Vicky Singleton
Biographic Data
| ID | 133783 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Vicky Singleton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Vicky |
| FAMILY NAME | Singleton |
| SIGNATURE | SINGLETON V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lancaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1289-0835 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 559 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Ghosts in the machinery
This paper explores post-treatment experiences of women who have had radiotherapy for gynaecological cancer. Drawing on data from a project which explored post-treatment wellbeing, conceptual metaphors of ghosts/haunting are used to engage with enduring legacies of cancer and 'neglected matters' in post-treatment trajectories. Current arrangements of care contribute to the idea that participants are 'out of the other side of cancer' once active t…
The ambivalence of radiotherapy
Within the biomedical paradigm, treatment effects are typically split into primary and secondary effects with temporality playing a key role in this separation. Yet, this kind of ordering of effects with some effects understood as happening on the 'side', secondary and temporary, does not fit with how they are experienced by many patients who undergo treatment for cancer. Drawing on empirical data from a research project that gathered narratives …
Unsettling descriptions
This article explores the potential of describing things at the periphery of our attention. It discusses how our practices of 'describing collaboratively' shifted what we attended to in observations of participants in a Swedish gynaecological cancer patient organisation. We show how the care the organisation aims to promote is troubled and seemingly undermined by attending to palliative care. Our aim is to explore the ethico-political potential o…
Critical compassion
Care has become a focus of debate in feminist technoscience studies, with a recent call for researchers to be care-full about the politics of research and theorising and also to challenge 'care' as a taken-for-granted good. Care is a current focus of concern in Britain, where a crisis has been declared in national health and social care, and where previous policy has focused on quantity at the expense of quality. The influential government-commis…
The politics of policy practices
This collection explores the relations between policy and care drawing on two specific sources of inspiration - that of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and that of Critical Policy Studies. It takes as its starting point a tension within and between the anticipated features of policy and those of care. Policy is often expected to provide general statements, protocols and directives, measurable outcomes, targets and indicators in order to guid…
ANT, multiplicity and policy
In this article, we explore the potential of actor network theory and feminist material semiotics as a set of tools for critical policy analysis. We describe their focus on material heterogeneity, ontological multiplicity and performativity, and consider how this both generates political and policy possibilities and impossibilities and also creates the potential for change. We explore this by considering the British policy response to the 2001 fo…
Modes of Syncretism
In this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium "Fuzzy Studies," the authors, all of whom work in the field of science, technology, and society, begin from the assumption that, as Bruno Latour has put it, "we have never been modern." They accept the STS thesis that, while modern practices purport to be entirely rational and coherent, on closer inspection they turn out to be as much noncoherent as coherent. This article poses the question o…
ANT and Politics
Devices as Rituals
In this paper we seek to expand the sense of what a device is. We draw from ethnography about contemporary farming practices, and in particular beef cattle farming, as we explore the craft of farming. Our concern with practices on the farm considers, in particular, the Cattle Tracing System (CTS) of the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS). The CTS is important - nay financially crucial - to everyone who farms cattle in Britain, and it looks an…
When Contexts Meet
The article discusses three versions of context. First, UK Government legislation, the British Cattle Tracing System (CTS), as a context that frames and guides good farming practices to promote accountability for cattle movements and to control disease. It describes how the legislative context creates particular constructions of farmers, cows, and good and bad farming practices. Second, the article creates context as the local farm-based practice…
Object Lessons
During research on the management of alcoholic liver disease the authors found that it was difficult to keep the condition in focus through the course of the study. Perhaps this was a sign of methodological failure, but this paper explores an alternative possibility: that social science methods are ill adapted for the study of complex and messy objects. The paper reviews arguments about the character of complex objects as these have been recently…
The Promise of Public Health
In this paper I explore the relationship between the UK New Public Health Policy and one of its enactments. I outline a crucial policy document, Saving Lives (Department of Health, 1999, HMSO, London), and consider the practices that constitute a localised initiative called The Heart of the Shire. This initiative aims to train all members of a rural community in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in order to prevent deaths from cardiac arrest. I argu…
Sickness absence as risk-taking behaviour
This article examines the organisational and cultural factors, both formal and informal, which lead to the inappropriate non-use of sick leave or 'presenteeism'. A two-stage research process supplies the empirical data for this paper. Preliminary quantitative research was gathered from 200 questionnaires sent to staff at two centres; however, the results from this stage were inconclusive. The article therefore focuses on the findings from qualita…
Performing Technology's Stories
Ed Constant's recent article "Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff" is an attractive, graceful, and more than occasionally witty description of the growth of rational engineering belief. 1 In particular, it offers an account for the fact that our confidence in relevant scientific and technological theory tends not to be eroded by the apparently disconfirming instances endlessly thrown up in everyday practice. His argues that rational belief in…
The Politic(ian)s of SSK
Feminism, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Postmodernism
Is postmodernism debilitating for feminists approaching science? Is the actor-network approach, which rejects dualisms and universalism, politically impotent? Or is such a critique epistemologically conservative? I explore these questions by drawing on empirical research examining the UK Cervical Screening Programme (CSP). Specifically, I attempt to answer the question of whether or not women should participate in the CSP and undertake a cervical…
Actor-Networks and Ambivalence
Actor-network theory has, until recently, narrated the co-evolution of science and society in terms of dramatic triumphs and betrayals. This paper attempts to incorporate 'ambivalence' into the process of enrolment and black-boxing so central to the construction and continuation of actor-networks. Though ambivalence towards one's own and others' attributed roles in the network would seem to threaten the integrity of a given network, we suggest th…
Object Lessons
During research on the management of alcoholic liver disease the authors found that it was difficult to keep the condition in focus through the course of the study. Perhaps this was a sign of methodological failure, but this paper explores an alternative possibility: that social science methods are ill adapted for the study of complex and messy objects. The paper reviews arguments about the character of complex objects as these have been recently…
Actor-Networks and Ambivalence
Actor-network theory has, until recently, narrated the co-evolution of science and society in terms of dramatic triumphs and betrayals. This paper attempts to incorporate 'ambivalence' into the process of enrolment and black-boxing so central to the construction and continuation of actor-networks. Though ambivalence towards one's own and others' attributed roles in the network would seem to threaten the integrity of a given network, we suggest th…
ANT and Politics
Devices as Rituals
In this paper we seek to expand the sense of what a device is. We draw from ethnography about contemporary farming practices, and in particular beef cattle farming, as we explore the craft of farming. Our concern with practices on the farm considers, in particular, the Cattle Tracing System (CTS) of the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS). The CTS is important - nay financially crucial - to everyone who farms cattle in Britain, and it looks an…
When Contexts Meet
The article discusses three versions of context. First, UK Government legislation, the British Cattle Tracing System (CTS), as a context that frames and guides good farming practices to promote accountability for cattle movements and to control disease. It describes how the legislative context creates particular constructions of farmers, cows, and good and bad farming practices. Second, the article creates context as the local farm-based practice…
Performing Technology's Stories
Ed Constant's recent article "Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff" is an attractive, graceful, and more than occasionally witty description of the growth of rational engineering belief. 1 In particular, it offers an account for the fact that our confidence in relevant scientific and technological theory tends not to be eroded by the apparently disconfirming instances endlessly thrown up in everyday practice. His argues that rational belief in…
ANT, multiplicity and policy
In this article, we explore the potential of actor network theory and feminist material semiotics as a set of tools for critical policy analysis. We describe their focus on material heterogeneity, ontological multiplicity and performativity, and consider how this both generates political and policy possibilities and impossibilities and also creates the potential for change. We explore this by considering the British policy response to the 2001 fo…
Modes of Syncretism
In this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium "Fuzzy Studies," the authors, all of whom work in the field of science, technology, and society, begin from the assumption that, as Bruno Latour has put it, "we have never been modern." They accept the STS thesis that, while modern practices purport to be entirely rational and coherent, on closer inspection they turn out to be as much noncoherent as coherent. This article poses the question o…
Feminism, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Postmodernism
Is postmodernism debilitating for feminists approaching science? Is the actor-network approach, which rejects dualisms and universalism, politically impotent? Or is such a critique epistemologically conservative? I explore these questions by drawing on empirical research examining the UK Cervical Screening Programme (CSP). Specifically, I attempt to answer the question of whether or not women should participate in the CSP and undertake a cervical…
The politics of policy practices
This collection explores the relations between policy and care drawing on two specific sources of inspiration - that of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and that of Critical Policy Studies. It takes as its starting point a tension within and between the anticipated features of policy and those of care. Policy is often expected to provide general statements, protocols and directives, measurable outcomes, targets and indicators in order to guid…
The Promise of Public Health
In this paper I explore the relationship between the UK New Public Health Policy and one of its enactments. I outline a crucial policy document, Saving Lives (Department of Health, 1999, HMSO, London), and consider the practices that constitute a localised initiative called The Heart of the Shire. This initiative aims to train all members of a rural community in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in order to prevent deaths from cardiac arrest. I argu…
Critical compassion
Care has become a focus of debate in feminist technoscience studies, with a recent call for researchers to be care-full about the politics of research and theorising and also to challenge 'care' as a taken-for-granted good. Care is a current focus of concern in Britain, where a crisis has been declared in national health and social care, and where previous policy has focused on quantity at the expense of quality. The influential government-commis…
Unsettling descriptions
This article explores the potential of describing things at the periphery of our attention. It discusses how our practices of 'describing collaboratively' shifted what we attended to in observations of participants in a Swedish gynaecological cancer patient organisation. We show how the care the organisation aims to promote is troubled and seemingly undermined by attending to palliative care. Our aim is to explore the ethico-political potential o…
The Politic(ian)s of SSK
Actor-Networks and Ambivalence
Actor-network theory has, until recently, narrated the co-evolution of science and society in terms of dramatic triumphs and betrayals. This paper attempts to incorporate 'ambivalence' into the process of enrolment and black-boxing so central to the construction and continuation of actor-networks. Though ambivalence towards one's own and others' attributed roles in the network would seem to threaten the integrity of a given network, we suggest th…
Feminism, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and Postmodernism
Is postmodernism debilitating for feminists approaching science? Is the actor-network approach, which rejects dualisms and universalism, politically impotent? Or is such a critique epistemologically conservative? I explore these questions by drawing on empirical research examining the UK Cervical Screening Programme (CSP). Specifically, I attempt to answer the question of whether or not women should participate in the CSP and undertake a cervical…
The Politic(ian)s of SSK
Sickness absence as risk-taking behaviour
This article examines the organisational and cultural factors, both formal and informal, which lead to the inappropriate non-use of sick leave or 'presenteeism'. A two-stage research process supplies the empirical data for this paper. Preliminary quantitative research was gathered from 200 questionnaires sent to staff at two centres; however, the results from this stage were inconclusive. The article therefore focuses on the findings from qualita…
Performing Technology's Stories
Ed Constant's recent article "Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff" is an attractive, graceful, and more than occasionally witty description of the growth of rational engineering belief. 1 In particular, it offers an account for the fact that our confidence in relevant scientific and technological theory tends not to be eroded by the apparently disconfirming instances endlessly thrown up in everyday practice. His argues that rational belief in…
Object Lessons
During research on the management of alcoholic liver disease the authors found that it was difficult to keep the condition in focus through the course of the study. Perhaps this was a sign of methodological failure, but this paper explores an alternative possibility: that social science methods are ill adapted for the study of complex and messy objects. The paper reviews arguments about the character of complex objects as these have been recently…
The Promise of Public Health
In this paper I explore the relationship between the UK New Public Health Policy and one of its enactments. I outline a crucial policy document, Saving Lives (Department of Health, 1999, HMSO, London), and consider the practices that constitute a localised initiative called The Heart of the Shire. This initiative aims to train all members of a rural community in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation in order to prevent deaths from cardiac arrest. I argu…
When Contexts Meet
The article discusses three versions of context. First, UK Government legislation, the British Cattle Tracing System (CTS), as a context that frames and guides good farming practices to promote accountability for cattle movements and to control disease. It describes how the legislative context creates particular constructions of farmers, cows, and good and bad farming practices. Second, the article creates context as the local farm-based practice…
ANT and Politics
Devices as Rituals
In this paper we seek to expand the sense of what a device is. We draw from ethnography about contemporary farming practices, and in particular beef cattle farming, as we explore the craft of farming. Our concern with practices on the farm considers, in particular, the Cattle Tracing System (CTS) of the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS). The CTS is important - nay financially crucial - to everyone who farms cattle in Britain, and it looks an…
ANT, multiplicity and policy
In this article, we explore the potential of actor network theory and feminist material semiotics as a set of tools for critical policy analysis. We describe their focus on material heterogeneity, ontological multiplicity and performativity, and consider how this both generates political and policy possibilities and impossibilities and also creates the potential for change. We explore this by considering the British policy response to the 2001 fo…
Modes of Syncretism
In this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium "Fuzzy Studies," the authors, all of whom work in the field of science, technology, and society, begin from the assumption that, as Bruno Latour has put it, "we have never been modern." They accept the STS thesis that, while modern practices purport to be entirely rational and coherent, on closer inspection they turn out to be as much noncoherent as coherent. This article poses the question o…
Critical compassion
Care has become a focus of debate in feminist technoscience studies, with a recent call for researchers to be care-full about the politics of research and theorising and also to challenge 'care' as a taken-for-granted good. Care is a current focus of concern in Britain, where a crisis has been declared in national health and social care, and where previous policy has focused on quantity at the expense of quality. The influential government-commis…
The politics of policy practices
This collection explores the relations between policy and care drawing on two specific sources of inspiration - that of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and that of Critical Policy Studies. It takes as its starting point a tension within and between the anticipated features of policy and those of care. Policy is often expected to provide general statements, protocols and directives, measurable outcomes, targets and indicators in order to guid…
Unsettling descriptions
This article explores the potential of describing things at the periphery of our attention. It discusses how our practices of 'describing collaboratively' shifted what we attended to in observations of participants in a Swedish gynaecological cancer patient organisation. We show how the care the organisation aims to promote is troubled and seemingly undermined by attending to palliative care. Our aim is to explore the ethico-political potential o…
The ambivalence of radiotherapy
Within the biomedical paradigm, treatment effects are typically split into primary and secondary effects with temporality playing a key role in this separation. Yet, this kind of ordering of effects with some effects understood as happening on the 'side', secondary and temporary, does not fit with how they are experienced by many patients who undergo treatment for cancer. Drawing on empirical data from a research project that gathered narratives …
Ghosts in the machinery
This paper explores post-treatment experiences of women who have had radiotherapy for gynaecological cancer. Drawing on data from a project which explored post-treatment wellbeing, conceptual metaphors of ghosts/haunting are used to engage with enduring legacies of cancer and 'neglected matters' in post-treatment trajectories. Current arrangements of care contribute to the idea that participants are 'out of the other side of cancer' once active t…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Social science (7 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (6 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)