Claudia Malacrida
Biographic Data
| ID | 210667 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Claudia Malacrida |
| GIVEN NAMES | Claudia |
| FAMILY NAME | Malacrida |
| SIGNATURE | MALACRIDA C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lethbridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 154 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Always, already-medicalized: Women's prenatal knowledge and choice in two Canadian contexts
Women's childbirth choices occur within contested discourses about medical, natural, and woman-centered births. All three perspectives, to slightly differing degrees, presume an autonomous female subject who makes childbirth choices. Thus informed choice is posed as a crucial corrective to the increasing medicalization of childbirth. This article employs a critical feminist analysis to examine how women learn about childbirth and make choices lon…
Dangerous pregnancies: Mothers, disability and abortion in modern America
understanding of the narrative potential of disabled bodies and its crucial relation with citizenship is greatly masterfully.Moving away from a simplified anti-essentialist framework, this book relies on embodiment to bring into light how deep interconnections between physical, social and textual bodies form the terrain for constructing social narratives of disabled citizenship.With that, we find that embodiment is a powerful lens for understandi…
The best laid plans? Women's choices, expectations and experiences in childbirth
The past decades have seen a drastic increase in the medicalization of childbirth, evidenced by increasing Caesarean section rates in many Western countries. In a rare moment of congruence, alternative health-care providers, feminist advocates for women's health and, most recently, mainstream medical service providers have all expressed serious concerns about the rise in Caesarean section rates and women's roles in medicalization. These concerns …
Embodied Action, Embodied Theory: Understanding the Body in Society
In 2010 Jacqueline Low was invited to become an editorial board member of the then new online open-access journal Societies. In that same year, Claudia Malacrida was approached to organize a session on the sociology of the body at the 2012 International Sociological Association (ISA) meetings in Buenos Aries. When the call came in 2011 from Societies for editorial board members to propose topics for special issues of the journal, it was a natural…
Bodily Practices as Vehicles for Dehumanization in an Institution for Mental Defectives
This article analyzes the processes of dehumanization that occurred in the Michener Center, a total institution for the purported care and training of people deemed to be mental defectives[1] that operated in Alberta, Canada. I report on qualitative interviews with 22 survivors, three ex-workers, and the institutional archival record, drawing out the ways that dehumanization was accomplished through bodily means and the construction of embodied o…
Women and Cosmetic Breast Surgery: Weighing the Medical, Social, and Lifestyle Risks
In this article we provide a comparative analysis of qualitative, semistructured interviews with 24 women who had undergone different forms of cosmetic breast surgery (CBS). We argue that women must negotiate three types of risk: potential medical risks, lifestyle risks connected with choosing "frivolous" self-enhancements, and countervailing social risks affiliated with pressures to maximize one's feminine beauty. In addition, we highlight the c…
Women's Perceptions of Childbirth 'Choices: Competing Discourses of Motherhood, Sexuality, and Selflessness
Women in North America have many childbirth options. However, they must make these choices within a complex culture of birthing discourse characterized by competing knowledges and claims regarding the 'ideal birth' as medicalized, natural, or woman centered. We interviewed 21 childless women and 22 new mothers to explore their perceptions of choice and birthing. The women's interviews indicated that their birthing choices are reflective of tensio…
Income support policy in Canada and the UK: Different, but much the same
This paper examines linkages between women's experiences in accessing information, services and public policy relating to income support in Canada and the UK. Drawing on narrative interviews, the author finds mothers with disabilities are often embedded in complex relations of care, experiencing both embodied and social barriers. Additionally, by employing critical discourse analysis, it is clear that policy in both contexts is written not only i…
The Aish review is a big joke’: Contradictions of policy participation and consultation in a neo‐liberal context
Responsive and appropriate disability policy is ideally developed through the participation of individuals with disabilities. Using a case study methodology, we have examined the policy review process for a disability income programme in Alberta, Canada. We examined questions of participation and consultation and compared individual and agency involvement. Participation was characterized by sustained interactions with government, face‐to‐face col…
Gendered ironies in home care: Surveillance, gender struggles and infantilisation
Women are normatively expected to provide nurturance to the men in their lives through emotional support, and to the children in their lives through active, involved and expert mothering – indeed, being a caregiver is a master status for adult women in modernity. While this may be the case for all women, mothers who are disabled can have more a complicated relationship to caregiving than others, because they are both receivers and providers of ca…
Performing motherhood in a disablist world: Dilemmas of motherhood, femininity and disability
Women are expected to aspire to norms of femininity that include ideal motherhood, where mothers are positioned as ever available, ever nurturing providers of active, involved and expert mothering – indeed, being a caregiver is a master status for adult women in modernity. While this may be the case for all women, mothers who are disabled can have more a complicated relationship to ideal motherhood than others, because they are perceived of eithe…
Reflexive Journaling on Emotional Research Topics: Ethical Issues for Team Researchers
Traditional epistemological concerns in qualitative research focus on the effects of researchers' values and emotions on choices of research topics, power relations with research participants, and the influence of researcher standpoints on data collection and analysis. However, the research process also affects the researchers' values, emotions, and standpoints. Drawing on reflexive journal entries of assistant researchers involved in emotionally…
Negotiating the Dependency/Nurturance Tightrope: Dilemmas of Motherhood and Disability
La féminité normative place les mères dans une situation difficile, entre la dépendance et la tendance à se dévouer; d'un côté, les bonnes mères devraient être dépendantes dans une relation avec un mäle pourvoyeur. Inversement, elles devraient fournir de bons soins par un maternage actif, habile ainsi que par leur engagement. Cette condition pose des défis aux femmes ayant une incapacité et dont la dépendance à l'égard d'un partenaire masculin pe…
Contested memories: Efforts of the powerful to silence former inmates’ histories of life in an institution for ‘mental defectives’
This paper discusses the barriers encountered in undertaking an oral history project with survivors of a total institution for ‘mental defectives’ in the province of Alberta, Canada. Powerful social actors were able to bar access to survivors through legal guardianship orders, and to make access to the institution and its grounds and to publicly archived materials quite prohibitive to the researcher. In addition to overt efforts on the part of po…
Discipline and dehumanization in a total institution: Institutional survivors’ descriptions of Time‐Out Rooms
This article reports on interviews with 21 institutional survivors who lived until the mid‐ to late‐1980s in a total institution for the ‘training and care’ of ‘mental defectives’, operating in Alberta, Canada. The focus is on survivors’ descriptions of ‘Time‐Out Rooms’, used to discipline unruly and escaped inmates. Foucault’s theories about the disciplinary properties of modern society, the use of the gaze, technologies of the self and scientif…
Medicalization, Ambivalence and Social Control: Mothers' Descriptions of Educators and ADD/ADHD
Conrad notes that non-medical personnel often accomplish the routine, everyday work of medicalization. This is particularly so in the case of Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, where teachers, special educators and school psychologists identify, assess and administer medication to 'problematic' children. Drawing on data from interviews with Canadian and British mothers of ADD/ADHD children, this article explores mothers' perceptions of e…
Alternative Therapies and Attention Deficit Disorder: Discourses of Maternal Responsibility and Risk
In response to controversies about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Ritalin, many alternative therapies have proliferated in professional and lay circles. This study examines alternative therapy discourse and asks whether these texts offer any real challenge to traditional discourses of medicalized motherhood. Indeed, alternative therapies employ most of medicine's discursive strategies, portraying mothers as inadequate and responsible for th…
Motherhood, Resistance and Attention Deficit Disorder: Strategies and Limits
Étant donné son ambiguïté sur les plans culturel et historique, l'ap‐pellation psychiatrique de trouble déficitaire de I'attention (hyperac‐tivité) entraîne les mères dans un conflit avec les discours sur l'image de la bonne mère, la normativité familiale, les compétences profes‐sionnelles et la notion de risque. L'éude d entretiens avec 34 femmes au Canada et en Angleterre a permis de comprendre, du point de vue des femmes, les mécanismes de la …
Complicating Mourning: The Social Economy of Perinatal Death
In this article, the social economic practices related to perinatal death, based on Rando's model of complicated mourning and on an analysis of interactions with social institutions identified in the literature as relevant to perinatal death, are examined. Data are reported from semistructured interviews with 22 individuals who lost children to perinatal death. Parents' stories indicate that they were not provided with material social supports th…
Performing motherhood in a disablist world: Dilemmas of motherhood, femininity and disability
Women are expected to aspire to norms of femininity that include ideal motherhood, where mothers are positioned as ever available, ever nurturing providers of active, involved and expert mothering – indeed, being a caregiver is a master status for adult women in modernity. While this may be the case for all women, mothers who are disabled can have more a complicated relationship to ideal motherhood than others, because they are perceived of eithe…
Medicalization, Ambivalence and Social Control: Mothers' Descriptions of Educators and ADD/ADHD
Conrad notes that non-medical personnel often accomplish the routine, everyday work of medicalization. This is particularly so in the case of Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, where teachers, special educators and school psychologists identify, assess and administer medication to 'problematic' children. Drawing on data from interviews with Canadian and British mothers of ADD/ADHD children, this article explores mothers' perceptions of e…
Women's Perceptions of Childbirth 'Choices: Competing Discourses of Motherhood, Sexuality, and Selflessness
Women in North America have many childbirth options. However, they must make these choices within a complex culture of birthing discourse characterized by competing knowledges and claims regarding the 'ideal birth' as medicalized, natural, or woman centered. We interviewed 21 childless women and 22 new mothers to explore their perceptions of choice and birthing. The women's interviews indicated that their birthing choices are reflective of tensio…
Complicating Mourning: The Social Economy of Perinatal Death
In this article, the social economic practices related to perinatal death, based on Rando's model of complicated mourning and on an analysis of interactions with social institutions identified in the literature as relevant to perinatal death, are examined. Data are reported from semistructured interviews with 22 individuals who lost children to perinatal death. Parents' stories indicate that they were not provided with material social supports th…
Alternative Therapies and Attention Deficit Disorder: Discourses of Maternal Responsibility and Risk
In response to controversies about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Ritalin, many alternative therapies have proliferated in professional and lay circles. This study examines alternative therapy discourse and asks whether these texts offer any real challenge to traditional discourses of medicalized motherhood. Indeed, alternative therapies employ most of medicine's discursive strategies, portraying mothers as inadequate and responsible for th…
The best laid plans? Women's choices, expectations and experiences in childbirth
The past decades have seen a drastic increase in the medicalization of childbirth, evidenced by increasing Caesarean section rates in many Western countries. In a rare moment of congruence, alternative health-care providers, feminist advocates for women's health and, most recently, mainstream medical service providers have all expressed serious concerns about the rise in Caesarean section rates and women's roles in medicalization. These concerns …
Contested memories: Efforts of the powerful to silence former inmates’ histories of life in an institution for ‘mental defectives’
This paper discusses the barriers encountered in undertaking an oral history project with survivors of a total institution for ‘mental defectives’ in the province of Alberta, Canada. Powerful social actors were able to bar access to survivors through legal guardianship orders, and to make access to the institution and its grounds and to publicly archived materials quite prohibitive to the researcher. In addition to overt efforts on the part of po…
Motherhood, Resistance and Attention Deficit Disorder: Strategies and Limits
Étant donné son ambiguïté sur les plans culturel et historique, l'ap‐pellation psychiatrique de trouble déficitaire de I'attention (hyperac‐tivité) entraîne les mères dans un conflit avec les discours sur l'image de la bonne mère, la normativité familiale, les compétences profes‐sionnelles et la notion de risque. L'éude d entretiens avec 34 femmes au Canada et en Angleterre a permis de comprendre, du point de vue des femmes, les mécanismes de la …
Discipline and dehumanization in a total institution: Institutional survivors’ descriptions of Time‐Out Rooms
This article reports on interviews with 21 institutional survivors who lived until the mid‐ to late‐1980s in a total institution for the ‘training and care’ of ‘mental defectives’, operating in Alberta, Canada. The focus is on survivors’ descriptions of ‘Time‐Out Rooms’, used to discipline unruly and escaped inmates. Foucault’s theories about the disciplinary properties of modern society, the use of the gaze, technologies of the self and scientif…
Women and Cosmetic Breast Surgery: Weighing the Medical, Social, and Lifestyle Risks
In this article we provide a comparative analysis of qualitative, semistructured interviews with 24 women who had undergone different forms of cosmetic breast surgery (CBS). We argue that women must negotiate three types of risk: potential medical risks, lifestyle risks connected with choosing "frivolous" self-enhancements, and countervailing social risks affiliated with pressures to maximize one's feminine beauty. In addition, we highlight the c…
Negotiating the Dependency/Nurturance Tightrope: Dilemmas of Motherhood and Disability
La féminité normative place les mères dans une situation difficile, entre la dépendance et la tendance à se dévouer; d'un côté, les bonnes mères devraient être dépendantes dans une relation avec un mäle pourvoyeur. Inversement, elles devraient fournir de bons soins par un maternage actif, habile ainsi que par leur engagement. Cette condition pose des défis aux femmes ayant une incapacité et dont la dépendance à l'égard d'un partenaire masculin pe…
Income support policy in Canada and the UK: Different, but much the same
This paper examines linkages between women's experiences in accessing information, services and public policy relating to income support in Canada and the UK. Drawing on narrative interviews, the author finds mothers with disabilities are often embedded in complex relations of care, experiencing both embodied and social barriers. Additionally, by employing critical discourse analysis, it is clear that policy in both contexts is written not only i…
Gendered ironies in home care: Surveillance, gender struggles and infantilisation
Women are normatively expected to provide nurturance to the men in their lives through emotional support, and to the children in their lives through active, involved and expert mothering – indeed, being a caregiver is a master status for adult women in modernity. While this may be the case for all women, mothers who are disabled can have more a complicated relationship to caregiving than others, because they are both receivers and providers of ca…
Embodied Action, Embodied Theory: Understanding the Body in Society
In 2010 Jacqueline Low was invited to become an editorial board member of the then new online open-access journal Societies. In that same year, Claudia Malacrida was approached to organize a session on the sociology of the body at the 2012 International Sociological Association (ISA) meetings in Buenos Aries. When the call came in 2011 from Societies for editorial board members to propose topics for special issues of the journal, it was a natural…
Bodily Practices as Vehicles for Dehumanization in an Institution for Mental Defectives
This article analyzes the processes of dehumanization that occurred in the Michener Center, a total institution for the purported care and training of people deemed to be mental defectives[1] that operated in Alberta, Canada. I report on qualitative interviews with 22 survivors, three ex-workers, and the institutional archival record, drawing out the ways that dehumanization was accomplished through bodily means and the construction of embodied o…
Complicating Mourning: The Social Economy of Perinatal Death
In this article, the social economic practices related to perinatal death, based on Rando's model of complicated mourning and on an analysis of interactions with social institutions identified in the literature as relevant to perinatal death, are examined. Data are reported from semistructured interviews with 22 individuals who lost children to perinatal death. Parents' stories indicate that they were not provided with material social supports th…
Motherhood, Resistance and Attention Deficit Disorder: Strategies and Limits
Étant donné son ambiguïté sur les plans culturel et historique, l'ap‐pellation psychiatrique de trouble déficitaire de I'attention (hyperac‐tivité) entraîne les mères dans un conflit avec les discours sur l'image de la bonne mère, la normativité familiale, les compétences profes‐sionnelles et la notion de risque. L'éude d entretiens avec 34 femmes au Canada et en Angleterre a permis de comprendre, du point de vue des femmes, les mécanismes de la …
Alternative Therapies and Attention Deficit Disorder: Discourses of Maternal Responsibility and Risk
In response to controversies about Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Ritalin, many alternative therapies have proliferated in professional and lay circles. This study examines alternative therapy discourse and asks whether these texts offer any real challenge to traditional discourses of medicalized motherhood. Indeed, alternative therapies employ most of medicine's discursive strategies, portraying mothers as inadequate and responsible for th…
Medicalization, Ambivalence and Social Control: Mothers' Descriptions of Educators and ADD/ADHD
Conrad notes that non-medical personnel often accomplish the routine, everyday work of medicalization. This is particularly so in the case of Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder, where teachers, special educators and school psychologists identify, assess and administer medication to 'problematic' children. Drawing on data from interviews with Canadian and British mothers of ADD/ADHD children, this article explores mothers' perceptions of e…
Discipline and dehumanization in a total institution: Institutional survivors’ descriptions of Time‐Out Rooms
This article reports on interviews with 21 institutional survivors who lived until the mid‐ to late‐1980s in a total institution for the ‘training and care’ of ‘mental defectives’, operating in Alberta, Canada. The focus is on survivors’ descriptions of ‘Time‐Out Rooms’, used to discipline unruly and escaped inmates. Foucault’s theories about the disciplinary properties of modern society, the use of the gaze, technologies of the self and scientif…
Contested memories: Efforts of the powerful to silence former inmates’ histories of life in an institution for ‘mental defectives’
This paper discusses the barriers encountered in undertaking an oral history project with survivors of a total institution for ‘mental defectives’ in the province of Alberta, Canada. Powerful social actors were able to bar access to survivors through legal guardianship orders, and to make access to the institution and its grounds and to publicly archived materials quite prohibitive to the researcher. In addition to overt efforts on the part of po…
Reflexive Journaling on Emotional Research Topics: Ethical Issues for Team Researchers
Traditional epistemological concerns in qualitative research focus on the effects of researchers' values and emotions on choices of research topics, power relations with research participants, and the influence of researcher standpoints on data collection and analysis. However, the research process also affects the researchers' values, emotions, and standpoints. Drawing on reflexive journal entries of assistant researchers involved in emotionally…
Negotiating the Dependency/Nurturance Tightrope: Dilemmas of Motherhood and Disability
La féminité normative place les mères dans une situation difficile, entre la dépendance et la tendance à se dévouer; d'un côté, les bonnes mères devraient être dépendantes dans une relation avec un mäle pourvoyeur. Inversement, elles devraient fournir de bons soins par un maternage actif, habile ainsi que par leur engagement. Cette condition pose des défis aux femmes ayant une incapacité et dont la dépendance à l'égard d'un partenaire masculin pe…
The Aish review is a big joke’: Contradictions of policy participation and consultation in a neo‐liberal context
Responsive and appropriate disability policy is ideally developed through the participation of individuals with disabilities. Using a case study methodology, we have examined the policy review process for a disability income programme in Alberta, Canada. We examined questions of participation and consultation and compared individual and agency involvement. Participation was characterized by sustained interactions with government, face‐to‐face col…
Gendered ironies in home care: Surveillance, gender struggles and infantilisation
Women are normatively expected to provide nurturance to the men in their lives through emotional support, and to the children in their lives through active, involved and expert mothering – indeed, being a caregiver is a master status for adult women in modernity. While this may be the case for all women, mothers who are disabled can have more a complicated relationship to caregiving than others, because they are both receivers and providers of ca…
Performing motherhood in a disablist world: Dilemmas of motherhood, femininity and disability
Women are expected to aspire to norms of femininity that include ideal motherhood, where mothers are positioned as ever available, ever nurturing providers of active, involved and expert mothering – indeed, being a caregiver is a master status for adult women in modernity. While this may be the case for all women, mothers who are disabled can have more a complicated relationship to ideal motherhood than others, because they are perceived of eithe…
Income support policy in Canada and the UK: Different, but much the same
This paper examines linkages between women's experiences in accessing information, services and public policy relating to income support in Canada and the UK. Drawing on narrative interviews, the author finds mothers with disabilities are often embedded in complex relations of care, experiencing both embodied and social barriers. Additionally, by employing critical discourse analysis, it is clear that policy in both contexts is written not only i…
Bodily Practices as Vehicles for Dehumanization in an Institution for Mental Defectives
This article analyzes the processes of dehumanization that occurred in the Michener Center, a total institution for the purported care and training of people deemed to be mental defectives[1] that operated in Alberta, Canada. I report on qualitative interviews with 22 survivors, three ex-workers, and the institutional archival record, drawing out the ways that dehumanization was accomplished through bodily means and the construction of embodied o…
Women and Cosmetic Breast Surgery: Weighing the Medical, Social, and Lifestyle Risks
In this article we provide a comparative analysis of qualitative, semistructured interviews with 24 women who had undergone different forms of cosmetic breast surgery (CBS). We argue that women must negotiate three types of risk: potential medical risks, lifestyle risks connected with choosing "frivolous" self-enhancements, and countervailing social risks affiliated with pressures to maximize one's feminine beauty. In addition, we highlight the c…
Women's Perceptions of Childbirth 'Choices: Competing Discourses of Motherhood, Sexuality, and Selflessness
Women in North America have many childbirth options. However, they must make these choices within a complex culture of birthing discourse characterized by competing knowledges and claims regarding the 'ideal birth' as medicalized, natural, or woman centered. We interviewed 21 childless women and 22 new mothers to explore their perceptions of choice and birthing. The women's interviews indicated that their birthing choices are reflective of tensio…
Embodied Action, Embodied Theory: Understanding the Body in Society
In 2010 Jacqueline Low was invited to become an editorial board member of the then new online open-access journal Societies. In that same year, Claudia Malacrida was approached to organize a session on the sociology of the body at the 2012 International Sociological Association (ISA) meetings in Buenos Aries. When the call came in 2011 from Societies for editorial board members to propose topics for special issues of the journal, it was a natural…
Dangerous pregnancies: Mothers, disability and abortion in modern America
understanding of the narrative potential of disabled bodies and its crucial relation with citizenship is greatly masterfully.Moving away from a simplified anti-essentialist framework, this book relies on embodiment to bring into light how deep interconnections between physical, social and textual bodies form the terrain for constructing social narratives of disabled citizenship.With that, we find that embodiment is a powerful lens for understandi…
The best laid plans? Women's choices, expectations and experiences in childbirth
The past decades have seen a drastic increase in the medicalization of childbirth, evidenced by increasing Caesarean section rates in many Western countries. In a rare moment of congruence, alternative health-care providers, feminist advocates for women's health and, most recently, mainstream medical service providers have all expressed serious concerns about the rise in Caesarean section rates and women's roles in medicalization. These concerns …
Always, already-medicalized: Women's prenatal knowledge and choice in two Canadian contexts
Women's childbirth choices occur within contested discourses about medical, natural, and woman-centered births. All three perspectives, to slightly differing degrees, presume an autonomous female subject who makes childbirth choices. Thus informed choice is posed as a crucial corrective to the increasing medicalization of childbirth. This article employs a critical feminist analysis to examine how women learn about childbirth and make choices lon…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Law (10 works) · Social science (8 works) · Disability Rights and Representation (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Psychiatry (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)