Michael Bloor
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 247494 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Michael Bloor |
| NOMBRES | Michael |
| APELLIDO | Bloor |
| FIRMA | BLOOR M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Glasgow |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 68 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 365 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 68 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1974 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2019 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Surveillance and concealment
This chapter examines the issue of power in therapeutic relationships from a Foucauldian viewpoint. It deals with a summary statement of Michel Foucault’s approach to power and his analysis of surveillance. Foucault’s writings offer a conceptualization of power quite distinct from the ways in which power is viewed in Max Weber and Karl Marx. The near-absence of collective ideological dissent in therapeutic communities and health visiting may refl…
Selected Writings in Medical Sociological Research
Bishop Berkley and the adeno-tonsillectomy enigma - an exploration of variation in the social construction of medical disposals on the analysis of observational data - a discussion of the worth and uses of inductive techniques and respondant validation an alternative to the ethnomethodological approach to rule use - a comment on Zimmerman and Wieder's comment on Denzin observation of abortive illness behaviour conceptions on therapeutic work in t…
Useful but no Oracle
Delphi Groups are an increasingly popular method, not least because electronic communications have made it easier to assemble a 'virtual' expert panel, but there have been a number of review articles which have pointed to a lack of rigour. Using an extended case study of a Delphi Group designed to establish agreed policy recommendations and deriving from a project using observational and semi-structured interview methods, this article examines th…
Global governance of training standards in an outsourced labor force
The shipping industry is among the most globalized of all industries and is characterized by complex modular supply chains, including a largely outsourced labor force of “just‐in‐time” casualized workers from developing countries and the transitionalEastEuropean states. Despite long‐standing efforts by international bodies to standardize and regulate the education and training of seafarers, variations in practices and standards persist. Employers…
Room for Manoeuvre? Regulatory Compliance in the Global Shipping Industry
This article combines data from two separate studies of the shipping industry, one on enforcement of new regulations on the use of low-sulphur fuel and one on supply chain influences on ship operators’ health and safety policies and practices. The shipping industry is a valuable natural laboratory for the study of patterns of compliance and governance in late modernity because it is characterised both by highly developed polycentric governance st…
The Rime of the Globalised Mariner
This article borrows the form and metre of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner to describe and analyse the social situation of the globalised mariner. The shipping industry is characterised by complex global value chains and an outsourced, casualised labour force. The paper aims to be a piece of 'public sociology' and (in seeking to appeal in as vivid a manner as possible) is written in a style that Wright Mills called 'sociological poetry', …
An essay on 'health capital' and the Faustian bargains struck by workers in the globalised shipping industry
It has long been understood that work directly generates ill health and disability through injuries and occupational exposure to toxic and carcinogenic materials, but the more complex relationship between work and ill health that is seemingly mediated through psychological distress is more controversial. For example, the 'Karasek model', whereby high job demands coupled with limited latitude in decision making were thought to generate ill health,…
Unprepared for the Worst
This paper draws on the results of an Inquiry, commissioned by Qualiti (Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact), a node of ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods, into the physical and emotional harm suffered by qualitative social researchers. It argues that junior researchers and PhD students, the main recipients of such harm, are being let down by some principal investigators and PhD supervisors who…
Process evaluation
Good evaluation practice in public health research has become equated with the inclusion of a mixed-methods 'process evaluation' alongside an 'outcome evaluation' to gather data on how and why interventions are effective or ineffective. While the incorporation of process evaluations in randomized controlled trials is to be welcomed, there is a danger that they are being oversold. The problematic position of process evaluations is illustrated by d…
Putting it in context
The article draws on two separate studies employing developmental vignettes (hypothetical scenarios which unfold through a series of stages) to interview research participants. One study used the 'Davie' vignette, which was a conventional fixed narrative, while in the second, the 'Jack and Jenny' vignettes were made interactive by hyperlinking a series of PowerPoint scenarios and making the choice of the succeeding slide dependent on the intervie…
An informal school-based peer-led intervention for smoking prevention in adolescence (Assist)
Drug treatment and the achievement of paid employment
The aim of this article is to identify which aspects of drug treatment are most closely associated with recovering drug users’ ability to obtain paid employment. Based on a cohort study of 1033 individuals, this article reports on a logistic regression analysis of the factors associated with the achievement of paid employment 33 months after the initiation of treatment for drug dependency. While the results show a close relationship between the c…
Severity of drug dependence does not predict changes in drug users’ behaviour over time
This paper examines the power of a measure of drug dependence to predict future changes in drug consumption and related outcomes such as criminality and homelessness. Data from an ongoing, longitudinal, interview study (DORIS) of 1033 new attenders at a range of Scottish drug treatment facilities were analysed, 16 months on from sample recruitment, using forward stepwise logistic regression models. Dependence was measured at baseline and in subse…
Sociology and Medicine
Murcott, A. Sociology and Medicine: selected essays by P.M. Strong . 2006 Aldershot : Ashgate £55.00 xvii+296pp . ISBN 978-0-7546-3844-5 (hardback) To start to write a review of a collection of Phil Strong's essays is to become conscious immediately of one's own writing style. And its shortcomings. When Strong died, aged just 49, in 1995 he was arguably British sociology's foremost essayist and had written knowledgably about the essayist's craft,…
A Price Worth Paying
Drawing on analysis of relevant literature, focus groups, and web-based discussion board postings, assembled as part of an inquiry into risks to the well-being of qualitative researchers, it is argued that emotional harm is more prevalent than physical harm and may be particularly associated with reflexivity and the important influence of feminist research methods. The particular concern of feminist researchers with reflexivity, with research rel…
Treatment experienced’ and ‘treatment naïve’ drug agency clients compared
When Jack Gets out of the Box
This ar ticle considers the challenge of regulation across national borders using the example of the shipping industry. It examines the success of different global regulator y strategies in the sector, specifically the implementation of smar t regulation and enforced self-regulation. In doing so it draws upon empirical research into the enforcement of labour standards via por t-State control in India, Russia and the UK, and the regulation of trai…
The process of sample recruitment
This article draws on the authors' fieldwork experiences in four different research studies to address the gap in the methodological literature on the practical activities of sample recruitment. Boundaries between ineligibility and refusal are considered along with the 'emotional labour' required during the recruitment process. In particular, the article aims to draw attention to the necessary indeterminacies in the recruitment process to show ho…
Any port in a storm
This article draws on the experience of conducting fieldwork in Russia, as part of an international comparative examination of health and safety regulatory enforcement in the shipping industry. We discuss the difficulties faced by fieldworkers in ensuring personal safety and maintaining rapport with research respondents in conditions characterized by danger and crisis; a situation made worse by the murder of one of our key gatekeepers. We develop…
Keywords in Qualitative Methods
An essential companion for students across the social and health sciences, this text provides a wide-ranging coverage of qualitative methods complemented by extended illustration from the array of academic disciplines in which qualitative research is found and employed. Written in a lively and reader-friendly style, the guide covers a comprehensive range of topics, including: - a concise definition of the method - a description of distinctive fea…
Problem drug users and assault
Borna disease virus
Unicorn among the Cedars
This article considers the prospects for effective regulation of emerging globalized industries by examining the effectiveness of the ‘smart regulation’ approach associated with the port state control enforcement regime for seafarers’ health and safety. Smart regulation seeks to generate incentive structures that promote proactive compliance by ship operators. Drawing on an international comparative study, which included extensive observation of …
Rationale, design and conduct of a comprehensive evaluation of a school-based peer-led anti-smoking intervention in the UK
Comprehensive evaluations of complex public health interventions of this scale and nature are rare in the United Kingdom. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of conducting cluster RCTs of complex public health interventions in schools, and how the rigour of such designs can be maximised both by thorough implementation of the protocol and by broadening the scope of questions addressed in the trial by including additional evaluative components
Problem drug users and assault
A Price Worth Paying
Drawing on analysis of relevant literature, focus groups, and web-based discussion board postings, assembled as part of an inquiry into risks to the well-being of qualitative researchers, it is argued that emotional harm is more prevalent than physical harm and may be particularly associated with reflexivity and the important influence of feminist research methods. The particular concern of feminist researchers with reflexivity, with research rel…
Putting it in context
The article draws on two separate studies employing developmental vignettes (hypothetical scenarios which unfold through a series of stages) to interview research participants. One study used the 'Davie' vignette, which was a conventional fixed narrative, while in the second, the 'Jack and Jenny' vignettes were made interactive by hyperlinking a series of PowerPoint scenarios and making the choice of the succeeding slide dependent on the intervie…
Spotting the Invisible Man
Although there is now an extensive literature from female researchers reporting the influence of their gender on fieldwork relations there is a dearth of comparable accounts from male sociologists. In this research note we describe our perceptions of how our male gender has influenced our fieldwork in a number of participant observational studies conducted by ourselves in the last few years. We focus our observations in terms of the impact of res…
HIV-Related Risk Practices among Glasgow Male Prostitutes
Based on ethnographic data on relations between 32 male prostitutes and their clients, this article examines variability in HIV-related risk practices. It is argued that risk behavior should be seen as a situated product, emergent from the immediate situation of the sexual encounter. A minority of the prostitutes engaged in unsafe sex with at least some of their clients. Unsafe sex and violence were both associated with client control-with sexual…
Any port in a storm
This article draws on the experience of conducting fieldwork in Russia, as part of an international comparative examination of health and safety regulatory enforcement in the shipping industry. We discuss the difficulties faced by fieldworkers in ensuring personal safety and maintaining rapport with research respondents in conditions characterized by danger and crisis; a situation made worse by the murder of one of our key gatekeepers. We develop…
Artefact explanations of inequalities in health
Artefact explanations seek to account for inequalities in health as a construct of the measurement process. The Black Report believed that the artefact explanation was relatively unimportant in accounting for the persistence of class inequalities in health. This paper reviews the evidence on artefact explanations of class differentials in specific-cause and all-cause mortality data, and also of differentials by occupation, by geography, and by ge…
The South Wales Miners Federation, Miners' Lung and the Instrumental Use of Expertise, 1900-1950
Oral history materials from the South Wales Miners' Library are used to examine the communal understandings of, collective responses to, the scourge of Miners' Lung (pneumoconiosis) in the 1920s and 1930s. Lay epidemiology in mining communities attributed an aetiological role to coaldust at a time when many experts believed miners' pulmonary disease to be bronchitic, or to be silica-induced. In their efforts to secure compensation claims for thei…
Unprepared for the Worst
This paper draws on the results of an Inquiry, commissioned by Qualiti (Qualitative Research in the Social Sciences: Innovation, Integration and Impact), a node of ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods, into the physical and emotional harm suffered by qualitative social researchers. It argues that junior researchers and PhD students, the main recipients of such harm, are being let down by some principal investigators and PhD supervisors who…
On the Analysis of Observational Data
The process of sample recruitment
This article draws on the authors' fieldwork experiences in four different research studies to address the gap in the methodological literature on the practical activities of sample recruitment. Boundaries between ineligibility and refusal are considered along with the 'emotional labour' required during the recruitment process. In particular, the article aims to draw attention to the necessary indeterminacies in the recruitment process to show ho…
When Jack Gets out of the Box
This ar ticle considers the challenge of regulation across national borders using the example of the shipping industry. It examines the success of different global regulator y strategies in the sector, specifically the implementation of smar t regulation and enforced self-regulation. In doing so it draws upon empirical research into the enforcement of labour standards via por t-State control in India, Russia and the UK, and the regulation of trai…
Unicorn among the Cedars
This article considers the prospects for effective regulation of emerging globalized industries by examining the effectiveness of the ‘smart regulation’ approach associated with the port state control enforcement regime for seafarers’ health and safety. Smart regulation seeks to generate incentive structures that promote proactive compliance by ship operators. Drawing on an international comparative study, which included extensive observation of …
A comparison of HIV-related risk behaviour and risk reduction between female street working prostitutes and male rent boys in Glasgow
In this paper we provide an early report of two continuing ethnographic studies of prostitution. We compare female streetworking prostitutes and male rent boys in Glasgow in terms of risks of HIV infection and practice of safer sex. It is shown that a considerable proportion of streetworking female prostitutes in Glasgow were injecting drug users but that drug use was much less common among rent boys. Although condom use appeared to be widespread…
Process evaluation of health promotion interventions
English This article uses two extended illustrations of current process evaluations to address areas of difficulty in health promotion design. There are no clear solutions to methodological problems that are rooted in competition between paradigms. Further,any design adopted must adapt to constraints of resources and time. Nevertheless, a multi-method approach can provide a pragmatic and realistic way forward, with the precise mix of methods sele…
Global governance of training standards in an outsourced labor force
The shipping industry is among the most globalized of all industries and is characterized by complex modular supply chains, including a largely outsourced labor force of “just‐in‐time” casualized workers from developing countries and the transitionalEastEuropean states. Despite long‐standing efforts by international bodies to standardize and regulate the education and training of seafarers, variations in practices and standards persist. Employers…
Social control in the therapeutic community
Sharp's study ‘Social Control in the Therapeutic Community’ is used as a critical case for the hypothesis that all treatment institutions routinely maintain manipulative control of their clientele. Sharp's argument is that social control is an inevitable consequence of the ubiquitous, nihilating, individualising, and selective properties of staff interpretative work. This view is contested by the presentation of data collected in a second communi…
Drug-Taking, 'Risk Boundaries' and Social Identity
The instrumental use of steroids and analogous drugs is a normalised practice in bodybuilding subculture. However, in a society where bodily health and lifestyle are conjoined, such risk-taking carries negative connotations. Bodybuilders using drugs for purposes of physique enhancement are able to resist accusations of opprobrium and maintain competent social identity by drawing a sharp contrast between themselves and 'junkies'. This self-serving…
Ethnostatics and the Aids Epidemic
Ethnostatistics is the study of the social practices surrounding the construction and interpretation of statistics. This paper considers certain ethnostatistical aspects of the official statistics on AIDS cases--the monthly updated figures on AIDS cases supplied by the Department of Health and derived from the English and Scottish voluntary reporting schemes. The paper focuses on problems in the classification of cases according to the route of v…
Estimating the Prevalence of Hard‐to‐Reach Populations
This paper assesses the potential of mark‐recapture methods as a relatively powerful innovative research method for estimating the prevalence of “hard‐to‐reach”human populations in the social welfare field. We outline the development of mark‐recapture methods, illustrating some recent applications. The body of the paper reviews the main methodological and practical questions raised by the method. We suggest, by way of illustration, how it might b…
An essay on 'health capital' and the Faustian bargains struck by workers in the globalised shipping industry
It has long been understood that work directly generates ill health and disability through injuries and occupational exposure to toxic and carcinogenic materials, but the more complex relationship between work and ill health that is seemingly mediated through psychological distress is more controversial. For example, the 'Karasek model', whereby high job demands coupled with limited latitude in decision making were thought to generate ill health,…
Process evaluation
Good evaluation practice in public health research has become equated with the inclusion of a mixed-methods 'process evaluation' alongside an 'outcome evaluation' to gather data on how and why interventions are effective or ineffective. While the incorporation of process evaluations in randomized controlled trials is to be welcomed, there is a danger that they are being oversold. The problematic position of process evaluations is illustrated by d…
No Longer Dying for a Living
This article draws on documents and oral history tapes and transcripts stored in the South Wales Miners Library, particularly the 176 interviews with individuals or groups conducted as part of the South Wales Coalfield History Project (completed in 1974). The focus of the article is on collective health behaviour and particularly on formal and informal collective attempts to reduce safety threats in the pits. These data are related to contemporar…
Mortality among injecting drug users
STUDY OBJECTIVE--The aim was to quantify all cause mortality among injecting drug users. DESIGN--This was a retrospective analysis of 1989 data on injecting drug users and mortality obtained from three independent agencies: the Procurator Fiscal's Office, the General Register Office, and the Scottish HIV-test register. SETTING--Greater Glasgow, Scotland. SUBJECTS--Drug injectors, estimated population 9424. MAIN RESULTS--81 names were found using …
A possible artefactual component in specific cause mortality gradients. Social class variations in the clinical accuracy of death certificates
This paper investigates one possible avenue of artefactual influence on the production and/or concealment of social class gradients in specific cause mortality rates, namely, the possibility of social class biases in the accuracy of diagnosis of cause of death and the systematic misallocation of certain social groups to particular diagnoses. Information on this topic was obtained by matching occupational data gathered at death registration with d…
Teamwork, information control and therapeutic effectiveness
This paper maps the differential distribution of therapeutic work within the programmes of two therapeutic communities found in psychiatric hospitals. It is shown that in one of the two communities, therapeutic work was largely restricted to the small groups and to those large groups attended by the psychiatrists. The other community displayed a distribution of therapeutic work which was spread across the whole formal weekly programme and into in…
A review of investigations into adenotonsillectomy
Operations on the tonsils and adenoids are among the most commonly performed of all operations but present a wide range of problems when attempts are made to evaluate the results. This article reviews the findings of the major evaluative studies and discusses the general difficulties that confront them, particularly those that arise from failure to take into account the extensive web of social factors that precipitate a child towards operation an…
The Structures of the Life-World
On the Analysis of Observational Data
The Social Context of Psychiatric Care
Book reviews in this article: J. Stuart Whiteley and John Gordon, Group Approaches in Psychiatry. R. D. Hinshelwood and Nick Manning (eds). Therapeutic Communities: Reflections and Progress. David Towell and Clive Harries (eds). Innovation in Patient Care. Steven P. Segal and Uri Aviram, The Mentally Ill in Community‐Based Sheltered Care: A Study of Community Care and Social Integration
On the Retrieval of Sociological Descriptions
Our concern in this article is with the feeding back of sociological descriptions to those whom these descriptions purport to be about. This in particular is what we mean in our title by the ‘retrieval of sociological description’. We would like to consider here some of the issues surrounding any attempt on the part of the sociologist to offer his account for inspection by his research respondents, why one may attempt such an exercise and, tentat…
Therapeutic paradox – the patient culture and the formal treatment programme in a therapeutic community
Data collected by participant observation in a day hospital are used to examine the complex relationship between informal patient interaction and the formal group therapy programme of this therapeutic community. It was evident that staff might view apparently similar informal patient activities in quite different lights, as either complementary or as detrimental to the work of the formal groups. This apparent inconsistency in staff prescriptions …
Reality construction, reality exploration and treatment in two therapeutic communities1
Data collected by participant observation in two contrasting types of therapeutic community are compared to reveal broad similarities in the treatment process. In both communities treatment was centrally concerned with reality construction: patients/residents learned to follow, assimilate and reproduce accounts of the community structure and prescriptions for behaviour, and these accounts and prescriptions reflexively constituted the social world…
Reality construction, reality exploration and treatment in two therapeutic communities
Medical Thinking
Symptoms, illness behaviour and help-seeking
Observations of Abortive Illness Behavior
An observational study of prepatient illness behavior was terminated because it failed to yield comprehensive data on illness experience in a large, municipally run lodging house. However, the data collected during pilot work provide some insights on illness behavior likely to be underemphasized in retrospective interview studies. Observations confirmed Zola's findings on the extensiveness of accommodation to long-term symptoms and on the role of…
Social control in the therapeutic community
Sharp's study ‘Social Control in the Therapeutic Community’ is used as a critical case for the hypothesis that all treatment institutions routinely maintain manipulative control of their clientele. Sharp's argument is that social control is an inevitable consequence of the ubiquitous, nihilating, individualising, and selective properties of staff interpretative work. This view is contested by the presentation of data collected in a second communi…
Teamwork, information control and therapeutic effectiveness
This paper maps the differential distribution of therapeutic work within the programmes of two therapeutic communities found in psychiatric hospitals. It is shown that in one of the two communities, therapeutic work was largely restricted to the small groups and to those large groups attended by the psychiatrists. The other community displayed a distribution of therapeutic work which was spread across the whole formal weekly programme and into in…
Artefact explanations of inequalities in health
Artefact explanations seek to account for inequalities in health as a construct of the measurement process. The Black Report believed that the artefact explanation was relatively unimportant in accounting for the persistence of class inequalities in health. This paper reviews the evidence on artefact explanations of class differentials in specific-cause and all-cause mortality data, and also of differentials by occupation, by geography, and by ge…
A possible artefactual component in specific cause mortality gradients. Social class variations in the clinical accuracy of death certificates
This paper investigates one possible avenue of artefactual influence on the production and/or concealment of social class gradients in specific cause mortality rates, namely, the possibility of social class biases in the accuracy of diagnosis of cause of death and the systematic misallocation of certain social groups to particular diagnoses. Information on this topic was obtained by matching occupational data gathered at death registration with d…
Asylum to Anarchy (Book)
One Foot in Eden
An ethnographic study of HIV-related risk practices among Glasgow rent boys and their clients
This paper provides an early report of a continuing ethnographic study of male prostitution in Glasgow. Pilot work indicates that rent boy activity may be of considerable importance for the spread of HIV infection. Although there is little evidence of an association between rent boy activity and injecting drug use, rent boys may well be implicated in epidemic spread because many (but not all) of them report unsafe sexual practices. Some boys repo…
A comparison of HIV-related risk behaviour and risk reduction between female street working prostitutes and male rent boys in Glasgow
In this paper we provide an early report of two continuing ethnographic studies of prostitution. We compare female streetworking prostitutes and male rent boys in Glasgow in terms of risks of HIV infection and practice of safer sex. It is shown that a considerable proportion of streetworking female prostitutes in Glasgow were injecting drug users but that drug use was much less common among rent boys. Although condom use appeared to be widespread…
A Minor Office
Those doctors in a Scottish city who had completed the most death certificates in 1985 were identified, interviewed about their certifying practices, and asked, for comparative purposes, to complete a series of dummy death certificates, based on case summaries. Analysis of the dummy certificates indicated substantial inter-practitioner variations in practice. From the interview data it is clear that the completion of death certificates is a very …
Spotting the Invisible Man
Although there is now an extensive literature from female researchers reporting the influence of their gender on fieldwork relations there is a dearth of comparable accounts from male sociologists. In this research note we describe our perceptions of how our male gender has influenced our fieldwork in a number of participant observational studies conducted by ourselves in the last few years. We focus our observations in terms of the impact of res…
Ethnostatics and the Aids Epidemic
Ethnostatistics is the study of the social practices surrounding the construction and interpretation of statistics. This paper considers certain ethnostatistical aspects of the official statistics on AIDS cases--the monthly updated figures on AIDS cases supplied by the Department of Health and derived from the English and Scottish voluntary reporting schemes. The paper focuses on problems in the classification of cases according to the route of v…
The inappropriateness of psycho-social models of risk behaviour for understanding HIV-related risk practices among Glasgow male prostitutes
Much the most common models of HIV-related risk behaviour are those psychosocial models derived from studies of health behaviour and tested on large interview samples of American gay men. These models were not appropriate for understanding risk behaviour among 32 Glasgow male prostitutes. Whereas psycho-social models conceive of risk behaviour as volitional and individualistic, ethnographic data indicate that the male prostitutes' risk practices …
HIV prevalence and HIV risk behaviour among injecting drug users in London and Glasgow
This paper reports on the British findings from a cross-national study of HIV prevalence and HIV risk behaviour among 1,037 injecting drug users (IDUs) recruited from a variety of treatment- and community-based settings during 1990. Confirmed HIV saliva test results show 12.8% (63) of London respondents and 1.8% (8) of Glasgow respondents to be HIV antibody positive. Among London respondents, a higher rate of prevalence was found in those with no…
Mortality among injecting drug users
STUDY OBJECTIVE--The aim was to quantify all cause mortality among injecting drug users. DESIGN--This was a retrospective analysis of 1989 data on injecting drug users and mortality obtained from three independent agencies: the Procurator Fiscal's Office, the General Register Office, and the Scottish HIV-test register. SETTING--Greater Glasgow, Scotland. SUBJECTS--Drug injectors, estimated population 9424. MAIN RESULTS--81 names were found using …
Sociology (43 obras) · Medicine (33 obras) · Psychology (32 obras) · Political science (26 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Computer Science (15 obras) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (14 obras) · Social Psychology (13 obras) · Demography (12 obras) · Economics (12 obras)