Carol Thomas
Biographic Data
| ID | 3603660 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carol Thomas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carol |
| FAMILY NAME | Thomas |
| SIGNATURE | THOMAS C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lancaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4188-9224 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 781 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Avoidance-Endurance Model in Older Black Men with Low Back Pain
Disability & Society Special Issue
Rights to social determinants of flourishing? A paradigm for disability and public health research and policy
We need to understand how disability might have an accumulative impact across the life course, as well as how to ensure equity for people living with disabilities. This means conceptualising a social determinants of flourishing where we evaluate how exactly randomised controlled trials and public health interventions, not only lead to greater equality but also ensure rights to health and wellbeing
Do disabled people need a stronger social model
We introduce the social model of disability by reflecting on its origins and legacy, with particular reference to the work of the Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation. We argue that there has been a gradual rolling back of the rights and entitlements associated with the social model of disability. Yet no alternative for the social model has been proposed in response to such threats to disabled people’s human rights. Disabled peopl…
Times Change, but Things Remain the Same
I, Carol Thomas, have disappeared off the scene because I am now living in a nursing home needing care assistance and nursing care because of my impairment effects. I nevertheless feel the need to
Development and feasibility of a brief Zero‐time Exercise intervention to reduce sedentary behaviour and enhance physical activity
A brief intervention using Zero-time Exercise (ZTEx), a foot-in-the-door approach, was developed to reduce sedentary behaviour and increase physical activity. ZTEx refers to the integration of simple strength- and stamina-enhancing physical activity into daily life, which can be done anytime, anywhere and by anyone. This paper presents the development, feasibility, and preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of this intervention under the Hong…
Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies
This fully revised and expanded second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies takes a multidisciplinary approach to disability and provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of the main issues in the field around the world today. Adopting an international perspective and arranged thematically, it surveys the state of the discipline, examining emerging and cutting-edge areas as well as core areas of contention.\nDivided in …
Orality, oral culture, and historiography
Orality, oral culture, and historiography are aptly joined in ancient Greece and Rome: historical writing developed from non‐literate cultures. However, the roots of literacy differed. The discovery of clay tablets excavated at Bronze Age Greek sites demonstrated the deep roots of literacy and assisted historiography. Roman literacy does not have such deep roots.
Dementia, disability rights and disablism
This article considers the recent history and consequences of positioning people living with dementia in the realms of disability, disablism and disability rights. The geo-political focus is the United Kingdom and neighbouring resource-rich nations in the Global North. The first section examines the growing trend of identifying ‘dementia’ with ‘disability’, a trend fuelled by the expansion of dementia-related activism and research. The second sec…
Public health, research and rights
Public health research purports to provide the evidence base for policies, programmes and interventions to improve the health of a population. However, there is increasing awareness that the experiences of disabled people have played little part in informing this evidence base. This paper discusses one aspect of a study commissioned by England’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to review the implications for public health of theories…
Unpacking the impact of older adults' home death on family care-givers' experiences of home
Theorising disability and chronic illness
Routledge handbook of disability studies
The Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies takes a multidisciplinary approach to disability and provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of the main issues in the field around the world today. Adopting an international perspective and consisting entirely of newly commissioned chapters arranged thematically, it surveys the state of the discipline, examining emerging and cutting edge areas as well as core areas of contention. Divided in …
Negotiating the contested terrain of narrative methods in illness contexts
This paper offers an interpretive account of an ongoing transatlantic debate about illness narratives instigated by the publication in 1997 of Paul Atkinson's paperNarrative Turn Or Blind Alley?The claims and counter-claims to be found in this debate about narrative data and narrative analysis are set out sequentially, in an attempt to grasp the debate's essentials. Matters of theoretical perspective, methodology, ethics, and personal politics ar…
Cancer narratives and methodological uncertainties
This article considers the methodological uncertainties arising in the early months of a research project that involves the secondary data analysis, using narrative analysis methods, of lengthy interview transcripts with cancer patients and their main informal carers. It revisits the particular social contexts, purposes and intentions involved in the creation of the interview transcripts, then considers the new methodological challenges involved.…
Sociologies of Disability and Illness
Disability and Gender
This paper reviews theory and research on disability and gender from a UK perspective. It reflects upon the theoretical perspectives and debates that are to be found in UK disability studies today, and considers their relevance for research on the gendered nature of disability. Themes in empirical research are noted, as is the representation and treatment of disability in mainstream feminism(s). The paper warns about the danger of exclusion throu…
The place of death of cancer patients
The importance of place of death in young adults with terminal cancer
This paper addresses issues relating to place of death in young adults with terminal cancer, through the perspectives of their parents. Evidence suggests that the majority of terminally ill cancer patients would prefer the option of a home death, but little is known about preferences among young adult cancer patients and their families. Through retrospective reflection by bereaved parents of young adults with cancer, this paper aims to understand…
Rescuing a social relational understanding of disability
This paper considers some of the themes to be found in current UK debates about the social model of disability. It commences with a review of the origins and key features of the social model, then moves on to an examination of current critiques of its efficacy. The argument advanced is that the radical ideas that laid the foundation for the social model of disability contain a social relational kernel that now needs to be rescued and developed. A…
Mapping the determinants of health inequalities in social space
How is disability understood? An examination of sociological approaches
This paper considers sociological understandings of what constitutes disability. Current meanings of disability in both disability studies and medical sociology are examined and compared, using selected articles from leading authors in each discipline as case studies. These disciplines are often represented as offering starkly contrasting approaches to disability, with their differences amounting to a disciplinary 'divide'. It is argued that, on …
Place of death
A proper place to live
Deconstruyendo los conceptos de cuidados
How is disability understood? An examination of sociological approaches
This paper considers sociological understandings of what constitutes disability. Current meanings of disability in both disability studies and medical sociology are examined and compared, using selected articles from leading authors in each discipline as case studies. These disciplines are often represented as offering starkly contrasting approaches to disability, with their differences amounting to a disciplinary 'divide'. It is argued that, on …
Theorising Inequalities in Health
This paper contributes to the development of theory and research on inequalities in health. Our central premise is that these are currently limited because they fail adequately to address the relationship between agency and structure, and that lay knowledge in the form of narrative has a significant contribution to make to this endeavour. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first section we briefly review the existing, largely quanti…
A proper place to live
De-Constructing Concepts of Care
Care' has been the focus of much sociological and policy related research in the last decade. However, a review of this research literature reveals that the concept of 'care' is not uniformly defined, nor is its epistemological status clear. This paper explores the problematic nature of the concept of care in sociological research. In the first section, concepts of care characteristic of 1980s research are deconstructed and compared. This demonst…
Beyond 'beer, fags, egg and chips'? Exploring lay understandings of social inequalities in health
This paper seeks to contribute to the limited body of work that has directly explored lay understandings of the causes of health inequalities. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodology, the views of people living in contrasting socio-economic neighbourhoods are compared. The findings support previous research in suggesting that lay theories about causality in relation to health inequalities, like lay concepts of health and illness in ge…
Companions through cancer
Mapping the determinants of health inequalities in social space
The Baby and the Bath Water
The aim of this paper is to explore key dimensions of the reproductive experiences of disabled women who are, or who are thinking about becoming, mothers. The paper reports a qualitative study which involved semi‐structured interviews with 17 disabled women who were contemplating childbearing, or were pregnant, and/or had young children. The interpretation of these women's experiences is situated with reference to current debates on the meaning a…
Negotiating the contested terrain of narrative methods in illness contexts
This paper offers an interpretive account of an ongoing transatlantic debate about illness narratives instigated by the publication in 1997 of Paul Atkinson's paperNarrative Turn Or Blind Alley?The claims and counter-claims to be found in this debate about narrative data and narrative analysis are set out sequentially, in an attempt to grasp the debate's essentials. Matters of theoretical perspective, methodology, ethics, and personal politics ar…
Place of death
Do disabled people need a stronger social model
We introduce the social model of disability by reflecting on its origins and legacy, with particular reference to the work of the Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation. We argue that there has been a gradual rolling back of the rights and entitlements associated with the social model of disability. Yet no alternative for the social model has been proposed in response to such threats to disabled people’s human rights. Disabled peopl…
Theorising disability and chronic illness
Rescuing a social relational understanding of disability
This paper considers some of the themes to be found in current UK debates about the social model of disability. It commences with a review of the origins and key features of the social model, then moves on to an examination of current critiques of its efficacy. The argument advanced is that the radical ideas that laid the foundation for the social model of disability contain a social relational kernel that now needs to be rescued and developed. A…
Disability and Gender
This paper reviews theory and research on disability and gender from a UK perspective. It reflects upon the theoretical perspectives and debates that are to be found in UK disability studies today, and considers their relevance for research on the gendered nature of disability. Themes in empirical research are noted, as is the representation and treatment of disability in mainstream feminism(s). The paper warns about the danger of exclusion throu…
Dementia, disability rights and disablism
This article considers the recent history and consequences of positioning people living with dementia in the realms of disability, disablism and disability rights. The geo-political focus is the United Kingdom and neighbouring resource-rich nations in the Global North. The first section examines the growing trend of identifying ‘dementia’ with ‘disability’, a trend fuelled by the expansion of dementia-related activism and research. The second sec…
Domestic labour and health
This paper explores the relationship between unpaid domestic labour and health. Although the 'informal care' literature touches on the connection between aspects of domestic labour and health, sociologists have not engaged in a systematic analysis of the nature of this relationship. In the following discussion I examine i) the reasons why this relationship has been obscured, ii) possible ways forward in theorising the link and, iii) the under-rec…
Health Seeking Behaviour and the Control of Sexually Transmitted Disease
What people do when they have symptoms or suspicion of a sexually transmitted disease (STD) has major implications for transmission and, consequently, for disease control. Delays in seeking and obtaining diagnosis and treatment can allow for continued transmission and the greater probability of adverse sequelae. An understanding of health seeking behaviour is therefore important if STD control programmes are to be effective. However, taboos and s…
The place of death of cancer patients
Unpacking the impact of older adults' home death on family care-givers' experiences of home
Times Change, but Things Remain the Same
I, Carol Thomas, have disappeared off the scene because I am now living in a nursing home needing care assistance and nursing care because of my impairment effects. I nevertheless feel the need to
Public health, research and rights
Public health research purports to provide the evidence base for policies, programmes and interventions to improve the health of a population. However, there is increasing awareness that the experiences of disabled people have played little part in informing this evidence base. This paper discusses one aspect of a study commissioned by England’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to review the implications for public health of theories…
Historical Data for Health Inequalities Research
In 1999-2000, a pilot study was conducted to assess the feasibility of using local historical archives and oral histories to map historical factors that may be important in understanding contemporary variations in health. Focusing on housing clearances in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the pilot study drew on a wide range of materials (documentary and oral) to explore how changes to local housing impacted upon the local social and psychological land…
Cancer narratives and methodological uncertainties
This article considers the methodological uncertainties arising in the early months of a research project that involves the secondary data analysis, using narrative analysis methods, of lengthy interview transcripts with cancer patients and their main informal carers. It revisits the particular social contexts, purposes and intentions involved in the creation of the interview transcripts, then considers the new methodological challenges involved.…
Informal carers of cancer patients
This paper considers the significant unmet psychosocial needs of the informal carers of cancer patients, drawing on data generated in a 3-year UK study (1997-2000) on the psychosocial needs of cancer patients and their main carers. While the needs of the carers of cancer patients are increasingly being recognised in healthcare policy documents, there is relatively little published literature on these needs. A "significant unmet need" is defined h…
Population Mobility in Frontier Communities
Using continuous registration data from 21 rural settlements on the Italo-Yugoslav border zone, migration patterns have been analysed in relation to characteristics of the total population. The predominance of short-distance moves was confirmed but considerable variation in distance frequencies was demonstrated for different categories of movement. By implication these variations also applied to movements differentiated by sex and nationality as …
Population Mobility in Frontier Communities
Using continuous registration data from 21 rural settlements on the Italo-Yugoslav border zone, migration patterns have been analysed in relation to characteristics of the total population. The predominance of short-distance moves was confirmed but considerable variation in distance frequencies was demonstrated for different categories of movement. By implication these variations also applied to movements differentiated by sex and nationality as …
Public health strategies in Sheffield and England
This paper compares the conceptual foundations of two recent UK public health strategy documents: Our City Our Health, a discussion document associated with the Healthy Sheffield initiative, and the British Government's The Health of the Nation as applied to England. The aspects of the conceptual foundations considered are, firstly, the definitions of health employed, and secondly, the conceptualization of the determinants of health. The question…
De-Constructing Concepts of Care
Care' has been the focus of much sociological and policy related research in the last decade. However, a review of this research literature reveals that the concept of 'care' is not uniformly defined, nor is its epistemological status clear. This paper explores the problematic nature of the concept of care in sociological research. In the first section, concepts of care characteristic of 1980s research are deconstructed and compared. This demonst…
Healthwatch
A shame she can't bear children
Tubal infertility is a major public health problem and one which is directly linked to women's disempowerment in South Africa, writes Carol Thomas
Domestic labour and health
This paper explores the relationship between unpaid domestic labour and health. Although the 'informal care' literature touches on the connection between aspects of domestic labour and health, sociologists have not engaged in a systematic analysis of the nature of this relationship. In the following discussion I examine i) the reasons why this relationship has been obscured, ii) possible ways forward in theorising the link and, iii) the under-rec…
Health Seeking Behaviour and the Control of Sexually Transmitted Disease
What people do when they have symptoms or suspicion of a sexually transmitted disease (STD) has major implications for transmission and, consequently, for disease control. Delays in seeking and obtaining diagnosis and treatment can allow for continued transmission and the greater probability of adverse sequelae. An understanding of health seeking behaviour is therefore important if STD control programmes are to be effective. However, taboos and s…
The Baby and the Bath Water
The aim of this paper is to explore key dimensions of the reproductive experiences of disabled women who are, or who are thinking about becoming, mothers. The paper reports a qualitative study which involved semi‐structured interviews with 17 disabled women who were contemplating childbearing, or were pregnant, and/or had young children. The interpretation of these women's experiences is situated with reference to current debates on the meaning a…
Theorising Inequalities in Health
This paper contributes to the development of theory and research on inequalities in health. Our central premise is that these are currently limited because they fail adequately to address the relationship between agency and structure, and that lay knowledge in the form of narrative has a significant contribution to make to this endeavour. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first section we briefly review the existing, largely quanti…
Medicine, Gender, and Disability
In this article I examine the intersection of gender and disability in the medical arena by considering disabled women's experiences of receiving health care in the United Kingdom. Drawing on the "social model of disability," I focus on the attitudes and practices of doctors. I use two sources of qualitative data: (i) 68 disabled women's narratives gathered in the United Kingdom in 1996-1997; (ii) interviews with 17 disabled women regarding their…
Informal carers of cancer patients
This paper considers the significant unmet psychosocial needs of the informal carers of cancer patients, drawing on data generated in a 3-year UK study (1997-2000) on the psychosocial needs of cancer patients and their main carers. While the needs of the carers of cancer patients are increasingly being recognised in healthcare policy documents, there is relatively little published literature on these needs. A "significant unmet need" is defined h…
Companions through cancer
A proper place to live
Historical Data for Health Inequalities Research
In 1999-2000, a pilot study was conducted to assess the feasibility of using local historical archives and oral histories to map historical factors that may be important in understanding contemporary variations in health. Focusing on housing clearances in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the pilot study drew on a wide range of materials (documentary and oral) to explore how changes to local housing impacted upon the local social and psychological land…
Beyond 'beer, fags, egg and chips'? Exploring lay understandings of social inequalities in health
This paper seeks to contribute to the limited body of work that has directly explored lay understandings of the causes of health inequalities. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodology, the views of people living in contrasting socio-economic neighbourhoods are compared. The findings support previous research in suggesting that lay theories about causality in relation to health inequalities, like lay concepts of health and illness in ge…
The importance of place of death in young adults with terminal cancer
This paper addresses issues relating to place of death in young adults with terminal cancer, through the perspectives of their parents. Evidence suggests that the majority of terminally ill cancer patients would prefer the option of a home death, but little is known about preferences among young adult cancer patients and their families. Through retrospective reflection by bereaved parents of young adults with cancer, this paper aims to understand…
Rescuing a social relational understanding of disability
This paper considers some of the themes to be found in current UK debates about the social model of disability. It commences with a review of the origins and key features of the social model, then moves on to an examination of current critiques of its efficacy. The argument advanced is that the radical ideas that laid the foundation for the social model of disability contain a social relational kernel that now needs to be rescued and developed. A…
Mapping the determinants of health inequalities in social space
How is disability understood? An examination of sociological approaches
This paper considers sociological understandings of what constitutes disability. Current meanings of disability in both disability studies and medical sociology are examined and compared, using selected articles from leading authors in each discipline as case studies. These disciplines are often represented as offering starkly contrasting approaches to disability, with their differences amounting to a disciplinary 'divide'. It is argued that, on …
Place of death
The place of death of cancer patients
Disability and Gender
This paper reviews theory and research on disability and gender from a UK perspective. It reflects upon the theoretical perspectives and debates that are to be found in UK disability studies today, and considers their relevance for research on the gendered nature of disability. Themes in empirical research are noted, as is the representation and treatment of disability in mainstream feminism(s). The paper warns about the danger of exclusion throu…
Sociologies of Disability and Illness
Cancer narratives and methodological uncertainties
This article considers the methodological uncertainties arising in the early months of a research project that involves the secondary data analysis, using narrative analysis methods, of lengthy interview transcripts with cancer patients and their main informal carers. It revisits the particular social contexts, purposes and intentions involved in the creation of the interview transcripts, then considers the new methodological challenges involved.…
Negotiating the contested terrain of narrative methods in illness contexts
This paper offers an interpretive account of an ongoing transatlantic debate about illness narratives instigated by the publication in 1997 of Paul Atkinson's paperNarrative Turn Or Blind Alley?The claims and counter-claims to be found in this debate about narrative data and narrative analysis are set out sequentially, in an attempt to grasp the debate's essentials. Matters of theoretical perspective, methodology, ethics, and personal politics ar…
Sociology (26 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Medicine (20 works) · Political science (14 works) · Social science (13 works) · Disability Rights and Representation (12 works) · Nursing (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Healthcare innovation and challenges (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works)