Lee F Monaghan
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 114776 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Lee F Monaghan |
| PRENOMES | Lee F |
| SOBRENOME | Monaghan |
| ASSINATURA | MONAGHAN L F |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Limerick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5971-8357 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 57 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 577 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 57 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1996 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 14 |
Degrading Bodies in Pandemic Times
Mass communications frame fatness and COVID-19 as a dual threat. This discourse furthers well-established tendencies to degrade bodies labelled overweight or obese, positioning them as deficient and requiring correction. Empirically, this article draws from an online US right-wing news media platform, Campus Reform, including readers’ comments (n = 135) on an article denouncing professors working in fat studies during the COVID-19 lockdown. This …
Employing critical realism within and beyond social studies of health
Critical realism provides an alternative to positivism and interpretivism.It foregrounds ontology and an evaluative approach to knowledge, while promoting eclectic reasoning, transdisciplinarity, and ethical research across the quantitative/ qualitative, macro/micro and other divides.Health researchers have usefully employed critical realism, though it has also been dismissed as strange, a source of self-deception and hubris.Furthermore, it has b…
Schematising Covid-19 pandemic responses
Interpreting the Body
(F)ailing mothers and the quest for redemption
Covid-19 vaccination requirements for Ireland's healthcare students
International debate on COVID-19 policy issues, notably negative social consequences, is vital when grappling with the pandemic legacy. Drawing from the second author's experiences in the Irish healthcare and higher education sectors, this commentary scrutinises measures that discriminated against students who declined novel COVID-19 pharmaceuticals. In so doing, it serves as a point of contrast to fear-based interventions. Connections are made w…
Affect as Community Connectedness
This article examines how affect, as community connectedness, is strategized by an influencer with her audiences when re-framing weight-related stigma and disordered eating online. An analysis of plus-size model Tess Holliday's Instagram posts ( n = 212) identifies four main frames: (1) disclosing experiences of body-shaming/blaming/stigmatization as “our pain,” (2) collaborating with fellow influencers in de-stigmatizing disordered eating among …
Coronavirus (Covid-19), pandemic psychology and the fractured society
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and mass lockdowns that continue to shake the world, sociologists of health and illness have been advised to undertake research only when the time feels right and to avoid premature evaluation. Such advice makes sense, especially amidst an epidemic of interpretation that has resulted in substandard work. However, this contribution argues that when trying to understand and perhaps analyse early societal respons…
A discourse analysis of school girls engagement with fat pedagogy and critical health education
New interdisciplinary approaches including fat studies, fat pedagogy, critical weight studies and critical health education have attempted to challenge forms of weight-based oppression associated with obesity discourse within education settings. Very little is known about young people’s views of these alternative critical approaches. Theoretically informed by these perspectives, this article examines girls’ responses to the messages of these alte…
Managing Stigma
In this article, we explore the relationship between asthma and stigma, drawing on 31 interviews with young people (aged 5-17) in Ireland. Participants with mild to moderate asthma were recruited from Traveller and middle-class settled communities. Themes derived from an abductive approach to data analysis and a critical appreciation of Goffmanesque sociology include asthma as a discreditable stigma, negative social reactions (real, imagined, and…
Media, ‘Fat Panic’ and Public Pedagogy
Discourses regarding a ‘global obesity crisis’ and alternative frames (e.g. weight‐inclusive approaches to health) have proliferated through various media of communication. These media range from traditional print and visual formats (e.g. newspapers and television shows) to digital media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube), which enable different publics to produce, and not just consume, text, images and other data relating to the body. Reflecting …
Dietary approaches to weight-loss, Health At Every Size® and beyond
Obesity, neoliberalism and epidemic psychology
Obesity and neoliberalism are two concepts that generate plenty of concern and debate, arguably leading to more heat than light when terms like ‘epidemic’ are thrown into the fray. Drawing from critical weight studies, this paper offers critical commentary on the recent designation of obesity as a ‘neoliberal epidemic’ that can be attributed to energy-dense foods and a toxic mode of political economic organization. After delineating neoliberalism…
The Madoffization of Irish society
Financialization and neoliberal policy created the Celtic Tiger. This economic 'miracle' furthered creditors' and property developers' speculative interests, leading to an unstable financial pyramid that eventually imploded in 2008 with catastrophic consequences for Irish society. Using the sociological imagination as social critique, this paper offers a lens on fictitious capital and Ponzi finance in the context of Ireland's boom and bust. Criti…
Obesity, bodily change and health identities
Medicalised concerns about an obesity crisis persist yet more needs to be learnt about everyday orientations to weight (loss). This article reports and analyses data generated using qualitative methods, including repeated interviews and fieldwork conducted over one year in Canada with women (n = 13) identifying as (formerly) obese. Three ideal types are explored using empirical data: (1) hopeful narratives; (2) disordered eating distress; and (3)…
Re-framing weight-related stigma
Embodying health identities
The Casanova-Myth
The word Casanova is often treated as a synonym for womaniser, variously interpreted in a positive or negative light depending upon the audience. The Seduction Community (SC) largely comprises young heterosexual men who follow and adapt the teachings of commercial pick-up artists, typically in an effort to embody the Casanova-myth. This paper reports and analyses findings from a qualitative study of the SC. Drawing from life history interviews ( …
Chronic illness as biographical contingency? Young people's experiences of asthma
Much research on chronic illness, which views the experience as disruptive, is adult-focused though there is an emerging literature on children's and young people's experiences. Drawing on 31 interviews conducted with young people diagnosed with asthma in south-west Ireland, this article contributes to this literature. The sample includes boys (n = 15) and girls (n = 16) aged between 5 and 17 from the Irish Traveller community and the larger sett…
Debating, theorising and researching ‘obesity’ in challenging times
Scapegoating During a Time of Crisis
Focusing upon scapegoating in post-crash Ireland, this article considers a pervasive political process that is protective of powerful interests and the status quo following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Drawing from group conflict theory and framing analysis as part of a broader critical realist take on society, we consider how blame has been placed on myriad targets, ranging from a collective 'we who went a bit mad with borrowing' to more sp…
Obesity discourse and fat politics
It’s worse for women and girls’
Numerous critical analyses have already established the profoundly gendered nature of normative body ‘ideals’ and weight-management practices in Western cultures. Such studies have, amongst other things, elucidated how body dissatisfaction, ‘dieting’ and other weight-loss practices are discursively constituted as both feminised and feminising. Critiquing the over-determined normativity of thinness as a key index of femininity, these analyses have…
The Madoffization of Society
In 2009, US financier Bernard (Bernie) L. Madoff was jailed for 150 years after pleading guilty to running a massive ponzi scheme. While superficial condemnation was widespread, his US$65 billion fraud cannot be understood apart from the institutions, practices and fictions of contemporary finance capitalism. Madoff's scam was rooted in the wider political prioritization of accumulation through debt expansion and the deregulated, desupervised and…
Embodied Heterosexual Masculinities, Part 1
This and an accompanying article () constitute a developmental ‘think piece’ on embodied heterosexual masculinities, emotions and health. In conclusion, we underscore the need for more research on embodied masculinities, heterosexualities and emotions
Looking good, feeling good
Social scientists of medicine have largely, although by no means exclusively, focused their research on illness and sickness thus obscuring social scientific investigations of positive health and wellbeing. This is necessary because the concrete corporeal manifestations of 'health' in everyday life - components of and preconditions for embodied social practice - may, paradoxically, erode bodily capital while simultaneously contributing to it. Usi…
Body Mass Index, masculinities and moral worth
Based on the Body Mass Index (BMI, kg/m 2 ), most men in nations such as the UK and USA are reportedly overweight or obese. This is authoritatively defined as a massive and growing problem. Drawing from embodied sociology, critical obesity literature and qualitative data generated during an Economic and Social Research Council funded project on masculinities and weight‐related issues, this paper offers a critical realist contribution to the obesi…
Vocabularies of motive for illicit steroid use among bodybuilders
Big Handsome Men, Bears and Others
Using embodied sociology, this article offers a virtual ethnography of 'fat male embodiment'. Reporting and analysing qualitative data generated online, it includes a typology of big/fat male body-subjects and supportive/admiring others. These fat-friendly typifications are unpacked by referencing advocated codes of self-body relatedness, sexualities and the relevance of food. The virtual construction of acceptable, admirable or resistant masculi…
Regulating 'unruly' bodies
Security work in urban licensed premises is a risky occupation in Britain's fast expanding liminal night-time economy. Sociologically, little is known about this masculinist work, including those embodied strategies used by doorstaff or 'bouncers' to regulate 'unruly' bodies in and around commercial space. Using participant observational data generated in south-west Britain, this paper describes how the door supervisors' routine work tasks (large…
Chronic illness as biographical contingency? Young people's experiences of asthma
Much research on chronic illness, which views the experience as disruptive, is adult-focused though there is an emerging literature on children's and young people's experiences. Drawing on 31 interviews conducted with young people diagnosed with asthma in south-west Ireland, this article contributes to this literature. The sample includes boys (n = 15) and girls (n = 16) aged between 5 and 17 from the Irish Traveller community and the larger sett…
Discussion Piece
Hard Men, Shop Boys and Others
Emerging studies on private security work in Britain's night-time economy explore important sociological themes such as masculinities and violence. Contributing rich ethnography to this literature, and in furthering an embodied sociology, this paper describes the gendered construction of competency among 'bouncers' or door supervisors within the context of their potentially violent work. Centrally, it explores the door supervisors' variable bodil…
Challenging medicine? Bodybuilding, drugs and risk
This paper draws on data from a qualitative study of bodybuilding and drug-taking. It discusses the ambiguous role of medicine as a source of knowledge and expertise among participants who systematically disavow medical pronouncements on the uses and dangers of 'physique-enhancing' drugs. Empirical data on perceptions of the medical profession, risk, and bodybuilders' various sources of ethno-scientific knowledge, suggest that medicine is simply …
Obesity Epidemic Entrepreneurs
This article explores the enterprising act of socially constructing fatness, or overweight and obesity, as an individual and collective problem. We argue that this process is complex and hence draw liberally on and extend an eclectic range of scholarship (e.g. the sociology of the body, moral panic theory, critical weight studies) when presenting a typology of obesity epidemic entrepreneurs, that is, those who actively make fatness into a correct…
Creating `The Perfect Body
Using qualitative data, this article makes a substantive and formal contribution to the growing academic literature on bodybuilding and the sociology of the body. Placing a question mark against existing knowledge claims, it argues theories ascribing bodybuilding to antecedent predispositions are not sufficient when accounting for the ongoing variable project of creating `the perfect body'. It is asserted that physique bodybuilding (as opposed to…
Embodied Heterosexual Masculinities, Part 2
This paper extends our previous discussion on embodied heterosexual masculinities, men’s emotional lives and health (). First, we foreground writings on men’s health within and outside of heterosexual relationships given the interrelations between masculinities and other structures (e.g. the political economy). Second, we critically consider writings on masculinities, male bodies and emotions in a relational context. In conclusion, we underscore …
Coronavirus (Covid-19), pandemic psychology and the fractured society
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and mass lockdowns that continue to shake the world, sociologists of health and illness have been advised to undertake research only when the time feels right and to avoid premature evaluation. Such advice makes sense, especially amidst an epidemic of interpretation that has resulted in substandard work. However, this contribution argues that when trying to understand and perhaps analyse early societal respons…
Embodying Gender, Work and Organization
Despite a ‘somatic turn’ in the social sciences, there remains a dearth of theoretically informed research on male working bodies, the embodied doings of masculinities independent of biological sex and intra–gendered workplace relations. This is unfortunate because embodiment is thoroughly implicated in major social divisions, including gender domination in institutional contexts. Using an embodied sociological perspective and data generated duri…
Men, Physical Activity, and the Obesity Discourse
This article explores men’s talk about physical activity, weight, health and slimming. Drawing from qualitative data from men whom medicine might label overweight or obese, it outlines various ideal typical ways of orienting to the idea that physical activity promotes “healthy” weight loss before exploring the most critical display of perspective: justifiable resistance and defiance. This gendered mode of accountability comprises numerous themes.…
Embodied Heterosexual Masculinities, Part 1
This and an accompanying article () constitute a developmental ‘think piece’ on embodied heterosexual masculinities, emotions and health. In conclusion, we underscore the need for more research on embodied masculinities, heterosexualities and emotions
McDonaldizing Men's Bodies? Slimming, Associated (Ir)Rationalities and Resistances
Using Ritzer's McDonaldization of Society thesis as a reference point, this article contributes sociologically to burgeoning critical obesity studies. It does this using qualitative data from a study of men and weightrelated issues undertaken in northern England. Taking a counter-intuitive approach, it explores whether slimming proceeds in accord with the rationalizing principles of the fast-food restaurant: calculability, efficiency, predictabil…
Obesity, bodily change and health identities
Medicalised concerns about an obesity crisis persist yet more needs to be learnt about everyday orientations to weight (loss). This article reports and analyses data generated using qualitative methods, including repeated interviews and fieldwork conducted over one year in Canada with women (n = 13) identifying as (formerly) obese. Three ideal types are explored using empirical data: (1) hopeful narratives; (2) disordered eating distress; and (3)…
Re-framing weight-related stigma
Embodying health identities
Men, Masculinities and Health
B. Gough and S. Robertson ( eds ) Men, Masculinities and Health: Critical Perspectives . Basingstoke : Palgrave MacMillan , 2010 £19.99 (pbk ) xvii + 251 pp . ISBN 978-0-230-20312-9 Academic interest in men, masculinities and health has mushroomed in recent years. Today, this interest has currency amidst concerns among health professionals, policymakers and researchers about men’s shorter life expectancy relative to women - a ‘deficit’ which is o…
Dietary approaches to weight-loss, Health At Every Size® and beyond
Scapegoating During a Time of Crisis
Focusing upon scapegoating in post-crash Ireland, this article considers a pervasive political process that is protective of powerful interests and the status quo following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Drawing from group conflict theory and framing analysis as part of a broader critical realist take on society, we consider how blame has been placed on myriad targets, ranging from a collective 'we who went a bit mad with borrowing' to more sp…
Seeking university Research Ethics Committee approval
Seeking Research Ethics Committee (REC) approval in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) is increasingly encumbered by bureaucratic rules and regulations. Termed 'ethics creep', such governance is challenged by an emerging body of international literature. This article contributes to such literature by documenting the emotional vicissitudes of seeking REC approval in an Irish university, for a proposed sociological study of children with asth…
The metamorphosis of female bodybuilders
Female bodybuilding raises an obvious question: how should we judge these metamorphosized bodies and associated practices? We will reframe this question as part of a short communication on what many people judge to be a paroxysmal body that is deservedly discredited. Drawing from Kant's distinction between 'free beauty' and 'adherent beauty', our commentary revolves around the notion of aesthetic judgment. Different expressions of this are consid…
Men's Health and Illness. Gender, Power, and the Body (Book)
Creating `The Perfect Body
Using qualitative data, this article makes a substantive and formal contribution to the growing academic literature on bodybuilding and the sociology of the body. Placing a question mark against existing knowledge claims, it argues theories ascribing bodybuilding to antecedent predispositions are not sufficient when accounting for the ongoing variable project of creating `the perfect body'. It is asserted that physique bodybuilding (as opposed to…
Challenging medicine? Bodybuilding, drugs and risk
This paper draws on data from a qualitative study of bodybuilding and drug-taking. It discusses the ambiguous role of medicine as a source of knowledge and expertise among participants who systematically disavow medical pronouncements on the uses and dangers of 'physique-enhancing' drugs. Empirical data on perceptions of the medical profession, risk, and bodybuilders' various sources of ethno-scientific knowledge, suggest that medicine is simply …
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…
Looking good, feeling good
Social scientists of medicine have largely, although by no means exclusively, focused their research on illness and sickness thus obscuring social scientific investigations of positive health and wellbeing. This is necessary because the concrete corporeal manifestations of 'health' in everyday life - components of and preconditions for embodied social practice - may, paradoxically, erode bodily capital while simultaneously contributing to it. Usi…
Embodying Gender, Work and Organization
Despite a ‘somatic turn’ in the social sciences, there remains a dearth of theoretically informed research on male working bodies, the embodied doings of masculinities independent of biological sex and intra–gendered workplace relations. This is unfortunate because embodiment is thoroughly implicated in major social divisions, including gender domination in institutional contexts. Using an embodied sociological perspective and data generated duri…
Regulating 'unruly' bodies
Security work in urban licensed premises is a risky occupation in Britain's fast expanding liminal night-time economy. Sociologically, little is known about this masculinist work, including those embodied strategies used by doorstaff or 'bouncers' to regulate 'unruly' bodies in and around commercial space. Using participant observational data generated in south-west Britain, this paper describes how the door supervisors' routine work tasks (large…
Vocabularies of motive for illicit steroid use among bodybuilders
Hard Men, Shop Boys and Others
Emerging studies on private security work in Britain's night-time economy explore important sociological themes such as masculinities and violence. Contributing rich ethnography to this literature, and in furthering an embodied sociology, this paper describes the gendered construction of competency among 'bouncers' or door supervisors within the context of their potentially violent work. Centrally, it explores the door supervisors' variable bodil…
Opportunity, Pleasure, and Risk
Using ethnographic data generated in Southwest Britain and an embodied social paradigm, this article explores the opportunities, pleasures, and risks attendant to urban male heterosexualities. Participant observation and informal ethnographic interviews with nightclub security staff, or "doormen," contextualize and embody abstract and sterile risk discourses and knowledges. Although careful to avoid a pathologizing biomedical perspective, several…
Danger on the doors
Social scientific attention has recently focused upon the private regulation of Britain's burgeoning night-time economy by door supervisors or 'bouncers' as they are more commonly known. Contributing ethnography to this literature, this paper explores bodily risk among doorstaff in Southwest Britain. The commonly perceived association between doorwork and high levels of violence renders this a demonised occupation yet doorstaff may also be in phy…
Doorwork and Legal Risk
Door supervisors or ‘bouncers’ are charged with privately policing Britain’s nighttime leisure economy, sometimes using ‘normal’ force to ensure order inside and at the entrances to urban licensed premises. Using ethnography generated in Southwest Britain, this article explores the lived realities of legal risk among these predominantly male workers. As well as empirically charting interrelated factors associated with the imposition, amplificatio…
Discussion Piece
Big Handsome Men, Bears and Others
Using embodied sociology, this article offers a virtual ethnography of 'fat male embodiment'. Reporting and analysing qualitative data generated online, it includes a typology of big/fat male body-subjects and supportive/admiring others. These fat-friendly typifications are unpacked by referencing advocated codes of self-body relatedness, sexualities and the relevance of food. The virtual construction of acceptable, admirable or resistant masculi…
Weighty Words
Body Mass Index, masculinities and moral worth
Based on the Body Mass Index (BMI, kg/m 2 ), most men in nations such as the UK and USA are reportedly overweight or obese. This is authoritatively defined as a massive and growing problem. Drawing from embodied sociology, critical obesity literature and qualitative data generated during an Economic and Social Research Council funded project on masculinities and weight‐related issues, this paper offers a critical realist contribution to the obesi…
McDonaldizing Men's Bodies? Slimming, Associated (Ir)Rationalities and Resistances
Using Ritzer's McDonaldization of Society thesis as a reference point, this article contributes sociologically to burgeoning critical obesity studies. It does this using qualitative data from a study of men and weightrelated issues undertaken in northern England. Taking a counter-intuitive approach, it explores whether slimming proceeds in accord with the rationalizing principles of the fast-food restaurant: calculability, efficiency, predictabil…
Men and the War on Obesity
Men, Physical Activity, and the Obesity Discourse
This article explores men’s talk about physical activity, weight, health and slimming. Drawing from qualitative data from men whom medicine might label overweight or obese, it outlines various ideal typical ways of orienting to the idea that physical activity promotes “healthy” weight loss before exploring the most critical display of perspective: justifiable resistance and defiance. This gendered mode of accountability comprises numerous themes.…
Bodily sensibility
Warning: this article contains strong language. This paper explores how men might interpret and respond to a masculine bodily aesthetic in the wake of the putative obesity epidemic that reportedly affects most men in Western nations. This aesthetic, legitimated through discourses of health and risk management, is also shaped by popular representations of lean, toned and hard male bodies and their antithesis: the grotesque, ‘morbidly obese’ (sic) …
Physician Heal Thyself’, Part 2
Physician Heal Thyself’, Part 1
Obesity Epidemic Entrepreneurs
This article explores the enterprising act of socially constructing fatness, or overweight and obesity, as an individual and collective problem. We argue that this process is complex and hence draw liberally on and extend an eclectic range of scholarship (e.g. the sociology of the body, moral panic theory, critical weight studies) when presenting a typology of obesity epidemic entrepreneurs, that is, those who actively make fatness into a correct…
The metamorphosis of female bodybuilders
Female bodybuilding raises an obvious question: how should we judge these metamorphosized bodies and associated practices? We will reframe this question as part of a short communication on what many people judge to be a paroxysmal body that is deservedly discredited. Drawing from Kant's distinction between 'free beauty' and 'adherent beauty', our commentary revolves around the notion of aesthetic judgment. Different expressions of this are consid…
Men, Masculinities and Health
B. Gough and S. Robertson ( eds ) Men, Masculinities and Health: Critical Perspectives . Basingstoke : Palgrave MacMillan , 2010 £19.99 (pbk ) xvii + 251 pp . ISBN 978-0-230-20312-9 Academic interest in men, masculinities and health has mushroomed in recent years. Today, this interest has currency amidst concerns among health professionals, policymakers and researchers about men’s shorter life expectancy relative to women - a ‘deficit’ which is o…
Sociology (52 obras) · Political science (36 obras) · Psychology (33 obras) · Law (29 obras) · Obesity and Health Practices (27 obras) · Epistemology (25 obras) · Medicine (25 obras) · Social Psychology (23 obras) · Gender Studies (21 obras) · Law (21 obras)