Black-white mixed race young people in Ireland and their lived experiences of racialised exclusion

The multiracial family and the existence of mixed race children have come to be a regular feature of Irish familial life. Yet, nation-building discourses have promulgated notions of ethnic and religious homogeneity with Irish identity being racialised exclusively as white. Moreover, to date, there has been a dearth of academic scholarship related to racial mixedness in the Irish context. Through in-depth interviews, this paper sets out, therefore, to provide empirical insight into the lives of fifteen black (African) – white (Irish) mixed race young people (aged 4 to 18) with a particular focus on their experiences of racialised exclusion. Indeed, findings suggest that, as in other majority white national contexts, the black-white mixed race young people are racialised as black in the Irish public domain and as such, are positioned as ‘racialised outsiders’. In fact, their narrative accounts shed light on everyday encounters saturated by ‘us-them’ racial constructs based on phenotype. Thus, these young people, who are not fully recognised as mixed race Irish citizens, are effectively deprived of a space in which to articulate their belonging within the existing statist (i.e. inside/outside) framework.

Cumulative Dis/Advantage, Structure, and Change: Three New Directions in CDA Research

Over the past several decades, evidence for cumulative dis/advantage as a regular feature of cohort aging has continued to cumulate, while new questions concerning the underlying dynamics continue to emerge. This paper reviews the accumulated knowledge base, and focused on three recently emerging lines of inquiry that hold great promise for expanding more fully our understanding of CDA processes: 1) the intersection of class stratification and race in the operation of CDA processes, 2) factors accounting for cross-national variations, and 3) the intersection of robust intracohort processed that generate cda with intercohort processes and the impact of historical and social change. These three new directions are briefly discussed.

Policing Protest in Russia

As Russia’s post-communist regime descends deeper into authoritarianism, protest politics has become a regular feature of the political landscape. As such, President Putin increasingly faces the “dictator’s dilemma”: How much coercion to deploy against protesters without incurring a social backlash against the regime? That question more generally is now part of analytical consideration in comparative scholarship on social movements and contentious politics. This article contributes to the comparative discussion, first, through an elaboration of an original conceptual typology of protest-policing strategies, applicable to democratic and authoritarian regime types. Second, the article applies this conceptual scheme to Russia to illustrate the variant protest-policing strategies employed during the post-communist period. The research explains how Putin’s authoritarian regime responded to the challenge of the dictator’s dilemma by enacting protest-policing reforms. Inspired by policing trends in the Western democracies, these reforms entail a shift from confrontation-based to containment-based tactics. The article shows variation and adaptation in the way protesters were policed across Russia’s transition from unconsolidated democracy to consolidated authoritarianism. Finally, the article suggests the consequences of protest-policing reform for the ruling regime.

Cumulative Dis/Advantege, Structure, and Change: Three New Directions for CDA Research

Over the past several decades, evidence for cumulative dis/advantage as a regular feature of cohort aging has continued to cumulate, while new questions concerning the underlying dynamics continue to emerge. This paper reviews the accumulated knowledge base, and focused on three recently emerging lines of inquiry that hold great promise for expanding more fully our understanding of CDA processes: 1) the intersection of class stratification and race in the operation of CDA processes, 2) factors accounting for cross-national variations, and 3) the intersection of robust intracohort processed that generate cda with intercohort processes and the impact of historical and social change. These three new directions are briefly discussed.

RESEARCH ROUNDUP

In this regular feature, aesthetic nurse Claudia McGloin presents a brief synopsis of a range of recently published articles on medical aesthetics. Research roundup aims to provide an overview, rather than a detailed summary and critique, of the papers selected. Should you wish to look at any of the papers in more detail, a full reference is provided at the end of each study summary

Augmented reality in vascular and endovascular surgery: a scoping review (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Technological advances have transformed vascular intervention over recent decades. Augmented reality (AR) is a subject of growing interest within surgery, with potential to improve the clinicians’ understanding of 3D anatomy and their processing of real-time information. The aim of this review was to summarise the fundamental concepts of these technologies and to systematically assess the literature currently applying AR to vascular surgery. METHODS A systematic literature review of ‘Medline,’ ‘Scopus’ and ‘Embase’ was performed according to PRISMA guidelines. Studies were selected by a blinded process between two investigators and assessed with data quality tools. RESULTS AR technologies have had a number of applications across vascular and endovascular surgery. The majority of studies use 3D imaging (e.g) CT angiogram derived images of vascular anatomy to augment the clinicians anatomical understanding during procedures. A wide range of AR technologies have been employed with ‘heads up’ fusion imaging and AR head-mounted displays the most commonly clinically applied. AR applications have included guiding open, robotic and endovascular surgery while minimising dissection, improving procedural times and reducing radiation and contrast exposure. Additionally, AR has been successfully applied to surgical training, with scope to improve technical and team communication skills. CONCLUSIONS AR has shown promising developments in the field of vascular and endovascular surgery, with potential benefits to surgeons and patients alike. These include reductions in patient risk and operating times while optimising contrast and radiation exposure for radiological interventions. While more technological advances are required to overcome current limitations, it is likely that AR will be a regular feature of vascular surgery clinical practice and training in the future. CLINICALTRIAL Not suitable for PROSPERO registration due to scoping nature of review, without specific intervention or population study.

Thoughts on files

With the benefit of an anthropological attention to the importance of ‘things’ and the relations between ourselves and things (‘artefacts’), this paper gives attention to the Social Work File. Despite the rise of electronic recording, social work archives remain full of thousands of files that are increasingly accessed, especially by those who have been in care, and physical file-keeping remains a regular feature of practice. There is already a body of literature relating to the information in social work files, however this paper shifts the focus from this to the nature and role of the File itself. ‘Hidden in plain sight’ but laden with meaning and capacity, I identify the little we know already about the file. The various ways files and their authors and subjects, can interact are explored together with the file’s symbolic properties and the power held by the file’s owner, and the ability of the file to ‘other’ its subject. Whilst we understand that the practice shapes the file, how might the file shape practice?

RESEARCH ROUNDUP

In this regular feature, aesthetic nurse Claudia McGloin presents a brief synopsis of a range of recently published articles on medical aesthetics. Research roundup aims to provide an overview, rather than a detailed summary and critique, of the papers selected. Should you wish to look at any of the papers in more detail, a full reference is provided at the end of each study summary

Multidisciplinary team meetings in palliative care: an ethnographic study

ObjectivesMultidisciplinary team meetings are a regular feature in the provision of palliative care, involving a range of professionals. Yet, their purpose and best format are not necessarily well understood or documented. This article describes how hospital and community-based palliative care multidisciplinary team meetings operate to elucidate some of their main values and offer an opportunity to share examples of good practice.MethodsEthnographic observations of over 70 multidisciplinary team meetings between May 2018 and January 2020 in hospital and community palliative care settings in intercity London. These observations were part of a larger study examining palliative care processes. Fieldnotes were thematically analysed.ResultsThis article analyses how the meetings operated in terms of their setup, participants and general order of business. Meetings provided a space where patients, families and professionals could be cared for through regular discussions of service provision.ConclusionsMeetings served a variety of functions. Alongside discussing the more technical, clinical and practical aspects that are formally recognised aspects of the meetings, an additional core value was enabling affectual aspects of dealing with people who are dying to be acknowledged and processed collectively. Insight into how the meetings are structured and operate offer input for future practice.

Diplomacy

Early modern Europe witnessed profound changes in the institutions, conduct, and personnel of diplomatic relations between polities. In general, there was a shift to diplomacy becoming a constant, regular activity of the state, and, bureaucracies, protocols, and archives related to the conduct of diplomacy emerged across Europe. While it was far from universal, the exchange of resident ambassadors, attached to foreign courts and governments more or less permanently, became a regular feature in European statecraft. Many diplomatic exchanges remained ad hoc, carried out by extraordinary envoys, and asymmetric diplomacy was still common into the 17th century. Although genuine professionalism in diplomatic service was hard to detect, by the end of the 17th century the major European states had developed secretariats of state and foreign ministries, sectors of government dedicated to the prosecution of overseas affairs. A genuine “culture of diplomacy” was in place. This view of an emerging modern European diplomacy was shaped, and largely remains so, by a seminal work from the mid-20th century, Garret Mattingly’s Renaissance Diplomacy, first published in 1955. While Mattingly did not evince a comprehensively Burckhardtian break between the Middle Ages and Renaissance, he did locate the origins of modern diplomacy in 15th century Italy, with the use of residency by Italian territorial states. He saw the Habsburgs as the chief heirs to the Italian diplomatic system in the 16th century, with a Europe-wide model based on the principle of balance of power in place after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). The bibliography that follows reflects the deep and abiding influence of Mattingly’s state-centered model, but also the many innovations and departures associated with the “new diplomatic history.” This recent work has embraced a more expansive understanding of what constitutes diplomacy, who qualifies as a diplomatic agent, how diplomatic sources should be interpreted, and what facets of diplomatic exchanges are worthy of study. In so doing it has complicated and refined Mattingly’s vision. Several of the sections below concern specific historiographical thrusts of the new diplomatic history. The best work in early modern diplomatic history, however, remains rooted in the extraordinary richness of its source material, especially the millions of pages of correspondence that provide a real-time window into the early modern world. Vincent Ilardi, who did so much to bring attention to the enormous promise of examining Renaissance Italian diplomatic correspondence, once wrote, paraphrasing Braudel and with tongue wedged only half in cheek, that Renaissance diplomatic history might in fact offer a sort of histoire totale. There is something in it for everyone.