1,720,956 research outputs found
Corpi che gridano in silenzio. Vulvodinia, cronicità e narrazioni oltre i confini della biomedicina.
No full textThis dissertation investigates vulvodynia in the Italian context, framing it as an emblematic case of a contested chronic illness. Vulvodynia is a form of chronic pelvic pain that disproportionately affects AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth) individuals and those socialized as women. It is characterized by the absence of observable organic markers and by fragmented or uncertain medical and institutional recognition. Despite an estimated prevalence of 10–16%, vulvodynia is not officially recognized by the Italian National Health Service as a chronic and disabling condition, nor is it included in the Essential Levels of Care.
Adopting a situated feminist perspective the dissertation critically examines the epistemological foundations of the Western biomedical paradigm, highlighting its structural limitations in addressing chronic pain conditions lacking objective biological evidence. The first part reconstructs the historical and epistemological genealogy of Western medicine, focusing on the role of gendered power relations and the persistence of biomedical reductionism. It then introduces alternative theoretical frameworks—namely the embodiment paradigm, ecosocial theory, and contributions from materialist and post-structuralist feminism—to reframe the relationship between body, gender, and illness.
The second part of the dissertation is based on a qualitative study conducted through in-depth discursive interviews with sixteen women living with vulvodynia. The analysis of illness narratives reveals how the lack of medical recognition produces forms of clinical, epistemic, and institutional exclusion, deeply affecting patients’ biographies, identities, and social relationships. At the same time, the narratives highlight practices of resistance, the production of experiential knowledge, and the emergence of counter-narratives through activism, peer support, and digital spaces. These processes challenge the epistemic hierarchies of biomedical knowledge and point toward the need to rethink care relationships and clinical practices in the management of chronic illness
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Maschilità (dis)abilitate? (Ri)fare il genere attraverso disabilità e sport
No full textIn this article we aim to investigate how sport represents an area of practices that allows (re)building a masculinity considered socially adequate within biographies crossed by the turning point of an onset physical impairment. Making use of the approach of illness narratives, we analyze the life stories of three men who encountered severe physical accidents during adolescence. In this way, we try to outline some strategies of management of the so-called "dilemma of the disabled masculinity" (Shuttleworth et al 2012), showing how the manhood acts adopted by our participants are placed between the neutralization of the disabling impact of impairments and the attempt to enhance some aspects of their physical and emotional experiences that partially hybridize the dominant masculinity patterns
- …
