Sociological Research Online

This article responds to calls for new approaches to understanding and intervening in health inequalities and, in particular, for attention to the processes and relations that mediate structural inequality and everyday outcomes. Our contribution focuses on the part that healthcare organizations play in this. We draw on organizational sociology, which theorizes that while organizational structures, cultures, and practices may appear neutral – and rely for their legitimacy on this – they may, in fact, operate in the interests of some social groups and less in the interests of others. This proposition is worked through new empirical research on employee-driven innovation in the UK National Health Service. In both our case studies, front-line staff working with some of the most vulnerable citizens had identified the organization of care as both part of the problem and – potentially – part of the solution. In tracing their efforts to change the organization of care, we learn more about what it might take to mobilize resources in support of those whose lives are most affected by health inequalities.

In this article, we explore Susan Strange’s multidimensional and non-reductive international political economy (IPE) approach to structural power. Strange’s key weakness is the failure to account for her knowledge structure’s regulative form relative to her security, production and financial structures. We seek to develop Strange’s account through the addition of Manuel Castells’ account of digital network structures. Castells’ morphogenic structural approach to digital network power helps to clarify the mechanisms by which today’s knowledge structure achieves autonomy, internal regulation and generative capacity. This sociological completion of Strange’s theory, an international socio-political economy approach as it were, better explains the capacity and limits of today’s digital network knowledge structure to resist reduction to other structural interests. Strange’s non-reductive structural approach to power is significant for sociology as it helps identify ‘social order’ in a global age, but an additional sociological dimension is also necessary for the fulfilment of Strange’s theoretical project.

Globalisation processes and the spread of English as lingua franca are closely related. I consider language skills as symbolic capital and focus on the hegemony of English as lingua franca in international aid organisations. I argue that more attention must be paid to the role of language and linguistic capital when analysing global inequality and postcolonial power relations. Humanitarian and development organisations have so far received less sociological attention than other aspects of globalisation processes, whereas in the context of development studies, attention to language usually focuses on the ‘discourse of development’ rather than on the role of linguistic capital in multilingual settings. Aid work, which includes the transfer of skills and resources, simultaneously addresses and perpetuates global inequalities. Language structures power relations and inequality within aid organisations, in particular between national and international staff. My article is based on qualitative interviews with multilingual and monolingual aid workers from a wide variety of aid organisations. My article is innovative by demonstrating how linguistic capital intersects with other aspects of inequality in the global context of aid organisations. It makes an important contribution to the understanding of globalisation processes and to postcolonial sociology.

We use the concept of ‘imagined communities’, and related work on socio-technical imaginaries and expectations, to reflect on how Scotland is represented simultaneously as ‘sick and unhealthy’ and a ‘living lab’ due to its innovative medical research. Together, we suggest these narratives have driven a broader health and wealth agenda in post-devolution Scotland, which became salient during the 2014 independence referendum. We draw on research conducted during the independence referendum to consider how key stakeholders enacted imagined communities/identities (sick but also innovative) as they considered the historical impact of devolution on health and research systems and envisioned future independence. The referendum provided an opportunity to consider how Scottish health and research systems have been imagined over time. Our findings further the understanding of the impact of devolution on healthcare and medical research, revealing the role played by policy narratives rooted in imagined identities.

Pandemics pose new and difficult challenges. Risks associated with the spread of pandemics generate intense speculation in Western media. Taking the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak as a case study, the article critically analyses how the risk of contagion in the US, Europe, and the UK has been constructed in UK media and policy discourse. Drawing on the importance of media framing in shaping a given problem definition, causal interpretation and treatment recommendation, the article critically assesses the impacts of the British newspaper framing of Ebola, questioning the rationale of a UK domestic political response based on containment and border screenings. The article also takes a comparative angle, engaging with constructions of previous pandemics. Underscoring the importance of a sociological analysis of these framings, the article critically reflects on the role of media communication in reproducing certain topoi, which reduce the scope for open public debate around best responses to a pandemic emergency.

Pandemic emergencies are one of the foremost examples of the turn to preparedness. In this article, I discuss how biological threats are conceptualized inside the frame provided by such turn, connecting with novel governance practices aimed at tackling the challenges posed by the constantly shifting boundaries of global health. First, I review existing literature related to the turn to preparedness. This turn has turned virtual biological threats into the main drivers for preparedness planning. Second, I use empirical material to argue a redefinition of biological threats as entities that go beyond the molecular boundaries of viruses, turning hybrid social networks into the main object of interest for global health response before infectious diseases. This reconceptualization is manifested in three different challenges to the boundaries of global health emergencies: (1) a temporal challenge, which forces institutions to struggle with situating the boundary between event and non-event; (2) an institutional challenge, which brings together different actors, institutions, and organizations redefining their internal and external boundaries; and (3) a spatial challenge, whereby the territorial lines of secure and insecure spaces become mobile and unstable. As a conclusion, I will argue that those three challenges and the redefinition of certain boundaries are ways to govern a wider divide constructed by preparedness that aims at separating the threat and an object of protection.

This article analyses the first seasons of two interconnected AMC series, ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Fear the Walking Dead’. Our analysis focuses on how these shows frame the emergence of a bio-risk, how the leading characters deal with the experience of bio-risks, and how they develop (or fail at developing) strategies to overcome, or, if this renders impossible, to tame such bio-risk. We have used a Grounded Theory approach to analyse the data, frame our analysis, and create a theoretical understanding of the ways these shows present bio-risks, and of the ways they depict the fictional experience of living a bio-emergency, without any official, institutional plan regarding to how to deal with it.