Unburnished

More moral Martinis

Picking up on the last post, I guess what is going on is that there is an accepted American discourse around alcohol, health and work. In this particular instance, I think the discourse is explicitly about alcohol and work, with long-term health lurking in the background, i.e. being implicit.

It's much less acceptable to talk about or celebrate alcohol in the American workplace. Is this latent puritanism? Perhaps it is in two ways: one, a rejection of or fear of celebrating intoxicants and ribaldry; two, strong adherence to and celebration of the Protestant work ethic. On this latter note, perhaps someone authoring a website devoted to academic productivity does not see it as fitting to weave daily drinking into the equation. More's the pity.

In the UK, of course, the discourse is significantly different, both in normal workplaces and in academia. Although I get the impression that in the latter it's changing, becoming more American and productivity/Protestant work ethic focused. God forbid that the British discourse around alcohol and work become as either/or as the typical American version.

The moral martini

I find it really difficult to squeeze in writing time, so am using Anthony Burgess's well known Martini Method as an incentive. Burgess, who I believe was as prolific with the bottle as with the typewriter, developed a brilliant way of ensuring that he engaged in both these past times, rather than just the former: he wasn't allowed to start his daily drinking until he had written 1000 words. So every day he sat down and worked, until he reached that magic number. If it was a great day and he reached it very early, more's the better.

Anyway, I've adopted the same technique -- albeit with wine, and I don't plan on becoming as heavy drinker as Burgess was. (And I won't be doing any pre-lunch and losing.) I got the idea from an American website -- and here's where the morality comes in. The site, run by a PhD student, didn't have the balls to explicitly recommend that other Ph.D. students do something so shocking as bribe themselves with booze. The writer described the Martini Method, but then suggested using ice cream, or fruit smoothies!

How American, and how moral.

The fate repetoire and agency through inaction

Have just read a short paper by Jolanyi on health and morality (from the 7th conf of the European sociological assoc, Sep 05). Some quick notes while dinner is cooking.

In order to get a clearer picture of how the concept of health is constructed by older people, she asks them how health is generated.

She doesn't explicitly cite it as this, but in this paper I saw an eg of agency through inaction. Eg, in her paper, an older man devotes significant time and energy to the "fate repetoire", a disscourse strategy in which people avow and argue that helath is generated through factors outside their control. These factors might be environmental, lifecourse (eg childhood), genetic, or their constitution or character. (It's interesting and worth exploring that so many people tend to see character as outside their control.) But when talking about why he doesn't walk more than he does, he says it's bcz he's too lazy.

A couple of quick points. One, by choosing to be lazy he is exercising agency - like the kid in Dead Poets' Society who refuses to walk during the experiment on falling into step. Two, perhaps in making this choice he is also going along with his beliefs about fate's influence on health: what's the point in not being lazy if health is out of our control anyway. Is this a form of exercising agency? Within the broader context of the public health messages about the importance of activity, it is.

These messages are ubiquitous, and they do have a major impact on Jolanyi's subjects. Interestingly, at the start of a conversation, they argue that activity and good diet are the key to health, but then participants cite egs of people who were active and had good diets and who did not see the hoped for helath benefits, contrasted with those who didn't do what they should but stayed spry into their 90s. So they agree that activity and diet are important, but constitution and genes are more important.

A post for the day job: role of FE in increasing social cohesion

Frunkin's literature rvw tells us that bme groups are more likely to participate in FE - they are over-represented. In large part this will be because they are not yet in the ses bracket that makes HE the norm. It also has to do with the greater need that bmes have for getting qualifications in order to attain same level jobs as whites. This may or may not be true - I need to look for evidence - but bme groups certainly believe that it is true: see Frumkin. ANd it may well have something to do with ambition. BME groups report having positive attitudes to education. But what does this mean, Frumkin - education in general or in the fe college? I need to chase this up.

On the negative side, bme groups report lower satisfaction ratings w/teaching staff and other aspects of the FE experience. FE staff are - what? 80% white? WHich would make BME groups over-represented, in fact - but absolute terms may matter as well.

....

Does any review of FE's capacity to promote social cohesion need to be framed in terms of war begin with the recent government proclamations on FE's role in social cohesion and preventing violent extremism? I think this probably has to be the starting point, even if it's not dwelt on hugely.

I can have a discussion of what the government seeks; and then look at the research on this issue. I have the WBL research, but I should see if there is more. But there is something here that needs to be problematised: to what degree can and should FE colleges be overtly used as a cohesion tool, and how effective will an explicit approach be in comparison to the value they are already adding? Issues to address here include the racial make-up of FE staff and students, whether or not the government is seeking to address white extremism e.g. the BNP.

"Life's too short"

My favourite reason that people give for not paying attention to their health: "Life's too short." Dom said this, as does at least one of the cohort interviews I've seen.

On a serious note, whta are the relative contributions of various factors to shorter life, ie death and/or incapacity that comes earlier than might be expected? I've seen a chart that blames social circumstances for 15% of the proportional contribution, behaviour for 40% and genetic predisposition for only 30%. Environmental exposures then get 5%, and health care 10%. Is this accurate?

Notes on an interview

Reading a sample intvw from another cohort...

So much of what he discsusses is either about or is framed by health -- well, in particular, physical activity. For example, his house is "a nice little walk in the morning" from work -- that's one of the first things he says about it. Again, talking about where he was and where he might ideally like to live in the future, he bases the criteria around physical activity: I'd like to step out of my door within a few minutes walk be on the coast, he says. Every single weekend we go to the coast... we love it, we're always biking and walking.

If I knew how to do my fancy pants narrative analysis, I'd be able to write a couple of pages about his early statement that "you probably see the bikes on the back of the car is as you came in". luckily for me and anyone else who might ever read this, I don't yet know how to crap on about things like that.

He seems to hardly ever just sit around. Almost all of his free/fun time is spent doing physical activities, and most of that seems to be in large groups -- a huge social component of the activity, but you get the impression that he's not joining in the activity to socialise, he's doing the activity and is a very social guy so is bringing lots of people into his interest.

If you take MacIntyre's definition of health -- going and doing -- he's an extraordinarily healthy guy. Even when he's not going and doing physical activities, he's playing in a band two nights a week. "Keen aren't we," he asks, reflecting on how much physical activity he does every week.

There's something here related to a few things my dad said, that might be interesting to explore. This guy, despite being very physically active, had a cardiac arrest a year ago. It doesn't seem fair, he mused: doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, healthy diet, gets tons of exercise. He blamed it on overwork, which was increasing his stress and reducing his exercise, and bad genes: something similar happened to his dad.

When I asked dom what he thought caused health, he said he thought it was mostly genes. Pointing to the people around him, he said that the most spry and healthy ones weren't the ones who took better care of themselves, they were the ones who had selected the best mothers and fathers. That being said, dom clearly saw a role for behaviour in shaping health: he wishes he hadn't drank so much sweet tea over the course of his life, and had done more exercise. Judging his bad diet and lack of exercise over the course of his lifetime, he points to good genes as a reason why he's not in much worse health than he is.

I wonder if there are patterns that can be discerned amongst people, maybe different groups of people, wherein some people might blame everything on genes, other people might say that genes are the most powerful but also point to behaviour, and maybe some people might discount genes and just go for behaviour.

Something interesting about this interview is how physical activity is part of the narrative the almost no matter what the guy is talking about. When he's telling his life story, he has prompted to talk about cycling and other physical activities, but then does talk about it at length. He also talks about different reasons for doing it over the course of his life. When he was young he did it because it was fun and he was good at it; then after stopping for numerous years, he and his wife took it back up because she had snapped an Achilles tendon and needed a new type of exercise. Maybe this is a typical pattern: when we're young, were physical because it's fun and/or we're good at it; when were old, it's still fun, but we're doing it first and foremost because we know we should.

Of the six interviews I've read, he is the only one who cites a health event as a life turning point. I wonder if this ratio changes for people in their 60s and above. What's interesting is that his biographical narrative doesn't seem to change a ton after his heart attack: he's a bit more active it seems, but he was always a very active guy. So what impact does this turning point have on his biography? Makes him more consious of his life and health? of the health aspect of PA? Is it only through encouraing him to work less, to ahve that be a somewhat smaller chunk of his life and ambitions and how he spends his time? Or is it because it scared him so much, maybe changed him psychologically by denting his confidence, but also by making life seem more precious and fleeting? Or is it possible that he lends a healty event more import than others might, because he's so into his health?

One other health-related life event he cites: he failed his 11-plus because he broke his leg.

In terms of citing his generation, he says hat doing all this PA makes him feel s/w like he's not in the older generation, not like his parents would have been at the same age.

Like e/o, he cites aches and pains as one of the first disadvantages of ageing.

Interview responses

I'm reading some interviews from another study, one that doesn't really have specific quesitons about health - just to get an idea of how people respond to questions, how they tell their stories in response to these intw enquiries. A few interesting issues:

• what if any role do health and H issues play in how people define themselves?
• everyone mentions the aches and pains as a disadvantage of ageing
• there's some intersting talk around intergenerational hlh issues, eg mother's poor phys or emotional WB
• one guy spends a huge amount of time detailing his extensive phys activities, and the cardiac he suffered a year before.
• one woman spends a lot of time discussing poss causes of her H probs - it's work, she thinks
• the cardiac guy cites that as a key life turning point. how often will others? this is biog disruption, w/ a huge dose of 'why me?', as he did all the right things. Genetic predisposition, he knows - dad had same thing.

martini

i'm getting myself into a pooh and piglet muddle over how much and when to write. so here's the plan:

1. start with the burgess's martini system. he wrote 1k words per day, then poured himself a martini. w/o the former, he couldn't hav ethe latter. the sooner he did his writing, the sooner he could start his drinking. i don't get to start boozing at lunchtime, but so long as a write and i can drink. (sounds a bit sad, that, but really, it's not. really.) ;i'll be curious to see how i squeeze the time in each day.
2. in terms of topics, another font of muddle is my surfeit of reading w/o enough writing. in my daily blarging, if i can't think of a topic - and this has abeen a problem, bcz so much is so new to me, i'm a bit overwhelmed by ideas - then i'll just summarise the most recent article i read.
3. in fact, my hot new rule is that i need to summarise every article i read. next week i'll start by summarising everything i've read so far.
4. later on i'll figure out how to make my notes as useful as poss.

tiddly dum

i think that i'm not going to try to transfer notes from pdf printouts to onenote or word on a regular basis, at least for the rest of this year. i want to work out a good system for going from reading articles to having searchable, condensed, germane information. what i'm doing now is too time consuming, and forces me to spend too much time doing boring transfer work - and i'm not sure how valuable the effort is. 

in the meantime, i really loves me some benny frankle, and i think this scheme below is a Pretty Useful Thang. His two questions to himself would be pretty good blog fodder in the absence of any other ideas, with the questions morphed to "what do i want to learn/figure out today" / what did i learn today?

Disruption foretold

I posted earlier about the potential lack of relevance of the notion of biographical disruption when studying older people's ill health. I've got the notion of disruption for told -- that is, disruption that while unwanted is expected and thus fits in with one's preconceived ideas about one's lifecourse and biography.