Under-acknowledged both clinically and socially as a threat to men’s health, breast cancer in men continues to be a critical health issue, with complex ramifications for those affected. Research exploring men’s breast cancer experiences and their lives beyond the diagnosis remain limited. Hence, this inquiry asks ‘How do men describe breast cancer and their experiences of the illness?’ the aim, to advance understandings about men’s meaning-making of breast cancer and masculinity, and to ‘give voice’ to this under-researched population. Embedded theoretically and methodologically within a critical qualitative health framework, the research has two parts. Part one is a qualitative synthesis of nine existing international studies exploring men’s breast cancer experiences, following Noblit and Hare’s (1988) method for synthesising interpretive qualitative data. The outcomes of this synthesis were used to inform part two: a multi-method phenomenological exploration of men’s breast cancer accounts using verbal and visual data. Thirty-One British men recruited through NHS records, Breast Cancer Care, and social media platforms, used self-authored photographs to illustrate their breast cancer experiences, which they later discussed as part of extended semi-structured interviews. All data were analysed together using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith & Osborn, 2003). Integrating and triangulating the findings from the two study phases, the on-going marginalisation of men across the breast cancer trajectory, and how this influences men’s experiences of, and adjustment to the illness, are revealed. Findings from the qualitative synthesis suggest current approaches to breast cancer care and advocacy serve to isolate men, potentially alienating and emasculating them; while patient management practices and informational resources unequivocally marginalise men. Findings from the new inquiry corroborate those from earlier studies, further illuminating the difficulties men encounter and some of their coping strategies. Specifically, three superordinate masculinities were identified: ‘threatened and exposed’, ‘protected and asserted’, and ‘reconsidered and reconfigured’. A schematic representation is presented to show how these interconnected masculinities are encountered, performed and utilised by men from pre-diagnosis through treatment and beyond as they manage, make sense of, and live through breast cancer. How and why men encounter/perform these different masculinities at different points in time across the breast cancer trajectory, and how this aids men’s adjustment to illness, and life beyond the diagnosis, is considered. The findings are expected to have both academic and real-world impact through informing future research, and recommendations for advocacy and intervention for improved future breast cancer care and practices.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) college students have a history of suffering from discriminatory, marginalizing, and prejudicial attitudes and practices on American college and university campuses. Implementing a critical qualitative methodology, this study examined the lived experiences of 9 out gay and bisexual male college students at an urban research university located in the southeastern United States. The study focused on three research questions: 1) What is the college experience like for an individual who identifies as an out gay or male bisexual student? 2) What does safety mean to an individual who identifies as an out gay or male bisexual student? 3) How does an individual navigate staying safe as an out gay or male bisexual student? The study found: 1) The presence of LGTB’ness is integral to the LGBT student experience. 2) Being involved and feeling connected to campus serves as a pivotal component of the LGBT student experience. 3) Navigating masculinity is complicated given traditional gender roles. 4) Classroom climate is a major factor for the success and safety of LGBT students. Reviewing the results of this study college faculty, staff, and administrators can begin to understand the unique experiences of LGBT college students; and through this meaning making process, higher education officials can learn what is needed to improve the college experience for this historically marginalized minority. This study informed what colleges and universities can do to better meet the needs of LGBT college students and ensure they have a welcoming and safe college environment.

The incidence of unintentional childlessness in women who have, as popular comment puts it, 'left it too late', is rising markedly in many western nations, yet the experience is not well understood. This thesis focuses on issues of fantasy, loss, and grieving in the experience of 26 New Zealand women in their 30s and 40s who are what Cannold (2005) has termed 'circumstantially childless'; that is women who expected to have children but find themselves at the end of their natural fertility without having done so for - at least initially - social rather than biological reasons. I explore the conscious and unconscious dimensions of the fantasies that many of the women interviewed have about themselves as mothers in relation to a child or children. I argue that these fantasies have their origins in these women's trans-subjective relationship with their mothers before birth, the intersubjective relationship after birth, and the mutual overlapping of their unique psychobiography and the social worlds in which they have become adults. Circumstantial childlessness entails a loss of the potential to embody their fantasies about themselves as mothers. The thesis uses psychoanalytic and contemporary grief theories to explore their experience of loss and grieving, and their adaptation of their fantasies when the potential to embody them has passed. It calls for a reconceptualization of maternal subjectivity to encompass the creative and satisfying alternative ways that women who do not have children embody 'mother' in their lives. The study's psychoanalytically-informed psychosocial methodology entailed the innovative use of participant-produced drawings, and the development of a method of recording protocols - based on Bollas'(2007) notion of a symphonic score - to systematically record non-linguistic elements of the texts (such as sighs, hesitations, laughter, repetitions, and tears) across the range of the semi-structured individual and group interview transcripts. In this respect, the thesis contributes to investigations of social life that move beyond the limits of conventional text-based methods of inquiry and interpretation.

The restructuring of Canadian health care for more than twenty years has ushered in opportunities for growth in private home care services. Within this socio-economic reality, some seniors and families feeling the impacts of the cutbacks to health and social services have turned to other alternatives of care to fill care gaps. A new type of caregiver, the paid companion, has surfaced in this respect. Operating either independently or through private health care agencies, paid companions resemble surrogate family members or friends who perform a variety of services for the elderly who can afford to pay for private home care and support. My research objective has been to explore and develop an understanding of the experiences and relationships of paid companions and their clients within the context of the political-economic climate of neoliberalism that has supported the development of paid companions. This thesis presents research conducted between 2009 and 2010 in the Greater Victoria area with 30 participants: 15 companions, 8 clients, and 7 key informants. The two qualitative methods of qualitative (semi-structured open-ended) in-person interviews and autodriven photo elicitation were utilized in order to examine the subjective experiences of paid companions and their clients. The research revealed the ambiguity and divergence of opinion around the terms ‘companion’ and ‘paid companion,’ which are inherent in the nature of the work itself. The majority of participants emphasized that friendship and fictive kinship often form the core of a relationship that has been built on caregiving and trust. While paid companions derive fulfillment by providing care for clients, the relationships they develop with them are intrinsically linked to the companionship and care they give. Although clients’ care needs most often stem from general health and mobility issues, the relationships that are gradually formed with their companions often become as important as the task-based assistance their companions provide to them. / Graduate

abstract: In the United States, responsibility for public safety falls under the purview of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. These agencies use a range of strategies to ensure public safety, relying primarily on surveillance, the police, the jail and prison system, and the courts to adjudicate wrongdoing. The United States’ over-reliance on incarceration as an all-encompassing solution to social problems, paired with persistent police violence that disproportionately results in the death of Indigenous, African American, and Latino/a people, has placed these public safety practices under intense scrutiny. There has been a plethora of research examining the crisis of mass incarceration in particular, and the racial, class, and gendered inequities plaguing the criminal justice system more broadly. Through the (Re)imagining Public Safety Project, I make two primary interventions in this larger body of work. First, this is an abolitionist project. In other words, I ask how people generate safety in their daily lives without relying on the police, or prisons, or criminalization. Second, in developing these alternatives, I center the perspective of people of color who have been directly impacted by racially discriminatory public safety practices. To do so, I designed a collaborative, mixed-method qualitative research project that uses participant-generated photo elicitation interviews, alongside participant observation to (re)imagine public safety. Participants in this project theorized what I am calling “insurgent safety” to describe an alternative practice of safety that is underwritten by what I term “a public ethic of care,” “counter-carceral communication,” and play. Insurgent safety is the presence of self-determination, interdependence, mutual aid, shared vulnerability, joy, and communion rather than walls, cages, and banishment. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Justice Studies 2015

abstract: This study looked at ways of understanding how schoolyards might act as meaningful places in children's developing sense of identity and possibility. Photographs and other images such as historical photographs and maps were used to look at how built environments outside of school reflect demographic and social differences within one southwest city. Intersections of children's worlds with various socio-political communities, woven into and through schooling, were examined for evidence of ways that schools act as the embodiment of a community's values: they are the material and observable effects of resource-allocation decisions. And scholarly materials were consulted to examine relationships in the images to existing theories of place, and its effect on children, as well as to consider theories of the hidden curriculum and its relationship to social reproduction, and the nature of visual representation as a form of data rather than strictly in the service of illustrating other forms of data. The focus of the study was on identifying appropriate research methods for investigating ways to understand the importance of the material worlds of school and childhood. Using a combination of visual and narrative approaches to contribute to our understanding of those material worlds, I sought to expose areas of inequity and class differences in ways that children experience schooling, as evidenced by differences in the material environment. Using a mixed-methods approach, created and found images were coded for categories of material culture, such as the existence of fences, trees, views from the playground or walking in the neighborhood at four Tempe schools. Findings were connected to a rich body of knowledge in areas such as theories of space and place, the nature of the hidden curriculum, visual culture, visual research methods including mapping. Familiar aspects of schooling were exposed in different ways, linking past decisions made by adults to their continuing effects on children today. In this way I arrived at an expanded and enriched understanding of the present worlds of children communicated as through the material environment. Visually examining children's worlds, by looking at the material artifacts of everyday worlds that children experience at school and including the child's-eye view in decision processes, has promise in moving decision makers away from strictly analytical and impersonal approaches to decision making about schooling children of the future. I proposed that by weighting of data points, as used in decision-making processes regarding schooling, differently than is currently done, and by paying closer attention to possible longer-term effects of place for all children, not just a few, there is the potential to improve the quality of life for today's children, and tomorrow's adults. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Educational Psychology 2013

abstract: The history of the American Old West has frequently been romanticized and idealized. This dissertation study explored four Arizona towns that developed during the era of the American Old West: Tombstone, Jerome, Oatman, and Globe. The study broadly examined issues of remembering/forgetting and historical authenticity/myth. It specifically analyzed historic tourist destinations as visual phenomenon: seeking to understand how town histories were visually communicated to contemporary tourists and what role historically-grounded visual narratives played in the overall tourist experience. The study utilized a visual methodology to organize and structure qualitative data collection and analysis; it incorporated visual data from historic and contemporary photographs and textual data from observations and interviews. Through a careful exploration of each town's past and present, the research proposed a measure to assess how the strength of visual connections between past and present impacted tourist impressions of each town. The analysis suggested that, due to a general lack of historic knowledge, tourist impressions were more closely connected to contemporary experiences and prior expectations of the American Old West than to historically-grounded visual narratives. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2014

O bairro da Liberdade se organiza como polo comercial e turístico desde a década de 1970 por iniciativa de comerciantes locais junto à Prefeitura. Dois marcos importantes dessa iniciativa foram a instituição da Liberdade como Bairro Oriental e a inauguração de uma decoração oriental, que desde então caracteriza o bairro. Essa guinada se refletiu também nos estudos sobre a Liberdade, que se concentram mais nos traços orientais e nos aspectos comerciais e turísticos da vida local. Em busca de novas abordagens sobre o bairro, voltamonos para o cotidiano dos moradores. Estávamos interessados em saber o que os moradores destacariam na paisagem local, já que ela não guarda apenas traços orientais, como também vestígios de movimentos de outras comunidades pelo bairro. Entretanto, durante o processo de pesquisa, um objetivo teórico-metodológico ganhou corpo no trabalho: explorar a possibilidade de conhecer o bairro da Liberdade por meio da caminhada e do vídeo. Convidamos então alguns moradores para que nos acompanhassem em passeios e apresentassem os seus pontos de referência no bairro da Liberdade. Para o registro desses passeios, utilizamos uma câmera de vídeo, ora conduzida pelos moradores, ora pelo pesquisador. Este trabalho se desenvolveu então em duas frentes: a experiência que se deu ao vivo no bairro da Liberdade e a experiência que se deu depois a partir da revisão do vídeo. As duas experiências não deram conta de um bairro vistoso, que agrada a vista. Nos passeios ao vivo, ao invés do ver, os participantes realçaram as esferas do comer e do andar. Nos passeios em vídeo, ao invés de uma revisão confortável, tivemos que lidar com um enquadramento instável, que causava vertigem durante a recepção. Os dois passeios nos conduziram a uma compreensão da paisagem viva de um bairro em constante movimento. Cabe ainda destacar a contribuição teórico-metodológica do trabalho pelo desenvolvimento de um método visual de investigação do espaço social baseado em passeios filmados na companhia dos participantes / Liberdade Neighborhood was set as a center of shopping and tourist activities since the 1970s by joint efforts of local shop owners and city hall. Two major achievements from this cooperation were the creation of the Oriental District and the opening of an oriental décor which ever since distinguishes the neighborhood. This shift has also affected the studies of Liberdade Neighborhood, which focus further on the oriental features and the shopping and tourist aspects of local life. Looking for new approaches, we focus on the daily life of dwellers. We wondered what they would highlight in the local landscape, for it keeps not only oriental features, but also traces of movements from others communities around the neighborhood. Nonetheless, during the research process, a theoretical and methodological aim arose in our work: exploring the possibilities of knowing Liberdade Neighborhood through walking and video. We invited some dwellers to join us in walks and show us their landmarks in Liberdade. These walks were recorded with a camcorder. Some of them were recorded by the dwellers, others by the researcher. This work was then developed on two fronts: the experience which happened live at Liberdade; the experience which happened later while watching the videos. Both experiences did not feature a flashy neighborhood, which pleases our eyes. In our live walks, instead of looking, our participants stood out the domains of eating and of walking. In our video walks, instead of watching comfortably, we had to deal with an unsteady framing, which induced motion sickness during reception. Both walks led us to an understanding of the living landscape of a neighborhood constantly moving. It should also be noted the theoretical and methodological contribution of this work by developing a visual method to study the social space based on video walks alongside the participants

Purpose The aim of this master’s thesis is to gain in-depth insight into the emotional connections of consumers to the brand heritage of luxury fashion brands. Another aim of the paper is to investigate how brand love is enriched by the communication of brand heritage dimensions on Instagram. Design/Methodology/Approach This study is adopting an epistemological position of interpretivism and an abductive qualitative methodology. Seven semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with emerging luxury fashion consumers. Further, to gain insight into the meanings attributed to heritage luxury fashion brands, visual participatory methods were implemented. The methods used were a digital tour and a visual collage. The data was analysed with the help of thematic coding. Findings The current study finds that emerging consumers form emotional connections to heritage luxury fashion brands through dimensions of brand love: self-brand integration, passion-driven behaviours, long-term relationships and declarations of affection. This process of forming brand love for heritage luxury fashion brands is named ‘heritage brand love phases’ by this study. Additionally, the study finds that brand heritage is an enricher of brand love for emerging consumers on Instagram, where the consumer is already ‘highly brand-involved'. Managerial Implications It became evident in this study that there is a compatibility conflict between heritage luxury brands and social media. Brand managers ought to weave brand heritage seamlessly into their social media strategy for it to succeed. It is further suggested that managers take into account the ‘heritage brand love phases’ when devising heritage-related social media strategies. Originality/Value This paper explores brand heritage as an enricher of brand love on Instagram. This represents an unexplored area of brand love research. The study expands knowledge of luxury fashion by investigating how one dimension of luxury, brand heritage, impacts emerging consumers’ brand love.

Understanding the features of urban public spaces that attract or exclude elderly residents is becoming an increasingly pressing concern in cities across the world. The present study is underpinned by the aim to uncover the desires, needs, values, uses and aspirations of elderly residents in public spaces across Stockholm. Using the concept of ‘Age-Friendly Cities’, this research examines the links between these specific elements and broader feeling of belonging or wellbeing that can arise from access to inclusive public spaces. Participants from two contrasting neighbourhoods were recruited to partake in a mental mapping and photo elicitation study of their surrounding areas. These visual materials were used to assess the age-friendliness of the two areas. Findings were analysed according to three themes: outdoor green spaces, transport infrastructure and urban development and growth. These themes were used to inform a discussion around what constitutes age-(un)friendliness. Flexible, inclusive, open, accessible places sensitive to local histories were found to be preferred. The design of transport infrastructure, such as roads and metro stations, were identified as features that contribute to discomfort in public spaces. These concerns were further exacerbated and amplified by concerns at the rapid growth of the city. Age-unfriendliness was therefore characterised by issues such as exclusion from access to new developments and a loss of identity, quality of life, resources and local character.