Jessica Polzer | Western University Canada (original) (raw)
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University of the Basque Country, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
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Papers by Jessica Polzer
Social Science & Medicine, 2007
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2012
This paper examines the daily struggles of unionized employees whose municipal workplace was unde... more This paper examines the daily struggles of unionized employees whose municipal workplace was undergoing major change influenced by New Public Management. In-depth interviews with 45 front-line service providers revealed widespread frustration with working conditions and relationships with management. We interpret this response as an embodied expression of hysteresis, a term that Bourdieu used to describe the gap between changing field conditions and habitus. We argue that organizational change posed challenges for these workers because it produced a rupture between their taken-for-granted ways of being a “good” public servant (i.e., public service habitus) and what was expected of them after restructuring. Moreover, on the basis of gendered occupational class differences in employees’ practices, we suggest that hysteresis is itself a socially-structured phenomenon that reflects the tacit calculation of what was possible (or not) for workers occupying specific positions within the st...
The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics
Using an intersectional lens, this chapter examines sexual and reproductive health with a focus o... more Using an intersectional lens, this chapter examines sexual and reproductive health with a focus on cervical cancer prevention policy. In Canada, the control of cervical cancer has been a public-health success due to the widespread effects of Papanicolaou (Pap) screening. Within the context of publicly funded universal health insurance, which aims to achieve equitable access to healthcare, the routinisation of Pap screening has significantly lowered cervical cancer incidence and mortality among women generally. Despite this success, the burden of cervical cancer incidence and mortality is disproportionately carried by marginalised women, and structural barriers to access persist for groups who remain under-screened (Indigenous women, rural women, immigrant women, sexual and gender minorities). This approach to cervical cancer prevention contrasts with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme, which entailed a distinct shift in thinking about cervical cancer risk and constructed a new target group for cervical cancer prevention-sexually naïve girls. Promoted by both publichealth authorities and pharmaceutical companies, HPV vaccination framed
Journal of Sex Research - J SEX RES, 2012
This article critically examines the proliferation of information on the human papillomavirus (HP... more This article critically examines the proliferation of information on the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination as integral to contemporary processes of medicalization that take the young female body and her nascent sexuality as its primary object and target. We suggest that the recent introduction of voluntary HPV vaccination for girls, in North America and elsewhere, constitutes a form of neomedicalization (Batt & Lippman, 2010) that links risks for future disease (cervical cancer) with the transmission of a common, sexually transmitted infection (HPV). Informed by findings from a critical discourse analysis of Canadian English newspapers, magazines, and public information about HPV vaccination, our interest is on how the emergence of sexual relationships becomes constructed as a time fraught with risks to future health, and that must be managed through biotechnological intervention (vaccination). We suggest that this configuration of medicalization, rather than demarcate a new ca...
Social Science & Medicine, 2007
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2012
This paper examines the daily struggles of unionized employees whose municipal workplace was unde... more This paper examines the daily struggles of unionized employees whose municipal workplace was undergoing major change influenced by New Public Management. In-depth interviews with 45 front-line service providers revealed widespread frustration with working conditions and relationships with management. We interpret this response as an embodied expression of hysteresis, a term that Bourdieu used to describe the gap between changing field conditions and habitus. We argue that organizational change posed challenges for these workers because it produced a rupture between their taken-for-granted ways of being a “good” public servant (i.e., public service habitus) and what was expected of them after restructuring. Moreover, on the basis of gendered occupational class differences in employees’ practices, we suggest that hysteresis is itself a socially-structured phenomenon that reflects the tacit calculation of what was possible (or not) for workers occupying specific positions within the st...
The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Sexuality, and Canadian Politics
Using an intersectional lens, this chapter examines sexual and reproductive health with a focus o... more Using an intersectional lens, this chapter examines sexual and reproductive health with a focus on cervical cancer prevention policy. In Canada, the control of cervical cancer has been a public-health success due to the widespread effects of Papanicolaou (Pap) screening. Within the context of publicly funded universal health insurance, which aims to achieve equitable access to healthcare, the routinisation of Pap screening has significantly lowered cervical cancer incidence and mortality among women generally. Despite this success, the burden of cervical cancer incidence and mortality is disproportionately carried by marginalised women, and structural barriers to access persist for groups who remain under-screened (Indigenous women, rural women, immigrant women, sexual and gender minorities). This approach to cervical cancer prevention contrasts with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme, which entailed a distinct shift in thinking about cervical cancer risk and constructed a new target group for cervical cancer prevention-sexually naïve girls. Promoted by both publichealth authorities and pharmaceutical companies, HPV vaccination framed
Journal of Sex Research - J SEX RES, 2012
This article critically examines the proliferation of information on the human papillomavirus (HP... more This article critically examines the proliferation of information on the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination as integral to contemporary processes of medicalization that take the young female body and her nascent sexuality as its primary object and target. We suggest that the recent introduction of voluntary HPV vaccination for girls, in North America and elsewhere, constitutes a form of neomedicalization (Batt & Lippman, 2010) that links risks for future disease (cervical cancer) with the transmission of a common, sexually transmitted infection (HPV). Informed by findings from a critical discourse analysis of Canadian English newspapers, magazines, and public information about HPV vaccination, our interest is on how the emergence of sexual relationships becomes constructed as a time fraught with risks to future health, and that must be managed through biotechnological intervention (vaccination). We suggest that this configuration of medicalization, rather than demarcate a new ca...