In this article we address activist, patient advocate and medic perspectives on framing intersex, variations of sex characteristics and disorders/differences in sex development medical treatment as human rights abuses. Problematic aspects of intersex medical treatment have increasingly been highlighted in national debates and international human rights bodies. Some intersex activists have framed aspects of intersex medical treatment as human rights abuses since the 1990s. Other stakeholders in shaping medical treatment, such as patient advocates and medical professionals, are not always content with human rights framing, or even the term intersex. In order to address the different perspectives in this arena we provide background on the primary rights claims that have arisen followed by key human rights framing of these claims. We provide a short discussion of activism styles, looking at pan-intersex social movements and variation-specific patient associations as different styles of health social movements. The analysis of stakeholder perspectives on the use of human rights strategy in health areas provides a useful case study for medical sociology and policy in general.

Gender models: changing representations and intersecting roles in Dutch and Italian fashion magazines, 1982-2011 Kuipers, G.M.M.; van der Laan, E.C.; Arfini, E.A.G.

This article addresses the aestheticization of traditional foods and the use of territorialization as a brand value for the promotion of products and services. Economy of quality is studied through a focus on the role that political institutions may have in promoting quality chains. Through document analysis, questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups, we consider the case of the quality brand, DegustiBo, promoted by the Province of Bologna, Italy. This initiative was developed to help local shops and restaurants find a source of common identity in the local territory. We consider actors’ narratives in defining, judging, and creating quality as related to the specific branding initiative, focusing on the way different descriptions of quality as related to ways of enacting territory are read and presented as performing authenticity. We explore how branding has been supported, realized, and responded to, concentrating on the encounter between consumers and producers. A focus on producers’ perceptions of consumer competence helps addressing the narrative asymmetry between consumers and producers, and the ways in which consumer rituals work as sites of knowledge transmission and conflict, defining the contours of an arena for the performance of concerted and contested notions such as traditional, local, and authentic food.

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