BackgroundTelecare could greatly facilitate chronic disease management in the community, but despite government promotion and positive demonstrations its implementation has been limited. This study aimed to identify factors inhibiting the implementation and integration of telecare systems for chronic disease management in the community.MethodsLarge scale comparative study employing qualitative data collection techniques: semi-structured interviews with key informants, task-groups, and workshops; framework analysis of qualitative data informed by Normalization Process Theory. Drawn from telecare services in community and domestic settings in England and Scotland, 221 participants were included, consisting of health professionals and managers; patients and carers; social care professionals and managers; and service suppliers and manufacturers.ResultsKey barriers to telecare integration were uncertainties about coherent and sustainable service and business models; lack of coordination across social and primary care boundaries, lack of financial or other incentives to include telecare within primary care services; a lack of a sense of continuity with previous service provision and self-care work undertaken by patients; and general uncertainty about the adequacy of telecare systems. These problems led to poor integration of policy and practice.ConclusionTelecare services may offer a cost effective and safe form of care for some people living with chronic illness. Slow and uneven implementation and integration do not stem from problems of adoption. They result from incomplete understanding of the role of telecare systems and subsequent adaption and embeddedness to context, and uncertainties about the best way to develop, coordinate, and sustain services that assist with chronic disease management. Interventions are therefore needed that (i) reduce uncertainty about the ownership of implementation processes and that lock together health and social care agencies; and (ii) ensure user centred rather than biomedical/service-centred models of care.

Regendering the Military; theorising women's military participation. Abstract Abstract: This paper considers how, in the light of contemporary military transformations, feminist theorizing about women's military participation might be developed to take account of an emergent reality: the inclusion of increasing numbers of women in a range of roles within armed forces. A brief overview of established debates within feminist scholarship on women's military participation is provided, and we explore the trajectory of feminist strategies for change both within militaries and other institutions. The promise and limitations of UNSCR 1325 are discussed. The paper argues that existing feminist critiques often remain deterministic, and have too readily dismissed the possibilities for change created by women's participation, given the context of military transformations. Drawing on the idea of the regendered military, the paper presents a conceptual strategy for considering how feminist theorizing about the gender-military nexus can take seriously women's military participation whilst remaining alert to feminist political goals of gender equality, peace and justice.

This article examines individual military identities as articulated by serving and former British military personnel. Following a review of approaches to military identities in both traditional military sociology and more contemporary sociologies of military personnel informed by post-structuralist theories, the article introduces a methodological approach to identities driven by respondents’ perspectives generated during photo-elicitation interviews. These constructions of military identities rest on: the assertions and demonstrations of professional skill, competence and expertise of the trained military operative; the significance of fictive kinship and camaraderie amongst soldiers; and the place in identity work of personal participation in events of national or global significance. Military identity, we argue, is a locally emergent phenomenon, constituted by members’ concepts of their own identity. These findings complement and develop existing sociological conceptualizations of military identities.

This paper reviews contemporary approaches in Anglophone human geography to the geographical constitution and expression of militarism and military activities. Three main approaches are identified, and the merits, limitations and insights of each are discussed. These are: traditional Military Geography, intimately associated with state military discourses of military power; a broad political geography, focused on the spatiality of armed conflict; and research from across the social sciences on the political economies and sociocultural geographies of militarism, particularly in nonconflict situations. The paper concludes with some suggestions for further empirical and theoretical inquiry, and argues on moral grounds for a human geography explicitly concerned with military geographies in all their forms.

In this paper I examine military masculinities as a form of rural masculinity. I argue that one model of military masculinity, the warrior hero, acts as a dominant military construction of masculinity . I examine how the countryside as a location, and rurality as a social construction, impinge upon the construction of the ideal type of the warrior hero . The paper draws on recruitment literature, Ministry of Defence publicity materials, popular accounts of soldiering, and Army videos to trace out the practices and representations that construct the dominant discourse of the warrior hero . The paper is grounded conceptually in theories of gender identity and rurality as social constructions . I conclude by questioning the political consequences, both for rural life and for the armed forces, of this hegemonic model of masculinity.

This article explores the relationships between soldiers, masculinity and the countryside. It draws on a variety of published materials ranging from army recruitment literature to military autobiography. It is located primarily in conceptual frameworks suggested by feminist and rural studies literatures. Follow ing a brief discussio n of the historical contribution of the military to ideas of rurality, the relationships between soldiers, masculin ity and the country side are explored. First, the ways in which the army constru cts a particular view of the country side are discussed. This view accords the army rights of control over space, dictates a particular way of seeing rural space, and develops a quasi-environ mentalist interpretation of the impact of army activity on the landscape. Second, it is suggested that this conceptualisation of the country side contributes speci cally to the construction of particular (hegemonic) notion s of masculinity. The ideas of adventure and danger are particularly important in this respect. T hird, the role of the body of the soldier in this process is examined. The con struction of a speci c gendered identity through a process of transformation from civilian to soldier is discussed. T he article con cludes by suggesting how the body of the soldier is used to signify particular senses of place.

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This paper is about the distinctive contributions which contemporary military geography might make to the wider critical military studies project. The paper notes the relative absence of the study of military topics across Anglophone human geography in the second half of the twentieth century, and the resurgence of interest in the spatialities of militarism and military activities over the past decade or so in tandem with the emergence of critical geography. The paper then goes on to examine three key tropes of geographical inquiry to illustrate how a critical military studies alert to spatiality might develop further. These are geography's rich tradition of research and writing about landscape, geography's engagement with concepts of representation, and geography's theorizing on scale. The paper argues that a geographically informed critical military studies can be illuminating on matters of war and militarism because of its attention to the located, situated, and constitutive natures of military power and its effects. The paper concludes with a reflexive commentary on what critical military studies might take from ongoing debates in human geography about the necessity of engagement and co-inquiry with research subjects, when a focus on military topics raises ethical questions about collaboration. We argue that transparency, accountability, and awareness of the multiple and complex politics of academic inquiry are necessarily part of the wider critical military studies project.