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This paper examines parent participation in local Sure Start partnerships within the broader context of public involvement in policy-making processes. Public participation is set against a background where an emphasis on participatory democracy is seen as a solution to shortcomings identified with policy-making and implementation. However, the meaning of public participation is by no means straightforward and gives rise to problems at several levels. Many of these problems emanate from concerns with power and legitimation. While these concerns highlight important aspects of public participation in public and social administration, this paper, drawing on Foucault's concept of "pastoral power", examines whether public participation is better viewed as a predictable part of governance in modern Western democracies where subjects need to be recruited to exercise power over themselves.

This paper seeks to explore the role of school meals policy in the UK, and more particularly its articulation in England. It will outline the history of this policy and examine a number of changes that have taken place over time. The focus will be on nutrition and how the emphasis has shifted from issues of quantity to the composition of food eaten by children. The nutritional argument will be examined by exploring the changes in the governance of the population, as represented by school meals policy. Finally, the paper will address the awkward relationship between the state and children, as evinced by school meals policies.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of insights from media studies for medical sociology by focusing on the cultural and ideological messages transmitted in newspaper coverage of tranquilliser dependence. An analysis of 62 stories recounting the experiences of individual tranquilliser users reveals that journalists concentrate on two kinds of person -the celebrity and the ordinary user-in their reports. The ways in which the press deploys these users' experiences of tranquilliser dependence and withdrawal and their relationship with the medical profession are then analysed, with particular attention being given to the cultural and ideological meanings embedded in its descriptions of such experiences and relations. The paper ends with a discussion of the reasons for the transmission of such meanings by the press and their possible effect on different audiences.