Massey Documents by Type
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Item Perspectives on health and illness(Massey University, 2025-07-16) Morison T; Gibson A; Riley S; McGuigan KTaking a critical perspective, as we do in this book, involves going beyond the surface appearance of an idea or phenomenon to determine why it is the way it is (Baum, 2015). For (critically oriented) health psychology, this means scrutinising health-related issues through a lens that questions underlying assumptions, power dynamics, and social structures. It also means questioning our very understanding of the notion of health, which we frequently take for granted, and which is the focus of this chapter. The questions that may spring to mind are: What is the point of recognising and unpacking different, changing understandings of health and illness? And, Why is taking this critical perspective necessary or valuable? This chapter tackles these questions.Item Making sense of bodily experiences: Interpreting signs and symptoms(Massey University, 2025-07-16) Morison T; Gibson A; Riley SThis chapter is about how people make sense of the changes experienced in their bodies as an indication of illness. How do we know when a physical sensation is serious or just a fleeting discomfort? Deciding whether to seek medical care or ignore a symptom is a daily reality, but the process of interpreting bodily signals is far more complex than it might seem. By the end of this chapter, you will be able to understand symptom interpretation as more than a straightforward process. Instead, you will see it as a complex, socially negotiated act with significant implications for individual health, healthcare practices, and broader public health outcomes.Item Diagnosis as a social and political practice(Massey University, 2025-07-16) Morison T; Sarah RIn this chapter, we examine diagnosis not just as a process of labelling diseases, but as a practice that establishes a shared understanding of what constitutes sickness—an understanding shaped by values, norms, and biology, and imbued with significant social consequences (Jutel, 2024). We begin by asking, “What is diagnosis?”—exploring how naming and framing create diagnostic systems that often struggle with ambiguity. Next, we examine diagnosis as a social tool. In medical interactions, healthcare providers wield the “power to name,” raising questions: Who benefits from specific diagnoses? What role do they play in maintaining the status quo and, hence, social inequity? We also consider diagnosis in the context of medicalisation, whereby everyday experiences are reframed as medical issues through diagnostic classifications. We discuss the benefits, such as validation and care, and drawbacks, including stigma and oversimplification, associated with this practice.Item The unravelling of person-centred care: The value and necessity of analysing power relations in contraceptive services(SAGE Publications, 2025-04-30) Morison T; Macleod CI; Ndabul YGlobal research indicates ongoing challenges in delivering person-centred contraceptive care. Much of the contraceptive research investigates this issue using systems-focussed approaches to map institutional constraints (e.g. institutional or health system barriers to accessing contraception). The assumption underlying this research approach is that simply removing structural barriers can address issues and enhance contraceptive autonomy, but this is not the case. Our research shows how discursively constructed power relations undermine bodily integrity and contraceptive agency even as contraceptive providers endorse the principles of patient-centred care. Using a synthetic narrative/discourse approach to analyse provider interviews in South Africa and New Zealand, we draw on Foucauldian analytics of biopower to show how an idealised person-centred care narrative collapses under the weight of discourses of medicalised risk, protectionism, and biomedical expertise, signalling practices of power through confession, responsibilisation and surveillance. Our findings highlight an essential perspective frequently missing in systems-focussed research on contraceptive care: the crucial dimension of power and reproductive politics. Thus, we argue for the necessity of investigating this dimension, in addition to systemic challenges. Our work demonstrates the value of frameworks that illuminate power dynamics, such as the Foucauldian analytics of biopower we undertook. Expanding the range of research perspectives in contraceptive research can deepen understandings of how systems constraints and power relations together undermine relational person-centred contraceptive care.Item Extending sexual scripting theory through critical discursive psychology: An analytical approach to explore the performance of sexual identities.(SAGE Publications, 2024-09-23) Healy-Cullen S; Morison TSexual scripting theory, a widely used tool in sexuality research, was originally developed by Gagnon and Simon to illuminate the social nature of sexual practices and identity construction. Later, they sought to develop the theory further to align with a social constructionist perspective. However, vestiges of individualism and cognitivism haunt sexual scripting theory largely due to the use of the symbolic interactionist concept of performance. To address this, we draw on the performance–performativity approach in critical discursive psychology that develops the notion of performance from a discursive perspective and offers a way of extending sexual scripting theory that offers a truly social explication of sexual identity construction. We provide a practical illustration of this extended theorising, drawing on data from a project about young people’s online engagement with pornography. We demonstrate how developing the notion of sexual scripts as discursive resources that enable the performance of sexual identities allows us to illuminate the social and situated nature of identity construction. This framework enhances understanding of the process of sexual identity construction and provides a valuable tool for studying how broader sexual scripts that are sociohistorically specific provide a scaffolding for the ways an individual can construct sexual identities. Overall, this paper offers a valuable contribution to discursive scholarship in psychology by presenting a nuanced analytical framework that coheres with a constructionist, performative view of identity.Item Patient-provider power relations in counselling on long-acting reversible contraception: a discursive study of provider perspectives(Taylor and Francis Group, 2022-05-06) Morison TContraceptive providers play an essential role in shaping contraceptive decision-making and care, with the potential to constrain patients' agency. This is a particular concern given the rising hegemony of Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) and growing evidence of negative patient experiences of LARC promotion and provision. Despite this evidence, little research has considered health providers' perspectives. Drawing on interviews with 22 contraceptive health providers in Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper explored their professional identity construction, focusing on meaning-making in instances of conflict between providers' and patients' priorities and agendas. Guided by feminist poststructuralist theory, the discursive analysis highlights common rhetorical strategies used by participants to (1) justify the use of coercive practices to encourage LARC uptake, and (2) in turn, negotiate positive identities. Findings show how participants grapple with the reproductive politics structuring contraceptive care, including established understandings of the purpose of (long-acting) contraception and contraceptive providers' roles vis-à-vis provision and promotion. The findings point to limitations on contraceptive agency, despite the unanimous endorsement of rights-based voluntary care. Extending the critical literature on LARC and contributing to the under-researched area of contraceptive coercion and agency, the findings of this study have important implications for the delivery of contraceptive care.Item Reproductive justice: A radical framework for researching sexual and reproductive issues in psychology(John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2021-05-13) Morison TThe reproductive justice framework holds much promise for guiding research that can contribute to social change. Its limited integration and use in social psychology therefore represents a missed opportunity for justice-oriented social researchers. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the reproductive justice framework and demonstrate its value for social psychologists studying sexual and reproductive issues. Using the example of contraceptive provision, rights-based sexual and reproductive health research is contrasted with reproductive justice-oriented research to demonstrate how a reproductive justice lens can extend the analytical focus to illuminate the complex roots of an issue. This is crucial for developing policy and interventions that contribute toward longer-term systemic change and, ultimately, social transformation.Item Intimate partner violence in Khayelitsha schools: A Culture of silence(2018-03-31) Lynch I; Essop R; Tolla T; Morison TA team of HSRC researchers, partners and collaborators conducted research at 24 schools in Khayelitsha in the Western Cape to provide baseline data for a programme to address sexual violence in South African schools. They found high levels of sexual violence, including intimate partner violence. This was accompanied by a culture of silence.Item South African women as champions of change: A civil society programme of action for the African women’s decade(HSRC Press, 2014) Chitiga-Mabugu M; Karuaihe S; Reddy V; Morison T; Botsis H; Ntuli M; Tsoanamatsie NWomen are agents of their own development and make valuable contributions towards the eradication of poverty and the establishment of early childhood structures in South Africa. South African Women as Champions of Change provides a perspective on the complexities in best practice case studies in respect of civil society engagement with poverty eradication, early childhood development, gender-based violence, and the advocacy initiatives aligned to some of these programs. A cross-cutting theme underpinning the analysis is an exploration of the socioeconomic conditions that promote employment creation for women. This book is a timely reminder of the invaluable contribution made by civil society organizations towards addressing the challenges affecting grassroots South African communities.Item What does it mean to be ‘porn literate’? Perspectives of young people, parents and teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand(Taylor and Francis Group, 5/04/2023) Healy-Cullen S; Morison T; Taylor J; Taylor KPorn literacy education is a pedagogical strategy responding to youth engagement with pornography through digital media. The approach is intended to increase young people's knowledge and awareness regarding the portrayal of sexuality in Internet pornography. However, what being 'porn literate' entails, and what a porn literacy education curricula should therefore include, is not a settled matter. Recognising the importance of end-user perspectives, 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted with parents, teachers and young people in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and analysed via critical, constructionist thematic analysis. Participants drew on a developmentalist discourse and a discourse of harm to construct porn literacy education as a way to inoculate young people against harmful effects, distortions of reality, and unhealthy messages. In addition to this dominant construction of porn literacy education, we identified talk that to some extent resisted these dominant discourses. Building on these instances of resistance, and asset-based constructions of youth based on their agency and capability, we point to an ethical sexual citizenship pedagogy as an alternative approach to porn literacy education.
