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Editorial
Jane Shoebridge
Nursing (Social Science), Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University of South Australia, SA
Eileen Willis
Department of Palliative and Supportive Services, School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA
Article Text
In this second issue for 2003 we have been fortunate in having Lynne Hunt, Beverley McNamara, and Eileen Clark provide two excellent symposia. Lynne and Bev have handled the editorial processes for six articles that are challenging, thoughtful, and delightful accounts of the life, death, work and role of breasts in contemporary western culture. As Bev and Lynne indicate in their editorial, these articles also raise useful questions and challenges about research methodologies. Likewise Eileen Clark has brought together three articles on health and ageing that break new ground in the way they explore the reality of the lived experience of ageing and combine new policy directions and cultural ideas with old age.
In 2002 we put a call out to our subscribers for sociological topics of interest they wished the journal to pursue. We had in mind that these topics would provide articles useful for those of you doing research in similar areas, or as a teaching tool for your students. The two symposia in this issue deal with topics subscribers fed back to us.
From subscribers' suggestions, in 2004 the Journal will publish a symposium exploring the vexed question of the teaching of sociology to students of medicine, nursing and other allied health professions. With Simon Kitto (Monash) and others, we have taken this topic as the theme for the annual Health Day at this year's national conference of The Australian Sociological Association.
We have used the symposium format now for several issues in the hope that our readers find this intellectually stimulating. The symposium format allows readers to gain insight into the many ways in which various scholars theorise and understand the social issue. Inviting experts in the field to edit these symposia strengthens this agenda. If you are researching or teaching in an area of health sociology, health promotion or practice, or have knowledge with implications for health and social policy that you think would provide an exciting symposium, please contact the editors with your ideas. We now have a robust and increasingly international database of subscribers and reviewers with their areas of interest. This is complemented by the TASA database. We are in a position to provide guest editors with assistance in approaching possible authors and providing the names of reviewers, and welcome the diversity this approach offers.
Needless to say we also welcome articles reporting on original research or theorising on health sociology and related issues of equity, promotion, practice and policy from all our readers.
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