Based on interviews with 40 first-time mothers, the authors develop an argument that supplements the critique of medicalized childbirth by focusing on the social context in which women give birth. Particularly important about that context is women's privatized responsibility for babies' well-being, and a dearth of social supports for mothering, including the sharing of that responsibility by fathers. Contextualizing childbirth in this way makes clearer not only why many women are favorable toward medical intervention but also the decisions women make (...) during hospital births. The women we interviewed displayed widely ranging reactions to giving birth in the hospital. Describing their experiences, these women often emphasized pain and anxiety. Both conditions appear to have been relieved as effectively by social support as by medical assistance. Furthermore, women who had generally supportive partners were less likely to receive medical intervention during the birth and less likely to suffer postpartum depression. (shrink)

This research ethics article focuses on an unexpected finding from my Master’s thesis examining bereaved participants’ experiences of taking part in sensitive qualitative research: some participants wanted their real names used in my written dissertation and any subsequent empirical publications. While conducting interviews for my thesis and explaining the consent process, early responses highlighted the problematic notion of anonymity for participants engaged in qualitative research. Several participants asserted the significance of immortalizing their deceased loved ones in the pages of my (...) thesis, retaining ownership over their words and maintaining a public attachment to their personal identity. The preliminary responses also resonate with concerns regarding the ethics of assigning pseudonyms and anonymity to participants in qualitative research. Themes in the extant literature tend to centre on issues of researchers’ accountability and transparency towards participants or respect. The present article contributes to the debates surrounding anonymity and confidentiality within qualitative research, and also expands on specific issues pertaining to bereavement research ethics. (shrink)

Based on in-depth interviews, this article examines a sample of 48 Canadian women’s feelings about their changed postpartum bodies, their sense of self, and the factors that affect both. Our findings suggest that understanding women’s postpartum feelings requires contextualizing them in the work of infant care and women’s life circumstances, as well as ideologies about mothering and feminine appearance. Motherhood afforded the women in this study a new appreciation of their bodies, and a positive embodied sense of themselves, but only (...) if they felt their bodies performed maternal functions well. Concerns about appearance persisted and became especially salient when women faced the return to paid work. Moreover, varied life circumstances influenced women’s overall feelings about their changed bodies as insecurities were displaced onto women’s body images. (shrink)

Background:The perceptions of core professional nursing values of men in baccalaureate nursing programs are poorly understood.Objective:The study purpose was to understand and interpret the meaning of core professional nursing values to male baccalaureate nursing students.Research design and context:One-to-one interviews were conducted with male nursing students from a public university in the Midwest, following interpretive phenomenology.Ethical considerations:Measures to protect participants included obtaining Institutional Review Board approval, obtaining signed informed consent, and maintaining confidentiality.Findings:The study revealed five themes and several subthemes under an (...) overarching finding of caring. Acquisition of professional nursing values began prior to the nursing program and continued to varying degrees throughout the program.Discussion:Several implications are offered for nursing education, nursing practice, research, and public policy. These include identification of common values, teaching-learning strategies, inclusive environments, teamwork, and conflict resolution.Conclusion:Caring was revealed using a metaphor of a puzzle. (shrink)

In his Lives, Giorgio Vasari mentions many artists who were talented at music when they were young, prominently Giorgione and Sebastiano del Piombo. Benvenuto Cellini resisted his father's pressure to choose music. Why? How rewarding was a musical profession in Renaissance Italy? It could be very lucrative, both for town musicians such as Cellini's father and for castratos. Moonlighting for banquets, dances, even spying, could bring in additional income. For gentlemen, music was a necessary social grace; they had private tutors, (...) such as Silvestro Ganassi dal Fontego, who was himself a painter as well as a printer. Amateurs could learn from cathedral choirmasters, who were often music theorists, the pinnacle of the profession. The theorist Pietro Aaron, choirmaster at Imola Cathedral, then tutor to the sons of Sebastian Michiel, Grand Prior of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in Venice, had a wide acquaintance among humanists, noblemen and other musicians, and his letters open a window on the life of a musician. Among his many professions, the writer Antonfrancesco Doni counted music; a madrigal he wrote in 1560 is included in an appendix. The ability to improvise verses and music was much prized, ranging from star performers such as Serafino Aquilano to amateurs such as Niccolò Machiavelli. Portraits of musicians are discussed; they offer important evidence but are difficult to interpret. The theorist Lodovico Zacconi concluded in 1592 that being a musician was not only an honourable and lucrative profession but an enjoyable one. (shrink)

The success or failure of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim turns largely on the testimony of trial counsel. It is therefore common for the government to communicate ex parte with trial co...

Postmodernism and poststructuralism challenge fundamental positions in social theory. This book sets out some of the components of a postmodern social theory of health and healing, deriving from theorists including Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Foucault, Cixous and Kristeva. Nicholas J. Fox observes that the knowledge of the medical profession about the body, illness and health supplies the basis for medical dominance. The body of the patient is inscribed by discourses of professional `care,' an interaction which subjectifies the patient. Fox explores (...) the character of this power - and how it may be, and is, resisted. The book illustrates with detailed examples how the organization of health care and the caring relationship itself are sites for this contestation of power. Elements of feminist theory, and Derridean concepts of diffrance and intertextuality, supply the framework for the politics and ethics of the postmodern position on health. Deleuze and Guattari's radical challenge to psychoanalysis and familial repetitions within the healer/patient contact allows a re-reading of central ideas in medical sociology. While focusing upon the possibilities of postmodern social theory, the book demands a reappraisal of issues of structure, identity and knowledge in modernist medical sociology. Modernist sociology, Fox suggests, has been complicit in the creation of `the patient,' and of 'health' and 'illness.' Written with an emphasis on accessibility, this book explores the practical consequences of postmodern theory as well as familiarizing the reader with the concepts of postmodernism. (shrink)

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was one of the first Modern philosophers, and as such, one of the most significant. His contributions were often pathbreaking and his imprint still remains on fields such as logic, mathematics, science, international law, and ethics. While publishing relatively little during his life, he was in regular correspondence with important philosophers and even political leaders.

Resumen Los estudiantes universitarios pueden contribuir a la calidad de la democracia de su país en la medida en que aprendan a distinguir cómo la corrupción se instala en su práctica cotidiana, la combatan y se comprometan a estar atentos a la honestidad de sus acciones y la veracidad de su discurso. Describimos las implicaciones de comprender a la democracia como gobierno por discusión y pasamos a proponer a la razón pública como el sine qua non de una democracia que (...) busca hacer justicia social y que requiere ciudadanos dispuestos a debatir ideas con honestidad y rigor crítico, con debates públicos y pasión por la verdad. Estas ideas las contrastamos con los hallazgos de una encuesta sobre corrupción aplicada anualmente a estudiantes universitarios.University students maj contribute to the quality of democracy in their country to the extent that they learn to distinguish how corruption is part of their day-to-day practices, they combat it and commit themselves to be attentive regarding the honesty of their actions and the veracity of their discourse. We describe the implications of understanding democracy as government by discussion; we then propose public reason as the sine qua non of a democracy that seeks social justice and requires citizens willing to debate ideas honestly, rigorously, and critically, in public debates and with a passion for the truth. We contrast these ideas with the findings from a yearly survey of university students. (shrink)

The A to Z of Leibniz's Philosophy sheds light not only on his philosophical thought but also the impact it had on the thinking of his contemporaries. They, and he, are described in numerous cross-referenced dictionary entries. Also included are other entries that present his writings, explain his concepts, and trace his action in specific fields. The introduction sums much of this up and—along with the bibliography—provides a strong foundation for further study.

Fox writes about the nomadic project for people with bodies wherever they live, in what turned out not quite to be the planned sequel to his Postmodernism, Sociology, and Health (1993), but a treatment of the very practical issue of embodiment. Aspiring to transcend the conceptualization of embodiment by modern medicine, the caring professions, and other institutions, he suggests that it is possible to have a non-essentialist yet becoming body, not a being-body, not to be trammelled by notions of health (...) and illness. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Social scientists using one or another concept of process have paid little attention to underlying issues of methodology and explanation. Commonly, the concept used is a loose one. When it is not, there often are other problems, such as errors of reification and of assuming that events sometimes connected in a sequence are invariably thus connected. While it may be useful to retain the term " process" for some sequences of intelligibly connected actions and events, causal explanation must be sought (...) with respect to the events constituting processes rather than with respect to processes regarded as unitary entities. (shrink)

This essay appraises the history of the International Academy of Practical Theology, arguing that competing aims have pulled it in different directions. The essay arose initially out of a roundtable on IAPT at an international congress in São Leopoldo, Brazil, in preparation for the next biennial conference there in 2019. Why is there a need for the IAPT? What are some of its developments? Why is it important for South America and Brazil? In response, the essay suggests that the IAPT (...) has struggled to sustain at least two prominent commitments - a desire to enhance practical theology's scholarly visibility and acumen and a real need to become a genuinely international organisation in terms of representation and inclusion. A secondary argument woven through the essay is that collegial friendships across complicated differences of location and perspective have the capacity to moderate and even heal conflicts. (shrink)

Whether or not youth work should professionalise and to what degree governments should regulate youth work services have been a widely debated topic within the Australian youth sector in recent tim...

In this book Fox and Miller define public administration theory and public management doctrine as an orthodoxy that is intellectually bankrupt and democratically unacceptable. Constitutionalism and communitarianism get similar treatment. Next, the authors construct a new theoretical position defined as constructivism and based on critical theory, phenomenology and structuration theory.

This collection of papers is the fourth in a series of volumes on the work of the Comparative Austronesian Project. Each paper describes a specific Austronesian locality and offers an ethnographic account of the way in which social knowledge is vested, maintained and transformed in a particular landscape. The intention of the volume is to consider common patterns in the representation of place among Austronesian-speaking populations.

Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, bequeathed war against Persia to his son Constantius, a legacy which haunted the next two decades, culminating in Julian′s debacle in 363. Much has been written on the timing, motives, and strategy of these campaigns but the same role model appears at their beginning and end: Alexander the Great. Here, I wish to re-examine the evidence for his presence: recent scholarship has minimized it at one end and maximized at the other.

There seems to be a general consensus that the most important Continental philosopher of the twentieth century was Martin Heidegger. Even Étienne Gilson spoke of him as one of only two real philosophers of his lifetime. Despite the general acknowledgment of his philosophical brilliance, Heidegger remains a highly controversial figure in the history of thought largely on account of his infamous involvement with Nazism. In recent years Richard Wolin has gone to great lengths to document and examine Heidegger’s troubling politics (...) and legacy. Wolin claims that Heidegger’s Children is his final offering on Heidegger and his flawed politics; it follows upon his books The Politics of Being and The Heidegger Controversy. (shrink)

Linda Williams has written a solid and comprehensive introduction to Nietzsche’s concept of will to power. She covers all of the fundamental questions and issues that interpreters of Nietzsche must face along with reviewing the strongest interpretative positions and suggesting her own approach.

Film theory has long been dominated by the conflict between formalists and realists. According to Singer, “formalists call attention to the technical means by which a filmmaker goes beyond the real world in order to express his or her artistic vision” while realists “emphasize that film records properties of the physical world that lend themselves to the photographic process”. Singer attempts to ply a middle path, which emphasizes films’ ability to transform reality through both realist and formalist means. The book (...) is divided into three parts with each part consisting of one chapter advancing his theory and another applying his theory to a film. (shrink)

Lukacher claims that the theory of eternal recurrence is the secret alternative approach to time and man’s relation to it in western thought. Eternal recurrence has been buried in philosophy by the dominance of Christian thought and theology and its concomitant linear approach to history. Lukacher seeks to resuscitate the pagan theory by tracing its path of development from the pre-Socratics Heraclitus and Anaximander through Nietzsche and into contemporary thought with Derrida.

In an excellent work on the American legal system, John C. Anderson holds modern legal theory as largely to blame for the gross injustices that he claims commonly occur. Anderson begins by listing a number of examples of legal injustices and then spends the rest of the book explaining why misguided legal theory is to blame. His critique begins with the most representative and influential of twentieth-century legal theorists, Ronald Dworkin, then moves back to Kant, whom he holds to be (...) the intellectual forefather of the errors of modern legal theory. The fourth chapter attempts to rehabilitate Aristotle’s theory of natural justice and the book ends with a series of proposals for correcting the legal system. (shrink)