This paper examines older people’s access to care experiences in rural China by integrating anthropological investigation with ethical inquiry. Six months of fieldwork in a post-reform primary hospital show how rural residents struggle to access gerontological and nursing care under socially disadvantageous conditions. This anthropological investigation highlights the unmet needs in medical and nursing care for older people, as well as some social, institutional and structural elements that impede access to care. Centring on protecting the vulnerable as informed by feminist (...) ethics scholarship, this paper argues that the failure to meet older people’s dependency needs is unjust, on the premise that it suggests a denial of the inherent value, rights and dignity of older people. This paper appeals for the provision of greater care and support by the state through putting in place social arrangements that better advance older people’s access to care. Some policy recommendations concerning health and social care reform for older people in rural China are also proposed. (shrink)

This is an exploration of women’s tradition of hospitality, the epistemic and moral contribution of their practices of welcoming the other and their historical experience as providers of care. The essay claims that female hospitality has largely consisted of care for others, which challenges a social model based on individualism and self-sufficiency. The argument is rooted in ethnography and Jewish thought and reclaims the home as an ethical space. This text analyses two disturbing and painful stories from the Tanakh that (...) are both examples of the consequences of extreme or absolute hospitality and violence against women. The famous works of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Lévinas on hospitality as ethics and hospitality as the feminine are discussed vis-à-vis anthropological and feminist approaches to the connection between the female welcoming of the other and the ethics of care. Finally, the reflections of the members of Beit Midrash Arevot shed light on a traditionist feminism that develops an ethics and practice of hospitality as welcoming otherness. (shrink)

Purpose. Considers the possibility of establishing the Hospitality Philosophy as an independent field of philosophical knowledge. Theoretical basis. Theoretical basis for this issue is the numerous philosophical researches on the topic of hospitality (anthropological, phenomenological, ethical, social-philosophical etc.) and the analysis of its essence and paradigmatic antinomy in the historicalphilosophical way. Scientific novelty. The article attempts to revitalise the notion of philotechnics (φιλοτεχνία) as 'the art of taking care of the guest's welfare' as a possible basic concept of contemporary philosophy (...) of hospitality, which is able to reflect its nature most concisely, including its utilitarian and extra-utilitarian functions – not only a high service level, but also a “humane” attitude towards the guest. Findings. It has been summarized that modern hospitality as a specific human activity needs its own philosophy, which would comprehensively analyze the concept, study the facets and forms of its manifestations, define the worldview paradigm, form a methodology and be able to lead to an understanding of the goals of hospitality, to orient modern hospitality models to achieve certain and clear quality indicators while respecting historically verified value constants. (shrink)

How to hospitably welcome refugees and migrants presents urgent questions for social and political thought. Current debates can be attributed to three discursive fields. Liberal versions hold that there are good reasons for political and legal limits of hospitality, critical perspectives advocate a renewed cosmopolitanism and, finally, deconstructive perspectives focus on the demand of unconditional hospitality as an absolute ethical requirement. These concepts trouble the conventional congruence of citizenship and bounded territory that make up modern nation states, on the one (...) hand. On the other hand, they affirm the rights of political communities to decide on the contents and the extent of the universal duty to host those endangered. Taking the Mediterranean and the local arena (Lampedusa) as the example, the article, which is based on extensive, multi-sited anthropological field research, engages with the tensions and limits inherent in current notions of hospitality. (shrink)

Hospitality is a multifaceted concept that has been received by, and worked into, various academic realms and disciplines, such as philosophy, politics, anthropology, aesthetics, ethics, and translation studies. The essays collected in this volume, by a wide range of international contributors, examine how, in the wake of the work of Levinas and the late Derrida, this concept has entered into and transformed the thinking of these disciplines.

Is it possible to really give a gift? This may, at first glance, seem like a peripheral question for philosophy, which normally directs its attention to seemingly bigger questions. The dynamics of the gift move into philosophy from anthropology and sociology, but Jacques Derrida insists that this question belongs at the heart of philosophy. This volume takes up Derrida's challenge to invest in the question of a gift, and the relationship between gift and economy. The powerful and corruptive forces (...) of economy can wreak havoc on every effort to give or receive a pure gift. Each of the essays investigates some aspect of the gift, and the way economics relate to the sheer hospitality and generosity implied in the idea of giving. Is there a blessed economy? Must economics always operate in a sinister and exploitive fashion? What can be learned by the philosophical investigations related to this concept? There is something about the event or idea of the gift that cannot be entirely explained by the machinations of economy. In the giving of a gift something happens, if only unpredictably and rarely, that cannot be explained by the calculus that tracks the exchange of money, property, goods, debt and power. This excess that confounds the reduction of the gift to the dynamics of power and exchange is a source of creative fascination for a wide range of philosophers, including the collection of scholars who have contributed to this book. (shrink)

Since its founding in the nineteenth century, social anthropology has been seen as the study of exotic peoples in faraway places. But today more and more anthropologists are dedicating themselves not just to observing but to understanding and helping solve social problems wherever they occur--in international aid organizations, British TV studios, American hospitals, or racist enclaves in Eastern Europe, for example. In Exotic No More , an initiative of the Royal Anthropological Institute, some of today's most respected anthropologists demonstrate, (...) in clear, unpretentious prose, the tremendous contributions that anthropology can make to contemporary society. They cover issues ranging from fundamentalism to forced migration, child labor to crack dealing, human rights to hunger, ethnicity to environmentalism, intellectual property rights to international capitalisms. But Exotic No More is more than a litany of gloom and doom the essays also explore topics usually associated with leisure or "high" culture, including the media, visual arts, tourism, and music. Each author uses specific examples from their fieldwork to illustrate their discussions, and 62 photographs enliven the text. Throughout the book, the contributors highlight anthropology's commitment to taking people seriously on their own terms, paying close attention to what they are saying and doing, and trying to understand how they see the world and why. Sometimes this bottom-up perspective makes the strange familiar, but it can also make the familiar strange, exposing the cultural basis of seemingly "natural" behaviors and challenging us to rethink some of our most cherished ideas--about gender, "free" markets, "race," and "refugees," among many others. Contributors: William O. Beeman Philippe Bourgois John Chernoff E. Valentine Daniel Alex de Waal Judith Ennew James Fairhead Sarah Franklin Michael Gilsenan Faye Ginsburg Alma Gottlieb Christopher Hann Faye V. Harrison Richard Jenkins Melissa Leach Margaret Lock Jeremy MacClancy Jonathan Mazower Ellen Messer A. David Napier Nancy Scheper-Hughes Jane Schneider Parker Shipton Christopher B. Steiner. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo de este artículo es plantear la relación entre la antropología trinitaria y el lenguaje simbólico, a fin de responder al desafío de crear una cultura de la hospitalidad. Para lograr este propósito se realiza un ejercicio interdisciplinario de puesta en diálogo entre la poesía y ensayos de Octavio Paz y las tesis de ontología trinitaria de Klaus Hemmerle, a partir de lo cual se deducen las características de una mística del nosotros.The aim of this article is to (...) point out the relationship between the trinitary anthropology and the symbolic language, so as to give an answer to the challenge of creating a culture of hospitality. In order to achieve this, an interdisciplinary exercise of dialogue between Octavio Paz 's poems and essays and Klaus Hemmerle 's thesis of the trinitary onthology is carried out, from which we infer the characteristics of the mystic ofus. (shrink)

In China's healthcare sector, a popular and socio-culturally distinctive phenomenon known as guanxi jiuyi, whereby patients draw on their guanxi with physicians when seeking healthcare, is thriving. Integrating anthropological investigation with normative inquiry, this paper examines medical guanxi through the lens of patient–physician trust and mistrust. The first-hand empirical data acquired – on the lived experiences and perspectives of both patients and physicians – is based on six months' fieldwork carried out in a county hospital in Guangdong, southern China, which (...) included in-depth interviews with 20 patients and 20 medical professionals. Patients who emphasized the positive effects of guanxi on patient–physician trust believed that it facilitates access to experienced medical specialists, enhances clinical communication, and reduces the financial and medical risks of over diagnosis and overtreatment by physicians. At the same time, these findings reveal patients' strong sense of mistrust, not only towards individual health professionals but also to the medical profession and China's commercialized healthcare industry. While some health professionals in the study responded favourably to medical guanxi, most were opposed to it on the grounds that it undermines professional standards and equitable healthcare. We found that the practice of medical guanxi is not morally justifiable, chiefly because it reinforces the present high levels of patient–physician mistrust and erodes trust between patients and the medical profession as a whole. In China, both the medical profession and the state need to promote patient–physician trust based on medical professionalism and institutional norms, rather than on guanxi or individual relationships. (shrink)

The period of the end of the twentieth — the beginning of the twenty-first century can be called the heyday of human rights movements that advocate the inclusion of new agencies in the political, ethical, social and other fields. Among them arose the animal rights movement, which later developed into a philosophical turn called animal turn, which is now one of the most popular in the Western philosophical and anthropological discourse. Being mostly a media and popular science project, animal turn (...) has been little studied and criticized from an academic point of view. In this article, it is proposed to explore the history of the turn, its development and, most importantly, how the ideas about man, animal and their relationships changed within the framework of animal turn. The new anthropology, which also includes the turn under discussion, inextricably links the concept of man with the concept of boundary, stating it as a necessary element for the constitution of the human self. As a part of a general philosophical trend to expand the discourse of the Other, animal turn suggests to consider the animal as a universal example of Otherness, which can not only coexist with a human, but also be an integral part of his self-perception. The article proposes to consider how the transition from the recognition of animals as "also feeling" was gradually made to the idea of maximum inclusiveness, openness and hospitality. It is also proposed to critically comprehend the new concept of man as a being who strives for maximum positive harmony with himself and the material world. As examples, the texts of the most famous representatives of animal turn are analyzed: P. Singer, T. Regan, J. Derrida, B. Massumi, P. Godfrey-Smith and V. Despre. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the impossible possibility of an ethical dwelling with technology. In arguing for an ethical comportment in our dealing with technology, I am not only arguing for the consideration of the ethical implications of technology (which we already do) but also, and more importantly, for an ethics of technological artefacts qua technology. Thus, I attempt to argue for a decentering (or rather overcoming) of anthropocentric ethics, urging us to move beyond any centre, whatever it may (...) be—anthropological, biological, etc. I argue that if we take ethics seriously we must admit that our measure cannot be that of man. To develop the argument, I use an episode in Star Trek where the fate of the highly sophisticated android Commander Data is to be decided. I show how the moral reasoning about Data remains anthropocentric but hints to other possibilities. I proceed to use the work of Derrida and Levinas (with some help from Heidegger) to suggest a possible way to think (and do) an ethos beyond traditional ethics—an ethics of hospitality in which we dwell in a community of those that have nothing in common. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Beyond Apathy: A Theology for Bystanders by Elisabeth T. Vasko, and: The Limits of Hospitality by Jessica WrobleskiKathryn Lilla CoxBeyond Apathy: A Theology for Bystanders Elisabeth T. Vasko Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015. 269pp. $29.00The Limits of Hospitality Jessica Wrobleski Collegevile, MN: Liturgical Press: A Michael Glazier Book, 2012. 168pp. $19.95At first glance it might seem as if these two books do not belong together since moving beyond apathy (...) requires engaged action, and accepting the limits of hospitality focuses attention on how we step back from particular actions. However, both Vasko and Wrobleski challenge their readers to reconsider how interaction with other people, coupled with honest reflection, stretches the contours of our comfort zones, ultimately leading to conversion, a richer embrace of each other’s humanity, and discipleship practices. Together the works require the reader to grapple with how our apathy not only is culpable as a sin of omission but also functions as another form of inhospitality. In recognizing our various sins, including apathy, how do we practice hospitality for the self while seeking forgiveness and reconciliation?Methodologically, both Vasko and Wrobleski use experience—theirs and others’—in a nuanced, engaging manner. They use narratives to illustrate theory or to prompt critical self-reflection in the context of faith. Their self-revelation is neither overdone nor naïve. Rather, both demonstrate how faith seeks understanding whereby the tradition can help make sense of lived experience, and how experiences at times require theological reconstruction of doctrine in order for the tradition to speak words of hope, salvation, and love in new contexts. Both Vasko and Wrobleski advocate, albeit with different styles, that discipleship requires an honest assessment of contemporary reality while looking toward the future, attending to evidence of an eschatological inbreaking of the kingdom. Together their works bridge the all-too-often divided arenas of theoretical study and religious practice by exploring theological claims and perspectives not their own, as well as prayer and other practices that help correct biases and ideologies.More specifically, Vasko wants to analyze why humans “repeatedly bypass opportunities for resisting violence” (9). Her decision to focus on the “category of bystander” helps her “disrupt the victim-perpetrator and oppressor-oppressed binaries and the hierarchical dualism often accompanying it” (14). This disruption of binary frameworks for considering violence and sin, both between two [End Page 215] individuals or two communities, provides a new consideration of how individuals and communities participate in structural sin, and a compelling assessment of why we are culpable for sins of omission. Vasko advances conversations about white privilege and complicity in structures of sin by considering the question of inaction when confronted with injustice. Why are we bystanders, and how can we move beyond bystander status toward solidarity in the pursuit of justice, especially as it relates to our participation in violence around bullying, racism, sexism, and LGBTQ discrimination? Her theological analysis of the bystander weaves together and demonstrates the interconnectedness of Christology, atonement theory, sin/grace, theological anthropology, and scripture. She demonstrates the importance of drawing on the social sciences for insight into structures and communal norms of behavior as well as strategies for fostering change. While grappling with a tough topic, Vasko ultimately provides a roadmap for acknowledging apathy and beginning the process of moving beyond it, even as some will disagree with the end goal of moving beyond apathy.Wrobleski, too, explores privilege, although in a more understated manner through the category of hospitality. She investigates the limits, along with “the virtues and conditions necessary to sustain the practice of hospitality over time and in diverse circumstance” (ix). It is in the exploration of providing hospitality where the question of privilege arises: Who can offer hospitality? Do we have the means to offer it? What is the risk of hospitality? What form does hospitality take and how does one extend welcome that honors and recognizes the inherent dignity of all people despite different life circumstances? These questions are considered in a richly complex and nuanced way in chapter 4, “The Limits of Security.”Wrobleski explores the communal dimensions of hospitality through narratives of various communities—her own, Catholic Worker houses, and... (shrink)

This book suggests a bold comparative approach to broad cultural differences between Africa and Melanesia. Its theme is personhood, understood in terms of what anthropologists call embodiment. These concepts are applied to questions ranging from the meanings of spirit possession, to the logics of witchcraft and kinship relations, the use of rituals in healing, and even the impact of capitalism. Questioning common assumptions about the huge differences among these discrete areas, the contributions document surprising continuities.

Using theories in medical anthropology, especially the ideas inspired by Hector Avalos and George Foster, the study explains three activities associated with the early Christian healthcare system: (1) touching infectious people, (2) hospitality towards possibly infectious people and (3) the practice of itinerary evangelism as an activity that earned Christianity the dubious role of being a carrier of infectious diseases. Discussed alongside the issues associated with the advent of COVID-19, the study aims at (1) reflecting that early Christian healthcare (...) system, which was an offshoot of Jewish healthcare systems, had practices that were perceived to exacerbate infection. In addition, (2) in view of the advent of COVID-19 pandemic, although of lesser catastrophe to ancient plagues, the study proposes that such epidemics call upon the collective actions of mercy and kindness, as Jesus did towards the infected. Theoretically, Victor Turner’s concepts of liminality and communitas assist in imagining the discursive ideas concerning labelling and marginalisation of the Jesus movement, with comparative implication towards those suspected to have contracted the deadly COVID-19 virus. The study concludes with a warning against Christian practices that may further inflame infection by suggesting alternative practices for love and empathy towards others. Contribution: Using ideas concerning infectious diseases in antiquity, the study reinterprets the Jesus movement as a movement that was perceived as carriers of infectious disease. Due to fear of infectious diseases, the rituals associated with hospitality towards the outsiders, the touch and laying of hands and iternary lifestyle were seen as promoting infection. Taking this perspective, the Jesus movement whose modus operandi is mostly associated with the periphery of the villages and cities created alternative rituals for the outcast. In view of the spread of COVID19, such stance by the Jesus movement provides lessons for the church and society to reach out to people who are considered infectious and burden to main society. (shrink)

In hospital rooms across the country, doctors, nurses, patients, and their families grapple with questions of life and death. Recently, they have been joined at the bedside by a new group of professional experts, bioethicists, whose presence raises a host of urgent questions. How has bioethics evolved into a legitimate specialty? When is such expertise necessary? How do bioethicists make their decisions? And whose interests do they serve? Renowned sociologist Charles L. Bosk has been observing medical care for thirty-five years. (...) In What Would You Do? he brings his extensive experience to bear on these questions while reflecting on the ethical dilemmas that his own ethnographic research among surgeons and genetic counselors has provoked. Bosk considers whether the consent given to ethnographers by their subjects can ever be fully voluntary and informed. He questions whether promises of confidentiality and anonymity can or should be made. And he wonders if social scientists overestimate the benefits of their work while downplaying the risks. Vital for practitioners of both the newly prominent field of bioethics and the long-established craft of ethnography, What Would You Do? will also engross anyone concerned with how our society addresses difficult health care issues. (shrink)

Life history theory suggests that in risky and uncertain environments the optimal reproductive strategy is to reproduce early in order to maximize the probability of leaving any descendants at all. The fact that early menarche facilitates early reproduction provides an adaptationist rationale for our first two hypotheses: that women who experience more risky and uncertain environments early in life would have (1) earlier menarche and (2) earlier first births than women who experience less stress at an early age. Attachment theory (...) and research provide the rationale for our second two hypotheses: that the subjective early experience of risky and uncertain environments (insecurity) is (3) part of an evolved mechanism for entraining alternative reproductive strategies contingent on environmental risk and uncertainty and (4) reflected in expected lifespan. Evidence from our pilot study of 100 women attending antenatal clinics at a large metropolitan hospital is consistent with all four hypotheses: Women reporting more troubled family relations early in life had earlier menarche, earlier first birth, were more likely to identify with insecure adult attachment styles, and expected shorter lifespans. Multivariate analyses show that early stress directly affected age at menarche and first birth, affected adult attachment in interaction with expected lifespan, but had no effect on expected lifespan, where its original effect was taken over by interactions between age at menarche and adult attachment as well as age at first birth and adult attachment. We discuss our results in terms of the need to combine evolutionary and developmental perspectives and the relation between early stress in general and father absence in particular. (shrink)

This volume, which is rooted in biogeophysical studies, addresses conceptions of political action in the Anthropocene and the tension between a desire to accomplish the Promethean project of modernity and a post-Promethean approach. This work explores the idea of ​​an anthropological mutation of political consolidation from a “post-Promethean togetherness”, to creating the capacity to act together. The political thinking of the human condition developed by Hannah Arendt is important here as a resource for thinking about humanity in terms of human (...) adventure. This has three dimensions: hubris, the world and coexistence referring respectively to the logic of profit of the homo oeconomicus, the logic of responsibility of the homo collectivus and the logic of the hospitality of the homo religatus. The intellectual and political attitude outlined in this book is an extension of critical theory: the work also puts forward a critique of what poses a problem in our relationship to the world and suggests how to overcome it, the ultimate goal being social transformation. The author propose an uprising and an anthropological consolidation of politics based on the revitalization that is brought about by the sharing of a conviviality both between humans and with what is non-human. The identification of conviviality as an educational paradigm to survive the Anthropocene gives us the much needed reason for hope despite this heritage of the Anthropocene. In addition to Arendtian thinking, this critical theory for the Anthropocene draws on the political thinking of several contemporary authors including Maurice Bellet, Hartmut Rosa, Andreas Weber, Dominique Bourg, and Christian Arnsperger. This volume is of interest to researchers in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

The scandal of the human: immanent transcendency and the question of animal language -- Sovereign silence: the desire for answering speech -- The gravity of melancholia: a critique of speculative realism -- Listing toward cosmocracy: the limits of hospitality.

Health care is provided in many contexts—not just hospitals, clinics, and community health settings. Different institutional settings may significantly influence the design and delivery of health care and the ethical obligations and practices of health care practitioners working within them. This is particularly true in institutions that are established to constrain freedom, ensure security and authority, and restrict movement and choice. We describe the results of a qualitative study of the experiences of doctors and nurses working within two women’s prisons (...) in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Their accounts make clear how the provision and ethics of health care may be compromised by the physical design of the prison, the institutional policies and practices restricting movement of prisoners and practitioners, the focus on maintaining control and security, and the very purpose of the prison and prison system itself. The results of this study make clear the impact that context has on professional practice and illustrate the importance of sociology and anthropology to bioethics and to the development of a more nuanced account of professional ethics. (shrink)

Philippe DespoixThis essay focuses on the interaction between the new reproduction media and corresponding reconfiguration of research fields in anthropology using the case of the “techniques of the body” – a concept developed by Marcel Mauss. For Mauss, the initiator of this discipline in France, body skills constituted the most important anthropological entity resulting from the confrontation of technical images and his interest in walking techniques. Three scenarios are especially significant for Mauss’s formulation of “body techniques” as a genuine (...) concept: the front during the World War I, a New Yorker hospital in 1926, and an ethnographical field study conducted in Africa during the late 1920s. Both, the photographic media as well as the Abyssinian expedition of his student Marcel Griaule, whose research publication Mauss co-authored in 1933, take centre stage here. (shrink)

This volume addresses how spatialized identities, belongingness and hospitality are interrogated in British and Irish contemporary art (painting, installation, video, photography, new public art) at a time when economic and political crises tend to encourage individual or exclusive usages of space. It sketches a cartography of encounters encompassing the home, the neighbourhood, the village or city, and the nation. Artists interrogate how intimacy is both facilitated and threatened by spatial devices, how space fashions our perception of gender, social or ethnic (...) identity and activates power relations. They explore the need for a home or a homeland and the various forms exile or placelessness can take. They may also take part in the restoration of the Commons and the constitution of alternative communities. Whether the analyses focus on the private sphere (in urban, suburban or rural contexts), or on shared communal spaces, they ponder the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion at work in human encounters and shed light on how artistic apparatuses make the tensions between openness to the other and rejection or withdrawal perceptible. The approach, borrowing from art history as well as anthropology lays emphasis on context, situationality and field work; it proposes to repoliticize relational art and concludes on the dialogical positionality which lies at the core of art. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical approach to tourism as a permanent factor in the lifestyle, economy, and culture of the contemporary global community. Travel to well-known destinations and pursuit of an ever-increasing range of leisure activities are an aspiration of most humans today. Those not themselves engaged in tourist activities are quite often involved in providing the goods and services which make tourism possible. Yet the ill effects of mass tourism and overtourism on sensitive ecosystems, resources, and community life have (...) begun to outweigh economic gains, threatening to destroy destinations, cultural heritage, and livelihoods. The editors and contributors of this collection reflect on the nature and meaning of tourism, its history, elements, and forms, the roles of tourist and host, the limits of hospitality, tendencies to excess and the reasons why we engage in such forms of behaviour, and the place of tourism in human culture as a whole. By shedding light on these questions, more efficacious solutions to the urgent problems raised by the practice of tourism can be found. This work is a must-read for scholars, teachers, and students engaged in study and research on philosophy of culture, philosophical anthropology, tourist and destination management, human factors engineering, and sustainability. (shrink)

This article is based on a chapter of my forthcoming book, A World Cut in Two: The Global Traffic in Organs . My debts to those who have assisted the Organs Watch project are too numerous to be acknowledged here. The late "Micky" Friedlaender of Hadassah Hospital was an invaluable friend and feisty interlocutor on the ethics and practice of transplantation. Meira Weiss, esteemed anthropological colleague and friend, and Dr. Chen Kugel, military IDF commissioned officer and senior pathologist, each paid (...) dearly for their love of truth, of their professions, and their patriotism. Their work on this subject paved the way for the writing of this article. (shrink)

Norway’s living kidney donation-rate is among the highest in the world ( 36 per million ). According to questionnaire-results, donors enjoy better than average health, presumably due to the strict medical criteria for being allowed to donate and life long medical follow up. However, in recent years international studies have cast doubt on the predominantly positive picture of donors and recipients, particularly regarding psychological aspects of transplantation surgery and donor evalutation. Findings in this study derive from anthropological fieldwork lasting 36 (...) months at three university hospitals in the Oslo-basin. 18 end stage kidney disease patients and their potential donors were recruited opportunistically and interviewed (separately) in three or more semi-structured conversations during the evaluation process and after transplantation. 3 cases are discussed in detail. Notes were transcribed and analysed according to narrative theory. Focus was to explore the content of donors’ and recipients’ pre- and post-transplantation narratives and to examine whether these accounts warrant a need for more comprehensive psychological assessment than is current practice in Norway. Donor- and recipient-narratives are well suited as a tool to improve living kidney donation-decisions. The material indicates a need to offer psychological care to LKD-partners, before and after transplantation. (shrink)

On the basis of experiences in pastoral hospital care, the relationship between disease, sin, and guilt in the life of patients is explored. Against the disregard of this subject in medicine, and even in most of pastoral care, it is argued that patients' interest requires that their hidden or manifest questions be addressed, rather than their being exposed to efforts at “helping” through mere attempts at “debt clearance.” Only by openly confronting sin and guilt can the patient be taken seriously (...) in his role as subject of his disease. Theological and anthropological background considerations revealing the essence of sin as a disruption or even destruction of the Divine gift of life in its realization through a lived relationship to God and other humans are offered as evidence for this claim. (shrink)

As resident physicians practicing Internal Medicine in hospitals within the USA, we are confronted on a daily basis with patients who wish to leave the hospital floor to smoke a cigarette. While many physicians argue that hospitals should do everything in their power to prevent patients from smoking, we argue that a more comprehensive and nuanced approach is needed. In part 1 of this perspective piece, we outline the various forms of smoking bans in hospital settings, applauding the development of (...) indoor smoking bans while questioning the move towards stricter, campus-wide smoking bans. In part 2, we turn to traditional biomedical ethics to guide our approach to the hospitalised patient who smokes. This approach, which is informed by our backgrounds in harm reduction and medical anthropology, takes into account the lived realities of patients and acknowledges the complicated sociohistorical contexts of tobacco use. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HIV, Art, and a Journey toward Healing:One Man's StoryJulia Kellman (bio)Some of the territory is wilder and reports do not tally. The guides are good for only so much. In these wild places I become part of the map, part of the story, adding my versions there. This Talmudic layering of story on story, map on map, multiplies possibilities, but also warns me of the weight of accumulation. I (...) live in one world—material, seemingly solid—and the weight of that is quite enough.1I have just reread anthropologist Ruth Behar's2 essay, "Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart." It started me thinking about several things—the outer limits of psychic pain, for example, or the relationship of the researcher and the researched, of bearing witness and giving testimony, and of the "ethnographic experience of talking, listening, transcribing, translating, and interpreting" that forms the core of enquiry about people and their lives.3 What can I say, I wonder, to touch readers in such a way that they see the indispensable truth in the individual stories that develop from such enquiries? How can my role as interpreter and witness lead to the understanding that the buffeting winds of lived experience (those of the researcher and of those who are researched) are not inconveniences but an essential quality of humanistic research? How can I use the accretion of stories that make up my research and my life (as if there were a difference), I muse, as I sit at my computer screen reading a text as "it in its turn reads me," as the writer Jeanette Winterson4 describes this experience. For over the years, I, too, not only have come to feel this pulse of the systole and diastole of telling and being told, but I have also used this alternating relationship to develop insight into the nature of the connection of researcher and researched, teacher and taught.There are two main narratives that form the core of this particular undertaking—one personal and the other the result of informal conversations, [End Page 33] formal interviews, casual interactions, social events, and interchanges during the art class for people with HIV/AIDS that I teach weekly at a local hospital. The stories both probe the mystery of disease, expression, and the search for coherence, and, in my case, the role of "the wild places on the map"5 where the researcher/writer adds her witness and testimony to the narrative to become part of the story.Individual ExperienceBefore we begin this discussion of individual experience, art, and illness, it is important to point out that there are only two general types of humanities enquiry: One enumerates, compares and contrasts, creates and tests hypotheses, reads literature, and/or examines the minutiae of materials or systems of one sort or another. The other is engaged in exploring the individual, the idiosyncratic, and the unique. Its subject is that which is particular. My research consists of the second type, qualitative to its core, and deeply sunk in the narrative, personal world of lived experience.The privacy of individual situations, our utter singularity, is one of the factors that most marks our lives as creatures. We can share our stories, describe our impressions, explain our sensations, but unless we participate in an actual experience in which our boundaries momentarily disappear, the most we can hope for is the simultaneous partaking of similar feelings with a sensitive, empathetic companion in what philosopher-sociologist Alfred Schutz6 describes as a We-relationship, an intersubjective experience that leads to sharing time, mutuality, and growing old together. Thus the ticklish nature of achieving actual interpersonal congruence makes enquiries into the specifics of actual lived experience difficult. If one is to learn anything useful from such considerations, one must focus on the individual and the story of his/her particular life journey in an intimate, extended, multifaceted manner and content one's self with the fact that all one will ever be able to report about in such an undertaking are discrete events and single people, never grand numerical accumulations or demographically significant quantities.Researcher's DisclaimerFor a reader to orient herself in... (shrink)

Materializing absence, Jenny Hockey, Carol Komaromy and Kate Woodthorpe -- Never say die: CPR in hospital space, Susie Page -- Making hospice space, Ken Worpole -- Dying spaces in dying places, Carol Komaromy -- The materialities of absence after stillbirth: historical perspectives, Jan Bleyen -- Distributed personhood and the transformation of agency: an anthropological perspective on inquests, Susan Langer -- Behind closed doors? corpses and mourners in English and American funeral premises, Sheila Harper -- Private grief in public spaces: interpreting (...) memorialisation in the contemporary cemetary, Kate Woodthorpe -- Wandering lines and cul-de-sacs: trajectories of ashes in the United Kingdom, Leonie Kellaher, Jenny Hockey and David Prendergast -- Natural burial: the de-materialising of death?, Andy Clayden, Jenny Hockey and Mark Powell -- What will the neighbours say? reactions to field and garden burial, Tony Walter and Clare Gittings -- Memorialising the suicide victim: "walking the walk," Caroline Simone -- Potent reminders: an examination of responses to roadside memorials in Ireland, Una McConville and Regina McQuillan -- Geographies of the spirit world, Douglas J. Davies -- Recovering presence, Jenny Hockey, Carol Komaromy and Kate Woodthorpe. (shrink)

"Ist der Patient ein Mensch?" is a collection of articles. Its central topic is the question if the object of modern medicine is still the human being or if just organs and tissues are treated by medical doctors? The drawing on the book cover shows a lung instead of a human patient lying in a hospital bed. The approaches to this topic are diverse and surprising. E.g. the surgeon Ankersmit argues that it is impossible for him to see the human (...) being in the body lying on the operation table because then he would be unable to perform his work professionally. Other texts stretch the topic of the book to the questions whether medical doctors are human beings or if the human being of today is a "patient" in the sense of a current crisis of anthropology. Also questions like patient autonomy and communication with patients are tackled. The book is edited by Helmut Hofbauer, Lukas Kaelin, Hendrik Jan Ankersmit & Walter Feigl. Authors are: Lukas Kaelin, Gabriele Baumann, Hendrik Jan Ankersmit, Renate Heinz, Claus G. Krenn, Alexander Lapin, Sigrid Pilz, Margot Ham-Rubisch, Petra Herzeg, Klaus Spiess, Lucie Strecker, Paul Ferstl, Helmut Hofbauer & Peter Kampits. (shrink)

Maxwell John Charlesworth, cofounder with Graeme E. de Graaff, of Sophia , died suddenly and peacefully at home on the second of June 2014. Born on the thirtieth of December 1925 in Numurkah, Victoria, Max took his MA in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne in 1948. At that time, the Melbourne Department of Philosophy was the preeminent school in Australasia. He married Stephanie Armstrong in 1950. Between 1950 and 1952, he was hospitalized for TB. On his recovery, he studied—1953–1955—at (...) the University of Louvain, where he took his PhD avec la plus grande distinction. He was later to become Visiting Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1972 and 2006. In 1956, he was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and returned to a position in his old University of Melbourne in 1959.A man of wide and deep interests, Max worked in the fields of Bioethics and Anthropology, as well as in Philosophy. He was a visiting Professor at the Maison d .. (shrink)

The integrity of critical ethnography requires engagement in reflexive practice at all phases of the research process. In this discussion paper, I explore the insights and challenges of reflexive practice in an ethnographic study of the recovery experiences of black trauma patients in a Philadelphia hospital. Observation and interviews were conducted with twelve patients who were admitted to trauma‐designated units of the hospital over the course of a year. During fieldwork, I learned the ways that my background as a professional (...) nurse structured my way of being in clinical space and facilitated a particular interpretation of clinical culture. In analysis, reflection on subjectivities through which I designed this ethnographic research allowed me to see beyond my preconceived and theoretically informed perspective to permit unexpected features of the field to emerge. Reflexive practice also guided my reconciliation of key practical and epistemological differences between clinical ethnographic research and the anthropologic tradition in which it is rooted. I conclude that with careful reflection to the subjectivities that influence the research process, interdisciplinary clinically relevant applied interpretations of critical ethnographic work can be used to generate detailed knowledge across contexts in clinical care, nursing practice, and patient experiences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Pound of Flesh: Lacan’s Reading of The Visible and the InvisibleCharles Shepherdson (bio)This cut in the signifying chain alone verifies the structure of the subject as discontinuity in the real.—Lacan, “Subversion of the Subject”This moment of cut is haunted by the form of a bloody scrap—the pound of flesh that life pays in order to turn it into the signifier of signifiers, which it is impossible to restore, (...) as such, to the imaginary body.—Lacan, “Direction of the Treatment”A philosophy of the flesh is the condition without which psychoanalysis remains anthropology.—Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible1. The Limit of LanguageWhen The Visible and the Invisible was published in 1964, Lacan was teaching for the first time at the École normale supérieure. In the fall of 1963, the previous semester, the French Society for Psychoanalysis had excluded Lacan from its list of approved training analysts, which also meant his rejection from the society founded by Freud himself, the International Psychoanalytic Association. 1 As a result, Lacan cancelled his seminar at Sainte-Anne [End Page 70] Hospital, where it had been running for ten years, and began teaching for the first time before a university audience (at the invitation of Fernand Braudel, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and other supporters who had arranged for him to continue his teaching). Philosophers like Jean Wahl and Jean Hyppolite had of course taken an interest in his work for many years, but this was the first time that participants in his seminar no longer needed the special credentials required to enter the psychiatric clinic at the teaching hospital. The seminar was now open to the public, was considerably larger than it had ever been, and its participants came mainly from the university. Lacan was now obliged to make a case for his work before the academic world.The seminar he had planned for that year was called Les noms-du-père (The Names-of-the-Father), but only one session took place. 2 When he moved from Sainte-Anne to the École normale, he offered a different course, which was published as Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, although it was originally entitled Les fondements de la psychanalyse (The Foundations of Psychoanalysis). 3 It is clear, therefore, that this seminar constitutes a new beginning of sorts, a return to fundamental principles. It also involves a concerted effort, on Lacan’s part, to prove himself.If we begin with these historical details, it is not because of their intrinsic importance, or because a theoretical text can be reduced to its historical milieu, but because Lacan’s remarks on The Visible and the Invisible can be grasped only if we recognize the specific concerns that occupied him during this course. 4Before we turn to that course, however, let us sketch its horizon more precisely. The ill-fated session from the Names-of-the-Father seminar, which has been published in the English (but not the French) edition of Television, contains an analysis of the “voice” which is very close to the account of the “gaze” that organizes his discussion of Merleau-Ponty [see Salecl and Zizek]. The session on the “voice” develops through a reading of the biblical account of Abraham and Isaac [see Derrida], which is in turn elaborated by reference to Caravaggio’s depiction of the sacrifice of Isaac and Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling—the entire session providing a brief summary of Lacan’s course on anxiety from the previous semester (the unpublished Seminar X: L’angoisse, 1962–63), in which Heidegger is never far away. 5 The context for his treatment of Merleau-Ponty is therefore extremely complex and overdetermined, opening in many directions, but at the same time it is extremely precise, in the sense that Lacan’s purpose in exploring these materials is not primarily philosophical, but concerns the development of a fairly narrow and technical point within psychoanalytic theory, namely, the problem of the drive. 6 [End Page 71]We thus have an initial orientation: as objects of the drive, the “voice” and the “gaze” are not properties of the subject (the... (shrink)

The essays in this special issue of HEC Forum provide reflections that make explicit the implicit anthropology that our current pandemic has brought but which in the medical ethics literature around COVID-19 has to a great extent ignored. Three of the essays are clearly “journalistic” as a literary genre: one by a hospital chaplain, one by a medical student in her pre-clinical years, and one by a fourth-year medical student who reports her experience as she completed her undergraduate clerkships (...) and applied for positions in graduate medical education. Other essays explore the pandemic from historical, sociological, and economic perspectives, particularly how triage policies have been found to be largely blind to structural healthcare disparities, while simultaneously unable to appropriately address those disparities. Central issues that need to be addressed in triage are not just whether a utilitarian response is the most just response, but what exactly is the greatest good for the greatest number? Together, the essays in this special issue of HEC Forum create a call for a more anthropological approach to understanding health and healthcare. The narrow approach of viewing health as resulting primarily from healthcare will continue to hinder advances and perpetuate disparities. Health outcomes result from a complex interaction of various social, economic, cultural, historical, and political factors. Advancing healthcare requires contextualizing the health of populations amongst these factors. The COVID-19 pandemic has made us keenly aware of how interdependent our health as a society can be. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 3.2 (1996) 139-142 Concurrent Contents: Recent and Classic References at the Interface of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology Articles Abramowitz, S., C. Abramowitz, C. Jackson et al. 1973. The politics of clinical judgment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 41: 385-391.Audi, R. N. 1972. Psychoanalytic explanation and the concept of rational action. The Monist 56: 444- 464.Barondess, J. A. 1979. Disease and illness--a crucial distinction. American (...) Journal of Medicine 66: 375-376.Barrett, R. J. 1988. Interpretations of schizophrenia. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 12: 357-388.Bechtel, W. 1993. The case for connectionism. Philosophical Studies 7: 119-154.Belzen, J. A. 1995. The impact of phenomenology on classical psychiatry: Rümke's position between Jaspers and Kraepelin. History of Psychiatry 6: 349-385.Benda, C. E. 1967. Neuroses of conscience. Journal of Existentialism 7: 425-442.Binns, P. 1995. Commentary on "Contentless consciousness." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2: 61-63.Blankenburg, W. 1980. Phenomenology and psychopathology. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 11: 50-78.Bloomfield, T. M. 1979. Psychoanalysis: A human science? Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 9: 271-287.Blumenfeld, D. 1972. Free action and unconscious motivation. The Monist 56: 426-443.Boudreaux, G. 1977. Freud on the nature of unconscious mental processes. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 7: 1-32.Bracken, P. J. 1995. Beyond liberation: Michael Foucault and the notion of a critical psychiatry. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 1-13.Brazier, M. 1995. Commentary on "Who should be committable?." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 49-50.Bursztajn, J., and A. Brodsky. 1995. Authenticity and autonomy in the managed-care era: Forensic psychiatric perspectives. Journal of Clinical Ethics 5, no. 3: 237-242.Byrnes, J. F. 1979. Suggestions on writing the history of psychological data. History and Theory 16: 297-305.Campbell, E. J., J. G. Scadding, and R. J. Roberts. 1979. The concept of disease. British Medical Journal 2: 757-762.Carveth, D. 1988. In reply to Eagle's reply on "The epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis." Philosophy of the Social Sciences 18: 377-378.Chadwick, R. F. 1995. Commentary on "Karl Jaspers and Edmund Husserl." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 1: 83-84.Christiansen, B. 1964. The scientific status of psychoanalytic clinical evidence (III). Inquiry 7: 47-79.Davis, M. 1987. Realistic utilitarianism and the social conditions of cognitive psychotherapy. Social Theory & Practice 13: 237-259.Dega, W., et al. 1978. Ethics and mental health: Discussion. Dialectics and Humanism 5: 219-235.Dingle, H. 1949. The logical status of psycho-analysis. Analysis 9: 63-66.Dupeau, J. 1977. Freud and degeneracy. Diogenes Spring: 43-64.Eagle, M. 1988. A reply to Carveth's "The epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 18: 371-375.Elevitch, B. 1974-75. Reasons, motives and psychoanalysis. Philosophical Forum (Boston) 6: 143- 162.Elliot, P. 1995. Policies, identity, and social change: Contested grounds in psychoanalytic feminism. Hypatia 10: 41-55.Fabrega Jr, H. 1980. The position of psychiatric illness in biomedical theory: A cultural analysis. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 5: 145-168.Fisk, G. 1993. Accreditation of psychotherapists. British Journal of Hospital Medicine 50: 437-438.Flynn, B. G. 1985. Reading Habermas reading Freud. Human Studies 8: 57-76.Forrow, L., R. M. Arnold, and J. Frader. 1991. Teaching clinical ethics in the residency years--preparing competent professionals. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16: 93-112.Friedman, M. 1982. Philosophical anthropology and psychotherapy. Philosophical Context 12: 9-19.Galdston, I. 1969. The ontologic foundations of morality. Existential Psychiatry 7: 69-75.Gardner, S. 1995a. Commentary on "Irrationality and the dynamic unconscious." Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 2: 175-176.Gardner, S. 1995b. Psychoanalysis, science, and commonsense. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 2, no. 2: 93-113.Handelsman, M. M. et al. 1995. Does legally mandated consent to psychotherapy ensure ethical appropriateness? The Colorado experience. Ethics and Behavior 5, no. 2: 119-129.Hanlon, M. D. 1977. Commentary on Dunham's "Psychiatry, Sociology and Civil Liberties." Values and Ethics in Health Care 2: 275-278.Heaton, J. M. 1972. Insight in... (shrink)

Na busca da cura do corpo, a oração opera milagres: uma discussão sobre eficácia simbólica, perspectivismo, cura e religião (In the search for the healing of the body, prayer works miracles: a discussion on symbolic efficacy, perspectivism) - DOI: 10.5752/P.2175-5841.2013v11n31p965 O artigo busca descrever, compreender e interpretar o caso observado de uma jovem portadora de teratoma ovariano maligno, internada em hospital do câncer na cidade de Belém, estado do Pará. A jovem foi desenganada diante do diagnóstico da doença, mas sua (...) mãe agarrou-se na “fé em Deus”, pois “Ele opera milagres”, dizendo que dela retiraram “coisa feia”, cheia de dentes, cabelos e gorduras, que não sabia inteiramente explicar, mas que “Jesus cura”. A mãe, evangélica, mantinha a Bíblia na enfermaria, orando em voz alta diante do leito da menina. Aos poucos, amenizou-se a gravidade do caso, deixando perplexo o saber biomédico, diante do reconhecimento de outras buscas de cura, como através da oração, que levou aquela jovem a sair de alta hospitalar. Esse episódio, observado atentamente pela coautora deste artigo, permite uma discussão que transcende o âmbito da biomedicina, do ponto de vista antropológico, especialmente no campo da chamada “eficácia simbólica”, em que xamanismo e psicanálise podem ser chamados para conferir sentido a esse drama, cujo desfecho mostrou-se favorável para a jovem e sua mãe, até o ponto que foi possível observar. Palavras-chave : Cura. Religião. Eficácia Simbólica.This article aims to describe, understand and interpret the observed case of a young woman with ovarian malignant teratoma, hospitalized in the cancer hospital in the city of Belém, State of Pará, Brazil. The young woman was thought as incurable on the diagnosis of the disease, but her mother clung in “faith in God”, because “He works miracles”, saying that “ugly things”, full of teeth, hair and grease, were removed from her; she also said that she could not understand it all, or full explain it, but she is convinced that “Jesus heals”. The mother, an Evangelical woman, held the Bible in the infirmary, praying out loud in front of the girl’s bed. Gradually it was alleviated the severity of the case, leaving bewildered the biomedical knowledge, on the recognition of other results, such as healing through prayer, which led that young woman to leave the hospital. This episode, closely observed by one of the authors of this article, allows a discussion that transcends the scope of biomedicine, from the anthropological point of view, especially in the field of the so-called “symbolic efficacy” (Lévi-Strauss), in which shamanism and psychoanalysis can be called to give meaning to this drama, whose outcome was favorable to the young woman and to her mother, until the point that it was possible to observe. Keywords : Healing. Religion. Symbolic efficacy. (shrink)

The causes of disease and stress affecting immigrants have been studied, in Apulia, by monitoring schedules directed to working people, in order to estimate the index of social-anthropological stress (A. De Lucia and Nuzzi 1999).The present research wants to evaluate the state of illness concerning the children of the immigrants.Thanks to the doctors working in the hospital structures in Ban, we have obtained some data relative to the years 1991–2000. However, they are completely anonymous and without any identifying element.Later-on the (...) same data have been employed, still in an anonymous form, only with a statistical purpose.The high number of people affected by genital-urinary and respiratory pathologies of infectious nature and the large number of people suffering from malnutrition, suggests conditions of great poverty and deprivations which were already present in their native countries, and have been made worse by the difficulties of the travel and the precarious accommodation in Italy.Obviously to be considered a truly civilized country we must be able to offer good living conditions to the non-productive part of the population, either autochthonal or immigrant. (shrink)