Abdulaziz Sachedina
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195378504
- eISBN:
- 9780199869688
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195378504.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
The epilogue undertakes to assess the intellectual exchange between religious communities and medical researchers in the Muslim world for the development of biomedical ethics. The problem-solving ...
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The epilogue undertakes to assess the intellectual exchange between religious communities and medical researchers in the Muslim world for the development of biomedical ethics. The problem-solving method adopted by the prestigious Islamic Juridical Council of the World Muslim League in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is founded upon searching for normative responsa based on revealed sources only. The Council, represented by Sunni and Shi‘ite jurists, has deemphasized human dimension of medical enterprise by ignoring to evaluate human moral action and its ramifications for Islamic biomedical ethics. The classical juridical heritage, as demonstrated in this study, instead of functioning as a template for further moral reflection about critical human conditions and vulnerability in the context of modern healthcare institutions, has simply been retrieved to advance or obstruct legitimate advancements in biomedicine. Normative essentialism attached to evolving interhuman relationships has reduced Islamic jurisprudence to the search in the revealed texts rather than in theological ethics to estimate human nature and its ability to take the responsibility of actions performed cognitively and volitionally under variable circumstances. Religious and moral empowerment of average human person appears to be out of question for the Islamic religious establishment across Muslim world. It is this lack of empowerment of an individual capable of discerning right from wrong that makes Islamic juridical rulings in biomedicine inconsonant with international standards of human dignity and autonomous moral agency.Less
The epilogue undertakes to assess the intellectual exchange between religious communities and medical researchers in the Muslim world for the development of biomedical ethics. The problem-solving method adopted by the prestigious Islamic Juridical Council of the World Muslim League in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is founded upon searching for normative responsa based on revealed sources only. The Council, represented by Sunni and Shi‘ite jurists, has deemphasized human dimension of medical enterprise by ignoring to evaluate human moral action and its ramifications for Islamic biomedical ethics. The classical juridical heritage, as demonstrated in this study, instead of functioning as a template for further moral reflection about critical human conditions and vulnerability in the context of modern healthcare institutions, has simply been retrieved to advance or obstruct legitimate advancements in biomedicine. Normative essentialism attached to evolving interhuman relationships has reduced Islamic jurisprudence to the search in the revealed texts rather than in theological ethics to estimate human nature and its ability to take the responsibility of actions performed cognitively and volitionally under variable circumstances. Religious and moral empowerment of average human person appears to be out of question for the Islamic religious establishment across Muslim world. It is this lack of empowerment of an individual capable of discerning right from wrong that makes Islamic juridical rulings in biomedicine inconsonant with international standards of human dignity and autonomous moral agency.
Harold G. Koenig
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0032
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The description of healing provided in this book has cast a wide net, including much more than just physical healing but also healing in relationships with others, healing in relationship with one's ...
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The description of healing provided in this book has cast a wide net, including much more than just physical healing but also healing in relationships with others, healing in relationship with one's own self, healing in one's relationship with God, and healing on the community or cultural level as well. The focus of biomedicine on the physical alone and the neglect of other parts of the person have improved physical well-being but not their emotional health and spirituality. The resurgence of interest in many forms of religious healing testifies to this failure of allopathic medicine to heal, despite its increasing capacity to cure. Understanding and respecting the unique contributions of allopathic medicine and religious healing systems, each supporting the work of the other in true integration, is what holds the greatest hope for the wholeness and healing of persons. According to physician Ralph Snyderman, dean and chancellor of Duke University Medical Center, a new field called “integrative medicine” will be the medicine of the future.Less
The description of healing provided in this book has cast a wide net, including much more than just physical healing but also healing in relationships with others, healing in relationship with one's own self, healing in one's relationship with God, and healing on the community or cultural level as well. The focus of biomedicine on the physical alone and the neglect of other parts of the person have improved physical well-being but not their emotional health and spirituality. The resurgence of interest in many forms of religious healing testifies to this failure of allopathic medicine to heal, despite its increasing capacity to cure. Understanding and respecting the unique contributions of allopathic medicine and religious healing systems, each supporting the work of the other in true integration, is what holds the greatest hope for the wholeness and healing of persons. According to physician Ralph Snyderman, dean and chancellor of Duke University Medical Center, a new field called “integrative medicine” will be the medicine of the future.
Abdulaziz Sachedina
David E. Guinn (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195178739
- eISBN:
- 9780199784943
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195178734.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral ...
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This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral judgments in bioethics? Is the sacred law, the Shari'a, which is regarded as an integral part of Islamic ethics, the only recognized source of ethical judgments in Islam? What is the role of human experience/intuitive reasoning in moral justification? This chapter explores these questions and their answers.Less
This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral judgments in bioethics? Is the sacred law, the Shari'a, which is regarded as an integral part of Islamic ethics, the only recognized source of ethical judgments in Islam? What is the role of human experience/intuitive reasoning in moral justification? This chapter explores these questions and their answers.
Devi Sridhar
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199549962
- eISBN:
- 9780191720499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549962.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics, Political Economy
This chapter examines how nutrition is defined within the Bank, specifically looking at the biomedical influence on the Bank's approach to hunger. It concludes that undernutrition is constructed as a ...
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This chapter examines how nutrition is defined within the Bank, specifically looking at the biomedical influence on the Bank's approach to hunger. It concludes that undernutrition is constructed as a matter of choice for households, and in particular, women.Less
This chapter examines how nutrition is defined within the Bank, specifically looking at the biomedical influence on the Bank's approach to hunger. It concludes that undernutrition is constructed as a matter of choice for households, and in particular, women.
Chloe Silverman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691150468
- eISBN:
- 9781400840397
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150468.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book examines the evolution of the diagnostic category of autism as people have understood it in different places and times, with a particular focus on the importance of affect in biomedical ...
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This book examines the evolution of the diagnostic category of autism as people have understood it in different places and times, with a particular focus on the importance of affect in biomedical research during the second half of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first. It considers the degree to which representation of autism depends on particular institutional and epistemological arrangements; shifts the focus from psychiatrists, epidemiologists, and geneticists to parents, counselors, diagnosticians, and lawyers, as they try to make sense of and apply systematic, authoritative knowledge in their daily lives and work; and highlights the centrality of love as a way of knowing about bodies, persons, and relationships in biomedicine. This introduction provides an overview of theories of love in biomedicine, the ethics of treating autism and how it relates to the question of moral personhood, the history of diagnosis of autism, biosociality and contested illnesses, and the book's methodology.Less
This book examines the evolution of the diagnostic category of autism as people have understood it in different places and times, with a particular focus on the importance of affect in biomedical research during the second half of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first. It considers the degree to which representation of autism depends on particular institutional and epistemological arrangements; shifts the focus from psychiatrists, epidemiologists, and geneticists to parents, counselors, diagnosticians, and lawyers, as they try to make sense of and apply systematic, authoritative knowledge in their daily lives and work; and highlights the centrality of love as a way of knowing about bodies, persons, and relationships in biomedicine. This introduction provides an overview of theories of love in biomedicine, the ethics of treating autism and how it relates to the question of moral personhood, the history of diagnosis of autism, biosociality and contested illnesses, and the book's methodology.
Chloe Silverman
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691150468
- eISBN:
- 9781400840397
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150468.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines the process of persuasion and affective involvement whereby parents and new practitioners come to take part in the practice of treating autism as well as in research on autism. ...
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This chapter examines the process of persuasion and affective involvement whereby parents and new practitioners come to take part in the practice of treating autism as well as in research on autism. It considers the production of biomedical knowledge in one parent-practitioner community and the ways that social relations based on affect alter vision, create trust, and change measures of therapeutic success. Despite the fact that biomedical treatments for autism are regarded as “alternative” practices, this community does not operate “outside” the forms of expertise and representations of biological systems accepted by conventional practitioners. What makes them distinct is a conscious shift in perspective as opposed to an appeal to a diffrent knowledge system altogether. They are an experimental community within biomedicine, and their treatment practices remain controversial, but parents of autistic children are exploring them at increasing rates.Less
This chapter examines the process of persuasion and affective involvement whereby parents and new practitioners come to take part in the practice of treating autism as well as in research on autism. It considers the production of biomedical knowledge in one parent-practitioner community and the ways that social relations based on affect alter vision, create trust, and change measures of therapeutic success. Despite the fact that biomedical treatments for autism are regarded as “alternative” practices, this community does not operate “outside” the forms of expertise and representations of biological systems accepted by conventional practitioners. What makes them distinct is a conscious shift in perspective as opposed to an appeal to a diffrent knowledge system altogether. They are an experimental community within biomedicine, and their treatment practices remain controversial, but parents of autistic children are exploring them at increasing rates.
Renée L. Beard
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781479800117
- eISBN:
- 9781479855377
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479800117.001.0001
- Subject:
- Social Work, Health and Mental Health
Alzheimer’s is ubiquitous. Stories of the heart-wrenching drudgery of care giving, escalating incidence rates, and the new path to a cure just around the corner are everywhere. Yet we rarely see or ...
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Alzheimer’s is ubiquitous. Stories of the heart-wrenching drudgery of care giving, escalating incidence rates, and the new path to a cure just around the corner are everywhere. Yet we rarely see or hear from anyone actually living with AD. The negative portrayals, apocalyptic projections, and promise of cures in the mass media and medical outlets are grossly inaccurate. But they are also an assault on the identities of those with Alzheimer’s. Drawing on an 18-month ethnography observing cognitive evaluations and post-diagnosis interviews with nearly 100 forgetful individuals, this book aims to chip away at this pervasive and persistent destructive trend by revealing what life with memory loss is really like. While diagnosed seniors are ultimately socialized into medicalized interpretations of their forgetfulness, most participants achieve a graceful balance between accepting the medical label and resisting the social stigma that accompanies it. In contrast to what we are led to believe, people with early AD actively and deliberately navigate their lives. Interviews with specialty clinicians and staff from the Alzheimer’s Association reveal that a biomedical ethos generates tensions that constrain the roles older forgetful people can play within these settings. Clinicians and Association staff perpetuate “myths” about “self-loss,” “impending cures,” and the economic and emotional “burden” even if they do not personally believe them. Living with AD ultimately requires managing stigma and presumptions of incompetence in addition to the associated symptoms. Unfortunately, we, the well-meaning public, and not their dementia become the major barrier to a happy life for those affected.Less
Alzheimer’s is ubiquitous. Stories of the heart-wrenching drudgery of care giving, escalating incidence rates, and the new path to a cure just around the corner are everywhere. Yet we rarely see or hear from anyone actually living with AD. The negative portrayals, apocalyptic projections, and promise of cures in the mass media and medical outlets are grossly inaccurate. But they are also an assault on the identities of those with Alzheimer’s. Drawing on an 18-month ethnography observing cognitive evaluations and post-diagnosis interviews with nearly 100 forgetful individuals, this book aims to chip away at this pervasive and persistent destructive trend by revealing what life with memory loss is really like. While diagnosed seniors are ultimately socialized into medicalized interpretations of their forgetfulness, most participants achieve a graceful balance between accepting the medical label and resisting the social stigma that accompanies it. In contrast to what we are led to believe, people with early AD actively and deliberately navigate their lives. Interviews with specialty clinicians and staff from the Alzheimer’s Association reveal that a biomedical ethos generates tensions that constrain the roles older forgetful people can play within these settings. Clinicians and Association staff perpetuate “myths” about “self-loss,” “impending cures,” and the economic and emotional “burden” even if they do not personally believe them. Living with AD ultimately requires managing stigma and presumptions of incompetence in addition to the associated symptoms. Unfortunately, we, the well-meaning public, and not their dementia become the major barrier to a happy life for those affected.
G. E. R. Lloyd
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199567874
- eISBN:
- 9780191721649
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199567874.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
Medicine aims to secure health and well-being, but what those consist in and how to achieve them are often disputed questions. Some societies have self-styled experts in the domain, others have none. ...
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Medicine aims to secure health and well-being, but what those consist in and how to achieve them are often disputed questions. Some societies have self-styled experts in the domain, others have none. But even in those that do, there are often rival groups offering alternative treatments and explanations. This chapter discusses shamanism and other modes of traditional healing, the various traditions of medicine in ancient Greece, China, and India, and aspects of modern biomedicine and psychiatry, to bring to light the ways in which different concepts of medicine are developed, and the roles that learned and often exclusive elites played in promulgating them.Less
Medicine aims to secure health and well-being, but what those consist in and how to achieve them are often disputed questions. Some societies have self-styled experts in the domain, others have none. But even in those that do, there are often rival groups offering alternative treatments and explanations. This chapter discusses shamanism and other modes of traditional healing, the various traditions of medicine in ancient Greece, China, and India, and aspects of modern biomedicine and psychiatry, to bring to light the ways in which different concepts of medicine are developed, and the roles that learned and often exclusive elites played in promulgating them.
Susan S. Sered
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0015
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Throughout the 20th century, Jews had been in the vanguard of Americans utilizing conventional biomedicine and biomedically trained physicians. This chapter seeks to contextualize the still evolving ...
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Throughout the 20th century, Jews had been in the vanguard of Americans utilizing conventional biomedicine and biomedically trained physicians. This chapter seeks to contextualize the still evolving Jewish healing movement both in terms of American medicine and in terms of Judaism. This exercise is particularly important because the Jewish healing movement, for the most part, does not challenge the hegemony of either mainstream medical or Jewish institutions. Practitioners insist that they are about healing rather than curing, and that they are not about miracles or superstition. In contrast to the poor interpersonal relationships said to be plaguing the male rabbinical establishment, the women involved in the Jewish healing movement stress the importance of human interactions.Less
Throughout the 20th century, Jews had been in the vanguard of Americans utilizing conventional biomedicine and biomedically trained physicians. This chapter seeks to contextualize the still evolving Jewish healing movement both in terms of American medicine and in terms of Judaism. This exercise is particularly important because the Jewish healing movement, for the most part, does not challenge the hegemony of either mainstream medical or Jewish institutions. Practitioners insist that they are about healing rather than curing, and that they are not about miracles or superstition. In contrast to the poor interpersonal relationships said to be plaguing the male rabbinical establishment, the women involved in the Jewish healing movement stress the importance of human interactions.
Phua Xiong, Charles Numrich, Wu Chu Yongyuan, Deu Yang, and Gregory A. Plotnikoff
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0028
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The Hmong are an ethnic minority with ancient roots in China. There are now more than 100,000 Hmong refugees in the United States, with the highest concentration in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As the ...
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The Hmong are an ethnic minority with ancient roots in China. There are now more than 100,000 Hmong refugees in the United States, with the highest concentration in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As the Hmong make America their home, their practice of traditional healing—Hmong shamanism (kev ua neeb)—has been particularly challenged by the multiple forces that accompany acculturation, such as the problems faced when individuals are confronted with health care, social services, and legal systems that have no understanding of Hmong traditional beliefs and cultural attitudes. At the same time, the tension between acculturation and traditional beliefs modulates the Hmong's participation in American biomedicine. Due to the dynamic interaction of souls, spirits, and people, and the impact of their interactions on health and illness, many Hmong find Western medicine less than adequate in meeting their needs. Those who do not seek Western treatment will try a variety of traditional healing practices, including shamanism, herbalism, and other home remedies and magic healing. Nevertheless, shamans and shamanism are not opposed to conventional physician care.Less
The Hmong are an ethnic minority with ancient roots in China. There are now more than 100,000 Hmong refugees in the United States, with the highest concentration in Minnesota and Wisconsin. As the Hmong make America their home, their practice of traditional healing—Hmong shamanism (kev ua neeb)—has been particularly challenged by the multiple forces that accompany acculturation, such as the problems faced when individuals are confronted with health care, social services, and legal systems that have no understanding of Hmong traditional beliefs and cultural attitudes. At the same time, the tension between acculturation and traditional beliefs modulates the Hmong's participation in American biomedicine. Due to the dynamic interaction of souls, spirits, and people, and the impact of their interactions on health and illness, many Hmong find Western medicine less than adequate in meeting their needs. Those who do not seek Western treatment will try a variety of traditional healing practices, including shamanism, herbalism, and other home remedies and magic healing. Nevertheless, shamans and shamanism are not opposed to conventional physician care.
Kaja Finkler
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0030
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
At one time it was believed that traditional healing would disappear in light of the great success of biomedicine, especially since religion and religious healing are usually juxtaposed as mutually ...
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At one time it was believed that traditional healing would disappear in light of the great success of biomedicine, especially since religion and religious healing are usually juxtaposed as mutually antagonistic to science and biomedicine. However, recent evidence refutes this assumption. In fact, more than thirty medical schools have introduced courses on the relationship between spirituality and medicine. This chapter examines the religious underpinnings of what is ostensibly a purely scientific enterprise, the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the new genetics that form part of contemporary biomedicine. It argues that ideologies of the HGP, which utilizes the most advanced technology of the times, are sustained by religious ideas based on Judaism and Christianity. Although it may appear that contemporary scientific ideas are far removed from religious beliefs, closer scrutiny reveals that Western religious notions undergird the HGP. The chapter begins with a brief overview of modern society's shift to the secularization of medicine and then turn to the new genetics, which became an integral part of biomedicine.Less
At one time it was believed that traditional healing would disappear in light of the great success of biomedicine, especially since religion and religious healing are usually juxtaposed as mutually antagonistic to science and biomedicine. However, recent evidence refutes this assumption. In fact, more than thirty medical schools have introduced courses on the relationship between spirituality and medicine. This chapter examines the religious underpinnings of what is ostensibly a purely scientific enterprise, the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the new genetics that form part of contemporary biomedicine. It argues that ideologies of the HGP, which utilizes the most advanced technology of the times, are sustained by religious ideas based on Judaism and Christianity. Although it may appear that contemporary scientific ideas are far removed from religious beliefs, closer scrutiny reveals that Western religious notions undergird the HGP. The chapter begins with a brief overview of modern society's shift to the secularization of medicine and then turn to the new genetics, which became an integral part of biomedicine.
Pamela Klassen
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195167962
- eISBN:
- 9780199850150
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195167962.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The contemporary home birth movement is rooted in a countercultural critique of biomedicine that, like many other alternative healing movements in America, draws from religious and spiritual ...
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The contemporary home birth movement is rooted in a countercultural critique of biomedicine that, like many other alternative healing movements in America, draws from religious and spiritual resources. Spanning a continuum from traditionalist Jews and Christians to feminist practitioners of Goddess spirituality, these religious and spiritual resources are quite diverse, especially in light of the fact that only a small minority of childbearing women plan to give birth at home. Although these women may have very different understandings of the religious significance of childbirth and different theologies of the body, they do share at least one commonality: they are fashioning their religious interpretations of childbirth largely outside of the context of official, religious institutions. This chapter examines the politics of spirituality, healing, and childbirth in America.Less
The contemporary home birth movement is rooted in a countercultural critique of biomedicine that, like many other alternative healing movements in America, draws from religious and spiritual resources. Spanning a continuum from traditionalist Jews and Christians to feminist practitioners of Goddess spirituality, these religious and spiritual resources are quite diverse, especially in light of the fact that only a small minority of childbearing women plan to give birth at home. Although these women may have very different understandings of the religious significance of childbirth and different theologies of the body, they do share at least one commonality: they are fashioning their religious interpretations of childbirth largely outside of the context of official, religious institutions. This chapter examines the politics of spirituality, healing, and childbirth in America.
Anita Hannig
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226457154
- eISBN:
- 9780226457321
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226457321.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. ...
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Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula—a birthing injury that leads to chronic incontinence—to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backwards culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. Beyond Surgery unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation. Through her in-depth ethnography of two fistula repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight, and where a host of religious, moral, aesthetic, economic, and political agendas converge. As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling “culture” the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical care in rural Africa. Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of present-day medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.Less
Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula—a birthing injury that leads to chronic incontinence—to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backwards culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. Beyond Surgery unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation. Through her in-depth ethnography of two fistula repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight, and where a host of religious, moral, aesthetic, economic, and political agendas converge. As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling “culture” the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical care in rural Africa. Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of present-day medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.
Renée C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195365559
- eISBN:
- 9780199851881
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365559.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Much like other fields of study, the origins of bioethics can be hard to trace, analyze, and interpret. This chapter presents the beginnings of bioethics in the United States, which includes an ...
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Much like other fields of study, the origins of bioethics can be hard to trace, analyze, and interpret. This chapter presents the beginnings of bioethics in the United States, which includes an account of an explosive moment of creation much like the Big Bang Theory as a result of advances in the field of biomedicine, of specific issues, and of significant events. Another perspective on the gradual emergence of bioethics in relation to social, cultural, medical, and political occurrences is also provided.Less
Much like other fields of study, the origins of bioethics can be hard to trace, analyze, and interpret. This chapter presents the beginnings of bioethics in the United States, which includes an account of an explosive moment of creation much like the Big Bang Theory as a result of advances in the field of biomedicine, of specific issues, and of significant events. Another perspective on the gradual emergence of bioethics in relation to social, cultural, medical, and political occurrences is also provided.
Geetha B. Nambissan and S. Srinivasa Rao
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780198082866
- eISBN:
- 9780199082254
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198082866.003.0012
- Subject:
- Sociology, Education
This chapter examines Ayurveda education in India and the reproduction of indigenous knowledge in a pluralist culture. The story of indigenous knowledge systems such as Ayurveda, especially in the ...
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This chapter examines Ayurveda education in India and the reproduction of indigenous knowledge in a pluralist culture. The story of indigenous knowledge systems such as Ayurveda, especially in the last century, has been one of power struggles resisting the authority, prestige, and the hegemonic tendencies of biomedicine, while selectively co-opting the rival’s therapeutic knowledge and practices in order to be relevant and contemporaneous. Today, Ayurvedic education both contests and collaborates with biomedicine, providing an interesting instance of simultaneous reproduction of plural knowledge systems. Contemporary Ayurvedic education raises several questions pertinent to sociology of education (SoE) in India. Having schooled in the biomedical sciences, how do students make the necessary cognitive shift into the Ayurvedic body of knowledge and its conceptual categories? How do modern Ayurveda colleges organize and realize these conceptual shifts and cultural transitions? The author analyses the role of culture in medicine and in education, and describes the educational and cultural processes of knowledge reproduction in the modern institutions of traditional medicine. This chapter also discusses the curricular and extra-curricular strategies used by Ayurveda colleges to address the marginalization of Ayurveda and the dominance of biomedicine. It also considers how Ayurvedic education contests the binaries between two knowledge systems and attempts to counter the power hierarchies ensuing from them.Less
This chapter examines Ayurveda education in India and the reproduction of indigenous knowledge in a pluralist culture. The story of indigenous knowledge systems such as Ayurveda, especially in the last century, has been one of power struggles resisting the authority, prestige, and the hegemonic tendencies of biomedicine, while selectively co-opting the rival’s therapeutic knowledge and practices in order to be relevant and contemporaneous. Today, Ayurvedic education both contests and collaborates with biomedicine, providing an interesting instance of simultaneous reproduction of plural knowledge systems. Contemporary Ayurvedic education raises several questions pertinent to sociology of education (SoE) in India. Having schooled in the biomedical sciences, how do students make the necessary cognitive shift into the Ayurvedic body of knowledge and its conceptual categories? How do modern Ayurveda colleges organize and realize these conceptual shifts and cultural transitions? The author analyses the role of culture in medicine and in education, and describes the educational and cultural processes of knowledge reproduction in the modern institutions of traditional medicine. This chapter also discusses the curricular and extra-curricular strategies used by Ayurveda colleges to address the marginalization of Ayurveda and the dominance of biomedicine. It also considers how Ayurvedic education contests the binaries between two knowledge systems and attempts to counter the power hierarchies ensuing from them.
C. U. M. Smith, Eugenio Frixione, Stanley Finger, and William Clower
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199766499
- eISBN:
- 9780199950263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199766499.003.0010
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, History of Neuroscience
This chapter discusses the changes and elaboration of the animal spirit doctrine by the foremost biomedical thinkers of the 18th century. It reviews Georg Ernst Stahl's animistic ideas, which were ...
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This chapter discusses the changes and elaboration of the animal spirit doctrine by the foremost biomedical thinkers of the 18th century. It reviews Georg Ernst Stahl's animistic ideas, which were inadequate and moved back to a more mechanistic physiology. It then introduces Herman Boerhaave, who is also called the teacher of Europe. The rest of the chapter focuses on Boerhaave's deep and detailed summary of early-18th-century work on the physiology and anatomy of the neuromuscular system. Finally, this chapter also reviews several relevant figures in 18th-century biomedicine and some electrical theories of the 19th century.Less
This chapter discusses the changes and elaboration of the animal spirit doctrine by the foremost biomedical thinkers of the 18th century. It reviews Georg Ernst Stahl's animistic ideas, which were inadequate and moved back to a more mechanistic physiology. It then introduces Herman Boerhaave, who is also called the teacher of Europe. The rest of the chapter focuses on Boerhaave's deep and detailed summary of early-18th-century work on the physiology and anatomy of the neuromuscular system. Finally, this chapter also reviews several relevant figures in 18th-century biomedicine and some electrical theories of the 19th century.
James Hallenbeck and Vyjeyanthi S Periyakoil
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199238361
- eISBN:
- 9780191730290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238361.003.0033
- Subject:
- Palliative Care, Patient Care and End-of-Life Decision Making, Palliative Medicine Research
Communication occurs in cultural contexts, which are in turn determined by a host of variables — ethnicity, religion, geographic origin, gender, sexual orientation, social role, and age, among ...
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Communication occurs in cultural contexts, which are in turn determined by a host of variables — ethnicity, religion, geographic origin, gender, sexual orientation, social role, and age, among others. Anthropologist Edward Hall noted that social interactions and associated communication can be broadly classified as being relatively high or low in their cultural context. Low-context communication is task-oriented, emphasizing straightforward, unambiguous spoken or written communication, while high-context communication embeds large amounts of meaning within the actual situation (or context), within which communication is occurring and tends to compress meanings in spoken, written, and non-verbal communication. Current medical training tends to focus almost exclusively on low-context aspects of communication. This chapter provides an introduction to high-context intercultural communication, as it applies to palliative care, and discusses educational strategies for improving related communication skills. It also examines the relevance of high-context communication to palliative care, the culture of biomedicine, ambiguity, compression of meaning, and subtexts.Less
Communication occurs in cultural contexts, which are in turn determined by a host of variables — ethnicity, religion, geographic origin, gender, sexual orientation, social role, and age, among others. Anthropologist Edward Hall noted that social interactions and associated communication can be broadly classified as being relatively high or low in their cultural context. Low-context communication is task-oriented, emphasizing straightforward, unambiguous spoken or written communication, while high-context communication embeds large amounts of meaning within the actual situation (or context), within which communication is occurring and tends to compress meanings in spoken, written, and non-verbal communication. Current medical training tends to focus almost exclusively on low-context aspects of communication. This chapter provides an introduction to high-context intercultural communication, as it applies to palliative care, and discusses educational strategies for improving related communication skills. It also examines the relevance of high-context communication to palliative care, the culture of biomedicine, ambiguity, compression of meaning, and subtexts.
Helena Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520298033
- eISBN:
- 9780520970168
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520298033.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
How are spiritual power and self-transformation cultivated in street ministries? This book provides an in-depth analysis of Pentecostal ministries in Puerto Rico that were founded and run by ...
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How are spiritual power and self-transformation cultivated in street ministries? This book provides an in-depth analysis of Pentecostal ministries in Puerto Rico that were founded and run by self-identified “ex-addicts,” ministries that are also widespread in poor Black and Latino neighborhoods in the U.S. mainland. The book melds cultural anthropology and psychiatry. Through the stories of ministry converts, the book examines key elements of Pentecostalism: mysticism, ascetic practice, and the idea of other-worldliness. It then reconstructs the ministries' strategies of spiritual victory over addiction: transformation techniques to build spiritual strength and authority through pain and discipline; cultivation of alternative masculinities based on male converts' reclamation of domestic space; and radical rupture from a post-industrial “culture of disposability.” By contrasting the ministries' logic of addiction with that of biomedicine, the book rethinks roads to recovery, discovering unexpected convergences with biomedicine while revealing the allure of street corner ministries.Less
How are spiritual power and self-transformation cultivated in street ministries? This book provides an in-depth analysis of Pentecostal ministries in Puerto Rico that were founded and run by self-identified “ex-addicts,” ministries that are also widespread in poor Black and Latino neighborhoods in the U.S. mainland. The book melds cultural anthropology and psychiatry. Through the stories of ministry converts, the book examines key elements of Pentecostalism: mysticism, ascetic practice, and the idea of other-worldliness. It then reconstructs the ministries' strategies of spiritual victory over addiction: transformation techniques to build spiritual strength and authority through pain and discipline; cultivation of alternative masculinities based on male converts' reclamation of domestic space; and radical rupture from a post-industrial “culture of disposability.” By contrasting the ministries' logic of addiction with that of biomedicine, the book rethinks roads to recovery, discovering unexpected convergences with biomedicine while revealing the allure of street corner ministries.
Joan Judge
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520284364
- eISBN:
- 9780520959934
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284364.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This book is an act of redemption. It retrieves a genre of text that has been banished to the margins of scholarly inquiry but that provides unparalleled access to the complexities of the past: the ...
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This book is an act of redemption. It retrieves a genre of text that has been banished to the margins of scholarly inquiry but that provides unparalleled access to the complexities of the past: the early Chinese commercial periodical press. Focusing on one particularly innovative example, Funü shibao (The Women’s Eastern Times), and on one of the most significant—and neglected—periods in modern Chinese history, the early Republic, it develops a methodology that both engages the full materiality of the medium and situates it within the arc of historical change. It offers a close reading of the journal’s cover art, photographs, advertisements, poetry, and discursive texts against one another, uncovering an unbounded space where text, image, and experience meet; where editors, artists, readers, and authors commune. Central to this shared space is the notion of “experience,” the meanings of which are refracted through the key tensions that underlie the journal: tensions between reform and commerce, everyday and epic agendas, male editorial strategies and female authorial tactics. Situating Funü shibao at the conjuncture of interrelated shifts in China’s knowledge, print, medical, commercial, and sexual cultures in the early twentieth century, the book further exposes productive aporias and messy hybrids that ideologically driven history has rendered invisible. It also recovers traces of the modes of reasoning, the look, and the stories of a cast of well-known, little known, and unknown historical actors, including a new demographic of Republican Ladies, all of whom were deeply engaged with the minutia and the monumentality of the twentieth century’s global transformations.Less
This book is an act of redemption. It retrieves a genre of text that has been banished to the margins of scholarly inquiry but that provides unparalleled access to the complexities of the past: the early Chinese commercial periodical press. Focusing on one particularly innovative example, Funü shibao (The Women’s Eastern Times), and on one of the most significant—and neglected—periods in modern Chinese history, the early Republic, it develops a methodology that both engages the full materiality of the medium and situates it within the arc of historical change. It offers a close reading of the journal’s cover art, photographs, advertisements, poetry, and discursive texts against one another, uncovering an unbounded space where text, image, and experience meet; where editors, artists, readers, and authors commune. Central to this shared space is the notion of “experience,” the meanings of which are refracted through the key tensions that underlie the journal: tensions between reform and commerce, everyday and epic agendas, male editorial strategies and female authorial tactics. Situating Funü shibao at the conjuncture of interrelated shifts in China’s knowledge, print, medical, commercial, and sexual cultures in the early twentieth century, the book further exposes productive aporias and messy hybrids that ideologically driven history has rendered invisible. It also recovers traces of the modes of reasoning, the look, and the stories of a cast of well-known, little known, and unknown historical actors, including a new demographic of Republican Ladies, all of whom were deeply engaged with the minutia and the monumentality of the twentieth century’s global transformations.
Jeremy A. Greene, Flurin Condrau, and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226390734
- eISBN:
- 9780226390901
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226390901.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Histories of medicine in the twentieth century are often illustrated with specific pharmaceuticals: antibiotics that defeated infectious diseases, vaccines that prevented childhood diseases, ...
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Histories of medicine in the twentieth century are often illustrated with specific pharmaceuticals: antibiotics that defeated infectious diseases, vaccines that prevented childhood diseases, antineoplastic drugs that fought cancers, cardiovascular drugs that helped stem the epidemic of heart disease, immuno-suppressants that made complex organ transplants possible, psychotropic drugs that controlled the demons of psychosis and lifted the veil of depression. These stories have become familiar catechisms of the biomedical present: they suggest sudden and dramatic forms of social change that followed in the wake of a series of magic bullets discovered over the course of the twentieth century. The collected essays of this volume seek to challenge the linearity of this historical narrative, provide thicker descriptions of the process of therapeutic transformation, and explore the complex relationships between medicines and social change. Working on three continents and touching upon the lived experiences of patients and physicians, consumers and providers, marketers and regulators, and many other actors and agents, the contributors to this volume cumulatively reveal the tensions between universal claims of therapeutic knowledge and the specificity of local sites in which they are put into practice. Collectively they ask: what is revolutionary about therapeutics?Less
Histories of medicine in the twentieth century are often illustrated with specific pharmaceuticals: antibiotics that defeated infectious diseases, vaccines that prevented childhood diseases, antineoplastic drugs that fought cancers, cardiovascular drugs that helped stem the epidemic of heart disease, immuno-suppressants that made complex organ transplants possible, psychotropic drugs that controlled the demons of psychosis and lifted the veil of depression. These stories have become familiar catechisms of the biomedical present: they suggest sudden and dramatic forms of social change that followed in the wake of a series of magic bullets discovered over the course of the twentieth century. The collected essays of this volume seek to challenge the linearity of this historical narrative, provide thicker descriptions of the process of therapeutic transformation, and explore the complex relationships between medicines and social change. Working on three continents and touching upon the lived experiences of patients and physicians, consumers and providers, marketers and regulators, and many other actors and agents, the contributors to this volume cumulatively reveal the tensions between universal claims of therapeutic knowledge and the specificity of local sites in which they are put into practice. Collectively they ask: what is revolutionary about therapeutics?
