The Politics and Postmodern Reinterpretations of Clinical Praxis:Espousing Local Understanding of Distress

In this paper, inspired by a postmodern reconceptualization of truth and the deconstruction of objectivity, I critique the notion of westerninspired psychotherapy as neutral, universal, apolitical, and normative for all cultures and groups. This value-free idea of clinical praxis,I argue, would advantageously give way to understandings that re-vision the therapeutic encounter as a deeply political context – subject to the vulnerabilities of normal social interactions. Consequently, in view of increasingly credible ideas about the embeddedness of human experience, the subjectivity that must attend ‘scientific’ work, and the deconstruction of hegemonies as givens, I frame the crises currently facing orthodox psychotherapeutic praxis, and challenge its assumed superiority over local espousals of mental distress. This is done in the hope that a new space for more pluralistic forms of therapy might evolve unconstraine

'Experts', 'partners' and 'fools': exploring agency in HIV treatment seeking among African migrants in London

In an attempt to promote patient agency and foster more egalitarian relationships between patients and doctors, discourse concerning health and wellbeing in the UK has increasingly centred around the notion of informed and 'expert' patients who are able to effectively input into the direction and management of their own health care and treatment. While the relationship between a patient and their doctor can play a vital role in influencing the treatment decisions and health-related outcomes of people living with long term illness, little is known about the ways in which people living with HIV actually perceive their relationship with their doctors, nor the implications this may have for the types of treatment they may seek to use and the related information that they share. Drawing on 11 focus group discussions and 20 repeat interviews undertaken in 2008-2009 with HIV-positive adult migrants from Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa living in the UK, this paper argues that patient-doctor relationships can be heavily influenced by the perceived legitimacy of different forms of medical knowledge and treatments and by culturally influenced ideas regarding health, wellbeing and agency. Despite a desire amongst some migrants to use 'traditional' medicines from southern Africa as well as other non-biomedical treatments and therapies, the research found that the perceived lack of legitimacy associated with these treatments in the UK rendered their use a largely clandestine activity. At the same time, many patients made clear distinctions concerning issues affecting their immediate health and factors influencing their more general wellbeing, which in turn, impacted upon the information that they chose to share with, or conceal from, their doctors. Such findings challenge assumptions underpinning policy promoting patient agency and have significant and, in cases, potentially adverse implications for the safety and effective administration and management of HIV treatments in African migrant populations and possibly more generally. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Critical thinking and systems thinking: towards a critical literacy for systems thinking in practice

About the book: In reflective problem solving and thoughtful decision making using critical thinking one considers evidence, the context of judgment, the relevant criteria for making the judgment well, the applicable methods or techniques for forming the judgment, and the applicable theoretical constructs for understanding the problem and the question at hand. In this book, the authors present topical research in the study of critical thinking. Topics discussed include developing critical thinking through probability models; the promotion of critical thinking skills through argument mapping; an instructional model for teacher training in critical thinking; advanced academic literacy and critical thinking and critical thinking and higher education

Repurposing literacy: the uses of Richard Hoggart for creative education

After 50 years, what are the implications of Uses of Literacy for educational modernisation, in the light of subsequent changes from 'read only' literacy to 'read-write' uses of multimedia? This chapter argues that a broad extension of popular literacy via consumer-created digital content offers not only emancipationist potential in line with Hoggart's own project, but also economic benefits via the dynamics of creative innovation. Multimedia 'popular entertainments' pose a challenge to formal education, but not in the way that Hoggart feared. Instead of producing 'tamed helots,' commercial culture may be outpacing formal schooling in promoting creative digital literacy via entrepreneurial and distributed learning. It may indeed be that those in need of a creative make-over are not teenagers but teachers

‘I don’t know what I’m doing. How about you?’: Discourse and identity in practitioners dealing with the survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

This research is based on interviews conducted with a voluntary group of health practitioners who care for the adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse in one area of Scotland. This project takes a broadly interpretive approach to the interviews, and examines the processes of sense-making apparent in the scripts of the doctors, community nurse and counsellors who comprise this voluntary Forum. Those interviewed were highly sceptical of traditional medical approaches to dealing with survivors of such abuse, and they all questioned the effectiveness of expert professional knowledge. The research highlights the role of patient disclosure as a key mechanism in the process of their treatment, which is akin to the confessional technology discussed in detail in the work of Michel Foucault. Combined with other medical technologies patient disclosure is revealed as a technique of normalization. In this particular case the experts themselves were engaged in unravelling this process in search of alternative approaches to caring for their patients, which were based on a relationship of equal partnership rather than of expert authority. This research thus begins to illustrate the processes of sense-making and identity formation which exist between professional health care workers and the victims of abuse for whom they care

"What is Bread?" The Anthropology of Belief

This is a postprint (accepted manuscript) version of the article published in Ethos 40(3):341-357 in September 2012. The final version of the article can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.bu.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1548-1352.2012.01261.x/abstract (login required to access content). The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author.Accepted Manuscripttru

Philanthropy Insights

The Philanthropy Insights Report is based on research aimed at furthering the overall understanding of philanthropy in South Africa.The report was written in collaboration with various philanthropic experts from different fields.The different subsections will provide you with a deeper insight into philanthropy and guidance on starting your philanthropic journey

Fictorians: historians who \u27lie\u27 about the past, and like it

Debates about history and fiction tend to pitch novelist against historian in a battle over who owns or best represents the past. This article posits that things are not quite so dichotomous: novelists write non-fiction histories, and historians even sometimes write novels. In fact, these latter seem, anecdotally, to be increasing in number in recent decades. The author approached some of these historians to find out why they have turned to writing fictionalised versions of the past to complement, or sometimes replace, their non-fiction publications. For the sake of clarity, in the article I have playfully dubbed the historians who write historical fiction as ‘fictorians’. The article considers their responses within wider discussions about history and fiction, and reflects briefly upon the meaning of this ‘fictional turn’ for the future of the history discipline

Assessment of work-based reports: an analysis of assessment frameworks

In Britain engineering professional development has traditionally been seen as a three phase process consisting of a period of engineering formation, a period of training and a period during which engineering responsibilities are demonstrated. An individual could submit evidence of these activities and become registered as a Professional Engineer. Increasing numbers of people employed in the role of engineer do not have formal engineering qualifications and a part or all their engineering formation is carried out within engineering companies or organizations. These people therefore do not have the academically authenticated credentials to register as professional engineers but if they are ignored then the pool of registered engineers will cease to be representative of the profession. The Engineering Council, the body responsible for registering engineers in the UK, has acknowledged the changes in the structure of the profession and has introduced an alternative route for assessing the knowledge and understanding that underpins the competence of a professional engineer. Individual engineers can demonstrate that they have an adequate engineering formation through any combination of academic qualifications and a technical report on some aspect of their professional engineering work. The introduction of the technical report requires the Professional Engineering Bodies to carry out an assessment outside the traditional assessment framework of the Universities. This paper reviews and analyses the requirements of assessment systems and derives the components of such a system that will ensure that the results of the assessment of a work-based technical report will be respected and be seen as assuring comparable standards to the academic routes to engineering formation. By examining assessment separately from the processes of teaching and learning, the paper also reveals the extent of an assessment process and its costs

Problematising home education: challenging ‘parental rights’ and 'socialisation'

In the UK, Home Education, or home-schooling, is an issue that has attracted very little public, governmental or academic attention. Yet the number of children home educated is steadily increasing and has been referred to as a 'quiet revolution'. This article neither celebrates nor denigrates home educators, its aim, rather, is to identify and critically examine the two dominant discourses that define the way in which the issue is currently understood. First, the legal discourse of parental rights, which forms the basis of the legal framework, and secondly a psychoanalytical/common-sense 'socialisation' discourse within which school attendance is perceived as necessary for healthy child development. Drawing on historical, doctrinal human rights and psychoanalytical sources and post-structural and feminist perspectives, this article suggests that both discourses function as alternative methods of governance and that the conflicting ‘rights claims’ of parents and children obscure public interests and fundamental questions about the purpose of education