Interviewing 'Ana': Thematic analysis of voice dialogues with the internal anorexic voice

Overview Many individuals experiencing eating disorders (EDs) describe an internal ‘eating disorder voice’ (EDV) or ‘self’. Preliminary studies link the EDV with development, maintenance and ambivalence to recover from EDs. This thesis aims to develop an in-depth understanding of the EDV, its role in EDs and implications for recovery. Part 1 is a meta-ethnography of experiences of EDVs, involving 19 qualitative studies. The results indicate that experiences of the EDV can have a pervasive impact over the course of EDs. There were common experiences, such as escalating EDV power and malignancy through ED development, and idiosyncratic aspects, for example the EDV’s relations to the self and ED. In recovery, the EDV was framed as both a source of ambivalence and an opportunity for change. Part 2 is an empirical paper, presenting a thematic analysis of voice dialogues with the anorexic voice (AV). This was a joint project. Nine women with anorexia nervosa (AN) participated. ‘Chairwork’ was used to interview participants’ AVs. The analysis describes an interdependent relationship, whereby the person ‘needs’ the AV as it promises to solve their problems, a valued but fraught relationship develops, and the AV ‘needs’ to preserve its influence over the person for its own survival. Where relevant, exploring individuals’ EDV experiences could highlight obstacles to recovery and tailor treatments, but further research is needed to establish effective ways of working with EDVs. Part 3 provides a critical appraisal, focused on experiences of the ethical review process and the dynamic interplay between research and researcher

The Future of the Internet III

Presents survey results on technology experts' predictions on the Internet's social, political, and economic impact as of 2020, including its effects on integrity and tolerance, intellectual property law, and the division between personal and work lives

MANAGING COMMUNITY: A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF PRAXIS

If communities are to become a viable means of implementing social policy then community practitioners must individually examine their personal praxis. Therefore, in discovering a community's aims and objectives, a management model is needed that offers every practitioner a reflexive means of understanding peoples' beliefs, values, and attitudes. This proposition is critically examined through a philosophical framework that explores individuals' diverse perspectives on community, derived from their adherence to contending ontological and epistemological propositions about the social world, and its related ethical and motivational dimensions. Following a philosophical analysis, the taxonomy of social reality perspectives, developed by Dixon (2003) and Dixon and Dogan (2002; 2003a, b, c, d; 2004). is systematically used to explore the contending views on social reality. Thus, methodological configurations are associated with logical categories, (1) naturalist agency, underpinning the self-interested (free-riding) homo economicus\ (2) naturalist structuralism, underpinning the obligation driven homo hierarchus; (3) hermeneutic structuralism, underpinning the conversation-saturated homo sociologicus (Archer, 2000: 4); and (4) hermeneutic agency, underpinning homo existentialis. The disciplines of social psychology, ethics, and political science are employed to explore selected facets of human nature, moral principles, and political ideology chosen, by associates of each set of methodological configurations, in particular relational situations. Informed by this investigation a sample of community practitioners were questioned about their praxis. This reveals that a substantial majority understand and accept an objective and knowable social worid where people are self-interested. Therefore, these practitioners perceive community as a setting where they can influence the decisions of others through discourse and judge its ethical merits by the degree of loyalty and obligation extended to their projects. Thus, it is apparent that community practitioners should evaluate their praxis, through critical self-reflection, if they are to develop suitably robust and durable symbiotic relationships with adherents to each of the four social reality perceptions. This research leads to a new logic, based on the innovative interpretation of ontotogical and epistemotogical configurations offered in the seminal work of Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) and Archer (1989, 1995, 2000 and 2003). Here, an emerging social ontology informs the construction of more specific theories conceming the dynamics of community in identifiable localities. Therefore, it now becomes possible to construct a management model, incorporating contending social realities, the techniques of mediation and the results of changing cognition and cognitive dissonance, that facilitates community practitioner's critical self-reflection and construction of managerial strategies based on community member's contending perceptions of social reality

A study exploring people’s experiences of hearing voices over time: what are the different phases of managing voices and how might these phases affect engagement with services?

Hearing voices (also known as auditory verbal hallucinations) can be a distressing experience. Negative beliefs about voices are associated with negative emotional and behavioural consequences. It is important to understand peoples’ experiences with voices and the different stages of managing them. However, there is no conclusive empirically supported theoretical model illustrating the phases that individuals may encounter when coping with their experiences over time. Typically, research has focused upon retrospective accounts of voice hearing. The aim of this dissertation was to develop an empirically supported model of the stages of voice hearing. This was achieved by examining service users’ experiences with voices over time, identifying different phases of managing voices, and exploring how these phases affected therapeutic intervention. Chapter one is an introduction to the research in this area. Chapter two outlines the methodological processes and issues within this programme of research. Chapter three provides a systematic literature review of longitudinal studies examining distressing voices in clinical populations. Chapter four examines time one interviews and discusses the barriers and enablers to the disclosure of voices. Chapter five reports the findings from interviews with clinicians and explores the barriers and enablers to starting and continuing a conversation about voices with service users. Chapter six presents a model developed from an integration and evaluation of existing models in relation to data generated from interviews conducted longitudinally. Chapter seven summarises findings, discusses the theoretical and clinical implications, outlines the limitations of the programme of research and proposes future directions to continue the research

From Virtue to Sympathy: Perspectives in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Literature on the Disintegration of the Social Bond

In general, developments in English literature of the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century tend to place increasing attention on individual experience and greater variety in characters\u27 aims, motives, and desires. Along with this tendency, the literature reflects alterations in the conceptual understanding of benevolence and sympathy that coincide with other significant changes in perspective, particularly a shift in the general understanding of the construction of the world and society. That is, works of the earlier period reflect perspectives and values of a society motivated by similar goals and desires, while those later works tend to portray characters at odds, in limited or more extreme fashion, with the social structures or larger social, political, and economic forces. The literature also reflects a changing awareness of the relationship between the self and history. Characters or the authors\u27 personas first know themselves within a grand design of history with a universal ordering principle; later, they perceive themselves outside of history and submerging themselves in reenvisioned history or in self-history. The effect of the shifts in these larger perspectives is to undermine the essential understanding of sympathy as a shared, bonding, and redemptive experience that underlies all possibility for community. An examination of the varying notions of sympathy in works by Alexander Pope, Jane Austen, Ann Yearsley, Joanna Baillie, Ann Bannerman, Dorothy Wordsworth, and William Wordsworth from 1730 to 1816 reveals a variety of ways in which an understanding of sympathy changes: from a fully integrated and immediate virtue-based response within a functioning social structure -- that is, sympathy as idealism -- to a more self-defining reaction within the chaotic realities of individual imaginative experience. Understanding the development of and shifts in the concept of sympathy begins, however, with a review of principal statements of four moral sense philosophers of the early to mid-eighteenth century -- Shaftesbury, Frances Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Subtle differences in the way they describe human response to the circumstances of another reflect an increasing awareness of distinctive rather than shared experience

‘Ni kubahatisha tu!’-‘It’s just a game of chance!’ Adaptation and resignation to perceived risks in rural Tanzania

Many HIV/AIDS prevention interventions have been shown to increase awareness and knowledge but few have been shown to impact on behaviour. This ethnographic study was designed to provide a holistic account of risk perception in order to inform our understandings of how HIV risk is perceived. Through qualitative methods it is both a deductive testing of the risk theories of Douglas and Giddens and an inductive, grounded investigation to identify which risks are prioritised and the discourses which influence risk perceptions in one rural and one neighbouring peri-urban site in north-western Tanzania. Risk perception is framed by multiple, sometimes contradictory, discourses which shape individual perceptions of risk at particular moments. These are defined as a series of ‘risk moments’, each of which is context specific and contingent on dynamic social conditions. Living in a society in flux, where multiple forms of tradition co-exist with modern ideals, rural dwellers’ experiences of past misfortune are often interpreted to inform a future-oriented risk perception. The role of chance and fatalism are dominant public and private discourses, but ones which co-exist with collective and individual capabilities to control risk through reliance on social capital and social networks to create maendeleo(development), despite restricted lifestyle alternatives and vulnerable socio-economic conditions. Responses to some risks are invariable and predictable, such as routinised actions like hand washing. Responses to other risks, such as crop failure, vary according to predictable patterns. These patterns include social position and biography, defined through gender, socio-economic status, partner type and exposure to alternative lifestyle choices through migration. This is one of several ways in which risk perceptions are dominated by social factors. Others are the presumed social causes of many risks, and the social benefits or costs of risk aversion. Conflicting social risks, such as exposure to jealousy and being too trusting, are subject to cautious strategies to manage ambiguous social relations. Within this dynamic social world, characterised by contradictions between adaptation and resignation, risk priorities are constantly re-assessed and management strategies renegotiated as individuals encounter novel circumstances. The results from this research have confirmed this contingent nature of risk perception and contributed to our knowledge of people’s approaches towards health risks and understandings of prevention which may be useful in the design of appropriate behaviour change campaigns

American wasteland : a social and cultural history of excrement, 1860-1920

textHuman excrement is seldom considered to be an integral part of the human condition. Despite the relative silence regarding it, however, excrement has played a significant role in American history. Today the U.S. has more than two million miles of sewer pipes underneath it. Every year Americans flush more than a trillion gallons of water and fertilizer down the toilet, and farmers spend billions of dollars to buy artificial fertilizer. Furthermore, excrement is bound up in many complicated power relationships regarding race, gender, and ethnicity. This dissertation examines the period in American history, from the Civil War through the Progressive Era, when excrement transformed from commodity to waste. More specifically, it examines the cultural and social factors that led to its formulation as waste and the roles it played in the histories of American health, architecture, and imperialism. The first chapter assesses the vast changes to the country’s infrastructure and social fabric beginning in the late nineteenth century. On the subterranean level, much of America’s immense network of sewers was constructed during this era—making it one of the largest public works projects in U.S. history. Above ground, the United States Sanitary Commission, founded at the onset of the Civil War, commenced a widespread creation of sanitary commissions in municipalities, regions, and even internationally, that regulated defecation habits. Chapter Two assesses the social and architectural change that occurred as the toilet moved from the outhouse to inside the house—specifically, how awkwardly newly built homes accommodated this novel room and how the toilet’s move inside actually hastened its removal. The third chapter shifts focus to the way Americans considered their excrement in relation to their body in a time when efficiency a great virtue. Americans feared ailments related to “autointoxication” (constipation) and went to absurd lengths to rid their bodies of excrement. The fourth chapter analyzes the way excrement was racialized and the role it had in the various projects of American imperialism. The colonial subjects and potential American citizens—from Native Americans to Cubans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans—were regularly scrutinized, punished, and re-educated regarding their defecation habits.American Studie

The Nexus between Artificial Intelligence and Economics

This book is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the notion of the Singularity, a stage in development in which technological progress and economic growth increase at a near-infinite rate. Section 3 describes what artificial intelligence is and how it has been applied. Section 4 considers artificial happiness and the likelihood that artificial intelligence might increase human happiness. Section 5 discusses some prominent related concepts and issues. Section 6 describes the use of artificial agents in economic modeling, and section 7 considers some ways in which economic analysis can offer some hints about what the advent of artificial intelligence might bring. Chapter 8 presents some thoughts about the current state of AI and its future prospects.

Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics

Environmental philosophers allege that philosophical views supporting the animal liberation movement are theoretically and practically inconsistent with environmentalism. While it is true that some animal ethicists argue that we ought to intervene extensively in nature such as the prevention of predation, these views take controversial positions in value theory and normative theory: (i) hedonism as a value theory, and (ii) a view of normativity which places the good before the right, e.g. maximizing utilitarianism, or a rights theory that includes strong positive rights, i.e. animals are entitled to a certain level of welfare or protection from harm. Importantly, environmental philosophers’ critiques mistakenly assume that sentience-based ethics must take these forms. I argue that there are least two angles for progress and reconciliation: (i) countenance values other than pleasure and the absence of pain, such as the value of “free” beings, come what may, or (ii) embrace a view of normativity where, unlike utilitarianism, the right is prior to the good, constraining the scope of obligation from the outset. Together or individually, these angles give shape to a workspace of animal ethical theories amenable to environmentalism. In short, I argue that a sentience-centered notion of moral considerability is correct, that several plausible views about the good and its relation to the right compatible with sentiocentrism can reconcile animal ethics with environmental ethics, and that a sentiocentric ethic constitutes an adequate environmental ethic. If this argumentative arc is on track, it provides a broad justification for the core goals of environmentalism and promises greater consilience between considered judgments about the value of wild animals and the rest of the environment

Ethics, Religion, and Spiritual Health

What does human enhancement technology (HET) and artificial intelligence (AI) have to do with religion? This book explores, specifically, the intersection of HET and AI with spiritual health, Christianity, and ethics. The exploration strengthens an emergent, robust body of publications about human enhancement ethics. What does it mean to make us “better” must also address the potential spiritual implications. Concern for spiritual health promises to make the study of religion and human enhancement ethics increasingly pressing in the public sphere. Some of the most significant possible and probable spiritual impacts of HET and AI are probed. Topics include warfare, robots, chatbots, moral bioenhancement, spiritual psychotherapy, superintelligence, ecology, fasting, and psychedelics. Two sections comprise this book: one addresses spirituality in relation to HETs and AI, and one addresses Christianity in relation to HETs and AI