Senses and Sensibilities: The Practice of Care in Everyday Life in Northern Thailand

This is a dissertation about care. Based on over ten years of experience with Southeast Asia and sixteen months of ethnographic research for this project, I address the issue of caregiving primarily from the perspective of those providing care at home for elderly people in urban Northern Thailand and from the vantage point of national and international public health initiatives aimed at supporting such endeavors. In turn, I use the intimate experiences of caregivers to interrogate the politics of aging, long-term care, and national identity. What emerges is an understanding of caregiving different from that of liberal humanitarianism and biomedicine alike. With a focus on social relationships and embodied care practices, I show how forms of attention, obligation, giving, and receiving in urban Thai settings do not always equate with their counterparts in standard global health accounts. Instead, local values are put into action with significant ramifications for the performance and promotion of care. I examine local and global techniques of power and care embedded in the growing number of volunteer organizations directed at the elderly. With attention to class, religion, and history, I trace the interpersonal, social, and political influences reflected in caregiver subjectivity and propose a distinctly Thai logic of psychosocial support that underlies the experience of the caregivers and aid workers with whom I worked. Examining family dynamics and the stories people tell about the future, I trace a new imaginary for long-term care at play, apparent at both the individual and the institutional level. And I develop the concept of the "social body," arguing that attention to and care of the collective is crucial for making sense not only of the disorienting varieties of volunteerism marking the shifting ground of long-term and end-of-life care in Thailand, but also of the larger scale political upheavals afoot in that country today.Anthropolog

Efland, Orange County : an action-oriented community diagnosis: findings and next steps of action

Six students from the UNC School of Public Health worked with the Efland community in the spring of 2003 to conduct an Action Oriented Community Diagnosis (AOCD). The team conducted interviews with community members and service providers in the area, and then worked with a planning committee to bring people together at a community forum to discuss major topics and plan future actions for desired changes. The most frequently mentioned assets of the Efland community include: the high quality of life enjoyed by residents; its convenient geographic location; the high prevalence of religious activity; and the friendly, familial atmosphere of the area. Along with these strengths, six major issues arose during the course of this process: the disparities between Southern and Northern Orange County; water and sewer; services; transportation; youth; and growth and development. Many Efland residents expressed the desire for more youth centered recreational activities. Some community members felt the increase in teen drug use is the consequence of a limited recreation in Efland, and organized activities could reduce drug use by presenting youth with other options for their free time. Accurate information on the actual drug situation and risk factors currently operating for children in the area today could help community groups make a case for creating opportunities for the youth to parents and potential donors. New data needs to be collected on the prevalence of and the current risk factors for adolescent drug use in the Efland community, as such information may have changed since outlined in past research documents. Another major issue is the water and sewer infrastructure in Efland. A sewer system will cost either the county or its residents a great deal of money both to install and maintain. The county’s stalled action suggests it is not currently economically attractive to them to extend this needed service. But the growth of subdivisions pushing in from Chapel Hill and Research Triangle Park may increase demands for services. Future research should be directed toward finding out exactly how much taxes and service fees will increase for residents already living in the Efland area. There is a possibility that residents are not being extended necessary services now and may not be able to afford them later when these services do become available. Water and sewer infrastructure is directly tied to issues of growth and development. Without an area representative on the Board of County Commissioners, Efland community members need a detailed account of economic development plans for the Efland area to ensure the advancement of their interests. Details of the restrictions on building in the Efland area (due to soils and watershed regulations) need be outlined and compared to the areas where septic tanks are failing and where there is an expressed need for a sewer system. Groups that deal with environmental justice should be consulted in the event that a needed public health service is being withheld based on revenue potential considerations at the county level. Finally, the Efland community should continue to highlight their many assets. The strengths of this community are a foundation that can enable the completion of the desired changes voiced by the community. Community members with experience rallying their community to action emphasize the importance of positive reinforcement, and celebrating the richness of Efland’s citizenry may be a powerful mover of the community.Master of Public Healt

Sensing the presence of gods and spirits across cultures and faiths.

Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit-such events are among the most remarkable human sensory experiences. They change lives and in turn shape history. Why do some people report experiencing such events while others do not? We argue that experiences of spiritual presence are facilitated by cultural models that represent the mind as "porous," or permeable to the world, and by an immersive orientation toward inner life that allows a person to become "absorbed" in experiences. In four studies with over 2,000 participants from many religious traditions in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu, porosity and absorption played distinct roles in determining which people, in which cultural settings, were most likely to report vivid sensory experiences of what they took to be gods and spirits.Templeton Foundatio

Bridging Graduate Education in Public Health and the Liberal Arts

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is part of Five-Colleges Inc, a consortium that includes the university and four liberal arts colleges. Consortium faculty from the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the university and from the colleges are working to bridge liberal arts with public health graduate education. We outline four key themes guiding this effort and exemplary curricular tools for innovative community-based and multidisciplinary academic and research programs. The structure of the consortium has created a novel trajectory for student learning and engagement, with important ramifications for pedagogy and professional practice in public health. We show how graduate public health education and liberal arts can, and must, work in tandem to transform public health practice in the 21st century

Similarities and differences in concepts of mental life among adults and children in five cultures.

How do concepts of mental life vary across cultures? By asking simple questions about humans, animals and other entities - for example, 'Do beetles get hungry? Remember things? Feel love?' - we reconstructed concepts of mental life from the bottom up among adults (N = 711) and children (ages 6-12 years, N = 693) in the USA, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu. This revealed a cross-cultural and developmental continuity: in all sites, among both adults and children, cognitive abilities travelled separately from bodily sensations, suggesting that a mind-body distinction is common across diverse cultures and present by middle childhood. Yet there were substantial cultural and developmental differences in the status of social-emotional abilities - as part of the body, part of the mind or a third category unto themselves. Such differences may have far-reaching social consequences, whereas the similarities identify aspects of human understanding that may be universal.Templeto