Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness

Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness PDF Author: Robert Pool
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000325067
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The etiology of the Wimbum people in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon is described through an examination of the way in which the meanings of key concepts, used to interpret and explain illness and other forms of misfortune, are continually being produced and reproduced in the praxis of everyday communication. During the course of numerous dialogues, witchcraft, a highly ambivalent force, gradually emerges as the prime mover. As destructive cannibals or respectable elders the witches are the ultimate cause of all significant illness, misfortune and death, and as diviners they are also the ultimate judges who apportion moral responsibility. Even the ancestors and the traditional gods turn out to be fronts behind which the witches hide their activities.The study is on three levels: a medical anthropological exploration of explanations of illness and misfortune; a detailed ethnography of traditional African cosmology and witchcraft; and an examination of recent theoretical issues in anthropology such as the nature of ethnographic fieldwork and the possibility of dialogical or postmodern ethnography.

Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness

Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness PDF Author: Robert Pool
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000325067
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
The etiology of the Wimbum people in the Western Grassfields of Cameroon is described through an examination of the way in which the meanings of key concepts, used to interpret and explain illness and other forms of misfortune, are continually being produced and reproduced in the praxis of everyday communication. During the course of numerous dialogues, witchcraft, a highly ambivalent force, gradually emerges as the prime mover. As destructive cannibals or respectable elders the witches are the ultimate cause of all significant illness, misfortune and death, and as diviners they are also the ultimate judges who apportion moral responsibility. Even the ancestors and the traditional gods turn out to be fronts behind which the witches hide their activities.The study is on three levels: a medical anthropological exploration of explanations of illness and misfortune; a detailed ethnography of traditional African cosmology and witchcraft; and an examination of recent theoretical issues in anthropology such as the nature of ethnographic fieldwork and the possibility of dialogical or postmodern ethnography.

Illness in Context

Illness in Context PDF Author: Knut Stene-Johansen
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042029439
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
At the Interface/Probing the Boundaries seeks to encourage and promote cutting edge interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary projects and inquiry. By bringing people together from differing context, disciplines, professions, and vocations, the aim is to engage in conversations that are innovative, imaginative, and creative interactive. --

Communicating Health and Illness

Communicating Health and Illness PDF Author: Richard Gwyn
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761964759
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
In this book Richard Gwyn demonstrates the centrality of discourse analysis to an understanding of health and communication. Focusing on language and communication issues he demonstrates that it is possible to observe and analyze patterns in the ways in which health and illness are represented and articulated by both health professionals and lay people. Communicating Health and Illness: · Explores culturally validated notions of health and sickness and the medicalization of illness · Surveys media representations of health and illness · Considers the metaphoric nature of talk about illness · Contributes to the ongoing debate in relation to narrative based medicine

Phenomenology of Illness

Phenomenology of Illness PDF Author: Havi Carel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199669651
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The experience of illness is a universal and substantial part of human existence. Like death, illness raises important philosophical issues. But unlike death, illness, and in particular the experience of being ill, has received little philosophical attention. This may be because illness is often understood as a physiological process that falls within the domain of medical science, and is thus outside the purview of philosophy. In Phenomenology of Illness Havi Carel argues that the experience of illness has been wrongly neglected by philosophers and proposes to fill the lacuna. Phenomenology of Illness provides a distinctively philosophical account of illness. Using phenomenology, the philosophical method for first-person investigation, Carel explores how illness modifies the ill person's body, values, and world. The aim of Phenomenology of Illness is twofold: to contribute to the understanding of illness through the use of philosophy and to demonstrate the importance of illness for philosophy. Contra the philosophical tendency to resist thinking about illness, Carel proposes that illness is a philosophical tool. Through its pathologising effect, illness distances the ill person from taken for granted routines and habits and reveals aspects of human existence that normally go unnoticed. Phenomenology of Illness develops a phenomenological framework for illness and a systematic understanding of illness as a philosophical tool.

The Meaning of Illness

The Meaning of Illness PDF Author: Mark and Herzlich Auge
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134346387
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book is based on collective research carried out during the 1980s. This edition appears ten years after the original publication in French. Since then we have experienced many changes. In the late decade, disciplines have changed, as have the societies being researched. The outbreak of AIDS in Africa and the industrial world is not the least of these major and influential changes. The reader today will be sensitive to these changes and this research maintains its value as an intellectual endeavour and a useful model.

Life Interpretation and the Sense of Illness within the Human Condition

Life Interpretation and the Sense of Illness within the Human Condition PDF Author: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401007802
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In medicine the understanding and interpretation of the complex reality of illness currently refers either to an organismic approach that focuses on the physical or to a 'holistic' approach that takes into account the patient's human sociocultural involvement. Yet as the papers of this collection show, the suffering human person refers ultimately to his/her existential sphere. Hence, praxis is supplemented by still other perspectives for valuation and interpretation: ethical, spiritual, and religious. Can medicine ignore these considerations or push them to the side as being subjective and arbitrary? Phenomenology/philosophy-of-life recognizes all of the above approaches to be essential facets of the Human Condition (Tymieniecka). This approach holds that all the facets of the Human Condition have equal objectivity and legitimacy. It completes the accepted medical outlook and points the way toward a new `medical humanism'.

The Meaning of Illness

The Meaning of Illness PDF Author: S. Kay Toombs
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401126305
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
This work provides a phenomenological account of the experience of illness and the manner in which meaning is constituted by the patient and the physician. The author provides a detailed account of the way in which illness and body are apprehended differently by doctor and patient. This title has been awarded the first Edwin Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology.

The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness

The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness PDF Author: Richard McQuellon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199750785
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Every day, thousands of people receive a diagnosis of serious, life-threatening illness, and their families and friends suddenly become caregivers. Despite the best of intentions it is not always easy to communicate well under these circumstances, or find deep empathy for something one has never before experienced. When is it best to speak, and when to be silent? How can someone provide real comfort, and how can relationships with loved ones facing serious illness be enhanced in this most difficult time? This book is about how to be an encouraging caregiver and friend under the most difficult circumstances, when the possibility of death is all too real The authors believe that open dialogue must not be avoided until the last minute when opportunities will be limited, but that caregivers and loved ones can embrace this time, mortal time, honestly as a way to sensitively and compassionately engage with those for whom a central fact of life is realized--that all of our lives are time-limited. In The Art of Conversation Through Serious Illness, the authors consider how to best listen to and speak with one facing life-threatening illness, with lessons on being a primary conversation partner, becoming properly empathic and receiving empathy, maintaining everyday conversation, using platitudes appropriately, understanding healthy denial, and talking about dying. Offering bedside guidance usually only available to professionals and peppered with insightful anecdotes from the authors' own experiences, this gentle, succinct book is appropriate for anyone going through this uniquely difficult yet universal life experience.

Explaining Illness

Explaining Illness PDF Author: Bryan B. Whaley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135673705
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This volume studies the explanation of illness in various cultural and social contexts. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners in health communication and health care fields, including nursing, public health, and medicine.

The Illness Narratives

The Illness Narratives PDF Author: Arthur Kleinman
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 154167460X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness. Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines -- figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring. Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.