Discourse Of Healing Research Articles

Politics, Responsibility and Risk: Editorial Introduction

Introduction1.1 The papers in this special issue of Sociological Research Online were all presented at the BritishSociological Association Annual Conference, held at the University of York in March 2004. The conferencetheme was ‘Sociological Challenges: Conflict, Anxiety and Discontent’. This is the second special issue ofSociological Research Online to emerge from that conference. The first special issue, ‘Families, Intimacyand Social Change’ ,was published in SRO last June 2006 (See Sociological Research Online, Volume 11,Issue 2, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/2/editorial.html for a fuller discussion of the conference focus,selection of papers, themes, etc.).1.2 In this editorial we look briefly at the five papers selected under the theme, ‘Politics, Risk andResponsibility’. The politics of risk is a topic which is impossible to overlook. Indeed, the concept of risk ishighly politicised (Caplan 2000) and a much used (perhaps, overused) category in sociology. While weknow the study of risk reveals an enormous amount about key elements of modernity, the quintessentialrisk culture (Beck 1992; Giddens 1991), the concept of risk assumes human responsibility – thatsomething can be done to prevent misfortune or frightening events (Lupton, 1999: 3). Contemporary work onrisk exposes the unease that awareness of deviations from the norm create.1.3 This special issue begins with the paper, ’I love you to the bones: Constructing the anorexic body in the‘Pro-Ana’ Message Boards’ by Katie Ward. This is a fascinating piece which challenges both medical andsocial models concerning appropriate body shape and size as well as approaches to the ‘treatment’ ofanorexia. Ward presents an alternative approach which is anti-medical, as well as an ethnography of thepro-anorexia community which is ‘risk adverse’. The key question she poses is, ‘How is it possible foranorexics, labelled as pathologically thin, to reject the medical model in favour of a disciplinary regimewhich guarantees stability and control as well as a ‘healthy diet’ of pills and purging, sustaining life? Oneanswer to this question is that pro-ana participants (low body weight individuals) share important informationon various websites on the Internet. This information helps to alter radically the meaning of weight losspharmaceuticals and allows them to become ‘expert patients’ who not only resist medical definitions ofhealth and illness but also employ pharmaceutical technologies in ways never intended by government,physicians and the pharmaceutical industry.1.4 The second paper ‘The body as a weapon: Bobby Sands and the Republican hunger strikes’ by ChrisYuill explores the politics of risk through the lens of prisoners’ bodies in 1970-1980s Northern Ireland. Yuilltheorises how these incarcerated in ‘H-Block’ bodies were used as modalities of resistance and how,through hunger strikes, prisoners’ bodies were mobilised as a resource and weapon to destabilise notionsof civilised embodiment. The bodily suffering the prisoners endured in the form of hunger strikes, privationand psychological misery contributed to notions of self-sacrifice and martyrdom which were embedded inthe tradition of Catholicism and Gaelic heroes. Key to this paper is how the ‘risky ‘body emerges in politicalarenas particularly when hostility and struggle are present.1.5 The need for a clear feminist approach on the experience of women who have been sexually abused inchildhood is addressed in the third paper, ‘Poliitics, responsibility and adult victims of childhood sexualabuse’ by Jo Woodiwiss. This is an empirically based paper, which includes interviews and written accountsfrom sixteen women with continuous, recovered or false memories of sexual abuse in childhood. Reviewing‘the harm story’ versus ‘the healing discourse’ in this therapeutic world, Woodiwiss contends that both arebased on similar models of childhood and development, namely that women who are sexually abused areunable to develop into healthy adults. The implication is that these women see themselves as sick,damaged and responsible for their lack of joy. Ironically, while Woodiwiss’s respondents wanted toexperience themselves as ‘normal’, the experience of normality for some was impeded by their therapeuticor counselling relationships. Furthermore, in their awareness of the supposed need to recognise ‘an innerchild’, they created a variety of ways of dealing with this awareness ranging from acceptable to non- TitleElizabeth Ettorre and Alison Anderson: Politics, Responsibility and Risk Created Date4/20/2010 7:59:39 AM

The Athenian Aesklepion and the End of the Philoctetes

Despite the setting of Sophocles’ Philoctetes on the isolated, barren island of Lemnos, far from anything resembling a polis, many different scholars have concluded that this work has something to do, however elusive it might ultimately be, with the nature of the Athenian polis late in the Peloponnesian War. My contribution to clarifying this relationship will be to reexamine the text’s discourse of healing and cure in the light of the associations between disease, social strife and the cult of Asclepius, the figure who, according to Heracles at the end of the drama, will finally cure Philoctetes, and whose temple had recently been constructed next to the Theater of Dionysus as a result of the plague during the 420s. Sophocles’ vision of social healing stresses the need to reintegrate the aristocratic mode into society, as part of a fundamentally democratic concern for the mixed or balanced polity. The engagement of Sophocles’ Philoctetes with the Athenian cults of Athena, Heracles and Asclepius and with the topography of the Acropolis provides the key to this interpretation.

Healing and Salvation in Late Modernity: the Use and Implication of Such Terms in the Ecumenical Movement

AbstractThis article explores developments over the last decades in the way ecumenical texts, primarily originating from world conferences organized by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, speak about soteriology. Under the headlines, “Salvation Today” (1973) and “Your Kingdom Come” (1980), terminology inspired by liberation theology took centre stage, and a predominantly immanent understanding of salvation was promoted. In recent years a different terminology has taken over, and it is one that focuses on “healing” and “the fullness of life”. At its best, the holistic healing approach manages to take up the important concerns from earlier times, such as economic justice, racism and environmental issues, while at the same time giving more room for existential issues and the experiences of the individualThe new healing discourse appears to reflect two different modalities of the church's healing ministry, viz. that which is concerned with the causes of suffering, and that which addresses the experience of suffering. The latter was often ignored in the recent past. The healing discourse gives room for new explorations of practices that have been central in the church throughout its history, such as anointing the sick, and praying for and with them, and hearing individual confessions.Openness towards subjective experience also has implications for the contextualization of the Christian faith. There is a new awareness that not only do the causes of suffering vary from situation to situation but so does the understanding of (what constitutes) suffering itself. Changing or varying understandings of suffering give rise to different approaches to its alleviation, and can inspire a rethinking of how we understand salvation in different contexts.The new healing discourse can also be studied in its relationship to cultural trends known as post‐modernity or late modernity. The texts under study display very ambivalent approaches to these developments. There might be a tendency for texts that have concrete experience as their starting point to take a more positive view of these cultural developments than do texts that begin with more general theological observations.

Diskoerse oor heling in ’n narratief- pastorale benadering

Discourses of healing in a narrative-pastoral approach In this article fiction is used as a metaphor. True to the metaphor of fiction, this research was done through participatory action research. Conversations on the subject of healing are researched by investigating written resources and case studies as well as listening to qualified opinions. In order for healing to be widely understood, a diversity of fictional works are offered. By looking at the documented meanings of scientific disciplines and conversations it is crystal clear that healing has become a fashionable word and has apparently always been one. There are various conversations on the topic of healing, ranging from medical, theological, and even alternative perspectives. The research was done in a post- modern society, and the characteristics of this era implemented as such. A unique outcome of this dialogue is the new and fresh understanding of healing as a word which includes the person as a whole and not as a fragmented object. The culmination describes an unique discussion of healing by embracing illness as part of human existence. Brokenness is used as a point of departure in contrast with the illusion of healing.

Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering.

Analyzing the ways U.S. culture has been formed and transformed in the 80s and 90s by its response to the Vietnam War and the AIDS epidemic, Marita Sturken argues that each has disrupted our conventional notions of community, nation, consensus, and 'American culture.' She examines the relationship of camera images to the production of cultural memory, the mixing of fantasy and reenactment in memory, the role of trauma and survivors in creating cultural comfort, and how discourses of healing can smooth over the tensions of political events. Sturken's discussion encompasses a brilliant comparison of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the AIDS Quilt; her profound reading of the Memorial as a national wailing wall - one whose emphasis on the veterans and war dead has allowed the discourse of heroes, sacrifice, and honor to resurface at the same time that it is an implicit condemnation of war - is particularly compelling. The book also includes discussions of the Kennedy assassination, the Persian Gulf War, the Challenger explosion, and the Rodney King beating. While debunking the image of the United States as a culture of amnesia, Sturken also shows how remembering itself is a form of forgetting, and how exclusion is a vital part of memory formation.

Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa. JOHN M. JANZEN. Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care, 34. JOHN M. JANZEN, gen. ed

<i>Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa.</i> JOHN M. JANZEN. Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care, 34. JOHN M. JANZEN, gen. ed

Nurses and doctors and discourses of healing1

This article challenges current sociological approaches to nursing that emphas ise the universality of nursing oppression and the notion of nurses as victims who are inevitably 'caught' between structures of class and patriarchy. It is argued that, despite recent influences from post-structuralism and post-mod ernism, these approaches remain trapped within many of the assumptions of 'modernist' feminism and so focus on oppression and subordination at the ex pense of nursing agency and resistance. The article makes use of concepts from feminist post-structuralism, particularly feminist appropriations of Michel Foucault's concept of discourse, to reintroduce the notion of agency into the analysis of nursing work. Through an ethnographic study in a hospital ward, it goes on to examine some of the 'effects of truth' within the dominant dis course of scientific medicine. While these include manifestations of medical power, they also include discourses of healing, which are constituted by nurses and doctors in their daily work. Evidence is provided to demonstrate that these healing discourses reveal both an alternative, oppositional knowledge/practice framework and a level of autonomy that has generally been unrecognised in accounts of nursing work. The article concludes by drawing out the implications of the study for the sociological analysis of nursing and, finally, for the more complex and contradictory relationship between doctors and nurses.

: Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa . John M. Janzen.

American AnthropologistVolume 96, Issue 2 p. 450-452 SOCIAL/CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY: Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa. John M. Janzen Roland A. Foulkes, Roland A. Foulkes University of FloridaSearch for more papers by this author Roland A. Foulkes, Roland A. Foulkes University of FloridaSearch for more papers by this author First published: June 1994 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1994.96.2.02a00210AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume96, Issue2June 1994Pages 450-452 RelatedInformation

Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa

Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa

Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa

Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa

Ngoma: discourses of healing in central and southern Africa

Ngoma: discourses of healing in central and southern Africa

Sickness as Cultural Performance: Drama, Trajectory, and Pilgrimage Root Metaphors and the Making Social of Disease

This paper examines the use of root metaphors in the description of social activity and especially the performance of sickness. It starts with a critical account of Susan Sontag's examination of the use of illness as metaphor in literature. There then follows a brief analysis of another account of society based on the discussion of creative literature-Kenneth Burke's "Dramatism," itself acknowledged as a source by Erving Goffman. Goffman's own expressed reservations about his supposed use of a dramatic metaphor are then extended to suggest that Goffman was more concerned with "performance" in a broader sense. The discussion of performative metaphors is then shifted by a critical consideration of Anselm Strauss and colleagues' view of sickness as manifold performances of work rather than drama, expressed in their metaphor of "trajectory." Sickness as a process compounded of many performances is further explored using ideas developed by the anthropologist Victor Turner toward the end of his life, in collaboration with his wife, Edith Turner. It is finally suggested that sickness as cultural performance enables us to understand the dialectical relationships between expressive and instrumental activities surrounding sickness. This in turn leaves room for the nonreductionist understanding, within a sociological framework, of individual idiosyncrasy, biological accident, and the discourse of healing.