Social Suffering Research Articles

Gender difference in experiences with and adjustments to infertility: the case of infertility patients at family guidance association of Ethiopia

While the experiences of infertile women to infertility have been well studied in African countries, the gendered differences in experiences with infertility and how men and women respond to infertility in societies with strong social expectations of becoming a parent is understudied. This article discusses how women’s and men’s experiences with infertility is molded by the prevailing structure of gendered behaviours, roles and expectations and how they process, make sense of, and negotiate their identities in relation to ‘failing’ upon a highly expected dimension of life, namely parenthood. To address this dearth, phenomenological research design and a combination of methods, such as in-depth interviews, key informant interviews, review of secondary literature, and case histories, were used. The study was conducted at Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia model clinic in Addis Ababa. The study reveals that infertility challenges self-perceived gender identity of women and men. However, at the social level, women’s gender identity is more strongly challenged than men’s. Further, there are tremendous and gendered variations in the types of stigma and psychological distresses experienced and coping mechanisms adopted. In general, women carry the greatest burden of infertility within the existing gender structure, and social sufferings resulting from infertility have not produced new alternatives to masculine and feminine identities.Keywords: Infertility, gender, social suffering, copping strategy

Social Suffering after the Sewol Ferry Sinking : On Representation, Experience and Intervention

Social Suffering after the Sewol Ferry Sinking : On Representation, Experience and Intervention

Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions: A Quest into the Time-honoured Mindsets About Feminineness Scuffle in the Context of Colonization and African Patriarchy

The purpose of this paper is to cast light on the ideology expressed within the lines of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous conditions. The author in her trial to reflect upon the Zimbabwean community tends implicitly to invite the reader to consider the social status and by virtue the social sufferings accorded to the African woman in a society that decides to minimize the womanist presence to a mere asset exploited by men. Some of Dangarembga’s concerns in the novel touch upon gender, the African social dogmata, the roles stipulated to women by their macho counterparts and the taken for granted responsibilities of men, and their identities and personal ambitions apart from their stated roles. The paper launches a claim on gender and its upshot on marginalizing women and strengthening the knot of racism. Then, it tackles gender roles and the respective sociocultural dictations of rights and duties of African men and women. Under the same heading, gender identities and the internal and external conflicts of the characters throughout the way of self-realization are attached due heed. The paper tends to confer a virtual view to the intentions of the novel in making explicit the harrowing effect of the chauvinist community on squashing the feminine identity. Considerations of the colonial influence on the original African identity are also thought through. The paper aspires in the meantime to consider interdisciplinary issues by incorporating the field and theoretical views vis-a-vis the points mulled over in the work.

Social Suffering: Changing Organisational Culture in Children and Families Social Work through Critical Reflection Groups—Insights from Bourdieu

Social Suffering: Changing Organisational Culture in Children and Families Social Work through Critical Reflection Groups—Insights from Bourdieu

Class, Social Suffering, and Health Consumerism

ABSTRACTIn recent years an extensive social gradient in cancer outcome has attracted much attention, with late diagnosis proposed as one important reason for this. Whereas earlier research has investigated health care seeking among cancer patients, these social differences may be better understood by looking at health care seeking practices among people who are not diagnosed with cancer. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among two different social classes in Denmark, our aim in this article is to explore the relevance of class to health care seeking practices and illness concerns. In the higher middle class, we predominantly encountered health care seeking resembling notions of health consumerism, practices sanctioned and encouraged by the health care system. However, among people in the lower working class, health care seeking was often shaped by the inseparability of physical, political, and social dimensions of discomfort, making these practices difficult for the health care system to accommodate.

The Suffering in Activity of Daily Living of Home Stayed Chronic Stroke Patients: Parse`s Theory of Human Becoming

This study deals with the experiencing of sufferings in daily living activities to provide qualitative information about the phenomenon that is intended to contribute to the improvement of the physical and social environment in the community. Home-based chronic stroke patients experienced suffering in their daily living activities due to physical dysfunctions and also from the limitation of outdoor activities resulting to the deteriorating social relations and sexual sufferings, and self-doubt thus causing regrets and apologies to the families in the process. But, despite this suffering finds the psychological stability through change and compensation methods, were out to overcome.

American Network for Intervention in Situations of Social Suffering (RAISSS): A Case Study of a Civil Society Organization Network

The civil society organizations networks in the Latin American region are increasingly participating in the public policy advocacy. There are many studies that address them, but they do it through more in qualitative methodological approaches but there are few analyzed from a social network analysis approach. We present a case study that analyzes the American Network for Intervention in Situations of Social Suffering (Red Americana de Intervencion en Situaciones de Sufrimiento Social, RAISSS), a transnational network of civil society networks from 15 Latin American countries that work with the same meta-model, called ECO2, to promote social inclusion and public policy advocacy.

Abortion Policy and Social Suffering: the objectification of Romanian women's bodies under communism (1966–1989)

The aim of this article is to address why and how the solution to the demographic decline envisaged by the Romanian communist state did not alleviate its repercussions on society, but rather generated untoward social, moral and gender effects that exacerbated the existing social pathology. This study centres on the social suffering experienced by Romanian women, revealing the close connection between their predicament and the state's flawed approach to the problem and focusing on their lived experiences of oppression, pain, shame and illness. Their suffering is framed as a response to forms of loss: the loss of health, the loss of dignity, and the loss of self.

Critical Cosmopolitanism, Antagonism, and Social Suffering

This response will contemplate how the fluid mechanics managing the dialectic between nationalism and cosmopolitanism were imbricated with the affective registers of racialized forms of conceptualizing and categorizing the discipline. I want to suggest that the manner in which claims of belonging to and eviction from national dwelling places can be historically coordinated with this nation's emergent racial imaginaries. I will argue that this history has forged important critical capacities that we should cultivate more actively to meet current and future challenges from within and without the academy. Also, I will embark upon a brief trial of critical cosmopolitanism in terms of how it might shape and guide an assessment of a difficult challenge being mounted by Afro-Pessimism to some essential presumptions of Communication Studies in general and Rhetorical Studies in particular.

Additional Thoughts on the Individualism–Collectivism Paradigm: Familial Co-aggregation, the Treatment Gap, Structural Competency, and Social Suffering

Additional Thoughts on the Individualism–Collectivism Paradigm: Familial Co-aggregation, the Treatment Gap, Structural Competency, and Social Suffering

"The Ocean is our Farm": Marine Conservation, Food Insecurity, and Social Suffering in Southeastern Tanzania

This paper examines the social impact of a large-scale marine conservation project (Marine Park) in the coastal region of Mtwara, southeastern Tanzania, following displacement and the enforcement of restrictions on fishing and extracting marine resources. Through an analysis of interviews and focus group discussions with residents in six villages, the paper illustrates how the undesired effects of the Marine Park have become part of people’s everyday discourse regarding hardships and their experiences of the violence of everyday life. Elicited narratives provide insights into how the Marine Park, in combination with a multiplicity of factors leading to displacement, dispossession, and social dislocation, has intensified hardships, especially among female-headed households, due to their increasing poverty, marginalization, and food-related insecurity. The narratives shed light on people’s lived experiences of disempowerment, feelings of humiliation, anger, despair, low self-esteem, and extreme resentment—in essence, their social suffering. The paper makes a case for addressing the human dimensions of marine biodiversity and conservation interventions as a key step in making them genuinely collaborative and sustainable in terms of social equity and ecological effectiveness.

38th S.H. Foulkes Annual Lecture: Intimacy and Social Suffering in a Globalized World

How is intimacy possible in a globalized world—and how does the loss of intimacy effect societies as well as individuals? This is the central question of the following article.It is argued that sociology alone cannot find any convincing answers, because we need to understand the unconscious dynamics of global developments that undermine the human capacity to bond and to experience intimacy. Group analysis offers quite a unique position ‘on the edge’, that allows us to observe and to connect, to analyse and to understand not only patients, but also people and situations outside of the clinical world. In this sense it is social group analysis that turns out to be a valid research method and an approach that is capable of deciphering the ‘social unconscious’. An extensive case study out of a research project about transnational children in Ecuador (South America) and the story of Daqui are offered to show what is unconsciously at stake in a modern and globalized world, how much intimacy has degenerated already and how this can be understood in terms of group analysis.

Social Suffering and Political Confession: Suku in Modern China, by Sun Feiyu. Singapore: World Scientific, 2013. xx + 197 pp. US$88.00 (hardcover), US$66.00 (eBook).

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsSocial Suffering and Political Confession: Suku in Modern China, by Sun Feiyu. Singapore: World Scientific, 2013. xx + 197 pp. US$88.00 (hardcover), US$66.00 (eBook).Anne E. McLarenAnne E. McLarenThe University of Melbourne Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 72July 2014 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/677075 Views: 22Total views on this site Copyright 2014 by The Australian National University. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Brain Drain: Economic and Social Sufferings for Bangladesh

This paper presents the alarming issue of brain drain with the causes that are responsible for the migration of academics, doctors and engineers from Bangladesh to developed countries. Bangladesh being one of the least developed countries needs its talents to stay to contribute to the development. But majority of these highly skilled immigrants do not come back after completing their study or training and start living in the foreign countries. Lack of opportunity, higher standard and insecurity are some reasons behind their immigrations. After exploring the causes, the paper also examines the suffering of Bangladesh in want of native talent. Some real life cases have been obtained through interview which are analyzed and presented through charts. The suffering goes bigger in the health sector, education and science and technology. The loss of Bangladesh and ways to reduce this is the key concern of this research.

Brain Drain: Economic and Social Sufferings for Bangladesh

This paper presents the alarming issue of brain drain with the causes that are responsible for the migration of academics, doctors and engineers from Bangladesh to developed countries. Bangladesh being one of the least developed countries needs its talents to stay to contribute to the development. But majority of these highly skilled immigrants do not come back after completing their study or training and start living in the foreign countries. Lack of opportunity, higher standard and insecurity are some reasons behind their immigrations. After exploring the causes, the paper also examines the suffering of Bangladesh in want of native talent. Some real life cases have been obtained through interview which are analyzed and presented through charts. The suffering goes bigger in the health sector, education and science and technology. The loss of Bangladesh and ways to reduce this is the key concern of this research.

Brain Drain: Economic and Social Sufferings for Bangladesh

Brain Drain: Economic and Social Sufferings for Bangladesh

Fallen Uterus: Social Suffering, Bodily Vigor, and Social Support among Women in Rural Mexico

This article focuses on rural indigenous Mexican women's experiences with uterine prolapse, particularly the illness's expression of social suffering. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted during 2004-2005 and 2007 in a Nahua village in the state of Veracruz, the article analyzes the multifactorial nature of women's social suffering. Results show that the roots of uterine displacement for the women lie in lack of social relations and in perceptions of bodily vigor. Additionally, inequality present in the women's interactions with mainstream Mexico brings into focus the larger structural factors that shape their reproductive health. The implications of research on the effect of social support on women's embodiment of social suffering can extend beyond one illness, linking it to broader issues shaping the health of marginalized populations.

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States

Foreword, by Philippe Bourgois Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Worth Risking Your Life? 2. We Are Field Workers: Embodied Anthropology of Migration 3. Segregation on the Farm: Ethnic Hierarchies at Work 4. How the Poor Suffer: Embodying the Violence Continuum 5. Doctors Don't Know Anything: The Clinical Gaze in Migrant Health 6. Because They're Lower to the Ground: Naturalizing Social Suffering 7. Conclusion: Change, Pragmatic Solidarity, and Beyond Appendix: On Methods and Contextual Knowledge Notes References Index

Good Practices of Interdisciplinary International Cooperation between Universities and Local Development on Social Suffering in Urban Spaces

This article describes areas in application of good practices which emerged from international and interdisciplinary research on social suffering in urban spaces and on change agentry with inter-cultural sensitivity, which is on the basis of a new concept of co-operation for local development. Three examples of possible good practices are illustrated: 1) Pilot action-research project by UNAN of Managua on community health and quality of life in Managua’s Barrio Carlos Fonseca, an urban place of social suffering; 2) the relationship between University of Sancti Spiritus and the local Cuban community; 3) the action-research on the rights of citizen that the University of Milano-Bicocca, together with the Foundation Casa della Carità (local NGO), is conducting in some districts in Milan. It is important to emphasize how universities progressively raise number of tasks making them increasingly important as agents for local development. Therefore universities should be measured not only on the basis of quality of knowledge and human capital, but also on the level of embedded social capital within a certain region. Universities should increasingly become the nexus in which people can come together, ask questions, make demands and offer experiences. These social and professional practices pass through the university arena and return to their origins enriched by exchanges of new perspectives. Ideas coming from places of action and from dynamic collectivities outside, stimulate the inside through continuous co-mingling.

The Role of Relevancy and Social Suffering in “Generativity” Among Older Post-Soviet Women Immigrants: Table 1.

This paper examines generativity, social suffering, and culture change in a sample of 16 women aged 65 years or older who emigrated from the former Soviet Union. Key concerns with generativity are identity, which can be strongly rooted in one's original cultural formation, and a stable life course, which is what ideally enables generative impulses to be cultivated in later life. To better understand how early social suffering may affect later life generativity, we conducted two 90-min interviews with each of our participants on their past experiences and current views of generativity. The trauma of World War II, poor quality of life in the Soviet Union, scarcity of shelter and supplies, and fear of arrest emerged as common components in social suffering, which affected their identity. Overall, the theme of broken links to the future--the sense that their current lives were irrelevant to future generations--was strong among informants in their interviews, pointing to the importance of life course stability in relation to certain forms of generativity.