Identity,selfhood and dementia: messages for social work

Dementia has been identified as a policy priority area for the European Union (EU). Given projected figures on the global increase in dementia over the next few decades, working with people with dementia is likely to become an even more prominent area of activity for social workers in older people's services. Recent research has begun to engage with the subjective experiences of people with dementia and there is considerable focus within nursing literature on their active efforts to maintain identity and selfhood. However, these issues have received little attention within the domain of social work. This paper reviews recent research on the subjective experiences of people with dementia and discusses the implications for social work in relation to: early intervention; communication and assessment, and support arrangements. Based on experience in England, it is argued that the current policy and practice context constrains social work's ability to respond to these issues and that a supportive organisational context, as well as high levels of skill, time and commitment, are required if concepts of personhood and citizenship are to have meaning in practice.     

艺术人类学视野下的人观表征——从《自我之舞:人观与加瓦尔地区般度戏史诗剧的表演》谈起

本文通过对相关民族志作品的分析,指出,人观研究可以使艺术人类学更深入地参与人类学主流理论的讨论,也有助于我们探寻不同文化中独特的自我建构与情感表达方式,从而推进艺术人类学的发展.     

Exploring personhood in dining experiences of residents with dementia in long-term care facilities

Despite the shift toward using person-centered approaches in dementia care, the relevance and applicability of the concept “personhood” remains unclear in everyday practice and activities, such as mealtime experience for residents with dementia. Based on a qualitative study, this paper presents emergent themes at mealtimes that support or undermine personhood of twenty residents with dementia in two long-term care facilities. Methods of data collection included conversational interviews with residents with dementia, participant observations, focus groups with staff and examination of available documents. Data analysis identified eight themes: (1) outpacing/relaxed pace, (2) withholding/holding, (3) stimulation, (4) disrespect/respect, (5) invalidation/validation, (6) distancing/connecting, (7) disempowerment/empowerment, and (8) ignoring/inclusion. These findings raised questions about current practice and identified areas for improvement. Although staff approaches seemed to have the greatest impact on residents' experiences, the physical environment and organizational milieu were also responsible for hindering and facilitating staff to provide the best possible care and interaction.     

A Fluid Ambiguity: Individual,Dividual and Personhood

In this paper, I examine different conceptualisations and enactments of personhood, based on data gathered from a rural community in Sri Lanka. Through an examination of a relational web that moulds personhood, the article argues against a distinctive categorisation of autonomous/individualistic personhood and collectivistic/dividual personhoods; instead, it illuminates a fluidity of the boundaries that define the contours of one’s persona, highlighting not the contrasts, but the analogies between these two categories. Furthermore, it explicates how such fluidity is complemented by a manipulative ambiguity. It is such fluidity and ambiguity that enables both collective and individual desires, anxieties and hopes to materialise in and through the relational web that sketches one’s personhood and its borders.     

Casting Timeshadows: Pleasure and Sadness of Moving among Nomadic Reindeer Herders in north-east Siberia

Abstract

Mobility is not simply imposed by the movement of animals, but gives a specific quality to human life. A long-term study of cyclical movement among Eveny reindeer herders reveals an alternating build-up and release of tension as each site is activated by human engagement with its spirits and then becomes dormant again until the following year. In each onward move, pleasure is mingled with sadness to form an indigenous aesthetic as the herder’s intention to travel is matched by the destination’s invitation to arrive. By contrast, the Soviet-imposed village creates a new immobility which thwarts this aesthetic and these emotions, perhaps stimulating depression and suicide. The analysis reveals a very particular kind of relationship between space, mobility and emotion.     

Literal Meanings: The Case of Mekeo Sorcery

In a recent article in The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (TAPJA), Bergendorff () offers a new approach to the interpretation of traditional sorcery practices among the Mekeo peoples of Papua New Guinea involving the transcendence of certain conceptual divisions of the indigenous cosmology and local understandings of personhood and the institutional order. On the basis of the ‘literal meaning’ for various words of the Mekeo language, Bergendorff argues that his interpretation resolves an earlier debate on the topic of Mekeo sorcery between Stephen () and me (Mosko ). This essay examines the ethnographic data that Bergendroff brings to bear in support of his new interpretation and juxtaposes his methodological use of literal meanings against authoritative linguistic analyses of the Mekeo language and its several dialects (Desnoës , ; Jones ). It is concluded that Bergendorff's analysis is internally inconsistent, that his use of literal meanings is unsupportable, and that the resulting view of Mekeo sorcery, personhood, society and cosmos is profoundly distorted.     

Our bodies,our choices: Australian law on foetal personhood

The debate revolving around foetal vs maternal rights has been philosophised for years. It has captured attention internationally with the European Court of Human Rights struggling for over five decades to define personhood, and is still yet to reach a definite formulation. A proposed Law Crimes Amendment Bill (Zoe's Law, 2) is currently fuelling public debate about women's reproductive choices in New South Wales, Australia. The proposed legal bill attempts to redefine a ‘person’ or ‘human being’ by placing a marker on when ‘personhood begins’ namely at 20 weeks or weighing a minimum of 400 g. Similar laws recognising personhood at foetal viability have come into force in the United States of America that clearly show the broader consequences of this kind of legislation as American women now face county-by-county, state-by-state anti-choice legislative activism. Midwives work closely with women and their families giving them the authority to formulate opinions on issues of maternal–foetal conflict. If a law such as this is allowed to pass a number of legal and ethical issues will arise for Australian midwives that could potentially have far reaching implications for them and for the women and families that they provide women centred care for.     

Mobile Persons: Cell phones,Gender and the Self in North India

In this article I analyse the varied ways mobile phones are integrated into the daily lives of low-income people and the implications for courtship practices, marriage relations and kinship ties. Rather than offer a celebratory analysis of the mobile phone's empowering effects, my ethnographic research reveals a more complex story, one that shows how the presence of the mobile both reinforces and undermines gender roles and institutions of authority. Conceptually, I argue that mobile communication provides insights into north Indian personhood as ‘nodal’, while also stimulating new practices and ideologies that render this technology central to the struggle for (and over) power and domination.