“Great Annoyance to Their Mindes”: Humours, Intoxication, and Addiction in English Medical and Moral Discourses, 1550–1730

2021 ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
David Clemis
Keyword(s):  
Moral Discourses

scholarly journals Women, Bridal Girdles, and the Household in Renaissance Prague

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Anna Parker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Women's History ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Property System ◽  
Women's Power ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Gendered Roles ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Women’S History

Abstract This article addresses early modern women's power through an object study of the wedding girdle, a thickly embellished belt that was the most costly, emblematic, and intimate item in a Renaissance bride's trousseau, and which uniquely illuminates the lives of women. Building on the work that women's history has done to uncover how women navigated the patriarchal system, I propose that a focus on the household is vital to understanding the socially specific ways in which burgher women – members of the citizen class of Renaissance Prague – exerted agency in their daily lives. Burgher sensibilities, specifically the desire to display the prosperity, industry, and piety of their households, created distinct mechanisms for women to assert themselves. This article sets women's lives against the interwoven structures of the household, namely, gendered roles and expectations, the legal property system, and moral discourses surrounding marriage. By levering these structures, the same that constrained them, burgher women were able to express power.

Socially Constructing Healthy Eating: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of Healthy Eating Information and Advice

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110234
Author(s):  
Jo Mackenzie ◽  
Esther Murray
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Healthy Eating ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Nutritional Composition ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Moral Citizenship ◽  
Moral Discourses

A variety of materials offering healthy eating advice have been produced in the United Kingdom to encourage people to eat well and avoid diet-related health issues. By applying a Foucauldian discourse analysis, this research aimed to uncover the discourses used in six healthy eating texts (two state-produced and four commercial texts), how people positioned themselves in relation to these discourses, and the power relations between institutions and the U.K. public. Ten discourses including scientific, thermodynamics, natural, family/caring, emotional, medical, and moral discourses were uncovered and offered up subject positions in relation to moral citizenship and personal responsibility. Through the use of biopower, foods appeared to be categorized as “good” or “bad” foods in which bad foods were considered to be risky to health due to their nutritional composition. Most texts assumed people have the agency to follow the advice provided and failed to consider the readers’ personal contexts.

scholarly journals Speak with one voice! Towards an ecumenical ethics applicable to the church-state dialogue in South Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Koos Vorster
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Ethical Concern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Government ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
The Church

This research deals with the question of whether an ecumenical ethics can be developed in South Africa that at least will be applicable in the field of political ethics and that can assist the various ecclesiastical traditions to ‘speak with one voice’ when they address the government on matters of Christian ethical concern. The research rests on the recognition of the variety of ethical persuasions and points of view that flow from the variety of hermeneutical approaches to Scripture. However, within this plethora of ethical discourses, an ‘overlapping’ ethics based on a proposed set of minimum theological ideas can be pursued in order to reach at least an outline of an applicable ecumenical political ethics conducive to the church–state dialogue in South Africa today. The article concludes that a ‘minimum consensus’ on the role of revelation in the moral discourses is possible and is enriched by traditional ideas such as creation and natural law, the reign of God and Christology, and it can provide a suitable common ground for an ecumenical ethics applicable to the moral difficulties in the political domain in South Africa today.

scholarly journals Rituele van plesier: Dolf van Coller se Die Bieliebalies

Literator ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-163
Author(s):  
J. Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
Birth Of Tragedy ◽  
Moral Discourses

Rituals of pleasure: Dolf van Coller’s Die Bieliebalies This article is an analysis of Dolf van Coller's Die Bieliebalies (1993), read as a hedonist text. It has many points of similarity with what Bakhtin (1984) called grotesque realism, and with Nietzsche’s views as expounded in The birth of tragedy (1956). By comparing Van Caller's text to that of Bakhtin and Nietzsche, a counter-discourse to contemporary moral discourses such as feminism is explored. Van Coller’s use of laughter as a relativising mechanism is very liberating in the context where petty morality intervenes dogmatically in the field of literature and other spheres of life.

scholarly journals Moral discourses and pharmaceuticalised governance in households

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dew ◽  
P Norris ◽  
J Gabe ◽  
K Chamberlain ◽  
D Hodgetts
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Natural Production ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Health Experts

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This article extends our understanding of the everyday practices of pharmaceuticalisation through an examination of moral concerns over medication practices in the household. Moral concerns of responsibility and discipline in relation to pharmaceutical consumption have been identified, such as passive or active medication practices, and adherence to orthodox or unorthodox accounts. This paper further delineates dimensions of the moral evaluations of pharmaceuticals. In 2010 and 2011 data were collected from 55 households across New Zealand and data collection techniques, such as photo- and diary-elicitation interviews, allowed the participants to develop and articulate reflective stories of the moral meaning of pharmaceuticals. Four repertoires were identified: a disordering society repertoire where pharmaceuticals evoke a society in an unnatural state; a disordering self repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a moral failing of the individual; a disordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a threat to one's physical or mental equilibrium; a re-ordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify the restoration of function. The research demonstrated that the dichotomies of orthodox/unorthodox and compliance/resistance do not adequately capture how medications are used and understood in everyday practice. Attitudes change according to why pharmaceuticals are taken and who is taking them, their impacts on social relationships, and different views on the social or natural production of disease, the power of the pharmaceutical industry, and the role of health experts. Pharmaceuticals are tied to our identity, what we want to show of ourselves, and what sort of world we see ourselves living in. The ordering and disordering understandings of pharmaceuticals intersect with forms of pharmaceuticalised governance, where conduct is governed through pharmaceutical routines, and where self-responsibility entails following the prescription of other agents. Pharmaceuticals symbolise forms of governance with different sets of roles and responsibilities.

Fighting the virus, “hunting the witches” – moralizing in public discourses during the coronavirus pandemic in Croatia

Kybernetes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krešimir Žažar
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Communication ◽  
Moral Discourses

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to discuss particular features of the public debate around the COVID-19 pandemic and its mitigation strategies in Croatian media from the beginning of 2020 to mid-September of the same year. Design/methodology/approach The discussion is theoretically grounded on Luhmann’s concept of moral communication combined with the key assumption of critical discourse analysis that language reflects a position of power of social actors. Based on these premises, the analysis of a sample of articles in a chosen online media was conducted to uncover the moral codes in the public debate concerning the corona outbreak and connect them with specific moral discourses of particular social actors. Findings The findings clearly indicate that the communication about the pandemic is considerably imbued with moralization and that moral coding is profoundly used to generate preferred types of behaviour of citizens and their compliance with the imposed epidemiologic measures. In conclusion, Luhmann’s claim of moralization as a contentious form of communication is confirmed as the examined public discussion fosters confrontations and generates disruptions rather than contributing to a productive dialogue among diverse social actors. Originality/value The novelty of the approach lies in the combination of Luhman’s conceiving of moral communication with critical discourse analysis that, taken together, entails a pertinent research tool for analysing relevant attributes of the ongoing vibrant debate on the coronavirus outbreak.

scholarly journals When the Brain Leaves the Scanner and Enters the Clinic

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Barnett ◽  
Ella Dilkes-Frayne ◽  
Michael Savic ◽  
Adrian Carter
Keyword(s):  
Drug Treatment ◽  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Treatment Providers ◽  
Immoral Behavior ◽  
Brain Recovery ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Moral Condition ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
The Brain

Addiction neuroscience promises to uncover the neural basis of addiction by mapping changes in the “diseased brains” of people with “drug addictions.” It hopes to offer revolutionary treatments for addiction and reduce the stigma experienced by those seeking treatment for a medical, rather than moral, condition. While the promises of addiction neuroscience have received considerable attention, relatively few studies have examined how neuroscientific discourses and promises play out in drug treatment settings. Instead of asking how neuroscience might measure or treat a preexisting addiction “problem,” we draw on poststructuralist ideas to trace how neuroscientific discourses produce addiction as a certain type of “problem” and the effects of these particular problematizations. Based on interviews with a range of different types of treatment providers working in Victoria, Australia, we discuss three themes that reveal neuroscientific discourses at work: (1) constituting pathological subjects, (2) neuroplasticity and “recovery,” and (3) the alleviation of guilt and shame via references to the “diseased brain.” On the basis of our analysis, we argue that dominant neuroscientific discourses produce patients as pathologized subjects, requiring medical treatment. We also contend that the intersection of neuroscientific and recovery discourses enacts “recovery” in terms of brain “recovery” through references to neuroplasticity. Further, when neuroscientific and moral discourses intersect, addicted subjects are absolved from the guilt associated with immoral behavior emerging from a “hijacked brain.” We conclude by emphasizing the need for future critical work to explore the complex ways in which neuroscientific discourses operate in localized care ecologies.

Drudges, Shrews, and Unfit Mothers

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-33
Author(s):  
John Barker
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Southeastern Coast ◽  
The Status ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Large Corpus ◽  
London Missionary Society

Abstract Among the first Europeans to encounter and settle on the southeastern coast of New Guinea, members of the London Missionary Society contributed a large corpus of publications concerning indigenous peoples from the mid-1870s until the rise of professional anthropology in the 1920s. While these works focus mainly on the activities and concerns of men, women provide a key index of “civilization” relative to the working British middle class from which most missionaries came. This essay provides a survey of the portrayal of women in this literature over three partly overlapping periods, demonstrating a shift from racialist to moral discourses on the status of Papuan women – a shift that reflects transitions in both missionary and anthropological assumptions during this period.

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