From Medicine to Health: The Proliferation and Diversification of Cultural Authority

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-254
Author(s):  
Steven Epstein ◽  
Stefan Timmermans
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Structural Transformations ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Alternative Healing ◽  
Health Social Movements ◽  
Social Authority ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Structural

In his account of the medical profession’s ascent, Paul Starr drew a distinction between the social authority of physicians and the cultural authority of medicine—between doctors’ capacity to direct others’ behavior and the ability of medical institutions and discourses to shape meanings of illness, health, wellness, and treatment. Subsequently, scholars have reflected on the social-structural transformations challenging physicians’ social authority but neglected shifts in cultural authority. Focusing on the United States, we find a proliferation and diversification of cultural authority, reflecting a partial movement from the domain of medicine into new terrains of health. This shift is apparent in the resurgence of alternative healing, the advent of new forms of self-care and self-monitoring, the rise of health social movements, and the spread of health information online. We advance a research agenda to understand how the mechanisms and dynamics of cultural authority shape contests to speak in the name of health.

Abortion in the Web of Relationship: Negotiating the Abortion Decision Through a Lens of Care

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-55
Author(s):  
Lisa R. Avalos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
The Public ◽  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Structural Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
Dorothy Smith ◽  
The Web

Does the public abortion debate in the United States bear any relation to women’s private discourse about their abortion experiences? In this work—a qualitative study of the abortion narratives of 20 women—I argue that the familiar pro-choice and pro-life frameworks that have dominated public abortion discourse do not begin to provide a suitable forum for the collective expression and understanding of women’s personal abortion stories. By focusing on the conflicting rights of the parties involved, these frameworks leave us poorly equipped to understand how women experience abortion as members of social networks where interdependence and connection are important. While the debate emphasizes conflicting rights, women articulate their experiences with abortion in ways that emphasize relationship, care, and connection to others. By drawing on the work of theorists such as Dorothy Smith, Jean Baker Miller, Carol Gilligan, and Georg Simmel, I illuminate the misappropriation of women’s abortion experience in the public debate, relating this phenomenon to the social-structural context in which it and other exclusions of subordinate groups occur.

Crime, Youth Unemployment, and the Black Urban Underclass

1987 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Troy Duster
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Youth Unemployment ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Transformations ◽  
Crime Reduction ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Current Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Development

There is now a wealth of data demonstrating a strong relationship (in the United States, at least) between unemployment and contact with the criminal justice system. Black youth are disproportionately represented in both categories. Until the current period, most youth simply “matured” out of a life of crime. However, we are witnessing a new development of a deep bifurcation of the social structure and a corresponding development of a possible permanent “underclass.” Our previous assumptions about the life cycle, the market economy, and employment prospects must be reconceptualized if we are to address this concern with any success. In particular, programs of “crime reduction” must address the structural transformations that have so altered the unemployment differences between Black and White youth.

The Complexity of Health Disparities: More Than Just Black–White Differences

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Charles Ellis ◽  
Molly Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Health Disparities ◽  
Clinical Outcomes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Language Pathology

Health disparities have once again moved to the forefront of America's consciousness with the recent significant observation of dramatically higher death rates among African Americans with COVID-19 when compared to White Americans. Health disparities have a long history in the United States, yet little consideration has been given to their impact on the clinical outcomes in the rehabilitative health professions such as speech-language pathology/audiology (SLP/A). Consequently, it is unclear how the absence of a careful examination of health disparities in fields like SLP/A impacts the clinical outcomes desired or achieved. The purpose of this tutorial is to examine the issue of health disparities in relationship to SLP/A. This tutorial includes operational definitions related to health disparities and a review of the social determinants of health that are the underlying cause of such disparities. The tutorial concludes with a discussion of potential directions for the study of health disparities in SLP/A to identify strategies to close the disparity gap in health-related outcomes that currently exists.

Cross-space Consumption among Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Currency Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Migrants

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.

Local Histories/Global Designs

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Central America ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
South Central ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Border Thinking ◽  
East West

This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. It explores the crucial notion of “colonial difference” in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which the book calls “border thinking.” Further, the book expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling on the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. The book's concept of “border gnosis,” or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. A new preface discusses this book as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History.

27. Immigration and other evils: A profile of Dr. C. K. Clarke and the eugenics movement in Canada

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
L. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Mentally Ill ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Canadian Population ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Eugenics Movement ◽  
The Government ◽  
Mental Defectives

Dr. C.K. Clarke (1857-1924) was one of Canada’s most prominent psychiatrists. He sought to improve the conditions of asylums, helped to legitimize psychiatry and established formal training for nurses. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Canada experienced a surge of immigration. Yet – as many historians have shown – a widespread anti-foreigner sentiment within the public remained. Along with many other members of the fledgling eugenics movement, Clarke believed that the proportion of “mental defectives” was higher in the immigrant population than in the Canadian population and campaigned to restrict immigration. He appealed to the government to track immigrants and deport them once they showed signs of mental illness. Clarke’s efforts lead to amendments to the Immigration Act in 1919, which authorized deportation of people who were not Canadian-born, regardless of how many years that had been in Canada. This change applied not only to the mentally ill but also to those who could no longer work due to injury and to those who did not follow social norms. Clarke is a fascinating example of how we judge historical figures. He lived in a time where what we now think of as xenophobia was a socially acceptable, even worthy attitude. As a leader in eugenics, therefore, he was a progressive. Other biographers have recognized Clarke’s racist opinions, some of whom justify them as keeping with the social values of his era. In further exploring Clarke’s interest in these issues, this paper relies on his personal scrapbooks held in the CAMH archives. These documents contain personal papers, poems and stories that proclaim his anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner views. Whether we allow his involvement in the eugenics movement to overshadow his accomplishments or ignore his racist leanings to celebrate his memory is the subject of ongoing debate. Dowbiggin IR. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada 1880-1940. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. McLaren A. Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada 1885-1945. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990. Roberts B. Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada 1900-1935. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988.

Do You Read Me? How Empathy Mitigates the Social Costs of High Self-Monitoring

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam M. Kleinbaum ◽  
Alexander H. Jordan ◽  
Pino G. Audia
Keyword(s):  
Social Costs ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
The Social

Ethnographic Service Learning: An Approach for Transformational Learning

Journal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie A. Medeiros ◽  
Jennifer Guzmán
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Transformational Learning ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Field Methods ◽  
The Social ◽  
Service Learning Projects ◽  
Transformational Experiences ◽  
Learning Projects

Trends in higher education pedagogy increasingly point to the importance of transformational experiences as the capstone of liberal arts education. Practitioners of ethnography, the quintessential transformational experience of the social sciences, are well-positioned to take the lead in designing courses and term projects that afford undergraduate students opportunities to fundamentally reshape their understanding of the social world and their own involvement within it. Furthermore, in the United States, colleges and universities have become proponents of service learning as a critical component of a holistic educational experience. In this article, we describe how service learning can be incorporated into training students in ethnographic field methods as a means to transformational learning and to give them skills they can use beyond the classroom in a longer trajectory of civic participation. We discuss strategies, opportunities, and challenges associated with incorporating service learning into courses and programs training students in ethnographic field methods and propose five key components for successful ethnographic service learning projects. We share student insights about the transformational value of their experiences as well as introduce some ethical concerns that arise in ethnographic service-learning projects.

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