scholarly journals Beyond biopolitics: the importance of the later work of Foucault to understand care practices of healthcare workers caring for undocumented migrants

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Lafaut
Keyword(s):  
Role Models ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Healthcare Access ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
The Self ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Healthcare Ethics ◽  
Care Practices

Abstract Background Undocumented migrants experience multiple institutional and legal barriers when trying to access healthcare services. Due to such limitations, healthcare workers often experience ethical dilemmas when caring for undocumented migrants. This article aims to understand how individual healthcare workers who regularly take care of undocumented migrants deal with these dilemmas in practice. So far, the role of healthcare workers in this context has mainly been theorized through the lens of biopolitics, conceiving of healthcare workers as merely obedient instruments of humanitarian government or gatekeeping. Methods Based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations with healthcare workers in Belgium, we explore how they ascribe meaning, reflect upon and give shape to care practices in relation to undocumented migrants. We use Foucault’s later work on care of the self to interpret the accounts given by the healthcare workers. Results Healthcare workers in clinical roles exercise a certain degree of freedom in relation to the existing limitations to healthcare access of undocumented migrants. They developed techniques such as purposefully being inattentive to the undocumented status of the migrants. They also try to master their affective responses and transform their bodily attitude towards undocumented patients. They perform practical mental exercises to remind themselves of their role or position in the wider healthcare system and about their commitment to treat all patients equally. These techniques and exercises are inspired by colleagues who function as role models, inspiring them to relate in an ethical way to limitations in healthcare access. The developed care practices sometimes reproduce, sometimes transform the legal and institutional limitations to care for undocumented migrants. Conclusions The findings nuance the biopolitical analysis regarding the role of healthcare workers in healthcare delivery to undocumented migrants that has been dominant so far. Theoretically this article provides a reconceptualization of healthcare ethics as care of the self, an ethical practice that is somewhat independent of the traditional professional ethics. Trial Registration Medical ethics committee UZ Jette, Brussels, Belgium – Registration date: 18/05/2016 – Registration number: B.U.N. 143201628279.

scholarly journals Beyond biopolitics: the importance of the later work of Foucault to understand care practices of healthcare workers caring for undocumented migrants

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Lafaut
Keyword(s):  
Role Models ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Healthcare Access ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
The Self ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Healthcare Ethics ◽  
Care Practices

Abstract BackgroundUndocumented migrants experience multiple institutional and legal barriers when trying to access healthcare services. Due to such limitations, healthcare workers often experience ethical dilemmas when caring for undocumented migrants. This article aims to understand how individual healthcare workers who regularly take care of undocumented migrants deal with these dilemmas in practice. So far, the role of healthcare workers in this context has mainly been theorized through the lens of biopolitics, conceiving of healthcare workers as merely obedient instruments of humanitarian government or gatekeeping.MethodsBased on semi-structured, in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations with healthcare workers in Belgium, we explore how they ascribe meaning, reflect upon and give shape to care practices in relation to undocumented migrants. We use Foucault’s later work on care of the self to interpret the accounts given by the healthcare workers.ResultsHealthcare workers in clinical roles exercise a certain degree of freedom in relation to the existing limitations to healthcare access of undocumented migrants. They developed techniques such as purposefully being inattentive to the undocumented status of the migrants. They also try to master their affective responses and transform their bodily attitude towards undocumented patients. They perform practical mental exercises to remind themselves of their role or position in the wider healthcare system and about their commitment to treat all patients equally. These techniques and exercises are inspired by colleagues who function as role models, inspiring them to relate in an ethical way to limitations in healthcare access. The developed care practices sometimes reproduce, sometimes transform the legal and institutional limitations to care for undocumented migrants.ConclusionsThe findings nuance the biopolitical analysis regarding the role of healthcare workers in healthcare delivery to undocumented migrants that has been dominant so far. Theoretically this article provides a reconceptualization of healthcare ethics as care of the self, an ethical practice that is somewhat independent of the traditional professional ethics.Trial RegistrationMedical ethics committee UZ Jette, Brussels, Belgium – Registration date: 18/05/2016 – Registration number: B.U.N. 143201628279

Redefining the Proxemics of the Mentorship

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Schreiner
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Learning Outcome ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Spatial Contiguity ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
Traditional Structures

The sociopolitical controversies on campus that have resulted in “safe spaces” have pressured traditional structures based on proxemics, such as the mentorship, to reinvent themselves or disappear. In the chapter, “proximity” itself is defined not in terms of spatial contiguity but as an attentional structure by which the mentee achieves an intimate understanding at a distance of the objective achievements in teaching and writing that distinguish her mentor and other role models and that provoke acts of creative mimesis and exegesis by the mentee. Inspired by the ancient Stoic practice of the “care of the self” as explicated by Michel Foucault, the crux of the redefined mentored relation is not inculcating knowledge but guiding the growth of the mentee's critical consciousness in preparation for a career and a life well-lived, befitting a noble spirit. Since the focus of the redefined mentored relation privileges distance and objective spirit (via the critical study of works) over personal interaction, the scholarly autonomy of the mentee is a noteworthy learning outcome.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

scholarly journals To-Do Is to Be: Foucault, Levinas, and Technologically Mediated Subjectivation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Peter Bergen ◽  
Peter-Paul Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Self Care ◽  
The Self ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Technological Mediation ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Technological Artifacts ◽  
Ethical Subjectivity ◽  
The World

AbstractThe theory of technological mediation aims to take technological artifacts seriously, recognizing the constitutive role they play in how we experience the world, act in it, and how we are constituted as (moral) subjects. Its quest for a compatible ethics has led it to Foucault’s “care of the self,” i.e., a transformation of the self by oneself through self-discipline. In this regard, technologies have been interpreted as power structures to which one can relate through Foucaultian “technologies of the self” or ascetic practices. However, this leaves unexplored how concrete technologies can actually support the process of self-care. This paper explores this possibility by examining one such technology: a gamified To-Do list app. Doing so, it first shows that despite the apparent straightforwardness of gamification, confrontation and shame play an important role in how the app motivates me to do better. Second, inspired by Ihde’s schema of human-technology relations, it presents different ways in which the app may confront me with myself. Subsequently, it accounts for the motivation and shame that this technologically mediated confrontation with myself invokes through a Levinasian account of ethical subjectivity. In so doing, it also shows how Levinas’ phenomenology implies a responsibility for self-care and how nonhuman, technological others may still call me to responsibility. It concludes with a reflection on the role of gamification in technologically mediated subjectivation and some implications for design.

Lyrics of Life

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Keshavarz
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Political Education ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Persian Poetry ◽  
Communicative Role

Lyrics of Life: Sa’di on Love, Cosmopolitanism, and care of the Self is an accessible study of the lyrical, humorous, and social and education aspects of classical Persian poetry through the ghazals of Sa’di of Shiraz (d.1291) the poet, traveller, and ethicist. In six chapters and on epilogue, the author focuses on Sa’di’s worldly wisdom, his cosmopolitan perspectives, his sense of humour, his ethical legacy, and the lyrical quality that has made his work immune to the ravishes of time. The study provides hundreds of verses in English translation in order to enable the reader to experience Sa’di’s poetic art first hand. The discussions emphasize the relation between this poetry and lived experience, the central communicative role of poetry in the medieval Muslim world and the elegance of the poetic language as a social tool for ethical and political education. At the same time, it describes, in fine details, the lyrical strategies that the poet used in order to keep his poetry fresh, lyrical, humorous and entertaining.

Contraceptive behavior in women in the Republic of Kalmykia

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Vadim K Iur’ev ◽  
Anatolij G Serdjukov ◽  
Ceren M Tebleev ◽  
Viktor G Puzyrev
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Young People ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Intrauterine Device ◽  
The Self ◽  
Sexual Life ◽  
Sexually Active ◽  
Barrier Methods ◽  
The Republic

Contraception is the important component of family planning. It plays the important role in fighting with abortion and preserving the reproductive health of women. The specially designed anonymous survey was performed in 375 women living in the Republic of Kalmykia in the age from 16 till 45 years old. The average age of beginning of sexual life was estimated as 18,6 ± 0,1 years at the examined group. The average age decreased from 19,3 ± 0,3 to 17,0 ± 0,2 during the last 10 years. Almost the half of respondent (45,9 %) started the sexual life before the marriage. Kalmyk women started the sexual life later than Russian and entered the premarital relationship rarely. 70,2 % of sexually active women protected from pregnancy: 74,2 % used barrier methods of contraception, 13,5 % - intrauterine device, 12,9 % - oral hormone contraception, 11,1% - rejected sexual intercourse. Women below 30 and Kalmyk women used the barrier methods of contraception most often. Women older than 30 years used intrauterine device most often, oral hormone contraception was in use among cities inhabitants and among Russian women. The self-appraisal of knowledge on contraception questions showed that women estimate their erudition as 3,98 ± 0,04 on average. One quarter (23,2 %) of women consider themselves insufficiently or poorly informed dealing with this question. Women in the age below 20 and inhabitants of countryside are less informed. The information was received from the formal source by 32,5 % of women (at school - 27,7 %, from healthcare workers - 4,8 %). The majority of women (50,8 %) received the information from the informal source: 17,9 % - mother and other relatives, 12,8 % - mass media, 4,3 % - printed matter. The role of school in the informing young people dealing with this question decreased during the last few years. The role of healthcare workers in the informing young people is very low.

scholarly journals A Web-based, Mobile Responsive Application to Screen Healthcare Workers for COVID Symptoms: Descriptive Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haipeng (Mark) Zhang ◽  
Dimitar Dimitrov ◽  
Lynn Simpson ◽  
Balaji Singh ◽  
Nina Plaks ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Healthcare Delivery ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Of Day ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Self ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Symptom Screening ◽  
Self Service ◽  
Service Application

AbstractBackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has impacted over 1 million people across the globe, with over 330,000 cases in the United States. To help limit the spread in Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health required that all healthcare workers must be screened for symptoms daily – individuals with symptoms may not work. We rapidly created a digital COVID-19 symptom screening tool for a large, academic, integrated healthcare delivery system, Partners HealthCare, in Boston, Massachusetts.ObjectiveWe describe the design and development of the COVID-19 symptom screening application and report on aggregate usage data from the first week of use across the organization.MethodsUsing agile principles, we designed, tested and implemented a solution over the span of a week using progressively custom development approaches as the requirements and use case become more solidified. We developed the minimum viable product (MVP) of a mobile responsive, web-based self-service application using REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture). For employees without access to a computer or mobile device to use the self-service application, we established a manual process where in-person, socially distanced screeners asked employees entering the site if they have symptoms and then manually recorded the responses in an Office 365 Form. A custom .NET Framework application was developed solution as COVID Pass was scaled. We collected log data from the .NET application, REDCap and Office 365 from the first week of full enterprise deployment (March 30, 2020 – April 5, 2020). Aggregate descriptive statistics including overall employee attestations by day and site, employee attestations by application method (COVID Pass automatic screening vs. manual screening), employee attestations by time of day, and percentage of employees reporting COVID-19 symptomsResultsWe rapidly created the MVP and gradually deployed it across the hospitals in our organization. By the end of the first week of enterprise deployment, the screening application was being used by over 25,000 employees each weekday. Over the first full week of deployment, 154,730 employee attestation logs were processed across the system. Over this 7-day period, 558 (0.36%) employees reported positive symptoms. In most clinical locations, the majority of employees (∼80-90%) used the self-service application, with a smaller percentage (∼10-20%) using manual attestation. Hospital staff continued to work around the clock, but as expected, staff attestations peaked during shift changes between 7-8am, 2-3pm, 4-6pm, and 11pm-midnight.ConclusionsUsing rapid, agile development, we quickly created and deployed a dedicated employee attestation application that gained widespread adoption and use within our health system. Further, we have identified over 500 symptomatic employees that otherwise would have possibly come to work, potentially putting others at risk. We share the story of our implementation, lessons learned, and source code (via GitHub) for other institutions who may want to implement similar solutions.

scholarly journals Practical Role of Philosophy in Sport: Case of Philosophical Consultation

2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Lukáš Mareš
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe process of philosophical questioning has the power to form not only our way of thinking, but also the way we live. Both my sporting and academic career have made me think about the importance of asking good questions and undergoing the process of answering them. I decided to create a profession of philosophical consultation in sport which works with athletes and coaches of various ages. Consultants and athletes (clients) engage in a dialogue about important and interesting questions/topics in client’s life. This dialogical process is called philosophical consultation. It focuses on critical evaluation and development of client’s thinking, self-cognition, and attitudes/worldviews. Philosophical consultation helps athletes and coaches to look for their identity and achieve better self-awareness. It can be argued that consultation offers what Patočka calls the “care of the soul” (epimeleia peri tês psychês) or what Foucault calls the “care of the self” (epimeleia heautou), which are based on Socrates’ kind of philosophizing. It helps to achieve ancient ideals of kalokagathia and gnôthi seauton. The potential of using philosophy in sport hasn’t been fully discovered. Philosophical consultation is presented as a process of self-cognition and inner development. It has the potential to influence the care for well-being of athletes and coaches.I aim to explore the practical role of philosophy in sport. I will present possible connections between philosophy and sport and the historical predecessors of the concept of philosophical consultancy in sport. As well, we will discuss what philosophical consultancy is, how philosophical consultant works, and finally what are the challenges in bringing philosophical consultation into sport. Methods that are used in this interdisciplinary article are critical textual analysis, description, and interpretation of data.

scholarly journals The Role of Descartes’s Dream in the Meditations and in the Historical Ontology of Ourselves

2018 ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Edward McGushin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Negative Power ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
Positive Source ◽  
The Way

This paper situates the dream-hypothesis in Descartes’s First Meditation within the historical ontology of ourselves. It looks at the way in which the dream enters into and transforms Descartes’ relation to his “system of actuality.” In order to get free from his confinement within his system of actuality – an actuality defined by relations of power-knowledge, government, veridiction, and subjectivity – Descartes draws on the disruptive, negative capacity of the dream. But, while Descartes draws on the dream to get himself free and to establish a way of thinking and living differently, he also disqualifies the dream as a positive source of knowledge, truth, or subjectivity. Excavating this ambivalent place of the dream in the genealogy of our present, we aim to recover the dream not only in its negative power but also to open up the possibility of re-imagining its positivity as a form of counter-conduct, problematization, and element in the care of the self. This paper represents one piece of a larger genealogical study that examines the history of relationships between the arts of dreaming and the problematization of power-truth-subjectivity.

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