scholarly journals Narrowed Lives: Meaning, Moral Value, and Profound Intellectual Disability

10.16993/bbl ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simo Vehmas ◽  
Reetta Mietola
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Multiple Disabilities ◽  
Group Homes ◽  
Disability Policy ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Ethnographic Data

What is day-to-day life like for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities who live in group homes? How do they express their desires and wishes? How do care workers think about them and treat them? Do they have basic rights to activities most of us take for granted: activities like sociability, sexuality, and moral affirmation? Narrowed Lives is an illuminating portrait of what life is like in Finnish group homes where adults who have profound intellectual and multiple disabilities live their lives. Based upon ethnographic data, it documents how care workers strive to guarantee individuality and dignity against a backdrop of scarce resources and misguided policies. This book argues that the lives of people with profound disabilities need not be determined by their impairments. It calls for a re-evaluation of disability policy so that its underlying conviction of people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities as equally valuable fellow humans would materialise in practice. This novel and accessible book combines ethnography and philosophy, and will be of interest to researchers and students in disability studies, special education and philosophy, as well as parents, professionals and policy makers.

scholarly journals Profound Intellectual Disability and the Bestowment View of Moral Status

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMO VEHMAS ◽  
BENJAMIN CURTIS
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Multiple Disabilities ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Special Relation ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
Equal Concern

Abstract:This article engages with debates concerning the moral worth of human beings with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMDs). Some argue that those with such disabilities are morally less valuable than so-called normal human beings, whereas others argue that all human beings have equal moral value and that, therefore, each group of humans ought to be treated with equal concern. We will argue in favor of a view that takes points from opposing camps in the debates about the moral worth of humans with such disabilities. Our position, roughly, is this: most humans with PIMDs are persons in the morally significant sense and, therefore, deserve moral consideration equal to that granted to so-called “normal” human beings. Some humans with PIMD may not be persons, but nevertheless deserve moral consideration equal to that of persons because they stand in a special relation to persons.

Pandemic Disease, Public Health, and Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 796-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Smith ◽  
Ross Upshur
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Pandemic Preparedness ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Ethical Frameworks ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
The Face ◽  
Conducting Research

Infectious disease pandemics raise significant and novel ethical challenges to the organization and practice of public health. This chapter provides an overview of the salient ethical issues involved in preparing for and responding to pandemic disease, including those arising from deploying restrictive public health measures to contain and curb the spread of disease (e.g., isolation and quarantine), setting priorities for the allocation of scarce resources, health care workers’ duty to care in the face of heightened risk of infection, conducting research during pandemics, and the global governance of preventing and responding to pandemic disease. It also outlines ethical guidance from prominent ethical frameworks that have been developed to address these ethical issues and concludes by discussing some pressing challenges that must be addressed if ethical reflection is to make a meaningful difference in pandemic preparedness and response.

Towards an AIDS-free generation by 2030: how are South African children, adolescents, caregivers and health care workers coping with HIV?

2021 ◽  
pp. 008124632199217
Author(s):  
Yogan Pillay
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
South African ◽  
Health Care Workers ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Free Generation ◽  
Living With Hiv

We are committed to an AIDS free generation by 2030 – nine short years away. This article reflects on the global and South African data on new infections, total number of children and adolescents living with HIV as well as data on vertical transmission. The article includes the voices of key stakeholders in the quest to end HIV in children so that lessons from their experiences can be used by policy makers in strengthening services.

City Kids in the Wilderness: A Pilot-Test of Outward Bound for Foster Care Group Home Youth

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Fischer ◽  
E. B. Attah
Keyword(s):  
Foster Care ◽  
Foster Parents ◽  
Group Home ◽  
Group Homes ◽  
Outward Bound ◽  
Care Group ◽  
Pilot Test ◽  
Group Home Care ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Before And After

Children in urban foster care settings, rarely have the opportunity to participate in adventure-based wilderness experiences, such as Outward Bound. This paper describes the use of a seven-day Outward Bound experience with 23 youth from four foster care group homes in Atlanta, Georgia. The effort examines data collected before and after the program documenting the perspectives of the youth, their foster parents, and their foster care workers in regard to the impacts on the youth. The research highlights the difficulties of evaluating a field-based experience, and provides data that illustrates the potential effects of Outward Bound on youth in group-home care. Further research is needed to fully demonstrate the effects of such efforts and to identify how to best tailor the experience to the needs of youth in urban foster care settings.

scholarly journals A semiotic approach to language ideologies: Modelling the changing Icelandic languagescape

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2-4) ◽  
pp. 271-296
Author(s):  
Stephen Pax Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
E Coli ◽  
Semiotic Model ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Linguistic Purism

Attempts have been made to examine how speakers frame linguistic varieties by employing social semiotic models. Using ethnographic data collected over many years, this article applies such a model to Iceland, once described as the ‘e-coli of linguistics’ – its size, historical isolation and relative linguistic homogeneity create conditions akin to a sociolinguistic laboratory. This semiotic model of language ideologies problematizes the prevailing discourse of linguistic purism at a time of sociolinguistic upheaval. The analysis shows how an essentializing scheme at the heart of Icelandic language policy ensured that linguistic “anomalies” such as “dative disease” and “genitive phobia” indexed essential differences. “Impure” language was indicative of un-Icelandicness. Once monolingual (indeed monodialectal), the Icelandic speech community is increasingly characterized by innovative linguistic transgressions which thus far have not been instrumentalized by language policy makers. It is shown how a semiotic model can help us analyse the function of language ideologies more generally.

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