Visibility of Chinese ad hoc medical interpreters through text ownership: A case study

Professional interpreters’ visibility in the European context has been widely discussed in the field of community interpreting, but the visibility of untrained ad hoc interpreters in non-European contexts such as China has received little academic attention. By adopting the concept of “text ownership” proposed by Angelelli (2004a), this study examines Chinese ad hoc interpreters’ manifestations of visibility in an authentic medical setting. Based on field observations, audio recordings and interviews, the study reports on four types of visibility demonstrated by ad hoc interpreters: (a) replacing the interlocutor; (b) expressing affect towards a patient; (c) exploring answers; and (d) brokering comprehension. Other forms of visibility are also identified, such as omissions of doctors’ or patients’ remarks and small talk between doctor and interpreter. Interpreters’ deeply held views on social factors as well as the institutional and social norms they have been exposed to are believed to influence their manipulation of medical discourses. This study concludes that in a context where professional medical interpreting services are unavailable, ad hoc interpreters may act as linguistic facilitators by taking on various roles that go beyond mere interpreting. However, their excessive visibility may give rise to potential clinical risks, especially when direct doctor–patient communication is compromised. Attention is drawn to the importance of proper training as well as to the need for the professionalization of medical interpreting in China.

Memories of the Manicomio: Representations of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Institutions in Contemporary Italian Writing

<p>In the long-standing relationship between mental illness and literature in Italy, where historically literary and medical discourses on neurosis have been intertwined, the criticism of mental institutions has stood out as a literary trope only since the spread of radical psychiatry movements in the 1950s. From Le libere donne di Magliano (1953), by Tuscan psychiatrist and writer Mario Tobino, many writings produced around the years of the Basaglia reform and in the following decades have openly engaged with the dark present and past of psychiatric hospitals. However, while the shocking personal testimonies and photographic and audio-visual records of internment that supported and promoted the Basaglia reform are being reassessed today as tangible acts of memory, less attention has been given to the literary representations of asylums and their role as a medium of memory for a twenty-first-century readership. This has become clear in the years around the thirtieth anniversary of the Law 180/78, when the contemporary representations of the Italian teatro di narrazione significantly dealt with the theme of the internment, seeking to debunk the cultural myths surrounding psychiatric hospitals and their patients. This thesis seeks to address this gap by arguing that the literary discourse on mental hospitals in Italy has focused on the intricate relationship between cultural perceptions of mental disorders, personal experience of treatment and internment, and their legacy on the country’s collective memory. I structure my analysis within the intersection of two main theoretical frameworks: the first refers to the recent psychiatric and historical assessments of the Italian psychiatric confinement, and the second draws from theoretical conceptualisations of the relationship between literary genres and collective memory. To do this, I consider three literary genres that have played a significant role in this debate, each within their specific conventions: the memoir, the novel and narrative theatre. After introducing the discourse on the perception of mental confinement through a review of its representations in different media, I discuss the memoir in depth, focussing on Tobino’s three published diaries, Alda Merini’s L’altra verità. Diario di una diversa (1986) and Fabrizia Ramondino’s Passaggio a Trieste (2000). This is followed by a thorough analysis of the relationship between the novel and the psychiatric institution through the reading of Tobino’s Per le antiche scale. Una storia (1972), Italo Calvino’s La giornata d’uno scrutatore (1963) and Luca Masali’s La vergine delle ossa (2010). Finally, I discuss Ascanio Celestini’s La pecora nera. Elogio funebre del manicomio elettrico (2006), Renato Sarti’s Muri. Prima e dopo Basaglia (2008) and Marco Paolini’s Ausmerzen. Vite indegne di essere vissute (2012), in the context of narrative theatre. Through my analysis of these texts and theatrical performances, I show how the manicomio gradually acquires the status of lieu de mémoire in contemporary Italian writing. Depicting, criticising and remembering the asylum, contemporary literary writings have responded to its disappearance as a physical space by rethinking it as a metaphorical means of understanding the present. Progressively challenging a literary tradition which struggled to give voice to the experience of mental disorder, these depictions have recognized persistent forms of social exclusion in contemporary Italy and highlighted the pressing need for a new culture of representing internment.</p>

Memories of the Manicomio: Representations of Mental Illness and Psychiatric Institutions in Contemporary Italian Writing

<p>In the long-standing relationship between mental illness and literature in Italy, where historically literary and medical discourses on neurosis have been intertwined, the criticism of mental institutions has stood out as a literary trope only since the spread of radical psychiatry movements in the 1950s. From Le libere donne di Magliano (1953), by Tuscan psychiatrist and writer Mario Tobino, many writings produced around the years of the Basaglia reform and in the following decades have openly engaged with the dark present and past of psychiatric hospitals. However, while the shocking personal testimonies and photographic and audio-visual records of internment that supported and promoted the Basaglia reform are being reassessed today as tangible acts of memory, less attention has been given to the literary representations of asylums and their role as a medium of memory for a twenty-first-century readership. This has become clear in the years around the thirtieth anniversary of the Law 180/78, when the contemporary representations of the Italian teatro di narrazione significantly dealt with the theme of the internment, seeking to debunk the cultural myths surrounding psychiatric hospitals and their patients. This thesis seeks to address this gap by arguing that the literary discourse on mental hospitals in Italy has focused on the intricate relationship between cultural perceptions of mental disorders, personal experience of treatment and internment, and their legacy on the country’s collective memory. I structure my analysis within the intersection of two main theoretical frameworks: the first refers to the recent psychiatric and historical assessments of the Italian psychiatric confinement, and the second draws from theoretical conceptualisations of the relationship between literary genres and collective memory. To do this, I consider three literary genres that have played a significant role in this debate, each within their specific conventions: the memoir, the novel and narrative theatre. After introducing the discourse on the perception of mental confinement through a review of its representations in different media, I discuss the memoir in depth, focussing on Tobino’s three published diaries, Alda Merini’s L’altra verità. Diario di una diversa (1986) and Fabrizia Ramondino’s Passaggio a Trieste (2000). This is followed by a thorough analysis of the relationship between the novel and the psychiatric institution through the reading of Tobino’s Per le antiche scale. Una storia (1972), Italo Calvino’s La giornata d’uno scrutatore (1963) and Luca Masali’s La vergine delle ossa (2010). Finally, I discuss Ascanio Celestini’s La pecora nera. Elogio funebre del manicomio elettrico (2006), Renato Sarti’s Muri. Prima e dopo Basaglia (2008) and Marco Paolini’s Ausmerzen. Vite indegne di essere vissute (2012), in the context of narrative theatre. Through my analysis of these texts and theatrical performances, I show how the manicomio gradually acquires the status of lieu de mémoire in contemporary Italian writing. Depicting, criticising and remembering the asylum, contemporary literary writings have responded to its disappearance as a physical space by rethinking it as a metaphorical means of understanding the present. Progressively challenging a literary tradition which struggled to give voice to the experience of mental disorder, these depictions have recognized persistent forms of social exclusion in contemporary Italy and highlighted the pressing need for a new culture of representing internment.</p>

Female Onanism: Condemned Pleasures, Medical Probes, and Late-Victorian Pornography

The more Victorian physicians deepened their research into female sexuality, the more a culture of lust infected the hypocritical façade of a nation strictly attached to social norms of order, formality, and bigotry. Lascivious sexual desire and carnal appetite – here embodied in female masturbation – were taboos that had to be forcibly silenced. Yet, late-Victorian pornography mocked medical discourses on female onanism, as well as fears related to female sexuality, and revealed ‘unspeakable’ secret domestic settings marred by ‘dangerous’ practices, scandalous carnality and deviant desires. Furthermore, contemptuous of literary censorship and strict morality, the plenteous erotic literature, represented here by William Lazenby's pornographic magazine The Pearl, not only dared to taunt physicians’ concerns about female ‘self-pollution’ circulating at that time, but also found a great inspiration in the huge domestic success of some innovative medical tools – specifically patented to assuage women's nerves – being produced in those years: electric vibrators. Those ‘engines’ rapidly invaded pornographic literature of the late nineteenth century and became central to a great number of erotic stories, titillating fables and poems, as clearly demonstrated by the contents of The Pearl.

Resisting Medical Discourses in Fat Social Work Practice

This Major Research Paper conducted an institutional ethnography of social work practice with fat service-users in medical settings, exploring the resistance or conformity taken in clinical settings to medical discourses on fatness. Using a voice-centered relational method, three social workers were interviewed on their experiences working with fat- identified clients within medical settings. The interviews explored the role of social work in medical settings, the operation of power structures and cultural discourses that restrict or limit social workers’ capacity for engagement from social perspectives, and the resistance practices workers use to navigate their practices to maintain anti-oppressive social work practice. It was found that there are significant issues with the medical model’s engagement with fat service-users and that, while there are significant barriers to fat positive social work practice, it is through the use of language, client- centeredness, teaching moments, and advocacy, that anti-oppressive social workers navigate these spaces.

Resisting Medical Discourses in Fat Social Work Practice

This Major Research Paper conducted an institutional ethnography of social work practice with fat service-users in medical settings, exploring the resistance or conformity taken in clinical settings to medical discourses on fatness. Using a voice-centered relational method, three social workers were interviewed on their experiences working with fat- identified clients within medical settings. The interviews explored the role of social work in medical settings, the operation of power structures and cultural discourses that restrict or limit social workers’ capacity for engagement from social perspectives, and the resistance practices workers use to navigate their practices to maintain anti-oppressive social work practice. It was found that there are significant issues with the medical model’s engagement with fat service-users and that, while there are significant barriers to fat positive social work practice, it is through the use of language, client- centeredness, teaching moments, and advocacy, that anti-oppressive social workers navigate these spaces.

Investigating the factors behind differences in ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ medical knowledge in the context of fever treatment in Yangon, Myanmar.

How is treatment seeking behaviour influenced by contrasting medical discourses? This paper uses the context of fever patients in Yangon, Myanmar to investigate the factors behind differences between ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ medical knowledge, which consequently guide the treatment seeking behaviour of hospital and clinic patients in Myanmar’s second largest city. By conducting the deductive thematic analysis of secondary qualitative data from both patients and medical doctors using an adapted form of Amartya Sen’s capability approach framework, this cross-sectional study uncovers how: education, socially rooted collective knowledge and unregulated pharmacies drive differences between ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ medical knowledge and therefore dictate treatment seeking behaviour. The results of this paper highlight the interdisciplinary nature of health, meaning health systems should be considered within their sociological, political and economic contexts. The current omission of traditional health discourse within the prevailing Burmese health system may limit the successfulness of biomedical treatment. Appreciating the complexity of how health is understood by populations, specifically how traditional medicine and biomedicine coexist within the Burmese context can allow policymakers to form a stronger health system by creating contextualised policies and health interventions for the general public that cater to the diversity of narratives within health.

BlackLivesMatter in Healthcare: Racism and Implications for Health Inequity among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia

Despite decades of evidence showing that institutional racism serve as significant barriers to accessible healthcare for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, attempts to address this systemic problem still fall short. The social determinants of health are particularly poignant given the socio-political-economic history of invasion, colonisation, and subsequent entrenchment of racialised practices in the Australian healthcare landscape. Embedded within Euro-centric, bio-medical discourses, Western dominated healthcare processes can erase significant cultural and historical contexts and unwittingly reproduce unsafe practices. Put simply, if Black lives matter in healthcare, why do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples die younger and experience ‘epidemic’ levels of chronic diseases as compared to white Australians? To answer this, we utilise critical race perspectives to theorise this gap and to de-center whiteness as the normalised position of ‘doing’ healthcare. We draw on our diverse knowledges through a decolonised approach to promote a theoretical discussion that we contend can inform alternative ways of knowing, being, and doing in healthcare practice in Australia.

Mental Health and the Self-Tracking Student

This article examines universities’ adoption of WellTrack—a self-tracking mobile phone application modeled on cognitive behavioral therapy techniques—as a solution to reported increases in the prevalence and severity of student mental health conditions. Drawing from a feminist materialist perspective that understands discourse and the material word as co-produced, this article argues that the app’s design, marketing, and reception are deeply intertwined with the political rationality of neoliberalism, which centers self-responsibility and the market economy. The article first situates the development of the WellTrack app within larger institutional and political shifts towards digital education governance. It then contextualizes the app’s use within the history of college mental health services in the United States, revealing how longstanding socio-medical discourses concerning student wellness individualize structural and systemic factors of ill health. Through close reading and immanent critique of the marketing and media reception of the WellTrack app’s introduction into universities, the article provides an account of how universities are socializing students to relinquish data to private firms in exchange for health services. Students are encouraged to engage in constant self-examination and strive towards a vision of student wellness that precludes an analysis of the structural conditions and intersecting oppressions contributing to poor student mental health. These conditions are social and pervasive, requiring institutional analysis and critique of the university itself.

Empowered or patronized? The role of emotions in policies and professional discourses on birth care

While the focus on emotions has been associated with the rise of psychosocial welfare and has promised a gateway to accommodate individually diversified needs of citizens in policies, the article shows that the role of emotions needs to be better understood. Highlighting emotions can serve both to empower and to patronize those who experience them. Referring to emotions can thus strengthen hierarchies and downplay individual requests to initiate a change. The analysis of professional discourses on birth care in Czechia shows the value of contextualising emotions. While midwifery discourses apply the emotional context of birth to support women in their specific birth choices, medical discourses use the emotional context to patronize them and to limit their requirements. As a result, policy demands are seen as illegitimate when coming from midwives, who want to see women’s choices more respected in care. We analyse this dynamic through intimacy. As a conceptual framework used in sociology of care, ‘intimacy’ ties individual emotional experiences to collective discourses on care, the body and related feelings. Viewing professional discourses on birth care through intimacy reveals the role of emotions in the collective recognition of the personal struggle for the right to give birth in conditions that respect bodily and emotional integrity, which informs how we think of the role of emotions in policies in general.