Audit culture, accountability, and care: A phenomenological anthropology of child welfare

Front-line child welfare workers have long since preoccupied social work, sociological, and anthropological scholarship. This article employs phenomenological anthropology to attend to the embodied, experiential, and sensorial dimensions of front-line child welfare work. However, rather than renew calls to improve casework through increased institutional support, resilience-building, or retention efforts, I draw on caseworkers’ lived experiences to engage in a critical examination of the state’s role as parens patriae. What do caseworkers’ experiences “on the inside” reveal about the state’s capacity to care—both for its own frontline staff and the families in its purview? How do such experiences problematize our understanding of state accountability? Ultimately, how can they shift the scholarly fixation on developing “better” workers who can accommodate the ever-increasing demands of casework, to a larger critique of the state’s ability to serve as “the guardian and ultimate guarantor of child welfare” ( Boyden, 2005 : 195)? By locating caseworkers’ experiences within a larger context of “audit culture”—a climate of suspicion and surveillance that forces workers to constantly account for their productivity and performance—this article problematizes the state’s model of accountability and care ( Shore and Wright, 2000 ). I argue that, in light of the toxic social dynamics it creates, “audit culture” is incommensurable with the state’s role as parens patriae.

Propio-cuerpo y persona: experiencias propio-corporales e identidad personal en la fenomenología de H. Schmitz

El presente artículo de investigación estudia la relación entre experiencias corporales e identidad personal, a partir de la pregunta sobre si aquellas son fundamento de esta. En la primera parte del artículo se justifica el tema abordado, mediante la revisión del planteamiento del problema de la identidad personal de J. Locke; por lo que se estudia el rol del cuerpo en la idea de hombre y en la identidad personal. Después, se analiza la noción de identidad personal tomando en cuenta las experiencias de dolor y placer. En la segunda parte, se aborda la antropología neo-fenomenológica de Hermann Schmitz, a partir de la tesis de “sin propio-cuerpo no hay persona” y de su descripción del dolor como fundamento propio-corporal de la identidad personal. A continuación, se expone la dinámica entre actitud propio-corporal y equilibrio personal como estructura básica de la situación personal. Finalmente, se ofrece una breve conclusión (3). Palabras clave: Identidad personal, cuerpo, propio-cuerpo, dinámica propio-corporal, situación personal. Abstract The following research article examines the relationship between felt-bodily experiences and personal identity, and whether the former can be considered the basis for the latter. The first part of the article deals with the relationship of these two concepts within Locke's view of personal identity in order to justify the question. Therefore, the role of the body in the conception of man and in personal identity is revised. Then the idea of personal identity in relation to pain experience is questioned. The second part deals with the neo-phenomenological anthropology of Hermann Schmitz, which is based on the thesis: “without felt-body no person”. Next, the dynamics between attitude and composure as the basic structure of the personal situation identity is revealed, which can be assumed as an answer to the question of personal identity. Finally, a brief conclusion is given. Key words: Personal identity, body, felt-body, felt-body dynamics, personal situation. Resumo O presente artigo estuda a relação entre experiências corporais e identidade pessoal, tomando como base a indagação se aquelas são fundamentos desta. Na primeira parte do artigo, justifica-se o problema mediante a revisão da abordagem de J. Locke para o problema da identidade pessoal; razão pela qual o papel do corpo na ideia do homem e na identidade pessoal é estudado. Na sequência, estuda-se a noção de identidade pessoal, levando-se em consideração as experiências de dor e de prazer. Na segunda parte, aborda-se a antropologia neo-fenomenológica de Hermann Schmitz, com base na tese de "sem o seu próprio-corpo, não existe pessoa" e sua descrição da dor como fundamento próprio-corporal da identidade pessoal. Em seguida, a dinâmica entre atitude próprio-corporal e equilíbrio pessoal é exposta como estrutura básica da situação pessoal. Por fim, é oferecida uma breve conclusão. Palavras-chave: Identidade pessoal, corpo, próprio-corpo, dinâmica do próprio-corpo, situação pessoal.

Anthropological Epochés: Phenomenology and the Ontological Turn

This article has two objectives. In the first part, I present a critical overview of the extensive anthropological literature that may be deemed “phenomenological.” Following this critique, which is built up around a classification into four different varieties of phenomenological anthropology, I discuss the relationship between phenomenological anthropology and the ontological turn (OT). Contrary to received wisdom within the anthropological discipline, I suggest that OT has several things in common with the phenomenological project. For the same reason, I argue, it is not accurate to posit OT and phenomenology as opposing or antagonistic projects, as they are often depicted among critics and advocates of OT alike. On the contrary, I go as far as suggesting, OT may be understood as one of the most concerted attempts anthropology has produced to realize a distinctly anthropological version of Husserl’s method of phenomenological bracketing, namely what could be called the ontological epoché.

El camino hacia una nueva antropología clínica: afectividad y corporalidad en la obra de erwin straus

From a hermeneutic reading of the phenomenological anthropology of Erwin Straus, current work seeks to explain the original meaning of affectivity and corporality, as constituting modalities of the relation between human existence and its world. On the first term, through a critical-historical reconsideration of certain propositions of scientific psychology and their philosophical foundations, the aim is to go back to the origin of human condition, deformed by interpretations founded on suppositions a priori, uncovering it. Precisely, opposite to current naturalistic psychology, fades off the ontological difference between man and things, from a perspective as Straus', the incarnated subjectivity, which feels itself when it feels something else, is proposed as the primary object of study of psychological science; its own action is exposed continuously to other influences, therefore, its intrinsic vulnerability. The present analysis allows us to establish a new frame, both for the future experimental investigations and for the comprehension of the experience of the alienated man. Indeed, Straus' phenomenological anthropology allows us to break off the three dualisms that support contemporary investigations of corporality and affectivity: subject-object, receptivity-activity, interior-exterior. Secondly, psychopathologies are understood as different modalities of I-world relations, fully significative in which the impossibility of existence to decide on the course of his biography prevails.

The Ego as Moral Person. Husserl’s Concept of Personhood in the Context of his Later Ethics

Husserl’s philosophy has ethical roots. In the well-known Crisis text, he speaks of the task of philosophers as “functionaries of mankind” (Crisis: 17). “To be human is essentially to be a human being in a socially and generatively united civilisation” (Crisis: 15). The philosopher bears a responsibility for “the true being of mankind” (Crisis:17) for it is through philosophy that mankind’s being towards a telos can come to realisation. This task, to which “we are called” (Crisis: 17) can only be accomplished on the grounds of the human person as a moral person. In the following I would thus like to show that Husserl’s statements are only comprehensible from out of the ethical-moral reflections underlying his concept of personhood in the context of his later ethical thought. An analysis of Husserl’s concept of personhood can shed light on the task of philosophy and make comprehensible not only his phenomenological ethics but also his phenomenological anthropology.

A Generative Theory of Anticipation

In this article, I argue that anticipation unfolds within a range of experiential modalities. Because moods and emotions, intuitions and imagination, among other forms of experience, can all appear as disclosing something about the future, anticipation is heterogeneous. Building on work in phenomenological anthropology and philosophy, I offer a generative phenomenology of the range of anticipatory experience, arguing that some forms of experience are relatively more implicit while others may prove more salient and offer more explicable forms of anticipation. As anticipation emerges in time, the more implicit experiential modes such as mood and intuition operate as antecedents to more explicit ones such as imagination. Turning to apply these ideas to ethnographic materials from my fieldwork among architectural design teams in San Francisco, I demonstrate how attentiveness to this gradient of anticipatory experience allows us to account for anticipatory experiences as they unfold through time.

Ageing and Dying Radically

This biographical and, in part, phenomenological anthropology of older people in post-industrial England illuminates a local and generationally specific communitarian critique of and form of resistance against the process of individualisation. Rather than presenting communitarianism conventionally as an abstract political ideology or set of ideas about locality, it is conceptualised as emerging from and being reinforced by experiences of ageing, especially bodily ageing. It these respects, the article responds positively to Tatjana Thelen and Cati Coe’s call to take the anthropology of ageing out of its current condition of relative intellectual marginality, by recognising ageing and its related care arrangements as key structuring features within societies and political organisation and by treating them as a window onto understanding broad-scale social and political processes.

Mavefornemmelser og dårlige lugte

Denne artikel omhandler sansninger som en integreret del af den pædagogiske praksis i en børnehave beliggende i et socialt udsat boligområde. Med afsæt i den fænomenologiske antropologi og en orientering mod sanser og sanselighed udforsker artiklen, hvordan pædagogerne i børnehaven erfarer og søger at skabe viden om ’familien’, samt peger på de dilemmaer og potentialer, denne form for vidensskabelse indebærer. Med et perspektiv på det sanselige som politisk såvel som et begreb om atmosfære, argumenteres der for en større faglig opmærksomhed på det sanselige og en bevægelse henimod et fokus på, hvordan der vides i det pædagogiske arbejde og ikke kun, hvad der vides om børn og deres familier. Artiklen bygger på empiri fra et etnografisk feltarbejde. [Abstract – UK]Gut feelings and bad smells – How pedagogues sense the family in a social housing area. This article addresses the sensorial as an integral part of the pedagogical practices in a Danish kindergarten located in a social housing area. Drawing on phenomenological anthropology and an orientation towards sensations, the article explores how the pedagogues in the kindergarten experience and come to know ‘the family’ as well as the dilemmas and potentials that this involves. With a perspective on sensations as political as well as by drawing on the notion of atmosphere, the article argues for greater attention to the sensorial within the pedagogical profession and a move towards exploring how pedagogues come to know as opposed to what they know about children and their families. The article builds on ethnographic fieldwork.

Divinity Inhabits the Social

This chapter argues that theologians and anthropologists should consider themselves natural (if sometimes conflictual) conversation partners because “divinity inhabits the social,” which means that neither field can avoid dealing with central themes theorized by the other. From a phenomenological anthropology viewpoint, theological languages contribute to new and more adequate accounts of lived experience. Based on women’s accounts of divine blessing at an Atlanta homeless shelter, this essay maintains that a continuum exists between academic theology and vernacular religion roughly analogous to the one between biomedical and vernacular accounts of suffering. Theologically engaged anthropology should emulate the analytic program of medical anthropology in probing the relation between these. Ways must also be found to broaden the kinds of expert knowledge that count as theology, especially in non-Christian traditions. The goal should be a theoretically robust program that contributes to more than just the anthropology of religion.