Caring after death: issues of embodiment and relationality

Death most fundamentally would seem to concern the absence of presence, and the loss of the living embodied other is the apparently hard inescapable truth to be faced. This brings sharply into relief the part that bodies play in our relationships and in caring for others. In this chapter I explore the significance of the absence and presence of material bodies for care practices, and for the understandings of relationality that may underpin caring after death. At the same time I also consider the bodies of the living and the ways in which grief and loss may be experienced as physical pain in one's own body. Drawing on published autobiographical materials, I suggest that the relationality of caring - even in contemporary US and European societies - may incorporate an embodied relational self in which threats to the physical wellbeing of another may be experienced directly as implicating one's own physical wellbeing. Such 'embodied relationality' highlights one of the deep paradoxes in the costs and benefits of care, which arise when we recognise how individual well-being and flourishing may be bound up with that of others

Key Concepts in Family Studies

Taken from the book to be published by Sage in December 2010, this document provides the Introduction to the book, in which the authors discuss issues in Family Studies as a contemporary field of academic and professional work. Their discussion includes: some of the different positions adopted by researchers towards the use of the language of 'family'; the broad themes generally included in this field of study; and dilemmas in evaluations of, and interventions in, family lives

Ejectives in Scottish English: a social perspective

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the realization of word-final /k/ in a sample of read and casual speech by 28 female pupils from a single-sex Glaswegian high school. Girls differed in age, socioeconomic background, and ethnicity. Ejectives were the most usual variant for /k/ in both speech styles, occurring in the speech of every pupil in our sample. Our narrow auditory analysis revealed a continuum of ejective production, from weak to intense stops. Results from multinomial logistic regression show that ejective production is promoted by phonetic, linguistic and interactional factors: ejectives were used more in read speech, when /k/ occurred in the /-ŋk/ cluster (e.g. tank), and when the relevant word was either at the end of a clause or sentence, or in turn-final position. At the same time, significant interactions between style, and position in turn, and the social factors of age and ethnicity, show that the use of ejectives by these girls is subject to a fine degree of sociolinguistic control, alongside interactional factors. Finally, cautious comparison of these data with recordings made in 1997 suggests that these results may also reflect a sound change in progress, given the very substantial real-time increase in ejective realizations of /k/ in Glasgow over the past fourteen years

Childhood, children and family lives in China

In this chapter we bring into focus those aspects of family lives in China that are concerned with children’s family relationships, and the ways in which such issues are part and parcel of the broader institutionalisation of childhood. We draw on theoretical frameworks in the sociology of childhood and childhood studies (e.g., Prout, 2004; Qvortrup, 2000; Smith and Greene, 2014). Since these theoretical perspectives have developed predominantly in Anglophone literature, some researchers have considered their relevance to, and utility for, China and Chinese childhoods (Goh, 2011; Miao, 2013; Wang YY, 2011, 2014a, 2014b; Zheng, 2012a, 2012b; Ribbens McCarthy et al., 2017). In engaging with existing theories, and applying them to, Chinese children’s family lives, we seek to go beyond any tendency to just ‘add in the missing children’ to existing discussions (Kesby et al., 2006: 186), and give consideration to a variety of cultural and local contexts that characterise China and illuminate why it is necessary to decentre universalist thinking (Jullien, 2008/2014

“Why can’t they be in the community?” A policy and practice analysis of transforming care for offenders with intellectual disability

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe key policy and practice issues regarding a significant subgroup of people with intellectual disability – those with offending behaviour being treated in forensic hospitals. Design/methodology/approach – The reasons why psychiatrists continue to be involved in the treatment of people with intellectual disability and mental health or behavioural problems and the factors that may lead to patients needing hospital admission are examined. Using two illustrative examples, three key questions – containment vs treatment, hospital care vs conditional discharge and hospital treatment vs using deprivation of liberty safeguards usage in the community are explored. Findings – Patients with intellectual disability, mental health problems and offending behaviours who are treated within forensic inpatient units tend to have long lengths of stay. The key variable that mediates this length of stay is the risk that they pose to themselves or others. Clinicians work within the framework of mental health law and have to be mindful that pragmatic solutions to hasten discharge into the community may not fall within the law. Originality/value – This paper makes practical suggestions for the future on how to best integrate hospital and community care for people with intellectual disability, mental health and offending behaviours. </jats:sec

Producing emotionally sensed knowledge? Reflexivity and emotions in researching responses to death

This paper reflects on the methodological complexities of producing emotionally-sensed knowledge about responses to family deaths in urban Senegal. Through engaging in ‘uncomfortable reflexivity’, we critically explore the multiple positionings of the research team comprised of UK, Senegalese and Burkinabé researchers and those of participants in Senegal and interrogate our own cultural assumptions. We explore the emotional labour of the research process from an ethic of care perspective and reflect on how our multiple positionings and emotions influence the production and interpretation of the data, particularly exemplified through our differing responses to diverse meanings of ‘family’ and religious refrains. We show how our approach of ‘uncomfortable reflexivity’ helps to reveal the work of emotions in research, thereby producing ‘emotionally sensed knowledge’ about responses to death and contributing to the cross-cultural study of emotions

Computational fluid dynamic analysis of bioprinted self-supporting perfused tissue models

Natural tissues are incorporated with vasculature, which is further integrated with a cardiovascular system responsible for driving perfusion of nutrient‐rich oxygenated blood through the vasculature to support cell metabolism within most cell‐dense tissues. Since scaffold‐free biofabricated tissues being developed into clinical implants, research models, and pharmaceutical testing platforms should similarly exhibit perfused tissue‐like structures, we generated a generalizable biofabrication method resulting in self‐supporting perfused (SSuPer) tissue constructs incorporated with perfusible microchannels and integrated with the modular FABRICA perfusion bioreactor. As proof of concept, we perfused an MLO‐A5 osteoblast‐based SSuPer tissue in the FABRICA. Although our resulting SSuPer tissue replicated vascularization and perfusion observed in situ, supported its own weight, and stained positively for mineral using Von Kossa staining, our in vitro results indicated that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) should be used to drive future construct design and flow application before further tissue biofabrication and perfusion. We built a CFD model of the SSuPer tissue integrated in the FABRICA and analyzed flow characteristics (net force, pressure distribution, shear stress, and oxygen distribution) through five SSuPer tissue microchannel patterns in two flow directions and at increasing flow rates. Important flow parameters include flow direction, fully developed flow, and tissue microchannel diameters matched and aligned with bioreactor flow channels. We observed that the SSuPer tissue platform is capable of providing direct perfusion to tissue constructs and proper culture conditions (oxygenation, with controllable shear and flow rates), indicating that our approach can be used to biofabricate tissue representing primary tissues and that we can model the system in silico

Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons

Despite calls for cross-cultural research, Minority world perspectives still dominate death and bereavement studies, emphasizing individualized emotions and neglecting contextual diversities. In research concerned with contemporary African societies, on the other hand, death and loss are generally subsumed within concerns about AIDS or poverty, with little attention paid to the emotional and personal significance of a death. Here, we draw on interactionist sociology to present major themes from a qualitative study of family deaths in urban Senegal, theoretically framed through the duality of meanings-in-context. Such themes included family and community as support and motivation; religious beliefs and practices as frameworks for solace and (regulatory) meaning; and material circumstances as these are intrinsically bound up with emotions. Although we identify the experience of (embodied, emotional) pain as a common response across Minority and Majority worlds, we also explore significant divergencies, varying according to localized contexts and broader power dynamics

Possible liquid immiscibility textures in high-magnesia basalts from the Ventersdorp Supergroup, South Africa

The lowermost succession of lavas in the Proterozoic Ventersdorp Supergroup contains light weathering ocelli up to 15 cm in diameter which occur in layers of a darker weathering volcanic material. Some ocelli appear to merge, and discrete light weathering layers may be the ultimate end-stage of this coalescence. Alternatively, coexisting magmas in the neck of the volcano may have been erupted in varying proportions, and turbulence during flow caused spalling of large drops of the lighter weathering material into the other. Several lines of field evidence suggest that two distinct liquids coexisted and were rapidly quenched after eruption. Chemical data for ocelli and matrix are consistent with the hypothesis of liquid immiscibility. The differences in compositions between the coexisting pairs of liquids are small and it is suggested that the original magmas must have been close to the consulute composition