Ethos最新文献

In this article, we analyze the multiple ways of moral being with depression in urban Nigeria, including those of the ethnographer. This approach fits recent theorizing in moral anthropology and mental health that aims at uncovering how mental illness and ethical being come into being in between patients and meaningful others. We argue that the Nigerian experience of depression does not follow the Heideggerian model of moral breakdown and ethical performance but is rather a shared experience of struggling along without the ideal of a full recovery. By proposing a radical reconsideration of existing care models that are largely based on cure and correction, struggling along draws attention to the unfinishedness of depression. This is best described as a heightened everyday awareness that lingers in between reflective and unreflective modes of being that comprise both the physical and metaphysical worlds young Nigerians inhabit and allows for moral being with mental health struggles.

This case study provides a critical discourse analysis of 121 letters of complaint and self-advocacy authored by Natasha Keating, a trans woman incarcerated in two Australian male correctional facilities from 2000 to 2007. During her incarceration, Natasha experienced victimization, misgendering, microaggression, and institutional discrimination. Despite this, Natasha embodied and “fought” against the injustices she experienced, whilst seeking to speak for other trans incarcerated persons also silenced and treated with indifference, contributing to changes in the carceral system. This original case study analyzes the discursive strategies Natasha employed to construct and reclaim an affirming self-identity through a deliberate campaign to effect social change and policy concessions within a system designed to curtail self-determination. Through her empathic and impassioned letter-writing approach, leveraging a military metaphor, this novel analysis showcases the significant implications her activism/agentism and determination had in naming and seeking to dismantle the systems of oppression trans incarcerated women experience.

This article describes how particular emotions map figuratively onto body parts in Australian Indigenous languages. While most languages use expressions involving body parts to talk about emotions—as in “broken-hearted,” for instance—Australian Indigenous languages do it to a remarkable extent. After identifying the figurative tropes—metaphors and metonymies—that recur most frequently in such expressions across the continent, the article discusses specific body-part associations and figurative patterns for several salient emotional categories. This includes generic emotions (feel good/bad); “empathetic” emotions (affection and derived emotions); anger and sulkiness; social attitudes around agreeableness and compliance; shame; love, desire, and jealousy; and fear and surprise. Far from being randomly distributed, the figurative properties of each category exhibit regular patterns. Some of these patterns reflect somatic and behavioral responses to emotions or cognitive properties of emotions, while others remain unexplained. [Australian languages, emotions, figurative language, embodiment]

Résumé Cet article décrit et analyse les correspondances entre catégories émotionnelles et parties du corps dans les expressions figuratives des langues aborigènes australiennes. La majorité des langues du monde utilisent des collocations incluant des parties du corps pour décrire des émotions—comme dans l'expression « cœur brisé » par exemple— mais celles-ci sont particulièrement nombreuses dans les langues australiennes. Après avoir identifié les tropes—métaphores and métonymies—qui reviennent le plus souvent dans ces expressions à travers le continent, l'article analyse les associations spécifiques entre certaines parties du corps, certains tropes, et certaines catégories émotionnelles. Ces catégories incluent les émotions génériques (se sentir bien/mal) ; les émotions dites « empathétiques » (affection et émotions dérivées) ; la colère et la bouderie ; les tempéramments relationnels comme l'amabilité ou un caractère conciliant ; la honte ; l'amour, le désir et la jalousie ; ainsi que la peur et la surprise. Chacune de ces émotions présente des associations préferentielles avec certaines parties du corps, et des propriétés figuratives récurrentes. Certaines de ces préférences et récurrences renvoient à des réactions somatiques ou comportementales aux émotions en question, d'autres à leurs dimensions cognitives ; et d'autres encore restent inexpliquées.

Chronic pain is a phenomenon in which the biological sensations of pain interact synergistically with an individual's cultural world. Considerable anthropological work has been done on the senses and on the anthropology of chronic pain. Less attention has been given to the sensations of chronic pain, how they can escalate to suffering, and how they may be managed in daily life to enable well-being. To develop an integrated understanding of chronic pain processes, we worked as a collaborative research team that included a patient coauthor. Together we synthesized a model that outlines the biological pathways of pain while taking into account the cultural factors that can magnify pain into arcs of suffering or temper pain toward arcs of well-being. Drawing on scholarly literature, long-term ethnographic research, and personal experience with autoimmune disease, we propose a dynamic model of the moment-to-moment arcs that maintain, magnify, or temper pain. [pain, suffering, well-being, autoimmune disease, and systems model]

Spanish abstract: El dolor crónico es un fenómeno en el que las sensaciones biológicas del dolor son sinérgicamente interactivas con el mundo cultural del individuo. Ha sido mucho trabajo antropológico en los sentidos y la antropología del dolor crónico. Menos atención ha prestado a las sensaciones del dolor crónico, su crecimiento a sufrimiento y cómo estas sensaciones pueden ser manejadas en la vida cotidiana para facilitar el bienestar. El desarrollo de un entendimiento integrativo de los procesos del dolor crónico exigió un equipo de investigación integrativo y colaborativo, lo que incluyó un paciente como coautor. Juntos, resumimos un modelo que esboza las vías biológicas del dolor mientras abarcando los factores culturales que amplifican el dolor a ciclos de retroalimentación de sufrimiento o, alternativamente, templan el dolor a ciclos de retroalimentación de bienestar. Con el apoyo de literatura académica, investigaciones en etnografía prolongadas y experiencia personal de enfermedades autoinmunitarias, propongamos un modelo dinámico de ciclos de retroalimentación instantáneos que mantienen, magnifican otemplan el dolor. [dolor, sufrimiento, bienestar, enfermedad autoinmune, modelo sistemático]

Some Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members conceive of the fundamental problem they share as a “spiritual malady.” Based on fieldwork among three AA groups in Nova Scotia, Canada, this article advances an ethnographic description of the concept. Through a close examination of how the spiritual malady was interpreted by my interlocutors, I propose that the concept creates a cultural framework for the articulation of subjectivities and the interpretation of psychologies. I argue that it exists through a reciprocity of private and public meanings that are more the product of interactions between AA members than the learning and repetition of a formal ideology. This analysis becomes a means of exploring the agency of AA members as producers of meaningful representations of the challenges they feel they hold in common.