107 research outputs found
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The Stench of Disease: Public Health and the Environment in Late-Medieval English towns and cities
Full text linkThis article explores the urban environmental concerns of late-medieval English towns and cities and argues that these urban areas had a form of public health. During this period, regulations that focused on maintaining the good health of town and city inhabitants were created and enforced. Among other things, these regulations focused on reducing unsanitary trade practices, protecting water sources, eliminating foul smells from the air, and preventing the consumption of bad food and water. They also represented a practical application of medieval theories and perceptions of disease—namely that disease was linked to bad smells. Rather than lacking any form of public health due to medieval theories of disease, they actively pursued it due to the ancient and medieval link between environmental health and physical health
Contested Histories and Happiness: Leprosy literature in Japan
Full text linkAt the turn of the twentieth century, the Japanese government passed a series of laws targeting people diagnosed with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). As a result, many patients were quarantined in public leprosaria, often for life. In order to cope with both the diagnosis of a heavily stigmatized illness and a lifetime in isolation, patients began to write. The works produced by sufferers became so popular that by the mid-1930s their writing was referred to as a distinct literary genre, “leprosy literature.” Studies of leprosy literature have focused on its depiction of human rights violations, struggles with the illness, and the difficulty of life in quarantine. However, patient writing in the 1930s also reveals the multiple ways in which patients found happiness within the institution. In this sense, leprosy literature is also a site of translation, revealing the negotiations of hospital life involving hospital and medical authorities, patients, leprosy relief groups, and government policies. Residents of the leprosaria represent happiness in multiple ways depending on their conception of their illness and life in the leprosaria. For some patients, the institution itself was a source of happiness in that their illness was stigmatized to the degree that life outside the hospital became unbearable. Other writers chafed at life in the hospital; the translation of happiness in their writing is a more complex process. This paper takes these diverse processes of translation as its starting point and examines the multiple ways in which patients conceived of health and happiness within the confines of hospital life.
Understanding Well-Being in Multi-Levels: A review
Full text linkWell-being is not only an emerging research agenda, but also a critical issue concerning the individual as well as the societal development, because how the issue is viewed has a huge theoretical as well as practical, even policy, implication. In academic, while some argue that well-being is in the subjective perception of one’s life or psychological functioning, others argue that well-being is in the objective conditions and the broader environment. This paper, drawing on psychology tradition, tries to go beyond the dichotomy of well-being as either an individual attribute or external conditions. Instead, this article acknowledges the multi-levels of well-being are closely tied and should be taken into accounts when well-being is concerned. We will provide a brief review of the two major approaches – subjective well-being and quality of life – of well-being before the multi-level approach is introduced. The strength and challenges of the multilevel approach will be discussed
From Comparison to Indices: A disabling perspective on the history of happiness
Full text linkWho should be considered the most unhappy, the blind or the deaf? The intensive debate over this issue in the early 19th century is the outset of our study of how during the last two hundred years disability and happiness have become inextricably connected. On the basis of our historical analysis we have identified characteristics that also can be found in current happiness interpretations, namely the persistent role played by activation, professional intervention, and alignment with normative behaviors. In order to highlight this intimate connection between past and present we subsequently focus on the contemporary preoccupation with the happiness of people with disabilities, exemplified by research on the so-called “disability paradox” and the development of happiness indices within the behavioral sciences. Our thesis is that applying perspectives from disability studies to happiness research uncovers processes of exclusion and other modalities of power previously overlooked. In our examples, we recognize a desire to lay bare the inside of disabled people’s minds and impose on them un/happy subjectivities. We furthermore argue that the way we think of, and treat, both disability and happiness, i. e. by systematization and professionalization, belongs to a rationalization process which risks colonizing the emotional realm of disabled people. Thus we suggest a research program that ‘dis/ables’ happiness studies and, aided by historical analysis, reconsiders the emotional dimension of disability
How the Practicing Physician Encounters Human Rights in Daily Clinical Situations
Full text linkOur study shows the awareness and application of the concept of human rights (understood as patient rights) in a hospital environment. We sought to determine whether such rights are respected, soliciting the opinion of patients and as to how it acts as a measure for whether service delivery is wholly effective in the conext of the clinician-patient relation. Our research was undertaken to signal a contemporary need in service delivery: health personnel involved in the delivery of surgical services have much to learn from the practical applications of human rights principles and the essential role they must fulfill in research and advocacy in order to improve the availability of surgical care globally. Human rights, medical ethics and empathy are parallel mechanisms working at the level of the patient-clinician relationship. This, in general, can influence the quality of care and communication for the better. Our study was conducted in 2011 and lasted 6 months. The research sites were the public hospitals located in the Kujavian-Pomeranian region of Poland. There were two classes of hospitals: the first, had more than 400 beds (Group I) and the second one: above 400 beds (Group II). We solicted the opinion of 180 patients who had undergone laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The main planned outcome (hypothesis zero) of the study was that there were no differences between the two Groups of hospitals, and therefore no substantial variance in service delivery. The Mann-Whitney U test evidenced that judging by the significance level (p > 0.05), there is no basis for rejecting hypothesis zero.
Learning the Scripts: An exploration of the shared ways in which young Lao volunteers in Vientiane understand happiness.
Full text linkThe idea that development policies need to take account of factors broader than economic growth is increasingly commonplace. A focus upon happiness provides an alternative way of looking at development, but the concept of happiness is far from straightforward. This paper argues that any consideration of happiness in policy must be grounded in nuanced qualitative research that provides a rich understanding of the realities of people\u27s lives and their multiple and often conflicting understandings of what happiness means. This paper draws on ethnographic research with young Lao volunteers with community-based organisations in Vientiane, Laos, that took place between 2010 and 2012. Drawing on Wierzbicka\u27s (2004) concept of cultural scripts, it identifies, describes and explores three collective scripts that this specific group of young people believe about the things that make them happy: • The way to be happy is to be a good Lao person • I will be happy if I have the things that I need to be comfortable and have an easy life • I am happy when I follow my heart Despite illustrating very different understandings of happiness, these stories are woven from a common set of themes about the things that young people think make them happy. Consideration is given to the possible origins of these shared scripts. The discussion section of the paper looks at the implications of these shared scripts for understanding happiness and for the inclusion of a consideration of the concept of happiness in public policy. The paper ends with three conclusions. Firstly it suggests the importance of rich qualitative research in order to make choices about the meaningful use of well-being indicators. Secondly, in making explicit the socially constructed ways that people understand happiness, such research can also remind us of the need to interrogate the ways that happiness is considered in public policy. Thirdly, the paper suggests that such a critical approach to happiness could also be beneficial at the personal level in order for individuals to challenge and make choices about their own beliefs about happiness.
Towards Promoting An African Medical System: A critique of government responses to claims of a cure for HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, 1986-2007
Full text linkThe HIV/AIDS epidemic has been described as the greatest health challenge of our era. Aside from Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment (HAART), the virus has defied any other form of permanent cure or disease control. The continents of Africa and Asia are the worst-hit areas by the scourge of the pandemic. Yet in Africa, there have been claims of HIV/AIDS being cured by African indigenous medical practitioners. Our paper examines the official responses of the Federal Government of Nigeria to such claims. We will examine the emergence and national responses to the epidemic in Nigeria and assess the government’s contempt for the efforts of indigenous medical practitioners in the quest for a viable cure. We conclude by asserting that until African governments realize, recognize and appropriate indigenous medical achievements into mainstream health strategy and policy, Africa will not only remain at the periphery of global health systems but will also continue to be ravaged by HIV/AIDS
Who is Teaching Us about Sustainable Happiness and Well-Being?
Full text linkThe growing recognition that happiness and well-being are intertwined with sustainability is leading to new opportunities for enhancing happiness and well-being, sustainably. The education sector has a critical role in advancing this work but has been slow to incorporate sustainability education and applications of positive psychology. The concept of sustainable happiness (happiness that contributes to individual, community and/or global well-being without exploiting other people, the environment or future generations) (O’Brien, 2010a) offers an innovative perspective to re-invigorate sustainability education and shape priorities for 21st century learning – contributing to resilient, sustainable happiness and well-being for all
Encounters with Translations of Happiness
Full text linkThis special issue edited by Katie Aubrecht demonstrates that a focus on translations of happiness makes us attend to the interpretive process animating social relations. There are many registers of translation that individuals, communities, and the state make use of as they grapple with relations to happiness. Among the vast array of historical registers that aim to make happiness comprehensible or compelling, medicine and politics are two of the most noteworthy. Moving from one register to another, such as from institutional versions of happiness as a medically regulated matter, to its appearance in situations of war, trauma, illness, local community or state, between these differing registers, we come to re-encounter happiness in many important ways as this special issue demonstrates. This issue thus invites its readers to question modernity’s progressive interest in and use of happiness as a way to narrate and assemble our essential inter-relatedness