Every day during September we will post up an idea for you to vote on. The most popular ideas will become the things that the inaugural Organizing Committee of the Critical Physiotherapy Network focuses on in 2015. So please make sure you cast your vote at the bottom of each post. 10 years ago, as I was just starting out on my PhD, one of my supervisors suggested that I attend the 'In Sickness and In Health' conference in Reykjavik that year. The conference was organized by a group of critical and radical health researchers who had come together a few years before and realized that they needed a forum to exchange ideas and support each others' research. (You can read the programme … [Read more...] about Idea 1: A colloquium in the South of France (2 mins)
Tone Dahl-Michelsen’s interview in Norwegian
Please refer to the earlier posting to access links to Tone's article. Hvordan ble du interessert i spørsmål om kjønn i fysioterapeututdanning? Min interesse for spørsmål om kjønn i fysioterapeututdanning startet i min egen studietid i 1992-1995. Fra første dag på fysioterapeututdanningen så var kroppen hovedsakelig fokusert som en generalisert, anatomisk og biomekanisk kropp. Jeg husker at i første time med ferdighetstrening så sa læreren at «upassende oppførsel» ikke skulle forekomme. På denne tiden var jeg ikke klar over hvordan dette dreide seg om kjønn. Jeg tror at min interesse for betydningen av kjønn i fysioterapeututdanning ble trigget gjennom det paradokset jeg erfarte ved at … [Read more...] about Tone Dahl-Michelsen’s interview in Norwegian
Tone Dahl-Michelsen on ‘When bodies matter’
One of the things we want to do with our Critical Physiotherapy Network is to promote people writing critically about physiotherapy. As well as posting up recent publications and maintaining an archive of resources, we'll profile the authors and try to get behind their work. In this piece, Tone Dahl-Michelsen -Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Professions, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway (link to Tone's profile and CV) talks about her recent paper When bodies matter: Significance of the body in gender constructions in physiotherapy education. You can find a link to the article here. Abstract This article examines which bodily … [Read more...] about Tone Dahl-Michelsen on ‘When bodies matter’
Health as pornography
Drawing a long bow, I know, but with a few minor amendments, Loïc Wacquant could actually be talking about physiotherapy...or medicine...or any of the other health professions that adhere to the medical model: '...the [physiotherapy] merry-go-round is to [health] what pornography is to amorous relations: a mirror deforming reality to the point of the grotesque that artificially extracts [deviant movement] from the fabric of social relations in which they take root and make sense, deliberately ignores their causes and their meanings, and reduces their treatment to a series of conspicuous position takings, often acrobatic, sometimes properly unreal, pertaining to the cult of ideal … [Read more...] about Health as pornography
Social determinants of health and physiotherapy
I start a week of teaching on the social determinants of health on Monday with our 1st year physiotherapy students. It's part of a course/module we run at AUT called 'Physiotherapy and Health Priorities' and it looks at applying public health principles to our practice. Social determinants aren't something that physios have spent a lot of time studying in the past, and it's a bit alarming to see how little research is out there that points to a role for the profession. We're not even driving the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff on this issue: we're the people who pick up the patients who have left the ambulance after its already crashed. Clearly this is not a wise or enviable … [Read more...] about Social determinants of health and physiotherapy
New article ‘Mobility, empire, colonisation’ by Tony Ballantyne
From History of Australia, 2014, 11(2) Link to full text here. Abstract This article examines the role of mobility in the operation of modern maritime empires and identifies some of the particular ways in which mobility was constituted as a ‘problem’ in debates over colonisation. After briefly mapping a range of ways in which different forms of mobility underwrote the processes of empire, the article turns to the colony of Otago. It sketches how arguments about the meaning of different types of movement played out in a specific colonial location where tensions over fixity and mobility stood at the heart of struggles over the meaning of both ‘empire’ and ‘community’. … [Read more...] about New article ‘Mobility, empire, colonisation’ by Tony Ballantyne
Being really critical about thinking
Because physiotherapy is so grounded in the biomedical sciences, most undergraduate students (and a fair few postgrads) tend to think that critical thinking is about the ability to analyze a research paper. At best this can result in a deep appreciation for the evidence that presently exists for a phenomenon, at worst the students follow a formulaic process to arrive at a score that is as predictable as it is banal. There is, however, another side to critical theory - a world of research and scholarship that these students are rarely, if ever, exposed to - the kinds of thinking that is commonplace in the arts, humanities, philosophy and sociology. I spend quite a lot of time in this … [Read more...] about Being really critical about thinking