I teach on a postgraduate paper that gets students from all sorts of health disciplines to think about themselves as health professionals, their professions, and the ‘others’ that they work with. We use a lot of activities to get the students to reflect on their practice and some of these activities can be really challenging. Students do photo essays, write letters of appreciation, design practice models, and explore critical incidents, but perhaps the most interesting activity involves them taking something every day and obvious and making it strange. We ask the students to identify something about their practice that might otherwise be taken-for-granted, and get them to tell us … [Read more...] about Stating the obvious
The sociology of everyday
People often think that philosophy and sociology are concerned with grand ideas like hope, suffering, the meaning of existence, and what it means to be good. And while it can be about these things, it often concerns things that are commonplace, everyday and quotidian (a lovely word, meaning occurring everyday, mundane and repeated). The latest special issue of the journal Sociology (link) is devoted to the study of everyday life and asks some really interesting questions that we can use in our thinking and practice of physiotherapy. In the guest editorial, Sarah Neal and Karim Murji argue that, 'In many ways, it is difficult to overstate the significance of the everyday because it is, … [Read more...] about The sociology of everyday