In this short video, Judith Butler explores the lived experience and some of the social and political dimensions of disability with Sanaura Taylor in a walk through the streets of San Francisco. During the walk they challenge the normative definition of the idea of walking and talk about how disability is often projected on to people by our stereotypical attitudes. One of the things that really moved me was their discussion of the normality of obtaining help from people. This feeds into one of the growing critiques of Western culture - and we see it coming through really strongly in health care, particularly when funding cuts are being made - and that is that we should not be looking … [Read more...] about Walking, disability rights and embodiment (video feat. Judith Butler & Sanaura Taylor)
Podcast – Prof Teresa Mangum – The Future of the Academic and Public Humanities
This podcast if the first in a series of lectures on the future of the humanities in public life. The series began on 28 November 2014 with a leture by Professor Teresa Mangum, Director of the Obermann Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa. Professor Magnum talks about how the humanities are being systematically undermined by discourses that privilege economic efficiency and utilitarian learning. There are a lot of parallels with the way we are seeing the long-valued capabilities of empathy, caring and altruism in education and health care practice being replaced by capitalistic notions of measurable cost and benefit. Abstract: In the United States, the pressures on the … [Read more...] about Podcast – Prof Teresa Mangum – The Future of the Academic and Public Humanities
My critical physiotherapy Christmas list
Santa is a busy chap so needs help to know who's been naughty and whose been nice. I've tried my best to be nice this year. Honestly I have. So I thought I'd draw up a critical physiotherapy Christmas list of the things I'd like in my stocking on Christmas morning. Dear Santa, Could I please have: A physiotherapy journal that refuses, on principal, to publish any article where the authors use the words evidence-based practice, musculoskeletal, neurological, cardiorespiratory, mixed methods, systematic, descriptive, thematic, or any word ending in -itis. A return to a properly funded public health system. An overhaul to the weighting of academic journals. I'd like all journal's … [Read more...] about My critical physiotherapy Christmas list
ISIH conference abstracts submitted
I've decided to submit two abstracts for the ISIH conference next year. The first follows some work I've been doing for a chapter I'm writing for an upcoming book by Franziska Trede and Celina McEwen titled 'Educating the deliberate professional: Preparing practitioners for emergent futures', and looks at the historical role played by artisans and whether professions like physiotherapy might find some meaningful and interesting ways to reinvent this role in 21st century health care. This is the first abstract: Re-inventing artisans for 21st century health care Calls for health professionals to be more than ‘technical rationalists’ have been prominent in professionalization … [Read more...] about ISIH conference abstracts submitted
Educating Health Professionals: an Intersectoral Policy Approach
This report Educating Health Professionals-an Intersectoral Policy Approach was sent to us by Prof. Dr. Heidi Höppner MPH, Professorin für Physiotherapie, Förderung der Gesundheit und Teilhabe in Berlin (hoeppner@ash-berlin.eu). Thinking about the future of health and care At present, the health system and the health industry are undergoing historic changes and are confronted with major challenges. The health society is increasingly interconnected globally, which leads to a shift in the traditional boundaries between disciplines and professions, institutions and countries. By the same token, the relation between service provision and citizen, market and regulation, doctor and patient, … [Read more...] about Educating Health Professionals: an Intersectoral Policy Approach
Thinking about silence
This is a general call out to anyone who reads this blog who might be interested in looking further into the therapeutic and educational possibilities of silence. I'm interested in the idea of silence as a way to stimulate thought and practice in the way that Erin Manning talks about the thousand possibilities that exist for dancers before they finally resolve into this movement or that (Manning, 2007). I'm also interested in its deliberate use as a postmodern strategy designed to leave problems unresolved as a way to keep open the possibility of thinking otherwise or a thousand alternative 'lines of flight' (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). And as an educational strategy akin to Jacques … [Read more...] about Thinking about silence
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