Refraction of participation by Jeannette Pols
Refraction of participation What does it mean to participate? What does participation do?[1] The etymology of ‘participation’ traces from the Latin word participationem, which translates as ‘sharing, …
Refraction of participation What does it mean to participate? What does participation do?[1] The etymology of ‘participation’ traces from the Latin word participationem, which translates as ‘sharing, …
The question of how Willem was coping, alone in the big house, had come to concern many of those surrounding him. Over the past couple of months, Willem…
The sun wakes her up. But Mrs Wijngaard keeps her eyes closed. She is 90 years old and sits quietly in her armchair in her apartment in the…
For my doctoral research, I interviewed family members living with a loved one with early-onset dementia, a diagnosis that one receives under the age of 65. Jans, not…
Babe, my grandpa, was born on the kitchen tiles of a small Seattle home. His dad, whose own grandpa had run a seedy downtown brothel, would disappear and…
During fieldwork on dementia care in a nursing home, I was struck by the complex and layered orderings of space, time and subjectivity in daily life on the…
During my first visit to Ghana in 1998, I was involved in a research project that looked at possible co-operations between healers and psychiatric clinics. I stayed in…
Attending to what makes up ‘the everyday’ has long been a challenge for scholars in the social sciences. [1] Researchers from different disciplines and perspectives have explored how mundane…
Medicine in the Meantime: The Work of Care in Mozambique Ramah McKay Duke University Press, 2018, 256 pages The study of medical humanitarianism has grown tremendously in…
One of the most bewildering and fascinating things about spending time with people with dementia is that they can rapidly travel through time. This was most clear with…
I have chosen to tell a story based on six photographs I took of my father, Ivio Duranti (1918-2009) in the last year of his life. He was…
One way to ‘think with dementia’ is to phenomenologically shift from ‘memory’ to ‘remembering’ and to mine ‘remembering’ for its qualities and potentialities as socio-culturally limned experience. Whe…
Sitting on orange seats in the corridor, Ms Verbeek, her niece Hannie and I are waiting for the general practitioner. Ms Verbeek seems a little restless and is…
We knew each other from the drop-in centre. Aspects of our daily life concerns had been shared. ‘We’ were drop-in centre participants: the majority had been diagnosed with…
On a Thursday evening, five men gather around a dinner table. Their host, a scientist from Surrey, England, has left them a note telling them to begin eating…
Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women behind Bars Carolyn Sufrin University of California Press, 2017, 311 pages. Jailcare sheds light on a dark place. The ethnography exposes…
Photo courtesy of “Jane” Jane started us off by saying “I grew up in the US, so I could never count on having healthcare.” Jane (for whom I’m…
Transplanting Care: Shifting Commitments in Health and Care in the U.S. Laura L. Heinemann Rutgers University Press, 186 pp. Heinemann’s work eschews the dramatic moment of transplant…
This is the third installment of the series from the University of Cape Town’s First Thousand Day Research Group. My research traces out the pathways of donated milk…
Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders and Care by Yasmin Gunaratnam Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013, 208 pages David Tasma, a Polish Jew and survivor of the Warsaw ghetto,…
Unforgotten: Love and the Culture of Dementia Care in India by Bianca Brijnath Berghahn Books, 2014, 240 pages Bianca Brijnath’s book, Unforgotten: Love and the Culture of Dementia…
“Global Health is like a containership. The multiple actors —international and local NGOs, humanitarian organisations, scientists, activists, politicians — operate the tugboats, attempting to nu…
I am lying in bed. It is 4 am. The TV is flickering. I am listening for it, I am waiting for it. Next to me a gentle…