Critical geographies of love and loss: Relational responses to the death of a spouse in Senegal

Marriage practices in the Majority world may differ considerably from dominant cultural ideals in the Minority world of ‘romantic love’ and ‘companionate marriage’ based on monogamous relationships. Similarly, mourning in the ‘Rest’ of the world often diverges from assumptions within Anglophone bereavement studies of a ‘grieving journey’. This paper provides a gendered, spatial, relational analysis of responses to the death of a spouse in Senegal, based on in-depth interviews with Serer women and men in rural and urban communities. A heightened sense of relationality with the deceased surrounded widows' bodies, with permeable boundaries that needed to be contained and “purified” through widowhood-mourning practices in order to restore social cohesion. For men, the space of the home was transformed, sometimes unbearably, by the loss of a wife and mother due to their central role in home-making practices, transforming men's relational being. ‘Embodied relationality’, alongside material constraints, also shaped perspectives on remarriage. The paper reveals the diverse material, embodied, spatial, and often explicitly gendered, ways that the effects of the death of a spouse may be manifested in the experience of the living person and draws attention to the permeable embodied boundaries of ‘relational being’ that encompass the living and the dead.     

A Return to “The Clinic” for Community Psychology: Lessons from a Clinical Ethnography in Urban American Indian Behavioral Health

Community psychology (CP) abandoned the clinic and disengaged from movements for community mental health (CMH) to escape clinical convention and pursue growing aspirations as an independent field of context‐oriented, community‐engaged, and values‐driven research and action. In doing so, however, CP positioned itself on the sidelines of influential contemporary movements that promote potentially harmful, reductionist biomedical narratives in mental health. We advocate for a return to the clinic—the seat of institutional power in mental health—using critical clinic‐based inquiry to open sites for clinical‐community dialogue that can instigate transformative change locally and nationally. To inform such works within the collaborative and emancipatory traditions of CP, we detail a recently completed clinical ethnography and offer “lessons learned” regarding challenges likely to re‐emerge in similar efforts. Conducted with an urban American Indian community behavioral health clinic, this ethnography examined how culture and culture concepts (e.g., cultural competence) shaped clinical practice with socio‐political implications for American Indian peoples and the pursuit of transformative change in CMH. Lessons learned identify exceptional clinicians versed in ecological thinking and contextualist discourses of human suffering as ideal partners for this work; encourage intense contextualization and constraining critique to areas of mutual interest; and support relational approaches to clinic collaborations.     

Belief in a just world mediates the relationship between institutional trust and life satisfaction among the elderly in China

This study investigated the relationship between institutional trust and life satisfaction, and the mediating role of belief in a just world (BJW) among the elderly. The General Belief in a Just World Scale (GBJW) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) were employed. A self-developed Institutional Trust questionnaire was used to measure participant’ levels of trust in eight institutions. The aggregate score for all eight items represented the level of institutional trust. The questionnaires were completed by 19,352 retirees ranging in age from 50 to 99 (M = 69.7, SD = 8.0). The results showed the following: (1) overall, the retirees tended to report high institutional trust and high life satisfaction; (2) institutional trust was positively associated with life satisfaction; and (3) more importantly, the relationships between institutional trust and life satisfaction were partially mediated by GBJW. This finding provides a new insight into the psychological mechanisms by which institutional trust relates to individual happiness. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings, as well as the study’s limitations, are discussed.     

An Auto‐Ethnographic Study of “Open Dialogue”: The Illumination of Snow

This auto‐ethnographic study describes the changes in the author's thinking and clinical work connected to her first‐hand experience of Open Dialogue, which is an innovative, psychosocial approach to severe psychiatric crises developed in Tornio, Finland. In charting this trajectory, there is an emphasis on three interrelated themes: the micropolitics of U.S. managed mental health care; the practice of “dialogicality” in Open Dialogue; and the historical, cultural, and scientific shifts that are encouraging the adaptation of Open Dialogue in the United States. The work of Gregory Bateson provides a conceptual framework that makes sense of the author's experience and the larger trends. The study portrays and underscores how family and network practices are essential to responding to psychiatric crises and should not be abandoned in favor of a reductionist, biomedical model.     

The Effect of Terror on Institutional Trust: New Evidence from the 3/11 Madrid Terrorist Attack

Research from the United States suggests that the 9/11 terrorist attack increased trust in political institutions by creating a “rally effect.” In this research note we analyze Eurobarometer data collected immediately before and after the March 11, 2004 terrorist attack in Madrid to replicate and extend previous findings from the United States. We report that, first, trust in different types of institutions (political, media, justice) increased significantly immediately after the Madrid terrorist attack; second, the effect of the attack varied systematically across different types of institutions; and, third, the effect was generally short‐lived. Our results suggest that the rally effect of terror on trust in institutions generalizes across national contexts but also that the effect differs across types of institutions.     

Scientific empathy,American buddhism,and the ethnography of religion

This paper examines some of the current ideas and methods that have problematised the study of religion within a globalised community. Religion and culture cannot be considered bounded entities, to be described as unchangeable. However, their constant process of change is not something new. It becomes new due to writing patterns and contemporary ideas on the relevance of religion or the creativity of culture. By analysing some discussions on possession cults, the paper suggests that ritual and performance constitute the moments when culture and religion are mediated. It is through ritual that religious practices are adapted, and it is in a ritual performance where culture is contested and challenged. Religion becomes ‘confused culture’, that once again is re‐organised and made orderly by reflection on ritual practices. Finally, the paper suggests that the agenda for an anthropology of religion for this new century is two‐fold. Firstly, to try to become more conversant with ever changing localised practices of ritual, and secondly, to try to converse about those practices with other practitioners and scholars from different fields and in different fields.     

The ‘Connection’ Health Care Providers Make with Dying Patients

SUMMARY

The literature confirms illness and hospitalisation can become spiritual encounters for patients and their families. Further, it has been established that both patients and their families are better equipped to deal with loss and change if they have a healthily developed spiritual sense of self. The aim of the study sought to determine the benefit or otherwise of a previous model of spiritual care. It asked ‘from the perspective of the nurse and other health care providers, what constitutes spiritual care giving?’ An ethnography was undertaken where data consisted of field notes, interviews, records, and diary entries. This paper reports on interview data, from which themes were derived. The major theme titled their space is expressed via a new model of spiritual care. It was shown that when caring for patients and their relatives, nurses and other health care professionals enter the world of the other to determine the other's needs. In so doing they typify agapé (altruistic love), where the individual cares for a complete stranger as if that stranger were family. This connection with the patient and their family is the foundation for spiritual care.     

Queering Buddhism or Buddhist De-Queering?

Abstract

This article examines how multiple axes of difference — race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality — operate in the religious/spiritual lives of western convert LGBTQI Buddhists. Through an ethnographic study of a diverse LGBTQI Buddhist group in Oakland, California, it will reflect on emerging differences between western convert Buddhist LGBTQI practitioners. In particular, it examines how distinct populations of LGBTQI practitioners utilize the non-essentialist philosophy of Buddhism, showing how it can operate both conservatively as a way to reinforce heteronormativity and subversively as a way to challenge heteronormativity.     

Environments as reinforcer systems in the study of job satisfaction

This paper examined differences in the degree to which fifteen specific sources of job satisfaction were related to and predictive of the overall satisfaction of department chairmen in the six model environments proposed by Holland (1973). The fifteen specific sources of job satisfaction were regressed on overall satisfaction, separately for chairmen in each environment, through the use of incremental stepwise multiple regression procedures. The results indicated that the overall satisfaction of chairmen in these six environments was differentially related to unique weightings and combinations of the fifteen predictor variables. It was concluded that environments, composed of essentially similar groups of people in different organizations, serve as job satisfaction reinforcer systems in a manner similar to organizations as illustrated by Dawis.     

“I Was a Muslim,But Now I Am a Christian”: Preaching,Legitimation, and Identity Management in a Southern Evangelical Church

Established in 2005, “Life” is a suburban, nondenominational, evangelical church in Charlotte, North Carolina, with an almost entirely white membership, yet the lead pastor is an immigrant from the Middle East. As an ex‐Muslim ethnic Pakistani who was born and raised in Kuwait, Pastor Sameer Khalid does not “fit” into southern culture, and he did not convert to Christianity until he was enrolled in college in the United States. Ethnographic data from 14 months of fieldwork reveal how Pastor Sameer uses weekly sermons to negotiate racialized stigmas, emphasize his common religious identity with the congregation, and make his immigrant background a distinctive religious resource for the church. More specifically, while all pastors require legitimation of their charismatic authority, this research focuses on the dynamics of performance through preaching within the Sunday morning services of this congregation, a performance that negotiates this lead pastor's ethnic and religious identities and accentuates his strategic use of institutionalized evangelical narratives to subvert Islamophobic threats and buttress legitimation of his pastoral identity.