The general aim of this paper is to provide insight into the relevance of critical phenomenology for the study of the patient-provider relationship in health care systems in U.S. jails, prisons, and detention facilities. In particular, I utilize tools from the work of scholars studying phenomenological approaches to health care and structural forms of oppression to analyze several harms that arise from the provision of medical care under the punitive constraints of carceral facilities.

In ‘Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and Emotions in Being and Time’, we explicated the crucial role that Martin Heidegger assigns to our capacity to affectively find ourselves in the world. There, our discussion was restricted to Division I of Being and Time. Specifically, we discussed how Befindlichkeit as a basic existential and moods as the ontic counterparts of Befindlichkeit make circumspective engagement with the world possible. Indeed, according to Heidegger, it is primarily through moods that the world is ‘opened (...) up’ and revealed to us as a world that is suffused with values and entities that already matter to us. In this companion essay, our aim is to expand our analysis of affectivity in the following ways: first, we revisit our discussion of Befindlichkeit in light of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of BT; second, we discuss the basic or fundamental mood of boredom and its ontological significance; we conclude by providing a brief characterization of how Heidegger's notion of mood changes in his later thinking. (shrink)

In exploring phenomenological literature, it is evident that the term ‘phenomenology’ holds rather different meanings depending upon the context. Phenomenology has been described as both a philosophical movement and an approach to human science research. The phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau-Ponty was philosophical in nature and not intended to provide rules or procedures for conducting research. The Canadian social scientist, van Manen, however, introduced specific guidelines for conducting human science research, which is rooted in hermeneutic phenomenology and this (...) particular method has been employed in professional disciplines such as education, nursing, clinical psychology, and law. The purpose of this paper is to explore the difference between the phenomenological method as described by van Manen and that of other philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Merleau-Ponty. In so doing, the author aims to address the blurred boundaries of phenomenology as a research method and as a philosophical movement and highlight the influence of these blurred boundaries on nursing knowledge development. (shrink)