In 2004, twelve capuchin monkeys were moved from the labs of the Danish psychiatric hospital of Sankt Hans to a small private-owned zoo in another part of Denmark in order to be rehabilitated. These monkeys were the last nonhuman primates to be used as research animals in Danish biomedical laboratories. The normal procedure would be to kill research animals after the termination of an experiment; in this case, however, a decision was reached to close down the lab. The moral landscape (...) had changed, and it was no longer considered acceptable to use nonhuman primates in Danish biomedicine. From being considered a biological resource serving as a model of man, the monkeys had become moral subjects with a claim to a life suiting their natural needs. Simultaneously, the monkeys became instrumental in creating moral legitimacy for the actors involved in their rescue. What we see is an instance of pathfinding in a changing moral landscape where actors negotiate nonhuman primate nature as they create new moral positions for themselves. (shrink)

In this article we explore the contribution from social anthropology to the medical ethical debates about the use of informed consent in research, based on blood samples and other forms of tissue. The article springs from a project exploring donors’ motivation for providing blood and healthcare data for genetic research to be executed by a Swedish start-up genomics company. This article is not confined to empirical findings, however, as we suggest that anthropology provides reason to reassess the theoretical understanding of (...) autonomy as generally defined by Beauchamp and Childress. Careful consideration of the trust expressed by donors through the act of donation, furthermore, suggests that there is reason to redirect the ethical scrutiny from informed consent to issues concerning institutional arrangements and social responsibility. In particular, we suggest that an anthropological approach could facilitate a reconsideration of the political implications of using informed consent as a regulatory practice in tissue-based research. (shrink)

This article has two objectives. In the first part, I present a critical overview of the extensive anthropological literature that may be deemed “phenomenological.” Following this critique, which is built up around a classification into four different varieties of phenomenological anthropology, I discuss the relationship between phenomenological anthropology and the ontological turn (OT). Contrary to received wisdom within the anthropological discipline, I suggest that OT has several things in common with the phenomenological project. For the same reason, I argue, it (...) is not accurate to posit OT and phenomenology as opposing or antagonistic projects, as they are often depicted among critics and advocates of OT alike. On the contrary, I go as far as suggesting, OT may be understood as one of the most concerted attempts anthropology has produced to realize a distinctly anthropological version of Husserl’s method of phenomenological bracketing, namely what could be called the ontological epoché. (shrink)

Discourse communities are groups of people who share common ideologies, and common ways of speaking about things. They can be sharply or loosely defined. We are each members of multiple discourse communities. Discourse can colonize the members of discourse communities, taking over domains of thought by means of ideology. The development of new discourse communities can serve positive ends, but discourse communities create risks as well. In our own work on the narratives of people with interests in health care, for (...) example, we find that patients speak of their illness experiences as victims of circumstance; policy makers construct adverse experiences and challenges as opportunities to be taken; health care workers speak from a mixed perspective, seeing themselves as both victims and opportunists depending on context. To be trapped within the discourse of a particular community is to put at risk the ability to communicate across discourses. Membership of a discourse community can impair the habit of critique, and deny opportunities for heteroglossic discourse. Privileging critique as a mode of discourse perhaps might define the ethical community, suggesting that ethical community may be an antidote to the constraining effects of conventional discourse community. (shrink)

Contemporary discourses surrounding adoption have a normative tone and are critical of the ways in which international adoption is power based and exploitative. These discourses have a significant influence on adoptive parents, structuring their actions and opening the door for scrutiny of individual adopters' motives and ethics. As an internationally adoptive parent, I reflect, in this article, on my experience and use it as a vantage point from which to consider alternative perspectives on the ethical debates in the extant adoption (...) literature. The insights gained from my experience can inform adoption practices and the development of more nuanced, less polarized perspectives on the ethics of international adoption and inspire new avenues of research that explore the ways in which adoptive parents navigate their socio-political contexts in ways that are ethically sensitive and workable for them. (shrink)

Ethnographic fieldwork is subject to a number of tensions regarding the position of the researcher. Traditionally, these are discussed from a methodological perspective, and draw attention to issues such as ‘objectivity’ of the research and the supposed need for ‘distance’ in the process of knowledge-building. Approaching the issue from a different angle, this article provides a reflection on the positionality of the researcher through an autoethnographical account based on fieldwork with socially excluded groups. Rather than reflecting on the (dis)advantages of (...) proximity for the research process, it explores from a personal stance how this role interacts with other roles in the researcher's life (e.g. being a volunteer, a citizen, an advocate, a moral being). Increased awareness about this intrinsic positionality of the researcher calls for a situated conceptualisation of professionalism and science. The author furthermore explores how an autoethnographical approach relates to educational research and su.. (shrink)

In the pursuit of a dramaturgy of telematics as a compositional practice, the author builds a position on technology as externalized technique, develops a dramaturgic strategy with notions of an extended theatre practice and reports on a realized telematized performance where a practical implementation was explored. The theatrical site is viewed as a construct of attention, generated by the performers through the performance composition. The composition determines the audience experience, orchestrated by how the construction of the site manages their perspectives, (...) and how the performers are situated in the consciousness site of the audience. In the performed event the performers articulate as a collective extended entity, incorporating the transformation of the performance site via the articulation strategies implemented in the staging. Telematics is argued to be a technology facilitating specific modes of thinking, generating specific modes of actions and presence, which enable new performance sites and new modes of situating performance. (shrink)

The project Gender Perspective on Embedded Intelligent Systems – Application in Healthcare Technology financed by Vinnova is integrated into the research environment Embedded Intelligent Systems at Halmstad University. EIS is contributing to the regional Triple Helix innovation system Healthcare Technology by developing new technology for application within the health and care sector, and there is an outspoken need for a more articulated gender perspective within the research environment. The project is inspired by the Technoscientific gender research. It has a qualitative (...) and action research approach and is oriented toward development. In the project process the difference between epistemological cultures has been obvious. In the interaction between the researchers we realize that engineering and other technological sciences not only consider aspects of science to be separate from reality, but also seek positivistic proof in research, something not always possible in the more qualitative research of the social sciences. In the paper we discuss how to bridge and create understanding between sciences and different epistemological cultures. (shrink)