Care

In the context of the care crisis in modern medicine, the existential needs of patients are not sufficiently satisfied. One idea to address the crisis is that physicians should be educated to be virtuous. This suggestion is inadequate because it does not take into account the role of (non-)human factors, including technologies. The paper focuses on online caring forums, arguing that they are technological factors that can play the role of “focal things”, in which the members gather together to do a care-related focal practice. We study empirically the online forums of Ninisite, a popular Persian website on pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting, and suggest that these forums shape focal practices that are helpful in alleviating the care crisis.             

In An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro gives an account of Masuji Ono, an ageing painter who reviews his life and profession in the post-World War II Japan. Though the novel has huge potentials for psychosocial development of characterization, few studies have paid attention to this potentiality. This study is going to investigate the characterization of the protagonist in terms of the midlife crisis with which he is involved. Considering the fact that Masuji’s review is characterized by the obsession with family and profession with an attempt to decide whether he achieved “generativity” or “stagnation,” his account can be discussed in terms of Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development. Focusing on the seventh stage of Erikson’s theory which is primarily characterized by deciding over the binary “generativity versus stagnation” and the individual’s struggle to decide on the meaning of life, the present research explores Masuji’s attempts at creating a positive image of his past and also his tendency to compensate his shortcomings in familial issues in order to finally feel “generative” in his midlife years. Ultimately, this research comes to the conclusion that Masuji is able to overcome the psychological tribulations of the stage by developing the virtue of “care.”

Challenging menstrual situation is more difficult for orphans and vulnerable adolescent girls; also negative experiences of having period have a significant impact on their physical and mental health. Awareness of their experiences is essential for improving and developing programs as well as psycho-social interventions. Thus, the present phenomenological qualitative study investigated menstrual experiences of orphans and vulnerable adolescent girls residing in residential houses of OVC Care Institutions in Iran. Saturated sampling lead to collecting 12 semi-structured interviews with the OVGs living in OVC Care Institutions residential houses of Iran. Qualitative analysis was performed using the Colaizzi’s method of data analysis to examine the patterns derived from the data. The results of analysis included five main themes and sixteen sub-themes. 1) Psychological problems of menstruation 2) Psychological problems 3) Positive strategies (attributing positive meaning, acceptance, attending to the body, seeking help and religious expectations compatibility. 4) negative strategies (relying on false/limited information, focusing on negative excitements and immature behaviors) 5. Needs and privileges of care homes (high numbers of supporters/ low privacy, desirable health facilities but limited access, helpful but non-comprehensive menstrual knowledge). Understanding menstrual experiences of orphans and vulnerable adolescent girls residing in residential houses can provide insights into gender-specific needs from a beneficiaries’ perspective so that it would be useful for improving the quality of care and also in developing educational interventions and preventing negative consequences throughout life.

For Edmund Husserl, the crisis of the modern sciences consists in the reduction of beings and the world to the mathematically measurable. Yet the lifeworld with its things that we fashion and use with our hands is no less real than the objects of science, and the scientific attitude is always nested within this lived world. Martin Heidegger by contrast finds the major source of our crisis in the Cartesian conception of subject and world. This has culminated in Nietzschean theory of the will to power, which in its unity with technology has despoiled our environment. In all of this Heidegger retains a tenderness for the small-scale products of human handiwork, which are preferable to machines and machine tools. In his own philosophy of technology Gilbert Simondon shares some of these concerns, whilst contending that technological objects have untapped potentials in relation to those who invent, use and develop them. Common to all these philosophies is a worry about abstract theory and mechanization reducing our direct engagement with things. This worry is compounded by a sociocultural tendency identified by Matthew Crawford, a tendency to denigrate a career in the practical trades. Drawing on Crawford’s experience of manual engagement in the world, I argue that a revalorization of such skilled work and of caring and repairing would help to ameliorate the climate and pollution crises and improve our lives. Many of our problems come from the discarding of things through our carelessness or through planned obsolescence by their makers.