Seeking Care & Global Cultural Neutrality in White Houses(?)

The email concerned a book
- | White Houses | -
 and posed a question.

Needless to say it caught my attention ...

Is White a Statement or a Neutral Surface for Expression?

This is a question I ask myself, but in respect of Hodges' model.

To what extent is Hodges' model neutral across cultures?

Remove the green, blue and red colours I adopted for the care domains  and what you have is a blank sheet; an empty conceptual space.

Is it empty? 

Very quickly it can become filled with what the person, patient, client, group ... brings with them.

Hodges' model is a stage. Several stages.

It is a theater.

It is a challenge for the performer, as they take their turn. As they navigate the space, they seek to ensure, assure, obtain feedback that the other - listener(s) are with them; whether in agreement or not.
Hodges' model is an arena for personal, group reflection, debate, argument(ation) or as described these days - co-production.

How suitable is #h2cm as a tool to support global health objectives, such as, the Social Development Goals and the Social Determinants of Health (and their ongoing development)? For me, Hodges' model is not just a neutral surface, it is a neutral substrate for the many forms of knowledge needed to solve the problems of the 21st Century.

individual - self

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group- population

	Polite House, Trondheim, Norway, 2012. JVA. The house appears to be made of three stacked and slightly skewed volumes, with touches of colour inside contrasting with the white walls. Photographer credit: © Lars Evanger

My source: Thames & Hudson

Later in the summer - autumn I might post another photo in memory of my father and a holiday ...

The Art & Science of Health: [conceptual scraps ii]

The contrast here within health care is quite stark, we can distinguish between scraps of paper in two ways ...

1. Whatever we do with care needs; confirm them from the referral and possibly (usually) identify additional care needs (and educational opportunities also..?), assess, plan, intervene, and evaluate - that scrap of paper (or its digital analogue) should initially be blank, untainted by judgements, bias and assumptions.
2. As soon as the scrap of paper is populated - scribed-upon then its value and the responsibility of those who access it subsequently is suddenly weighed and measured by law and accountability.

In the first case, ownership is not relevant, in that there is nothing, as yet, to 'own'. Values however can still be represented, if the staff's attitude towards the new patient, client, service user or administration terms referral, contact, triage case is similarly 'neutral'.*

In the second case, when the print hits the page by whatever means the stakes are suddenly raised. The law has a say in what is expected, permissible and reasonable conduct by those gathering data, creating a record, holding, copying and transferring the record in part, or whole and its accuracy, destruction and disposal.

*Of course, even when blank, forms - templates can have proprietary value and may well be protected, copyrighted and trademarked.

to be continued ...

Related post - Part 1:
The Art & Science of Health: [conceptual scraps i]

Hodges' model: a blanc space, neutral for structure & content

On twitter today I mentioned the discovery of the book Panaesthetics by Daniel Albright. It was a buy in the end. A great discovery saddened to then learn that its author is no longer with us. Although I have not read it there will be much to draw from it: literally. I have often written about Hodges' model being initially a neutral space, a blank sheet. What is a starting position is always political as with Hodges' model. Its structure regiments the paper it is drawn upon. The presence of a political care - knowledge domain makes a statement. Structurally and in content the sense of neutrality is broken. Albright points to historical support as he discusses "What is painting?".

"White, said Superville, is an innocent peaceful color, calming us in the way that pure snow or moonlight calms. Black implies "silence and solitude, sadness, death, and oblivion"; red is "the hieroglyph of life and movement . . . the excess of luminous rays, just as the colour black is its absorption and annihilation." But this correlation of color with emotional state is less original than Superville's belief that color and lines are "the identical signs of one invariable language, and the associations of the one automatically imply the associations of the other" - every color corresponds to a linear pattern, every linear pattern presupposes a certain color. Superville provides a diagram to prove his point: red throws its arms into the air; black is stooped, submissive; "white , an invariable, pure sign, like the horizontal line, occupies the middle space between two extremes" (fig. 27)." p.102.

This is not the exact figure from the book but the meaning is relayed (I think).

A contact from the OU and 'The Difference that Makes a Difference' Conferences David Chapman kindly commented on this post on Facebook:

David Chapman "White is an innocent, peaceful, color". Except when it is the colour of the KKK, colonialism and slavery? I like the use of the shapes and can see that there may be ideas you can use in the quad, though.

Unlike · Reply · 1 · March 4 at 8:44am

I've expanded on my Facebook response below:

Thanks David, Yes I realise there's a potentially racist tone to this "white as pure". It is of course about the ideas, structure and form. I still refer implicitly to Michel Serres' work and the significance of 'blanc' and in previous posts. There are many ethnocultural connotations as to how black, white, greys and colours are interpreted and what they mean. As a tool it is important that Hodges' model conveys neutrality. In this case no emotional, value-based stance is taken.

Another thought from the past I recall is the BBC micro wordprocessor View and its appearance on a monochrome (Phillips) screen. Green on black (the new 'blanc'?) worked best. The penultimate blanc is the night sky...?

Albright, D. (2014) Panaesthetics On the Unity and Diversity of the Arts. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Diagram: http://www.dezenovevinte.net/obras/av_rc_baile_en.htm

Hodges' meta-model...?

In combination the empty foreground and background brings us simultaneously to what is 'now': the situation, the context. The personal, social, political and physical are constantly re-presented in the health:ill-health duality. Our focus remains: ill-health. We still lack the depth of vision to resolve this duality. Focus needs structure: only from simplicity may we travel to complexity. 

The need for simplicity, structure, meaning and recording can be found, accomplished and apprehended through the conceptual framework known as Hodges' model. Its cruciform span is coincidental, and yet can be interpreted as four ways. Four ways of looking - seeing, learning and knowing. Five ways and even. As the model and the user reflects the innumerable perspectives that can be found as these conceptual spaces breathe: waxing and waning. Always from that initial state. Emptiness with structure.

Self: Inside and Outside the Boxes c/o Tate Liverpool Maria Lassnig

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic -------------------------------------------  mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group-population

Maria Lassnig, Inside and Outside the Canvas IV 1984-5 © Maria Lassnig Foundation

Let there be no - 'Invisible Rooms' - in the Art and Science of Care

Visited Tate Liverpool, 1000-1230 today.

Blanc:Individual:Population - Dichotomy, Polar Opposition, Planetary Health

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ---------------------------------------  mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

Pole-to-Pole (Upper Marginal)

Image: WOPA, Greenland, Pole-to-Pole

What's good for art students ....

Never take the stylus or brush
in your hand if you have not first
constituted in your mind all that you have to do.

Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, 1435-36

My source: 16 May 2010, Visit to The British Museum, Italian Renaissance drawings.

Is this my excuse for taking so long with a new website?

Curriculum design and the value of whitespace

The best websites are often variously described as clean, slick, easy to navigate and access. They are considered 'best' often as a consequence of appreciating the need for whitespace. This means of course that they are also minimalist, uncluttered, easier to style consistently and they often have plenty of free space. The Google site and resulting interface is a prime example, to the extent it has become a recognised brand characteristic.

The pressures on curricula almost preempts the phenomena of student cramming. Without careful planning and discipline curricula can be jammed so full that there is no slack, no whitespace.

As a result there is also no space to reflect (Clouder, 2009).

Reference:
Lynn Clouder (2009) Promotion of Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment through Curriculum Design, Occasional Paper 10, Connecting Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment, Edited by Helen Bulpitt and Mary Deane, Higher Education Academy. p.11.

Additional links:
Whitespace programming language

What Hodges' model is not - prescriptive

Even though models of nursing (health and social care?) are not exactly flavour of the month at present, if they were then Hodges' model could avoid getting involved in the interminable debates that often surrounds this or that model. As per a previous post therapies, models and computing languages can have much in common with legions of supporters - champions who may have a great deal invested professionally and personally.

Hodges' model is neutral in this respect: it is not prescriptive. It does not dictate the particular approach (problem-based, solution focused, person-centred, family partnership, psychosocial, developmental, educational, recovery, self-care, citizen-centred...), but obviously wherever Hodges' model is used the values expected of the professional must follow. Hodges' model provides a very high level, generic arena with potential applications across home, all clinical, social care and pastoral settings, other work places, communities, businesses, governments, high schools, colleges, prisons and for the more adventurous the space station and beyond. This may suggest that Hodges' model is in some way 'above' other models, looking down as they fight it out in their disciplinary enclosures below; but this is far from it. All the tools we use must to subjected to debate, research and critique.

So wherever you are physically and wherever the (care) situation leads you cognitively (within and between one or more care domains) Hodges' model can be utilised. This freedom, this diversity of application does not come free. Allied with our values using Hodges' model requires work and effort. We can obtain an appreciation of the task and the work involved when we consider Hodges' model in terms of user interface design and progressive disclosure - to follow.

Original image source: http://www.medicinescomplete.com/mc/bnf/current/images/diamorphine_prescription.gif