Where is the Centeredness of Care?

In trying to see Hodges' model anew, which is quite a challenge after four decades; what of the model's structure?

It is easy to get carried away with mathematical terminology:

One line, add another, and they intersect, at a 90 degree right angle. So is centeredness to be found at the intersection point? 

If I'm tying myself up in knots well there's another possibility! 😉 

As a whole it appears the axes of the model are a manifold and not - in the center?

What do you think?

See also: 'What Is a Manifold?'

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-a-manifold-20251103/

Book for review: iv "Philosophy of Care - New Approaches to Vulnerability, Otherness and Therapy"

Don't worry this is not a chapter-by-chapter review. Having cast the stone that is Hodges' model we will skip a few times.

The use of footnotes varies from chapter to chapter. They inform the text, in several instances being quite illuminating. Beside the footnote (1/3 of a page) I noted - 'baby, cacophony, perception - brain - not overwhelmed but can't ignore' (p.41). Stoicism is the focus in chapter 3; perception, fields, manifold, circles of care, self, time, situation! We have field, subfields, domains.

"Perception is always about a diagnosis of the situation in which the living being finds itself. ...

... perception is always about finding one's "whereabouts" or one's "location" in life's journey." p.42.

On the features of perception, 4/4: "might be termed the breadth or width of the perceptual field." p.42. 

"As pointed out above, all perception has the structure of a compact, continuous, and uninterrupted manifold. In other words, it forms what we have termed a field. But the perceptual field  could contain nothing but the "bare bones" of "inert" qualia, (a manifold of simple qualities impinging themselves upon the perceiver)." p.42. 

The author, Jorge de Carvalho continues another view of qualities that take place in "each given moment". This is the challenge of salience, what is significant? How to 'read' in care: the spoken, the unspoken? 

Developing notes on Hodges' model as a mathematical object, Hodges' model in its basic form as a template, I'm proposing as an empty set. The structure of Hodges' model, its two axes instantiate the "bare bones". In programming/instruction terms ... Hodges' model provides INITIALISATION. A reset. This can act as a prompt for learners to acknowledge the person - the other and consider 'unconditional positive regard'. There's polarity too (p.46) and each living being lives in its own global field, in its own global 'map' - in its own geography" (p.49). Physical geography and the change 'there' is giving rise to cogeographical (a neologism?) disruption - eco-anxiety and climate-angst. 

Psycho-geography: the polarity of our times?

Previously: NHS data breaches: the 'cogeography' of who and where?

Another note, amongst Hierocles' circles is 'reflex arc'. So many feedback loops, cascades to worry about. 

As Jorge de Carvalho writes: 'what we are talking about is a very complex field of fields. ... described both as a compass rose and as a framework of concentric circles" (p.51). [There's a relay race, a torch relay in ancient terms p.54. Care is the object that is passed on. I've a dual-shaped baton to pass on.]

Care is more than perception (p.52), care presupposes a degree of activity or action. I like the acknowledgement of 'vigilant waiting' too. For me this draws in the importance of communication; Watzlawick's Five Axioms of Communication. After all, what happens to all these perceptions? There's vulnerability, fragility and care for the sheer existence and the whole content of a given being (p.56). Jorge de Carvalho, deploys a series of numbered points which helps reading. Page 60's footnote had me drawing circles, unborn at the centre: as one. But the collective unborn in another rough circle. Eachtimeness: I like this Stoic formulation through circles. Fourthly, we arrive at pure care. I'm still pondering on ".. there is no absolute either/or dichotomy between care and its opposite" (p.61). Integration is also here, an issue for modern times, a legacy problem from ancient times?

Luis Mendes's chapter I must read again. The abstract includes:

"Three fundamental aspects will be identified: (a) the need to consider self-existence from a global point of view; (b) the need for an axis for that life-view; (c) the need for correspondence between self-existence and life-view. Apparently, this structure is formal and arbitrary. Secondly, I will analyse the structure of despair. Three fundamental aspects will be analysed: (α) the requirement for a life-view which can be applied to the totality of subjective existence; (β) the requirement for an unconditioned instance of meaning; (γ) the requirement for the exclusion of the possibility of failure." p.79.

I'm sure Kierkegaard has featured in Philosophy Now, and The Philosophers' Magazine. Mendes' focus is arbitrariness. The hypothesis is well explained (p.80) structure of care. There's much for me here: care, life-view (health career - life chances), "a global understanding maps the world" (p.81), existential map, fulfilment, meaning (of course!). Reading -

"So, a life-view needs to be stabilized, to have unity. It needs an instance that works as an axis and as a point of support. We need something to support our life" (p.83).

I could have jumped up, waved and shouted "OVER HERE!" Would Kierkegaard have been pleased? Perhaps I should have read Kierkegaard, not Michel Serres (please see bibliography in the sidebar)? Still time (fingers x'd); especially if there's any interest in the form of co-author(s)? Care is full of ideals. Mendes through Kierkegaard gives my  project encouragement: "Truth is to live for an idea." p.84. Not necessarily truth but the idealism in care, including identity. It is helpful in care to be reminded of the ideal as a calling, hence motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) is still key. If you're intrinsically motivated, devoted to your chosen vocation, is your pay that important - to the government/organisation that employs you? A shame this is so often lost to political leaders; who, given their chosen vocation, exhibit a markedly short memory.

Braga, J. & Santiago de Carvalho, M. (Eds.), (2021) Philosophy of care: New approaches to vulnerability, otherness therapy. Springer. 

Many thanks again to Springer for my copy, especially given a follow-up request, well post-publication date.

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES                   

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

personal courage relational - (emotional) care despair - fulfilment motivation ideals	unity - stability maps compass - orientation models - frameworks geography
life as a whole society - community of practice external validation extrnisic motivation	sustainable development goals policy accountability failure (courage here - political convictions?)

See also:

body & soul - Book: Philosophy of care: New approaches to vulnerability, otherness therapy

Book for review: ii "Philosophy of Care - New Approaches to Vulnerability, Otherness and Therapy"

Book for review: iii "Philosophy of Care - New Approaches to Vulnerability, Otherness and Therapy"

viii Book: Bill Ross - 'Order and the Virtual'

 'The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology'

So much of what we experience is nuanced. What was conscious thought, becomes tacit knowledge and unconscious. Is that consciousness nullified as Ross writes on page 76? I wrote a note 'reflection as hesitation'; also prompted to think about intution (p.83) and our word uses in 'retardation' (which here is no problem at all - in physics and complex sciences/systems. Again the 'principle of least action' arises (p.82). With more physics and cosmology to follow, it helps a little that 'manifold' has landed begging to be understood across the contexts. Bill Ross notes how Delueze and Michel Serres used the game metaphor [Game analogy #1]. Again, lifting this to a scribble 'Health-Illness is quite a game'! This will be the subject of a post soon. In England at least the law and manifold on health (being productive) and illness has been utterly disrupted. The game-table has been kicked over, by those in society who still able? New spaces, and canvases are needed. Kantian thought and interpretations are added to Leibniz. A heady mix but clearly essential as Bill Ross's critique is developed. 

 

The book was a must-read, as in the contents: Complexity (with a presentation next month), cosmology, Serres, and Claude Shannon. In Game Analogy #2, "Communication is understood here to encompass much more than meaningful exchange; all phenomena 'communicate'". p.85. I couldn't agree more with with these 'games', this thought being 'situated within the purchase of information theory' (p.86). Bizarrely (or not), in the same year two papers:

Jones, P. (1996) Humans, Information, and Science, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24(3),591-598.

Jones, P. (1996) An overarching theory of health communication? Health Informatics Journal,2,1,28-34. 

Ross explains the global view of Michel Serres when it comes to 'information'. This entranced me, and I only scratched the skin:

Jones, P. (2008) Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons, IN Kidd, T., Chen, I. (Eds.) Social Information Technology Connecting Society and Cultural Issues, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 7, pp. 96-109.

Here there's a pointer to the cosmology to follow - Ross is true to the title. I have let most of the Astronomy Yearbooks go, but retain a few. Not just for key birth-years, but articles that are well written and researched historical snapshots. Here, Bill Ross discusses the game of Cepheid variables and their significance in mapping the universe. Truly, fascinating. Weaver's three levels of salient action are listed. Threads are tied too, with conclusions offered. These rules are reappraised, physics ever present. In light of one of the above papers I should revisit Serres, and Leibniz; the search for 'overarching explanatory power' (p.91) is ongoing. This game draws on Serres invitation to imagine a diagram, a network of nodes, channels, and propositions. This tabular formulation and its relations for me, spans the history of economics (Quesnay's tableau), the current state of economics (human values), and next (mathematical?) steps for Hodges' model. So many questions here: surely node  can't be an axis? I felt like Hansel, picking up sweets, Cartesian lines, scalene forms, thresholds, coming across hoops to jump through through to terminal equilibri. As you walk the sound of the thalweg, downstream... where Bergson features once again.

 

Reading Ross, over several months coincided with several key themes gaining in personal coherence. Bayesian ideas as might be applied to Hodges' model, even if in a naïve way (c/o feedback on draft notes). The remainder of chapter 3 includes time (thought), percept (space), to close with Deleuze's Ideal Game. I looked up Cortázarian Hopscotch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Cort%C3%A1zar_novel), as the preface is titled. Ross reflects on the Ideal Game (does it exist, for Deleuze, only in thought?), and the distinction between 'domestic' chance (Baysian) and radical contingency belonging to the clinamen. In response to 'physical action and and the thought being on the same continuum', don't ask (please!), but I scribbled: 'corridor care' - a dangerous game, far from ideal. Plus, bird's using quantum entanglement to navigate. 'Kant's chaotic manifold', I will also investigate for next month(?).

Chapter 4 'Order as Complexity' proved most relevant. Every page is touched by graphite.

Deleuze has a 'blind spot' (p.111), something that Hodges' model seeks to ameloirate. But then of course at the model's center (nexus - as noted) that decussation of the axes invites a darkness of its own. If Hodges' model assists forethought and foresight  While inviting complexity, this interdisciplinary palette can also facilitate trandiscipinary sense-making. 'Magnitudes of intensity' reminded me of logarithmic thresholds within our perceptual apparatus. This is like reading Serres. A flow of punctum, simultaneity, delay (again) but its contribution to causal series, and Aionic time. I was taken (frequently)  to plane, person, personhood, chronicity, scales, local to global to glocal.

'BwO' (p.117)? That's 'body without organs: DELEUZE, GUATTARI a thousand plateaus - capitalism and s c h i z o p h r e n i a'.

There is a 'corner' amid those thousand plateaus. n.b. to self - 'triangulation always needs one other'. I cannot resolve the frameworks as yet, scientific - otherwise or otherwhere; but you can take flight from here. Physics takes it place as 'complexity begets complexity'. Bill Ross utilises well-recognized sources, Penrose, Kauffman, Kolmogorov and Bohm.

As with the frameworks internal and external complexity must be untangled 1-4 (p.124?). I can laugh now, did I really try to marry up Order  - Disorder :: Simple - Complex (complicated?) to the domains of Hodges' model? So often reading philosophy, you feel an imposter playing games with words, as in: 'different similarities' and 'similar differences' (p.125). But of course, this is serious scholarship. Especially, when it involves lines, a rough circle, segments and dimensions: disorder becomes different degrees of order. Page 126 delivers Deleuze in spades, Ross pulls his thoughts together. It is fitting for me that Ross closes chapter 4 with a nod to transdisciplinarity.

Chapter 5 deals with symmetry and disymmetry; indifference and difference; limits and non-locality. There is an argument to follow (p.133). With 'group theory' mentioned on p.131, I've a lot of things to 'look up' [topology too]. Despite appearances I recognise the lack of symmetry in Hodges' model. This is what the situation does (practice) and means (theory): 'There is no reason under the sun which can rely on perfect symmetry' (p.135).  Where do/can we locate 'spooky action at a distance' in Hodges' model (p.140)? 

The Higgs role! Who knew? 'the speed of light. It represents a retardation.' Thanks Bill Ross, fascinating pp. 135-174. Plus, axes too. Note to self: when we die do we 'simply' set sail on the Dirac Sea? Attending the Bill Ross Memorial Workshop – BSP Special Event 2025 last September:

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2025/09/bill-ross-memorial-workshop.html

the esteem .. and love .. that Bill Ross engendered in the people that knew him. The preface refers to chats in university cafes. How I wish. I wonder what Bill would have made of Hodges' model and the ongoing project here? Vitally, I get a distinct sense that he would have found time to listen ... 

'Bill Ross (1964 – 2022) had interests ranging widely across contemporary philosophy and culture, with a particular interest in the relations between science and philosophy. As managing editor, he was the driving force behind Clinamen Press, which in the early 2000s published new works by contemporary philosophers, and English translation of important works by continental philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Gaston Bachelard and Michel Serres. He completed his PhD in philosophy at Staffordshire University, where he taught on the MA in the Philosophy of Nature, Information, and Technology. Bill had a lifelong passion for the connections between science and philosophy, on which he had published several important articles. Bill was working on a monograph on the philosophy and science of Deleuzian cosmology, which was has been posthumously published by Edinburgh University Press. This event is to celebrate Bill’s book and his life, and to allow his friends, his colleagues, and anyone interested in his work or the topics and issues addressed by his work to continue the conversation that Bill’s work inspires.'

https://www.thebsp.org.uk/bill-ross-memorial-workshop-deleuzian-cosmologies/

 

Many thanks again to Edinburgh University Press for my copy - a keeper! Bill Ross RIP.

 

Bill Ross (2024) Order and the Virtual: The Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-order-and-the-virtual.html

vi Book: 'Complexity in Health Care - A Paradigm Shift for Clinical Practice'

The rest of the book is practice-based which is a strength. Chapter 18 has three clinical illustrations, were reflection and self-reflection is brought to fore. Especially so, as it pointed out that the 'clinical situation/encounter' introduces its own 'vagaries', or noise which can impact the 'quality of the bond between clinician and patient'. Rapport is the key. 

I was still missing 'complexity' and its dynamics, but I'm sure of the following:

If this was discussed - could be represented then the book would be theory-laden and I and other would-be readers would not be able to understand.

I still think Hodges' model can help, and in chapter 19 picked out 'manifold' (p.113), as if doing so, manifests something more esoteric. There is something here, the author noting the need to shift from individual to group perspectives. So, yes I think we can do more than embrace 'complexity' (p.114).

On page 116 there is discussion of the sometimes sudden path to recovery, 'probably common but often not comprehended'. Please pardon the naivety, but I scribbled 'hidden in complexity, what would (say) the three(?) equations be?'. For a book published in 2023 'artificial intelligence' is not indexed. This might be one area that AI could assist, given the progress in formal mathematics (but see below p.183!)? Algorithm is mentioned throughout the book. Further reading here, informed me that engaging with a reading group on 'Philosophical Counselling' is worthwhile. It is!

Part IX had me wondering if the debate about typical and complex cases, there is a slight of perspective going on? You can end up with paradoxes in terms of an individual's needs, criteria, risk, 'need for admission'. Which I must think about! Chapter 20 has three further reading texts on abductive reasoning. There's an appeal(?) on page 129 for an appropriate treatment model, well that is my take. Collaborative care and stepped care models are suggested. But with acknowledgement that:

'In truth, all models currently available may involve a defect in continuity within or between systems'. p.129.

I beg to differ. A role of Hodges' model is to help frame aspects of care through time, to facilitate and assure continuity.

Part X tackles the required precision in assessment, hence recourse to mathematics and statistics. The next two chapters may be useful for early career researchers and yet looking over our shoulders what is ai offering here? In Case 1 I was impressed by the suggestion of a health record that is over 70 years old. Not impossible of course, but I thought of the Lloyd George envelopes, their hospital equivalents, other paper sources and inevitable scanning this would entail here in the UK? Of interest to research is the creation and validation of complexity profiling inventories (tools) not just that, but their self-assessment form of delivery. And, yes in summary chapter 24:

'We are still left with the challenge of rating the patients' severely compromised health situations where "health" includes social, emotional, and financial well-being.' p.143.

'How do you factor this interpersonal situation into your complexity equation?' p.144.

Yes, how indeed? 

The realities of research of dealt with - funding for the development of tools a problem universally. The references here concern biopsychosocial complexity. Chapter 25 describes abstraction, and hiding detail, which is of great interest here. DSM-5 criteria for major depressive disorder are listed (DSM-6 may be released in 2029?). 

In chapter 25 the authors are once stymied by 'how to include (integrate? PJ) four dimensions, three time periods,and assorted assessment items in a single assessment.' 

As noted the four domains are here again (p.151): medical, psychological, social and care delivery and on page 153, introducing chapter 26, limitations of complexity assessment tools. Parity as in 'parity of esteem' is not indexed and I don't recall having read this, but this is well represented in later deliberations on variables #2. You will find psychosis, but not in depth or severity.

 In 'Creation of a New Model for Clinical Practice' (Chapter 31) identity is stressed, as a prompt to encompass those variables that contribute to preserving the person - what is humanistic. Allied with manifold, identity is a 'coi' for me, concept of interest - for this same reason. On page 172: the authors observe they 'are left with the question of whether there are acceptably accurate clinical models that are simpler and more straightforward than ours? We believe the answer is no!'. I believe there is a way, and a model to help 'keep the life in clinical work' - not take it out. There is a sense that Chapter 32 seeks what I was looking for above: as they explore random variable and 'sample spaces' descriptively - over a page.

Ah! 'Artificial intelligence' is found in text p.183. I'm surprised an editor, proofreader aloud the following sentence to go unchallenged?

'But, as will be discussed, these computer techniques have their limitations based on their lack of flexibility.' 

I was genuinely surprised to read this. Plus, again on ai on page 185: 'Making inferences is not reliably their domain.' I think I would look more at the human-ai interface. And the status of ai within psychiatry as opposed to medicine, but that is also another (parity - divide) debate. Things really are complex now on so many fronts: ethics especially.

Perhaps I am looking for the cookbook formula as introduced for chapter 35 clinical judgement. The further reading is combined with critical thinking. More detail on the empirical-collaborative method is welcome. When I read 'illustrated' I take this literally. Again I can disagree twice on page 220. I know Hodges' model is not validated, but it can - with practice(?) - do this light (simple) or heavy (complex) lifting. 

The warning about dogma needs to be repeated regularly. It is rather like the need for nurses to revisit their profession, role and work as relates to the law. Is Hodges' model an over-valued idea? Am I guilty of thinking I'm an expert? A problem with that view is that any assumed expertise is stretched across the whole model. So if anything there is a shallowness, but this means that I see my particular scope of practice, as other colleagues / professions see theirs. Here in the UK of late, this seems to have become rather blurred. 

In closing with this and achieving a "real-life" understanding of a case, with synthesis - path analysis diagram, the author's underline the value of their book which I have enjoyed and informed my preparation for WCCS26 (more to follow there). The authors can perhaps be reassured that all practitioners have a means to achieve their paradigm shift as described here - with added value and values.

There is a missed word: "of the situation ['with'?] him" on page 114. And revision needed re. text beginning with 'his boyish Paul McCartney "mop-top" ... on page 214. Spelling error on 216 'retu(r)ning'. 

Thanks again to Daniela and colleagues at SpringerNature for the review copy.

Steven A. Frankel, Steven D. Thurber, James A. Bourgeois (2023) Complexity in Health Care: A Paradigm Shift for Clinical Practice. Cham. Switzerland: Springer. ISBN: 978303114948.

Book review: "The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix" ii

The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix

 

Once again I will start by referring to a previous post:

Q. What is Hodges' model? A. It is NOT a 2x2 matrix.

 

The structure of Hodges' model, the two axes immediately suggests opposition, dichotomy and thoughts of polarities. 

 

Page 30, table 2.2 Principles of 2 x 2 Mastery, includes:

"Opposition: 

Opposition between forces is either direct or complementary. Direct opposition is Hot versus Cold or On versus Off. Complementary opposition is Size versus Speed or Growth versus Profit. Recognize the nature of opposition, and work with it." p.30.

Of the others, the creative tension in health is manifold. Out of a professional foundation comes the therapeutic relationship nurse - patient and then the tension of trying to provide person-centred care that also has integrity in having the courage to advocate or engage independent advocacy and address the political issues that may (will) arise. Iteration here is a gift in that Hodges' model is situated and can address the multiplicity of contexts that are encountered in health, education and business too. Iteration for me implies travel, movement between the domains in search of a new perspective, (ad-)vantage point. Combined with integrity, this can mean going were you are not necessarily comfortable and perhaps seeking help. I like transcendence a great deal as it refers to "Learning requires unlearning". This points to the outcomes of interventions and application of knowledge, skills supported by Hodges' model with positive change. Transcendence can encompass liminality as described in therapy and education - threshold concepts in particular.

If you seek proof of complexity in healthcare, nursing and medicine look no further than a business book. The book is a marvellous reference text on 2x2 frameworks. In the introduction the authors stress the work is not intended to be read cover to cover. Business readers will be drawn to specific types of framework. Well referenced and researched the index is also comprehensive (with one framework missing (of course!). As the year of publication indicates the references and business examples that are outlined are dated, but they still deliver in readable and meaningful terms the utility of the framework described.

The layout and organisation of the chapters retains a 'current' appeal. I mention proof of complexity after reading:

 "Strategy is the art and science of competing more effectively than one's competitors." p.91.

In healthcare the 'competitors' may be the patients themselves (self-stigmatising, fearing the future, helplessness, hopelessness, fatigue). Competition may lie in other agencies depending on the politics of local health care delivery. Some may argue that the commodification of health is a creative tension not a political one. Also in the sense that 'we' are duty bound to heal, cure, treat you and have you care for yourself in future. Art and science are needed in print and book-loads at present as COVID-19 pushes out other diseases, illnesses that patients and families still face.

More to follow ...

 

Book review: "The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix" i

Alex Lowy, Phil Hood (2004) The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix: Using 2 x 2 Thinking to Solve Business Problems and Make Better Decisions, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass ISBN: 978-1-118-00879-9

With many thanks to the publisher for my review copy.

Tongues: The Edinburgh Companion to the Global Medical Humanities

Editors: Benjamin Dalton (Lancaster University), Steven Wilson (Queen’s University Belfast), Alex Wragge-Morley (Lancaster) and Stephanie Wright (Lancaster)

NEW Deadline for abstracts: 30 January 2026

The deadline for proposals to participate in a new Edinburgh Companion to the Global Medical Humanities has been extended. Following on from the landmark Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities, this handbook aims to catalyse the emerging field of global, multilingual work in the medical humanities. In its earliest form, the medical humanities sought to recognize the importance of literature and the arts to medical education and communication. In the following decades, scholars have recognized the entanglements that have existed between mind, body and environment – entanglements that call into question still prevalent distinctions between the sciences and the humanities, or between biology and culture (Whitehead et. al., 2016). Now, scholars and practitioners are increasingly bringing global cultures, epistemologies, and languages to bear on the medical humanities. At the same time, new approaches that both challenge and extend the concerns of the medical humanities are emerging in non-Anglophone and non-Western contexts.

This volume will give students and scholars a comprehensive guide to the dynamic and emerging field of global medical humanities – identified as such in recent editorials in Medical Humanities, The Polyphony and The Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities. This is a field that engages critically with the notion of global studies, recognizing that some of its iterations simply perpetuate the cultural, epistemic, and cultural hierarchies that have so long dominated the fields of health and the humanities. At once synthesizing and developing the insights of the field, this Edinburgh Companion will deploy the metaphor of the tongue to bring together, without homogenizing, a globally diverse range of contexts and interconnections. The tongue is at once an instrument of speech and a bodily organ that connects people to their cultures and environments. Indeed, through its communicative function and the pleasures and pains of taste, the tongue relates people to the language and foodways frequently taken to define cultures and societies. Moreover, the tongue is an interface for pleasure, intimacy and connection between bodies. And, of course, the tongue quite literally brings the world into the body through acts of taste and eating (Mol, 2021).

On the one hand, therefore, this Companion will deal with language, exploring the manifold ways in which translation between cultural and linguistic contexts can change our understandings and experiences of health. But at the same time, taking its cue from the corporeality of the tongue, it will explore how thought, perception and bodily reality may alter or be altered by movement in and between cultural and linguistic settings. This new handbook will thus serve as a crucial resource for anybody engaging with the trans-cultural and trans-linguistic aspects of health and wellbeing, from scholars and students to medical practitioners and carers.

The handbook will include a foreword by Angela Woods (Durham University), and the editors invite proposals for chapters on any topic relating to the global medical humanities, including but not restricted to:

• Translating the medical humanities across cultures (broadly conceived)
• Vernaculars of healthcare
• Non-verbal languages
• Global conceptions or expressions of pleasure, sexuality, taste, and/or pain
• Bodies, senses and environments
• Failures of language to communicate pain and/or bodily resistance to translation

Abstracts of between 200-300 words should be sent along with a short (50-word max) bio to a.wragge-morley AT lancaster.ac.uk, b.dalton AT lancaster.ac.uk, s.wright9 AT lancaster.ac.uk and steven.wilson AT qub.ac.uk by 30 January 2026. Informal enquiries can be directed the same addresses.

My source: NNMHR list www.jiscmail.ac.uk/NNMHR

Book review: "After Ethnos" i

A great believer in serendipity, this played a part in my discovering this book. From the FT Weekend's 'How to Spend It' I noticed the book and its cover in 'the aesthete' Anicka Yi (pp.17-18):

 

The best book I've read in the past year is After Ethnos by Tobias Rees. He's mapped out the evolutionary transformation of humans and I think it's an important book for the next stages of our species. p.17.

Looking up the book and the publisher's blurb - a request for a review copy was rewarded.

Two points, first I wondered about the meaning of  'ethnos'. A small word, it seemed to have instant gravitas. It does: being Greek for "a people" (p.1). The quote above does not mention 'anthropology' specifically, but this is very much the book's focus. Once delivered, and making a start I got a taste of what was to follow; and did wonder if I had bitten-off more than I could chew.

 

As a nurse, I thought I'm not an anthropologist, but as a member of humanity we are all in a sense anthropologists. Surely, it isn't a far stretch from 'people skills', social skills, interpersonal skills to anthropology? Perhaps, if you work in mental illness - health this connection, relatedness is accentuated? Anthropology is of course a specialist subject and the book has helped me 'place' it on the book shelf in relation to cultural studies. The view from Wigan Pier does not get you far, even if it has stretched to within 2.5 degrees of the equator and Amman, Jordan. Anthropology is fieldwork as well as a repository for theories.

 

Any qualms were quickly put aside. The book while anthropologically technical and philosophical is an easy read. The main text is 121 pages. So a couple of days and you are after ethnos too. I've still to read the notes as I passed-them-by, recording the numbers of several to look up later.

The project of the book on the DUP site includes:

In After Ethnos Tobias Rees endeavors to decouple anthropology from ethnography—and the human from society and culture—and explores the manifold possibilities of practicing a question-based rather than an answer-based anthropology that emanates from this decoupling. What emerges from Rees's provocations is a new understanding of anthropology as a philosophically and poetically inclined, fieldwork-based investigation of what it could mean to be human when the established concepts of the human on which anthropology has been built increasingly fail us.

There is much to savour here, at least in my reading. Rees refers to:

lines of thinking

lines of escape

lines of research

line of flight

A preoccupation for me is 'line(s) of sight' and insight. Much space is given to differentiating anthropology and ethnology. The role of curiosity (key for Rees) about the human and hence the difference between anthropology that is answer-based to one that is question-based.

 individual 

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

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

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

questions	answers
a people	the people

After Ethnos

 

Clearly, the book is a challenge to classical, established, traditional views of  anthropology. What is taught, the curriculum and its future.

Rees seeks to disrupt, derail, depart and break free from what is current thinking, to seek escapes. I like reference to chaos, turbulence; the book is nonprogrammatic and all this without resort to a place at which to arrive.

In chapter 1 the sentence: Classical modern ethnology has come to an end.

 

prompted me - to substitute terms:

Classical and modern nursing (theory and practice?) has come to an end? p.8

Chapter 1 asks: what is anthropology? What is anthropology's job? What's it's domain? The book covers the history of anthropology, ethnology to facilitate a general reader's understanding.

More to follow ... 

 

and thank you to Duke University Press for the review copy.

Book review: "After Ethnos" ii

Book review: "After Ethnos" iii

 

Book review: "After Ethnos" iv

After Ethnos - acknowledgements

Rees, Tobias. After Ethnos, (2018): Durham and London. Duke University Press.

Notes (I) for a 2010 introduction to the Health Career Model

.... The structure and composition of Hodges' model can be viewed as a sketch, a back-of-the-envelope idea expressed as a diagram as per (insert figure 1 and 2) and in combination (figure 3). While this is a perfectly valid interpretation it invites the view that Hodges' model is simplistic. In its basic unpopulated form the model is simplistic, in the same way that a blank canvas, computing device display, or piece of paper is simplistic. There is however, much more going on here, consideration of which can lead us to new ways to justify and explain the model.

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler"
Albert Einstein

Einstein is helpful because while simple - the model provides the foundation for global conceptual scope (complexity) should this be needed. Hodges' model demonstrates the complexity of health and social care without making it simpler.

"Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means."
Dr. Koichi Kawana, Architect

If Hodges' model is simple, a way to represent the tip of the health and social care iceberg, then why should we then wish for global conceptual scope? The reasons are manifold, but revolve around one factor:

safety.

...

Quotes source: http://www.petefreitag.com/item/496.cfm

Finding space in Hay-on-Wye: Complexity & healthcare - book

This time last week I was in Hay-on-Wye the book town on the border of England and Wales. February is still pretty cold, a good excuse to really browse.

complexity and healthcare - book cover

Amongst some great finds were three books on complexity in primary care and medicine.

I am sure that the way complexity can be woven within Hodges' model are manifold. On page 4 of Sweeney & Griffiths: 

'Using the idea of multidimensional phase space can help us understand categories of disease without clear boundaries. Instead of thinking of a person's illness as a walled off and separate pigeon hole, it can be useful to think of it as a point within a multidimensional illness space'

Kieran Sweeney, Frances Griffiths (eds). (2002) Complexity and healthcare: an introduction. Radcliffe Medical Press Ltd.