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Paper short abstract

What we consider moral in relation to death is directly influenced by temporality. Time influences decisions in context of the event; and over time influences our perspective of it. The way we integrate death into our life story reveals how we see ourselves as moral beings.

Paper long abstract

Family members dealing with end of life medical decisions for or with their loved one undertake a peculiar form of moral reasoning different to everyday moral reasoning. It is different because death is an ethical conundrum in which any decision provides only a temporary solution. Thus, time is central to the experience and to choice. Death evokes deep moral questions of right and wrong within the context of unfamiliar clinical settings and protocol, uncertain time frames and particular family dynamics. Temporality, therefore, is a fundamental element in end of life decision making. First, the perceived dying trajectory has a direct influence on the types of decisions that can be made. This moral reasoning process draws on balancing questions of quality of life and quantity of time left. Temporality also has another important influence. Over time, the narrative recollection of events reveals how individuals involved define a good death in relation to their values and thus how they perceive themselves as moral beings. How we reason our way to 'good' decisions for end of life care is part of our ethical work, but how we re-tell this event reveals how we see or want to be seen as moral. Thus, the manner in which we integrate death into our life story reveals our moral being.

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Paper short abstract

Moving abroad often has implications on dietary and health outcomes due to culture shock and new food environments. This paper examines how affordability, availability, palatability and time affects Southeast Asian international students' diets and health outcomes upon commencing study in Australia.

Paper long abstract

Purpose: To investigate potential dietary changes among Southeast Asian international students living in self-catered accommodation while studying abroad and to consider implications for their health.

Design: Participants were interviewed about their food preferences and behaviours in their home countries and during their undergraduate studies at the Australian National University.

Setting: A university in Australia

Participants: Study participants were full-time undergraduate students over 18 years of age from Southeast Asian countries studying at the Australian National University for at least one year, and living in self-catered accommodation.

Methods: Thirty-one, in-depth, face-to-face qualitative interviews concerning usual diets were collected over a three month period in 2013. Interviews were coded and analysed with the aid of a computer program Atlas ti.

Results: The macro-nutrient content of Southeast Asian international students' diets did not change a great deal when they moved to Australia. Most students replaced some preferred foods on occasions because they either could not afford them, they were not available or they lacked to time to prepare them. These dietary changes were not necessarily reflected in changes to students' weights and most students considered that they were as healthy as when they lived at home.

Conclusion: As students adapt to a new food environment they reflexively manage potential health risks. Strong student networks and an accessible and healthy food environment would support students to make healthy dietary choices although additional information about healthy diets could facilitate this further.

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Paper short abstract

Fetal personhood is a widely debated among medical and legal professionals. What is missing from such an approach is the perspectives of women themselves, and an understanding of when and by what means they come to view their fetus subjectively as a person.

Paper long abstract

When a fetus becomes a person is contentious within academia, and possibly more so outside of academia. The current literature focuses on when medical professionals, policy forming bodies, and the law should consider the fetus a person. What remains unclear is, at which point pregnant women assign personhood to their fetus. Specifically, whether there is a connection between the assignment of personhood - as expressed through identification with the fetus as a baby - and women's experiences of obstetric ultrasound. This research explores at which point pregnant women begin to think about the fetus as a baby by retrospectively discussing their experiences of obstetric ultrasound. The findings, based on two semi-structured narrative interviews, indicate that the technologically mediated gaze of obstetric ultrasound does influence a change from objective to subjective language use when women refer to the fetus. This is particularly apparent when fetal 'sex' is confirmed during the ultrasound, with both women solidifying in the use of the term baby from the point of 'sex' confirmation onwards.

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Paper short abstract

This article will discuss street healers' narratives to understand the tale of 'moral' masculine sexuality in the Bangladeshi context.

Paper long abstract

Street healing provides an opportunity to consider the moral boundaries of sexuality in Bangladesh. Street healing practice focuses on creating a 'crisis' of male sexual potency. Street healers intertwine a narrative of morality and health to create a problem which they can then resolve for their male clients. Their narratives publicly tell of a crisis of masculinity and sexual health. This paper, based on an ongoing ethnography of street healing in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, is focused on understanding the construction of masculine sexuality and sexual health-seeking behavior in Bangladesh. In their narratives, street healers describe heterosexual masculinity as a moral practice and homosexual practices as immoral. They also describe masturbation, sex with a sex worker and sex during menstruation as immoral. In their narratives, they intertwine their knowledge of traditional medicine, Western medicine, as well as established Bangladeshi moral codes concerning sexuality. In this space there are limits as well as possibilities for sexual health promotion which this research attempts to describe.

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Paper short abstract

The role of the ethnographer is attached to the grounds of first-instance access. I discuss how my enquiry into the worlds of schizophrenia patients at clozapine clinics holds anthropological value, albeit compromised by conditions of access to settings otherwise reserved for the clinically trained.

Paper long abstract

The role of the ethnographer in exploring the worlds of the extremely medically vulnerable becomes particularly complicated in the terrain of treatments for the severely mentally ill. The therapeutic process and outcomes, such as significant life expectancy gaps attributable to heart disease more than suicide, expose shortfalls in health equity and effectively 'accessing' the patient. Further, critical anthropological insights become inevitably inseparable from the grounds of first-instance access to the treatment setting. This paper discusses barriers to anthropological access to patients with schizophrenia being treated with clozapine, the gold standard antipsychotic that requires ongoing physiological monitoring and management.

As a non-clinician anthropologist, the pursuit of ethnography in clozapine clinics has necessitated extensive consultations and support from medical authorities. This has shaped my enquiry into one that demonstrates clinical value and renders me a 'researcher'; 'medical anthropologist' confuses my non-clinical role and 'anthropologist' is too unfamiliar to my participants. I cannot access everyday lives outside of the clinical setting - my conversations, interactions and observations (questionably participatory) are confined to clinic opening hours. I am not involved in any aspect of recruitment and consent and, dare I mention, the official paperwork granting me access to the clinic has taken over a year and no less than 20 different authorisations. I will be discussing the points at which my enquiry is credibly anthropological and the points at which I must compromise in order to access anything of an ethnographic setting otherwise reserved for the clinically trained.