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This paper explores the use of Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence by family planning organizations in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. It examines how particular interpretations of Islam are promoted in order to encourage fertility reductions, and the ways Muslim clerics, women and their families react to this process. The paper first discusses how Pakistan's demographic crisis, as the world's sixth most populous nation, has been widely blamed on under-funding for reproductive health services and wavering political commitment to family planning. Critics have called for innovative policy and programming to counter ‘excessive reproduction’ by also addressing socio-cultural and religious barriers to contraceptive uptake. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, the paper examines how family planning organizations in Gilgit-Baltistan respond to this shift by employing moderate interpretations of Islam that qualify contraceptive use as a ‘rational’ reproductive strategy and larger families as ‘irrational’. However, the use of Islamic rhetoric to enhance women's health-seeking agency and enable fertility reductions is challenged by conservative Sunni ulema (clergy), who seek to reassert collective control over women's bodies and fertility by deploying Islamic doctrine that honors frequent childbearing. Sunnis’ minority status and the losses incurred by regional Shia-Sunni conflicts have further strengthened clerics’ pronatalist campaigns. The paper then analyses how Sunni women navigate the multiple reproductive rationalities espoused by ‘Islamized’ family planning and conservative ulema. Although Islamized family planning legitimizes contraceptive use and facilitates many women's stated desire for smaller families, it frequently positions women against the interests of family, community and conservative Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines family planning in Brazil as biopolitics and explores how the democratization of the State and of reproductive health services after two decades of military dictatorship (1964–1984) has influenced health professionals’ and family planning users’ discourses and practices. Do health professionals envisage family planning as a ‘right’ or do they conceive it, following the old neo-Malthusian rationale, as a ‘moral duty’ of poor people, whose ‘irrational’ reproduction jeopardizes the family's and the nation's well being? And how do their patients conceptualize and embody family planning? To answer these questions, this paper draws on 13 months of multi-sited ethnographic research undertaken between 2003 and 2005 in two public family planning services in Salvador da Bahia, where participant observation was undertaken and unstructured interviews were conducted with 11 health professionals and 70 family planning users, mostly low income black women. The paper examines how different bio-political rationalities operate in these services and argues that the old neo-Malthusian rationale and the current, dominant discourse on reproductive rights, gender equality and citizenship coexist. The coalescence of different biopolitical rationalities leads to the double stigmatization of family planning users as ‘victims’ of social and gender inequalities and as ‘irrational’ patients, ‘irresponsible’ mothers and ‘bad’ citizens if they do not embody the neo-Malthusian and biomedical rationales shaping medical practice. However, these women do not behave as ‘docile bodies’: they tactically use medical and non-medical contraceptives not only to be good mothers and citizens, but also to enhance themselves and to attain their own goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The link between high fertility and poverty is well established. However, this paper shows how infertility may also generate poverty among childless families in Bangladesh. An ethnographic study was conducted, involving various qualitative research methods that revealed economic consequences to be one of the crucial sequelae of childlessness in Bangladesh. This paper details how the poverty/fertility relationship is dependent on social and institutional characteristics, including patriarchal values, education, urban-rural location and health services. Empirical data show that childlessness generates poverty in various ways, including the deprivation of children's earnings, decline in women's mobility, demoralisation of men to earn an income, marriage devaluation by the husband, disbursements for treatment and denial of microcredit (very small loans to those in poverty, which support them to become self-employed to generate income). The current study shows that the infertility/poverty relationship is mostly contingent upon class and gender. It is therefore the rural poor childless women who are most badly affected economically in Bangladesh rather than the urban middle class childless women. In other words, this study reveal that along with gender, class plays a dominant role in terms of the economic consequences of childlessness in Bangladesh. It sheds light on a different and unusual aspect of poverty and aims to contribute to the gender discussion of livelihood and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

VACTERL Association is a medical diagnosis that represents a broad range of characteristics affecting the following body systems: vertebrae; anal; cardiovascular; trachea; esophageal; renal and radial; and limb. Auditory, growth, sex, and reproductive characteristics are often present as well. Thus far, VACTERL has only been examined within the medical system, and, within that framework, it has become identified as an anomaly and ‘disability,’ leaving the embodied experiential realities of individuals who live with it unexplored. This paper reports on a qualitative study with eight self-identified women with VACTERL Association. This paper provides an introduction to the experiences of these women and provides an exploration of the elements and processes of identity negotiation, with particular focus on the intersection between gender and ability. As well, the impact of a medical label as it affects identity formation is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the interpretative practices of the police when carrying out stops and searches. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out in England and Wales, a conceptual framework is developed to understand how officers become suspicious and decide to initiate encounters. It is argued that officers use tacit knowledge to make sense of new situations and determine what action to take, and base their suspicions on signals they come across on patrol. In examining these social processes, the paper shows that categories and stereotypes are central to decision-making which result in a police focus on the socially marginal. Looking beyond the immediate influences on officer action, the paper also explores the role played by the law in regulating police practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a disruptive ethnography of Indians in Tanzania (Tanzanian-Indians). It uses narratives of individuals to challenge the popular ethnographic categories within which the individuals are usually subsumed. This paper analyses three critical questions concerning Category, Homeland and Community. Is the category Mhindi (‘Indian’ in Kiswahili) exhaustive as a cultural identity? What is the relationship of Tanzanian-Indians to their ‘homeland’ India? Does a community-based approach map on to the realities of everyday lives of Tanzanian-Indians? The focus will be on Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. Both these neighbouring places have significant Indian presence and through ethnographic research using conversations, semi-structured interviews and the self-presentation of individuals through temples, mosques and clubs, we highlight the diversity of experience that lies behind the specific identity category of Mhindi. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cemeteries garner considerable academic attention as anthropologists, landscapers, archaeologists, sociologists, geographers and historians examine their layout, purpose and use. Emerging from these studies is a body of literature that considers cemetery and burial ground design, memorialisation, mourning behaviour and ‘dark tourism’. Beyond interdisciplinary journals such as Mortality and edited multi-disciplinary books however, the insight generated in this literature can be fragmented through publication in discipline specific periodicals. As a result cemeteries are often analysed and presented as places that contain, for example, design or tourism and heritage or emotion and mourning. Framed by concerns over the sustainability of cemeteries nationwide, this paper considers the contemporary English cemetery as a simultaneous space of emotion, commerce and community. Using data from an ethnographic case study of a cemetery in East London, it illustrates the contestation that can result from these concurrent contrasting interpretations. The paper concludes that care needs to be taken when implementing initiatives and policy to balance the varying demands and expectations of a cemetery's purpose and use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the grid of sentiment that structures medical travel to India. In contrast to studies that render emotion as ancillary, the paper argues that affect is fundamental to medical travel's ability to ease the linked somatic, emotional, financial, and political injuries of being ill 'back home'. The ethnographic approach follows the scenes of medical travel within the Indian corporate hospital room, based on observations and interviews among foreign patients, caregivers, and hospital staff in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore. Foreign patients conveyed diverse sentiments about their journey to India ranging from betrayal to gratitude, and their expressions of risk, healthcare costs, and cultural difference help sustain India's popularity as a medical travel destination. However, although the affective dimensions of medical travel promise a remedy for foreign patients, they also reveal the fault lines of market medicine in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interprofessional education (IPE) has emerged as a critical pedagogy for promoting interprofessional collaboration (IPC) within healthcare. However, the literature includes few reports of students' perspectives on IPE experiences. Understanding students' experiences is critical, as they are the crux of IPE's culture change agenda. This paper presents an autoethnographic account of my experiences as a medical student participating in an IPE placement within a Canadian academic hospital. During the five-week placement, I collected data using participant observation and reflective journaling on all placement experiences. I expanded my notes using the emotional recall technique and conducted thematic analysis. Using a series of narrative vignettes, this paper explores the relationships between my personal experience and the cultural and educational issues underpinning IPE. The first vignette explores the relationship between students' patient access and our status in tutorial discussion. The second vignette considers the impact of shadowing on my appreciation of another professional's practice. The last vignette portrays my experience learning about the complex politics that shape IPC. The conclusion suggests that the IPE placements incorporate reflexive activities (i.e., journaling and interviewing) to enhance the students' appreciation and understanding of roles, responsibilities and professional perspectives, and to promote critical thinking and professional growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses a paper by David Bridges, which examined the superiority and exclusivity of insider understanding issues when compared to outsider understanding. He emphasizes the importance of the paper to the contexts of religious understanding, ethnographic research and intercultural understanding. The author cites five key points of the Bridges' paper, one of which is that people is both an insider and an outsider when it comes to dealing with another person or community.

To reach the most vulnerable individuals in under-resourced countries, health communication interventions increasingly move towards the community level. However, little is known about how health information spreads through local social networks. This paper maps the health information network of a rural trading centre in Uganda. As part of a five-year ethnographic study of sustainable community health resources, ego networks were obtained for 231 village residents in March 2014. Using both ethnographic and social network data, we analyze how the village social network is structured, and how this structure may influence the transmission of health information. Results show a network with low average proximity, with a small number of individuals, notably key administrative officials, much closer connected to many other community members than average. However, because of social partitioning in the village network, a number of people are outside the social clusters in which the top influencers are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper arises from a transnational research network investigating social work education. University based social work programmes from four European countries (Ireland, Italy, Norway, and the U.K.) shared a similar concern: how educators can support students to prepare for social work practice. The relationship between social work education and practice is not straightforward; the partnership between educators and practitioners in helping social work students to flourish in practice remains a complex and, at times, controversial issue. Furthermore, it is not enough to help students learn the mechanics of day to day tasks, it is also important to motivate them in becoming social workers stimulated by principles of human rights and social justice. With this in mind, each educator conducted a local study using qualitative and/or quantitative methods to explore what influences the development of such practitioners. Analysis from the studies indicate three key issues for social work education in Europe: developing strategies to help students in preventing and overcoming 'practice shock'; the promotion of coherence as a way to bring into focus the complexity of the interrelationships between theory and practice; the active engagement of students and practice teachers in the evaluation and development of contemporary social work education models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine how traditional views of normality are negotiated, indorsed and resisted when talking about children with heart defects. Having as a starting point an ethnographic project that aimed to study knowledge construction when being pregnant or having a child with a heart defect, we focus on argumentation put forward by clinicians and parents in order to understand the forms that normality takes in relation to children's health and illness and the way that it is constructed argumentatively and linguistically. More specifically, we draw data from recorded doctor-patient consultations, ethnographic interviews and entries from family blogs and forums and focus on those instances where normality is negotiated as a means of providing a medical consultation or of taking and motivating decisions about the child's health and everyday life. The analysis is conducted by identifying content and logical topics in the data and showing how constructions of normality and alternative conceptions are constructed in discourse. Discourses are additionally related to discursive, semiotic framing and the realization of norms. Our results highlight a duality that is being painted both in the clinicians and in the parents' discourse when negotiating the illness and the accompanying risks in the child's everyday life. Some of the traditional norms being re-constructed and re-negotiated in the data are those of stigmatization, diversity, responsibility and freedom of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative health care and holistic spiritual practices have become increasingly popular in many Western countries, especially among women, who often claim them to be deeply transformative. This paper presents an ethnographic study of women's tantric retreats in Northwest Europe that aimed to help women reconnect with their vital sexual energy, rediscover the sacredness of their female bodies, and possibly heal from damaging and even traumatic experiences regarding their femininity and sexuality. It draws on Turner's influential view on ritual as a liminal space in order to account for the transformative potential of these workshops. Specifically, it applies Hinton and Kirmayer's flexibility hypothesis, which suggests that healing rituals shift people's mode of being-in-the-world, including their cognitive, emotional, and physical state or stance, towards openness to new ways of being. First, it highlights different ontological domains where shifts took place, notably somatic state, self-image and relationality. Subsequently, it identifies the main modalities that were used for enabling transformation: the embodiment of the metaphor of the goddess/the divine as present in each woman and the use of intimate, loving touch and meditative awareness. The process of transformation and healing elucidated in this way engaged the physical, emotional and cognitive levels as interacting dimensions, relying foremost on the activation of a vital energy that both gave participants a deep sense of self and connected beyond the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presently, there is a general understanding that health, illness and rehabilitation should be studied in a relational context, and that people's experiences, perceptions and practices in relation to health and recovery are formed relationally and contextually. The aim of this paper is to consider and discuss how men experienced their marital relationships, after being diagnosed with cancer. The empirical material is based on the authors' ethnographic fieldworks, including participant observation and interviews with men who have or have had cancer. The analysis is informed by the anthropologist Michael Jackson's notion of intersubjectivity and his argument that intersubjectivity continually and dialectically moves between the complementary poles of compassion and conflict. We demonstrate how the men appreciated their partners' support and care, but also that the cancer disease and the treatment could cause marital friction and tension. Due to their new life circumstances and subject positions, the men continuously shifted between the poles of compassion and conflict, struggling for balance and control, including negotiations of how to perform their masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within sociological and organisational literature much attention has been paid to the emotional labour and emotion work performed by care staff. By contrast, comparatively little attention has been paid to that which researchers perform and how it is shaped by the need to behave appropriately and in ways that are in keeping with the demands of the study setting. Existing literature focuses largely on the need for researchers to be aware of their emotions as part of being reflexive and thus, through acknowledgement, minimising any emotional impact (subjectivity) on research interpretations. In this paper, I draw on two research experiences, an ethnographic study into end-of-life care in care homes and an exploration into the role of the Anatomical Pathology Technologist in a hospital mortuary to explore the tensions between conducting sensitive research and managing emotions. I conclude by drawing on the theories of Goffman and Hochschild to explore the relationship between emotion management and sensitive research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leprosy stigma is more neglected than the disease itself since global interventions towards leprosy are focused on the medicalisation of individual-sufferers and statistical counting of documented cases and less prioritising the impact of leprosy stigma towards society. This paper examines the impact of courtesy stigma on society through comparative ethnographic method conducted in two sites in East Java Province, Indonesia. Investigation in the first site, Mandangin Island, found that the island suffers underdevelopment of public facilities such as clinics and clean water and migration and medical knowledge bottlenecks. In the second site, Sumberglagah village, leprosy patients and the community they live with are also socially separated from the locals and they are engaged in controversial businesses exploiting the public fear of leprosy. This study finds that leprosy stigma in two leprosy-impacted communities in East Java, Indonesia, does not only isolate individuals but also a whole community from a bigger society regardless of whether all of the community members have leprosy. This study also detects problems related to leprosy education within the two impacted communities. It is suggested that efforts to address the problems require holistic approaches and commitments from various actors in the area in complement to existing global health missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides ethnographic evidence on how coloniality shapes the making of Latin American psychologists. A critical ethnography was conducted at a psychology training institution in Ecuador, consisting of twelve months of participant observation; forty-one semi-structured interviews; and analysis of academic discourse, photos, videos and relevant social media content. The research was guided by the tradition of Critical Psychology – specifically Liberation Psychology – and Critical Discourse Analysis. Findings suggest the pervasiveness of coloniality in the making of Ecuadorian psychologists and, hypothetically, of others in Latin America and the wider Global South. Interpretations also highlight the non-essentialist, non-dichotomist, 'messy' nature of such processes, a consideration which may advance current ethical and analytical debates on decolonisation. Echoing ongoing critical arguments, authors suggest that a 'help-as-war' metaphor is a category with potential value to contribute to such advancement, an approach that has important theoretical and pragmatic implications for researchers and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural psychiatrists and medical anthropologists have collaborated to help clinicians screen for culture-related issues in patient explanatory models of illness and to enhance the clinical processes of engagement, diagnosis, and treatment planning. This effort prioritises patient perspectives on suffering and healing to counter the trend of symptom-based interviews which assume biologically determined models of mental disorders. The 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) includes the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI), a semi-structured questionnaire for eliciting patient explanatory models. This paper analyses specific linguistic meanings and practices that could account for patient perceptions of improved rapport with clinicians, clinician perceptions of improving information gathering, and cultural models of health and illness during the DSM-5 field trial piloting the CFI. Twenty-seven audiotapes were analysed through the Roter Interaction Analysis System (RIAS), a standardised method for examining medical interviews based on ethnographic studies of small-group communication. After an introduction with procedural and reassurance statements to orient communication, the CFI's open-ended questions elicited patients' opinions on interpersonal, environmental, and biomedical information. Clinicians made facilitation and activation statements for patients to speak more and informed patients about what to expect. Patients constructed cultural models of illness that weaved interpersonal, environmental, and biomedical information. Clinicians and patients made rapport-building statements to each other. A RIAS-derived patient-centred score indicates that CFI sessions addressed patient concerns. Our work offers a way to analyse the discursive construction of culture in health settings and patient-centredness through detailed examinations of linguistic meanings and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide new empirical and methodological findings problematising evidence, evaluation and measurement when using asset-based approaches and co-production to improve health and address inequalities. The Assets Model was applied to develop and implement a co-produced methodological evaluation framework – Asset-Based Indicator Framework – measuring impacts of creative community engagement on health and inequalities. Our three-phased approach synthesised data from multiple sources over five years. Phase One identified existing health assets in Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups using a six-month ethnography; interviews with community organisation representatives (n=35); three BME focus groups (n=27). Phase Two identified conditions/actions for assets to be activated to maximise health for 'Roma' using community-based participatory action research (n=50). Phase Three turned to evaluation and indicators. The Asset-Based Indicator Framework was co-produced with self-identified Gypsies following an extensive literature review; expert interview; three participatory action-research workshops with professionals (n=20); two participatory action-research workshops with community members and professionals (n=49). Asset-based evaluation and measurement is complex due to narrow conceptualisations of evidence; epistemological and methodological incompatibilities; and lack of capacity and resources for sustained engagement. Understanding the granularity and interrelation of assets at individual, community and structural levels; identifying mechanisms through which change happens; and applying participatory and empowering methods to capture actions on assets leading to community-defined outcomes may not lead to meaningful changes without systemic change. The paper fills a clearly-defined gap addressing evaluation of community engagement within complex systems rather than clinical-medicine interventions with wide-ranging implications for international research, practice and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explored how the organizational cultural experiences of elite youth footballers shaped their identity development and behavior. The first author occupied the position of sport psychology practitioner-researcher within 1 professional football club over 3 years. Traditional ethnographic research methods were employed, including observations, field notes, reflections, and informal interviews. A cultural sport psychology perspective on identity as a social construction and research on the cultural characteristics of professional football were used as frameworks to make sense of the data. Despite the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan in 2012, the traditional masculine culture of professional football dominated the studied club. Creative nonfiction vignettes revealed that youth players were encouraged to develop their self-stories focused on a single-minded dedication to professional football. The limited identity-related resources offered at both club and cultural level are detrimental for players in terms of their well-being and long-term psychological development. From the results of this study, we suggest that future sports psychology practice within professional football may best be delivered at an organizational level. However, for sport psychologists to be effective in this role, they must develop an understanding of the subcultural features and characteristics of the organization. In line with this, there would be great value in introducing a focus on organizational culture within sport psychology professional training and education routes. Lay Summary: This paper explores the impact of the professional football culture on the psychological development of elite youth footballers. From the findings we suggest that sport psychology should be delivered at an organisational level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the concept of 'local biologies' was proposed in the 1990s, it has been used to examine biosocial processes that transform human bodies in similar and different ways around the globe. This paper explores understandings of biosocial differentiation and convergence in the case of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the Czech Republic. Specifically, it examines how Czech TCM practitioners view TCM as universally applicable while fine-tuning it to situated biosocial conditions, experimenting with the compatibilities of various human and plant bodies as part of their generalised, clinical practice. Drawing upon ethnographic research among TCM practitioners in the Czech Republic, it suggests that in addition to the individualization of TCM therapeutics to suit particular patients, Czech TCM is characterised by collective particularization, shaped by local concerns over ethnic, environmental and cultural differences. By looking critically at TCM practitioners' sensitivities to localised biological similarities and differences it aims to contribute to understandings of the expansion of TCM in Central Europe, as well as more broadly to current social science debates over the risks and opportunities inherent in abandoning the assumption of a universal human body and biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an institutional ethnography that explored how risk discourse organised the experiences of pregnant women living with HIV and was reproduced in the work of healthcare providers operating in a 'high risk' prenatal clinic in Ontario, Canada. This inquiry began from the standpoint of pregnant women living with HIV, and made connections between women's experiences, the work of healthcare providers delivering prenatal care, and the ruling relations that organised women's experiences and healthcare providers' activities. The study revealed how risk was an omnipresent discourse in women's lives and became visible through the treatments women were prescribed, the prenatal clinic appointment schedule women were expected to follow, and the application of medical interventions. The discourse of risk coordinated the work of healthcare providers and was inextricably linked to practices that prioritised foetal health. Women's daily realities and experiences were overshadowed by the healthcare providers' focus on the foetus and mitigating perinatal risks. As a result, the work women did to organise their lives to participate in care, and the physical and emotional costs they experienced when attending their appointments, taking their medicines, and following clinical procedures were overshadowed within an institutional context where the primary goal was to reduce risks to their babies – even if women shared concerns and aspirations about preventing perinatal HIV transmission. Women's experiences reveal some important consequences regarding the current organisation of prenatal care that emphasises risk and possible ways to enhance prenatal care policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a longitudinal ethnography of nine children's use of texts in and out of school in a multilingual setting in Sweden. The aim of this contribution is to reflect on the ways in which four out of these nine children are able to represent their literacies in school and in that way also represent their experiences and identities. The analysis highlights the importance of ethnographic approaches through which literacies can be studied from children's perspectives rather than using predefined and technical definitions. Drawing on the results, I argue that studies of children's literacy practices have to be related to children's positions and to power structures within society and its institutions. The crucial goal in this is to avoid deficit discourses, to challenge narrow classroom discourses and to sustain democracy in diverse societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates how personal narrative and reflective practice are used as the basis for an ethnographic account that locates the researcher in the research endeavour. It provides an overview of narrative inquiry as a means of reflective practice. Two narrative approaches - life history/autobiographical narrative and autoethnography - are briefly introduced and evidence is presented of the application of these approaches in a number of discipline areas. This serves to highlight the relative dearth of literature reporting the use of autoethnography in particular in the counselling and psychology fields, either in terms of research or practical applications. After outlining the background of the author's doctoral study, the paper illustrates how autoethnography is employed as an example of reflective practice. Concluding remarks address a reflection of the experience of writing the paper, including reference to criteria for evaluating autoethnographic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential rehabilitation centres are a popular form of treatment for Indigenous Australians suffering from alcohol and drug misuse; however, there has been very little substantive research and evaluation in this area. Based on long-term ethnographic research, this study examines the informal aspects of a treatment programme in an Indigenous residential alcohol and drug rehabilitation service. Evaluation of such services often focuses on treatment length and/or treatment level obtained as key indicators of success. This study suggests that 'treatment' may be more complex and layered with multiple levels of meaning, which may not necessarily be captured in some evaluation designs. For the residential rehabilitation centre discussed in this paper, oscillating periods of mutual support and discipline have an important therapeutic function. Standard measures of treatment length and level obtained are meaningless without incorporating understanding of this process. This paper presents some of the ethnographic findings, alongside some of the evaluation implications of doing this kind of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mentorship programs are implemented within academia to build staff capacity and to enhance the human capital of the organization. Previous studies have centred on identifying the benefits of mentoring from the perspective of the mentee, while the role of the mentor has been overlooked, and limited research has been conducted to investigate the perspectives and experiences of both the mentor and mentee. This article reports on a mentor and mentee's catalyst for joining a formal mentoring program within their university, their expectations, needs and priorities, and how the mentoring relationship was sustained. A reflective case study and autoethnographic approach was used to undertake this study. The results revealed that both the mentor and mentee had vastly different catalysts for joining the mentoring program, shared expectations and priorities regarding career progression, and sustained the relationship due to both subjective outcomes such as enhanced self-belief and objective outcomes including increased publication outputs. This paper invites academics to consider their perspectives on mentoring and to recognise the value of engaging in a university facilitated mentoring program for both the mentor and the mentee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the ‘case’ of educational reform in India, this paper explores the emergence of both new trans-national spaces of policy and new intra-national spaces of policy and how they are related together, and how policies move across and between these spaces and the relationships that enable and facilitate such movement. The paper is an attempt to think outside and beyond the framework of the nation state to make sense of what is going on inside the nation state. In particular, it takes seriously the need to rethink the frame within and scales at which the new policy actors, discourses, connections, agendas, resources, and solutions of governance are addressed – and the need to move beyond what Beck calls ‘methodological nationalism’ . In other words, the paper argues that thinking about the spaces of policy means extending the limits of our geographical imagination. To address this argument, it combines the presentation and discussion of data with some more general discussion of policy networks and mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Blood transfusions belong to standard and commonly utilised biomedical procedures. Jehovah's Witnesses' transfusion refusals are often referred to in bioethical and medical textbooks. Members of this globally active religious organisation do not, however, challenge biomedical diagnosis and treatment as such. A result of both their trust in and their interpretation of the Bible, they question only this medical treatment. In spite of the global presence of this religious community and its uniformly practised teachings, including those pertaining to blood, experiences and choices of Jehovah's Witness patients have been understudied. Drawing on a nine-month fieldwork with Jehovah's Witnesses and physicians in Germany (mainly in Berlin) between 2010 and 2012, the paper addresses treatment choices made by Witness patients and their relationship with physicians. In light of the long tradition of 'medical heterodoxy' established in German culture and society, Germany constitutes an ideal point of departure for such a study. By utilising the concept of 'medical landscape' it is argued that Jehovah's Witnesses in my field site find themselves at the intersection of different medical landscapes: in the 'immediate' surroundings of the German healthcare system that is open to different 'treatment modalities', and that of the United States, which favours biomedicine. The paper also argues that Jehovah's Witnesses' position towards blood transfusions can further be used as a lens to shed light on the German (bio)medical landscape itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the diversity in patients' experience of biomedicine and contrasts it with the normative view characteristic of health professionals. Ethnographic fieldwork among Polish migrant women in London, Barcelona and Berlin included interviews about their experiences with local healthcare and health professionals. Themes drawn from the narratives are differences between the cities in terms of communication between patients and health professionals, respect for patients' choices and dignity, attitudes to pregnancy and birth (different levels of medicalization), and paediatric care. It is argued that patients continuously negotiate among their own views and expectations based on previous experiences and knowledge from personal communication; internet forums and publications; and the offer of medical services in the countries of their settlement. Patients experience pluralism of therapeutic traditions within and outside bio-medicine. In turn, representatives of bio-medicine are rarely aware of other medical practices and beliefs and this leads to various misunderstandings. By highlighting the pluralism of medical practices in European countries and the increasing mobility of patients, this case study has useful implications for medical anthropologists and health professionals in a broader Western context, such as raising sensitivity to different communication strategies and a diversity of curing traditions and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Village dwellers in Central Ukraine have access to various types of therapy that comprise diverse medical landscapes. Patients' movements within these landscapes are possible thanks to each person's web of relations. Medical landscapes are not fixed, but vary and dynamically change for each person, depending on their fluid and interchanging, hierarchical webs of mutual relations with other people, personal bodies, institutions, discourses, political powers, other non-human organisms, or objects such as medicines. This paper was inspired by the medicoscape concept (H€orbst and Krause 2004) as well as Ingold's idea of meshwork analyses of relations between various actors: in this case, patients, healers, a weak state, official healthcare providers, pharmacists and medicinal plants, in the context of patients' therapeutic choices. Self-medication based on herbal remedies is a very important feature of people's medical landscapes in Central Ukraine and usually the first therapy choice for most interlocutors. That is why this paper is focused on the presentation of the means through which people acquire knowledge about medicinal plants, and the ways they interact with plants and plants interact with them. In this way, showing the complexity of villagers' webs of relations is possible. The analysis is based on ethnographic research conducted between 2009 and 2013 in the Vinnytsia region (Central Ukraine). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss how life history drawings can serve as a valuable method for global health research. The introduction discusses qualitative approaches to concepts such as reliability, validity and triangulation, and situates the use of participatory visual methods within the broader field of participatory research. The paper reports on an experience using life history drawings as part of extended ethnographic research in rural Mexico and among Mexican migrants living in Atlanta. The primary method for that parent project was comparative ethnographic research, which included life histories collected from 13 pairs of women over 15 months of participant observation. Early in the research, the drawings contributed to a major reorientation in the direction of the research project. The insights generated through analysis of the life history drawings exemplify how this participatory research technique can direct attention to social processes that feel salient to community members. In this case, they called attention to the enormity of social change in this community over one generation, reorienting the study from one focused on change causes by migration to one that focused on two trajectories of change: generational and migration-related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the example of a human rights training in Nepal, the author looks at global body politics in a reflexive piece on her engagement in development practices that translate western feminist ideas on gender inequality and empowerment via UN human rights policies into non-western contexts. It firsts look at postcolonial and critical literature on feminist engagement in gender and development processes including a discussion on the concept of global body politics before examining briefly the framing of gender-based violence in Nepal. The core of the paper is a reflexive analysis and interrogation of the training in Nepal in order to bring out the tensions and contradictions around western developmental, feminist and human rights discourses. The discussion looks at how difficult it is for feminist, human rights and developmental discourses and practices to unmoor themselves from the notion of the ‘expert’ and those who do the rights/work/righting rights training and those who are perennially seen as requiring training. The conclusion reflects on possibilities of other epistemic practices found in intercultural dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon the notion of slow emergency as a framework to interpret ethnographic and qualitative findings on the challenges faced by Puerto Ricans with chronic conditions and health-sector representatives throughout the island during and after Hurricane María. We conducted participant observation and qualitative interviews with chronic disease patients (n = 20) health care providers and administrators (n = 42), and policy makers (n = 5) from across the island of Puerto Rico in 2018 and 2019. Many Puerto Ricans coping with chronic diseases during and after María experienced bureaucratic red tape as a manifestation of the colonial legacies of disaster management and health care. They describe a precarious existence in perpetual 'application pending' status, waiting for services that were not forthcoming. Drawing on ethnographically informed case examples, we discuss the effects of these bureaucratic barriers on persons with three chronic conditions: renal disease, opioid dependency, and HIV/AIDS. We argue that while emergency management approaches often presume a citizen-subject with autonomous capacity to prepare for presumably transient disasters and envision a 'post-disaster future' beyond the immediate crisis, Puerto Rican voices draw attention to the longer, sustained, slow emergency of colonial governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying digitally mediated play presents challenges in terms of how to view and record both the on-screen action and player's bodies in physical space. Carrying out this research in a socially and technologically diverse range of family households poses further challenges, common to ethnographic media research in general. In this paper, we describe a method for generating richly detailed views of 6–8 year old children's digital play with the game Minecraft, on a range of devices and in a range of household configurations. We explain the process undertaken in our own research, highlighting the need for flexibility and a collaborative approach between participants and researchers. We argue that collecting multi-perspectival recordings of digital play provides data that has the potential to greatly aid understanding of digital playworlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how the turn from narrative to embodied research practice offers a space to women survivors of war-related sexual violence to rehearse forgiveness in the post-conflict setting, where its realisation seems unimaginable in the face of the extent of the crimes committed and the current sociopolitical situation. Using the case of 'Mother of the Oppressor', a short performative act created through the ethnographic research process, the topics around the relationship between survivors' individual desires to forget, the pain stored in their bodies, and the collective demand from different social and political institutions to forgive are being discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is essential for success in business, especially in the contemporary world where innovations are a cornerstone of competitive advantage. A large body of literature has examined many factors which influence creative abilities with the work environment being the factor of increasing importance. Creativity has been associated with the work environment through a number of theoretical frameworks and empirical studies. However, the relationship between the work environment and creativity in different cultures has not been explored sufficiently. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by linking the concept of a creativity-supporting work environment and culture. To that end, elements of the work environment (physical, socio-organisational, and fun in the workplace) and creative personality have been analysed on multinational samples. The results clearly point that the relationship exists between dimensions of the national culture (individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and power distance) and specific elements of a creativity-supporting work environment. Practitioner summary: Companies experience high pressure for generating creative ideas. As a result, stimulating employees' creativity has become a key strategic aim. This study, through cross-cultural primary research, provides clear managerial implications and practical advice for successful implementation and quality adoption of the creativity-supporting work environment worldwide. Abbreviations: A-FOs: activity-based flexible offices; AVG: average; CDQS: creativity development quick scan; CP: creative personality; CPS: creative personality scale; FWP: fun in the workplace; HF/E: human factors and ergonomics; IDV: individualism; MAS: masculinity; MBA: Master of Business Administration; PDI: power distance; PWE: physical work environment; SWE: socio-organisational work environment; UAI: uncertainty avoidance; USA: United States of America; WE: work environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I will compare and contrast the Austronesian symbolic elements of the two social formations within which I have conducted extensive ethnographic and archival research, that of the highly egalitarian Buid of Mindoro, Philippines and that of the equally hierarchical Makassar of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. I will demonstrate both that their cosmological structures are built out of common symbolic elements and that these structures could be used to legitimate vastly different political systems. The common symbolic elements included a gendered cosmos inhabited by a series of parallel societies composed of animal, human and spirit subjects; the conceptualisation of human sociality as generated by shared experience within a nested series of bounded spaces; and the ability of certain agents to move between these spaces by way of specialised training, vehicles and portals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cholera spread from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, Haitian migrants, a largely undocumented and stigmatized population in Dominican society, became a focus of public health concern. Concurrent to the epidemic, the Dominican legislature enacted new documentation requirements. This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of anti-Haitian stigma in the Dominican Republic from June to August 2012. Eight focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with Haitian and Dominican community members. Five in-depth interviews were held with key informants in the migration policy sector. Theoretical frameworks of stigma's moral experience guided the analysis of how cholera was perceived, ways in which blame was assigned and felt and the relationship between documentation and healthcare access. In FGDs, both Haitians and Dominicans expressed fear of cholera and underscored the importance of public health messages to prevent the epidemic's spread. However, health messages also figured into experiences of stigma and rationales for blame. For Dominicans, failure to follow public health advice justified the blame of Haitians and seemed to confirm anti-Haitian sentiments. Haitians communicated a sense of powerlessness to follow public health messages given structural constraints like lack of safe water and sanitation, difficulty accessing healthcare and lack of documentation. In effect, by making documentation more difficult to obtain, the migration policy undermined cholera programs and contributed to ongoing processes of moral disqualification. Efforts to eliminate cholera from the island should consider how policy and stigma can undermine public health campaigns and further jeopardize the everyday 'being-in-the-world' of vulnerable groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Achieving appropriate wheelchair provision at a national level is complex, requiring regulations, funding and policies established through governments. Understanding wheelchair provision within different countries is key. This paper describes the process used to support the development of wheelchair service strategic plans in Romania and the Philippines. It considers the influences, meaning, challenges and developments when producing strategic priorities within two different contexts. Methods: The International Society of Wheelchair Professionals (ISWP) sponsored affiliates Motivation Foundation Romania and the Philippine Society of Wheelchair Philippine Society of Wheelchair Professionals (PSWP), to conduct organizational ethnographic mixed method stakeholder centred studies, to develop robust strategic plans. An affiliate coordinator for wheelchair provision in less resourced settings supported this process. Results: Diversity between the two-affiliate sites was evident, influencing value placed within both societies towards equality and participation. Common components to address included: advocacy; wheelchair service infrastructure; capacity building; education; training and research. Research process facilitation supported by affiliate coordinator is important. Conclusion: Understanding contextual dimensions, which sharp a countries wheelchair service, is essential. Member states should take action by conducting in-country wheelchair sector analysis, to create wheelchair provision strategies for sustainable development, to meet personal posture and mobility needs, primary for daily living, as a basic human right. Understanding the complexity of providing appropriate wheelchairs within different countries is essential to meet the diverse needs of citizens. Conducting situational analysis of the wheelchair sector involving key stakeholders in the process is important to understand different perspectives and develop strategic priorities towards sustainable development. Producing context specific wheelchair sector reports and strategic plans strengthens the evidence base when informing governments regarding the importance of developing sustainable wheelchair provision infrastructures. The affiliate coordinator role is important to support affiliates to produce robust documentation that clearly and objectively outlines the wheelchair sector issues and plans, to provide solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The death of a child creates especially poignant feelings and extreme stress, distress, and devastation for family members and healthcare providers. In addition, serious or long-term illness forces a reconstruction of our experiences with time and space. In this paper, we report on a long-term ethnographic study of a Pediatric Palliative Care Team (PPCT). Using the concepts of spatiality and temporality; Deleuze's concepts of smooth and striated spaces; Innis's concepts of space and time biases; Foucault's concept of heterotopian space—places with multiple layers of meaning; and a related concept of heterokairoi—moments in time with multiple possibilities—we consider how the PPCT constructs and reconstructs meaning in the midst of chaos, ethical dilemmas, and heartbreaking choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a complex and challenging condition and recovery can be a slow and difficult process. Predicting factors remain largely unknown. This paper aims to systematically review qualitative studies which have investigated female service users' experiences of recovering from AN and carry out a meta-synthesis of the themes they identified. Meta-ethnography was used to select and synthesize the studies. Articles published between 2002 and 2017 were searched in PsycInfo, EMBASE, CINAHL and Medline. Studies were included if they explored recovery from AN using a qualitative methodology. The methodological quality of the studies was systematically and critically appraised. Fourteen studies were selected for inclusion. Common themes reported by participants describe the process of recovery from AN as dealing with a fragmented sense of self, a turning point where insight and commitment to recovery is developed, and, in recovery, a reclamation of self through meaningful relationships, rebuilding identity and self-acceptance. Recovery from AN is experienced as a complex psychological process with many contributing factors. Findings highlight the need to reconsider clinical practice and treatment provision to incorporate the psychological components of self-identity into recovery programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes a newly developed prosthetic leg socket design for a below-knee amputation. Excessive heat and the resulted perspiration within a prosthetic socket were the most common causes for reporting a reduced quality of life for prosthetic users. The product namely AirCirc means air circulation and it has been designed by approach of medical device design process in providing the amputees to maintain the skin temperature inside the socket. This device has been designed to provide the amputees with comfort and ultimate breathable. In order to design the device, the small hole was made in prosthetic socket surface since it has a function as air circulation. Four types of proposed sockets namely P1, P2, P3 and P4 and one control socket were compared on a single patient to determine the best design of prosthetic socket. The result successfully reveals that by using holes can be maintain the temperature inside prosthetic socket. In addition to the eco-friendly material, the woven kenaf was used as material that provides good strength as compared to glass fibre and offer sustainable and biodegradable product yet provides unique and aesthetic surface as came from woven kenaf itself. The objective of this paper is to provide the airflow prosthetic socket design and optimize the use of natural fibre in prostheses field. Thus, with the use of the environmental friendly material, functionality device and heat removal capability make the device suitable for maintaining a comfortable and healthy environment for prosthesis. Newly developed prosthetic leg socket design for a below-knee amputation Device has been designed to provide the amputees with comfort and ultimate breathable Woven kenaf was used as material that provides good strength as compared to glass fibre for sustainable and biodegradable product Results show that by using holes can be maintain the temperature inside prosthetic socket [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports how transit crime and perception of crime have been barriers to an area-focused and person-based ethnographic urban health and wellbeing research study in St. Louis. This study has experienced two primary challenges. First, respondent concerns about crime have impeded the ability of the study to follow best practices to strengthen ethnographic and qualitative research. Second, these concerns have impeded sampling and respondent participation in a way that decreases the voice and perspectives of older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: This paper focuses on the reasons for the under-representation of British South Asians in substance use services. Based on a small-scale evaluation of a substance use service that delivers targeted outreach support within two predominantly Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in the north west of England, this paper contributes to the debate around how substance use services can best engage with young British Pakistani and Bangladeshi substance users. Methods: Semi-structured interviews (with six staff members, 18 young Pakistani and Bangladeshi service users, and 18 stakeholders and partner agencies), a detailed ethnographic observation of the service, and an analysis of routinely collected quantitative monitoring data. Findings: The paper highlights the importance of what Fountain terms low threshold/open access services. Alongside this, the paper argues that the building of trust and confidence in a substance use service is a key when it comes to engaging with young Pakistani and Bangladeshi substance users. Yet this necessary process takes time: something that is at odds with the current trend towards short-term funding regimes and 'quick wins'. Conclusions: The paper concludes by advocating the need for, not only a diverse range of engagement strategies, but also a longer term approach when it comes to developing and delivering substance use services aimed at successfully engaging with this particular group of substance users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Routinized activities create security for persons with dementia (PWDs) and help care staff manage everyday tasks, but care staff also assist PWDs with constructing routines during their leisure time. This paper investigates how a PWD negotiates how to use the common room in a dementia ward as a social space with co-present staff members, other residents, and a visiting researcher. Methods: Based on ethnographic observations and video recordings and using conversation analytical methodology, the paper presents sequential analyses of video recorded data collected at a dementia unit in a Danish care facility. Results: Detailed analyses of selected instances indicate that the PWD treats care staff as being in charge of the social organization of common room, and they show how the PWD is routinely guided to sit calmly, minding his own business. The analyses also show that the PWD relies on ritualized action and routine activities when managing co-presence and interaction with the visiting researcher. Moreover, they show that a previous non-routine joint activity is used by the PWD to take initiative and thereby re-establish it later. Conclusions: We argue that routine and ritual both provide constraints but also resources for PWDs to actively co-co-create new shared activities with co-present others, and we suggest that PWDs' possibilities for taking initiatives for activities during leisure time among other things rely on the routines that have already been established in interaction with care staff and others or on non-routine activities which PWDs may turn into routines as they re-establish them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global health donors increasingly embrace international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) as partners, often relying on them to conduct political advocacy in recipient countries, especially in controversial policy domains like reproductive health. Although INGOs are the primary recipients of donor funding, they are expected to work through national affiliates or counterparts to enable 'locally-led' change. Using prospective policy analysis and ethnographic evidence, this paper examines how donor-funded INGOs have influenced the restrictive policy environments for safe abortion and family planning in South Sudan and Malawi. While external actors themselves emphasise the technical nature of their involvement, the paper analyses them as instrumental political actors who strategically broker alliances and resources to shape policy, often working 'behind the scenes' to manage the challenging circumstances they operate under. Consequently, their agency and power are hidden through various practices of effacement or concealment. These practices may be necessary to rationalise the tensions inherent in delivering a global programme with the goal of inducing locally-led change in a highly controversial policy domain, but they also risk inciting suspicion and foreign-national tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, indigenous peoples live with stark disparities in health when compared with national populations. The disparities arise from a combination of factors that relate to the social and economic determinants of health, combined with disenfranchisement, and a rapid destruction of indigenous health systems, forests, natural resources and indigenous knowledge. In Malaysia, the indigenous peoples, known as the Orang Asli or 'Original People', are often viewed by authorities as 'backward, ignorant and resistant to modern health services', and therefore responsible for their poor state of health. This view situates the problem in the indigenous community, with the state as the benevolent provider of progress and improvement including health services. Orang Asli responses to this benevolence ranges from pragmatism to resignation to resistance. Drawing on a two-year ethnographic study, this paper explores, from the perspective of the Orang Asli, the dynamics of state and non-state societies, the structure and role of indigenous health systems and the effects of socio-economic transition in shaping Orang Asli responses to modern health services. Already burdened with poorer health compared with the national population, there is a growing problem of non-communicable diseases among the Orang Asli. Addressing this will require a shift from the benevolent dependency-creating approach commonly adopted by state public health services to one that is inclusive, responsive and participatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sex workers in South Africa face various forms of structural and interpersonal violence, including police violence, exclusion from health services, and stigmatization and marginalization within their communities. In an attempt to counteract the harmful health effects of criminalization and exclusion, risk-reduction workshops are a key component of HIV prevention programs globally. This paper offers a critical investigation of Creative Space workshops – a South African model of risk-reduction workshops for sex workers – taking place in Soweto, Johannesburg. Drawing on Paulo Freire's work, the paper explores the potential of these workshops to contribute to the empowerment, health and well-being of sex workers. Objectives: The aim of this paper is to investigate the social and psychological effects of peer-led risk-reduction workshops for sex workers in Soweto, South Africa, with a particular focus on the ways in which they might contribute to community empowerment. Methods: This paper is based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 32 sex workers conducted as part of a 20-month ethnographic study (December 2015 to July 2017). Data was analyzed combining inductive thematic analysis with a theoretical frame based on Freire's theory of community empowerment. Results: Peer-led risk-reduction workshops can serve as a 'safe space' for sex workers and distribute empowering forms of knowledge, particularly regarding health issues and rights. However, divisions between different groups of sex workers and between sex workers and non-sex workers counteract the potential benefits of the workshops. Conclusions: Peer-led sex worker programs are likely to be more empowering when they are committed to raising critical consciousness and creating solidarity, and embedded in community action, focusing on common issues such as institutionalized racism, livelihood insecurity, and lack of access to safe and secure housing. Such actions would have positive outcomes on health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The minimally invasive autopsy (MIA), an innovative approach for obtaining post-mortem samples of key organs, is increasingly being recognized as a robust methodology for cause of death (CoD) investigation, albeit so far limited to pilot studies and research projects. A better understanding of the real causes of death in middle- and low-income countries, where underlying causes of death are seldom determined, would allow improved health planning, more targeted prioritization of available resources and the implementation of coherent public health policies. This paper discusses lessons learnt from the implementation of a Feasibility and Acceptability (F&A) study evaluating the MIA approach in five countries: Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique and Pakistan. This article reports the methodological choices made to document sociocultural and religious norms around death, to examine community and relatives' attitudes and perceptions towards MIA, and to identify factors motivating the MIA's acceptance and refusal. We used ethnography, grounded theory and framework method approaches. In-depth and semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with key informants, including next of kin of deceased individuals and healthcare providers, were conducted. Participant observation and direct observation of procedures and ceremonies around death were organized in all study sites. In Mozambique, MIA procedures were observed and case studies conducted. The implementation of this F&A protocol has provided critical lessons that could facilitate the future implementation of post-mortem procedures for CoD investigation. These include the need for early community engagement, staff training and preparedness, flexibility to adapt the protocol, gathering qualitative data from diverse sources, and triangulation of the data. We have applied a rigorous, effective and culturally sensitive methodological approach to assess the F&A of MIA in resource-constrained settings. We strongly recommend that such an approach is applied in settings where MIAs or similar post-mortem sensitive procedures are to be introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]