Sky Edith GROSS
Sky has a PhD in Social Sciences (Sociology, anthropology, medical ethics, STS), an MA degree in History (Magna cum Laude- from the leading EHESS, Paris) and a double major BA in Business Administration and Sociology-Anthropology (Summa cum Laude). After four consequent postdoctoral positions (Sociology, Medical\Genetic Ethics, End-of-Life studies, Health-Systems Management in three major Israeli universities and honorary fellow at King's College), and extensive teaching, research and publishing experience, she has opted for a two-years term as Director of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Ministry of Science and Technology. There she took on the development and application of national programs at the intersection of Science and Society (including, diversity, outreach, inter-agency collaboration, strengthening of science-for-policy programs). Her academic career focused on professional, organizational, social, and ethical aspects of science, health disparities, medicine and psychiatry, global health. Sky is fluent in 3 languages (English, French, Hebrew, understands Spanish) and performed research in both qualitative and quantitative methods, and in a wide range of disciplines. She has experience working in several languages and in international research environments (including the EU Commission, bilateral programs and UNESCO). She has first hand experience from within a funding agency and has herself developed funding schemes and collaborations between national and international agencies. Her recent position as Director of the National Council for the Advancement of Women in Science and Technology provided her the opportunity to develop and apply leadership skills and promote policy-making and complex collaborations in one of the areas most close to her heart - diversity and gender equality.She recently took part in the prestigious "International Visitor Leadership Program" (administered by the US Department of State) along with 47 other women leaders from 47 different countries.Sky Gross served as lecturer in medical ethics and humanities at the Tel-Aviv University School of Medicine and of bioethics and society at the Biotechnology department of the School of Engineers. As a medical anthropologist, Sky's research foci and background include several lanes, among which are subjects of prenatal testing in the ultraorthodox Jewish community, social microdynamics in postnatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, inclusion of complementary medicine in the delivery room, and epistemological and symbolic boundaries between biomedical and complementary practitioners in the hospital setting.In her more recent work she considers issues associated with both philosophical and anthropological understandings of the brain and its relation to conceptualisations of the 'mind'. With this intention, she uses historical analysis to approach the ethical debate surrounding the practice of frontal lobotomy, and a cultural reading of the scientific and popular discourses on 'mirror neurons'. In her latest published paper, she brings an extensive fieldwork in a neuro-oncology clinic to shed light on complex expert and lay constructions of brain tumors as objects for diagnosis.She is now working on two main projects namely, the cultural correlates of neuroanatomical research and brain localisation (or 'how is culture mapped onto the brain')
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clinic in Israel. It is claimed that patients, close-ones and physicians
engage in creating metaphorical visions of the brain and brain tumours
that reaffirm Cartesian dualism. The ‘brain talk’ involved visible and
spatial terms and results in a particular kind of objectification of the
organ of the self. The overbearing presence of visual media (i.e., magnetic
resonance imaging, computed tomography, angiographic studies) further
gave rise to particular forms of interactions with patients and physicians
where the ‘imageable’ (i.e., the image on the screen) became the
‘imaginable’ (i.e., the metaphor). The images mostly referred to a domain
of mundane objects: a meatball in a dish of spaghetti, a topping of olives
over a pizza, the surface of the moon, a stone, an egg, an animal, a dark
cloud. Furthermore, conversations with family members showed that
formal facts and informed compassion were substituted by concrete
representations. For them, and especially for the patient, these
representations redefined an ungraspable situation, where a tumour – an object – can so easily affect the organ of their subjectivity, into something
comprehensible through the materialistic, often mechanistic actions of
most mundane objects. This, however, also created alienated objects
within the boundaries of their own embodied selves. Patients, on the one
hand, did not reject their own sense of ‘own-ness’, of having a lifeworld
(lebenswelt) as subjective agents, but on the other, did talk about their
own interiors as being an ‘other’: an object visible, observable and
imaginable from a third-person standpoint – a standpoint drawing its
authority from biomedical epistemology and practice."
related mechanisms of resolution. These mechanisms include Hierarchisation: ranking the relative validity and reliability of the different sources of information, eventually prioritising reports from more authoritative expertises (e.g. imaging reports would be considered more reliable than patients’ accounts); Sequencing: relying upon the temporal dimension, and defining the discrepancy itself as a diagnostic sign (e.g. the degradation or amelioration of the disease); Negotiation: adjusting diagnoses
via a preliminary exchange between experts and a consequent ‘‘fine tuning’’ of the reports (e.g. radiologists being aware of clinical evaluations before finalising their reports); Peripheralising: turning to other expertises to ‘‘explain away’’ symptoms that do not fit with a well established initial diagnosis
(e.g. asserting that a symptom’s source was orthopaedic rather than neurological); and pragmatism: using information only as far as it provided sufficient grounds for treatment decisions, leaving ambiguities unresolved. These five mechanisms are presented here in the context of the daily work of the clinic.
hospital settings by examining a new phenomenon in modern
medicine: collaboration between alternative and biomedical
practitioners (primarily physicians) working together in
biomedical settings. The study uses qualitative methods to
examine the nature of this collaboration by calling attention
to the ways in which the biomedical profession manages to
secure its boundaries and to protect its hard-core professional
knowledge. It identifies the processes of exclusion and
marginalization as the main mechanisms by which symbolic
boundaries are marked daily in the professional field. These
processes enable the biomedical profession to contain its
competitors and at the same time to avoid overt confrontations
and mitigate potential tensions between the two medical systems."
The present paper expands the context of our research by focusing on two groups of allied health professionals who utilize CAM practices. Like increasing numbers of physicians who practice CAM, the nurses and midwives under study are trained and experienced in mainstream bio medicine and have at some point in their careers opted to study and practice a variety of CAM skills. Their experiences in the processes of boundary crossing are analyzed in terms of 'boundary work' to include practices utilized in the work context.
clinic in Israel. It is claimed that patients, close-ones and physicians
engage in creating metaphorical visions of the brain and brain tumours
that reaffirm Cartesian dualism. The ‘brain talk’ involved visible and
spatial terms and results in a particular kind of objectification of the
organ of the self. The overbearing presence of visual media (i.e., magnetic
resonance imaging, computed tomography, angiographic studies) further
gave rise to particular forms of interactions with patients and physicians
where the ‘imageable’ (i.e., the image on the screen) became the
‘imaginable’ (i.e., the metaphor). The images mostly referred to a domain
of mundane objects: a meatball in a dish of spaghetti, a topping of olives
over a pizza, the surface of the moon, a stone, an egg, an animal, a dark
cloud. Furthermore, conversations with family members showed that
formal facts and informed compassion were substituted by concrete
representations. For them, and especially for the patient, these
representations redefined an ungraspable situation, where a tumour – an object – can so easily affect the organ of their subjectivity, into something
comprehensible through the materialistic, often mechanistic actions of
most mundane objects. This, however, also created alienated objects
within the boundaries of their own embodied selves. Patients, on the one
hand, did not reject their own sense of ‘own-ness’, of having a lifeworld
(lebenswelt) as subjective agents, but on the other, did talk about their
own interiors as being an ‘other’: an object visible, observable and
imaginable from a third-person standpoint – a standpoint drawing its
authority from biomedical epistemology and practice."
related mechanisms of resolution. These mechanisms include Hierarchisation: ranking the relative validity and reliability of the different sources of information, eventually prioritising reports from more authoritative expertises (e.g. imaging reports would be considered more reliable than patients’ accounts); Sequencing: relying upon the temporal dimension, and defining the discrepancy itself as a diagnostic sign (e.g. the degradation or amelioration of the disease); Negotiation: adjusting diagnoses
via a preliminary exchange between experts and a consequent ‘‘fine tuning’’ of the reports (e.g. radiologists being aware of clinical evaluations before finalising their reports); Peripheralising: turning to other expertises to ‘‘explain away’’ symptoms that do not fit with a well established initial diagnosis
(e.g. asserting that a symptom’s source was orthopaedic rather than neurological); and pragmatism: using information only as far as it provided sufficient grounds for treatment decisions, leaving ambiguities unresolved. These five mechanisms are presented here in the context of the daily work of the clinic.
hospital settings by examining a new phenomenon in modern
medicine: collaboration between alternative and biomedical
practitioners (primarily physicians) working together in
biomedical settings. The study uses qualitative methods to
examine the nature of this collaboration by calling attention
to the ways in which the biomedical profession manages to
secure its boundaries and to protect its hard-core professional
knowledge. It identifies the processes of exclusion and
marginalization as the main mechanisms by which symbolic
boundaries are marked daily in the professional field. These
processes enable the biomedical profession to contain its
competitors and at the same time to avoid overt confrontations
and mitigate potential tensions between the two medical systems."
The present paper expands the context of our research by focusing on two groups of allied health professionals who utilize CAM practices. Like increasing numbers of physicians who practice CAM, the nurses and midwives under study are trained and experienced in mainstream bio medicine and have at some point in their careers opted to study and practice a variety of CAM skills. Their experiences in the processes of boundary crossing are analyzed in terms of 'boundary work' to include practices utilized in the work context.
This question has troubled Western society for centuries, and still does today. Philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists - as much as the lay public - battle with the question of whether our personality, sense of self and states of mind can truly be explained through a scientific study of the brain, and whether one can at least correlate these with brain activity and structure. With the recent hyperbolic advances made in neuroscience, these questions arise in the form of intensive and broad debates on whether one may be able, at some point in the future, to fully account for what we cherish more than all, our sense that we are more than a lump of flesh.
This "more" however, does not belong to the realm of science: in the laboratory, one must deal with observable and operalizationable phenomena – everything core subjectivity (’qualia’- e.g. the experience of pain, of seeing the color red) is not. How can neuroscience approach the mind without losing its brain? How well has it done thus far, and what may we expect in the future?
This talk will suggest one – among many – approaches to this quandary, by looking at the history and current practices of brain localization. By introducing the mind-body conundrum into the study of this enterprise, we will consider the extent to which localization and classification of brain/mind functions serve as a way to materialize what is/was believed to be beyond ’matter’. The following debate will allow a discussion of an issue that concerns us all
This question has troubled Western society for centuries, and still does today. Philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists - as much as the lay public - battle with the question of whether our personality, sense of self and states of mind can truly be explained through a scientific study of the brain, and whether one can at least correlate these with brain activity and structure. With the recent hyperbolic advances made in neuroscience, these questions arise in the form of intensive and broad debates on whether one may be able, at some point in the future, to fully account for what we cherish more than all, our sense that we are more than a lump of flesh.
This "more" however, does not belong to the realm of science: in the laboratory, one must deal with observable and operalizationable phenomena – everything core subjectivity ('qualia'- e.g. the experience of pain, of seeing the color red) is not. How can neuroscience approach the mind without losing its brain? How well has it done thus far, and what may we expect in the future?
This talk will suggest one – among many – approaches to this quandary, by looking at the history and current practices of brain localization. By introducing the mind-body conundrum into the study of this enterprise, we will consider the extent to which localization and classification of brain/mind functions serve as a way to materialize what is/was believed to be beyond 'matter'. The following debate will allow a discussion of an issue that concerns us all.