Paul Mason
Anthropologist - Conservationist - Educator
Address: Taronga Institute of Science and Learning
Bradleys Head Road
Mosman 2088 NSW
Australia
Address: Taronga Institute of Science and Learning
Bradleys Head Road
Mosman 2088 NSW
Australia
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (55)
Uploads
Books by Paul Mason
Pavithra Joseph & Gladys Noel.
Pavithra Joseph & Gladys Noel.
role that female humans played in hunter -gatherer societies, and
also has clear implications for the type of mothering they were able
to deliver. Recent data published in Nature adds to this picture.
Analysis of a fossil tooth from a Neanderthal infant shows that
Neanderthal children moved off exclusive breastfeeding at around
7.5 months of age. In comparison, infants in hunter -gatherer societies
are not weaned until around three or four years of age. Clearly, female
participation in close -range hunting would impact negatively upon child -
rearing capacities while lullabies and cave painting would be more
conducive to the parent-infant bond. In my view, the human babies
who had more time with their caregivers, who were in turn supported by their own families in the task of raising highly dependent, slow- maturing, offspring, found themselves in an ideal learning environment. The parent-
infant bond is key to the evolution of language, nonverbal communication
and interpersonal emotional skills; the extended childhood increases the duration of learning and innovation.
Tuberculosis (TB) treatment is lengthy and psychologically demanding. Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) is a useful model for conceptualising human behaviour in response to stress. SCT situates behavioural, environmental, and personal factors in a relationship of reciprocal determinism. Understanding a patient’s experience requires not only an observation of their behaviour (e.g. presentation for treatment, medication adherence), environmental factors (e.g. social support structures, access to resources), and personal factors (e.g. medical knowledge, expectations of treatment) but also consideration of how these three factors impact upon each other. Personal factors, specifically self-efficacy beliefs, are central to the capacity to exercise control over one’s life. Self-efficacy beliefs are personal judgments of what one can do with whatever resources and skills one possesses to organise and execute courses of actions required to attain designated types of performances. Psychometric tools to measure self-efficacy among TB patients can be a useful means of identifying individual, social, and structural obstacles and facilitators to effective health-seeking behaviours and successful treatment outcomes.
Objectives
This study aimed to determine psychometric characteristics of a Coping Self-Efficacy (CSE) scale among Vietnamese TB patients.
Method
Ethnographic fieldwork in Ca Mau, the southernmost province of Vietnam, led to the development of a context-specific TB Treatment CSE scale aimed at better understanding the experience of regional Vietnamese TB patients. Using convenience sampling, scale domains were developed through structured and semi-structured interviews with 75 newly diagnosed TB patients identified through a community-wide TB screening program in Ca Mau.
Results
The Vietnamese version of the TB Treatment CSE scale contained 27 items across four domains including 5 items on “communication with doctor”, 4 items on “seeking support”, 7 items of “disclosure of diagnosis”, and 11 items on “medication adherence”. Piloting indicated acceptance and feasibility of the scale to measure self-efficacy among both literate and illiterate Vietnamese TB patients.
In standard language, the word ‘degenerate’ refers to undesirable deviation. Even medical doctors refer to harmful degradation as a ‘degenerative’ condition. The scientific term ‘degeneracy’, however, has a much less negative meaning. Degeneracy refers to the variable pathways that can lead to the same outcome or the ability of different structures to perform the same function. For example, different chemical pathways can be used to metabolise food, different proteins can bind to the same molecules, and multiple pathological pathways have been implicated in the clinical symptoms of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, dystonia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, neuropathic pain, autism, and sleep apnea.
Many scientists have been blind to the concept of degeneracy not only because the term itself is misleading, but also because degeneracy is distributed throughout living systems. A traditional research approach looking for a single cause for any given condition is not able to map multiple processes yielding the same output. Geneticists looking for a single gene for a given function or neuroscientists looking for the brain area responsible for a specific behaviour are examples of a bias that hides degeneracy from scientific thinking. A lot of the time, technological limitations only allow researchers to investigate one structure and one function at a time. Not including degeneracy in scientific models, however, risks ignoring an important part of how living systems operate.
‘Redundant’ is another tricky word used differently in everyday speech and science. In everyday speech, we often use the word ‘redundant’ to refer to something that is unnecessary. To be made ‘redundant’ at the workplace, for example, is to lose your job. In science, redundancy refers to multiple copies of identical structures. However, even among scientists there is confusion between redundancy and degeneracy. For instance, two different genes that code for the same function are often mislabelled redundant. Making a clear distinction between redundancy and degeneracy helps scientists be more precise about the properties of a system. The words we use to think about living systems can be just as valuable as the technology we use to study them.
Degeneracy is a vital property of evolutionary systems. Having multiple different backup pathways is how living systems maintain stability over time and also how they change, adapt and evolve. Degeneracy can be observed in many different systems such as genetic codes, epigenetic programs, immune systems, respiratory networks, bodily movement, human language, and cultural behaviour. Drawing upon the history and philosophy of science as well as examples from contemporary research, this talk will elucidate the structural variation and functional plasticity underlying the dynamic composition of complex living systems.
demanding. Informed by interviews with TB patients in Ca Mau, Vietnam, a social cognitive model is presented to gain an understanding of the patient experience. Drawing upon Bandura’s health promotion model, we highlight individual, social, and structural obstacles and facilitators to health seeking behaviour. The model is extrapolated with a focus on self-efficacy. Greater efficacy has been associated with higher health seeking behaviours and mental-wellbeing. Fieldwork in Ca Mau, Vietnam, has led to the development of a context-specific TB Treatment Self-efficacy scale aimed at better understanding the experience of TB patients.
SETU Semester 1, 2017
Faculty of Arts
ATS1255_CLAYTON_DAY_ON_S1-01 Encountering cultures: Introduction to anthropology 1
Lecture slides:
https://prezi.com/_cxgegsxr1jm/marcel-mauss/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
Lecture presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1vkNPDwFhY
The mobilisation of medical knowledge for legal purposes is a persistent issue in diverse cultural contexts. As long as science, disease and crime continue to be conflated to aggregate, subjugate, and regulate populations, critical inquiry will be necessary. Disease and Crime offers a sound representation of scholarship in this area. This highly readable volume will interest scholars in anthropology, history, sociology, medical humanities and area studies. It could be used whole or in part as course material for undergraduate or postgraduate students. As an excellent example of solid, high quality, robust scholarship, Disease and Crime will satisfy early career researchers and experienced academics alike.
Writing the history of tuberculosis does not simply involve tracing how humans travelled from uncertainty to reason in searching for a cure for a disease. Tuberculosis fundamentally altered the human landscape in a range of significant ways and its history is not linear. The incapacity to sequester the spread and devastation of tuberculosis opened the space for all manner of regulations, surveillance and secular moralising that infiltrated the most intimate parts of peoples’ lives. With unparalleled command of his topic and an incredible amount of primary resources, Armus analyses social context and the culture of medical practice in a multifaceted history of tuberculosis in Buenos Aires.
Across different cultures, the physical experience of sleep paralysis is remarkably consistent. A sleeping person, generally reclining in the supine position, has the sensation of waking up in the middle of the night. They feel vividly aware of their surroundings but incapable of motor action. For a stressful period of time lasting up to a couple of minutes, the individual feels awake but paralysed, even feeling unable to breathe. Eventually, their body is able to move again, but the experience can leave an unforgettable trace on their being. Adler calls the phenomenon a night-mare (with a hyphen) thus not giving credence to the western medical definition of sleep paralysis. Nonetheless, her book is still called Sleep Paralysis, which suggests the sort of compromises anthropologists make to popularise their ethnography. A minor clash, however, between ethnographic methodology and marketable literature does not retract from Adler’s wonderful work, which bridges a divide between her discipline and a wider audience.