Overview
The problems of bioethics are embedded in people's lives and social worlds. They are shaped by individual biographies and relationships, by the ethos and institutions of health care, by economic and political pressures, by media depictions, and by the assumptions, beliefs, and values that permeate cultures and times. Yet these forces are largely ignored by a professional bioethics that concentrates on the theoretical justification of decisions. The original essays in this volume use qualitative research methods to expose the multiple contexts within which the problems of bioethics arise, are defined and debated, and ultimately resolved. In a provocative concluding essay, one contributor asks his fellow ethnographers to reflect on the ethical problems of ethnography.
Full Product Details
Author: Barry Hoffmaster
Publisher: Temple University Press,U.S.
Imprint: Temple University Press,U.S.
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.345kg
ISBN: 9781566398459
ISBN 10: 1566398452
Pages: 419
Publication Date: 15 February 2001
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Bioethics in Social Context energizes both bioethics and ethnography. The authors expand the scope of what issues bioethics should consider, and they demonstrate how culture, mass media, emotions, families, and institutions are relevant in consideration of those issues. In doing all this, they open new possibilities for the empirical investigation of moral life. -Arthur W. Frank, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, and author of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics and At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness ...this book provides a valuable contribution to the expanding field of empirically based ethics, or 'ethics in use', revealing the moral decisions people make in the real world, and how and why they make those decisions. -Journal of Medical Ethics
Bioethics in Social Context energizes both bioethics and ethnography. The authors expand the scope of what issues bioethics should consider, and they demonstrate how culture, mass media, emotions, families, and institutions are relevant in consideration of those issues. In doing all this, they open new possibilities for the empirical investigation of moral life. --Arthur W. Frank, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, and author of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics and At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness
Bioethics in Social Context energizes both bioethics and ethnography. The authors expand the scope of what issues bioethics should consider, and they demonstrate how culture, mass media, emotions, families, and institutions are relevant in consideration of those issues. In doing all this, they open new possibilities for the empirical investigation of moral life. - Arthur W. Frank, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, and author of The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics and At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness
Author Information
Barry Hoffmaster is professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. From 1991 to 1996 he was the Director of the Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values in London, Ontario, and he served as President of the Canadian Bioethics Society in 1994-94. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center.
