Full Description
"Explorations of a Mind-Traveling Sociologist" is a book of thematically interconnected ethnographic essays by the internationally esteemed sociologist Renée C. Fox, who employs a participant observer outlook to provide unique insight on such enduring—and pressing—issues as the lived experiences of physicians and patients, including patients who are physically challenged, elderly, mortally ill or beyond the reach of medical care; the origins and consequences of epidemic outbreaks of old and new plague-like infectious diseases that occur and recur, despite the impressive advances of medicine; the concomitants and challenges of aging; the wellsprings, dynamics and significance of medical humanitarian action; engagement with a "beyond borders" world view; the occurrence of national and international events of major moral as well as political and legal import and repercussions; and the meaning and meaningfulness of teaching, exploring, questing and writing. Latently associated with these themes are the author's social values and social conscience. Composing these essays from a participant observer outlook heightens and enriches the author's observations over the course of her daily life, enabling her to engage in "mind travel" to places and people she has intimately known in the past and to places she has yearningly hoped to visit but never has.
Contents
Foreword by Anne Fadiman; Preface; Resilience; Apartment Number 1103/4; A Hallway Friendship; Making an Apartment House My Home; Beyond Borders; The Meanings of My MSF Book; Venturing Out with a Rolling Walker; Election to the Explorers Club; Encounters with Physicians; Plagues; Miss Balkema—and Mary Beth; Life, Death, and Uncertainty in Physicians' Memoirs; Terrorist Bombings in Brussels; The 2016 Presidential Election; Donald Trump's Executive Orders on Immigration; On Being a Teacher; What I Learned about the Language of Silence; A Bioethics Award and a Surrogate Lecture; Epilogue; Index.
