Trade winds and time: The Clock of the South

S
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

E --------------------------------------- W

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

N
G7
G8
 ..

Alt	trade-winds
Socio- (political)	Clock of the South

individual
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

C/o BBC: Bolivian Congress clock changed to turn anti-clockwise

The clock displayed on the Bolivian Congress building, located in the city of La Paz, has been re-set to run in reverse.

Its hands turn left and the numbers have been inverted to go from one to twelve to the left.

It's the latest measure taken by the government of President Evo Morales to promote the indigenous identity of the Andean country. ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-28040065

Additional link:
World Economic Forum

updated 26 August 2014
BBC Radio 4 20:00: Whatever Happened to Global Governance?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f9rdr

Original image source:
http://bubblear.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/clock1-1110x400.jpg

Gender models role models and cognitive models... Discuss?

As a male nurse I have been aware of gender throughout my career ever since my student days (late 1970s-early 80s) - mental health - and then as a student again for two years general nurse training. The cultural, professional and global changes over the past three decades and more have been quite profound all influencing the perspectives and realities of gender in nursing today.

Since 1987-88, when I discovered Hodges' model I was also bound to wonder about gender in terms of:

• the number of male nurse theorists and their contribution (should this matter!)?; 
• other male nurse theorists globally and the influence of other cultural perspectives;
• the need to consider gender of course in terms of 'standpoint' within research;
• Is Hodges' model gender biased as its structure and basis comprised of categories of care concepts is a very masculine activity? (Even though the intention in identifying the boxes is to transcend and integrate them.) Please see below (and no pun intended).
• Therefore nursing (still primarily a female profession) may ignore/discredit the potential of the model?

Possibly, the stand-out feature of Hodges' model is its invitation to categorise and typify. There could be gender-based consequences in how the model is perceived and received, which in turn could affect interest and participation in research on this subject? In designing studies of the model the feminist standpoint might be useful?:

“What, then, about the further charge that making clear-cut classifications of this kind is a very masculine thing to do? … It reaches its peak in empirical science as we know it, itself a very male affair, and it embodies the desire to have control of things and to know what is likely to happen. It issues in the kind of binary opposites we have found feminists, especially postmodernist feminists, decrying so vigorously-antimonies such as thought/language, nature/culture, reason/emotion, theory/practice, white/black, and especially men/women.” Crotty, (1998) p.171.

Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. SAGE Publications Ltd.

This post was prompted by an item on GANM (Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery)

Le Ballet Mécanique (1924, Fernand Leger) & the axes of Hodges' model

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ------------------------------------- mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

individual

Le Ballet ?
Le Ballet ?	Le Ballet ?

group - population

The Ballet mécanique faq
http://www.antheil.org/faq.html

My source: Budick, A. (2013) Hymn to progress, Life&Arts, FT Weekend, 14-15 December. p.16.

Arts: "Reflection on a sofa" Hodges' model as a 'memory palace' I

Prior to the New Dynamics in Ageing Showcase this Monday (a great event) I travelled down to London on Sunday morning. I wasn't 100% that morning, nothing specific.

I arrived at noon dropped the bags at the B&B and then took the nine stops from Kings Cross to South Kensington. A few minutes walk brought me to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I was early to collect my timed ticket for the Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace exhibition.

After queuing for ten minutes (we Brits eh!) at the proper sign to be told I just had to approach the entrance at the allotted time. I went to check the cafe. This was very nice, on the pricey side and rather busy. It's not easy to find a seat, do self-service and be secure. Anyway it was time for a walk, find somewhere else. Before doing so I went to shop and bought the exhibition book, not a huge tome and quite interesting.

Not far away around the corner I found the Brompton cafe. There were seats here. I ordered a cappucinno. There was a large communal table so I sat there. I was ok for about twenty minutes and then came over all hot and increasingly dizzy. I realised I had to move and quickly so took my jumper off and walked around to the right where there was a bookshop.

It was empty and there was sofa with 'LOVE' emblazoned on it - three times - if I registered this correctly. I could hear the cafe and just see one table through the passage way. At that moment I'd had enough of the individual-group axis and the humanistic-mechanistic took over as I went semi-horizontal.

After a couple of minutes I recovered myself and was able to get up - yes the gyro functions - and carry on my way. I am really grateful for that little space and rest. I was still determined to visit the exhibition and attend the showcase. This was fortunate timing with Sunday the 20th the last day of the exhibition and I wanted to keep it that way.

In the post-apocalyptic world of British author Hari Kunzru’s specially commissioned 10,000 word novella, London has been ravaged by a magnetic storm; all memory, art, writing, and recording has been banned. As one man attempts to remember, alone in his cell, the narrative unfolds.
Zoe Pilger, The Independent - Art review.

“misremembered” ambulance by London-based illustration collective Le Gun

“Once there were great palaces called Hospitals.” In contrast to a dystopian future when the NHS and indeed all medical knowledge has been erased, the idea of basic public services appears miraculous. “It was a time of great wonder,” he writes, referring to the present. This fragment of text is accompanied by a fabulous sculpture of a “misremembered” ambulance by London-based illustration collective Le Gun. A ghoulish figure brandishes a whip and pulls a cart filled with potions that promise ad-hoc, alchemical healing.
Zoe Pilger, The Independent - Art review and image

See page 18-19 of Kunzru’s book.

I started in a memory palace, a book shop. I left to visit another, carrying my own memory palace in my mind.

Hodges' model is a memory palace, vacant, awaiting occupancy by patient, client, or carer. The model acts as a great prompt past, future and the here and now.

Individual - Group: Axes & Histories

What are the dimensions of the axes that make up the structure of Hodges' model?

Can the individual see the group - the global population - beyond the fresh air in their pocket?

In not seeing the individual, as the global corpus shouts about: "choice", "economic growth", "freedom", "human rights", "democracy", "justice" ... do they see the big picture amid the political smog, the corporate dust storm?

One form human society has so far not generally taken is global. There is still virtually no shared consciousness globally of common struggles or common achievements. Enormous groups - the poor in the Global South for instance - have no sense of forming a single community; in an earlier age, the experience of being subjected to European colonial force failed to create a common anti-colonial front. Even today's most urgent global issues tend to be tackled regionally or nationally: the history of global warming or organised crime is a history of multiple actors, as often as not talking at cross-purposes. p.8.

Prof. Mark Mazower, All together now, FT Weekend, March 9 - 10, 2013, p. 8. Reviewing The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Differences, by David Cannadine, Allen Lane. 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/edb5b2ea-84d3-11e2-891d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2OXNCQ1xD
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b1793262-8d6f-11e2-82d2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2OXNCQ1xD

My coat, Your coat, the Community cloakroom

'Untitled' 2012 (coats, wire, screws), by Jannis Kounellis

"Such wall-mounted three-dimensional pieces seem to me to talk the language of painting rather than sculpture. So does a massive, poignantly flopping black cross created from several navy coats tied together with wire and screws, hung against a wall. Each coat is a human measure, a stand-in for a human presence." p.20.

Wullschlager, J. (2012) Arts: Beauty in a burlap sack, Financial Times, 8-9 December. p. 20.




Bunzl, J. (2001) writes:

"Expressed in terms of a community-building process, we could thus identify the entity of the nation state as representing the equivalent of the individual person: the prime agent through which community or chaos in the world will ultimately be determined." p.20.

Additional link:
Parasol unit (Jannis Kounellis exhibition)

Bunzl, J. (2001) The Simultaneous Policy – An Insider’s Guide to Saving Humanity and the Planet. New European Publications.
Image source:
Wullschlager, J. (2012) Arts: Beauty in a burlap sack, Financial Times, 8-9 December. p. 20.

Snakes & Ladders - Health & Safety: Blog Action Day - The Power of We

This year's theme for Blog Action Day is The Power of We. Andy Roberts over at DARnet posted about his not taking part given this particularly ambiguous title. I can see what Andy means. I'd signed-up for this year and wondered what to write; but then last Friday morning returning to work up the A59 at the Tickle Trout I was behind a van carrying two ladders...

I used to be a bit reckless in terms of heights, but I was kid then. Can you imagine the sudden lease of mental life from a row of terraced houses in Liverpool to fields and woods? Friends used to climb and go from tree-to-tree, in the summers our football pitches became dusty patches.

In my mid-teens helping out I thought nothing of staining the side of the dorma extension one-handed with about 30cms of standing clearance. In the decade from 1970 to the 1980s attitudes changed markedly as health and safety become firm buddies (see for example HSE). If the ladders were out to stretch their legs then my dad or younger brother were on station ensuring the ladder stayed put. There's the power of we keeping me safe.

The health and independence that the majority of us takes for granted seems to give individuals that childhood tree-to-tree disregard for safety.

H2CM central axis IND - GRP

I can illustrate what I mean; for example, look where this individual has got themselves! Of course, we often depend upon others to get to many places. Our very existence depends on others. 

Central to Hodges' model is a structure built from the key humanistic, that is the psychological and social perspectives of 'I' and 'We'.

This gives the model its spine. Everything else in health and social care follows from this axis. We need the social and political foundations of relationships, families, communities to take us to organisations, political movements, government and global governance. Previously, I pointed to the effort required to deliver person-centred care. We have to conceptually take the individual from the ascendent point in the model and put them at the model's center. Doing this collaboratively that is the communication that counts.

There is however, a responsibility that rests with the person. The Power of We is also not a given. It is possible for individuals to opt out of society, being a citizen is something for others. What difference can I make to political outcomes? There is the political debate about individual responsibility regarding life-style choices. If people are to achieve self-efficacy they need to climb down from that crow's nest and traverse the humanistic and mechanistic dimensions of life.

This responsibility is really telling though when an individual seeks to take, or maintain power for themselves within a nation. They trample on the freedoms, lives and choices of others. The people taking power back, doing so peacefully and gaining evidence of abuse of power that is the real power of we.

A room with a view from on high can still bring unique insights for individuals from which we can all learn:

"I know the whole world is watching right now and I wish the world could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you really are." Felix Baumgartner, 14 October 2012.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9607604/Skydiver-Felix-Baumgartner-attempts-to-break-sound-barrier-live.html 

Baumgartner image: BBC
Ladder brush c/o: http://www.trendyrobot.com/brushes/000343/popup.html

How solid is the framework? Paper: Perceptual ratings of opposite spatial properties...

In researching conceptual spaces and h2cm I came across the following source:

Bianchi, I. , Savardi, U., Burro, R. (2011). Perceptual ratings of opposite spatial properties: Do they lie on the same dimension? Acta Psychologica, 138, 3, 405-418.

As constructed h2cm makes several assumptions with its axial structure. Is the placement of humanistic – mechanistic and individual – group on continua truly representative of the opposites of continua?

It seems that to address this question we must investigate cognitive linguistics. Bianchi et al., raise the following for consideration:

The idea that two contrary properties lie on the same continuum has formed the basis of various methodologies used in experimental research in the field of Psychology since the late sixties (e.g. the differential semantic method, Likert scales, etc.); however, an increasing number of methodologists are facing problems connected to the assumption of unidimensionality in opposite scales ... (p.405).

I wonder to what extent the original purposes of h2cm can support the existing continua? Nursing and the scope of nursing should also be able to substantiate the model. Nursing is person-centred. 

The idea that opposites presuppose an underlying continuum has been a default assumption in linguistics and cognitive semantics for more than two decades even though it has been noted that in every-day language people describe their perceptions in terms of opposites (“you are driving fast”, “the walk is long”, “the room is small”, “it's hot today”) instead of using unidimensional scales (respectively, velocity, size and temperature) (p.406).

Additional links:
http://hodges-model.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/combining-h2cm-informing-science-and.html
Hodges's model

Health & Social Care - Shoeing the Horse*

Anvil

*humanistically ...

Anvil image:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blacksmith_anvil_ganson.svg

Original horseshoe image:
http://www.ranchomilagrokansas.com/

Leonardo: models, limbs and spirit

On the 3rd February I headed off to London for the weekend to visit the National Gallery with (two) tickets for the Leonardo exhibition. This was an amazing experience on the Saturday afternoon. The exhibition was small in terms of room sizes and across two floors, but it was very busy and warm even with timed ticketed entry. The show comprised much more than the main exhibits; the drawings, several inspired works by Leonardo's students and audio commentary adding context. Text descriptions and several quotations also proved informative:

A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard as he has to represent it by the attitude and movement of the limbs.

Leonardo da Vinci

Additional links:

Nursing: Art and Science ... Fra Angelico to Leonardo

Visualization & Diagrams

Catalogue image source:
http://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/products/leonardo_exhibition/leonardo_da_vinci_exhibition_catalogue/p_leonardoEC