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The article aims to study the relevance of the concept of identity to research in contemporary social sciences. The concept is discussed in terms of both collective and individual identity. Following the analyses of the American sociologists Brubaker and Cooper, the author argues that the meaning of “identity” is incompatible with the specificity of social phenomenon as objects of scientific research. In this respect, constructivism and naturalism both lead to a groupist social ontology and to a conceptually impoverished sociology of identity that inevitably thwarts the understanding of the complexity of the social world. At the level of individual identity, the article focuses on the analyses by the French philosopher Vincent Descombes, who reestablishes the uses of the concept in the framework of three meanings: numeric identity, social identity and expressive identity. Criticizing the oxymoronic use of expressions such as “multiple identities” and “changing identity”, Descombes emphasizes the necessary social foundations of personal identity and hence points out the inadequacy of philosophical individualism, and individualist approaches in general, with regard to social phenomenon.
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During the last decade, and as a consequence of the global crisis of 2008, the modern public space, an essential element of urban habitation, has undergone radical transformation. The financialization of the economy, causing distortions in all spheres of public life and leading to new global inequalities, has ultimately led to the emergence of a global public space formed by the “new poors” pursuing new place-based protest tactics and coordinating their activities via social networks and the Internet.
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The article describes how the concept and practice of organic agriculture emerged in Bulgaria. While usually presented in relevant literature as a process of conversion or individual motivation, here it is discussed in terms of commitment to worths. The research approach focuses on social aspects of organic farming and thus allows drawing conclusions as to the sustainability of these agricultural practices over time. The analysis suggests that the practice of organic agriculture can be understood in terms of different configurations of worths established in the course of commitment to others and to the concept of the organic.
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Reminiscence-based activities developed as a practical intervention in care relationships with older people during the early 1980s in the UK and USA. Core to these was the acknowledgement that remembering the past and events in individual past lives could be a rewarding and enhancing experience for older people. Developments drew on the observations of the psychogeriatrician Robert Butler and a commitment to dealing with issues relating to the quality of life of frail older people. Using an example from the UK, this chapter considers what, at the time, emerged as a movement committed to legitimising reflection on the past, where previously this had been considered symptomatic of mental decline. It was argued that to encourage older people to talk about the past would improve cognitive states, prevent negative feelings, combat isolation and enhance feelings of self-worth. Since the 1980s successive decades have seen the re-discovery of reminiscence as a positive intervention in the lives of older people with a focus on dementia being the current emphasis. In this chapter I argue, with support from research into reminiscence-based activities, that participation should be understood as being less about modifying aspects of the ageing process and more about the humanising of social care relationships, within families, communities and in care settings, through the recognition and celebration of individuality and life experience in old age.
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This article discusses oral history work in palliative care in the UK that offers people with life-limiting illnesses opportunities to audio record their life stories. Oral history is a biographical approach that captures personal experience and perspective, it complements and enhances palliative care by offering opportunities to record memories and have them permanently archived. Oral histories are recorded with no time limit or medical agenda and enable an expression of identity. Research on the impact of oral history in palliative care has identified benefits and challenges. Oral history provides a validating and dignified social activity, enables expression of pre-diagnosis identities that reveal the ‘person behind the patient’. Bereaved family and friends highlight that an important aspect of oral history is the creation of a voice recording as a lasting memory. Ethical and practical challenges include working with people whose ability to participate is affected by illness and the emotional impact of personal reflection. Oral history in palliative care offers insight into living with life-limiting illness and preparing for end of life and has capacity to benefit the wellbeing of participants and family.’
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The paper primarily discusses how parents of children with disabilities remember and interpret their encounter and life with disability in narratives and communities with specific focus on expression evaluation and management of emotions. Based on 35 biographical interviews and 9 focus-groups (with informal and formal carers for people with disabilities) it reveals a specific emotion work, which detects and contributes to overcoming the barriers in the integration of existential and social experience, making possible both the inscribing in and distancing from particular social situations and narrative contexts. Following various intricate scenarios and plots of moments of sorrow and joy in the interviews, the present text also shows how emotions link individual life projects and goals to certain cultural traditions and legacies, to state and regional policies and social models of (care for) health and well-being. The links themselves lay in the basis of original types of social relationships, agencies and solidarities.
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This paper discusses the educational aspects of the historical transformation of disability from a matter of care, cure and charity to a matter of social justice and human rights, initiated and led by the disabled people’s movement. The first part of the paper considers the social model of disability and its significance for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The second part focuses on inclusive education, regarding it as a major element of the transformation of disability into an issue of justice and rights. The concluding section analysis the practice of inclusion both globally and in Bulgaria by discussing various barriers to inclusion (lack of adequate support, large groups and classes, ableism, rigid curricula, overvaluation of academic achievements, selectivity), their links to disciplinary power and marketisation, and possibilities for their overcoming.
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The article contends that we can witness a passionate embracing of an interpretative grid, structuring, constructing and governing the ways the people, whose lives are profoundly affected by disability (either as being disabled themselves or as primary caregivers), categorize the world, their subjectivities and the others. This grid is based on the image of exchange and investment, whose moralized counterpart is the deservingness/undeservingness pattern of justifying what one is entitled to and what one has a right to demand. In this perspective the “social value” and inclusion of the disabled ultimately appear to depend on the participation in the “work utopia” – the morally dignified imagery of productivity, accompanied by stigmatization of disability assistance. This identity formation framework should be regarded as an unfortunate way of directing and governing the collective energies, demanding social inclusion. It generates and legitimizes the lack of solidarity with the most vulnerable members of society and even among their communities as this case clearly shows.
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The article presents the idea of the illness as a source of social suffering to the patient and his/her family. Suffering is thought as a consequence of the lack of institutionalized care practices that set the political commitment to guarantee a decent life for the sick and their relatives. Тhе emphasis on the concept creates the need of taking a public responsibility to reduce the social suffering, and at the same time it subjects to moral condemnation the inaction. The social experiences of suffering and the social response to what it causes people are seen as significant forces shaping interpersonal relationships, intragroup dynamics, and the nature of the institutional measures being taken.
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The article summarizes the main issues raised by the new regulations, proposed by the Bulgarian legislator at the end of 2018 and in the beginning of 2019as legal solutions to some of the problems of people with disabilities. Unfortunately, the search for these answers was not a legislative initiative itself, but a reaction to the “mothers protests” that lasted almost all throughout the 2018. Three laws were adopted: Disability Act: promulgated on 18.12.2018, in force since 1.01.2019; Personal Assistance Act: promulgated on 18.12.2018, in force since 1.01.2019; and the Social Services Act: promulgated on 22.03.2019, in force since 1.01.2020. The postponement of the most significant of the three laws – the Social Services Act, for the beginning of 2020 is the reason why the proposed legislative decisions should be referred to in this report as The Promise “2020”. An analysis is made of the new actors around which social services are organized and the state's efforts to ensure the protection of these rights, focusing on the regulatory lines that go through the everyday life of people with disabilities.
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The issue of social isolation of the disabled people is certainly not new; it has been a center topic since the end of the last century. The reason for discussing such a problem is relatively simple: the difference between healthy and unhealthy individuals. This division, which is typical for the flora and fauna, has become apparent since the dawn of the human development – the strongest and most adaptable survive, while the weak are being rejected, isolated or killed. The thesis that is defended is that people with disabilities actually live, if not in full, in substantial isolation. The main factor for this is the state that does not provide the necessary financial and social conditions for a positive change. Excerpts from biographical and expert interviews will be applied to the arguments, concerning some of the most pressing issues in caring for the impaired. These include the social rejection and stigmatization of this vulnerable group, the transfer of stigmatization to the parents of such people, the breakdown of the family community, the scarcity of resources, institutions and skilled staff to adequately cultivate and adapt such individuals, the fear and insecurity that accompany everyday life of the carers.
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The article examines the biographical situation of the families of children with disabilities in Bulgaria. The recomposed families appear as a result of the reorganization of the family structure due to the reduced autonomy of the child and related to the change in the number and gender of the particular individuals involved, as well as the specific roles they occupy in it. Different gender divisions are analyzed, such as those of psychological attitudes towards disability, of perception of parenthood and of division of labor.
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Caregiving in the situation of dementia poses major challenges to family members, but the spiritual aspect of the challenge is less often addressed. Caring for a person with dementia inevitably involves unreasonable demands upon the carer. It may also become more difficult to distance oneself from previous sleights for which the dementing person can no longer make amends. In these situations any sense of forgiveness for past wrongs can be engulfed by feelings of resentment. In this presentation we discuss the Christian concept of the person in relationship and how family relationships may need to be sustained from within the larger community outside of the family as dementia increases in one of its members. We also refer to recent initiatives which have been piloted by the second author with family carers in Hampshire, U.K., which have aimed to help dementia caregivers with the essentially spiritual tasks of finding emotional release and transcending their feelings of hurt.
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Caregiver burnout in dementia is concerned with physical and emotional exhaustion, involving the development of a negative self-concept and an unhealthy or resentful attitude toward the caregiving role. This paper explores two interventions aimed at alleviating the psychological strain on carers, and resulting in a supportive environment for carers to perform their role. The paper explores key concepts involved in the facilitation of behavioural change, and the promotion of emotional growth through self-expression resulting in a better quality of care for the person living with dementia.
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