In 2017, a variety of events are planned on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the event, which is usually regarded as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Planning and carrying out of them have already begun. I just received an invitation to take part in the Assembly of the Protestant Church of Germany in 2017. This is a great Biennale Kirchentag, which will take place in Berlin.

This article explores the bureaucratic, legal and economic dimensions of the neonatal care. Drawing analytically on the neo-Weberian approach in the sociology of professions [Freidson 2001] and the anthropology of bureaucracy in medicine [Berg 1996; Berg & Bowker 1997], we propose to analyse the medical documents and the practices of its composition as both a constitutive element of medical practice and as organisational infrastructure that ensures the coordination of different professional groups and their interactions with patients. Specifically, we define this (...) part of the work of doctors, nursing staff and health care managers in the context of neonatal resuscitation care as a process of creating and modifying a 'paper body' for their patients, i.e. all the document flow that accompanies the processes of treating and routing the patient. Empirically, the study relies on qualitative data collected within ‘the Birth of the Patient’ project: diaries of included observations of a neonatal intensive care physician, ethnographic observations by social researchers, focus groups with neonatal intensive care unit staff and interviews with medical professionals and healthcare managers. As a result of this data analysis, we find that the documentary history of the newborn patient is shaped by multiple negotiations between different medical professionals and representatives of different health care institutions. In some cases, the patient's 'paper body' turns out to be a major determinant of his or her future trajectory of (de)hospitalisation. We also find that the formation of such a documentary biography of a newborn patient does not directly correlate with his or her clinical condition, but reflects the complex system of distribution of material and non-material resources that constitute the newborn care service and in some cases goes beyond it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Full Collection of Personal NarrativesZohar Lederman, Ola Ziara, Rachel Coghlan, Oksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova, Oleksandr Dudin, Vladyslava Kachkovska, Iryna Dudchenko, Anna Kovchun, Lyudmyla Prystupa, Yuliya Nogovitsyna, Ghaiath Hussein, Kathryn Fausch, P. P. Kyaw, Ayesha Ahmad, Richard W Sams II, Handreen Mohammed Saeed, Artem Riga, Ryan C. Maves, Elizabeth Dotsenko, Irina Deyneka, Eva V. Regel, and Vita Voloshchuk• An Unsettling Affair• How We Keep Caring While Walking Through Our (...) Pain• Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of Wartime• Why We Stay• A Semi-Personal Story from a Ukrainian NGO Professional (or a Semi-Professional Story from a Ukrainian Person) Living through the War• When Ethics Survives Where People Do Not: A Story From Darfur• Burma’s Healthcare Under Fire: My Experience as an Exiled Medical Professional• When a Conflict Collapses on a Child: An (Aborted) Medical Evacuation of a Hazara Toddler During the Kabul Airport Blast and the Taliban Takeover• The Vagaries and Vicissitudes of War• Providing Care to a Potential Aggressor: An Ethical Dilemma• One Surgeon’s Experience During Armed Conflict in Ukraine• The Limits of Our Obligations• A Liberating Breath• Soldiers of the Invisible Front: How Ukrainian Therapists Are Fighting for the Mental Health of the Nation Under Fire• Stories of Families with Chronically Ill Pediatric Patients during the War in UkraineCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)