Another brick in the wall: A commentary on ‘Rochmawati & Minanton (2020) Embedded spiritual conversation in cancer communication: lived experiences of nurses and patients/relatives’

Bodyweight—the number on the scale—has been constructed as an objective measure of health, and weight loss as synonymous with healthier. Weight has been used as a way of classifying and controlling people, ignoring the embodied, relational, and cultural meanings attached to health and weight. Instead, these subjective experiences are lumped into a numerical category. Our society's obsession with weight is weighing us down and most of us should toss out our scales. Scale stories offer a departure from canonical narratives about physical health and body image by emphasizing emotions and lived experiences instead of bodyweight and numerical categories.

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Two Gambling Women

International Review of Qualitative Research ◽

10.1525/irqr.2012.5.1.39 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 39-49

Author(s):

Tzu-Hui Chen

Keyword(s):

Lived Experiences ◽

Personal Experience ◽

Cultural Context ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Immigrant Population ◽

The Other ◽

Mail Order ◽

Foreign Brides ◽

And Migration ◽

The Relationship

This narrative aims to explore the meaning and lived experiences of marriage that a unique immigrant population—“foreign brides” in Taiwan—possesses. This convergence narrative illustrates the dynamics and complexity of mail-order marriage and women's perseverance in a cross-cultural context. The relationship between marriage, race, and migration is analyzed. This narrative is comprised of and intertwined by two story lines. One is the story of two “foreign brides” in Taiwan. The other is my story about my cross-cultural relationship. All the dialogues are generated by 25 interviews of “foreign brides” in Taiwan and my personal experience.

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Through the Lens of Gurdjieff

Fieldwork in Religion ◽

10.1558/firn.31487 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 36-52

Author(s):

Michael Pittman

Keyword(s):

Participant Observation ◽

Field Research ◽

Spiritual Transformation ◽

Spiritual Practice ◽

Asia Minor ◽

Eastern Asia ◽

The Caucasus ◽

Successive Generations ◽

Spiritual Conversation

G. I. Gurdjieff (c.1866–1949) was born in Gyumri, Armenia and raised in the Caucasus and eastern Asia Minor. He also traveled extensively throughout Turkey to places of pilgrimage and in search of Sufi teachers. Through the lens of Gurdjieff’s notion of legominism, or the means by which spiritual teachings are transmitted from successive generations, this article explores the continuing significance of spiritual practice and tradition and the ways that these forms remain relevant in shaping contemporary trends in spirituality. Beginning with Gurdjieff’s use of legominism, the article provides reflection on some early findings done in field research in Turkey— through site visits, interviews and participant-observation—conducted in the summers of 2014 and 2015. The aim of the project is both to meet individuals and groups, particularly connected to Sufism, that may have some contact with the influences that Gurdjieff would have been familiar with, and to visit some of the sites that were part of Gurdjieff’s early background and which served to inform his work. Considerations of contemporary practices include the view of spiritual transmission, and practices of pilgrimage, prayer and sohbet, or spiritual conversation, in an ongoing discourse about spiritual transformation.

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