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Engaging persons with dementia in meaningful activities supports well-being; however care staff are challenged to identify activities that are developmentally and generationally appropriate in a group setting. In this study, I compared a randomly assigned treatment group (HT) to a comparison group (traditional activities) on outcome variables, including engagement, affect, and problem behaviors. HT programming was implemented twice weekly at four treatment sites for six weeks, while traditional activities were observed at four comparison sites during that time period. A mixed method assessment was undertaken to examine the processes and outcomes that influenced the observed outcomes and the interrelationships between these dependent variables. Data was gathered from a variety of sources using a range of methods, including structured observational assessments, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group session. Informants included persons with dementia, traditional activity facilitators from the comparison sites, and observational research team members. Nonparametric Mann Whitney-U analyses were used to compare the treatment and comparison groups on behavioral and affective domains, while multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was used to examine the interrelationships between these outcome variables. Analytic induction and constant comparison enabled the researchers to identify factors that affected the implementation of the intervention and its subsequent impact on the participants. Mann Whitney-U results revealed no statistical differences between the HT and traditional groups on the three affective domains; however, levels of adaptive behavior did differ between the two groups, with the treatment group demonstrating significantly higher levels of active, passive, and other engagement, and the comparison group demonstrating significantly higher levels of self-engagement. MCA analyses indicated that individuals who exhibited high level of active engagement were also likely to display high levels of pleasure and low levels of non-engagement, further supporting the value of active engagement in activities to optimize well-being. Qualitative findings highlighted the importance of simultaneously capturing the participants' responses as well as indicators of the social and physical environment to gain a holistic understanding of the intervention and associated outcomes. Results demonstrated that while HT programming results in positive outcomes for participants, facilitation of therapeutic activities for persons with dementia is a critical element influencing the targeted outcomes. / Ph. D.

This thesis explores the way popular culture imitates and reinforces a sentimentalized reading of sonogram images that has been established by the conservative Right as the proper way to view this image. It analyzes several popular culture texts to expose the way their use of sonogram images personifies the fetus. It aims to problematize the way this image has become a symbol of fetal personhood and initiate a discussion about our roles as consumers of popular culture and images. Finally, it connects the use of this image to recent legislation surrounding mandatory ultrasounds and personhood initiatives, and argues that the public’s acceptance of fetal personhood is dangerous for women’s personhood and citizenship.

The purpose of this research is to analyse how gender is ‘done’, represented and reproduced in a Peruvian baby shower ritual. The study is situated geographically in the urban Andean setting of Cusco, and theoretically, in a feminist framework combining an ethnomethodological ‘doing gender’ perspective, anchored in social interactions, with a linguistic performativity approach, as formulated by Judith Butler. In the latter, gender is understood as performed through discursive practices of iterability. The ethnographic material, collected from two baby showers and additional interviews, demonstrate several ways and sites in which gender is done and performed in the Cusqeanean baby shower. This occurs, for instance, by the means of gendered gifts, decorations and performances of gender-crossing and hyperbolised displays of masculinity, femininity and sexuality.             Furthermore, to help make sense of the notions of prenatal gender, as well as the strictly gendered cultural norms for invitation cards, decoration and gift-making, which made me unknowingly brake conventions when bringing gender-neutral wooden toys to a Peruvian baby shower, I draw on theorisation of fetal personhood. Adapting van Gennep’s (2004[1909]) concept, I propose that the baby shower could be conceptualised as a rite of passage, in which the unborn transcends from the state of fetus to a gendered baby. The acts of naming and attributing gender in the baby shower ritual, I argue, are requisites for incorporating the child into the society, as family members and, ultimately, as human beings. The baby shower can, thus, be regarded a crucial site for the ‘social birth’ of the Cusqueanean baby.

In context of the possibility of aging interventions leading to significant or radical extensions in human lifespan, this thesis seeks primarily to address the question of the value of life’s continuance to persons, as the most fundamental motivating factor behind the project specifically to extend life beyond the classic endogenous maximum span. In so doing, its chief focus will therefore be upon the nature of persons themselves, especially in terms of the structure of personhood as a category of being. Much of the investigation will therefore be of an ontological nature, with the nature of value itself, and the relation of value both to persons in particular, and living organisms and the natural realm in general, being a critical theme. The consideration of the latter cases is necessitated by the requirement to analyse the structure of persons in whole, and especially because the primary positive thesis is that persons are processes which are motivated at base by a conative driver which itself is constitutive of their being at all. The analysis of the nature and function of this primary driver of persons as processes, in context of its relation to their secondary instrumental valuation of themselves, which lies at the core of the thesis will generate the conclusion that life’s continuance constitutes an inalienable value to persons that is profound to the degree that it obtains irrespective even of their own evaluative judgements. This analysis suggests a grounding in the question of the manner in which persons arise from the category of other living organisms in general, and the manner in which these arise from the background matter in the universe. The latter will be analysed and the nature of the conative driver will be asserted to be a physical principle which is a defining condition of living organisms in general. Additionally, the analysis of the category of the natural will constitute a critical theme for other reasons, which involve the reliance by certain commentators in the discourse concerning the ethics of aging intervention and life extension upon assertions as to naturalness, and the ethics of human alteration of or interference with the natural, the sacred, the normal, and the given. These latter will be argued to constitute a cluster concept, which will be analysed and demonstrated largely to be lacking in soundness, validity and real cohesion. Further, common ethical arguments against the wisdom of radical life extension in the personal case will be analysed, and mostly found wanting. The core thesis represents a re-evaluation of the classic liberal concept of persons as selfconscious, autonomous, rational valuing agents. This classic analysis will be shown to be faulty in certain key respects, and a correction will be proposed along the lines mentioned above. The fact that these faulty aspects of the classic liberal position constitute key points of attack for conservative personhood theorists, and that the correction offered by the revised liberal version generates a picture of the stability of the value of persons to themselves (and therefore generally) that at least matches that of the various conservative positions (considered to be their main strength by their proponents), largely neutralises such critiques, as well as removes a key rationale for those opting for the conservative positions in their rejection of the general subjectivist liberal picture of personhood. The conservative conception of value in general, and the value of life and persons in particular is critiqued and found wanting. Aside from being commonly based upon a false conception of naturalness, in which supernatural entities, substances or beings are considered to operate, a significant aspect of the failure of this conservative picture arises from the false conception of persons as substantial in nature, or as substances. Accordingly, a critique of the concept of substance in universal ontology is conducted in the first section of the thesis, which will attempt to demonstrate the ontological primacy of process over substance.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Different people can have different cultural interpretations of the person—atomic versus embedded—and these may affect health care decision-making. This study examines both the ethics of variations in personhood as well as their implications for the doctrine of informed consent and the duty to warn of genetic disease risk. It argues that variations in personhood are consistent with the ethics of the Principle of Autonomy and the Canadian stand on informed consent, though autonomy and consent play out differently in practice on the two models. Also as a result of different interpretations of the person, the duty to warn of hereditary risk is found to be relevant to the atomic conception but unnecessary among embedded individuals. / Graduate / 0422 / 0566 / 0326 / pkdheri@uvic.ca

This paper offers grounded evidence in support of the elaboration of Kim's [(2001). Becoming intercultural: An integrative theory of communication and cross-cultural adaptation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage] integrative theory of communication and cross-cultural adaptation (ITCCA) to include sojourner reentry. Findings from 24 intensive interviews validate the heuristic value of ITCCA in the reentry context, but also reveal unique features that set reentry adaptation apart from cross-cultural adaptation. Key theoretical contributions include (1) a nuanced description of the role of reentry communication competence, (2) greater complexity of the roles and networks of interpersonal and mediated communication upon return, (3) an expansion to the environment domain to include home environment, and (4) a long-range perspective on the development of functional fitness, psychological health, and intercultural personhood. Implications for sojourner reentry training are addressed.

There are some human beings who live their lives at the extremes of the human condition because of some gross intellectual, cognitive, neurological, or developmental impairment to their human nature. The evidence from practices of care and concern towards such people – the profoundly impaired – suggests that they are acknowledged and respected as moral peers within the human community. Such pre-reflective intuitions and commonplace practices lend credence to the anthropological claim that the profoundly impaired are recognisably persons. Yet what might an argument in support of this intuition look like? How is it that the profoundly impaired are recognisably persons among fellow persons? This thesis is a theological response to that question. The presupposition underpinning the question is that there is something at stake for the humanity of the profoundly impaired in their being the particularly conditioned human beings that they are. There are, however, those who do not allow for the personhood of the profoundly impaired precisely because of the impaired condition in which they live their lives, and there are others who do uphold the personhood of the profoundly impaired precisely by sidelining their impairment. Peter Singer is representative of the first position. Christian theology can and should make an effective response to Singer’s challenge. An emerging field in Christian theology seeks to do so by proposing a distinct theology of disability that re-imagines Christian anthropology. The aim is to secure the humanity of the disabled without the condition of their humanity becoming an obstacle to their moral status within the community of persons. Key to this re-imagining is the adoption of a paradigm of inclusion towards the disabled. However, a critique will be offered of those theological re-imagined Christian anthropologies that centre on a paradigm of inclusion, and on a commitment to separating out the condition of the profoundly impaired from the question of their humanity. The Dutch Protestant theologian Hans Reinders proposes one such re-imagined anthropology in his recent major work, Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics. His claim is that the humanity of the profoundly disabled cannot be secured by the traditionally held Christian doctrine of the imago Dei because that doctrine treats personhood as something intrinsic to human beings, thereby making it inaccessible to the profoundly disabled who do not have the personalising capacities of reason and will. Instead, he proposes ‘being chosen as a friend’ by God as the only way in which the humanity of the profoundly disabled can be secured, thereby rejecting an immanent reading of the imago Dei in favour of a transcending conception of friendship. This thesis will argue that Reinders’ anthropological project fails because his transcendent concept cannot do for the humanity of the profoundly disabled what it sets out to do. Consequently, a return will be made to that tradition of Christian anthropology centred on the imago Dei to see what may be retrieved from it, such that the condition under which the profoundly impaired live their lives is central to them being recognisably the persons that they are. This is a proposition which says that the personal presence of the profoundly impaired among other persons is not to be denied to them (contra Singer), nor only extended to them as a means of belonging (contra a paradigm of inclusion), nor simply eschewed of them so that they may thereby be included by other means (contra Reinders). In placing the doctrine of the imago Dei at the heart of the creaturely life of human beings, the Catholic Church has made this doctrine the structural centre of any theological account of the personhood of the profoundly impaired. It will be the positive task of this thesis to uncover the theological import of this Catholic anthropological imagination. The two authors most significantly engaged with in undertaking this task will be C S Lewis and Josef Pieper.

The Human Organ Transplantation Act - moral and ethical problems of its application This thesis deals with issues related to the applications of the Human Organ Transplantation Act. It is focused on the assessment of existing legislation regarding transplantation, the identification of problematical areas of transplantation law and the possibility of their correction. The thesis is divided into several parts. At the beginning it deals with the history and development of transplant medicine. It also contains a description of the current legislation and a brief summary of an international regulation. The main focus of the thesis is to analyze the deficiencies in Czech legislation and to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of the transplant law. Finally, it analyzes the forthcoming amendment to The Human Organ Transplantation Act prepared by the Ministry of Health. The Human Organ Transplantation Act is a modern legislation respecting international commitments of the Czech Republic. Nature of the transplant legislation is given by its fundamental aspects  the principle of presumed consent in connection with legally provided guarantee to respect disagreement expressed in accordance with law, the preference of a deceased donor prior to a living one, the principle of fairness in the allocation of...