Health disparities are differences in disease prevalence, mortality rates, and adverse health outcomes across social demographics. The prevalence of health disparities stems from sociopolitical inequities that contribute to the ongoing marginalization of different communities, the majority of which occur along racial and ethnic lines in the United States. As moral wrongs in need of moral repair, health disparities can be addressed in one of six ways, articulated in the scholarship of Margaret Urban Walker: (1) holding wrongdoers responsible; (2) addressing the harms imposed on victims; (3) instating moral terms and standards into harmed communities to regain their trust in social mechanisms meant to protect them; (4) recreating trust among harmed communities rooted in new norms; (5) nourishing hope; and (6) bringing together victims and wrongdoers. This dissertation engages the aforementioned morally reparative steps to redress the moral wrong of health disparities in the United States through proposed policy, educational, and clinical interventions. This dissertation examines health disparities from four perspectives. First, it employs a sociohistorical lens to chart the history of health disparities in the United States and the complex social factors contributing to their prevalence. Second, it uses international rights rhetoric of the United Nations and its supporting committees to examine methods of accountability from the United States aimed at reducing disparities and inequities. Third, the dissertation applies the lens of Jacques Maritain’s ontologically informed personalism to reclaim personhood as a viable concept that attends to the sacrality of humanity and our status as social and political beings. Fourth, the dissertation applies the historical, rights, and personalist perspectives in a case study centering black birthing people as an exemplary demographic plagued by racially impacted health disparities and in need of moral repair. This dissertation uses the four-perspective approach to conclude with a morally reparative framework aimed at eliminating health disparities through constructive healthcare policy, practice, and educational measures affirming personhood, human dignity, universal human rights, and health for all people.

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Presumptive fertility is an ideology that leads us to treat not only pregnant women, but all female patients of reproductive age, with the presumption that they could be pregnant. This preoccupation with the possibility that a woman could be pregnant compels medical and social interventions that have adverse consequences on women’s lived experiences. It is important to pause now to examine this ideology. Despite our social realities -- there is a patient centered care movement in medical practice, American women are delaying and forgoing childbearing, abortion is safe and legal -- there is still a powerful medical and social process that subjugates womens’ bodies and lived experiences to their potential of being a mother. Fetoconsciousness, preoccupation with the fetus or hypothetical, not-yet-conceived, fetus privileges its potential embodiment over its mother’s reality. As a set of values that influence our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, the ideology of presumptive fertility is contextualized, critiqued, and challenged. / Urban Bioethics

Royal Gifts: Conferring Personhood upon Gifted Artworks in the Courts of England, 1300-1600 aims to uncover the social mechanisms at play when an artwork was given as a courtly gift, with particular interest given to those gifts which could be classed as ‘inalienable’ from the donor. The essay opens with an examination of current anthropological definitions of inalienable artworks and their powerful influence when deployed reciprocally at court as a binding social glue, reinforcing the ties from one individual to another which may not be readily strengthened by any other means. The essay goes on to make an analysis of three such artworks which fit such a definition, in light of how their status as a gift has informed their making, artistry, and meaning.  The specific types of artwork analysed are two illuminated manuscripts commissioned by royal patrons, and a gold jewellery brooch or badge of fealty.Primary issues addressed by the essay are building a picture of existing scholarship which deals with medieval gift-giving, why and how an artwork might be made so as to be inalienable from the owner, and how this can alter a contextual interpretation of the artwork.  The reasoning behind why such gift-giving rituals ceased to be enacted is also explored.The essay found that inalienable possessions, especially artworks, are never given arbitrarily in a court setting. Often, the nature of the artwork given contains vital information about the relationship between donor and recipient.  Making an art historical analysis of such artworks also revealed details about certain artistic choices made at the time to artwork was commissioned. In short, the essay finds that rendering an artwork inalienable was beneficial as a device for strengthening one’s own identity and one’s relation to others.

Depåfynd och anledningarna bakom deras nedläggelser har länge varit forskningsfrågor. Begreppet har definierats olika utav diverse författare. Flera forskare har utvecklat kriterier för vad som utgör ett depåfynd, samt om det har nedlagts i sakralt eller profant syfte. Gemensamt för en rituell tolkning är att depåplatsen har extraordinära naturliga egenskaper, något vattenmiljöer uppfattas besitta. Med området Östra Ljungby i Trolle-Ljungby socken, Skåne som undersökningsområde kommer uppsatsen ställa fyndmaterialet mot dessa kriterier. Fyndmaterialet har påträffats i både fast- och våtmark samt består till stor del av olika typer av yxor, verktyg och dolkar som typologiskt dateras till tidsperioder från mesolitikum till äldre bronsålder. Utifrån en hypotes om vattens personskap utforskas även en möjlig koppling mellan vattendepåfynden och folktrossägen. Tidsmässiga likheter och skillnader analyseras samt diskuteras i syfte att förstå deponeringsplatsernas kontinuitet. Det kan slutledas att flera sakrala depåer har nedlagts i Östra Ljungby, där vissa har gjorts på samma plats över långa tidsspann. Alltså finns det tecken som hänvisar till att undersökningsområdet haft en kontinuerlig deponeringstradition. Vidare finns en koppling till seder som gjorts för att skydda sig mot näcken. Däremot bör det belysas att en sådan koppling är svår att fastställa på grund av svårigheterna att rekonstruera forntida ritualer och ideologier. / Hoards and the reason behind their depositions have long been research questions. The term has been defined differently by various authors. Several researchers have developed criteria for what constitutes a hoard, as well as whether it has been deposited for a sacred or profane purpose. Common for a ritual interpretation is that the deposition place has natural properties that are extraordinary, something watery environments are believed to possess. With the area of Östra Ljungby in the parish of Trolle-Ljungby, Skåne as the research area, the essay will compare the finds against these criteria. The material found have been discovered in both solid ground and wetlands, and consists largely of various types of axes, tools and daggers that are typologically dated to time periods from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Based on a hypothesis concerning the personhood of water, a possible connection between the wetland hoards and folklore is explored. Temporal similarities and differences are analysed and discussed in order to further understand the continuity of the deposition sites. It can be concluded that several sacral depositions have been made in Östra Ljungby, where some have been made in the same place over long periods of time. Thus, there are signs that point to the study area having a continuous depositional tradition. Furthermore, there is a connection to customs made in order to protect oneself against näcken. However, such a connection is difficult to establish due to the difficulties in reconstructing prehistoric rituals and ideologies.

Submitted by Celso Magalhaes (celsomagalhaes@ufrrj.br) on 2017-10-24T10:29:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2016 - Nathanael Araujo da Silva.pdf: 2940154 bytes, checksum: 9c582b13b18f74e733ab1773bf35eb75 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-10-24T10:29:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2016 - Nathanael Araujo da Silva.pdf: 2940154 bytes, checksum: 9c582b13b18f74e733ab1773bf35eb75 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-28 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior - CAPES / This dissertation discusses the emergency of "LGBT literature books" promoted by authors, Publishing Houses and editors engaged on the process of its creation and perpetuation. The overall questions that guided the research were: what are the possible experiences that people develop from the books? How and why do they establish relationships with this object? In which way aspects of gender and sexuality became part of these links? What does the emergency or the new forms of naming such artifacts inform us? In order to pursue these questions, I have done fieldwork with participant observation in book releases, literary debates and ?saraus? organized by several individuals in diverse spaces of the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Therefore, it was possible to apprehend the people of the books and the books of the people with the purpose to understand and explain the sense of their actions, responsible for creating a network of relations that aims to construct what I call "the world of LGBT books" in which objects, people and values circulate / A presente disserta??o versa sobre a emerg?ncia de ?livros de literatura LGBT? promovidos por autores, Editoras e editores engajados no processo de sua cria??o e defesa. As perguntas gerais que nortearam a pesquisa foram: quais as poss?veis experi?ncias que as pessoas desenvolvem com os livros? Como e por que estabelecem rela??es com este objeto? De que maneira aspectos de g?nero e sexualidade passam a compor estes v?nculos? O que a emerg?ncia ou novas formas de nomea??o de tais artefatos nos permitem perceber? Para dar conta destes questionamentos, desenvolvi trabalho de campo com observa??o participante em lan?amentos de livros, debates liter?rios e saraus de literatura organizados por in?meros indiv?duos nos mais variados espa?os da cidade do Rio de Janeiro e em S?o Paulo. Deste modo foi poss?vel apreender as pessoas dos livros e os livros das pessoas com fins a compreender e explicar o sentido de suas a??es, respons?veis por conformar uma rede de rela??es que visam construir o que denomino por ?mundo dos livros LGBTs?, no qual circulam objetos, pessoas e valores