John Swinton: „Memory, Personhood, and Dementia Care Across Cultures: Insights from the Guna and African Caribbean Communities”

Datum
11. März 2025 

Hybrid lec­ture

John Swin­ton: „Mem­o­ry, Per­son­hood, and Demen­tia Care Across Cul­tures: Insights from the Guna and African Caribbean Communities”
Tues­day the 11th March at 1–1:45pm GMT and on Zoom (details below)
Orga­nized by the CAT (Cam­bridge Anthro­pol­o­gy-The­ol­o­gy) Network

Pro­fes­sor John Swin­ton, Chair in Divin­i­ty and Reli­gious Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Aberdeen, will be explor­ing demen­tia care across cul­tures, focus­ing on the Guna peo­ple of Pana­ma and the African Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty in the UK. Unlike dom­i­nant Euro­pean mod­els, which often insti­tu­tion­alise care, many Indige­nous and dias­poric com­mu­ni­ties pri­ori­tise famil­ial and com­mu­nal sup­port, embed­ding care with­in cul­tur­al and inter­gen­er­a­tional net­works. At the heart of this inquiry are two crit­i­cal themes: mem­o­ry and per­son­hood. In West­ern bio­med­ical dis­course, demen­tia is often framed as a loss of self, where mem­o­ry decline sig­nals a dimin­ished iden­ti­ty. How­ev­er, with­in the Guna and African Caribbean tra­di­tions, per­son­hood is not sole­ly con­tin­gent on cog­ni­tive func­tion but is sus­tained through rela­tion­ships, sto­ry­telling, rit­u­al, and com­mu­nal belong­ing. These cul­tur­al frame­works chal­lenge Euro­cen­tric assump­tions about auton­o­my and iden­ti­ty, offer­ing alter­na­tive mod­els of care that affirm the dig­ni­ty and social embed­ded­ness of indi­vid­u­als with demen­tia. Draw­ing on ethno­graph­ic insights, the­o­log­i­cal reflec­tions, and cross-cul­tur­al com­par­isons, this talk crit­i­cal­ly exam­ines how dif­fer­ent world­views shape demen­tia care prac­tices. By cen­ter­ing per­spec­tives from non-Euro­pean tra­di­tions, it high­lights the impor­tance of rela­tion­al per­son­hood, col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, and cul­tur­al­ly embed­ded care­giv­ing in reimag­in­ing com­pas­sion­ate and holis­tic demen­tia care.

After a 15-minute talk, Abra­ham Wu, PhD can­di­date at the Divin­i­ty Fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, will respond before open­ing up dis­cus­sion to the Net­work. Abraham’s doc­tor­al research focus­es on Augustine’s engage­ment with mem­o­ry and its con­tem­po­rary eth­i­cal significance.

Join Zoom meet­ing: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/82201408290?pwd=8aRHahSBk030TKpbW1ktEHsuTsmQ9o.1

Meet­ing ID: 822 0140 8290 / Pass­code: 152325