PHIL42630: Knowledge, Power, and Health (online)

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• This module aims to give students an understanding of the interplay between knowledge, power, and health in the contemporary world, with a view to engaging in political and public discourse around health policy and practice. Gaining control of what counts as knowledge is a central component of current tensions around topics from vaccination in the United States to burial of Ebola victims in Guinea. The course is built around the rigorous analytical and theoretical tools of leading-edge research in philosophy of medicine, epidemiology, and public health, supplemented by inputs from history, contemporary case studies, epidemiology, and biomedical research. The course examines the way that science, advocacy groups, anecdote, social media, and other influences compete for attention. It scrutinises the interplay between the worlds of the individual and the policy-makerwho also has a private world, with its special interests and perspectives. Nationally and internationally, health is increasingly becoming a battle-ground for wider social and political contestations. Not only lives, but elections, fortunes and reputations are now won and lost in debates about health; and any professional coming into contact with any aspect of the health professions must navigate the consequent tensions. Drawing on the analytical rigor and conceptual clarity of philosophy, this module gives students the knowledge and critical analytic skills to offer effective and enduring responses, in public-facing as well as academic domains, to contentious issues at the intersection of knowledge, power, and health, as these arise in a range of professional and academic contextsand to prepare for those that may arise in the future.

• The topics covered in the course may develop in response to events in both the world and the literature, and will include well-developed literatures such as the essentials of philosophy of medicine, epidemiology and public health, the literature on social determinants of health, as well as issues coming to prominence more recently such as the epistemology and politics of expertise, race and medicine, the ethics, epidemiology and ontology of intercultural medical disagreement, and the decolonisation of public health. (These lists are illustrative only.)

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Understanding of different theoretical perspectives on the relationship between knowledge, power, and health
• Knowledge of specific episodes, historical and/or contemporary, from different parts of the world, that illustrate this theoretical knowledge

Subject-specific Skills:

• Comprehension of novel ideas and conceptual frameworks relating to multiple medical traditions in multiple cultures
• Charitable yet critical engagement with the medical and broader conceptual frameworks of multiple cultures and medical traditions
• Ability to engage in public discussion on relevant topics and apply the knowledge learned in this context

Key Skills:

• Express ideas clearly and succinctly in writing and discussion
• Comprehend complex ideas, propositions and theories
• Defend opinions by reasoned argument
• Seek out and identify appropriate sources of evidence and information
• Tackle problems in a clear-sighted and logical fashion
• Communicate complex ideas clearly and persuasively to a wider audience

• Seminars (held online), discussion boards, reflective writings, and recorded discussion groups will provide the opportunity for students to present their own work in progress, to test their understanding of the course material, and defend and debate different opinions on theories and questions presented in that material.
• Delivery will support asynchronous engagement to accommodate students with different time commitments and in different time zones
• Guided reading provides a structure within which students exercise and extend their abilities to make use of available learning resources.
• The summative essays test knowledge and understanding of the course material, and the ability to identify and explain philosophical questions raised by the natural and medical sciences, and, using relevant research material, to present relevant philosophical theories and arguments that claim to answer those questions, and to make reasoned judgements on the merits and demerits of such theories.

Ongoing feedback will be offered in seminars based on participation levels and quality. The summative participation mark for seminar discussion will take into account the responsiveness to such feedback, and progress through the term.

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