Abstract: What have those living with dementia lost? If they have lost aspects of their mind and self, who are they now? Are they 'normal'? Prevailing medical, therapeutic and sociopsychoanalytic interventions and studies on dementia, largely influenced by Tom Kitwood's person-centred approach, have focused mainly on revealing and evaluating the remaining intact bodily abilities and functions beyond loss. In contrast to this predominant understanding of dementia, my decade-long involvement in a Jewish Care Home as a volunteer and researcher has raised ontological, epistemological and practical critiques, acknowledging that we are never beyond loss but always alongside it, and that we simply do not know how to dwell well with it. Although the expressive and performative words, gestures and behaviours of those with dementia are often regarded as inarticulate, repetitive and nonsensical, these are the lived worlds of dementia that those affected feel, experience and live through, whilst continuously making relations and familiarising themselves with people, things, and their surroundings. This demands a paradigm shift in the ontological, epistemological and practical horizon within the study of dementia. Critically developing Canguilhem's notion of the normal and the abnormal, Ingold's dwelling perspective and Deleuze's concept of becoming, I redefine dementia not as a fixed mode of being but as a continuous process of becoming-dementia through an attentive engagement with one's immediate surroundings. In more detail, this study explores the ways in which people challenge the taken-for-granted concepts of loss and abnormality in five different dementia contexts: ethics, repetition, time, agency and emplacement. By rejecting medical preconceptions or categorisations, this study focuses on uncovering what loss does in everyday life rather than asking what loss means or what people lose. In particular, this study emphasises bodily movement, sensory perception and affect, not because of the language deterioration during dementia trajectories but because of a new way of understanding and new reality that those affected practise in daily life. Consequently, this study illustrates the immanent potential of the anthropological view for thinking and dwelling with those living with dementia alongside their limits and implications. This study is thus an autobiographical ethnographic testimony of my past decade living, learning, volunteering, studying and most importantly co-dwelling with those living with dementia. This is a collaborative co-production created with those involved, as without the participation of those affected and the co-presence of significant others, my work could not be done. Accordingly, there is neither a beginning nor end to this study, but a moving forward and generating dementia becoming as the lives of those affected and those who care for them unfold.
Abstract: The Limmud Impact Study looks at how successful Limmud has been in taking people ‘one step further on their Jewish journeys’, what these journeys consist of and their wider impact on Jewish communities.
The study focuses on Limmud volunteers and draws on a survey of ten Limmud volunteer communities in eight countries - UK, USA, South Africa, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, Israel and Argentina - together with focus groups conducted with Limmud volunteers from around the world.
The findings provide clear evidence that Limmud advances the majority of its volunteers on their Jewish journeys, and for a significant proportion it takes them ‘further’ towards greater interest in and commitment to Jewish life.
Limmud’s principle impact on its volunteers lies in making new friends and contacts, encountering different kinds of Jews and enhancing a sense of connection to the Jewish people. For many Limmud volunteers, their experience has increased their Jewish
knowledge, their leadership skills and their involvement in the wider Jewish community. Involvement in Limmud therefore enhances both the desire to take further steps on their Jewish journeys, and the tools for doing so.
Limmud impacts equally on Jews regardless of denominationand religious practice. The younger the volunteers and the less committed they are when they begin their Limmud journeys, the further Limmud takes them. Those with more senior levels of involvement in Limmud report higher levels of impact on their Jewish journeys than other volunteers, as do those who had received a subsidy or training from Limmud.
Limmud volunteers often have difficult experiences and risk burnout and
exhaustion. While volunteers generally view the gains as worth the cost, Limmud
needs to pay attention to this issue and provide further support.
Abstract: The Big Society, in its essence, is about communities providing services to the public out of a sense of
communal belonging and public duty, rather than Government providing services to everyone centrally.
The Big Society is made up of the combination and integration of small communities doing good things.
It is about small-scale diversity, understanding that different communities have different priorities. This
understanding of difference is at the heart of the idea of the Big Society, replacing a one-size-fits-all view
imposed by central Government. Different communities may have different ideas about crime, reflected
through an elected Police Commissioner. They may have different ideas about planning, given voice
through a neighbourhood-based planning system. They may have different ideas about the priorities of
their Local Authorities, more able to be enacted through the new Power of Competence, and they might
have different ideas about their schools, reflected through the Free Schools policy.
But there’s more than one sort of community. It is easy to narrowly imagine a community as essentially
geographical, and to see communities as identical with neighbourhoods. Ideally, neighbourhoods should
all be communities, but there are other sorts of communities too: communities of shared interests, shared
faith, shared culture and history.
People give time and money to their own communities out of a sense of identification and simple
self-interest, ensuring that their communities provide the sorts of services and voluntary organisations
that they want. For the Big Society to succeed, it has to harness all of these communities, together with
the energy and resources they contain, and to find a way to use people’s and communities’ self-interest
constructively, to provide the widest benefit possible for society as a wh
ole.
Of course, communities aren’t mutually exclusive. This idea belongs to the naïve multiculturalism typical
of the 1980s, which assumed everyone can be neatly put into only one box. In reality, people may have
several senses of belonging, several connected identities, and can be active in several different
communities.
This applies to British Jews as much as anyone else. This paper is specifically about British Jews as
members of the Jewish community. Of course, all British Jews are also a part of their local
neighbourhoods and other communities of interest or values, but this paper focuses on the Jewish
community.
It aims to show the sorts of social capital that the Jewish community generates in all areas of life and to
give some practical examples of how the vision of the Big Society can be realised. It will also note some
potential stumbling blocks to our community – and other communities of all types – in building the Big
Society for everyone.
