Elizabeth and Chauncey Leake Memorial Fund

Bioethical Geographies: How Distance, Power and Time are Differently Experienced
Across Healthcare Settings

 

Christopher Mayes, PhD
Senior Research Fellow
Alfred Deakin Institute and
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences,
Deakin University
Australia

Thursday, March 24, 2022

5:00-6:00pm

Register HERE in advance for this webinar

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing
Information about joining the webinar.

To date, bioethicists have given fleeting attention to geography and space. This partly due to the 

fact that most bioethicists and bioethics centres are located in major international cities. This 

history and location of bioethics has arguably fostered what clinical psychologist Malin Fors has 

termed “geographic narcissism” – the subtle ‘devaluation of rural knowledge, conventions, and 

subjectivity, and a belief that urban reality is definitive’. This lacunae in the bioethics literature is 

particularly significant in relation to regional-metropole and rural-urban health disparities. In this 

paper I address the bioethical effects of geography by examining how distance, relations of 

power and time shape access to healthcare services and the quality of care received. I draw on 

some recent qualitative research conducted with participants based in regional/rural Australia 

seeking to access reproductive services. I argue that the differential experiences of distance, 

power and time are further compounded by for-profit operation of health-services.