Restorative justice empowers victims and challenges offenders

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Criticising the distinction between illness and disease, last studies in medical sociology consider it to be the same with the Cartesian dichotomy body/mind; disease being associated with the body and illness with the mind. On the other hand, this dichotomy reflects the separation between nature and culture, when disease can be understood as a natural phenomenon, while illness it is located on the side of the social and the cultural context. Looking deeper at the concept of disease, Bryan Turner argues that, disease is far from being a neutral organic phenomenon; the disease has also an obvious social and cultural side (B. S. Turner, 2008). This claim is based on the idea that what we call a natural phenomenon is, to some extent, a cultural construct . Perception of body normality or lack of disease is a phenomenon that varies depending on cultural , social and political context in which the medical knowledge is placed (Turner, 2008). Thus, one and the same body may be considered healthy in different societies and cultures. On the other hand, anthropology stresses how that the disease can be caused by "political, economic, social, structural and/or environment context of a given society" (Baer , Singer, Susser , 1997:35).
Referring to the relationship between the human body and the socio- cultural context, Leder discusses how the body becomes the primary site of construction of the outside world " lived-body helps building the world as experienced. The significance and shape of objects cannot be understood without reference to bodily powers which we use - senses , language and desires "( Nettleton and Watson , 2005:10 ) . The body becomes a medium through which we interact with the outer world, a world transfer by our senses and t...

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... Vannini 2006:13 ) .
Rethinking the sociology of the body in health , based on the phenomenological theory of symbolic interactionism made possible a deeper and more detailed analysis of the wide range of emotional issues , social and cultural involved in the experience of suffering caused by disease. Thus , the disease ceases to be a phenomenon depersonalized, conceptualized only in terms of organic malfunction, now regarded as a disorder that affects the experience of the individual in the world , causing a collapse of the vision of self and sometimes the whole identity of the person ( in particular in the case of very serious diseases or disabilities ) . This insight led to the development of a humanistic model of medicine, especially in terms of family medicine model that puts more emphasis on the patient's life context and socio-cultural aspects of the disease.

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