Biography
My teaching and research sits at the intersection of conversations about the mind, care, and ethics. I focus in particular on adults with significant 'intellectual disabilities' - that is, cognitive impairments that place them in need of dedicated care throughout their lives. What are the consequences of lacking some of the crucial mental abilities we tend to take for granted in our lives and our relationships? What does adulthood mean for those who depend on the intimate care we typically associate with childhood?
I explore these questions through comparative ethnographic research in the UK and India. My research in the UK focuses on the ethical life of a care home for adults with intellectual disabilities that is run by a Christian charity called L’Arche: the moral dilemmas of care work, the complexities of intimate relationships that go beyond the contractual, and the possibility of being becoming as an equal adult in contemporary Britain while still relying on dedicated support.
I also work with adults with intellectual disabilities and their families in South India where I am exploring how changing kinship relations open up new problems and solutions to questions about who cares for these individuals throughout their lives.
This research forms the basis of my teaching on care, religion, dependence, disability, cognition, and ethics; and it also takes me to Kerala where I am affiliated with the Mahatma Gandhi University of Kottayam and the Kerala Council of Historical Research in Thiruvananthapuram.
Research
Anthropology of Religion; Anthropology of Christianity; Medical Anthropology; Anthropology of Care; Anthropology of Disability; Intellectual and Mental Disability; Psychological Anthropology; Dependence and Welfare; Anthropology of Ethics; Moral Philosophy; The Ethics of Care.
Publications
2020
McKearney, P., 2020. What Escapes Persuasion: Why Intellectual Disability Troubles 'Dependence' in Liberal Societies. Med Anthropol, http://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2020.1805741 McKearney, P., 2020. Challenging Care: Professionally Not Knowing What Good Care Is Anthropology and Humanism, v. 45 http://doi.org/10.1111/anhu.123022018
McKearney, PT. and Zoanni, T., 2018. Introduction: For an Anthropology of Cognitive Disability, Berghahn Journals The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, v. 36 http://doi.org/10.3167/cja.2018.3601022017
McKearney, PATRICK., 2017. L'Arche, Learning Disability, and Domestic Citizenship: Dependent Political Belonging in a Contemporary British City, Wiley City & Society, v. 29 http://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12126 McKearney, P. and Zogas, A., Mentally Fit: Negotiating the Boundaries of Cognitive Disability, Routledge Medical Anthropology: cross-cultural studies in health and illness, http://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2020.1858296 McKearney, P., The Limits of Knowing Other Minds: Intellectual Disability and the Challenge of Opacity Social Analysis,Teaching and Supervisions
SAN3: Anthropological Theory and Methods
Belief and the Anthropology of Christian Life
SAN5: Ethical Life and the Anthropology of the Subject
Personhood, Cognition, and Ethics
SAN13: Gender, Kinship, and Care
Disability, Dependence, and Care
