Bhaji on the Beach: Teaching Relational Ethics in India

This article explores my recent experience of teaching as a visiting faculty member at the Centre for Ethics at a medical University in Mangalore. My teaching and research has emerged through years as a therapist collecting stories. Stories of fact emerge through relationships and are written through experience before being presented as ‘ways of doing, writing and reading research’ From my experience and training as a clinical anthropologist and as a psychotherapist I was aiming to suggest that ethics is relational and is enhanced when we reflect on our relationship with each other, noting our similarities and differences dependent on culture and context. I will illustrate this using the concept of ethnography. I will explore how reflection and reflexivity around the making of relationships between two or more people through epistemological transactional teaching and learning can be professionally and personally enriching.