Tom Koch – författare

An argument against the “lifeboat ethic” of contemporary bioethics that views medicine as a commodity rather than a tradition of care and caring.

Bioethics emerged in the 1960s from a conviction that physicians and researchers needed the guidance of philosophers in handling the issues raised by technological advances in medicine. It blossomed as a response to the perceived doctor-knows-best paternalism of the traditional medical ethic and today plays a critical role in health policies and treatment decisions. Bioethics claimed to offer a set of generally applicable, universally accepted guidelines that would simplify complex situations. In Thieves of Virtue, Tom Koch contends that bioethics has failed to deliver on its promises. Instead, he argues, bioethics has promoted a view of medicine as a commodity whose delivery is predicated not on care but on economic efficiency.

At the heart of bioethics, Koch writes, is a “lifeboat ethic” that assumes “scarcity” of medical resources is a natural condition rather than the result of prior economic, political, and social choices. The idea of natural scarcity requiring ethical triage signaled a shift in ethical emphasis from patient care and the physician''s responsibility for it to neoliberal accountancies and the promotion of research as the preeminent good.

The solution to the failure of bioethics is not a new set of simplistic principles. Koch points the way to a transformed medical ethics that is humanist, responsible, and defensible.

An exploration of moral stress, distress, and injuries inherent in modern society through the maps that pervade academic and public communications worlds.

In Ethics in Everyday Places, ethicist and geographer Tom Koch considers what happens when, as he puts it, “you do everything right but know you''ve done something wrong." The resulting moral stress and injury, he argues, are pervasive in modern Western society. Koch makes his argument "from the ground up," from the perspective of average persons, and through a revealing series of maps in which issues of ethics and morality are embedded.

The book begins with a general grounding in both moral stress and mapping as a means of investigation. The author then examines the ethical dilemmas of mapmakers and others in the popular media and the sciences, including graphic artists, journalists, researchers, and social scientists. Koch expands from the particular to the general, from mapmaker and journalist to the readers of maps and news. He explores the moral stress and injury in educational funding, poverty, and income inequality ("Why aren''t we angry that one in eight fellow citizens lives in federally certified poverty?"), transportation modeling (seen in the iconic map of the London transit system and the hidden realities of exclusion), and U.S. graft organ transplantation.

This uniquely interdisciplinary work rewrites our understanding of the nature of moral stress, distress and injury, and ethics in modern life. Written accessibly and engagingly, it transforms how we think of ethics—personal and professional—amid the often conflicting moral injunctions across modern society.

Copublished with Esri Press

Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine, new expanded edition, is a comprehensive survey of the technology of mapping and its relationship to the battle against disease. This look at medical mapping advances the argument that maps are not merely representations of spatial realities but a way of thinking about relationships between viral and bacterial communities, human hosts, and the environments in which diseases flourish. Cartographies of Disease traces the history of medical mapping from its growth in the 19th century during an era of trade and immigration to its renaissance in the 1990s during a new era of globalization. Referencing maps older than John Snow''s famous cholera maps of London in the mid-19th century, this survey pulls from the plague maps of the 1600s, while addressing current issues concerning the ability of GIS technology to track diseases worldwide. The original chapters have some minor updating, and two new chapters have been added. Chapter 13 attempts to understand how the hundreds of maps of Ebola revealed not simply disease incidence but the way in which the epidemic itself was perceived. Chapter 14 is about the spatiality of the disease and the means by which different cartographic approaches may affect how infectious outbreaks like ebola can be confronted and contained.

Das Führen von Theatern und Orchestern ist heute möglicherweise so komplex wie nie zuvor. Die Auswirkungen von Corona-Krise, Inflation, Fachkräftemangel, Nachhaltigkeitsbestrebungen und viele weitere Faktoren stellen die Bühnenbetriebe vor enorme Herausforderungen. Das Controlling  mit der zentralen Funktion der Zielsteuerung muss sich diesen Herausforderungen nicht nur reaktiv stellen, sondern neue, auch kreative und zukunftsweisende Lösungen finden. Es gilt, sich proaktiv auf die Herausforderungen der Zukunft einzustellen und strategisch zu positionieren. Anlässlich des zehnjährigen Bestehens des „Forum Theatercontrolling“ greifen Autor*innen aus Theorie und Praxis aktuelle Themen auf, anhand derer sie die Handlungsfelder und Potenziale für ein zukunftsorientiertes Theatercontrolling diskutieren. Dazu gehören neben an Bedeutung gewinnenden Aufgabenfeldern wie Nachhaltigkeits-, Risiko-, Personal- oder Marketingcontrolling auch methodische Fragen wie Agilität oder Digitalisierung im Controlling. Nicht zuletzt werden personelle Themen wie die strategische Rolle von Controller*innen, Generationenwechsel und Nachwuchskräfte oder lebenslanges Lernen behandelt.