Subramani, S. (2018). The moral significance of capturing micro-inequities in hospital settings. Social Science & Medicine. 209, 136-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.05.036

Micro-inequities: apparently small events, which are often ephemeral and hard to prove; events that are covert, often unintentional or unreflected.

One of my highly regarded works, as it was the first empirical study to illustrate micro-inequities in healthcare settings in India. I have illustrated how micro-inequities are often overlooked or understated within larger health inequality and inequity debates, as well as when understanding the consent process in healthcare interactions.

Subramani, S. (2019). Practising reflexivity: Ethics, methodology and theory construction. Methodological Innovations. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799119863276

The reflexivity concept intrigues me as it beautifully connects the ethical and social worlds and breaks the is-ought fallacy. As of now, 16492 people have read and downloaded this paper. It is exciting to receive emails from master's and graduate's students about this!

I explain how ethics, methodology, and theory construction are interconnected in this methodology paper. Reflexivity helps demystify both the study's and researcher's moral and epistemological positions.  To illustrate my point, I use my doctoral ethnographic work and reflexive moments.

Subramani, S. (2019). The Rhetoric of the ‘Passive Patient’ in Indian Medical Negligence Cases. Asian Bioethics Review. 11: 349. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41649-019-00106-1

I analyze court judgment rhetoric with a focus on the narrative construct of the 'passive patient'. Poverty-induced shame, stigma, and humiliation, as well as class discrimination, undermine the agency of patients, and such constructions have become normative justifications for legal reasoning that undermines patients' agency. 

It is the first in-depth analysis of medical negligence cases in India using judges' narratives as a guide to reflect on legal reasoning.

Subramani, S. (2020). The Social Construction of Incompetency: Moving Beyond Embedded Paternalism Toward the Practice of Respect. Health Care Analysis.  28, 249–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-020-00395-w

I discuss how 'incompetency' is socially constructed, particularly in clinical encounters. Through this work, I demonstrate how current debates on informed consent (and autonomy) are decontextualized and fail to acknowledge emotions, social relationships, and social context. I emphasize the need to focus on ‘respect for persons,’ to rethink the framework of ‘capacity,’ and to practice respect in hospital settings. This work (and ofcourse other papers) influenced my later conceptual work (with Nikola) in which I advocate for the experiential understanding of respect for persons within healthcare ethics. 

Subramani, S. (2020). Moral Habitus: An approach to understanding embedded disrespectful practices. Developing World Bioethics. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1111/dewb.12301

In this paper I show how morally oriented clinical interactions through everyday social evaluations generate and sustain disrespectful attitudes and behaviours that disregard patients and family members. These attitudes and behaviours often result from the habitual nature of interaction styles and embodied bodily dispositions within particular hospital settings. 

The concept of moral habitus offers theoretical grounds that can be used in discussions of ethics and patient-centered care to bridge the gap between theory and practice of respect in hospital settings. This concept has the potential to improve medical ethics education training, and I hope to explore further in the future to change the ethos of the institution for respectful patient-centered care.

Subramani, S., Biller-Andorno, N. (2022). Revisiting respect for persons: conceptual analysis and implications for clinical practice. Med Health Care and Philos 25, 351–360. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-022-10079-y

This paper sets out to explore if the concept of respect for persons—as opposed to a thin concept of autonomy—could help us engage better in healthcare practices. I (along with Nikola) probe the practical value of the experiential aspect of respect—understood as the recognition of persons as respect-worthy through certain dispositions and deliberative acts—by reflecting on instances in clinical practice that tend to be dismissed as negligible or even unavoidable (micro-inequities paper, 2018) in a stressful environment such as a busy hospital. Towards our conclusion, we suggest practicing recognition respect (drawing from the work of philosophers Darwall and Buss) in the professional-patient encounter by focusing on manners, attitudes, and behaviors.

Key focus here is on the experiential understanding of respect for persons! 

Subramani, S. (2024).  Othering and ethics of belonging in migrants' embodied healthcare experiences. Sociology of Health & Illness,  1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13829

In this philosophical and phenomenological–sociological inquiry, I closely examine embodied experiences as they reflect on self–other relationships, which is an ‘invisible’ dimension of moral cosmopolitanism practice. I argue here that when we look at migration health, drawing attention to migrants’ emotions and experiences illustrates the intersections of national identity, race, class, gender and how migrant social and political positioning regulates everyday lives. I argue that when diverse intersectional voices and experiences of migrants become central, rather than marginal, the problems we face are not viewed through disembodied and detached ideas of access to healthcare. Instead, attention is drawn to structural and embodied injustices, broadening the scope beyond the narrow calls for moral cosmopolitanism. When emotions and body politics become central through migrants’ experiences, they become political agents who practice cosmopolitanism through the ethics of belonging and not just passive ‘strangers’ who are owed duties by well-meaning, detached so-called ‘cosmopolitans’.