A key focus for agri-food scholars today pertains to emerging “alternative food movements,” particularly their long-term viability, and their potential to induce transitions in our prevailing conventional global agri-food systems. One under-studied element in recent research on sustainability transitions more broadly is the role of disruptive events in the emergence or expansion of these movements. We present the findings of a case study of the effect of a sudden acute food safety crisis—bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease—on alternative beef (...) production in the Province of Alberta, Canada. Employing the conceptual lens of Sustainability Transition Theory, we explore the perspectives of conventional and alternative beef producers, treating alternative beef production as a niche operating within the dominant regime of global industrial agri-business. Three key findings are presented here. First, food safety risks and disruptive events can emerge as a direct consequence of the socio-ecological contradictions embedded in industrial agriculture, representing an opportunity for expansion of agricultural niches. Second, certain features of socio-economic regimes can also contribute to niche emergence, such as an economic system that disenfranchises beef-producing families. Finally, our study highlights the high level of diversity among niche agents and the complex and nuanced nature of their support for the niche. (shrink)

Selected as Outstanding Academic Book by Choice magazine.

In this article we report the findings of a randomised control clinical trial that assessed the impact of a Philosophy for Children program and replicated a previous study conducted in Scotland by Topping and Trickey. A Cognitive Abilities Test was administered as a pretest and a posttest to randomly selected experimental groups and control groups. The students in the experimental group engaged in philosophy lessons in a setting of structured, collaborative inquiry in their language arts classes for one hour per (...) week for a number of weeks. The control group received the standard language arts curriculum in that one hour. The study found that the seventh grade students who had experienced the P4C program showed significant gains relative to those in the seventh grade control group at a high level of statistical significance, but the eighth grade students in the experimental group did not show such gains over the eighth grade control group. It was discovered that the seventh grade teachers started the program early in the school year and continued it for a period of 22 to 26 weeks, while the eighth grade teachers started much later and used the program for only 4 to 10 weeks. Our findings suggest that the P4C program must involve students in activities for a significant period of time before the program shows results, but that a meaningful impact on students’ cognitive abilities can be achieved in about 24 weeks of lessons, less than half the time evidenced by the study by Topping and Trickey. (shrink)

In this article we report the findings of a randomised control clinical trial that assessed the impact of a Philosophy for Children program and replicated a previous study conducted in Scotland by Topping and Trickey. A Cognitive Abilities Test was administered as a pretest and a posttest to randomly selected experimental groups and control groups. The students in the experimental group engaged in philosophy lessons in a setting of structured, collaborative inquiry in their language arts classes for one hour per (...) week for a number of weeks. The control group received the standard language arts curriculum in that one hour. The study found that the seventh grade students who had experienced the P4C program showed significant gains relative to those in the seventh grade control group at a high level of statistical significance, but the eighth grade students in the experimental group did not show such gains over the eighth grade control group. It was discovered that the seventh grade teachers started the program early in the school year and continued it for a period of 22 to 26 weeks, while the eighth grade teachers started much later and used the program for only 4 to 10 weeks. Our findings suggest that the P4C program must involve students in activities for a significant period of time before the program shows results, but that a meaningful impact on students’ cognitive abilities can be achieved in about 24 weeks of lessons, less than half the time evidenced by the study by Topping and Trickey. (shrink)

Three recent research reports by Topping and Trickey, by Fair and colleagues, and by Gorard, Siddiqui and Huat See have produced data that support the conclusion that a Philosophy for Children program of one-hour-per-week structured discussions has a marked positive impact on students. This article presents data from a follow up study done three years after the completion of the study reported in Fair et al.. The data show that the positive gains in scores on the Cognitive Abilities Test were (...) still present and had not faded after three years. Given the strength of these confirmations of the positive durable impact of the P4C program of structured discussions and given the relatively low cost of implementing the P4C program, it is recommended that it become a standard part of the school curriculum. (shrink)

Since publication of the 1986 Carnegie Commission report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, the professional teaching standards movement has gained noticeable momentum. The professional standards movement in teaching has been fueled by national organizations such as the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, and by close collaboration among these four entities. Further, nearly all (...) of the fifty states are embracing the professional standards movement through formal participation in the work of one or more of these organizations. Although the professional standards movement in teaching is strong and growing stronger, its implications are not clear for instructional programs in social foundations of education, either at the teacher preparation or the advanced graduate levels. In response to the standards movement, social foundations educators have a number of options before them, three of which are to (1) largely ignore these developments, as "this too shall pass"; (2) critically interpret and resist these developments through scholarship and collective professional action, as social foundations scholars did with Competency Based Teacher Education in the 1970s; and (3) critically interpret these developments while working to strengthen the potential of the professional teaching standards movement to achieve its stated goal of providing caring and qualified teachers for every classroom in the nation. Of these three options, the last is most advisable, but it presents a considerable challenge to social foundations educators. Although the absence of social foundations skills, perspectives, and understanding should make it very difficult for teacher candidates and teachers to perform well on standards-based teaching assessments, there is no guarantee that these assessments will hold candidates accountable for social foundations learning. Implications for social foundations educators and activists are significant. (shrink)

Pandemic plans are increasingly attending to groups experiencing health disparities and other social vulnerabilities. Although some pandemic guidance is silent on the issue, guidance that attends to socially vulnerable groups ranges widely, some procedural (often calling for public engagement), and some substantive. Public engagement objectives vary from merely educational to seeking reflective input into the ethical commitments that should guide pandemic planning and response. Some plans that concern rationing during a severe pandemic recommend ways to protect socially vulnerable groups without (...) prioritizing access to scarce resources based on social vulnerability per se. The Minnesota Pandemic Ethics Project (MPEP), a public engagement project on rationing scarce health resources during a severe influenza pandemic, agrees and recommends an integrated set of ways to attend to the needs of socially vulnerable people and avoid exacerbation of health disparities during a severe influenza pandemic. Among other things, MPEP recommends: 1. Engaging socially vulnerable populations to clarify unique needs and effective strategies; 2. Engaging socially vulnerable populations to elicit ethical values and perspectives on rationing; 3. Rejecting rationing based on race, socioeconomic class, citizenship, quality of life, length of life-extension and first-come, first-served; 4. Prioritizing those in the general population for access to resources based on combinations of risk (of death or severe complications from influenza, exposure to influenza, transmitting influenza to vulnerable groups) and the likelihood of responding well to the resource in question. 5. Protecting critical infrastructures on which vulnerable populations and the general public rely; 6. Identifying and removing access barriers during pandemic planning and response; and 7. Collecting and promptly analyzing data during the pandemic to identify groups at disproportionate risk of influenza-related mortality and serious morbidity and to optimize the distribution of resources. (shrink)

From the most prominent thinkers in Latin American philosophy, literature, politics, and social science comes a challenge to conventional theories of globalization. The contributors to this volume imagine a discourse in which revolution requires no temporalized march of progress or takeovers of state power but instead aims at local control and the material conditions for human dignity.

Three recent research reports by Topping and Trickey, by Fair and colleagues, and by Gorard, Siddiqui and Huat See have produced data that support the conclusion that a Philosophy for Children program of one-hour-per-week structured discussions has a marked positive impact on students. This article presents data from a follow up study done three years after the completion of the study reported in Fair et al.. The data show that the positive gains in scores on the Cognitive Abilities Test were (...) still present and had not faded after three years. Given the strength of these confirmations of the positive durable impact of the P4C program of structured discussions and given the relatively low cost of implementing the P4C program, it is recommended that it become a standard part of the school curriculum. (shrink)

Examines the implications of recent continental epistemology challenging the relationship between traditional, analytic, continental and postmodern understandings of science, showing that the challenging circumstances of the scientific project are transforming the role and meaning of science in the modern/postmodern world.

Three recent research reports by Topping and Trickey, by Fair and colleagues, and by Gorard, Siddiqui and Huat See have produced data that support the conclusion that a Philosophy for Children program of one-hour-per-week structured discussions has a marked positive impact on students. This article presents data from a follow up study done three years after the completion of the study reported in Fair et al.. The data show that the positive gains in scores on the Cognitive Abilities Test were (...) still present and had not faded after three years. Given the strength of these confirmations of the positive durable impact of the P4C program of structured discussions and given the relatively low cost of implementing the P4C program, it is recommended that it become a standard part of the school curriculum. (shrink)

We present this special issue on positive organizational ethics (POE) to highlight those pursuing positive subjective experiences, positive attributes of individuals and groups, and positive practices that contribute to ethical and virtuous behavior in organizations. Although prior research has offered some insight in this area, there is still much to be learned about how to cultivate and sustain ethical strength in different types of organizations and how goodness can emerge from and in spite of human failings. After describing the positive (...) movement, we position POE as a discrete area of inquiry within the broader positive behavioral sciences, at the intersection of positive behavioral studies and business ethics. After defining our terms and purpose for creating the POE domain, we introduce the articles in this special issue. The introduction concludes with suggested topics for future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 289-290 [Access article in PDF] Monoson, S. Sara. Plato's Democratic Entanglements: Athenian Politics and the Practice of Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. 256. Cloth, $39.50. Sara Monoson is that rare exception to the rule that political theorists cannot sustain the interest of political philosophers: her training in ancient history and classical Greek gives her treatment of Plato's complicated relationship (...) to democracy a depth and richness that will repay the efforts of the most exacting of critics. The book under review has much to offer philosophers as well as historians of philosophy. Notably, Monoson answers the question, "What is democracy?" with attention to a whole constellation of "cultural practices and normative imagery" (237) constitutive of the Athenian polis, on which the narrow conception of democracy qua system of government depends. The experience of festival participation, including processions, theater, and funeral orations; multifarious opposition to tyranny; and parrhe sia, frank speech, were practices that contributed to the Athenian citizen's confidence and expectation that he should and could participate actively in the governing of his polis. One of Monoson's implicit arguments is that Platonic political philosophy is inextricably bound up with its context; thus, when we excise a Platonic "position" or argument and test its soundness, we are doing philosophy, not the history of philosophy.Monoson details the democratic practices and images that are woven into the dialogues, and she features passages others have neglected or treated as anomalous (e.g., Statesman 303a-d, Letter 7 342d), arguing convincingly that it is an unfair oversimplification to view Plato as anti-democratic, or indeed as a doctrinaire writer in any sense (133-137). Thus she does not describe Plato as simple-mindedly pro-democratic either. Rather, she does an impressive job of demonstrating just how very deeply ambivalence toward democracy runs in the dialogues, most markedly in the Republic and Gorgias,but even in the Laws. Plato was as attracted to democracy as he was wary of it, as committed to its institutions as he was apprehensive of their untoward effects.The parts of Monoson's book devoted to theater participation, frank speech, and opposition to tyranny—in relation to democracy and in Plato—are especially fine and contain a wealth of evidence that withstands scrutiny admirably. Her treatment of the funeral oration, including an interpretation of Plato's Menexenus, is less successful, but because her thesis is demonstrated without it, I need not digress from the book's virtues. Monoson's historical sections on the tyrannicides, the early Academy, and Plato's Sicilian involvement are lucid and compelling. All along in this book, one notes passages that serendipitously bear on contemporary debates and on widely shared—but controversial—interpretations of the dialogues. To take but one example from [End Page 289] what I think of as the centerpiece of the book on the realizability of the Republic's ideal city (130-133), consider the well known and variously interpreted passage suggesting how to realize the ideal the "quick and easy way": send away everyone over ten, and let the philosophers educate the remaining children (541a). The conclusion and crux of Monoson's thoughtful reply is, "I suggest we see in this passage an indication that Plato acknowledged that all governing regimes can be supported or unsettled by cultural formations. He is deeply involved here with the question of how it is that a person or people can imagine themselves out of a dominant discourse." (I should add that the book is remarkably free of jargon.) Although Monoson has given us so much so well, I am greedy to know what she makes of democracy in the Protagoras,how she views the success of sycophants after the Peloponnesian War, and how she would incorporate deme politics into her account.The deficiencies of the work as a whole are few and minor: the sole structural weakness of this excellent book is that Monoson sometimes cites, instead of evidence or argument, the judgments of others whose work... (shrink)

The mystery of the rise of the affirmative, declarative (periphrastic) use of do in the thirteenth century and its decline by the start of the eighteenth century remains one of the principal unsolved problems for linguists working in historical research. Some of the main arguments on the origins of do discuss the needs of poetic rhyme (e.g., Engblom 1938), the positioning of the adverb (e.g., Ogura 1993), the elimination of awkward consonant clusters (e.g., Stein 1990), and the ambiguities of object (...) referents in questions (Hudson 1997), much of the earlier historical research relying on hypotheses relating to internal problems of the system. The present study examines the early causative origins of do, viewed from a diachronic, construction-based approach, and offers an explanation in which the reanalysis and subsequent loss of do as a declarative, affirmative auxiliary took place via a process known as hyperanalysis (Croft 2000), resulting in the gradual process of co-lexicalization of the causative verb meaning within the semantics of the main verb across an ever-increasing range of main verb environments. (shrink)

The People of Plato is the first study since 1823 devoted exclusively to the identification of, and relationships among, the individuals represented in the complete Platonic corpus. It provides details of their lives, and it enables one to consider the persons of Plato's works, and those of other Socratics, within a nexus of important political, social, and familial relationships. Debra Nails makes a broad spectrum of scholarship accessible to the non-specialist. She distinguishes what can be stated confidently from what (...) remains controversial and--with full references to ancient and contemporary sources--advances our knowledge of the men and women of the Socratic milieu. Bringing the results of modern epigraphical and papyrological research to bear on long-standing questions, The People of Plato is a fascinating resource and valuable research tool for the field of ancient Greek philosophy and for literary, political, and historical studies more generally. In discrete sections, Nails discusses systems of Athenian affiliation, significant historical episodes that link lives and careers of the late fifth century, and their implications for the dramatic dates of the dialogues. The volume includes a rich array of maps, stemmata, and diagrams, plus a glossary, chronology, plan of the agora in 399 B.C.E., bibliography, and indices. (shrink)

We present an instrument developed to explain to students the concept of the personal ethical threshold (PET). The PET represents an individual’s susceptibility to situational pressure in his or her organization that makes moral behavior more personally difficult. Further, the PET varies according to the moral intensity of the issue at hand, such that individuals are less vulnerable to situational pressure for issues of high moral intensity, i.e., those with greater consequences for others. A higher PET reflects an individual’s greater (...) likelihood of adhering to the morally correct path, even in the face of high situational pressures (personal costs) and low moral intensity (collective importance). PET questionnaires were completed by 506 students representing eight business schools throughout the United States. Relationships between respondents’ PET and their gender, age, and major field of study, as well as the geographical location of their school, are explored. Results indicate that older students have higher PETs and that students attending schools in the northeastern part of the United States have lower PETs. These findings are discussed. It is argued that the PET instrument can be used to help students identify organizational pressures and intrapersonal processes that can impede their moral behavior in organizations. (shrink)

We present an instrument developed to explain to students the concept of the personal ethical threshold. The PET represents an individual's susceptibility to situational pressure in his or her organization that makes moral behavior more personally difficult. Further, the PET varies according to the moral intensity of the issue at hand, such that individuals are less vulnerable to situational pressure for issues of high moral intensity, i.e., those with greater consequences for others. A higher PET reflects an individual's greater likelihood (...) of adhering to the morally correct path, even in the face of high situational pressures and low moral intensity. PET questionnaires were completed by 506 students representing eight business schools throughout the United States. Relationships between respondents' PET and their gender, age, and major field of study, as well as the geographical location of their school, are explored. Results indicate that older students have higher PETs and that students attending schools in the northeastern part of the United States have lower PETs. These findings are discussed. It is argued that the PET instrument can be used to help students identify organizational pressures and intrapersonal processes that can impede their moral behavior in organizations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.3 (2002) 185-207 [Access article in PDF] Agonism and Aretê Debra Hawhee Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity. —Friedrich Nietzsche The profound superficiality about which Nietzsche (...) marvels describes ancient Greek culture as a culture of contact, a culture replete with spectacular gatherings, groping eyes, bending flesh, constantly redoubling so that the superficial became embedded, enfolded into bodies, tones, words. One condition of such enfolding was the agôn, the contest, the encounter that produces struggle and change. As scholars such as Walter Ong, John Poulakos, and Jeffrey Walker have pointed out, agonism provided an important context for the emergence of rhetoric in antiquity. 1 As I will suggest, athletics made available an agonistic model for early rhetors to follow as they developed their art. But the force or quality of this brand of agonism is nonetheless at times surprising, and this unusual character of the agôn was central to the particular development of rhetoric as an art of response.It must be noted from the outset that the agôn is more than the one-on-one sparring that is emphasized in most treatments of the topic. That is, agonism is not merely a synonym for competition, which usually has victory as its goal. For outcome-driven competition, the Greeks used the term athlios, from the verb athleuein, meaning to contend for a prize. The agôn, by contrast, is not necessarily as focused on the outcome as it is on athlios, the more explicit struggle for a prize. Rather, the root meaning of agôn is "gathering" or "assembly." The Olympic Games, for example, depended on the gathering of athletes, judges, and spectators alike. Put simply, whereas athlios emphasizes the prize and hence the victor, agôn emphasizes the [End Page 185] event of the gathering itself—the encounter rather than the division between the opposing sides. To be sure, the "gathering" force of agôn to some extent entails—and is enabled by—the victory. One aim of this exploration, though, is less to consider agonism's teleological, or victory-driven side, and more to foreground the agonistic encounter itself. I will suggest that this encounter constitutes the more pervasive agonal dynamic, a dynamic that also figures prominently in the development of rhetoric as an agonistic force.John Poulakos's important book on the sophists points out the agonistic connection between rhetoric and athletics (32-39), arguing that the sophists effectively "turned rhetoric into a competitive enterprise" (35) and that athletics provided a "rich vocabulary" for the rhetorical art. Poulakos's account, however, focuses on the athlios side of agonism, the "victory at all cost" mentality. Yet the "gathering" force of the agôn inheres as well, most notably in the very structure of rhetorical situations and their dependence on an assembly, but also in the training and production of a rhetorical subject. The realm of training, interestingly, shows most clearly the close relation between athlios and agôn, as a drive for the prize depends on the gathering force of agonistic logic from the very beginning. Agôn is also connected to the verb agein, which is generally translated "to lead," but in some instances is linked to training and can be translated "to bring up, train, educate" (e.g., Plato's Laws 782d). So the word agôn suggests movement through struggle, a productive training practice wherein subjective production takes place through the encounter itself. As Nietzsche suggests, the Greeks produced themselves through active struggle; their pedagogy depended on agonism (1974, 58; see also Poulakos, 33).Taking seriously rhetoric's emergence in the context of the agôn requires a reconfiguration of rhetoric as an agonistic encounter. That is, for the sophists at least, agonism produces rhetoric as a gathering of forces—cultural, bodily, and discursive, thus problematizing the easy portrayal of rhetoric as telos-driven persuasion or as a... (shrink)

Allegations of scientific misconduct against graduate students appear to have unique attributes in the detection, investigation, processes used and sanctions imposed vis-à-vis other populations against which misconduct is alleged and found. An examination of the cases closed by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Research Integrity and the National Science Foundation reveals that most of the allegations made against graduate and medical students are for falsification and fabrication. Further, additional processes are used in these cases, e.g., student (...) judicial processes, more students are “set up” and more students admit misconduct. Finally, the sanctions imposed when a finding is made typically involve separation from the institution and the federal sanction ranges from none to debarment. Drawing upon the teachings and circumstances of cases involving graduate student peers is a good vehicle for illustrating the concepts and perils of misconduct to graduate students. (shrink)

At the end of their article in the September 2014 issue of the Journal of Business Ethics, Douglas R. May, Matthew T. Luth, and Catherine E. Schwoerer state that they are “hopeful in outlook” about the “evidence that business ethics instructors are….able to encourage students…to develop the courage to come forward even when pressures in organizations dictate otherwise”. We agree with May et al. that it is essential to augment students’ moral courage. However, it seems overly optimistic to believe that (...) this improvement will result from any course in business ethics. Indeed, we question the appropriateness of their measure of moral courage and assert that business ethics educators must purposely design their courses to develop students’ moral courage. In particular, we advocate introducing business ethics students to works of literature featuring protagonists who exercise moral courage in organizations. Fiction provides rich accessible narratives that show students worlds beyond their experience, awaken their imaginations, and evoke their emotions. Further, we highlight morally courageous exemplars because they inspire the cultivation of character. Joining those who underscore the role of virtue in business ethics education, we argue that exposure to moral exemplars in fiction will help students to build the moral courage they need to carry out ethical decisions in the workplace. Results from 46 students at the end of an MBA ethics course featuring moral courage provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of our approach. (shrink)

This paper presents an experiential exercise introducing the concept of the personal ethical threshold (PET) to help explain why moral behavior does not always follow moral intention. An individual’s PET represents the individual’s vulnerability to situational factors, i.e., how little or much it takes for members of organizations to cross their proverbial line to act in a way they deem unethical. The PET reflects the interplay among the situation, the particular ethical issue, and the individual. Exploring the PET can help (...) account for why some people are sometimes able to withstand substantial organizational pressures to behave in congruence with their ethical intentions, whereas others crumble in the face of apparently minimal situational forces. We hope that students’ exposure to and subsequent reflection upon their PET, by means of the exercise we present, will foster the development of their moral courage. (shrink)

Contrary to the popular belief that feminism has gained a foothold in the many disciplines of the academy, the essays collected in Theorizing Backlash argue that feminism is still actively resisted in mainstream academia. Contributors to this volume consider the professional, philosophical, and personal backlashes against feminist thought, and reflect upon their ramifications. The conclusion is that the disdain and irrational resentment of feminism, even in higher education, amounts to a backlash against progress.

A dialogue between virtue and care ethics is formed as a step towards meeting Pellegrino's challenge to create a more comprehensive moral philosophy. It is also a dialogue between nursing and medicine since each practice draws on the Greek Virtue Tradition and the Judeo-Christian Tradition of care differently. In the Greek Virtue Tradition, the point of scrutiny lies in the inner character of the actor, whereas in the Judeo-Christian Tradition the focus is relational, i.e. how virtues are lived out in (...) specific relationships, particularly unequal relationships where vulnerability of one of the members is an issue. In a care ethic relational qualities such as attunement rather than inner qualities are the point of scrutiny. A dialogue between these two traditions makes it possible to consider the relational virtues and skills of openness and responsiveness that are required for a respectful meeting of the other. (shrink)

This note considers the recent House of Lordsdecision in Royal Bank of Scotland plc. v.Etridge (No. 2). It concerns the familiarscenario of a wife jointly mortgaging (orproviding a guarantee for a mortgage of) thefamily home in order to secure financialsupport for a business run by her husband. Ina landmark judgement, Lord Nicholls set out newand specific procedures to be followed bylenders and solicitors who are providingindependent advice, in order to counter anyargument by the wife that the charge should beset aside (...) because her signature on the lender'scharge has been obtained by the undue influenceof her husband. This note considers the impactof the decision upon the parties involved insuch transactions. Special consideration isgiven to the surety wife and her chances ofdefending possession proceedings brought bylenders in the post Etridge era. (shrink)

This case note considers the Court of Appeal decision in Royal Bank of Scotland v. Etridge (No. 2) and other appeals [1998] 4 All E.R. 705. It concerns the familiar scenario of a wife jointly mortgaging (or providing a guarantee for a mortgage of) the family home in order to secure financial support for a business run by her husband. The House of Lords decision in Barclays Bank v O'Brien [1994] A.C. 180 has given rise to a range of litigation (...) in this area, and the spotlight has now moved from the banks to an examination of the quality of advice given by solicitors. The banks have heeded the warnings in O'Brien and now insist that wives are told to obtain independent legal advice. It will be seen that, following Etridge, if the bank tells the solicitor to give the wife legal advice upon undertaking the transaction, that will be sufficient to protect the bank, notwithstanding that the advice was either inadequate or even not actually given. The onus to ensure that proper advice is given is shifted squarely on to the solicitor. The note concludes that the decision is indicative of the shift of judicial opinion against wives seeking to avoid charges over matrimonial homes and in favour of banks. (shrink)

This note considers the recent House of Lordsdecision in Royal Bank of Scotland plc. v.Etridge (No. 2). It concerns the familiarscenario of a wife jointly mortgaging (orproviding a guarantee for a mortgage of) thefamily home in order to secure financialsupport for a business run by her husband. Ina landmark judgement, Lord Nicholls set out newand specific procedures to be followed bylenders and solicitors who are providingindependent advice, in order to counter anyargument by the wife that the charge should beset aside (...) because her signature on the lender'scharge has been obtained by the undue influenceof her husband. This note considers the impactof the decision upon the parties involved insuch transactions. Special consideration isgiven to the surety wife and her chances ofdefending possession proceedings brought bylenders in the post Etridge era. (shrink)

Employees’ may view prohibitive voice—that is, expressing concerns about harmful practices in the workplace—as a moral yet interpersonally risky behavior. We, thus, predict that prohibitive voice is likely to be influenced by variables associated with moral and relational qualities. Specifically, we hypothesize that employees’ moral identity internalization—i.e., the centrality of moral traits in their self-concept—is positively associated with their use of prohibitive voice. Furthermore, we hypothesize that this association is stronger when employees enjoy a higher quality relationship with their leader. (...) In addition, drawing on the literature on moral symbolism, we hypothesize that workgroup moral identity symbolization—i.e., the extent to which workgroup members symbolically display moral traits—moderates the relationship between moral identity internalization and prohibitive voice in a compensatory manner. That is, workgroup moral identity symbolization enhances employees’ use of prohibitive voice when employees’ moral identity internalization is low. Data collected from hospital employees and their supervisors and coworkers support these hypotheses. These findings suggest new ways to promote prohibitive voice and, thereby, protect organizational stakeholders from harmful behaviors. (shrink)

We consider in this article how the largest corporations in Apartheid South Africa used an in‐house magazine to manipulate their shareholders' perceptions of the current political scenario. We argue that in that era, business felt compelled to respond to the portrayal of events in South Africa presented by the international media. Furthermore, we examine the motivation of business for doing so and why that motivation does not exist in post‐apartheid South Africa.

Studies of language evolution in the lab have used the iterated learning paradigm to show how linguistic structure emerges through cultural transmission—repeated cycles of learning and use across generations of speakers. However, agent-based simulations suggest that prior biases crucially impact the outcome of cultural transmission. Here, we explored this notion through an iterated learning study of English-French bilingual adults (mostly sequential bilinguals dominant in English). Each participant learned two unstructured artificial languages in a counterbalanced fashion, one resembling English, another resembling (...) French at the phono-orthographic level. The output of each participant was passed down to the next participant, forming diffusion chains of 10 generations per language. We hypothesized that artificial languages would become easier to learn and exhibit greater structure when they were aligned with participants’ bilingual experience (i.e., English languages being easier to learn overall), or as a function of practice (i.e., languages learned second being easier to learn overall). Instead, we found that English-like languages became more structured over generations, but only when they were learned first. In contrast, French-like languages became more structured regardless of the order of learning, suggesting the presence of an asymmetric switch cost during artificial language learning. Moreover, individual differences in language usage modulated the amount of structure produced by the participants. Overall, these data suggest that bilingual experience impacts how novel languages are learned at an individual level, which can then scale up to cultural transmission of novel language at a group level. (shrink)

Hookups are uncommitted sexual encounters that range from kissing to intercourse and occur between individuals in whom there is no current dating relationship and no expressed or acknowledged expectations of a relationship following the hookup. Research over the last decade has begun to focus on hooking up among adolescents and young adults with significant research demonstrating how alcohol is often involved in hooking up. Given alcohol’s involvement with hooking up behavior, the array of health consequences associated with this relationship, as (...) well as its increasing prevalence from adolescence to young adulthood, it is important to determine the predictors and consequences associated with alcohol-related hooking up. The current review extends prior reviews by adding more recent research, including both qualitative and experimental studies (i.e. expanding to review more diverse methods), research that focuses on the use of technology in alcohol-related hookups (i.e. emerging issues), further develops prevention and intervention potentials and directions, and also offers a broader discussion of hooking up outside of college student populations (i.e., expanding generalization). This article will review the operationalization and ambiguity of the phrase hooking up, the relationship between hooking up and alcohol use at both the global and event levels, predictors of alcohol-related hooking up, and both positive and negative consequences, including sexual victimization, associated with alcohol-related hookups. Throughout, commentary is provided on the methodological issues present in the field, as well as limitations of the existing research. Future directions for research that could significantly advance our understanding of hookups and alcohol use are provided. (shrink)

This issue of the Hastings Center Report coincides with the annual conference of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, whose theme this year is “Where do we stand?” The issue addresses that theme with the article by Debra Mathews and colleagues and the set of brief response essays that follow it. Mathews et al., drawing on work carried out by the Association of Bioethics Program Directors, pose questions about how to understand and evaluate the worth of bioethics research. (...) Those questions require them to think very broadly about what bioethics is, in the first place, and how it is related to medicine, health policy, science, and society generally. In short, they are thinking at the highest level about the question, where do we stand? (shrink)

Nursing practice invites nurses to embody caring practices that meet, comfort and empower vulnerable others. Such a practice requires a commitment to meeting and helping the other in ways that liberate and strengthen and avoid imposing the will of the caregiver on the patient. Being good and acting well (phronesis) occur in particular situations. A socially constituted and embodied view of agency, as developed by Merleau‐Ponty, provides an alternative to Cartesian and Kantian views of agency. A socially constituted, embodied view (...) of agency is less mechanistic and less deterministic than Descartes' and Kant's radical separation of mind and body, and more responsive and generative than Kant's vision of moral agency as constituted by autonomous choice makers who are uninfluenced by emotion. The role of emotion in perception and judgement is explored in this paper. Distinctions between techne and phronesis are drawn. The role of emotion in market relationships and procedural ethics drawn for the abstract, general other are strategies for exchange of goods and services, but these same market relationships are dependent on well‐functioning nonmarket relations of noncalculated giving and receiving. (shrink)

According to standard accounts of mathematical representations of physical phenomena, positing structure-preserving mappings between a physical target system and the structure picked out by a mathematical theory is essential to such representations. In this paper, I argue that these accounts fail to give a satisfactory explanation of scientific representations that make use of inconsistent mathematical theories and present an alternative, robustly inferential account of mathematical representation that provides not just a better explanation of applications of inconsistent mathematics, but also a (...) compelling explanation of mathematical representations of physical phenomena in general. 1Inconsistent Mathematics and the Problem of Representation2The Early Calculus3Mapping Accounts and the Early Calculus3.1Partial structures3.2Inconsistent structures3.3Related total consistent structures4A Robustly Inferential Account of the Early Calculus in Applications 4.1The robustly inferential conception of mathematical representation4.2The robustly inferential conception and inconsistent mathematics4.3The robustly inferential conception and mapping accounts5Beyond Inconsistent Mathematics. (shrink)