Rhetorician Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification usefully demonstrates how communities are able to engage with difficult, opposing viewpoints as they develop or maintain a sense of shared identity. Identification, “establishing a shared sense of values, attitudes, and interests with [an audience],” is promoted dialogically in the modern national museum in a way that it is difficult for classrooms to emulate. This article examines dialogic national identification particularly through the focus in museums on certain key objects that serve as what Burke (...) termed “mythic images” that ambiguously unify multiple perspectives and translate their debates from the abstract to the concrete. By promoting the reflective identification of one’s personal memories with the collective memory of nationhood, national museums provide an aesthetic/pragmatic space for the dialogical embrace of a public identity that is not merely reflected in its exhibits but also continually reshaped by its visiting individuals. I end with the possibilities, or cautions, these mythic images suggest for varying types of communal identification—a tension inherent as well in Gert Biesta’s arguments for the meaning of a “good” education. (shrink)

Using measures developed by Singhapakdi et al. (1996, Journal of Business ethics 15, 1131–1140) the perceived importance of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR) is measured among MBA students in the United States, Malaysia and Ukraine revealing a stockholder view and two stakeholder views. Relativism and Idealism are also measured. The scores of MBA students are compared among each other and with those of the U.S. managers who were part of the original study. Managers'' scores tend to be significantly higher on (...) the Stockholder and Stakeholder II views, and much lower on Relativism than the MBA students. The Malaysian MBA students scored higher than did the American MBA students on Relativism, Idealism and the Stockholder view. The Ukrainian MBA students'' scores on the three PRESOR factors are generally similar to those of the American MBAs, while they had the highest scores of any group on the Relativism scale. Overall, the patterns of responses, as much as the significant differences on specific scales, support the notion that culture, however defined, affects both values and ethics. Several directions for future research are identified.''. (shrink)

Lament is a Christian practice modeled for us by Jesus. In this article, I argue that lament is a spiritual discipline that assists the sufferer to reconstruct meaning after the disorienting effects of the suffering. Drawing on the psychological literature on stress-related growth, I show how the structure of the psalms of lament facilitates the process of growth through meaning-making. Lament is a stylized form of speech consisting of five common elements that define a specific trajectory. The elements are an (...) address to God, complaints, request, motivation, and confidence in God. The trajectory of lament involves a psychological move from distress to praise, and from disorientation to new orientation. I argue that the meaning that is achieved is not primarily rational or propositional, but instead is anchored in the intimate, dialogical relationship with God. (shrink)

Until recently, psychologists have conceptualised and studied trust in God (TIG) largely in isolation from contemporary work in theology, philosophy, history, and biblical studies that has examined the topic with increasing clarity. In this article, we first review the primary ways that psychologists have conceptualised and measured TIG. Then, we draw on conceptualizations of TIG outside the psychology of religion to provide a conceptual map for how TIG might be related to theorised predictors and outcomes. Finally, we provide a research (...) agenda for future empirical work in this area, as well as practical applications for counsellors and religious leaders. (shrink)

Bird kill rate and disruption of habitat has been reported when industrial wind turbines are introduced into migratory bird paths or other environments. While the literature could be more complete regarding the documentation of negative effects on birds and bird habitats during the planning, construction, and operation of wind power projects, there is sufficient evidence to raise concerns. Authoritative and mandatory vigilance monitoring and long-term surveillance over the life of the industrial wind facility are lacking. By the time the documentation (...) of the rate of bird kills, including that of endangered species is available in an environs of an industrial wind turbine facility, the damage may be irreversible. This article briefly explores the negative environmental impacts of the siting of industrial wind turbines and associated infrastructure, including transformer stations and transmission lines, in proximity to migratory bird corridors, wetlands, and nesting grounds. Research is required prior to proceeding with further industrial wind development in these environs. The authors propose that there is sufficient scientific evidence to require invoking the precautionary principle and halting further development until these risks are resolved. (shrink)

Face perception, perhaps the most highly developed visual skill in humans, is mediated by a distributed neural system in humans that is comprised of multiple, bilateral regions. We propose a model for the organization of this system that emphasizes a distinction between the representation of invariant and changeable aspects of faces. The representation of invariant aspects of faces underlies the recognition of individuals, whereas the representation of changeable aspects of faces, such as eye gaze, expression, and lip movement, underlies the (...) perception of information that facilitates social communication. The model is also hierarchical insofar as it is divided into a core system and an extended system. The core system is comprised of occipitotemporal regions in extrastriate visual cortex that mediate the visual analysis of faces. In the core system, the representation of invariant aspects is mediated more by the face-responsive region in the fusiform gyrus, whereas the representation of changeable aspects is mediated more by the face-responsive region in the superior temporal sulcus. The extended system is comprised of regions from neural systems for other cognitive functions that can be recruited to act in concert with the regions in the core system to extract meaning from faces. (shrink)

Although there are notable exceptions, examination of nursing's participation in colonizing processes and practices has not taken hold in nursing's consciousness or political agenda. Critical analyses, based on the examination of politics and power of the structural determinants of health, continue to be marginalized in the profession. The goals of this discussion article are to underscore the urgent need to further articulate postcolonial theory in nursing and to contribute to nursing knowledge about paths to work toward decolonizing the profession. The (...) authors begin with a description of unifying themes in postcolonial theory, with an emphasis on colonized subjectivities and imperialism; the application of a critical social science perspective, including postcolonial feminist theory; and the project of working toward decolonization. Processes involved in the colonization of nursing are described in detail, including colonization of nursing's intellectual development and the white privilege and racism that sustain colonizing thinking and action in nursing. The authors conclude with strategies to increase the counter‐narrative to continued colonization, with a focus on critical social justice, human rights and the structural determinants of health. (shrink)

The Metaphysics of Experience styles itself as "a Sherpa guide to Process and Reality, whose function is to assist the serious reader in grasping the meaning of the text and to prevent falls into misinterpretation." Although originally published in 1925, Process and Reality has perhaps even more relevance to the contemporary scene in physics, biology, psychology, and the social sciences than it had in the mid-twenties. Hence its internal difficulty, its quasi-inaccessibility, is all the more tragic, since, unlike most metaphysical (...) endeavors, it is capable of interpretating and unifying theories in the above sciences in terms of an organic world view, instead of selecting one theory as the paradigm and reducing all others to it. Because Alfred North Whitehead is so crucial to modern philosophy, The Metaphysics of Experience plays an important role in making Process and Reality accessible to a wider readership. (shrink)

Background The opioid epidemic has enabled rapid and unsurpassed use of big data on people with opioid use disorder to design initiatives to battle the public health crisis, generally without adequate input from impacted communities. Efforts informed by big data are saving lives, yielding significant benefits. Uses of big data may also undermine public trust in government and cause other unintended harms. Objectives We aimed to identify concerns and recommendations regarding how to use big data on opioid use in ethical (...) ways. Methods We conducted focus groups and interviews in 2019 with 39 big data stakeholders who had interest in or knowledge of the Public Health Data Warehouse maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Results Concerns regarding big data on opioid use are rooted in potential privacy infringements due to linkage of previously distinct data systems, increased profiling and surveillance capabilities, limitless lifespan, and lack of explicit informed consent. Also problematic is the inability of affected groups to control how big data are used, the potential of big data to increase stigmatization and discrimination of those affected despite data anonymization, and uses that ignore or perpetuate biases. Participants support big data processes that protect and respect patients and society, ensure justice, and foster patient and public trust in public institutions. Recommendations for ethical big data governance offer ways to narrow the big data divide, enact shared data governance, cultivate public trust and earn social license for big data uses, and refocus ethical approaches. Conclusions Using big data to address the opioid epidemic poses ethical concerns which, if unaddressed, may undermine its benefits. Findings can inform guidelines on how to conduct ethical big data governance and in ways that protect and respect patients and society, ensure justice, and foster patient and public trust in public institutions. (shrink)

The nursing metaparadigm, as described by Fawcett in 1984, includes human, health, nursing, and the environment, all of which support theory development by giving direction to our focus as a scientific body. Nursing scientists make their mark in biotechnological applications, mobile health, informatics, and human factors research. We give voice to the patient through design feedback and incorporating technological advancements in our evolving nursing knowledge; however, we have not formally acknowledged technology in our metaparadigm. To continue patient‐centered care in this (...) age where machines are enmeshed in daily human life, we propose technology must be a domain of the metaparadigm to continue advancing nursing science and knowledge. In this paper, we propose a separate domain of technology within the metaparadigm to challenge nurses to consider approaches within their research and practice of how technology will impact patient care and their personal development within the profession. A technology‐specific domain within the metaparadigm also is a signal to other bodies of science of our willingness and ability to run at pace with novel, exciting new discoveries while adding our perspective. Nurses may become active agents in novel developments rather than passive adopters, continuing our legacy of patient advocacy through new knowledge generation. Emerging and continuing nurse leadership has set the stage for the next era of nurse‐led innovation and technology development, which provides an opportunity to embed technology as a core aspect of the nursing metaparadigm. (shrink)

While evenness is understood to be maximal if all types (species, genotypes, alleles, etc.) are represented equally (via abundance, biomass, area, etc.), its opposite, maximal unevenness, either remains conceptually in the dark or is conceived as the type distribution that minimizes the applied evenness index. The latter approach, however, frequently leads to conceptual inconsistency due to the fact that the minimizing distribution is not specifiable or is monomorphic. The state of monomorphism, however, is indeterminate in terms of its evenness/unevenness characteristics. (...) Indeed, the semantic indeterminacy also shows up in the observation that monomorphism represents a state of pronounced discontinuity for the established evenness indices. This serious conceptual inconsistency is latent in the widely held idea that evenness is an independent component of diversity. As a consequence, the established evenness indices largely appear as indicators of relative polymorphism rather than as indicators of evenness. In order to arrive at consistent measures of evenness/unevenness, it seems indispensable to determine which states are of maximal unevenness and then to assess the position of a given type distribution between states of maximal evenness and maximal unevenness. Since semantically, unevenness implies inequality among type representations, its maximum is reached if all type representations are equally different. For given number of types, this situation is realized if type representations, when ranked in descending order, show equal differences between adjacent types. We term such distributions “stepladders” as opposed to “plateaus” for uniform distributions. Two approaches to new evenness measures are proposed that reflect different perspectives on the positioning of type distributions between the closest stepladders and the closest plateaus. Their two extremes indicate states of complete evenness and complete unevenness, and the midpoint is postulated to represent the turning point between prevailing evenness and prevailing unevenness. The measures are graphically illustrated by evenness surfaces plotted above frequency simplices for three types, and by transects through evenness surfaces for more types. The approach can be generalized to include variable differences between types (as required in analyses of functional evenness) by simply replacing types with pairs of different types. Pairs, as the new types, can be represented by their abundances, for example, and these can be modified in various ways by the differences between the two types that form the pair. Pair representations thus consist of both the difference between the paired types and their frequency. Omission of pair frequencies leads to conceptual ambiguity. Given this specification of pair representations, their evenness/unevenness can be evaluated using the same indices developed for simple types. Pair evenness then turns out to quantify dispersion evenness. (shrink)

Mature rats were kept on protein-deficient diets to test the hypothesis that late-onset protein restriction results in deficits and to determine the feasibility of doing nutrition-behavior research with old naive animals. A 3% low-protein (LP) group and a 24% adequate-protein (AP) pair-fed control were used. Body weights and plasma protein concentrations were lower and exploratory behavior and motor coordination were poorer for LP rats. Both groups preferred the 24% protein diet. LP rats habituated slower and failed to overcome an initial (...) black preference on an oddity discrimination learning task. Nutrition-behavioral research with older rats is feasible, and late-onset protein restriction produces psychobiological deficits. (shrink)

This article explores the labour behind local food in the Canadian Atlantic province of Nova Scotia. Based on surveys and interviews with farmers, migrant farmworkers, and farmers’ market consumers in the province, we suggest that the celebration of local food by government and industry is a form of “local washing.” Local washing hides key aspects of the social relations of production: in this case, it hides insufficient financial and policy supports for Nova Scotian farms and the increased reliance on migrant (...) farmworkers via the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Our research found that a growing reliance on migrant farmworkers was not just the case for larger, industrial farms, but also for smaller farms participating in local and alternative food initiatives, like farmers’ markets and fresh produce subscription boxes. Additionally, our surveys show that while farmers’ market shoppers expressed an interest in supporting local foods, they reported knowing little about farm workers or working conditions. Our paper contributes to the literature on local and alternative food initiatives by connecting the relations of production to consumption. Rather than focusing solely on the nature of the relationships between farmers and consumers and the values embodied in direct agricultural markets, this research explores the central role of permanently temporary migrant workers in local agriculture. (shrink)

This essay is a critical engagement with recent assessments of comparative religious ethics by John Kelsay and Jung Lee. Contra Kelsay's proposal to return to a neo-Weberian sociology of religious norm elaboration and justification, the authors argue that comparative religious ethics is and should be practiced as a field of study in active conversation with other fields that consider human flourishing, employing a variety of methods that have their roots in multiple disciplines. Cross-pollination from a variety of disciplines is a (...) strength of comparative ethics, which has enlivened recent and ongoing research on ethics, not a problem to be resolved by convergence on a single, distinctively comparative project. The authors also argue in response to Lee and Kelsay that while individual comparative studies of virtue and personal formation can be flawed in various ways, this line of research has been productive and at times very compelling. Moreover, attention to comparative virtue ethics shows how scholarship on some ethical topics necessitates drawing on a variety of perspectives and disciplinary backgrounds, a conclusion relevant to all work in religious ethics today. (shrink)

Harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie’s western basin are caused in large part by nutrient loss from agricultural production. While use of nutrient management practices is encouraged to reduce agricultural nutrient loss and its consequent environmental impacts, such practices are not universally adopted. This study aims to better understand the factors that influence western Lake Erie basin farmers’ risk perceptions associated with agricultural nutrient loss, and thus further our knowledge of how adoption of nutrient management practices may be increased. We (...) propose a conceptual model to explain the relationships that we hypothesize to influence farmers’ risk perceptions associated with agricultural nutrient loss. Specifically, we consider the roles that farmer conservation identity, farmers’ perceived sufficiency of their nutrient management practices, and land vulnerability to nutrient loss play in influencing risk perceptions. We find that many of the hypothesized relationships are not statistically significant, and that risk perception associated with nutrient loss is primarily driven by farmers’ conservation identities. While farmers’ perceived sufficiency of their nutrient management practices plays some role in governing risk perceptions, we do not observe the hypothesized relationship between land vulnerability to nutrient loss and perceived sufficiency of nutrient management practices. (shrink)

In his article ‘Saints and Heroes’, Urmson argues that traditional moral theories allow at most for a threefold classification of actions in terms of their worth, and that they are therefore unsatisfactory. Since the conclusion of his argument has led to the widespread use of the term ‘acts of supererogation’, and since I do not believe that such acts exist, I propose to argue that the actions with which he is concerned not only can, but should, be contained within the (...) traditional classification. (shrink)

In his article ‘Saints and Heroes’, Urmson argues that traditional moral theories allow at most for a threefold classification of actions in terms of their worth, and that they are therefore unsatisfactory. Since the conclusion of his argument has led to the widespread use of the term ‘acts of supererogation’, and since I do not believe that such acts exist, I propose to argue that the actions with which he is concerned not only can, but should, be contained within the (...) traditional classification. (shrink)

This essay explores the ways in which emerging religious understandings of sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) have potential for new work in comparative ethics. I focus on the startling diversity of teachings on transsexuality among the Vatican and leading Shia clerics in Iran. While the Vatican rejects SRS as a cure for transsexuality, Iranian clerics not only support decisions to transition to a new sex, they see it as necessary in some cases given the gendered nature of the moral life. In (...) this essay, after describing the practical justification for sexual reassignment surgeries in Iranian fatwas and the emerging official Vatican position on transsexuality, I explain how these divergent positions are based on different semiotics of sex and gender that reflect specific ontological views of the human body. (shrink)

This article reflects one scholar's attempt to locate herself within emerging ethical methodologies given a specific concern with cross-cultural women's moral praxis. The field of comparative ethics's debt to past debates over methodology is considered through a typology of three waves of methodological invention. The article goes on to describe a specific research focus on U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shii women that initiated a search for a distinct method. This method of comparative ethics, which focuses on the production of ethical (...) knowledge through the interaction of discursive logics of various moral agents, is described. The conclusion turns to how methodological invention can itself become a constructive project through the way it (1) locates the scholar in relation to her subject of study and (2) allows for isolation of tactics within specific moral discourses. (shrink)

Models of risk-taking as used in the social sciences may be improved by including concepts from life history theory, particularly environmental unpredictability and life expectancy. Community college students completed self-report questionnaires measuring these constructs along with several well-known correlates. The frequency of risk-taking was higher for those with higher future unpredictability beliefs and shorter lifespan estimates (as measured by the Future Lifespan Assessment developed for this study), and unpredictability beliefs remained significant after accounting for standard predictors, such as sex and (...) temperament. The results demonstrate the usefulness of applying concepts from life history theory to enhance our understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

Critics of international trade agreements often cast them as threats to human health, and they can point to some sobering warnings from world history. Infectious diseases have swept across political boundaries, carried by traders, colonists, and other agents of globalization. Transnational epidemics have laid economies low, undermining political stability. The spread of viruses and bacteria to peoples previously unexposed and therefore lacking immunity has decimated populations and changed the political course of continents. Trade, exploration, and warfare have repeatedly produced encounters (...) between peoples at different levels of agricultural and technological development. Often, the results have been devastating for the disadvantaged group — economic marginalization, loss of sovereignty and culture, and collapse of public health. Yet the rise of civilization — plant and animal domestication, division of labor, technology, and resulting prosperity — was powered in large part by movement of products and knowledge along routes of trade and migration. (shrink)

Critics of international trade agreements often cast them as threats to human health, and they can point to some sobering warnings from world history. Infectious diseases have swept across political boundaries, carried by traders, colonists, and other agents of globalization. Transnational epidemics have laid economies low, undermining political stability. The spread of viruses and bacteria to peoples previously unexposed and therefore lacking immunity has decimated populations and changed the political course of continents. Trade, exploration, and warfare have repeatedly produced encounters (...) between peoples at different levels of agricultural and technological development. Often, the results have been devastating for the disadvantaged group — economic marginalization, loss of sovereignty and culture, and collapse of public health. Yet the rise of civilization — plant and animal domestication, division of labor, technology, and resulting prosperity — was powered in large part by movement of products and knowledge along routes of trade and migration. (shrink)