Actions that financially benefit one person may present risk to another person. For example, the payment incentives of portfolio managers and investors are often asymmetrical such that actions that benefit a portfolio manager can pose financial risk to clients. Despite the presence and potential harm of these asymmetries, few have addressed the question of who exploits these asymmetries and how to mitigate potential harm. Our study examined the effect of selfish personality traits (the Dark Triad) and interpersonal bonding on decision-making (...) for the self, another person, and another person with under reward asymmetry present. Results demonstrated that individuals higher in narcissism and psychopathy made risky decisions for themselves. However, when reward asymmetries were present, all three Dark Triad traits were associated with making riskier decisions for another person in order to benefit the self. There was also a significant interaction between interpersonal closeness generated through bonding and psychopathy such that bonding made the decision-making processes of those high in psychopathy less risky for others. These findings have implications for how different individuals with different relationships make self and other-based financial decisions, and how those decisions change when rewards are asymmetrical. (shrink)

Participation in experimental studies can be conceptualized as Goffmanian frames, i.e. a set of rules which include the fact the experimenter will be observing participant behavior through (the recording of) the experiment. This study is focused on frame breaches in 16 video- and audio-recorded dyadic conversations taking place in an experimental setting. Our main conclusion is that the experimental frame is conceptualized by participants as including constraints that go beyond non-experimental interactions, and in particular the need to mitigate frame breaches, (...) which are seen as face-threatening. Analyses revealed that participants only broke the research frame after they completed the task they were assigned by the researcher, and that breaches did not necessarily correspond to changes in key. Insights gained in relation to face and mitigation are discussed, as well as the participants’ need to determine their next steps once the research purpose has been perceived complete. (shrink)

From a cultural-historical perspective, the impairments of a child with a condition like cerebral palsy have biological origins, but the disability evolves from the mismatch between the child and his/her social conditions for development. One example of this dialectical production of disability can be seen in the challenge of the 21st-century welfare state: How to provide economically feasible health and educational services anchored in evidence-based methods and practices. Standardized social service pathways for children with CP illustrates an attempt to address (...) this challenge and moderate the mismatch by acting in the intersection between impairment and society. The aim of the article is to analyze challenges in the practice of connecting research and practice-based knowledge with societal practices in order to diminish the disability of the child. A multidisciplinary group assembled by the Danish National Board of Social Services engaged in a practice of developing a guideline for a social service pathway. Agendas and minutes from their series of meetings provide insight in how the work evolved through conflictual discussions. Rather than a neutral transformation of knowledge into practice, the practice revealed itself as a value-laden process in which the needs of the child and family were at times decentred and the focus shifted to how social services could be realised in complex, structured social practices. While the group managed to overcome several conflicts and agree of a social service pathway, a socio-economic analysis was unable to argue for the comprehensive social service pathway as an economic sound choice for municipal decision-makers. The conflict between the welfare ideology and economic feasibility remains unresolved and can be expected to limit the extent that impairments can be remedied and the mismatch decreased. Overcoming or diminishing the mismatch might never become economic worthwhile. As the political pendulum oscillates between welfare and economic concerns, the experience of disability will likewise diminish or expand. (shrink)

Cancer and its treatment pose challenges that affect not only patients but also their significant others, including intimate partners. Accumulating evidence suggests that couples’ ability to communicate effectively plays a major role in the psychological adjustment of both individuals and the quality of their relationship. Two key conceptual models have been proposed to account for how couple communication impacts psychological and relationship adjustment: the social-cognitive processing (SCP) model and the relationship intimacy (RI) model. These models posit different mechanisms and outcomes, (...) and thus have different implications for intervention. The purpose of this project is to test and compare the utility of these models using comprehensive and methodologically rigorous methods. Aims are: (1) to examine the overall fit of the SCP and RI models in explaining patient and partner psychological and relationship adjustment as they occur on a day-to-day basis and over the course of 1 year; (2) to examine the fit of the models for different subgroups (males vs. females, and patients vs. partners); and (3) to examine the utility of various methods of assessing communication by examining the degree to which baseline indices from different measurement strategies predict self-reported adjustment at 1-year follow up. The study employs a longitudinal, multi-method approach to examining communication processes including: standard self-report questionnaires assessing process and outcome variables collected quarterly over the course of 1 year; smartphone-based ecological momentary assessments to sample participant reports in real time; and laboratory-based couple conversations from which we derive observational measures of communicative behavior and affective expression, as well as vocal indices of emotional arousal. Participants are patients with stage II-IV breast, colon, rectal, or lung cancer and their spouses/partners, recruited from two NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers. Results will be published in scientific journals, presented at scientific conferences, and conveyed to a larger audience through infographics and social media outlets. Findings will inform theory, measurement, and the design and implementation of efficacious interventions aimed at optimizing both patient and partner well-being. (shrink)

A decolonial practice and understanding of education (whether theological or otherwise) requires engaging, subverting, deposing and reimagining a whole ecology of imaginaries, practices, structures, institutionalities, traditions, power asymmetries etc.: a task that is far beyond the capacities of any individual, community or even generation. Cognisant of this reality, the article foregrounds the question of pedagogy in theological education (but only as an integral part of the colonial/decolonial ecology of education) and argues that in so far as our pedagogies in theological (...) education treat students primarily as ‘thinking creatures’, we are engaging in a dis-membering pedagogy that reproduces the coloniality of being. I identify a Cartesian anthropology (‘ego cogito sum’) – engendering a host of dualisms giving artificial supremacy to certain dimensions of reality over others – as a key animating source of dis-membering pedagogies. Drawing on the ‘pedagogical excess’ (i.e. underexplored pedagogical themes) in the theological anthropology of Simon Maimela in conversation with pedagogical visions that cohere and extend his anthropological commitments, I argue that a re-membering pedagogy is, at minimum: a pedagogy of performative action, embodiment and (community based) liminality. I argue throughout the article that in the work of re-sourcing our animating anthropologies and re-imagining our pedagogies, we are engaged in the healing work of re-membering that which coloniality has torn apart: theory and practice, mind and body, the individual and relationality, the student and the teacher, the theological school and society. Contribution: This article outlines my attempts to theoretically and theologically ground (and extend) my espoused pedagogical commitments forged at the intersection of my community work and teaching as a theological educator in an undergraduate BTh programme. This article invites other theological educators to become conscious of the theological anthropology that their espoused pedagogical commitments assume and reflect on the pedagogical commitments that their theological anthropology entails, especially as it relates to the ongoing calls for the Africanisation/decolonisation of theological education in South Africa. (shrink)

The Theory of Planned Behavior predicts that a combination of attitudes, perceived norms, and perceived behavioral control predict intentions, and that intentions ultimately predict behavior. Previous studies have found that the TPB can predict students’ engagement in plagiarism. Furthermore, the General Theory of Crime suggests that self-control is particularly important in predicting engagement in unethical behavior such as plagiarism. In Study 1, we incorporated self-control in a TPB model and tested whether norms, attitudes, and self-control predicted intention to plagiarize and (...) plagiarism behavior. The best statistical fit for the path-analytic model was achieved when a direct path from self-control to plagiarism engagement was specified. In Study 2, we added a measure of perceived behavioral control and split the measurement of norms into descriptive and injunctive components. This study found that both self-control and perceived-behavioral control additively contributed to the prediction of plagiarism and the path-analytic model achieved its best fit when direct paths from perceived norms to plagiarism behavior were specified. These studies suggest that setting strong anti-plagiarism norms, such as by the use of honor codes, and seeking to enhance students’ self-control may reduce engagement in plagiarism. (shrink)

Retaliation against whistleblowers is a well-recognized problem, yet there is little explanation for why uninvolved peers choose to retaliate through ostracism. We conduct two experiments in which participants take the role of a peer third-party observer of theft and subsequent whistleblowing. We manipulate injunctive norms and descriptive norms. Both experiments support the core of our theoretical model, based on social intuitionist theory, such that moral judgments of the acts of wrongdoing and whistleblowing influence the perceived likeability of each actor and (...) ultimately influence intention to ostracize each actor and indicate more willingness to ostracize the whistleblower than the wrongdoer. When we vary norms for the wrongdoing in Experiment 1, we find that descriptive and injunctive norms indirectly influence intentions to ostracize both the wrongdoer and whistleblower. These relationships are serially mediated by the observers’ moral judgments of the act and likeability of the actor. When we vary norms for whistleblowing in Experiment 2, the injunctive norm manipulation affected moral judgment of the action of whistleblowing, and we do not observe any other significant effects of the norm manipulations on moral judgments of the actions of wrongdoing or whistleblowing. (shrink)

Recent data breaches underscore the importance of organizational cybersecurity. However, the high costs of such security can force chief financial officers (CFOs) to make difficult financial and ethical trade-offs that have both business and societal implications. We employ a 2 × 2 randomized experiment that varies both an observed scenario CFO’s investment decision (invest/not invest in security) and organizational outcomes (positive/negative) to investigate these trade-offs. Participant managers assess the observed CFO’s investment behavior and indicate their own intentions to invest. Results (...) indicate that when the observed scenario CFO invests in security, managers primarily follow their peers when making investment decisions. However, when the observed CFO does not invest in security, managers make their own decisions by engaging in more in-depth reasoning that includes assessment of the seriousness of consequences, as well as the ethical and societal considerations. Moderated mediation findings further deconstruct and corroborate these relationships. (shrink)

This book presents the first comparative study of the works of Charlotte Delbo, Noor Inayat Khan, and Germaine Tillion in relation to their vigorous struggles against Nazi aggression during World War II and the Holocaust. It illuminates ways in which their early lives conditioned both their political engagements during wartime and their extraordinary literary creations empowered by what Lara R. Curtis refers to as modes of ‘writing resistance.’ With skillful recourse to a remarkable variety of genres, they offer compelling (...) autobiographical reflections, vivid chronicles of wartime atrocities, eyewitness accounts of victims, and acute perspectives on the political implications of major events. Their sensitive reflections of gendered subjectivity authenticate the myriad voices and visions they capture. In sum, this book highlights the lives and works of three courageous women who were ceaselessly committed to a noble cause during the Holocaust and World War II. (shrink)

Using a dataset of corporate philanthropic gifts of $1 million or more, we examine the influence of corporate donors on the performance of recipient non-profit organizations. We find that corporate donors positively influence NPO performance, specifically in the form of higher revenues per employee, program ratios, and fundraising returns. We find little evidence that large foundation or individual donors similarly enhance organizational performance. In additional analysis, we find that large corporate donations matter when the corporation is more likely to have (...) influence over the recipient NPO. These findings suggest that corporate donors provide the monitoring and expertise needed to enhance organizational performance beyond simply providing funding to NPOs. Our results are robust to a two-stage model and propensity score matching to address endogeneity concerns. While prior research has examined the effect of corporate philanthropy on donor organization performance, we contribute to the literature by examining whether corporate philanthropy also improves recipient organization performance. (shrink)

African American history resounds with calls for black unity. From abolitionist times through the Black Power movement, it was widely seen as a means of securing a full share of America's promised freedom and equality. Yet today, many believe that black solidarity is unnecessary, irrational, rooted in the illusion of "racial" difference, at odds with the goal of integration, and incompatible with liberal ideals and American democracy. A response to such critics, We Who Are Dark provides the first extended philosophical (...) defense of black political solidarity. Tommie Shelby argues that we can reject a biological idea of race and agree with many criticisms of identity politics yet still view black political solidarity as a needed emancipatory tool. In developing his defense of black solidarity, he draws on the history of black political thought, focusing on the canonical figures of Martin R. Delany and W. E. B. Du Bois, and he urges us to rethink many traditional conceptions of what black unity should entail. In this way, he contributes significantly to the larger effort to re-envision black politics and to modernize the objectives and strategies of black freedom struggles for the post-civil rights era. His book articulates a new African American political philosophy--one that rests firmly on anti-essentialist foundations and, at the same time, urges a commitment to defeating racism, to eliminating racial inequality, and to improving the opportunities of those racialized as "black.". (shrink)

A formidable challenge to the research of non-verbal behavior can be in the assumptions that we sometimes make, and the subsequent questions that arise from those assumptions. In this article, we proceed with an investigation that would have been precluded by the assumption of a 1:1 correspondence between facial expressions and discrete emotional experiences. We investigated two expressions that in the normative sense are considered negative expressions. One expression, “anger” could be described as clenched fists, furrowed brows, tense jaws and (...) lips, the showing of teeth, and flared nostrils, and the other “sadness” could be described as downward turned mouths, tears, drooping eyes, and wrinkled foreheads. Here, we investigated the prevalence, understanding, and use of these expressions in both positive and negative contexts in South Korea and the United States. We found evidence in both cultures, that anger and sadness displays are used to express positive emotions, a notion relevant to Dimorphous Theory. Moreover, we found that anger and sadness expressions communicated appetitive feelings of wanting to “go!” and consummatory feelings of wanting to “pause,” respectively. There were moderations of our effects consistent with past work in Affect Valuation Theory and Display Rule Theory. We discuss our findings, their theoretical relevance, and how the assumptions that are made can narrow the questions that we ask in the field on non-verbal behavior. (shrink)

Height preferences reflecting positive assortative mating for height—wherein an individual’s own height positively predicts the preferred height of their mate—have been observed in several distinct human populations and are thought to increase reproductive fitness. However, the extent to which assortative preferences for height differ strategically for short-term versus long-term relationship partners, as they do for numerous other indices of mate quality, remains unclear. We explore this possibility in a large representative sample of over 500 men and women aged 15–77 from (...) Canada, Cuba, Norway and the United States. Participants’ own heights were measured, and they indicated their height preferences for a long-term and short-term mate using graphic stimuli containing metric indices. Replicating the “male-taller norm,” participants on average preferred taller-than-average male mates, and shorter-than-average female mates. Positive assortative preferences for height were observed across sexes and samples, however the strength of these height preferences varied with relationship context for men, and not for women. Taller men preferred relatively shorter women for short-term relationships than for long-term relationships, indicating stronger assortative preferences for height in a long-term context. These results provide preliminary evidence that, in addition to mate preferences for other physical traits related to mate quality such as masculinity in the body, face, and voice, assortative preferences for height do vary as a function of expected relationship length, but this was surprisingly only observed in preferences for female height. (shrink)

Inspired by the recovery of natural law and virtue ethics in recent ethical discourse, certain members of the American Maritain Association have written essays to stimulate this recovery further. Their efforts are assembled in this volume, Freedom, Virtue, and the Common Good. Writing under the influence of Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon, they herein examine the requirements of a satisfactory natural law and virtue ethics, broadly understood as a moral philosophy giving primacy to character-formation and to the development of (...) individual and social habits necessary to perfect human life. The ethics herein envisioned is one that must first be grounded in a sound philosophy of the human person. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:120 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Opera theologica quae latine edidit, 3 vols. (Roterodami, 1651-1660). His religious polemics with Amyrault and Grofius were famous. Paul Dibon, professor at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, is the most prominent contemporary historian of seventeenth-century Dutch philosophy and intellectual life; he is perfectly aware of the fact that genuine history can only be founded on solid erudition, and this inventory is a first-class contribution (...) to it. Only those who ignore the difficulties of this kind of research will underestimate the enormous effort it involves--an effort which is, much more than a pedantic and mechanical listing of data, a kind of venatio, requiring a continuous alertness, a surprising amount of imagination and intelligence, a painstaking precision, and an enormous background of knowledge. The letters are arranged in chronological order (with the exception of a few which are undated). Each entry lists the date, the names and locations of the sender and addressee, and the opening words of the letter. The status of the letter (original/ minute/copy/printed) is indicated, as is the library in which the letter is located (and the call number), and/or, if the letter was published, the printed source. Thirty-two libraries were explored. GIORGIO TONELLI State University o/ New York at Binghamton Introduction to Newton's Principia. By I. Bernard Cohen. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. Pp. xxx+380. $30.00) Over the past dozen years or so Newtonian scholarship has burgeoned as never before, and a first and fundamental result has been the publication of more and more of the wealth of manuscript material and letters that Newton left as a legacy of potential insight and confusion to future scholars. To date, the most imposing of the undertakings in publication have been The Correspondence (1959- ), begun under the editorship of H. W. Turnbull and continued more recently under that of J. F. Scott, and the Mathematical Papers (1967- ), started and continuing under the editorship of D. T. Whiteside. Selected documents of importance have been published by I. Bernard Cohen, assisted by Robert E. Schofield, in Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy... (1958), by A. R. Hall and Marie Boas Hall in Unpublished Scientific Papers o/ Isaac Newton (1962), and by J. W. Herivel in The Background of Newton's Principia (1965); additional documentary material has appeared in studies by Alexandre Koyr6, I. Bernard Cohen, Johannes A. Lohne, D. T. Whiteside, Richard S. Wesffall, J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, and still others--a full bibliography would run to considerable length. Nor, although the uncertainties in the interpretation of the documents are sometimes overwhelming, has this spate of publication merely served to replace one set of scholarly puzzles by another. The traditional, monolithic and impenetrable image of Newton "with his prism and silent face, / The marble index of a mind for ever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone..." has lost something of its hypnotic hold, and we begin to discern some of the steps, not to say jogs and leaps, in Newton's actual journey of thought and discovery. The volume here under review introduces another major enterprise in Newtonian scholarship, a "variorum" edition of the Principia. The edition itself, which has yet to appear, will consist primarily of a facsimile reproduction of the third edition (1726)-the last edition that Newton himself supervised----collated line by line with the variant readings in the two prior editions and in a manuscript of the first edition, and with the BOOK REVIEWS 121 corrections, improvements, and additions that Newton entered into copies of the first and second editions. This textual part of the edition was delivered to the press in 1966; additional parts are in various stages of preparation. There is to be a Commentary dealing with the prefaces, definitions, laws of motion, and the first three sections of Book I and most of Book III, along with English versions and modern analytical paraphrases of the sections dealt with, a glossary, and a number of short essays on such topics as the astronomical and physical data used by Newton, the mathematical background to the understanding of the Principia, and the analysis of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.1 (2003) 51-52 [Access article in PDF] Congress Considers Incentives for Organ Procurement Alexander S. Curtis [Tables]During the 108th Congressional session, several bills pertaining to ethical incentives for organ donation likely will be introduced. In some cases, they will be similar to bills before the 107th Congress (see Table 1). Bills in both the House of Representatives and the Senate address the establishment (...) and maintenance of donor registries, financial reimbursements for medical and nonmedical expenses incurred by qualifying donors, the presentation of commemorative medals, and tax credits.A bill entitled "Gift of Life Congressional Medal Act" (introduced last year by Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) as Senate Bill 325), and its corresponding bill of the same title (passed in the House of Representatives last year as H.R. 708), would establish a congressional commemorative medal honoring "any organ donor, or the family or family member of any organ donor." The medal is to be designed and struck with "suitable emblems, devices, and inscriptions" by the Secretary of the Treasury. The eligible donor or donor's family member would be presented with the medal by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. This bill would establish qualifying donations as those of human kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, pancreases, or any other organ, but excludes corneas and eyes.Another bill, introduced by Representative Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) entitled "Organ Donation Improvement Act" (H.R. 624), would award grants or contracts to states, transplant centers, and qualified organ procurement organizations for the purpose of providing travel, subsistence, and incidental nonmedical expenses to individuals who make living donations. In order to receive reimbursement, the donating individuals must reside in states other than the states in which the intended recipients reside and the annual income of those receiving the organs cannot exceed $35,000. The bill also would appropriate $15,000,000 to make grants to states and public and nonprofit entities for the purpose of carrying out studies, public education demonstrations, and outreach activities "designed to increase the number of organ donors within the state." The bill would be effective from time of enactment through 2005. [End Page 51]Two other bills proposed within the House of Representatives in 2002 called for amendment to the Internal Revenue Code. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act (introduced as H.R. 1872 by Representative James Hansen (R-UT)) and the "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" (introduced as H.R. 2090 by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ)) present a refundable credit to individuals or to the estates of those who agree either to be living donors or to donate their organs upon death. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act" refunds $10,000 to the estates of eligible individuals "for the taxable year which includes the date of the individual's death." The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" offers a refund of $2,500 to qualified persons. Donations of kidneys, livers, pancreases, islet cells, lungs, and intestines are accepted, however several conditions restrict permissible donors. The "Gift of Life Tax Credit Act" requires that the legally competent individual's death not be due to a suicide and that the intention to donate was clearly declared. The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" prohibits donations from individuals who were killed with physician assistance, died as a result of a suicide, have been indicted or convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor offense, or are actively under criminal investigation for a possible felony offense. The "Help Organ Procurement Expand Act" also restricts procuring organs from unborn children or human fetuses and under circumstances in which the living donor would be subject to "unacceptable levels of medical risk of death or permanent debilitation." Alexander S. Curtis is a research assistant at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He received his bachelor's degree from Miami University.... (shrink)

Recent financial fraud legislation such as the Dodd–Frank Act and the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (U.S. House of Representatives, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, [H.R. 4173], 2010 ; U.S. House of Representatives, The Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, Public Law 107-204 [H.R. 3763], 2002 ) relies heavily on whistleblowers for enforcement, and offers protection and incentives for whistleblowers. However, little is known about many aspects of the whistleblowing decision, especially the effects of contextual and wrongdoing attributes on organizational (...) members’ willingness to report fraud. We extend the ethics literature by experimentally investigating how the nature of the wrongdoing and the awareness of those surrounding the whistleblower can influence whistleblowing. As predicted, we find that employees are less likely to report: (1) financial statement fraud than theft; (2) immaterial than material financial statement fraud; (3) when the wrongdoer is aware that the potential whistleblower has knowledge of the fraud; and (4) when others in addition to the wrongdoer are not aware of the fraud. Our findings extend whistleblowing research in several ways. For instance, prior research provides little evidence concerning the effects of fraud type, wrongdoer awareness, and others’ awareness on whistleblowing intentions. We also provide evidence that whistleblowing settings represent an exception to the well-accepted theory of diffusion of responsibility. Our participants are professionals who represent the likely pool of potential whistleblowers in organizations. (shrink)

Racism as an independent topic of investigation in philosophy has considerably developed since the 1990s, when it appeared as part of growing debates that, on the one hand, investigated the political meaning of race and, on the other, its ontology and whether it existed at all. Likewise, with the idea of racism, its broadly normative meaning is critiqued by some philosophers, while others ask how best to conceive of it and identify its immorality. There were a few early and significant (...) forays in philosophy about the nature of racism, of which three works stand out because of the way they set the terms of the debate: David Theo Goldberg's Racist Culture, Charles W. Mills’ The Racial Contract, and Jorge L.A. Garcia's “The Heart of Racism.”1 This collection reacts to the latter fork in the discussion but does so in ways that significantly touch on the former.The collection begins with Jorge L. Garcia's “Virtue Ethics in Social Theory: Defending a Volitional Analysis of Racism from Tommie Shelby's Challenges.” It is a clarification and defense of his influential volitional analysis of racism (VAR) from three prominent objections: that VAR inadequately accounts for the immorality of racism because it relies on the assumed wrongness of racism built into ordinary usage of the term ‘racist;’ that it mistakenly separates intention from belief; and that it does not fully account for the racism of some troubling mental states that cannot be traced back to a racist ill-will. Garcia's account of racism as fundamentally rooted in racist ill-will, along with Lawrence Blum's, is representative of agent-centered theories of racism. Not only do they attempt to explain individual or personal racism, but they also hold that racism in institutions, structures, or systems traces back to the racism of persons.Current accounts of structural racism, however, claim that it exists and operates independently of infection from intentionally racist persons, that the focus on racist persons cannot adequately account for how racism works in society, and that, instead, we should concentrate on structures and ideologies. Amelia Wirts sharply defends this view in her, “What does it mean to say ‘The Criminal Justice System is Racist’?” She explains how structural racism applies to America's criminal justice system and other “intermediate” (between individual and societal level) structures. Wirts argues that personal accounts of racism, and in particular Garcia's VAR, do not adequately account for the patterns of racial disparity in the criminal justice system or its disproportionate harm to black people. She advocates, instead, for a patterned view of structural racism, the patterns of which operate “as if it were designed to disproportionately harm” some racialized group. Additionally, Wirts adds that such patterns are particularly racist when they fuel racist ideological symbols, as the criminal justice system does in relation to the idea of the black criminal.Structural analyses of racism are powerfully instructive, and Alisa Bierria, in “Structural Racism Within Reason,” offers an account that takes an epistemic turn that advances our understanding of their meaning. More than the idea that personal and structural racism beget each other in continuous looping effects, and more than the view that racism is best understood as an ideology that provides the content to racist attitudes or policy proscriptions, she argues that structural racism structures reason. Drawing on the 2012 case of Marissa Alexander, who unsuccessfully tried to use Florida's Stand Your Ground Law to justify her firing a warning shot at her estranged, abusive husband to protect herself from his murderous threat, Bierra argues that structural racism extends constructed and controlling intentions onto its targets, and, as in the case she discusses, it uses those constructed and fictional intentions to justify their punishment and depriving them of equal justice.Structural analyses of racism are essential additions to the philosophical understanding of racism that have appropriately challenged the centrality of agent-centered accounts. The increasing academic focus on structural explanations, however, along with the current overuse of “systemic racism” in popular discourse, threatens to eclipse the value of accounts of agent-centered accounts. In “Is Racism Essentially Systemic?” Michael Hardimon counsels against this trend. He reminds us that racism is not essentially systemic, and that the dominance of structural explanations could obscure its other forms and even the proper understanding of structural racism. Indeed, structures once constructed might operate independently of human intention, but they are designed, initiated, and often operated by persons.After considering the direction of the current philosophical discussion about the meaning of racism and its immorality, the next set of articles expands the discussion into matters of class, xenophobia, and white nationalism. Lawrence Blum's “Race and Class Together” starts it off. Blum builds class into his analysis of racism and critiques its absence in anti-racist theory. He argues that paying attention to class is required to secure justice for the victims of racism because pursuing justice is often a matter of both. Blum contends that race and class are “normatively distinct axes of injustice” and that, depending on the question, racial injustice needs to be addressed separately. However, there are aspects of racial injustice that can only be dealt with through a class analysis and require class or combined class–race focused policies. Pointing to the fact that many of the members of groups targeted by racism (he considers blacks, Indigenous peoples, and Latinxs) share cross-class interests, which includes shared interests with some whites, which they do not share with more economically privileged members of their own groups, Blum argues that these interests should be addressed through “class-focused policies,” in a manner that will secure justice for disadvantaged racial groups.Shifting from the class-race analysis, José Jorge Mendoza, in “‘Go Back to Where You Came From!’ Racism, Xenophobia, and White Nationalism,” turns our attention toward white nationalism to examine whether it is best understood as an expression of racism or xenophobia. Although he recognizes the importance of xenophobia in white nationalism, Mendoza does not neglect its connections with racist ideas. However, he acknowledges that emphasizing the role of race in condemnations of white nationalism risks overextending the concept of race, i.e., in regards to pan-racial groups, because some members of those groups are racially identified as white. Thus, the charge of racism against white nationalism in such cases may not clearly apply. To deal with those cases, Mendoza cleverly decouples the ideas of “radicalization” and “racial formation,” and he puts forward a new concept, “racial disintegration,” to account for the operation and shifting targets of white nationalism.In the final piece, David H. Kim and I discuss xenophobia and racism in the case of “Anti-Asian Racism.” We move from general theories of racism to inquire about what is at the base of anti-Asian racism. Little is said in contemporary accounts of racism about anti-Asian racism. This is due, in part, to the high level of abstraction in those discussions but also because much of the literature takes anti-blackness as the model of racism. Our piece addresses this lacuna in a manner not beholden to the black-white binary. We discuss how the idea of anti-Asian racism is a conceptual problem in the American context dominated by that binary. We then argue that xenophobia as a form of civic ostracism, and to some extent xenophilia, play a particular role in how anti-Asian racism functions and its immorality.The pieces in this collection resonate with current events and controversies involving racism and illustrate the potential of the debate to relate to and speak those events, not just to the specialized interests of a cloistered academic conversation. Each piece demonstrates the potential for extending vital lines of debate and discussion that touches the raw nerve of the public discussion of racism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. ed. by Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. TerryErin R. PinedaTommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry, editors. To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020. Pp. 464. Paperback, $20.00.In the summer of 2020, as cities across the globe erupted (...) in protest after the murder of George Floyd, references to Martin Luther King, Jr. abounded: while a familiar cast of politicians evoked his memory to scold riotous protestors, others issued King's rejoinder that "the riot is the language of the unheard" (King, "The Other America," 1967). Many such invocations no doubt smacked of the "ritual celebration" and "intellectual marginalization" [End Page 339] that, as Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry observe, have long marked King's reception as a political thinker (2). But in another sense, the seemingly inevitable return to King points to the significant stakes of taking his thought seriously and the political danger of laying claim to interpretive mastery. Struggles over King's legacy and the terms of his thought are not just about King but form part of the discursive terrain on which struggles over the demands of racial justice and the means of transformative collective action are waged.Shelby and Terry's ambitious, illuminating volume, To Shape a New World, first published in 2018 (timed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of King's assassination) and released as paperback in 2020 (amidst the George Floyd uprisings), invites us to take King seriously in just this sense: with an acute sensitivity to the stakes and an embrace of an interpretive pluralism that refuses the certainty of a singular, definitive reading. The collection facilitates rigorous engagement with King's thought in its own time and place but also presses the question of what we ought to do with it in this current "age of impunity and mendacity," standing amid the "unraveling" edges of "American empire," as Cornel West puts it (331). In posing and answering this question across its fifteen essays, the collection seeks to do justice to King as both a political philosopher and a political activist—a religious and political thinker whose philosophies were worked out not only behind the pulpit or within the academy, but also (and perhaps primarily) in concert with others on the field of political action. Indeed, one of its primary contributions is to challenge mainstream presumptions about what counts as political philosophy—its boundaries as a genre as well as the spaces where we imagine political philosophizing to happen and the figures we position as its primary producers.The volume is organized into four sections. The first, "Traditions," is devoted to exploring some of King's diverse intellectual influences. Here, the emphasis is less on making the case for particular traditions as the essential ones, and more on exploring the use of different interpretive lenses for shedding new light on his ideas. Three essays put King in context with thinkers he directly engaged: Robert Gooding-Williams places him in conversation with W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington to reveal the structure of King's account of dignity amid the constraints of racial injustice; Bernard Boxill shows how King's theory of civil disobedience builds on—and collectivizes—Frederick Douglass's account of comparative freedom; and Karuna Mantena explores the theory of nonviolent action that King, through figures like Benjamin Mays and Howard Thurman, adopted and adapted from Gandhi. In contrast, Paul Taylor argues that we should read King in the company of moral perfectionists Stanley Cavell and Christopher Lebron—as showing us how practices of self-criticism, self-transformation, and experimentation enable "citizens to remain dissatisfied with things as they stand" while remaining "open to the possibility that justice will require reconstructing both society and the self" (41).In the next section, contributors turn their attention to King's "Ideals"—the ethical and political imperatives that shape the ends and means of the struggle for a new world. Like Mantena, Martha Nussbaum reads King alongside Gandhi to focus on King's insistence on channeling righteous... (shrink)

In fall 1844, a party of colonists led by William Keil arrived at what was to become their new home, a gentle slope rising from the bank of the North River in Shelby County, Missouri, about forty-five miles west of Hannibal. One year later the utopian Bethel Colony had been laid out, houses were being added as fast as they could be built, and construction of a steam-powered gristmill was under way.The Bethel colonists were Bible Communists who found the (...) inspiration for their communal life in the book of Acts, which records that in the Early Church "as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds and laid them at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need"... (shrink)

Why do American ghettos persist? Decades after Moynihan’s report on the black family and the Kerner Commission’s investigations of urban disorders, deeply disadvantaged black communities remain a disturbing reality. Scholars and commentators today often identify some factor―such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street crime―as the key to solving the problem and recommend policies accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby argues, these attempts to “fix” ghettos or “help” their poor inhabitants ignore fundamental questions of justice and fail to see the urban (...) poor as moral agents responding to injustice. (shrink)

I reply to Mills's critique of my effort to show the relevance of Rawls's theory of justice for thinking about and responding to racial injustices. Contrary to Mills's claims, my suggestion that the fair equality of opportunity principle can remedy socioeconomic disadvantages caused by the legacy of racial oppression is compatible with Rawls's framework, does not conflate distributive justice with corrective justice, and does not confuse racial injustice with economic injustice. I also raise doubts about Mills's project to radically reconstruct (...) contractarian political philosophy. He seeks to displace ideal theory with nonideal theory by foregrounding the realities of past racial domination. Against this approach, I argue that an ideal theory that abstracts away from these realities is not inherently ideological, useless for corrective justice, or too ideal to guide social reform. And I defend the view that ideal theory is indispensible for nonideal theorizing about racial justice. (shrink)

Although the character of the “lady detective”is a staple of the cozy mystery genre, we contend that there are no great lady detectives to rival Holmes or Poirot. This is not because there are no clever or interesting lady detective characters, but ratherbecause the concept of greatness is sociallyconstructed and, like coolness, depends on public acclaim and perception. We explore the mechanics of genre formation, arguing that the very structure of cozy mysteries precludes female greatness. To create a “great”character,theauthor cannot (...) just endowher with certain attributes; she must actively work to overcome her audience’s tendency to import structures of oppression into the story, and she must wrestle against the conventions of the genre. In doing so, however, authors risk setting their stories in a wholly different genre. (shrink)

A crucial design feature of language useful for determining when grammatical language evolved in the human lineage is our ability to combine meaningless units to form a new unit with meaning (combinatoriality) and to further combine these meaningful units into a larger unit with a novel meaning (compositionality). There is overlap between neural bases that underlie hierarchical cognitive functions required for compositionality in both linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts (e.g., tool use). Therefore, evidence of compositional tool use in the archaeological record (...) should signify, at the very least, the cognitive capacity for grammatical language by that point in time. We devise a novel system to evaluate the level of hierarchical nesting of tool components in single tool use activities. In the application of this system, we demonstrate that nonhuman primates, and by extension, the last common ancestor shared by Pan and Homo, are capable of basic combinatoriality; however, their technology does not approach the compositionality observable in modern human tool use. The prehistoric archaeological record supports a continuous evolution of combinatorial tool use into compositional tool use, with evidence for human-like levels of by 0.93 million years ago (Ma), or possibly as early as 1.7 Ma. While compositional language could have lagged behind compositional tool use, if language and technology coevolved according to the Technological Origin for Language hypothesis, which proposes a feedback system between the two, then evidence for hierarchical tool use structures implies a similar level of complexity in linguistic structures. (shrink)