According to Iris Marion Young, a structural injustice occurs when members participating in one or more scheme of social coordination act blamelessly, but the schemes, in combination with norms and background conditions, systematically prevent some from developing their capacities and fulfilling their rights. Because participants are mostly blameless, Young argues that traditional individualist theories of responsibility inadequately address structural injustices. Young instead proposes a social connection theory of responsibility, whereby participants in a structural injustice acquire forward-looking responsibilities to remediate the (...) injustice by organizing, voting, protesting and pressuring institutions. In this paper, I argue that Young’s theory of structural injustice conflates several different moral failings, and that when we correctly disambiguate structural injustices, we can successfully address them with traditional individualist theories of responsibility, both forward-looking and backward-looking. (shrink)

This study explored perceived benefits and risks of participation in HIV research among 33 female sex workers in Tecún Umán, Guatemala. Stigma associated with sex work and HIV was a critical barrier to research participation. Key benefits of participation included access to HIV/sti prevention and testing, as well as positive and trusting relationships between sex workers and research teams. Control exerted by managers had mixed influences on perceived research risks and benefits. Results underscore the critical need for HIV investigators to (...) develop population-tailored procedures to reduce stigma; engage managers; and reinforce trusting, reciprocal relationships between sex work communities and researchers. (shrink)

Public investments in genomic and precision medicine have begun to yield clinically useful interventions, most recently, for example, two new, FDA-approved gene therapies for sickle cell disease (F...

In this paper, I discuss accounts of agency, participation, and self-determination by David Crocker and Stacy Kosko because they acknowledge that relationships of power can determine who gets to participate and when. Kosko usefully applies the concept of agency vulnerability to the case of the self-determination of indigenous peoples. I examine the specific context of Canada’s history as a settler nation, a history that reflects attempts to denigrate, dismiss and erase Indigenous laws, practices, languages, and traditions. I argue that this (...) history displays epistemic injustice in that the dominant collective interpretative resources of non-Indigenous Canadians have allowed the dismissal of the collective interpretative resources of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. This gap in collective interpretative resources can explain that Canada’s constitution, institutions, laws, and structures reflect the dominant collective interpretative resources of a colonizing nation, ones that have delineated and restricted the agency, participation, and self-determination of Indigenous Canadians. One important outcome of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and of its National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls is bringing the rich history of Indigenous collective interpretative resources and the networks of relationships shaped by them to light. By discussing examples from these reports, I give substance to the argument that foundational and structural injustices in settler nations are at bottom epistemic injustices, ones that have implications for accounts of agency, participation, and self-determination. (shrink)

As Oliver D. Crisp’s Analyzing Doctrine sets out the major moves of a future analytic systematic theology, this response worries about the lack of close attention to work of the Holy Spirit. It is argued that this generates an unhelpful tendency for key theological concepts to collapse into one another. First, the concepts of theosis, participation, union, conformity, and sanctification appear indistinguishable. Second, Crisp portrays monofocal attention to the union of incarnation, without equal concern for that additional complementary way that (...) humanity is united to God, namely, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

Resilience is the process and outcome of healthy adaptation despite significant adversity. Proliferation of research on the resilience construct has led to scientific concerns about the operationalization and measurement of resilience for assessment science and practice. Various studies that have investigated the psychometric properties and construct validity of the Resilience Scale for Adolescents have yielded inconsistent findings, which could partly be due to variations in the methodological approaches. This study investigated the factor structure and construct validity of the READ (...) in four European regions participating in the Universal Preventive Resilience Intervention Globally Implemented in Schools to Improve and Promote Mental Health for Teenagers project. Participants included adolescents aged 10–15 years from Spain, Iceland, Italy, and Poland. The five-factor model of the READ was similar across gender and participating regions. Construct validity of the READ was supported. After establishing construct separability, incremental validity was supported. The READ is a valid and reliable measure of protective factors involved in resilience and demonstrates promise for cross-cultural applicability. Recommendations for measuring resilience and validating the READ in future investigations are provided. (shrink)

This article focuses on the role of the interchromatin compartment (IC) in shaping nuclear landscapes. The IC is connected with nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) and harbors splicing speckles and nuclear bodies. It is postulated that the IC provides routes for imported transcription factors to target sites, for export routes of mRNA as ribonucleoproteins toward NPCs, as well as for the intranuclear passage of regulatory RNAs from sites of transcription to remote functional sites (IC hypothesis). IC channels are lined by less‐compacted (...) euchromatin, called the perichromatin region (PR). The PR and IC together form the active nuclear compartment (ANC). The ANC is co‐aligned with the inactive nuclear compartment (INC), comprising more compacted heterochromatin. It is postulated that the INC is accessible for individual transcription factors, but inaccessible for larger macromolecular aggregates (limited accessibility hypothesis). This functional nuclear organization depends on still unexplored movements of genes and regulatory sequences between the two compartments. (shrink)

This article aims to make progress towards an account of social cohesion and participation in terms of which we can better understand how groups of people come to constitute stable social orders. It argues for a conceptual distinction between "inclusion" and "integration" and sheds new light on their theoretical relationship. While "integration" refers to group members' willingness to act in accordance with the given norms of a social structure, "inclusion" is linked to their participation opportunities. Although inclusion also plays (...) an essential role in integrating a normative order, levels of inclusiveness necessary for social cohesion may vary across different contexts. (shrink)

Phase 1 healthy volunteer clinical trials—which financially compensate subjects in tests of drug toxicity levels and side effects—appear to place pressure on each joint of the moral framework justifying research. In this article, we review concerns about phase 1 trials as they have been framed in the bioethics literature, including undue inducement and coercion, unjust exploitation, and worries about compromised data validity. We then revisit these concerns in light of the lived experiences of serial participants who are income-dependent on phase (...) 1 trials. We show how participant experiences shift attention from discrete exchanges, behaviors, and events in the research enterprise to the ongoing and dynamic patterns of serial participation in which individual decision-making is embedded in collective social and economic conditions and shaped by institutional policies. We argue in particular for the ethical significance of structurally diminished voluntariness, routine powerlessness in setting the terms of exchange, and incentive structures that may promote pharmaceutical interests but encourage phase 1 healthy volunteers to skirt important rules. (shrink)

Upshot: Conversational conferences are difficult to design in a way that avoids the consequences that arise when participants are not experienced with or fully value the conversational mode of interaction. So, the designers of such conferences must experiment with ways to build a culture, use a structure, and facilitate participation that might mitigate some of these consequences. The potential of the experimental conference designed in the light of second-order cybernetics lies, in part, in the prospect of identifying and acquiring (...) the conversational abilities and appreciations necessary to support a participative-dialogic society. (shrink)

To examine the impact of the relationship between agency and structure on sustained participation in youth sport, semi-structured interviews were conducted with male college soccer players. The participants' accounts of their youth careers were analyzed through the lens of Structuration Theory framed in a constructivist paradigm. ST supports the significance of the recursive relationship between agent and structure in-context in the co-construction of experiences, and provides a framework for analyzing effects of compounding experiences gained across time and space (...) as they influence sport continuation. Clarity of expectations imposed in-context and the athlete's perceived impact on the structure evidenced, through deductive thematic analysis, as the most salient determinants of the perceived valence of the youth sport environment. The agent's perceived holding of authoritative resources across time and contexts was a critical dimension of the participants' continuation in youth sport, substantiating ST as a theoretical lens, situated in a constructivist paradigm, that might add depth to understanding patterns in participation and attrition. (shrink)

By unpacking some of the dichotomies inherent in the concepts of vulnerability and disability, the article problematises some of the current legal approaches to disability in Finland. It argues that where used to single out population groups or individuals due to their embodied characteristics, the vulnerability paradigm can be seen to create binaries both among the persons with disabilities, and between the “vulnerable” persons with disabilities and the perception of a rational, self-standing and autonomous human being. To mitigate such binaries, (...) the article explores an agency-centred discourse of vulnerability, one that recognises the co-existence of agency and vulnerability and sees agency as dynamic and responsive to the societal support structures that surround all of us. One of the central arguments of the article is that generalised approaches do, however, not suffice to make agency a reality for all persons with disabilities. Given the extensive diversity of intra-group variations between persons with disabilities, individualised solutions are needed for agency to be possible for all. To overcome objectification and de-agencification – and to enhance agency – this diversity of situations, needs and contexts of lived-in realities of individuals also needs to be expressly reflected in the legal language in addressing disability. (shrink)

We participate in moral debate, instead of taking morality for granted, because of discontent with the moral discourse in vogue. We feel that something is distorted or concealed. One way to expose deficiencies in established discourse is critical argument, but under certain specific historical circumstances, the apparent self-evidence of established moral discourse has gained such a sway, has acquired such an ability to conceal its basic vulnerability, that its validity seems beyond contestation. Then, all of a sudden, its vulnerability is (...) revealed, through the experience of laughter. Moral criticism is preceded by laughter. All crucial transformations in the history of moral thinking were made possible by laughter and moral criticism is originally a comic genre. The moral significance of laughter is recovered with the help of four philosophers of laughter: Bakhtin, Nietzsche, Bataille and Foucault. Laughter allows reality to appear in a certain light. It is a philosophical factor in its own right. This is explained through a thorough analysis of three crucial moral revolutions occurring in the fourth century B.C., the sixteenth century A.D. and the nineteenth century A.D. These transformations involved basic experiences of laughter articulated by three outstanding protagonists, namely Socrates, Luther and Ibsen. (shrink)

This article focuses on patients' participation in decision‐making in meetings with healthcare professionals in a healthcare system, based on neoliberal regulations and ideas. Drawing on two constructed empirical cases, primarily from the perspective of patients, this article analyses and discusses the clinical practice around decision‐making meetings within a Foucauldian perspective. Patients' participation in decision‐making can be seen as an offshoot of respect for patient autonomy. A treatment must be chosen, when patients consult physicians. From the perspective of patients, there is (...) a tendency for healthcare professionals to supply the patients with the information that they think are necessary for them to make their own decision. But patients do not always want to be a ‘customer’ in the healthcare system; they want to be a patient, consulting an expert for help and advice, which creates resistance to some parts of the decision‐making process. Both professionals and patients are subject to the structural frame of the medical field, formed of both neoliberal framework and medical logic. The decision‐making competence in relation to the choice of treatment is placed away from the professionals and seen as belonging to the patient. A ‘projectification’ of the patient occurs, whereby the patient becomes responsible for his/her choices in treatment and care and the professionals support him/her with knowledge, preferences, and alternative views, out of which he/she must make his/her own choices, and the responsibility for those choices now and in the future. At the same time, there is a tendency towards de‐professionalization. In that light, participation of patients in decision‐making can be regarded as a tacit governmentality strategy that shapes the location of responsibility between individual and society, and independent patients and healthcare professionals, despite the basically desirable, appropriate, and necessary idea of involving patients in their own situations from a humanistic perspective. (shrink)

Parental participation has gained significant attention in environmental psychology, which has revealed a need for an instrument that can measure parental participation with children regarding environmental issues. The present study met this need by validating the parental participation in the environment scale. This process began with 45 Chinese parents participating in an individual interview and group discussions, which helped generate a list of eighteen parent-child environmental activities. The activities were then modified and validated in the current study with a diverse (...) group of 969 parents recruited from six major Chinese cities. Both score structure evidence and generalizability evidence were obtained within this sample, and psychometric tests suggested a single factor construct with nine items. Once the PPE scale was revised, it showed measurement invariance across the parent who responded to the items, across the child’s primary caregiver, across the family’s living region, as well as across the family’s income group. Finally, evidence based on relations to other variables showed a relationship among parents’ PPE, pro-environmental behavior, and connectedness with nature. As a result, the study provided a novel measure to assess pro-environmental socialization via parental participation. (shrink)

Various kinds of user and patient involvement are spreading in healthcare in most Western countries. The purpose of this study is to critically assess the actual conditions for patients’ involvement in healthcare practice in Greenland and to point to possibilities for development. Patients’ perspectives on their own conduct of everyday life with illness and their possibilities for participation when hospitalized are examined in relation to the conditions in a hospital setting dominated by biomedical practice. On a theoretical level, it is (...) argued that the concept of ‘participation’ is preferable to the concept ‘involvement’ in healthcare. The study shows that there are several interconnected areas for development: the structural frames of hospital practice, including professionals’ possibilities for handling patient participation, and the agency of the patients conducting their everyday lives when hospitalized. Consequences of the biomedical hegemony are discussed in relation to WHO ́s broader approach to disease, illness and health and the still existing postcolonial traces of power and hierarchy. Finally it is argued that patient participation during hospitalization will promote the patients ́ conduct of everyday life, the cultural knowledge of the professionals, and the democratization of the healthcare sector. Such changes might be connected to a more encompassing democratic societal development – in Greenland as well as globally. (shrink)

This study examines the participation strategies of an environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) in community-based conservation (CBC) initiatives in the developing country context of Pakistan. We use local Pakistani concepts and terms to interpret and narrate our study. Drawing on the micro-mobilization literature, our analysis embeds a situated analysis of the_ ‘biradari’_ (kinship) structures that pervade Pakistani social and cultural milieu. We shed light on the importance of various gatekeepers in providing access and ongoing support for CBC initiatives, suggesting NGOs must (...) navigate complex cultural and social structures to manage participation in developing country contexts. Here our findings point to the importance of local knowledge not just in articulating community needs but also in articulating participation strategies. Furthermore, even though ‘elite’ structures have the potential to jeopardize equitable participation and project long-term sustainability, our analysis suggests interacting and gaining ‘_bharosa’_ (trust) of communities’ via these structures is critical to participation. While previous research has called into doubt the efficacy of CBC in advancing conservation, we suggest that frequent and culturally atoned engagement is a must for environmental NGOs working in socially entrenched developing nations. Our research brings to light the complex ethical terrain navigated by environmental NGOs in CBC projects, illuminating the inherent potential for both empowering and subjugating outcomes. (shrink)

Studies on participation and spatial orientations of college students have examined aspects of university life, as projected through language, from a reportorial or narrative perspective, but hardly any one of these studies has been devoted exclusively to how students' participation structure, together with the activities participants orient to at the participation space, evokes shared socio-academic backgrounds and cultural constraints, a major way to gain access into the students' cognitive and pragmatic tendencies. This research, thus, addresses itself to Nigerian college (...) students' participation configuration, their participant roles, and the illocutionary goals of their encounters within the Goffmanian participation framework and discourse pragmatic parameters. For data, 100 interactions amongst students of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, were taped and scrutinised for participation forms and spatial descriptions. Two types of participation structure are manifest in the interactions, namely, unmarked and marked participations. The unmarked participation structure is the regular frame in which Goffman's ratification and non-ratification framework is strictly observed. The marked participation configuration, an unexpected interactional frame which bifurcates into accommodated and non-accommodated structures, takes interruptions by unaccredited participants as appropriate or inappropriate. The paper contends that participation configuration and contextual elements prescribe participant roles together with the pragmatic functions assigned to language and actions in the interactions. Thus, the illocutionary goals of participants, rooted in socio-academic matters and enabled by participation structures, spatial orientations and body language manipulations are contextually negotiated. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The notion of “democracy” has become a much-debated concept in scholarship on business ethics, management, and organization studies. The strategy of this paper is to distinguish between a principle of organization that fosters participation and a principle of legitimation that draws on consent. Based on this distinction, we highlight conceptual shortcomings of the literature on stakeholder democracy. We demonstrate that parts of the literature tend to confound ends with means. Many approaches employ type I democracy notions of participation and often (...) take for granted that this also improves type II democratic legitimation. We hold this to be a mistake. We provide examples of the ambiguity of organizational procedures and show that under some circumstances a decrease in the degree of participation may actually increase legitimation because a governance structure that results in higher productivity can provide higher benefits for all parties involved, serve their interests and therefore meet their agreement. Less type I democracy may mean more type II democracy. We believe this to be an important insight for judging the legitimacy of both capitalistic firms and competitive markets. (shrink)

What are the semantic representations that underlie language production? We use structural priming to distinguish between two competing theories. Thematic roles define semantic structure in terms of atomic units that specify event participants and are ordered with respect to each other through a hierarchy of roles. Event structures instead instantiate semantic structure as embedded sub‐predicates that impose an order on verbal arguments based on their relative positioning in these embeddings. Across two experiments, we found that priming for datives (...) depended on the degree of overlap in event structures. Specifically, while all dative structures showed priming, due to common syntax, there was a boost for compositional datives priming other compositional datives. Here, the two syntactic forms have distinct event structures. In contrast, there was no boost in priming for dative light verbs, where the two forms map onto a single event representation. On the thematic roles hypothesis, we would have expected a similar degree of priming for the two cases. Thus, our results support event structural approaches to semantic representation and not thematic roles. (shrink)

It is frequently argued that to address structural injustice, individuals should participate in collective actions organized by civil society organizations, but the role and the normative status of CSOs are rarely discussed. In this paper, we argue that CSOs semi-perfect our shared obligation to address structural injustice by defining shared goals as well as taking actions to further them. This assigns a special moral status to CSOs, which in turn gives rise to our duty to support them. Thus, we do (...) not have full discretion when deciding whether to join collective actions or not. Under certain conditions, we can even be forced by others to do our share. (shrink)

The word 'participation' is taken to refer to a situation in which employees have some sort of share in the businesses which employ them. On this basis a classificatory scheme is produced which distinguishes between different forms of participation as well as the sources and motives behind those different forms. Participation as a whole is then distinguished from bargaining between management and labour. In bargaining, separate and opposing interests are accepted. In participation, there is an attempt to produce an over-arching (...) common interest. More importantly, bargaining operates outside those organizational arrangements definitive of a business which grant a strictly subordinate role to labour with respect to management structures and property entitlements. In contrast, participation is a modification of those arrangements up to, but not beyond, a position of equality for labour. It is this which gives participation its essentially reformist character and exposes it to attack from both those seeking a more than participatory share to labour and those for whom even a participating share is excessive. (shrink)

In discussion about basic theoretical approaches in a non-Cartesian psychology several candidates for a key concept were proposed, such as action, activity, relation, dialogue and discourse. None of these concepts, however, sufficiently grounds psychological theories of individual psychology in social practice. To accomplish this we need to conceptualize subjects as participants in structures of ongoing social practice. In this paper I argue why and address issues of subjectivity as encountered by persons in their participation in complex structures of social practice. (...) I introduce the concept of personal conduct of life and life-trajectory as elaborations of my theory. And I discuss this theoretical approach and show what is at stake in developing it by comparing it to similar approaches in the current literature on the person, self, and identity. (shrink)

After an initial period of feminist theorizing concerned with understanding patriarchy as a structure of male domination, many thinkers turned away from theorizing domination as such and focused instead on women's (constructed) subjectivity, identity, and agency. While this has fostered important insights into the formation of women's preferences, desires, and choices, this focus on subjectivity and subject formation has largely overshadowed deeper understandings of patriarchy as a structure of male domination while producing elisions between agency and freedom. In (...) this article, I move to show how domination as a structural concept can help us to reclaim the idea of ‘patriarchy’ as a source of women's systematic oppression while freedom as non-domination, derived from early republican conceptualizations of freedom, can help us to disambiguate freedom from agency by taking as central the relative positions of actors within social and political structures. Structural freedom as non-domination is thus useful for feminist thinkers in that it gives us critical purchase on the dynamics inherent in unequal social and political relationships and can be linked clearly to the institutions and ideologies that shape and justify interactions between more powerful and less powerful groups. Further, from this point of view intersecting structures of domination can be analysed rather than intersecting identity categories, allowing us to take intersectionality into account and avoiding the need to ground feminist action on a unitary ‘category woman’. Finally, this analysis points toward the radical democratic connexion between freedom and participation in the creation of the material and symbolic structures that frame our collective lives. (shrink)

In the past decade, the Norwegian government has emphasized user participation as an important goal in the care of mentally ill patients, through governmental strategic plans. At the same time, the governmental documents request normalization of psychiatric patients, including the re‐socialization of psychiatric patients back into society outside the psychiatric hospital. Milieu therapy is a therapeutic tool to ensure user participation and re‐socialization. Based on an ethnographic study in a long‐term psychiatric ward in a psychiatric hospital, we identified how staff (...) tried to implement user participation in their milieu‐oriented therapy work. We have identified three major tensions and challenges in implementing user participation in milieu‐therapeutic work. First, it is difficult to implement individual‐based user participation and at the same time take collective house rules and codes of conduct into consideration. Second, user participation proved a difficulty when patients’ viewpoints challenged staff judgements on proper conduct and goals for which patients might aim. Third, user participation becomes a challenge when trying to establish relationships based on equality when using milieu therapy in a biomedical hierarchical hospital structure. These tensions and challenges are seen in light of paradoxical political frames and demands on one side, and milieu therapy as a complex tradition anchored in different ideologies on the other. (shrink)

Cognitive-linguistic theories commonly model speakers’ grammatical knowledge as a network of constructions related by a variety of associative links. The present study proposes that structural priming can provide psycholinguistic evidence of such links, and crucially, that the method can be extended to non-alternating constructions. In a comprehension priming experiment using the “maze” variant of self-paced reading, English caused-motion sentences were found to have an inhibitory effect by slowing down participants’ subsequent processing of resultatives, and vice versa, providing evidence that speakers (...) store distinct but related representations for the constructions. Priming effects of a similar magnitude emerged in both directions, suggesting that the constructions are bidirectionally related, while not supporting previous claims about a metaphorical asymmetry between the patterns. Moreover, priming was only marginally affected when prime and target contained the same rather than different verbs, demonstrating that cross-constructional priming in comprehension can be observed in the absence of a “lexical boost”. The results raise questions for follow-up research on the role of inhibition in the grammatical network and the extension of structural priming to other types of constructional links. (shrink)

In this article, an attempt was made to identify the level of community social participation according to age, gender and the structural characteristics of the personal support networks in a population displaced by floods in the Colombian Caribbean. The research was based in a non-experimental methodology with an associative-relational strategy. An intentional non-probabilistic sample of 151 people affected by the winter wave in the south of the Department of Atlántico (Colombia) was selected. In total, the study included 42 males (27.8 (...) %) and 109 females (72.2 %) participants, with an average age of 37.48 (±14, Range 18 - 80) and average relocation time of 21.79 months (± 8.22, Range 5-36). The Arizona Social Support Interview Schedule (ASSIS) and Community Empowerment instruments were responded to with an instrument adapted from the leadership competence factor. The results show lower rates of intermediation in the older population, and the relationship between social participation and gender shows equally cohesive social support networks in men and women. This evidence is discussed to promote psychosocial interventions aimed to increase community engagement and empowerment of people that have experienced non-voluntary mobility processes. (shrink)

In this article we critically reflect on ‘feminist research methods’ and ‘methodology’, from the perspective of a feminist research unit at a South African university, that explicitly aims to improve gender-based violence service provision and policy through evidence-based advocacy. Despite working within a complex and inequitable developing country context, where our feminist praxis is frequently pitted against seemingly intractable structural realities, it is a praxis that remains grounded in documenting the stories of vulnerable individuals and within a broader political project (...) of working towards improving the systems that these individuals must navigate under challenging social and structural conditions. We primarily do this by working with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) providing gender-based violence services in research conceptualisation, design and implementation. This raises unique and complex questions for feminist participatory research, which we illustrate through a case study of collaborative, participatory research with NGOs to improve health and criminal justice outcomes for survivors of sexual violence. Issues include the possibility of good intentions/good research designs failing; the suitability of participatory research in sensitive service provision contexts; the degree(s) of engagement between researchers, service providers (collaborators/participants) and research participants; as well as our ethical duties to do no harm and to promote positive, progressive change through personal narratives and other forms of evidence. Given the demands of our context and these core issues, we not only argue that there are no ‘feminist methods’, but also caution against the notion of a universal ‘feminist methodology’. Whilst we may all be in agreement about the centrality of gender to our research and analysis, the fundamental aims and assumptions of mainstream (Western) feminist approaches do not hold true in all contexts, nor are they without variance in mode, ideal degrees of participation and importance to social context. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction 1. Political Communities and Human Rights Impacts in Transnational Democracy 2. Transnational Representation: Extending Participation in Cross‐Border Decision Making Acknowledgments References.

There are several strategies for exposing the defects of established moral discourse, one of which is critical argumentation. However, under certain specific historical circumstances, the apparent self-evidence of established moral discourse has gained such dominance, such a capacity of resistance or incorporation, such an ability to conceal its basic vulnerability that its validity simply seems beyond contestation. Notwithstanding the moral subject’s basic discontent, he or she remains unable to challenge the dominant discourse effectively by means of critical argument. Or, to (...) borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault, individuals find themselves faced with a certain rationality, a moral regime that dominates moral discourse to such an extent that they cannot offer any resistance without raising the suspicion of being unreasonable. They (that is, we) find ourselves confronted with a discourse quite unable to recognize its own deficiencies. Although we are forced to accept its basic claims, our chronic discontent nevertheless persists. That is, although we are forced to participate in this discourse, we remain basically ambivalent, and our attitude towards established morality contains both a Yes and a No. Then, all of a sudden, the basic vulnerability of the dominant regime dawns on us or is revealed to us – and this is the experience of laughter. (shrink)

Moral case deliberation (MCD) is a form of clinical ethics support in which the ethicist as facilitator aims at supporting professionals with a structured moral inquiry into their moral issues from practice. Cases often affect clients, however, their inclusion in MCD is not common. Client participation often raises questions concerning conditions for equal collaboration and good dialogue. Despite these questions, there is little empirical research regarding client participation in clinical ethics support in general and in MCD in particular. This article (...) aims at describing the experiences and processes of two MCD groups with client participation in a mental healthcare institution. A responsive evaluation was conducted examining stakeholders’ issues concerning client participation. Findings demonstrate that participation initially creates uneasiness. As routine builds up and client participants meet certain criteria, both clients and professionals start thinking beyond ‘us-them’ distinctions, and become more equal partners in dialogue. Still, sentiments of distrust and feelings of not being safe may reoccur. Client participation in MCD thus requires continuous reflection and alertness on relational dynamics and the quality of and conditions for dialogue. Participation puts the essentials of MCD (i.e., dialogue) to the test. Yet, the methodology and features of MCD offer an appropriate platform to introduce client participation in healthcare institutions. (shrink)

The legitimacy of technology as a whole, of individual fields of technology, and of concrete decisions on technology has become problematic. Traditional methods and elements for the legitimization of technological development and of the application of technology have been increasingly called into question since the 1980s. There are great expectations in participatory procedures to improving the legitimization of technology decisions. Those expectations, however, might not be justified. In the paper, the hypothesis is proposed that legitimacy can be brought about through (...) participation only under conditions that require the fulfillment of a number of preconditions, which often cannot be regarded as fulfilled. The unavoidable separation between internal communication among the participants and external communication with the nonparticipants turns out to be the fundamental structural characteristic hindering naïve expectations of improving legitimacy by participation. (shrink)

In this essay, I develop the concept of episodic value, which describes a form of value connected to a particular object or individual expressed and delivered through a narrative. Narrative can bestow special kinds of value on objects, as exemplified by auction articles or museum collections. To clarify the nature of episodic value, I show how the notion of episodic value fundamentally differs from the traditional axiological picture. I extend my discussion of episodic value to argue that the notion of (...) episodic value readily incorporates the role of narratives into the construction of identity in personal and social contexts. My main contentions are twofold. First, events or experiences from our personal narratives are episodically valuable insofar as they contribute to shaping our narrative identities. Second, when engaged in a collective action, we write a joint narrative with other participants that confers special meanings on the actions of each participant. (shrink)

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties and factorial structure of the Schema Mode Inventory for Eating Disorders (SMI-ED) in a disordered eating population. Method: 573 participants with disordered eating patterns as measured by the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) completed the 190-item adapted version of the Schema Mode Inventory (SMI). The new SMI-ED was developed by clinicians/researchers specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, through combining items from the original SMI with a set (...) of additional questions specifically representative of the eating disorder population. Psychometric testing included Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s α). Multivariate Analyses of Covariance (MANCOVA) was also run to test statistical differences between the EDE-Q subscales on the SMI-ED modes, while controlling for possible confounding variables. Results: Factorial analysis confirmed an acceptable sixteen-related-factors solution for the SMI-ED, thus providing preliminary evidence for the adequate validity of the new measure based on internal structure. Concurrent validity was also established through moderate to high correlations on the modes most relevant to eating disorders with EDE-Q subscales. This study represents the first step in creating a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring schema modes in eating disorders, and provides greater insight into the relevant schema modes within this population. Conclusion: This research represents an important preliminary step toward understanding and labeling the schema mode model for this clinical group. Findings from the psychometric evaluation of SMI-ED suggest that this is a useful tool which may further assist in the measurement and conceptualization of schema modes in this population. (shrink)

Composite Structure of Personal Networks, Age, and Well-being in Poland Traditionally aging research focused on the disintegration of social ties, however it has recently been observed that whom we contact has a larger impact on well-being. The authors used data from the Social Networks II module of the International Social Survey Programme to investigate the role of social network components in successful aging. A factor analysis on 1221 Polish participants revealed 4 factors that were interpreted as: close, medium, and (...) distant family, and friends. Well-being variables were most strongly related to contact with distant family, while SS variables were most strongly related to friends. Given SS was strongly related to distant family, while perceived SS was strongly related to close family. All family contacts decreased with age, though only distant family contacts were proactively managed. These results indicate the importance of distant family in Poland, in contrast to other countries. (shrink)

Because of the exacting nature of teaching, identifying factors affecting teachers’ mental health and psychological wellbeing are of paramount importance. Parallel with this line of inquiry, the goal of this project was to test a model of psychological wellbeing based on teacher self-efficacy and emotion regulation in an EFL context. To this end, 276 Iranian English teachers participated in this survey. First, the measurement models for the three latent constructs were verified through performing Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Then Structural Equation Modeling (...) was used to test the hypothesized model. SEM outcomes evince that both teacher self-efficacy and emotion regulation were the significant predictors of teachers’ psychological wellbeing, with teacher self-efficacy being a stronger correlate than emotion regulation. The findings offer significant implications for English as a Foreign Language teachers. (shrink)

The initiative to ensure oil-palm smallholders around the world participate in sustainable certification is increasing. Different efforts were strategised including increasing awareness and providing financial support. Despite that, the number of smallholders’ participation in sustainable certification is relatively low. This study embarked on the objective to identify the role of social structure, namely social interaction ties in affecting smallholders’ participative behaviours. Moreover, this study is also looking on the mediating impact of deliberative communication and responsible leadership in explaining the (...) relationship between the two previously stated constructs. Using a quantitative research design, this study collected data from 440 smallholders as its respondents. Samples were randomly selected, and questionnaires were distributed to obtain their responses. Data collected were then analysed using PLS-SEM to test the developed hypothesis. Accordingly, the findings indicate that social interaction ties have a significant impact on smallholders’ decisions to participate in sustainable certification. Furthermore, both deliberative communication and responsible leadership were proven to be significant mediators. This study provides insights on how smallholders’ participation in sustainable certification can be improved by tapping on the social structure elements as well as adopting deliberative communication and responsible leadership as a method to communicate and lead with the smallholders. This shall expand literature related to organisation psychology in rural areas and sustainability. (shrink)

On a proceduralist account of democracy, collective decisions derive their jus- tification—at least in part—from the qualities of the process through which they have been made. To fulfill its justificatory function, this process should ensure that citizens have an equal right to political participation as a respectful response to their equal status as agents capable of self-legislation. How should democratic participation be understood if it is to offer such a procedural justification for democratic decisions? I suggest that, in order to (...) overcome the structural procedural disadvantages affecting the actual, effective opportunities that citizens who hold nonmainstream views have to exercise their right to political participation, the enhancement of such opportunities requires securing space for contestation. Against this background, I vindicate the (currently underestimated) role of conscientious objection as a form of political participation. (shrink)

Background Genuine uncertainty on superiority of one intervention over the other is called equipoise. Physician-investigators in randomized controlled trials need equipoise at least in studies with more than minimal risks. Ideally, this equipoise is also present in patient-participants. In pediatrics, data on equipoise are lacking. We hypothesize that 1) lack of equipoise at enrolment among parents may reduce recruitment; 2) lack of equipoise during participation may reduce retention in patients assigned to a less favoured treatment-strategy. Methods We compared preferences of (...) parents/patients at enrolment, documented by a questionnaire, with preferences developed during follow-up by an interview-study to investigate equipoise of child-participants and parents in the BeSt-for-Kids-study. This trial in new-onset Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis-patients consists of three strategies. One strategy comprises initial treatment with a biological disease-modifying-antirheumatic-drug, currently not standard-of-care. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 parents and 7 patients, median 11 months after enrolment. Results Initially most parents and children were not in equipoise. Parents/patients who refused participation, regularly declined due to specific preferences. Many participating families preferred the biological-first-strategy. They participated to have a chance for this initial treatment, and would even consider stopping trial-participation when not randomized for it. Their conviction of superiority of the biological-first strategy was based on knowledge from internet and close relations. According to four parents, the physician-investigator preferred the biological-first-strategy, but the majority stated that she had no preferred strategy. In phase 2, preferences tended to change to the treatment actually received. Conclusions Lack of equipoise during enrolment did not reduce study recruitment, mainly due to the fact that preferred treatment was only available within the study. Still, when developing a trial it is important to evaluate whether the physicians’ research question is in line with preferences of the patient-group. By exploring so-called ‘informed patient-group’-equipoise, successful recruitment may be enhanced and bias avoided. In our study, lack of equipoise during trial-participation did not reduce retention in those assigned to a less favoured option. We observed a change for preference towards treatment actually received, possibly explained by comparable outcomes in all three arms. (shrink)

Real causal systems are complicated. Despite this, causal learning research has traditionally emphasized how causal relations can be induced on the basis of idealized events, i.e. those that have been mapped to binary variables and abstracted from time. For example, participants may be asked to assess the efficacy of a headache-relief pill on the basis of multiple patients who take the pill (or not) and find their headache relieved (or not). In contrast, the current study examines learning via interactions with (...) continuous dynamic systems, systems that include continuous variables that interact over time (and that can be continuously observed in real time by the learner). To explore such systems, we develop a new framework that represents a causal system as a network of stationary Gauss--Markov (``\OU'') processes and show how such \textit{OU networks} can express complex dynamic phenomena such as feedback loops and oscillations. To assess adult's abilities to learn such systems, we conducted an experiment in which participants were asked to identify the causal relationships of a number of OU networks, potentially carrying out multiple, temporally-extended interventions. We compared their judgments to a normative model for learning OU networks as well as a range of alternative and heuristic learning models from the literature. We found that, although participants exhibited substantial learning of such systems, they committed certain systematic errors. These successes and failures were best accounted for by a model that describes people as focusing on pairs of variables, rather than evaluating the evidence with respect to the full space of possible structural models. We argue that our approach provides both a principled framework for exploring the space of dynamic learning environments as well as new algorithmic insights into how people interact successfully with a continuous causal world. (shrink)