This research investigates the influence that consumers’ perceptions of retail business ethics have on their responses when retailers either create social discount spaces or do not. Using scenarios to imply these social practices and structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses among a sample of 689 respondents, the authors find that consumers’ perceptions of retail business ethics have positive effects on consumer loyalty, both directly and through consumer trust, as well as positive, strong influences on the retailer’s corporate social responsibility (...) and corporate reputation. Furthermore, consumers’ perceptions of retail business ethics exert a stronger effect on consumer trust in integrated social discount spaces, though social discount practices do not affect the link between such perceptions and loyalty. Compared with when the retailer does not offer discount space, collaborative and integrated social discount spaces have weaker effects on trust and loyalty to the retailer. These findings have several notable theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Sustainable luxury is a strategic issue for managers and for society, yet it remains poorly understood. This research seeks to clarify how corporate social responsibility actions directly and indirectly affect consumers’ willingness to pay a premium price for luxury brand products, as well as how a long-term orientation might moderate these relationships. A scenario study presents fictional CSR actions of two brands, representing different luxury products, to 1,049 respondents from two countries. The results of a structural equation modeling approach show (...) that the luxury brands’ CSR actions negatively affect customer WTPP overall and for each brand. The luxury brands’ functional and symbolic value dimensions positively mediate the effects of CSR actions on WTPP, whereas social value does not. The effects of CSR actions and brand symbolic value on WTTP do not differ between countries. The effect of functional value on WTPP differs across countries, such that it is stronger for high-LTO than low-LTO cultures. Inversely, the effect of social on customer WTPP is stronger for low-LTO than high-LTO cultures. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for luxury brand managers. (shrink)

Coinciding with the rising development of emerging markets, sustainable consumption practices in these markets are increasingly under scrutiny. In this context, we compare empirical results from consumers in four countries (three emerging markets and one developed market) in an experimental study to uncover patterns of preferences for sustainable luxury products (i.e., products that combine sustainability and luxury characteristics). Our findings illustrate that consumers’ quality, emotional, price, and social value perceptions, as well as purchase and electronic word-of-mouth intentions, are consistently higher (...) in all three emerging markets compared to the developed market. We find that sustainability (vs. conventional) product features increase consumers’ product value perceptions and behavioral intentions, although this effect is partially stronger for the developed compared to the emerging market(s). We further show a positive sustainability effect for luxury products, this effect is stronger for mass-market products. Combining sustainability and luxury signals leads to similar effects in emerging and developed markets. Thus, emerging markets have promise in terms of scope for incorporating sustainability characteristics into luxury products. Sustainable luxury consumption can therefore be understood as a manifestation of global consumer culture. (shrink)

Public policies are designed to have an impact on particular societies, yet policy-oriented computer models and simulations often focus more on articulating the policies to be applied than on realistically rendering the cultural dynamics of the target society. This approach can lead to policy assessments that ignore crucial social contextual factors. For example, by leaving out distinctive moral and normative dimensions of cultural contexts in artificial societies, estimations of downstream policy effectiveness fail to account for dynamics that are fundamental in (...) human life and central to many public policy challenges. In this paper, we supply evidence that incorporating morally salient dimensions of a culture is critically important for producing relevant and accurate evaluations of social policy when using multi-agent artificial intelligence models and simulations. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone estudiar la representación de la imagen del negro soldado en La revolución es un sueño eterno de Andrés Rivera. En efecto, frente a la negación por la historia del aporte épico de los afrodescendientes en las luchas por la emancipación, Andrés Rivera rescata la figura del afrosoldado argentino que se ha destacado heroicamente en los frentes bélicos para la defensa de la patria. Así, este trabajo analiza esta visión revolucionaria de la negritud argentina en Andrés Rivera. (...) Tras estudio, las dos primeras partes han demostrado que los soldados afroargentinos han tenido una participación heroica tanto en las Invasiones Inglesas como en las campañas de Liberación de San Martín, por lo que Andrés Rivera propone una representación sin estereotipias de la imagen del negro, a través de los campos de batalla, con igual valentía y dignidad que bancos e indios, frente a una literatura acostumbrada a representar al negro en la subalternidad. Las dos últimas partes han revelado la imagen dignificante de la negritud argentina, a través del personaje de Segundo Reyes, un esclavo devenido capitán de ejército, y su relación de amistad y de armas con Juan José Castelli, el orador de la Revolución y Representante de la Primera Junta en el ejército del Alto Perú. Así, el trabajo ha mostrado, de manera general, que la imagen del negro ha sido honrada por Rivera mediante las armas, la sociabilidad y la relación de hermandad con el “amo” blanco. The negation of the Afro-descendant contribution has been one of the constants in the history of Argentina. The symbolic participation of slaves in the struggles of the country has been often ignored by white and Europeanist history which represents the black as a secondary subject, a representation in the subalternity which also characterized the literature. But with the rise of the historical novel at the end of the 20th century, a new vision of the role and the image of the Afro-descendant was born, where the latter acquired a fundamental place in the country. This is what Andres Rivera proposes in his novel entitled La revolución es un sueño eterno, that we have in this work through parts: a reminder of the participation of black slaves in the struggles for emancipation, the approach from the trenches, the character of the black captain Segundo Reyes and the relationship between negritude and aristocracy. The first part traces the heroic participation of blacks in various battles of the country: English invasions, the, my revolution, the liberation war under San Martin, and the border struggles. The second part highlights the representation of “afroslodier”. With this approach, Andres Rivera speaks of the blacks not as a Community formed of slaves and free who, with regard to the whites and the Indians, stood heroically in all the struggles for the liberation of Argentina. To consolidate this approach without stereotype, the author uses an afro-argentine soldier character, a fisherman’s slave who becomes a captain of the army. The third part of the work analyses this revolutionary approach missing in literary history. And to highlight the loyalty and bravery of black soldiers alongside white figures, the author used, like Artigas and Ansina, duo Segundo Reyes, black captain, and Juan José Castelli, representative of the Government in the army of Alto Peru. The infallible friendship between the two during and after the wars which we analyzed in the last part shows how negritude and aristocracy are united by a perfect symbiosis made of fraternity and equal dignity. (shrink)

This uniquely inspirational and practical book explores human simulation, which is the application of computational modeling and simulation to research subjects in the humanities disciplines. It delves into the fascinating process of collaboration among experts who usually don’t have much to do with one another – computer engineers and humanities scholars – from the perspective of the humanities scholars. It also explains the process of developing models and simulations in these interdisciplinary teams. Each chapter takes the reader on a journey, (...) presenting a specific theory about the human condition, a model of that theory, discussion of its implementation, analysis of its results, and an account of the collaborative experience. Contributing authors with different fields of expertise share how each model was validated, discuss relevant datasets, explain development strategies, and frankly discuss the ups and downs of the process of collaborative development. Readers are given access to the models and will also gain new perspectives from the authors’ findings, experiences, and recommendations. Today we are in the early phases of an information revolution, combining access to vast computing resources, large amounts of human data through social media, and an unprecedented richness of methods and tools to capture, analyze, explore, and test hypotheses and theories of all kinds. Thus, this book’s insights will be valuable not only to students and scholars of humanities subjects, but also to the general reader and researchers from other disciplines who are intrigued by the expansion of the information revolution all the way into the humanities departments of modern universities. (shrink)

Lorsqu’elle nous reçoit à Conakry, en république de Guinée, ce 22 janvier 2002, Mme Kadidiatou Diallo prépare la commémoration de la « journée des pendus » au cours de laquelle, le 25 janvier 1971, de nombreuses personnes furent exécutées par pendaison à travers toute la Guinée, sur ordre du président de la République Ahmed Sékou Touré. Mme Diallo Telli a déjà accordé de nombreux entretiens à des journalistes qui l’ont interrogée sur son époux, Boubacar Diallo Telli, une (...) des plus célèbres per... (shrink)

The publication aims to make suggestions for a 'decolonisation of aesthetics' within an Afro-European framework. The texts (whose authors come from different cultural contexts between Germany, France, Senegal, Benin, Nigeria and Tunesia) do not only refer to heterogenous aesthetic practices understood as subversive and decolonial strategies, but also discuss philosophical questions of a renewed (non-in)dividual humanism. The artistic practices analyzed include artistic installations and ensembles as well as actions in urban and rural space, deceptive manœuvres at the borders and their (...) photographic documentation, and many more. (shrink)

Dans cette sélection d’extraits d’un interview avec Zsuzsa Laszlo, Dominique Malaquais et Kadiatou Diallo proposent une parole commune autour de SPARCK (Space for Pan-African Research, Creation, and Knowledge), qu’elles ont fondé en 2008. C’est un programme expérimental et multidisciplinaire de résidences d’artistes, d’ateliers, d’expositions, de publications et de performances centré sur des approches novatrices et éthiques d’espaces et de sociétés postcoloniales. Les projets SPARCK prennent pour point de départ les Afriques, pour penser le monde et ses futurs depuis le (...) continent et ses diasporas. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the relationship between national cultural dimensions and the probability of a firm being externally audited. It uses a large set of representative micro-data from nearly 3000 firms across 34 industries in 13 countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East over the period 2008–2010, and Schwartz’s cultural dimensions, namely autonomy, embeddedness, egalitarianism and hierarchy. The findings show that the relationship between firm audits and cultural autonomy and egalitarianism is strongly positive and statistically significant. Specifically, they (...) show that an increase of one standard deviation in affective autonomy increases the probability that a firm will engage in an external audit by 3.37%. Along the same lines, a 1 SD increase in egalitarianism leads to a 8.36% increase in the likelihood of a firm engaging in an external audit. However, there is no clear evidence that embeddedness and hierarchy play a role in firms’ external auditing trends. These findings remain robust to the use of several confounding factors at the firm and country levels. This research highlights its uniqueness in the choice of national culture as a determinant for the likelihood of external audits. (shrink)

Modeling is as old as humanity. It is one of the ways in which we experience the world, teach our children, and entertain ourselves. The digital computer, on the other hand, is approximately 60 years old but as computing power increases and access to technology becomes easier, more disciplines are using statistical and computational simulations. From the humanities to social sciences, scholars are advocating for a computational branch of their field of study. This is very exciting, and we want to (...) make sure that all disciplines stay connected and share their insights as they grow in their respective areas. Religion is a complex system that consists of humans, society, culture and social constructs that have evolved over millennia. The study of religion relies on empirical approaches to collect and analyze data to generate or validate existing theories. Modeling and simulation allows us to venture beyond statistical observation and into an exploration of the causal relationships between the different aspects of religion. It provides us with the ability to understand the system as a whole, the possibility of projecting how religion will evolve in the future and the capability to compare, contrast and merge seemingly conflicting theories of religion. In this article, we present five critical things that scholars in psychology of religion should know about the discipline of Modeling and Simulation. The goal of this short primer is to highlight the universal aspects of Modeling and Simulation and to provide a unifying view that transcends disciplines. (shrink)

"Le concept, principal ressort de l'abstraction philosophique, est aujourd'hui, paradoxalement, inadéquate pour exprimer les arguments philosophiques qui font débat en Afrique noire. Trop aride, trop étroit, trop univoque, le concept réduit ce qui est vécu comme un 'conflit de cultures' à un simple 'conflit intellectuel'. Pour éviter cet appauvrissement, le concept exige le détour par la fiction romanesque. En témoignent deux romans L'aventure ambiguë de Cheikh H. Kane et Entre les eaux de V.Y. Mudimbe. À travers eux, le romancier se (...) fait philosophe, et le philosophe pleinement écrivain. Autant dire que le discours philosophique exige un 'dehors', une extériorité radicale capable de l'éclairer. 'Philosopher en Afrique noire' relève autant du faire voir que du penser, tous deux inséparables l'un de l'autre."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

Nous invitons ici à une véritable promenade intellectuelle qui nous conduit à creuser l'histoire de la pensée et du penser en Islam pour y retrouver des rationalistes invétérés et endurcis dont le souci fut de défendre la raison au prix de leur foi : ce sont les rationalistes qu'on appelle communément " Mu'tazila ". Très tôt, ce mouvement prit une dimension rationnelle en développant au sein de l'Islam les thèses critiques et philosophiques les plus inattendues d'une religion. Cette histoire des (...) idées que nous voulons parcourir nous mènera au " siècle des lumières en Islam " même si l'expression est quelque peu contestée par certains intellectuels musulmans qui pensent à un manque de considération pour les nouveaux penseurs de l'Islam comme si le moment de la bonne pensée n'est pas le leur. On peut leur donner raison. L'histoire ne bégaie pas toujours. Elle est parfois infidèle. Telle est malheureusement l'histoire de l'Islam. Une histoire d'hybridation et parfois d'infidélité au texte. Apparue comme une religion de salut et de raison, son image est ternie aujourd'hui par ceux qui, au prix du glaive, substituent la modernisation de la pensée islamique à une islamisation violente de la modernité. (shrink)

The robustness of a system indicates its ability to withstand disturbances while maintaining its properties, performance, and efficiency. There are plenty of studies on the robustness of air transport networks in the literature. However, few works consider its mesoscopic organization. Building on the recently introduced component structure, we explore the impact of targeted attacks on the weighted world air transportation network on its components. Indeed, it contains five local components covering different regions and one global component linking these regions. We (...) investigate targeted attacks based on influential weighted centrality measures. Results show that the local components gradually separate from the world air transportation network as the fraction of removed airports grows. The weighted betweenness attack removes fewer top airports to isolate the regions compared to its alternatives. Furthermore, it is still convenient to travel locally in the separate areas. In contrast, strength and PageRank attacks need to target more airports to split the network. However, they are more disruptive. Indeed, the size of the isolated local components reduces drastically, so it becomes more challenging to travel locally. Looking at the world air transportation network through its component structure reveals a new viewpoint on its resilence. It opens new perspectives to design more efficient attacks. (shrink)

The main objective of Zika transmission studies is to work out the simplest approach to scale back human mortality and morbidity caused by the disease. Therefore, it is essential to spot the relative importance of the various factors contributing to the transmission and prevalence of the disease. Many mathematical models have been formulated incorporating vector-to-human transmission or human-to-human transmission. However, they do not take into consideration the mixture of both sorts of transmission. It raises the question of the impact of (...) both sorts of transmission on the disease dynamics. We develop a mathematical model of Zika with the vertical transmission in the vector population and human-to-human transmission to answer this question. It includes the immature phase of mosquitoes, adult mosquitoes, and human hosts. Results show that neglecting sexual transmission results in an understatement of the proportion of the infected population. Furthermore, it reduces the speed of disease spreading. On the other hand, vertical transmission in mosquitoes has a negligible effect on the dynamics of disease spread. We perform a sensitivity analysis of the reproductive number R 0 to raise to understand the parameters driving the dynamics of the disease. It appears that the most sensitive parameters in decreasing order are as follows: the adult mosquito death rate, the sting rate, the transmission probability of mosquito to human, and, therefore, the transmission probability of human to mosquito. Furthermore, the proportion at the equilibrium of infected humans is extremely sensitive to the transition rate from the immature vector stage to the adult stage, the human-to-human transmission rate, and, therefore, the human recovery rate. These results confirm that control policies targeting the vector population and, therefore, the recovery rate of people are pretty effective solutions. To validate the model and estimate the important parameters of the model and the prediction of the disease, we consider the real cases in Colombia from 2016. In a series of graphic maps, we presented the comparative study to estimate the disease scenarios and to predict the time limit of the epidemic control measure. (shrink)

Operating universities under pandemic conditions is a complex undertaking. The Artificial University responds to this need. TAU is a configurable, open-source computer simulation of a university using a contact network based on publicly available information about university classes, residences, and activities. This study evaluates health outcomes for an array of interventions and testing protocols in an artificial university of 6,500 students, faculty, and staff. Findings suggest that physical distancing and centralized contact tracing are most effective at reducing infections, but there (...) is a tipping point for compliance below which physical distancing is less effective. If student compliance is anything short of high, it helps to have separate buildings for quarantining infected students, thereby gracefully increasing compliance. Hybrid in-person and online classes and closing fitness centers do not significantly change cumulative infections but do significantly decrease the number of the infected at any given time, indicating strategies for “flattening the curve” to protect limited resources. Supplementing physical distancing with centralized contact tracing decreases infected individuals by an additional 14%; boosting frequency of testing for student-facing staff yields a further 7% decrease. A trade-off exists between increasing the sheer number of infection tests and targeting testing for key nodes in the contact network. There are significant advantages to getting and acting on test results quickly. The costs and benefits to universities of these findings are discussed. Artificial universities can be an important decision support tool for universities, generating useful policy insights into the challenges of operating universities under pandemic conditions. (shrink)

Religious practices centered on controlled trance states, such as Siberian shamanism or North African zar, are ubiquitous, yet their characteristics vary. In particular, cross-cultural research finds that female-dominated spirit possession cults are common in stratified societies, whereas male-dominated shamanism predominates in structurally flatter cultures. Here, we present an agent-based model that explores factors, including social stratification and psychological dissociation, that may partially account for this pattern. We posit that, in more stratified societies, female agents suffer from higher levels of psychosocial (...) trauma, whereas male agents are more vulnerable in flatter societies. In societies with fewer levels of formal hierarchy, males come into informal social competition more regularly than in stratified contexts. This instability leads to a cultural feedback effect in which dissociative experiences deriving from chronic psychosocial stress become canalized into a male religious trance role. The model reproduces these patterns under plausible parameter configurations. (shrink)

Debates over the causes and consequences of the “Axial Age” – and its relevance for understanding and explaining “modernity” – continue to rage within and across a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, social theory, and cognitive science. We present a computational model that synthesizes three leading theories about the emergence of axial civilizations. Although these theories are often treated as competitors, our computational model shows how their most important conceptual insights and empirically based causal claims (...) can be integrated within a single computational architecture. The plausibility of the latter is supported by the results of our simulation experiments, which were able to simulate the emergence and growth of an axial civilization. The model shows how the relevant theories can be rendered consistent, while challenging the claims of any one to comprehensiveness. (shrink)

Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

The social sciences and humanities are fragmented into specialized areas, each with their own parlance and procedures. This hinders information sharing and the growth of a coherent body of knowledge. Modeling and simulation can be the scientific lingua franca, or shared technical language, that can unite, integrate, and relate relevant parts of these diverse disciplines.Models are well established in the scientific community as mediators, contributors, and enablers of scientific knowledge. We propose a potentially revolutionary linkage between social sciences, humanities and (...) computer simulation, forging what we call “human simulation.” We explore three facets of human simulation, namely: the simulation of humans, the design of simulations for human use, and simulations that include humans as well as simulated agents among the actors. We describe the potential of human simulation using several illuminating examples. We also discuss computational, epistemological, and hermeneutical challenges constraining the use of human simulation. (shrink)

Malian farmers’ traditional system for managing seed of sorghum, an indigenous crop of vital importance for food security and survival, can be conceptualized as a commons. Although this system maintains a wide range of varieties and helps ensure access to seed, its ability to create and widely disseminate new varieties to meet evolving opportunities and challenges is limited. A network of farmer groups, public breeding programs, and development organizations collaborating in decentralized creation and dissemination of sorghum varieties in Mali is (...) examined regarding (1) how the network developed and what activities it conducts; (2) the resulting varietal diversity, varietal performance and organizational models; and (3) the elements of the traditional seed system that were maintained, strengthened or transformed. A single-case study approach was used that relies on published literature, official catalogues of released varieties and a database of farmer seed-cooperative requests for foundation seed. The functioning of the network and its varietal-, seed-, and organizational- outcomes are documented and the elements of the traditional sorghum seed system that are maintained or strengthened are analyzed. The evolution of the network’s reliance on commoning as a social process and its strengthening of core Seed Commons features are discussed with a view to the network’s contributions to targeted development outcomes and potential replicability. The case demonstrates how creating a framework for collaboration, enabling actors and organizations to take on collective responsibility while maintaining distributed decision-making at local level, opens opportunities for transforming farming- and food-systems towards sustainability and resilience. (shrink)

Composition as Identity is, roughly, the thesis that the parts of a whole, taken collectively, are in some sense identical with the whole. Einar Duenger Bohn argues for Universalism from CAI. Universalism says that composition is totally unrestricted: wherever two or more objects occur, an instance of composition occurs, however unnatural or gerrymandered. Bohn’s argument relies on inferences with generic quantifiers, but he does not provide a clear account of generic quantification. My argument is that on the most plausible approach (...) to thinking about such inferences, the argument fails. (shrink)

L'idée centrale est simple : l'éducation est la voie incontournable pour réaliser le type d'homme équilibré qu'une société se donne comme idéal. Ce fil directeur que Iba fall tient fermement tout au long de ce plaidoyer pour un monde davantage ancré dans les valeurs humanistes, explore différents aspects d'une crise à la fois d'identité et de civilisation. Il y a crise, selon le jeune professeur de philosophie, parce qu'il y a rencontre, choc et parfois contradiction entre deux modèles d'éducation. (...) Celui qui est porté par la mondialisation a des tendances dissolvantes pour celui engendré jadis par l'éducation traditionnelle africaine. D'où le sens du titre : " Crise de la socialisation au Sénégal ". S'agit-il d'un procès de la mondialisation? En un certain sens, oui cela en est un. Toutefois l'argumentaire donne à voir une lecture moins négative de ce changement d'échelle qui tend à affecter toute chose. Ce dont il est question, c'est la mise à l'épreuve des valeurs traditionnelles de l'éducation dans le contexte d'une mondialisation en cours. Très exactement, ce qui est en cause, c'est la volonté d'exportation ou de transfert des tendances chosifiantes de la globalisation économique et matérielle dans un domaine dont le propre est d'être immatériel et de se nourrir de valeurs qui se donnent l'homme comme fin et non comme moyen. Abdoulaye Elimane Kane. (shrink)

Si les voies du droit sont complexes, ses objets divers et ses champs multiples, il est par essence "en commerce" avec d'autres disciplines des sciences sociales et humaines, qui interfèrent dans son élaboration et affectent son contenu comme la portée de sa fonction normative. Au carrefour des régimes politiques, des systèmes juridiques et des sociétés en mutation, il a dû, au fil du temps, diversifier ses instruments pour répondre à des problématiques écartelées entre nationalismes et mondialisation. Ces rencontres et croisements (...) interpellent les juristes de tous horizons autant que les chercheurs de toutes disciplines. Des droits africains au droit français, du droit de l'urbanisme au droit et à la sociologie de l'environnement comme du tourisme, des droit constitutionnel et international aux droits de l'Homme, ce recueil présente des études et des témoignages rassemblés en l'honneur du Professeur Jean-Marie Breton, dont le parcours, un demi-siècle durant, l'a conduit à explorer, dans divers universités et continents, les itinéraires du droit dans sa quête de connaissance des terres des hommes. (shrink)

We present a perspective of the national transplant program based on organizational theory and complexity theory, framing the system’s allocation of donor organs as an interorganizational directed multiplex of agents with diverse belief formation in a cooperative-competitive environment. Simulation and analysis of this macroscale complexity may help explain known behavioural variations across member organizations. However, the transplant community still relies on system-scale simulations since effective macroscale methodologies are not well established. Therefore, we offer this perspective of the national transplant program (...) as a means to stimulate new methods that capture macroscale impacts of policy development for deceased donor organ allocation. (shrink)

Like any other part of the world, Africa is not immune to the intermingling of cultures and civilizations, heritages and horizons, the endogenous and the exogenous, knowledge and imagery. The effects of new communication and information technologies, which still remain the privilege of a minority of political and intellectual elites, cannot conceal the far more profound transformations and reconfigurations that characterize its societies and cultures.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural InterpretationEdward R. FallsEmpty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation. By Jay L. Garfield. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 306 + xi pp.Jay L. Garfield's Empty Words is a collection of (mostly) previously published essays bearing on the interpretation of Buddhist thought. Emphasizing the Indo-Tibetan tradition while indebted to Euro-American philosophy, Empty Words belongs in a class with books such (...) as Tom Tillemans's Scripture, Logic and Language: Essays on Dharmakīrti and His Tibetan Successors (1999) and Matthew Kapstein's Reason's Traces: Identity and Interpretation in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Thought (2001). Below is a précis of Empty Words, followed by remarks on some points that especially caught this reviewer's interest.The essays in Empty Words are gathered into three sections according to subject matter: (1) Madhyamaka, (2) Yogācāra, and (3) Ethics and Hermeneutics. There are five essays in section 1, clustered around three themes: Nāgārjuna's theory of causality (ch. 2, 4), parallels between Madhyamaka and the European skeptical tradition (ch. 1), and paradox in Madhyamaka (ch. 3, 5).Section 2 begins with an essay interpreting Vasubandhu on the three natures and three naturelessnesses, arguing that "Vasubandhu subordinates the naturelessnesses [End Page 196] to the natures pedagogically and describes them as characteristics of, but not (with the exception of the third) identical to the three natures" (p. 121). As for the other three essays in section 2, chapter 7 consists of a translation of and commentary on Vasubandhu's Trisvabhāvanirdes´a, chapter 8 presents an interesting experiment in cross-cultural interpretation in which the history of European idealism is viewed through a Buddhist idealist lens, and chapter 9 (one of the two previously unpublished essays in Empty Words—ch. 14 is the other) attempts to bring together Garfield's views on the limits of expressibility in Madhyamaka and his interpretation of the three natures in Yogācāra.Section 3 includes three essays concerning issues in ethics or political philosophy and two essays discussing the hermeneutical issues involved when Euro-American and Tibetan philosophers attempt to understand each other's traditions. The topics of the former essays are as follows. Is the Dalai Lama's advocacy of human rights (which are grounded in liberal moral theory) compatible with Buddhist ethics, which emphasizes a compassion-based morality (ch. 10)? Are Buddhist values and democracy incompatible (ch. 11)? How does Samdhong Rinpoche's approach to nonviolence relate to Gandhi's (ch. 12)? In the final two essays of the book, Garfield advocates a strategy of cross-cultural interpretation which would avoid the pitfall of orientalism, drawing heavily on Gadamerian-Heideggerian hermeneutics.The remarks that follow bear exclusively on points from essays in section 1 on Madhyamaka. In chapter 4, Garfield critiques the claim, attributed to Dharmakīrti (by rGyal tshab in his commentary on the pramānasiddhi chapter of Pramānavarttika) that belief in rebirth is necessary for the cultivation of bodhicitta. Garfield argues that if this claim is correct, then the "I" in the bodhisattva vow is doing real metaphysical work, functioning as the basis for a real causal relation, contra Nāgārjuna's analysis of causality (which is supposed to involve the rejection of real causal powers). Otherwise, a simpler account of bodhicitta would suffice, in which striving for personal enlightenment could be replaced by striving for someone's attaining enlightenment some time in the future. On this account, practitioners would resolve to contribute to the accumulation of causes of someone's eventually attaining enlightenment, where this accumulation of causes turns out to be something like "universal moral improvement."But what if practitioners just do not know how to bring about universal moral improvement? Garfield acknowledges that buddhas sometimes act counter to the "moral" good, and this suggests an important cognitive difference between buddhas and ordinary beings: ordinary beings can only (fallibly) infer what the best thing to do is, whereas buddhas simply know. Hence, the importance, from a practitioner's standpoint, of the Buddha's teaching, which is a path of personal attainment (and who knows whether it is incidentally a... (shrink)

À partir d’une approche anthropologique des prises en charge médicales de la tuberculose et du paludisme, ainsi que des conceptions et usages de la prévention dans des milieux urbains d’Afrique de l’Ouest , ce texte interroge la nature du métier de soignant. Après nous être penchés sur les spécificités de ce type d’étude anthropologique en milieu médical, nous nous attachons à décrypter les processus d’occultations des singularités du malade qui caractérisent les messages et discours de prévention. Dans les structures de (...) santé, sont étudiées les négociations des normes de diagnostic et de traitement à l’œuvre ; les attitudes des soignants qui oscillent entre sur- et sous-estimations des risques sanitaires ; et le hiatus entre la demande et les besoins réels de formations continues. Enfin, nous nous penchons sur la rencontre entre les soignants et les malades qui peut se trouver transformée par les spécificités de la maladie et de son traitement. On constate alors que les fondements de la professionnalisation tendent à disparaître au profit d’un mode de régulation du rapport au malade, au collègue et plus largement au savoir médical qui témoigne de l’émergence d’une culture soignante qui est, de fait, une culture organisationnelle. Elle se caractérise à la fois par la délégation des tâches à des non-professionnels, la production et la résolution des conflits mettant en évidence des réseaux clientélistes ainsi que par une routinisation des gestes.Drawing on an anthropological approach of tuberculosis and malaria care in West African cities , and on an analysis of prevention modes, this paper examines the characteristics of medical work. We first examined the conditions of an anthropological field study in health care centres. The concealment of both patients’ singularities and populations’ specificities targeted in the prevention messages were then studied. The negotiation of diagnosis and treatment standards, and the under- and over-estimations of nosocomial risks were also analysed. We also focused on the gap between demands and actual needs for training, and on the relationships between health care providers and patients, which can be modified by the specificities of the disease. We noticed a decay of professionalization, a kind of regulation of relationships between health care workers and patients, and among medical staff, which expresses an emerging medical culture, which is also an organizational culture. Its main features are the delegation of tasks to non-professionals workers, a strategy of conflict management based on clientelism, and the development of routine action. (shrink)

Abstract:Paul Williams critiques Śāntideva's argument, claiming it rests on a category mistake. I suggest that if Williams' critique were sound, then the debate about composition as identity in recent analytic metaphysics would also be nonsensical. My argument is that Williams' objection does not make sense when dealing with absolutely general concepts such as the concepts of identity and parthood.

In Discovering Alabama Forests, ecologist-educator Doug Phillips and photographer Robert Falls celebrate the current health and diversity of Alabama woodlands while sounding a call for their wise management and protection in the future.