In the US, research payments are technically taxable income. This article argues that tax liability is a form of possible economic and legal risk of paid research participation. Findings are presented from empirical research on Phase I healthy volunteer trials. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for the informed consent process, as well as for broader ethical issues in whether and how payments for research participation should be regulated.

This Australian text provides students with accessible coverage of the central areas of the jurisprudence course. It examines: asking the law question; common law theory; positivism and natural law; legal service; critical legal studies; feminism; post-modernism; and deconstruction.

Theoretical variables : an overview -- Limited and unlimited law -- Legal materialism and social existence -- A new legal materialism -- Inner and outer space -- Scales of law -- Subjects and perspective -- Imagining law -- Pathfinding -- Conclusion.

Julie Childers and Bob Arnold’s (2019) article, “The Inner Lives of Doctors: Physician Emotion in the Care of the Seriously Ill,” uses Kübler-Ross’s influential work on death and dying to remind us...

"Most modern legal theorists seek to limit their enquiries to a particular sort of law, on the assumption that law is necessarily restricted in its interactions with other social practices. margaret Davies deliberately - and provocatively - questions the usefulness of such 'positivist' dogmas, asserting that the law can and should be seen as multi-dimensional. Davies argues that the law is everywhere - in metaphysics, the social environment, language and the psyche. In a persuasive meeting of postmodern (...) discourse, deconstruction, feminism and legal theory, Davies creates new ways of thinking about the law by creating links with other practices and disciplines where none previously existed. This is a powerful critique of the ideology and theory of law in the West, providing a much-needed link between conventional legal philosophy and modern movements in legal theory." --From back cover. (shrink)

Today’s medical training environment exposes medical trainees to many aspects of what has been called “the hidden curriculum.” In this article, we examine the relationship between two aspects of the hidden curriculum, the performance of emotional labor and the characterization of patients and proxies as “bad,” by analyzing clinical ethics discussions with resident trainees at an academic medical center. We argue that clinicians’ characterization of certain patients and proxies as “bad,” when they are not, can take an unnecessary toll on (...) trainees’ emotions. We conclude with a discussion of how training in ethics may help uncover and examine these aspects of the hidden curriculum. (shrink)

This article examines two modalities of law, depicted spatially as the vertical and the horizontal. The intellectual background for seeing law in vertical and horizontal dimensions is to be found in much socio-legal scholarship. These approaches have challenged the modernist, legal positivist and essentially vertical view of law as a system of imperatives emanating from a hierarchically superior source such as a sovereign. In keeping with the socio-legal critical tradition, but approaching it from the perspective of legal philosophy, my aim (...) is to address three matters. First, why is vertical law problematic for feminists? Second, what are the theoretical characteristics of law in its horizontal register? Third, how is an appreciation of this ‘flat’ law useful for feminist legal theory and practice? In particular, I consider the ways in which feminist legal theory operating in the horizontal dimension can transgress, without transcending, the vertically determined perimeters of the nation state. (shrink)

Feminist legal theory has undergone some significant changes over the past thirty years. This article provides an introductory overview of feminist legal theory, from liberal and radical feminism through to postmodernism. It outlines some of the major current issues within feminist legal thought, notably debates surrounding culture and religion, the relationship of sex and sexuality scholarship to feminist research, and the position of women within transitional societies.

Essential reading for all those who wish to understand why legal theory is important to legal education, and for those who wish to extend their understanding of this dynamic academic discipline. A variety of perspectives are drawn together including social, literary, feminist and postmodernist theories.

This book re-imagines law as ecolaw. The key insight of ecological thinking, that everything is connected to everything else - at least on the earth, and possibly in the cosmos - has become a truism of contemporary theory. Taking this insight as a starting point for understanding law involves suspending theoretical certainties and boundaries. It involves suspending theory itself as a conceptual project and practicing it as an embodied and material project. Although an ecological imagining of law can be metaphorical, (...) and can be highly imaginative and suggestive, this book shows that it is also literal. Law is part of the material 'everything' that is connected to everything else. This means that once the previous certainties of legal thinking have been dismantled, it is after all possible to think of law as 'natural' - as embedded in and emergent from a normative biophysical nature. The book proposes that there exists a natural nomos: animals, plants, and Earth systems that produce their own values and norms from which human norms and laws emerge. This book, then, proposes a new way to understand law, and pursues specific arguments to demonstrate the feasibility of law as ecolaw. Drawing inspiration from current trends in the posthumanities, socio-ecological thought, and developments across the natural sciences in their specific intersections with humanities and social science disciplines, this book will appeal both to legal theorists and to others with interests in these areas. (shrink)

Legal pluralism refers to the idea that in any one geographical space defined by the conventional boundaries of a nation state, there is more than one law or legal system. This article examines several aspects of legal pluralism focusing on the relationship between the empirical facts of pluralism and its conceptual foundations. Variety of factors produce the perception of legal pluralism, which is reflected in intensified interest in the concept in contemporary scholarship. Legal philosophy and sociological approaches to law often (...) still occupy quite separate scholarly terrains. Legal pluralism has been identified as a fruitful area for constructive engagement between legal philosophy and the sociology of law. This article emphasizes the fact that with the decline of nation states as the locus of political and legal power, it seems inevitable that traditional state-centered legal philosophy must give way to a different paradigm, which recognizes the plurality of law. (shrink)

En suspendant la violence de ses passions et de ses désirs, l'homme se montre capable d'une relation harmonieuse et respectueuse avec lui-même, les êtres et les choses, dans un dialogue avec la douceur de la vérité et la beauté de l'art qui la recrée. On étudiera comment, à l'âge humaniste et classique, les modernes ont pensé la douceur à partir de la relecture des sources antiques et chrétiennes dans les divers champs du savoir de la poétique à l'éthique, de la (...) métaphysique à l'esthétique et dessiné un idéal difficilement définissable et aisément rompu."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This paper analyses the activities of five organizations shaping the debate over the global governance of genome editing in order to assess current approaches to public engagement (PE). We compare the recommendations of each group with its own practices. All recommend broad engagement with the general public, but their practices vary from expert-driven models dominated by scientists, experts, and civil society groups to citizen deliberation-driven models that feature bidirectional consultation with local citizens, as well as hybrid models that combine elements (...) of both approaches. Only one group practices PE that seeks community perspectives to advance equity. In most cases, PE does little more than record already well-known views held by the most vocal groups, and thus is unlikely to produce more just or equitable processes or policy outcomes. Our exploration of the strengths, weaknesses, and possibilities of current forms of PE suggests a need to rethink both “public” and “engagement.”. (shrink)

The Bible has influenced contemporary culture both positively and negatively. The present volume is a collection of papers that were discussed at an international colloquium on the use of the Bible in Ethics in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield in April 1995. Participants came from many parts of the world and from different backgrounds, and the papers reflect their varied interests and the contexts in which they work. The contributors, in addition to the three editors, (...) are John Barton, Bruce Birch, Mark Brett, Mark Chapman, David Clines, Philip Davies, Cheryl Exum, Stephen Fowl, Norman Gottwald, John Haldane, Walter Houston, Sharon Ringe, Chrisopher Rowland, Lisa Sowle Cahill and Gerald West. (shrink)

This Companion celebrates the strength of feminist legal thought, which is manifested in the dynamic combination of stability and change and the diversity of perspectives and methodologies, as well as in the extensive range of subject-matters included within its ambit. Bringing together contributors from across a range of jurisdictions and legal traditions, the book provides a concise but critical review of existing theory in relation to the core issues or concepts that animate feminism. It provides an authoritative and scholarly review (...) of contemporary feminist legal thought, and contributes to the ongoing development of some of its new approaches, perspectives and subject-matters. (shrink)

BackgroundThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration traditionally has kept confidential significant amounts of information relevant to the approval or non-approval of specific drugs, devices, and biologics and about the regulatory status of such medical products in FDA’s pipeline.ObjectiveTo develop practical recommendations for FDA to improve its transparency to the public that FDA could implement by rulemaking or other regulatory processes without further congressional authorization. These recommendations would build on the work of FDA’s Transparency Task Force in 2010.MethodsIn 2016-2017, we convened (...) a team of academic faculty from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Yale Medical School, Yale Law School, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to develop recommendations through an iterative process of reviewing FDA’s practices, considering the legal and policy constraints on FDA in expanding transparency, and obtaining insights from independent observers of FDA.ResultsThe team developed 18 specific recommendations for improving FDA’s transparency to the public. FDA could adopt all these recommendations without further congressional action.FundingThe development of the Blueprint for Transparency at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. (shrink)

Here, we used event-related potentials to test the predictions of two prominent accounts of code-switching in bilinguals: The Matrix Language Framework (MLF; Myers-Scotton, 1993) and an application of the Minimalist Program (MP; Cantone & MacSwan, 2009). We focused on the relative order of the noun with respect to the adjective in mixed Welsh-English nominal constructions given the clear contrast between pre- and post-nominal adjective position between Welsh and English. MP would predict that the language of the adjective should determine felicitous (...) word order (i.e., English adjectives should appear pre-nominally and Welsh adjectives post-nominally). In contrast, MLF contends that it is the language of the finite verb inflection rather than that of a particular word that governs felicitous word order. To assess the predictions of the two models, we constructed sentences featuring a code-switch between the adjective and the noun, that complied with either English or Welsh word-order. Highly proficient Welsh-English bilinguals made semantic acceptability judgements upon reading the last word of sentences which could violate MP assumptions, MLF assumptions, both assumptions, or neither. Behaviourally, MP violations had no significant effect, whereas MLF violations induced an average drop of 11% in acceptability judgements. Neurophysiologically, MP violations elicited a significant Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) modulation, whereas MLF violations modulated both P600 and LAN mean amplitudes. In addition, there was a significant interaction between MP and MLF status in the P600 range: When MP was violated, MLF status did not matter, and when MP criteria were met, MLF violations resulted in a P600 modulation. This interaction possibly reflects a general preference for noun over adjective insertions, and may provide support for MLF over MP at a global sentence processing level. Model predictions also manifested differently in each of the matrix languages: When the matrix language was Welsh, MP and MLF violations elicited greater P600 mean amplitudes than MP and MLF adherences, however this pattern was not observed when the matrix language was English. We discuss methodological considerations relating to the neuroscientific study of code-switching, and the extent to which our results shed light on adjective-noun code-switching beyond findings from production and experimental-behavioural studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 277-278 [Access article in PDF] John Hedley Brooke, Margaret J. Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer, editors. Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Journals Division, 2001. Pp. xiii + 376. Cloth, $39.00. Paper, $25.00. Some twenty years ago, when I submitted a dissertation proposal to explore connections between theologies of creation and views of (...) scientific knowledge in the seventeenth century, my doctoral committee was not initially enthusiastic—my idea might make a good dissertation in religion, but was it really history of science? I doubt I would have a similar experience today. Not only has the "warfare" thesis of science and religion been laid permanently to rest, historians have begun seriously to question whether it makes sense even to treat "religion" and "science" in an essentialist manner as separate ways of thinking that do not ordinarily interact. Many detailed case studies demonstrating a variety of fascinating, often important connections between science and religion have appeared from leading scholars in the past two decades. This trend continues in the latest volume of Osiris, which contains sixteen essays documenting various ways in which religious beliefs have influenced the actual content and presentation of science.The volume opens with two companion essays laying out the terrain. First, Brooke engages the new methodological and conceptual problems that confront historians following the demise of the "warfare" thesis. Then Stephen Wykstra offers criteria for sorting out the various roles for metaphysical and religious beliefs (which he distinguishes) in shaping scientific knowledge. The case studies begin with E. Jamil Ragep's essay on medieval Islamic astronomy, arguing that religion sometimes had a constructive role—a rather novel claim for Islamic science, he points out. Noah J. Efron and Menachem Fisch show how early modern Jewish exegetical practices influenced David b. Solomon Gans's interpretations of astronomical texts, and quite possibly his interpretation of nature also. A Christian astronomer is next, as Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein detail how Johannes Kepler's theology contributed directly to the discovery of scientific laws. Maurice A. Finnocchiaro then reviews various accounts of the Galileo affair, finding far more conflict in the subsequent historiography of the events than in the trial itself.Moving from astronomy to natural philosophy, Margaret G. Cook's essay on Robert Boyle examines the web of connections between theology, the mechanical philosophy, and [End Page 277] "the Aristotelian philosophy that he sought to replace." She demonstrates that Boyle used the classical art/nature distinction "to interpret the biblical account of the Creation and to argue that chemical techniques offered experimental confirmation that the world, created by art, worked by the same mechanical principles as artificial objects, not by the inherent agency of Aristotelian nature" (136). Margaret J. Osler also writes about Boyle. Contrary to the traditional view that final causes were expunged from science by the mechanical philosophy—a view that originated in the "positivism and scientific optimism" of the postwar period (168)—she proves that final causality remained central to the thought of Boyle and Pierre Gassendi. The essay by Stephen D. Snobelen presents substantial evidence that the famous General Scholium, appended to the second edition of Isaac Newton's Principia, was a carefully worded declaration of Newton's heterodox theology. "A Trinitarian," Snobelen concludes, "could not have written the General Scholium" (186). He also shows the degree to which Newton's theology shaped his overall natural philosophy, decisively debunking the late Richard S. Westfall's view that such influences could not be found.The final seven essays are mainly devoted to nineteenth-century science. Michael J. Crowe documents several ways in which Christian beliefs about divine goodness and the Incarnation affected astronomy. Martin Fichman shows how Alfred Russel Wallace's theism—not merely a vague spiritualism, as traditional accounts claim—"shaped the cognitive content of his mature evolutionary synthesis, which included a theoretical reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection" (227). In a revisionist account of Charles Darwin's philosophy of "nature," Phillip R. Sloan challenges the received view that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 11.3 (2001) 219-220 [Access article in PDF] Introduction In the last couple of decades,commodification has become almost a buzz-word in bioethics. As we become technically more adept at detaching elements of human bodies and making use of them for others, it seems as if more and more things-from motherhood to gametes to kidneys to our very DNA-can be borrowed, rented, bought, and sold. Other (...) technology allows us unprecedented influence over the characteristics of our offspring (unprecedented, that is, if we ignore the many cultures in which children were and are routinely discarded because they are the wrong sex, disabled, or the product of multiple births). It is common, for example, for writers to worry that the availability of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis will seduce parents into thinking of their children as commodities, to be ordered in much the same way as automobiles, with the inevitable concomitant that they will want to "return" children who do not measure up to their specifications.Unfortunately, a great deal of the talk about "commodification" has been clumsy and sloppy. The term has been used as a magic bullet, as if saying "But that's commodification!" is the same as having made an argument. In fact, commodification of human persons, human bodies, human labor, human relationships, is a complex matter. In many human dealings, commodified and noncommodified understandings of the same thing, or the same transaction, exist more or less comfortably together. Most Westerners condemn commercial sex, for example, while at the same time knowing that in most times and places in the world, marriage was and is thought of as primarily an economic relationship. The common use of "cheap" in post-World War II American slang to describe a teenage woman who is more sexually available than her peers perfectly captures the market rhetoric inherent in respectable American sexual mores.Given this complexity, it is not surprising that many writers in bioethics have gravitated to the work of Margaret Jane Radin. In her two books, Contested Commodities (Harvard University Press, 1996) and Reinterpreting Property (University of Chicago Press, 1993), and many articles, [End Page 219] Radin has taken on the problem of commodification without falling into either sentimentality or cynicism. She is a careful thinker and a careful (and demanding!) writer. We have long valued her work as we have sought to grapple with the many ways in which the problem of commodification arises in bioethics. In this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, entitled "Who's Afraid of Commodification?," we have asked three colleagues to join us in reflecting on aspects of the problem of commodification in bioethics. We are especially delighted that Radin agreed to respond to our efforts in this direction.Lisa Sowle Cahill takes the discussion of commodification to a new level, as she focuses on global ethics, especially genetic research and the marketing and accessibility of pharmaceuticals. Dena S. Davis explores the debates over refusal of treatment and rational suicide and concludes that to put a value on particular pieces of one's lifespan does not necessarily lead to negative aspects of commodification. Ronald M. Green analyzes Radin's use of Kant. Suzanne Holland addresses commodification of body parts, from gametes to cadaveric tissue, and concludes with some specific recommendations. Thomas A. Shannon takes a fresh look at the problem of whether we should allow the sale of organs; he shares with Holland a special concern for the rhetoric of commodification. Finally, Margaret Jane Radin responds to the preceding essays, asking four "stubbornly difficult" questions, questions that show that the debate about commodification is only just begun. Dena S. Davis and Suzanne Holland... (shrink)

Robert Rees Davies, a Fellow of the British Academy, was a highly original historian who offered compelling new insights into medieval society through a body of work focused on Britain and Ireland and, above all, Wales. He deployed his formidable public skills as a chair of committees and eloquent promoter and advocate of the cause of history. To a considerable extent, Rees Davies' work as a historian was influenced by his higher education at University College London and the (...) University of Oxford, as well as by the example of Marc Bloch and of other French historians. He was born at Glanddwynant, Caletwr, near Llandderfel in Merioneth, the fourth and youngest son of William Edward and Sarah Margaret Davies. The publication in 1987 of Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063–1415, which won the Wolfson Literary Award for History, further enhanced Rees Davies' reputation as a scholar. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in the same year. (shrink)

La menzogna è irrinunciabile per vincere in politica? Davi ci spiega quali sono i meccanismi di persuasione a cui ricorrono taluni politici per farsi eleggere e quali le responsabilità di quegli elettori che scelgono comunque di votare chi sostiene anche ciò che non può essere vero. È indubbio che la comunicazione politica si rifaccia al simbolismo e al linguaggio delle favole; non necessariamente per occultare la realtà, ma più direttamente per esprimere con maggiore efficacia il suo messaggio. Alle celebri favole (...) di 'Biancaneve', 'Cenerentola', 'Il brutto anatroccolo' sono ricorsi infatti uomini politici del calibro di Berlusconi, Prodi, Nixon, Carter, Mitterrand e partiti quali la Democrazia Cristiana; l'hanno fatto per conquistare voti ma anche per attivare ampi meccanismi di consenso che attingessero direttamente dall'inconscio collettivo. Le conseguenze - ammonisce l'autore - possono essere molto serie, come nel caso dell'attuale politica americana che ha portato la manipolazione e l'inganno a essere riconosciuti come tratti identitari della presidenza di George W. Bush. (shrink)

Developing a boundary-crossing ethics by paying attention to our stories, myths, and moral intuition.

Through the use of particular pedagogies and the adoption of new modes of thinking, physical literacy promises more realistic models of physical competence and ...

Western philosophers have traditionally concentrated on theory as the means for expressing knowledge about a variety of phenomena. This absorbing book challenges this fundamental notion by showing how objects themselves, specifically scientific instruments, can express knowledge. As he considers numerous intriguing examples, Davis Baird gives us the tools to "read" the material products of science and technology and to understand their place in culture. Making a provocative and original challenge to our conception of knowledge itself, _Thing Knowledge _demands that we (...) take a new look at theories of science and technology, knowledge, progress, and change. Baird considers a wide range of instruments, including Faraday's first electric motor, eighteenth-century mechanical models of the solar system, the cyclotron, various instruments developed by analytical chemists between 1930 and 1960, spectrometers, and more. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Professor Margaret Archer discusses a variety of aspects of her work, academic career and influences, beginning with the role the study of education systems played in...

Humanity and the very notion of the human subject are under threat from postmodernist thinking which has declared not only the 'Death of God' but also the 'Death of Man'. This book is a revindication of the concept of humanity, rejecting contemporary social theory that seeks to diminish human properties and powers. Archer argues that being human depends on an interaction with the real world in which practice takes primacy over language in the emergence of human self-consciousness, thought, emotionality and (...) personal identity - all of which are prior to, and more basic than, our acquisition of a social identity. This original and provocative new book from leading social theorist Margaret S. Archer builds on the themes explored in her previous books Culture and Agency (CUP 1988) and Realist Social Theory (CUP 1995). It will be required reading for academics and students of social theory, cultural theory, political theory, philosophy and theology. (shrink)

“You Have Seen Their Faces”: Gisèle Freund, Walter Benjamin and Margaret Bourke-White as Headhunters of the Thirties -/- Abstract This paper concentrates on one work by each of three authors: Walter Benjamin’s Deutsche Menschen (Germans), an anthology of twenty-five 18th and 19th century German personal letters; Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell’s You Have Seen Their Faces; and Gisèle Freund’s collection of photographic portraits of writers and artists, compiled between 1936 and 1939. The purpose of this paper is to (...) compare the politics of representation of these three figures and to examine the challenge they addressed to the dominant iconography of the 1930s. At the heart of each one’s work was a desire to bring about a shift in contemporary cultural politics by reimagining the body politic. Benjamin’s and Freund’s aim was to displace the monumentalizing, distancing, ‘heroic’ forms of fascist art and writing. They construct and project an intimate, or ‘domestic’ image of humanism as a form of social practice, past and present. Bourke-White’s aim was to bring to visibility an America concealed beneath the glossy homogenized images of white American advertising. All three authors aligned themselves with a documentary tradition that believed that representation should function as a constructed record of the traces of lived experience. Driven by a need to expose the other side’s deliberate falsifications of experience, they saw their own constructed fictions as ways of ‘documenting,’ and then perhaps transforming, an experiential world of ‘facts,’ bodies, and ‘truths.’ -/- Working Paper 3:15 European Society and Culture Research Group. Center for German and European Studies, University of California at Berkeley. April 1994 37pp. -/- M. Kay Flavell Critical Theory, University of California at Davis . (shrink)

How is it possible to think new thoughts? What is creativity and can science explain it? And just how did Coleridge dream up the creatures of The Ancient Mariner? When The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms was first published, Margaret A. Boden's bold and provocative exploration of creativity broke new ground. Boden uses examples such as jazz improvisation, chess, story writing, physics, and the music of Mozart, together with computing models from the field of artificial intelligence to uncover the (...) nature of human creativity in the arts. The second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, introduction and conclusion by the author. It is an essential work for anyone interested in the creativity of the human mind. (shrink)

One of postmodernism's toughest challenges to Christian thought is its wholesale rejection of metaphysics. This profound book meets the challenge squarely, offering a surer foundation for the idea of being and a new theological perspective of supreme relevance to today's world. In a brilliant turn of postmodern thought itself, Oliver Davies argues for a renewal of metaphysics based on a dynamic new understanding of ontology as narrative and performance. His repairing of the Western metaphysical tradition is grounded both in (...) the divine self-naming in Exodus -- which, for the rabbis, identified God's presence in the world with God's compassionate acts -- and in the compassionate resistance of Etty Hillesum and Edith Stein to the violence of the Holocaust. Building on a new metaphysics of compassion that is attentive to the deepest histories of the contemporary world, Davies offers a renewed systematic theology focused on divine speech and God's compassionate relation to human culture. (shrink)

Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is a powerful examination of current metaphors for and synonyms of teaching. It offers an account of the varied and conflicting influences and conceptual commitments that have contributed to contemporary vocabularies--and that are in some ways maintained by those vocabularies, in spite of inconsistencies and incompatibilities among popular terms. The concern that frames the book is how speakers of English invented (in the original sense of the word, "came upon") our current vocabularies for teaching. Conceptually, (...) this book is unique in the educational literature. As a whole, it presents an overview of the major underlying philosophical and ideological concepts and traditions related to knowledge, learning, and teaching in the Western world, concisely introducing readers to the central historical and contemporary discourses that shape current discussions and beliefs in the field. Because the organization of historical, philosophical, theoretical, and etymological information is around key conceptual divergences in Western thought rather than any sort of chronology, this text is not a linear history, but several histories--or, more precisely, it is a genealogy. Specifically, it is developed around breaks in opinion that gave or are giving rise to diverse interpretations of knowledge, learning, and teaching--highlighting historical moments in which vibrant new figurative understandings of teaching emerged and moments at which they froze into literalness. The book is composed of two sorts of chapters, "branching" and "teaching." Branching chapters include an opening treatment of the break in opinion, separate discussions of each branch, and a summary of the common assumptions and shared histories of the two branches. Teaching chapters offer brief etymological histories and some of the practical implications of the terms for teaching that were coined, co-opted, or redefined within the various traditions. Inventions of Teaching: A Genealogy is an essential text for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in curriculum studies and foundations of teaching and is highly relevant as well for students, faculty, and researchers across the field of education. (shrink)

The central problem of social theory is 'structure and agency'. How do the objective features of society influence human agents? Determinism is not the answer, nor is conditioning as currently conceptualised. It accentuates the way structure and culture shape the social context in which individuals operate, but it neglects our personal capacity to define what we care about most and to establish a modus vivendi expressive of our concerns. Through inner dialogue, 'the internal conversation', individuals reflect upon their social situation (...) in the light of current concerns and projects. On the basis of a series of unique, in-depth interviews, Archer identifies three distinctive forms of internal conversation. These govern agents' responses to social conditioning, their individual patterns of social mobility and whether or not they contribute to social stability or change. Thus the internal conversation is seen as being the missing link between society and the individual, structure and agency. (shrink)

History is useful when it is used properly: to understand why we and those we must deal with think and react in certain ways. It can offer examples to inform our decisions and guesses about the consequences of our actions. But we should be wary of looking to history for dogmatic lessons.We should distrust those who abuse history when they call on it to justify unreasonable claims to land, for example, or restitution. MacMillan illustrates how dangerous history can be in (...) the hands of nationalistic or religious or ethnic leaders who use it to foster a sense of grievance and a desire for revenge. (shrink)