The history of research in American Indian/Alaska Native communities has been marked by unethical practices, resulting in mistrust and reluctance to participate in research. Harms are not l...

Background This paper describes the design, implementation, and process outcomes from three public deliberations held in three tribal communities. Although increasingly used around the globe to address collective challenges, our study is among the first to adapt public deliberation for use with exclusively Indigenous populations. In question was how to design deliberations for tribal communities and whether this adapted model would achieve key deliberative goals and be well received.Methods We adapted democratic deliberation, an approach to stakeholder engagement, for use with (...) three tribal communities to respect tribal values and customs. Public deliberation convenes people from diverse backgrounds in reasoned reflection and dialogue in search of collective solutions. The deliberation planning process and design were informed by frameworks of enclave deliberation and community-based participatory research, which share key egalitarian values. The deliberations were collaboratively designed with tribal leadership and extensive partner input and involvement in the deliberations. Each deliberation posed different, locally relevant questions about genomic research, but used the same deliberation structure and measures to gauge the quality and experience of deliberation.Results A total of 52 individuals participated in the deliberations across all three sites. Deliberants were balanced in gender, spanned decades in age, and were diverse in educational attainment and exposure to health research. Overall, the deliberations were positively evaluated. Participant perceptions and external observer datasets depict three deliberations that offered intensive conversation experiences in which participants learned from one another, reported feeling respected and connected to one another, and endorsed this intensive form of engagement.Conclusion The adapted deliberations achieved key deliberative goals and were generally well received. Limitations of the study are described. (shrink)

: Can work be done for pay, and still be loving? While many feminists believe that marketization inevitably leads to a degradation of social connections, we suggest that markets are themselves forms of social organization, and that even relationships of unequal power can sometimes include mutual respect. We call for increased attention to specific causes of suffering, such as greed, poverty, and subordination. We conclude with a summary of contributions to this Special Issue.

This essay discusses the origins, biases, and effects on contemporary discussions of economics and ethics of the unexamined use of the metaphor an economy is a machine. Both neoliberal economics and many critiques of capitalist systems take this metaphor as their starting point. The belief that economies run according to universal laws of motion, however, is shown to be based on a variety of rationalist thinking that – while widely held – is inadequate for explaining lived human experience. Feminist scholarship (...) in the philosophy of science and economics has brought to light some of the biases that have supported the mechanistic worldview. Possible alternatives to the an economy is a machine include an economy is a creative process and an economy is an organism. Such metaphors are intellectually defensible as guides to scientific inquiry and provide a richer ground for moral imagination. (shrink)

Can work be done for pay, and still be loving? While many feminists believe that marketization inevitably leads to a degradation of social connections, we suggest that markets are themselves forms of social organization, and that even relationships of unequal power can sometimes include mutual respect. We call for increased attention to specific causes of suffering, such as greed, poverty, and subordination. We conclude with a summary of contributions to this Special Issue.

I present a way of thinking about gender that I have found helpful in evaluating various proposed feminist projects. By considering gender and value as independent dimensions, relationships of "difference" can be more clearly perceived as involving relationships of lack, of complementarity, or of perversion. I illustrate the use of my gender/value "compass" with applications to questions of self-identity, rationality, and knowledge. This way of thinking about gender allows a conceptualization of feminism that neither erases nor emphasizes gender distinctions.

Past research finds that after menopause some women experience negative changes such as vaginal dryness, decreased libido, and decreased orgasm quality; very little research inquires about positive changes. In contrast, this study shifts the research focus from whether women experience menopausal changes to how women view any changes in sex life. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with heterosexual and lesbian women, the author finds that most women emphasize cultural and social issues, such as relationship status and quality, health, and sexual (...) history, rather than menopausal changes when they describe sex after menopause. However, she finds a difference by sexual orientation in how women handle problems in sex. The author concludes by discussing the implication of this research for future menopause and sex research; most important, she emphasizes studying sex in the context of women's lives rather than as a result of the biological changes of menopause. (shrink)

Life history theory suggests that in risky and uncertain environments the optimal reproductive strategy is to reproduce early in order to maximize the probability of leaving any descendants at all. The fact that early menarche facilitates early reproduction provides an adaptationist rationale for our first two hypotheses: that women who experience more risky and uncertain environments early in life would have (1) earlier menarche and (2) earlier first births than women who experience less stress at an early age. Attachment theory (...) and research provide the rationale for our second two hypotheses: that the subjective early experience of risky and uncertain environments (insecurity) is (3) part of an evolved mechanism for entraining alternative reproductive strategies contingent on environmental risk and uncertainty and (4) reflected in expected lifespan. Evidence from our pilot study of 100 women attending antenatal clinics at a large metropolitan hospital is consistent with all four hypotheses: Women reporting more troubled family relations early in life had earlier menarche, earlier first birth, were more likely to identify with insecure adult attachment styles, and expected shorter lifespans. Multivariate analyses show that early stress directly affected age at menarche and first birth, affected adult attachment in interaction with expected lifespan, but had no effect on expected lifespan, where its original effect was taken over by interactions between age at menarche and adult attachment as well as age at first birth and adult attachment. We discuss our results in terms of the need to combine evolutionary and developmental perspectives and the relation between early stress in general and father absence in particular. (shrink)

Behavioral research has revealed how normal human cognitive processes can tend to lead us astray. But do these affect economic researchers, ourselves? This article explores the consequences of stereotyping and confirmation bias using a sample of published articles from the economics literature on gender and risk aversion. The results demonstrate that the supposedly ‘robust’ claim that ‘women are more risk averse than men’ is far less empirically supported than has been claimed. The questions of how these cognitive biases arise and (...) why they have such power are discussed, and methodological practices that may help to attenuate these biases are outlined. (shrink)

_In _Challenging the One Best System_, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the “portfolio management model.”_ They investigate the degree to which this model—a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy—challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as “the one best system.” The authors examine the design and enactment of the portfolio (...) management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model—planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports—and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices. Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, _Challenging the One Best System_ represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education. (shrink)

Let me make it clear from the outset that my main point isnoteither of the following: one, that there should be more women economists and research on “women's issues”, or two, that women as a class do, or should do, economics in a manner different from men. My argument is different and has to do with trying to gain an understanding of how a certain way of thinking about gender and a certain way of thinking about economics have become intertwined (...) through metaphor – with detrimental results – and how a richer conception of human understanding and human identity could broaden and improve the field of economics for both female and male practitioners. (shrink)

In this paper the authors argue that the exploration of the nature of needs and rights should begin with the actually existing organization of care and of justice in society. The authors raise two key concerns with this organization: 1) the invisibility of care to some, and 2) the inaccessibility of rights to others. Recent work by care scholars has called attention to the ways the current organization of care work perpetuates the myth of self-sufficiency for some, while reducing others (...) to mere dependents. Law and Society scholars have demonstrated the problems of uneven access to legal remedies within the current organization of the legal system. Addressing these concerns simultaneously reveals both the problems of the current organization of needs and rights as well as illuminating alternative possibilities. The authors argue, first, that a justice perspective, based on rights is inadequate because its presumed universality is belied by the reality of the inaccessibility of rights to many. Second, the authors argue that a care perspective, currently formulated upon the assumption that only some people have needs, is also flawed because its presumed particularity distorts the human experience and subsequent policies. Instead, the authors need to conceive of care in a public way that permits both rights and needs to be understood as applicable to all. The authors propose some initial thoughts about how to create such a public concept of care. (shrink)

This essay explores the profoundly gendered nature of the split between the disciplines of economics and sociology which took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emphasizing implications for the relatively new field of economic sociology. Drawing on historical documents and feminist studies of science, it investigates the gendered processes underlying the divergence of the disciplines in definition, method, and degree of engagement with social problems. Economic sociology has the potential to heal this disciplinary split, but only if (...) the field is broadened, deepened, and made wiser and more self-reflective through the use of feminist analysis. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This article reviews a conversation between business ethicists and feminist scholars begun in the early 1990s and traces the development of that conversation in relation to feminist theory. A bibliographic analysis of the business ethics and corporate social responsibility literatures over a twenty-five-year period elucidates the degree to which gender has been a salient concern, the methodologies adopted, and the ways in which gender has been analyzed. Identifying significant limitations to the incorporation of feminist theory in these literatures, we discuss (...) how feminist scholarship relating to behavior, organizations, and economics could be integrated. We suggest that a better integration of feminist theory would strengthen BE/CSR research, and point to new research directions and agendas arising from our approach. (shrink)

Ethics instructors often use cases to help students understand ethics within a corporate context, but we need to know more about the impact a case-based pedagogy has on students’ ability to make ethical decisions. We used a pre- and post-test methodology to assess the effect of using cases to teach ethics in a finance course. We also wanted to determine whether recent corporate ethics scandals might have impacted students’ perceptions of the importance and prevalence of ethics in business, so we (...) used in-depth case studies of several of the major scandals (e.g., Enron, Tyco, Adelphia). Our results are somewhat surprising since studying ethics scandals positively impacts students’ ethical decision making and their perceptions of the ethics of businesspeople. (shrink)

_Threshold Concepts on the Edge_ explores new directions in threshold concept research and practice and is of relevance to teachers, learners, educational researchers and academic developers.

An article by Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden published in this journal argues that market relations contain elements of what they call ‘fraternity’. This Response demonstrates that my own views on interpersonal relations and markets – which originated in the feminist analysis of caring labour – are far closer to Bruni and Sugden's than they acknowledge in their article, and goes on to discuss additional important dimensions of sociality that they neglect.

The physical, psychological, and spiritual violence against fat bodies in the US, committed in service of a racist, sexist, classist, and ableist vision of an idealized body size, is death-dealing. This essay develops a theo-ethical vision of fat liberation that rejects the trappings of the “religion of thinness” and celebrates the inherent worth of fat bodies through an incarnational theology that recognizes the image of God in every body size, the presence of body size diversity in creation, and the full (...) inclusion of all body sizes at the eucharistic table. (shrink)

A number of recent discussions about ethical issues in climate change, as engaged in by economists, have focused on the value of the parameter representing the rate of time preference within models of optimal growth. This essay examines many economists' antipathy to serious discussion of ethical matters, and suggests that the avoidance of questions of intergenerational equity is related to another set of value judgments concerning the quality and objectivity of economic practice. Using insights from feminist philosophy of science and (...) research on high reliability organizations, this essay argues that a more ethically transparent, real-world-oriented, and flexible economic practice would lead to more strongly objective, reliable, and useful knowledge. (shrink)

Advocates of a more socially responsible discipline of economics often emphasize the purposive and unpredictable nature of human economic behavior, contrasting this to the presumably deterministic behavior of natural forces. This essay argues that such a distinction between “social” and “natural” sciences is in fact counterproductive, especially when issues of ecological sustainability are concerned. What is needed instead is a better notion of science—“science-with-wonder”—which grounds serious science in relational, non-Newtonian thinking.

Advocates of a more socially responsible discipline of economics often emphasize the purposive and unpredictable nature of human economic behavior, contrasting this to the presumably deterministic behavior of natural forces. This essay argues that such a distinction between “social” and “natural” sciences is in fact counterproductive, especially when issues of ecological sustainability are concerned. What is needed instead is a better notion of science—“science-with-wonder”—which grounds serious science in relational, non-Newtonian thinking.

Across three decades in both Britain and the United States, surveys indicate that women must work harder than men do. Using data from the 1997 Skills Survey of the Employed British Workforce and the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, the authors investigate two possible explanations for this gap in reports of required effort: gender differences in job characteristics and family responsibilities. In multivariate ordered logistic regressions, extensive measures of job characteristics do not explain the difference between women and (...) men. Family obligations, as well, account for little or none of the gap. The authors argue that the association between gender and reported required work effort is best interpreted as reflecting stricter performance standards imposed on women, even when women and men hold the same jobs. The authors discuss alternative interpretations and implications for research. (shrink)

The moral status of human-animal chimeras that have human brain cells is especially concerning. The concern is that such animals have the same high moral status as human beings. Why? Julian Koplin suggests that support for this concern is based on this claim: capacities unique to humans gives one a high or full moral status. Koplin then proceeds to convincingly object this claim. However, I argue that the concern is instead based on a different claim: for those humans who do (...) have a high moral status, it is their (or some of their) mental capacities that confer this high moral status. Since having a human brain that is not too impaired is sufficient for having these mental capacities, and human-animal chimeras -- with brains composed of a sufficient number, type, and structure of human cells -- will have a human brain that is not too impaired, it follows that such animals would have the same moral status as human beings. (shrink)

Antibiotic resistance has become a problem of global scale. Resistance arises through mutation or through the acquisition of resistance gene(s) from other bacteria in a process called horizontal gene transfer (HGT). While HGT is recognized as an important factor in the dissemination of resistance genes in clinical pathogens, its role in the environment has been called into question by a recent study published in Nature. The authors found little evidence of HGT in soil using a culture‐independent functional metagenomics approach, which (...) is in contrast to previous work from the same lab showing HGT between the environment and human microbiome. While surprising at face value, these results may be explained by the lack of selective pressure in the environment studied. Importantly, this work suggests the need for careful monitoring of environmental antibiotic pollution and stringent antibiotic stewardship in the fight against resistance. (shrink)