L’accès à la paternité entraîne chez l’homme une crise identitaire et narcissique dont le dépassement requiert un travail psychique complexe. Celui-ci est basé sur la conflictualisation des identifications féminines et masculines et des deuils successifs. Ces aspects se révèlent indispensables à l’avènement de la paternité. Certains hommes sont rendus vulnérables par cette crise et présentent des troubles psychiques. Des interventions thérapeutiques destinées aux futurs pères au moment de l’émergence de ces troubles constituent une prévention très précoce de la psychopathologie paternelle (...) et diminuent les risques de voir s’installer des dysfonctionnements de la parentalité. Elles facilitent aussi l’investissement narcissique et objectal de l’enfant par son père. (shrink)

Dans le cadre d’une psychothérapie précoce mère-enfant et d’un dispositif thérapeutique particulier, nous avons pu constater des modifications du schéma d’attachement d’un jeune enfant. Ces transformations notables se sont produites grâce à la constitution chez cet enfant d’un monde interne et représentationnel fiable et différencié de celui de sa mère.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:14 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Melissa Oliver-Powell Beyond the Spectacle of Suffering: Agnès Varda’s L’Unechante,l’autrepas and Rewriting the Subject of Abortion in France In the spring of 1971, three years after the revolutionary fervor of May 1968 in France, 343 women put their names to a courageous manifesto announcing that they were criminals of a particularly gendered nature. The authors of (...) Manifeste des 343 (Manifesto of the 343) comprised a large group of culturally eminent French women and activists declaring that they had all illegally undergone abortions, which at this point, despite growing decriminalization throughout much of Western Europe, were still outlawed within their republic. Though many of the revolutionary fires had now eased to embers, French feminists demonstrated that reproductive rights were still a vital and unresolved topic of social justice. Including names as weighty as Simone de Beauvoir, Jeanne Moreau, and Catherine Deneuve, the manifesto brought together exceptional women from the fields of academia, law, theater, film and literature, alongside grassroots activists. Their action was a bold challenge to the French authorities, daring them to arrest some of the country’s brightest thinkers and cultural innovators under a law the signatories felt was deeply unjust, sexist, and antithetical to the values of individual liberty and citizenship. It was a case of those with the broadest shoulders weaponizing their privilege to present a robust front line in the wider struggle for women’s rights. One of the signatories was filmmaker Agnès Varda. Her name, like those of several others on the list, demonstrates the symbiosis between Melissa Oliver-Powell 15 cultural production and gender politics that has often characterized French feminist thought. From the multidisciplinary writings of Beauvoir, to the novels of the écriture féminine movement, to the lyrical academic prose of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and others, French and Francophone feminist writers have tended to connect art and politics with a great deal of fluidity. As a committed activist and a filmmaker, Agnès Varda falls very much within this tradition, often adopting and developing feminist practices within her cinema. This article examines how Varda’s 1977 film, L’Une chante, l’autre pas (One Sings, The Other Doesn’t) interacts with and participates in the feminist political project of reproductive rights as well as the ongoing intellectual and moral debates over abortion taking place in France throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. I look particularly at the adversarial construction of abortion narratives within these debates and the location of victimhood therein. Within mainstream cultural representations in and beyond France, abortion is typically constructed as either a traumatic or a transgressive moment. The same is often true on either side of political and social debates on abortion, which have tended either to characterize the women who get abortions as irresponsible and amoral or as sympathetic victims in need of protection. Though the transgressive element persists, it is the interaction with representations of trauma that interests me here. In approaching discussions of gendered injustice, it is common for feminist writers and activists to leverage pathos as a rhetorical strategy. While suffering can be a highly effective and galvanizing expression of oppression, such discourses also run the risk of producing excessive depictions of victimhood, which can displace the capacity for action from the subject of hardship onto the privileged oppressor. This risk is particularly at stake within the cultural form of film, as its visuality and identificatory mechanics have the potential to spectacularize the female victim and make her relatable only through suffering. This was often the case in earlier French films that featured abortion such as Les Mauvaises rencontres (1955), Des gens sans importance (1956), Journal d’une femme en blanc (1965), and Une femme en blanc se révolte (1966), all of which made their subjects sympathetic by entwining them in long narratives of victimization ending in death or disgrace. This article looks at how Varda’s L’Une chante, l’autre pas disengages from the spectacle of suffering that so often characterizes representations of women’s experiences 16 Melissa Oliver-Powell and rejects the idea that abortion narratives must... (shrink)

Aspiration by Agnes Callard locates standing assumptions in the theory of rationality, moral psychology and autonomy that preclude the possibility of working to acquire new values. The book also explains what changes need to be made if we are to make room for this form of agency, which I call aspiration.

An Ethics of Personality d addresses the ultimate question of modern ethics: how is morality possible after the `death of God'. It is the closing volume - General Ethics d and Philosophy of Morals d - of Agnes Heller's trilogy A Theory of Morals. d.

RésuméDans cette réponse à mes commentateurs, je réagis aux critiques de Alysia Blackham, Jessica Eisen, Pablo Gilabert, Andrea Sangiovanni, Dale Smith, Iyiola Solanke, et Daniel Viehoff incluses dans ce numéro spécial consacré à mon livre, Faces of Inequality. Parmi les sujets abordés, j'analyse les liens entre l’égalité et la discrimination, le rôle que joue la subordination dans ma théorie de la discrimination, et la méthodologie dans les théories de la discrimination.

Objections to the use of historical case studies for philosophical ends fall into two categories. Methodological objections claim that historical accounts and their uses by philosophers are subject to various biases. We argue that these challenges are not special; they also apply to other epistemic practices. Metaphysical objections, on the other hand, claim that historical case studies are intrinsically unsuited to serve as evidence for philosophical claims, even when carefully constructed and used, and so constitute a distinct class of challenge. (...) We show that attention to what makes for a canonical case can address these problems. A case study is canonical with respect to a particular philosophical aim when the features relevant to that aim provide a reasonably complete causal account of the results of the historical process under investigation. We show how to establish canonicity by evaluating relevant contingencies using two prominent examples from the history of science: Eddington’s confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity using his data from the 1919 eclipse and Watson and Crick’s determination of the structure of DNA. (shrink)

Long undervalued in France, philosophical anthropology has played an essential role in Germany, helping to address some of the most important issues straddling philosophy and the social sciences: humanity's place in nature and in history; the individual and others; and relations between human groups.

La modernité, dès ses débuts, attribue un rôle-clef aux passions : qu’elles soient hostiles à la Raison ou au contraire ses alliées, dangereuses ou fascinantes, elles marquent le rôle du corps, du désir, du langage et de l’imagination dans la nature de l’homme. La même époque voit se développer différentes variantes du matérialisme. Presque toutes réévaluent ce que la raison classique avait tendance à réprimer ou à considérer comme révélateur de la faiblesse humaine : le corps et tout ce qui, (...) dans l’âme ou dans la société, porte les traces de l’activité et de la positivité du corps. On peut donc s’attendre à ce que les matérialistes fassent un sort particulier aux passions, à ce qu’ils y reconnaissent des lois et non pas seulement des manques ou des vices, à ce qu’ils essaient d’en repérer l’efficace dans l’ensemble des activités humaines. Encore faut-il se demander comment chaque matérialisme procède, par quelle configuration propre il rend compte de ces phénomènes ou comment il dévie les discours de la théorie classique pour les forcer à passer par les objets qui sont les siens. Plutôt que de supposer l’existence d’une théorie matérialiste unique, une enquête s’impose donc qui prenne en vue la diversité de ces auteurs, les situe dans leur contexte et repère les points d’inflexion que rencontre chez chacun d’entre eux cette problématique générale des passions qui semble avoir gouverné plusieurs siècles. (shrink)

Agnès Bastit | : La présente contribution s’intéresse au micro-récit évangélique transmis par les Synoptiques et l’Évangile selon Thomas, qui met en scène un conflit pour la soustraction de « biens » à un « Fort » qui les détient. L’étude s’adonne dans un premier temps à une analyse des diverses formes textuelles sous lesquelles cet apologue a initialement circulé, puis à une enquête sur les diverses lectures et utilisations théologiques du thème dans l’oeuvre d’Irénée à la fin du (...) iie siècle et, au-delà, de quelques-uns de ses contemporains ou continuateurs. Du point de vue du panorama de la présence du verset et de l’histoire de son interprétation dans l’Église ancienne, la recherche a tendu à être exhaustive en ce qui concerne les trois premiers siècles, mais reste indicative pour les quatrième et cinquième siècles. La diffusion du récit dans l’Église ancienne est liée à sa fonction kérygmatique : l’économie de la rédemption de l’homme, injustement détenu par le diable, s’y trouve représentée par une action simple et efficace, reliant la vivification ultime de l’homme à sa formation puis captivité initiales, à travers le moment décisif de la libération de l’homme. | : This presentation deals with a microstory — passed down by the Synoptic gospels and the Gospel of Thomas — about a conflict due to the plundering of the “goods” possessed by a “strong one”. Our study begins with an analysis of the different textual forms in which this story circulated initially ; there follows an investigation into the various theological readings and uses of that theme in Irenaeus’s work at the end of the 2nd century, and also in the works of some of his contemporaries or later upholders of his theses. As for the general presence of that verse and the history of its interpretation in the ancient Church, research has been fairly exhaustive with regard to the first three centuries, but it remains only indicative for the 4th and 5th centuries. The propagation of that story in the ancient Church is closely related to its kerygmatic function : a simple, efficacious act sums up the economy of redemption, the rescue of man unjustly kept prisoner by the devil ; thus the story connects the ultimate revitalisation of man to his initial formation and subsequent captivity by recalling the decisive moment of man’s liberation. (shrink)

In order to make an attempt at grouping the various aspects of brain functional imaging (fMRI, MRS, EEG-MEG, ...) within a coherent frame, we implemented a model consisting of a system of differential equations, that includes: (1) sodium membrane transport, (2) Na/K ATPase, (3) neuronal energy metabolism (i.e. glycolysis, buffering effect of phosphocreatine, and mitochondrial respiration), (4) blood-brain barrier exchanges and (5) brain hemodynamics, all the processes which are involved in the activation of brain areas. We assumed that the correlation (...) between brain activation and metabolism could be due to either changes in the concentrations of ATP and ADP following activation of Na/K ATPase that result from the changes in ion concentrations, or the involvement, in different phases of metabolism, of a second messenger such as calcium. In this article, we show how this type of model enables interpretation of MRS and fMRI published data that were obtained during prolonged stimulations. (shrink)

We propose that learning has a top-down component, but not in the propositional terms described by Mitchell et al. Specifically, we propose that a host of learning processes, including associative learning, serve to imbue the representation of the conditioned stimulus (CS) with affective meaning.

A lively debate in the literature on moral progress concerns the role of practical reasoning: Does it enable or subvert moral progress? Rationalists believe that moral reasoning enables moral progress, because it helps enhance objectivity in thinking, overcome unruly sentiments, and open our minds to new possibilities. By contrast, skeptics argue that moral reasoning subverts moral progress. Citing growing empirical research on bias, they show that objectivity is an illusion and that moral reasoning merely rationalizes pre-existing biased moral norms. In (...) this article, I argue that both the rationalists and the skeptics fail to understand fully the role of practical reasoning by focusing exclusively on moral reasoning to the neglect of social reasoning. In the first half of the article, I argue against the skeptics by vindicating moral reasoning. I identify a Democratic Model of moral reasoning which is reliable and effective in overcoming bias. In the second part of the article, I argue against the rationalists. Drawing on a paradigmatic case of moral progress, i.e., the British abolition of the slave trade, I illustrate that moral reasoning, even when sound, is insufficient to motivate progressive action. The explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is not that the moral norm against cruelty is inert, as skeptics might suggest. Rather, it is that the moral norm against cruelty was overridden by the social norm of slavery which was tied to the British joint commitments to freedom and national honour. The debate between rationalists and skeptics centers around the moral rationality of human action, failing to recognize that human action is in fact primarily about social rationality. I defend a joint commitment account of social rationality, and offer a novel Communitarian Model of social reasoning which follows the logic of social rationality to revise social norms. I defend the reliability and efficacy of the Communitarian Model of social reasoning by applying it to the abolitionist social movement to show how Britons gave fellow Britons social reasons grounded in their joint commitments to freedom and national honour to end slavery. (shrink)

Gliomas can display marked changes in the concentrations of energy metabolism molecules such as creatine (Cr), phosphocreatine (PCr) and lactate, as measured using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). Moreover, the BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) contrast enhancement in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be reduced or missing within or near gliomas, while neural activity is not significantly reduced (so-called neurovascular decoupling), so that the location of functionally eloquent areas using fMRI can be erroneous. In this paper, we adapt a previously (...) developed model of the coupling between neural activation, energy metabolism and hemodynamics, by including the venous dilatation Balloon model of Buxton and Frank. We show that decreasing the cerebral blood flow (CBF) baseline value, or the CBF increase fraction, results in a decrease of the BOLD signal and an increase of the lactate peak during a sustained activation. Baseline lactate and PCr levels are not significantly affected by CBF baseline reduction, but are altered even by a moderate decrease of mitochondrial respiration. Decreasing the total Cr and PCr concentration reduces the BOLD signal after the initial overshoot. In conclusion, we suggest that the coupled use of BOLD fMRI and MRS could contribute to a better understanding of the neurovascular and metabolic decoupling in gliomas. (shrink)

The ecological approach to object pretend play, developed from the ecological perspective, suggests an action- and affordance based perspective to account for pretend object play. Theoretical, as well as empirical reasons, support the view that children in pretense incorporate objects into their play in a resourceful and functionally appropriate way based on the perception of affordances. Therefore, in pretense children are not distorting reality but rather, they are perceiving and acting upon action possibilities. In this paper, we argue for the (...) viability of an ecological theoretical framework to pretend object play which has been traditionally understood as a representational and metarepresentational ability. We discuss the origins and basic assumptions of the ecological approach to pretense. We layout details by presenting a qualitative analysis of a pretend play episode and discuss the results of an experimental study inspired by the ecological assumptions. We discuss pretend object play in the context of ecological work on tool use. We address the relationship between the enactive and the ecological approaches to pretend play, pointing out similarities as well as differences. We conclude that ecological and enactive approaches have shown that it is possible to challenge accepted interpretations and seek explanatory frameworks that could move the field in new directions. (shrink)

BackgroundInformed consent as stipulated in regulatory human research guidelines requires that a volunteer is well-informed about what will happen to them in a trial. However researchers are faced with a challenge of how to ensure that a volunteer agreeing to take part in a clinical trial is truly informed. We conducted a qualitative study among volunteers taking part in two HIV clinical trials in Uganda to find out how they defined informed consent and their perceptions of the trial procedures, study (...) information and interactions with the research team.MethodsBetween January and December 2012, 23 volunteers who had been in the two trials for over 6 months, consented to be interviewed about their experience in the trial three times over a period of nine months. They also took part in focus group discussions. Themes informed by study research questions and emerging findings were used for content analysis.ResultsVolunteers defined the informed consent process in terms of their individual welfare. Only two of the volunteers reported having referred during the trial to the participant information sheets given at the start of the trial. Volunteers remembered the information they had been given at the start of the trial on procedures that involved drawing blood and urine samples but not information about study design and randomisation. Volunteers said that they had understood the purpose of the trial. They said that signing a consent form showed that they had consented to take part in the trial but they also described it as being done to protect the researcher in case a volunteer later experienced side effects.ConclusionVolunteers pay more attention during the consent process to procedures requiring biological tests than to study design issues. Trust built between volunteers and the research team could enhance the successful conduct of clinical trials by allowing for informal discussions to identify and review volunteers’ perceptions. These results point to the need for researchers to view informed consent as a process rather than an event. (shrink)

In this paper, I take scientific models to be epistemic representations of their target systems. I define an epistemic representation to be a tool for gaining information about its target system and argue that a vehicle’s capacity to provide specific information about its target system—its informativeness—is an essential feature of this kind of representation. I draw an analogy to our ordinary notion of interpretation to show that a user’s aim of faithfully representing the target system is necessary for securing this (...) feature. (shrink)

Cet article présente le dispositif de formation et ses objectifs ainsi que l’analyse d’écrits réflexifs produits dans le cadre des travaux certificatifs et dans lesquels les participantes décrivent quelques-uns des effets de la formation sur leurs pratiques professionnelles.

In this paper, I characterize visual epistemic representations as concrete two- or three-dimensional tools for conveying information about aspects of their target systems or phenomena of interest. I outline two features of successful visual epistemic representation: that the vehicle of representation contain sufficiently accurate information about the phenomenon of interest for the user’s purpose, and that it convey this information to the user in a manner that makes it readily available to her. I argue that actual epistemic representation may involve (...) tradeoffs between these and is successful to the extent that they are present. (shrink)

Agnes Arber's international reputation is due in part to her exceptional ability to interpret the German tradition of scholarship for the English-speaking world. The Mind and the Eye is an erudite book, revealing its author's familiarity with philosophy from Plato and Aristotle through Aquinas to Kant and Hegel; but it is not dull, because the quiet enthusiasm of the author shines through. In this book she turns from the work of a specialist in one science to those wider questions which (...) any scientist must ask at intervals. What, in short, is the relationship between the eye that sees and the mind that weighs and pronounces? An important feature of this Cambridge Science Classics reissue is the introduction provided by Professor P. R. Bell, who as a Cambridge botany student at the time that Agnes Arber was writing The Natural Philosopby of Plant Form, is uniquely able to set The Mind and the Eye in the context of contemporary biological research. (shrink)

The association of celebrity worship with mental health concerns has been extensively studied in the past two decades. However, there is a lack of research on basic demographic characteristics that can potentially alter the link between celebrity admiration and different aspects of mental health. The present study investigates the possible moderating role of gender, age, and opposite/same-gender celebrity selection on the association of celebrity worship with general well-being, self-esteem and perceived daytime sleepiness. A total of 1763 Hungarian adults completed an (...) online survey focusing on attitudes and behaviors relating to celebrities and mental well-being. The moderation analysis showed that the negative association between celebrity worship and self-esteem was slightly stronger for women than for men, and the association between celebrity worship and perceived daytime sleepiness was slightly stronger for younger individuals than for older ones. Although both gender and age were particularly weak moderators, these results draw the attention to some potential individual differences when interpreting links between celebrity worship and different aspects of mental health. (shrink)

Scientific research is constrained by limited resources, so it is imperative that it be conducted efficiently. This paper introduces the notion of epistemic expression, a kind of representation that expedites the solution of research problems. Epistemic expressions are representations that (i) contain information in a way that enables more reliable information to place the most stringent constraints on possible solutions and (ii) make new information readily extractible by biasing the search through that space. I illustrate these conditions using historical and (...) contemporary examples of biomolecular structure determination. Then, I argue that the notion of epistemic expression parts ways with pragmatic accounts of scientific representation and an understanding of models as artifacts, neither of which require models to accurately represent. Explicating epistemic expression thus fills a gap in our understanding of scientific practice, extending Morrison and Morgan's (1999) conception of models as investigative instruments. (shrink)

Socrates says that everyone desires the good. Does he mean that people desire what appears to them to be good? Or does he mean that they desire what really is good? This article argues, with reference passages in the Meno and Gorgias, that these alternatives are less opposed than they seem: each identifies something Socrates takes to be a necessary but insufficient condition on desiring. If what we desire must both be and appear to us to be good, then people (...) desire a subset of the things they take themselves to desire, and a subset of the things that really are good. Pointing this out to people incites them to inquire about the good, since they will be motivated to discover which appearances are mistaken and which goods they have missed out on. This explains why Socrates so frequently asserts that everyone desires the good: it serves his protreptic purposes. (shrink)

Sometimes we engage in a pursuit before we can fully access its value. When we embark upon, for example, the project of coming to appreciate classical music, we make a foray into a new domain of value. The chapter introduces a new kind of reason—a proleptic reason—to rationalize such large-scale transformative pursuits. The proleptic reasoner is aware of the defect in her appreciation of some value, and feels the need to improve. It is explained that the work done by proleptic (...) reasons cannot be done by more familiar kinds of reasons. The implications of proleptic rationality for reasons-internalism are considered. Internalists hold that what I have reason to do can be arrived at by a procedurally rational extrapolation from my current desires. However, because the act of learning some new form of valuation cannot be analyzed as satisfying the values one already has, proleptic reasons are not internal. (shrink)

Studie over verborgen seksistische uitdrukkingen in de Nederlandse taal.

Humans seem to readily track their conspecifics’ mental states, such as their goals and beliefs from early infancy. However, the underlying cognitive architecture that enables such powerful abilities remains unclear. Here I will propose that a basic representational structure, the belief file, could provide the foundation for efficiently encoding, and updating information about, others’ beliefs in online social interactions. I will discuss the representational possibilities offered by the belief file and the ways in which the repertoire of mental state reasoning (...) is shaped by the characteristics of its constituents. A series of questions will be outlined concerning the representational skeleton of the belief file, sketching a possible structure that supports the rapid encoding and re-identification of belief related information. After analyzing the possible limitations of the belief attribution system, I will examine some of its characteristics that might enable a flexibility that is often neglected. I will suggest that operations involving belief files are not impeded by the absence of precise first-person information regarding their contents. In fact, the system permits manipulations with “empty” belief files, allowing humans to ascribe beliefs to conspecifics based on little or no direct information regarding the content of the mental state. Such an analysis aims to advance our understanding of how spontaneous belief attribution may be performed, and to provide an insight into the possible mechanisms that allow humans to successfully navigate the social world. (shrink)

Freud, Psychoanalysis and Symbolism offers an innovative general theory of symbolism, derived from Freud's psychoanalytic theory and relocated within mainstream scientific psychology. It is the first systematic investigation of the development of Freud's treatment of symbolism throughout his published works, and discovers in those writings a broad theory which is far superior to the widely accepted, narrow, 'official' view. Agnes Petocz argues that the treatment of symbolism must begin with the identification and clarification of a set of logical constraints and (...) psychological requirements which any general theory of symbolism must respect, and that these requirements have been neglected by existing accounts across a number of disciplines. Her newly proposed 'Freudian broad' theory of symbolism, by contrast, does meet these requirements, but only after it has been rehabilitated within a revised psychoanalytic context, encompassing major changes to our understanding of the concepts of unconscious and repression and the role of language. (shrink)

This essay argues that Plato’s Republic includes a widely overlooked meditation on the affective dimension of political judgment. This meditation occurs in the passages on music. In music, Plato identifies the possibility of an extra-rational aesthetic activity that prepares the soul for reasoned judgment: he makes musical mimesis the precondition to logos because of its ability to actualize in the soul the very ethos required of sound judgment. Music is able to do this because it is not imagistic; music does (...) not produce mediated representations but rather produces alterations in the condition of the soul itself. These alterations are made possible because the soul itself is structured musically. If music actualizes the conditions of the soul, so too does the soul instantiate the conditions of music. In his treatment of musical mimesis, Plato thereby makes disposition, or affect, the defining feature of sound judgment. (shrink)

This article aims to answer the main question raised – is Rorty’s moral philosophy possible? To what extent is it possible to treat it as an authentic theory? Rorty’s criticism of Kant and the Kantians, as one of the key points of contemporary moral philosophy, determines the posture in the moral domain and provides a certain place in discourse. The article states that, despite the fact that Rorty’s moral philosophy is not based on a particular theoretical concept, it can be (...) considered as a fragmented whole consisting of several parts, one of which is the agent’s openness to the choice of moral identity. At the same time, we will critically question the position of Rorty himself – while maintaining the suspicion towards the sources of moral knowledge, he maintains an insufficient distance with one of his own sources of moral knowledge, namely historical progress. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 31-63.

Animal welfare scientific literature has accumulated rapidly in recent years, but bias may exist which influences understanding of progress in the field. We conducted a survey of articles related to animal welfare or well being from an electronic database. From 8,541 articles on this topic, we randomly selected 115 articles for detailed review in four funding categories: government; charity and/or scientific association; industry; and educational organization. Ninety articles were evaluated after unsuitable articles were rejected. The welfare states of animals in (...) new treatments, conventional treatments or control groups with no treatment were classified as high, medium or low according to one or more. More articles were published in which the welfare of animals in new treatments was better than that of animals in the conventional or no treatment groups, demonstrating a positive result bias. Failure to publish studies with negative or inconclusive results may lead to other scientists unnecessarily repeating the research. The authors’ assessments of the welfare state of the groups were similarly rated high, medium or low, and it was found that new treatments were rated lower if the research was funded by industry, and higher when funded by charities, with government funding agencies intermediate. These differences were not evident in the Five Freedoms assessment, demonstrating an authors’ assessment bias that appeared to support the funding agencies’ interests. North American funded publications rated the welfare of animals in New treatments higher and those in a Conventional or No Treatment lower, compared with European-funded publications. It is concluded that preliminary evidence was provided of several forms of publication bias in animal welfare science. (shrink)

Strengthening the abilities of smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly women farmers, to produce for both home and the market is currently a development priority. In many contexts, ownership of assets is strongly gendered, reflecting existing gender norms and limiting women’s ability to invest in more profitable livelihood strategies such as market-oriented agriculture. Yet the intersection between women’s asset endowments and their ability to participate in and benefit from agricultural interventions receives minimal attention. This paper explores changes in gender relations (...) and women’s assets in four agricultural interventions that promoted high value agriculture with different degrees of market-orientation. Findings suggest that these dairy and horticulture projects can successfully involve women and increase production, income and the stock of household assets. In some cases, women were able to increase their control over production, income and assets; however in most cases men’s incomes increased more than women’s and the gender-asset gap did not decrease. Gender- and asset-based barriers to participation in projects as well as gender norms that limit women’s ability to accumulate and retain control over assets both contributed to the results. Comparing experiences across the four projects, especially where projects implemented adaptive measures to encourage gender-equitable outcomes, provides lessons for gender-responsive projects targeting existing and emerging value chains for high value products. Other targeted support to women farmers may also be needed to promote their acquisition of the physical assets required to expand production or enter other nodes of the value chain. (shrink)