The present paper examines certain salient features of the his tory-memory-identity relation. The common feature underpinning most contemporary manifestations of the memory craze seems to be an insecurity about identity, an insecurity that generates an excessive pre occupation with 'memory'. In the face of memory's valorization, what should be the attitude of the historian? At the present moment there is a pathetic and sometimes tragic conflict between what 'memory' expresses and confirms, namely, the demands made by subjectivities, and the demand, (...) essential to any scientific discipline, for proof. The paper explores this conflict and argues that neither term can be reduced to the other. It suggests that one needs to conceptualize the field of history as involving inevitable limits to historical knowledge, such that both history and memory are seen as inadequate. In this way one avoids both the arrogance of a would-be definitive history and the 'arrogance of authenticity' that all too often accompanies claims for memory. (shrink)

‘Cause of a Lust for LifeI got a Lust for LifeGot a Lust for LifeOh, a Lust for Life’Iggy Pop, 1977Why this Special Issue on Sport & Psychoanalysis, a still relatively little explored approach in c...

In this paper, we present a Lacanian perspective on football, while notably fathoming its normative dimension. Starting with a defining imperative, the prohibition against ‘handling’ or touching the ball with your hands, diverging football historically from rugby, we will subsequently focus our attention on the role of the foot, the eye (notably the eyes of the audience) and the ‘object a’ (in the context of gender). Against this backdrop, we will address pressing issues such as the troubled position of the (...) referee (as an ‘impossible profession’), the commercialisation of football, and the rising tides of violence, match—fixing and other instances of systemic deviance. As we will argue, football exemplifies modern sport as an arena defined by prohibitions and desire, by inclusion and exclusion, by purity and abuse, culminating in recent challenges involved in gender trouble. Symbolical practices, like modern football, are based on in- and exclusion. Instead of more regulations and dichotomies, we advocate careful attention to the delicate art of handling desire in practice. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Austin (the New Austin) that overcomes the Austin-Derrida debate by dissolving the dichotomy between construction and deconstruction and focusing on the notion of performative reconstruction. The essay also contains a discussion of the normative distinction between felicity and infelicity and how it affects the identity of speakers and agents. This discussion draws on recent Gender and Queer Theory and builds a bridge between the literature on identity and Speech Act Theory. The central argument (...) in this paper proposes a negotiating model of performativity and a robust notion of discursive responsibility that underscores the intimate and unavoidable links between the semantic and the socio-political. (shrink)

This paper considers the advantages of incorporating Foucault's anti-essentialist theory of the body into feminist explanations of women's oppression. There are also problems in that Foucault neglects to examine the gendered character of the body and reproduces a sexism endemic in "gender neutral" social theory. The Foucauldian body is essentially passive resulting in a limited account of identity and agency. This conflicts with an aim of feminism: to rediscover and revalue the experiences of women.

This article argues that the failure of certain theories of reflexive identity transformation to consider more fully issues connected to gender identity leads to an overemphasis on the expressive possibilities thrown up by processes of detraditionalization. By ignoring certain deeply embedded aspects, some theories of reflexive change reproduce the `disembodied and disembedded' subject of masculinist thought. The issues of disembodiment and disembeddedness are explored through a study of the work of Pierre Bourdieu on `habitus' and the `field'. The idea of (...) habitus yields a more dynamic theory of embodiment central to a feminist understanding of gender identity as a durable but not immutable norm. The idea of the `field' provides a more differentiated analysis of the social context in which the reflexive transformation of gender identity unfolds. This in turn offers a way of thinking of possible transformations within gender identity as uneven and non-synchronous phenomena. (shrink)

The everyday expressions of nursing practices are driven by their entanglement in complex flows of social, cultural, political and economic interests. Early expressions of trained nursing practice in the United States and Europe reflect claims of moral, spiritual and clinical exceptionalism. They were both imposed upon—and internalized by—nursing pioneers. These claims were associated with an endogenous narrative of discipline and its physical manifestation in early nursing schools and hospitals, which functioned as “total institutions.” By contrast, the external forces—diffuse yet pervasive—impacting (...) upon contemporary nursing more closely align with the power dynamics explored in Gilles Deleuze's concept of the Society of Control. The example of sensor technology and telemetric monitoring of nurses’ locations in the clinical setting exemplifies the intense presence of surveillance, performance metrics and the “rationalization” of nursing practice. It falls upon nurses to recognize, accept or challenge these dynamics in order to shape the future of nursing practice into a discipline which embodies our values and priorities. (shrink)

Volume 3, Issue 1, March 2019, Page 48-59.

The notion of politicization has been often assimilated to that of partisanship, especially in political and social sciences. However, these accounts underestimate more fine-grained, and yet pivotal, aspects at stake in processes of politicization. In addition, they overlook cognitive mechanisms underlying politicizing practices. Here, we propose an integrated approach to politicization relying on recent insights from both social and political sciences, as well as cognitive science. We outline two key facets of politicization, that we call partial indetermination and contestability, and (...) we show how these can be accounted for by appealing to recent literature in cognitive science concerned with abstract conceptual knowledge. We suggest that politicizing a concept often implies making its more abstract components more salient, hence legitimating its contestable character. Finally, we provide preliminary suggestions to test our proposal, using the concept of gender as case study. (shrink)

At once historical and philosophical, Michel Foucault used his genealogical method to expose the contingent conditions constituting the institutions, sciences and practices of the present. His analyses of the asylum, clinic, prison and sexuality revealed the historical, political and epistemological forces that make up certain types of subjects, sciences and sites of control. Although noting the originality of his work, a number of early critics questioned the normative framework of Foucault's method. Nancy Fraser argued that Foucault's genealogical method was ‘normatively (...) confused’ as it implied political critique yet claimed to be value-neutral. Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor also questioned the normative basis of Foucault's appeals to critique, arguing it was self-refuting as Foucault left no room for the subject to escape power. Although a debate among these scholars was planned for the mid-1980s, Foucault's death in 1984 meant this could not occur. A number of edited volumes sought to fabricate a debate, with defenders of Foucault excavating his published monographs to construct responses to his critics. While the monographs remain the central texts of Foucault's oeuvre, over the past decade his Collège de France lectures have been published and translated into English. This article offers a schematic survey of the influence of the Collège de France lectures in recasting different points in the debates over normativity, critique and resistance. (shrink)

This article addresses the world's contemporary crisis of care, despite the abundance of information about distant others, by exploring motivations for caring and the rok of imagination. The ethical significance of caring is found in performance. Applying Victor Vroom's expectancy theory, caring performances are viewed as extensions of rational expectations regarding the efficacy of actions. The imagination creates these positive or negative expectations regarding the ability to effectively care. William James s notion of the will to believe offers a unique (...) twist on rational expectations in that he regards humans as having the capacity to work within uncertainty to take decisive action. Applying this idea to caring performance is, this artick argues that peopk can have the will to care, beyond strict rational calculations or limits of social norms. Historically, caring has been associated with the imagination s ability to empathize, but the will to care offers another rok for the imagination in envisioning effective action. Given the significance of the imagination for ethical behavior, this artick explores the implications for cultivating care in terms of what educating for care might hok like. The work of feminist care ethicists, particularly Nel Noddings, is discussed, and contemporary case examples of caring performances are investigated. (shrink)

Several decades ago, feminists differentiated between the biologically given basis of sex identity (sex) and the socially constructed cultural practices anchored by sex identity (gender). In recent years, many feminists have challenged that distinction, arguing that biological sex is as much a social construct as are the practices comprising gender. I survey two examples from biological studies of sex identity that, by contrast (I maintain), warrant saving the concept of biologically given sex identity. The result is not antithetical to feminism, (...) however, since these studies also suggest that sex identity proliferates beyond the rigid female/male dichotomy. If articulated carefully, this view can avoid metaphysically essentialist baggage while enriching feminist conceptions of sex identity. (shrink)

: The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by re-inscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of "the beginning before the Beginning." The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the "demonic" and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: (1) that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part (...) of Kristeva's effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and (2) that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the "demonic" lies less "beyond us" than "in-between.". (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by reinscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of "the beginning before the Beginning." The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the "demonic" and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: (1) that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part of (...) Kristeva's effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and (2) that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the "demonic" lies less "beyond us" than "in-between.". (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by re-inscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of “the beginning before the Beginning.” The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the “demonic” and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part of Kristeva's (...) effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the “demonic” lies less “beyond us” than “in-between.”. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by reinscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of "the beginning before the Beginning." The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the "demonic" and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part of Kristeva's (...) effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the "demonic" lies less "beyond us" than "in-between.". (shrink)

In this essay I explore the role of dialectics for how social theory can take account of the problem of structure and agency, or, determination and freedom, in a critical and emancipatory way. I discuss the limits and possibilities of dialectical, and of anti-dialectical, criticisms of Hegelian dialectics. For this purpose, I look at Judith Butler’s discussion of dialectics and the concepts of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in her writings between 1987 (Subjects of Desire; republished 1999) and 1990 (Gender Trouble, republished (...) 2000). Butler’s book Gender Trouble remains a key text of contemporary feminist theory. Butler formulates in this book a critique of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex based on her claim that Beauvoir makes a distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ that implies the notion of the sexed body as a pre-cultural entity. In her earlier writings, though, her evaluation of de Beauvoir had been much more positive. The change in Butler’s evaluation of de Beauvoir is part of her increasing rejection of dialectics: Butler rejected in Gender Trouble any form of Hegelian dialectics with reference to Luce Irigaray’s (1985) claim that it is ‘phallogocentric’. Although Butler subsequently returned to Hegelian themes, she seems never to have revoked this claim made in her most momentous work. I argue that this change in the theoretical structure of Butler’s argument weakens her critique of identity politics and I suggest reading Butler backwards, from Gender Trouble to the more open discussion of dialectics in her earlier texts. Drawing on Adorno’s Negative Dialectics and other formulations of critical theory, I argue that the valid aspects of the critique of Hegelian dialectics can better be formulated as a dialectical critique of dialectics (Adorno; Butler, 1987a) than as a rejection of dialectics (Derrida; Irigaray; Butler, 1990). Retracing the genealogy of Butler’s argument will be a necessary backdrop, too, for evaluating her more recent comments on the Hegelian and ‘Frankfurt School’ traditions such as her Adorno Lectures given in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in November 2002. (shrink)

When the terms ?women? and ?violence? are used, it is usually in the context of women as victims and rarely as perpetrators of violence, and yet women do behave aggressively ? for instance, as female suicide bombers. An ethical analysis of this role, however, has tended to be somewhat overlooked, partly because of the gender stereotypes at play, with little (or spurious) focus on the agency and autonomy of the women. This has resulted in an incomplete understanding of the unique (...) ways in which societies treat female political aggressions, and the consequences of this for their agency. This paper seeks to redress these issues by evaluating two different societal portrayals of female suicide bombers; that of the ?scandalous subwoman? and the ?sublime superwoman?. It argues that violent women's agency is often distorted to extremes beyond that of their male counterparts, and that it is imperative to avoid misrepresenting them either as agentless victims (?subwomen?) or wholly agentic (?superwomen?) since, even in times of political instability, they can rarely be dichotomised in this binary way. (shrink)

It is difficult to develop good arguments when the central terms of the discussion are unclear – as with the current confused state of sex and gender terminology. Sports organisations and sports re...

This essay examines two tendencies in lesbian ethics as differing visions of community, as well as contrasting views of the relationship between the erotic and the ethical. In addition to considering those authors who make explicit claims about lesbian ethics, this paper reflects on the works of some lesbians whose works are less frequently attended to in discussions about lesbian ethics, including lesbians writing from the perspectives of theology and of literature.

Taking its departure from the destruction of ethicality (Sittlichkeit), as envisioned by Hegel in the Phänomenologie des Geistes (PG §443–475), this paper constructs a concept of a contemporary subject whose self-reliant autonomy fractures in the face of the truth. This truth is revealed as an upsurge of nature, whose role and significance has been denied in favor of comfort and security of the subject. The move to yoke and subdue nature by placing science—as Bacon saw fit—in service of technology, and (...) by placing technology in service of human comfort and safety, proved to bear fruit. However, this subjugation, and also the abuse of nature, in one and the same move, results in a subjugation and a denigration of the human self. (shrink)

We argue that Shogan's critique, as well as that of Fox, fails to engage with the central focus of our article, which was to characterize and evaluate different approaches to lesbian ethics and to propose an alternative to the more familiar approaches.

: Hospitals have adopted a rhetoric of family-centered maternity care, and one of the ways in which they show their commitment to it is through the integration of the husband-as-coach model of childbirth (the Bradley method) into delivery practices. I argue that this model's widespread popularity testifies less to the culture's endorsement of a woman-centered approach than to healthcare's appropriation of "natural" childbirth as a site for the production and reproduction of patriarchal and capitalist power.

Hospitals have adopted a rhetoric of family-centered maternity care, and one of the ways in which they show their commitment to it is through the integration of the husband-as-coach model of childbirth into delivery practices. I argue that this model's widespread popularity testifies less to the culture's endorsement of a woman-centered approach than to healthcare's appropriation of “natural” childbirth as a site for the production and reproduction of patriarchal and capitalist power.

Biases in cognition are ubiquitous. Social psychologists suggested biases and stereotypes serve a multifarious set of cognitive goals, while at the same time stressing their potential harmfulness. Recently, biases and stereotypes became the purview of heated debates in the machine learning community too. Researchers and developers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that some biases, like gender and race biases, are entrenched in the algorithms some AI applications rely upon. Here, taking into account several existing approaches that address the (...) problem of implicit biases and stereotypes, we propose that a strategy to cope with this phenomenon is to unmask those found in AI systems by understanding their cognitive dimension, rather than simply trying to correct algorithms. To this extent, we present a discussion bridging together findings from cognitive science and insights from machine learning that can be integrated in a state-of-the-art semantic network. Remarkably, this resource can be of assistance to scholars (e.g., cognitive and computer scientists) while at the same time contributing to refine AI regulations affecting social life. We show how only through a thorough understanding of the cognitive processes leading to biases, and through an interdisciplinary effort, we can make the best of AI technology. (shrink)

By juxtaposing readings of selected feminist critics with a reading of Ovid's account of Philomela's rape and silencing, this essay interrogates the rhetorical, political, and epistemological implications of the feminist "we." As a political intervention that comes into being as a response to women's oppression, feminism must posit a collective "we." But this feminist "we" is best understood as an impersonal, performative pronoun whose political force is not derived from a knowable referent.

:This article focuses on historical queer cultural geographies of masculinities and to do so it focuses on two cases/places. The first is an archival case/place: a partial assembly of documents of beats and their uses during and in the wake of Gay Liberation in Australia. The second is a literary case/place: Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, a canonical twentieth-century imbrication of male homosexuality and geography. This article will seek to rationalize the mobilization of these two asynchronous cases/places through the insights (...) that both afford, when brought together, for elaborating contributions that queer readings of Nietzsche can make to contemporary queer theories of space, time and masculinities. (shrink)

Alterity, the difference that being-other makes, is not an overt theme in the writing of Ueda Shizuteru, and yet by bringing alterity to the fore we are able to connect and examine several themes that Ueda does engage explicitly. It will turn out that several models of alterity are discernable in Ueda’s philosophy, and their common ground opens a mode of being-other that offers an alternative to dominant models of irreducible difference. Ueda’s philosophy of language suggests four alternative configurations that (...) increasingly allow for the dual emergence of authentic otherness and selfhood. Those configurations are intimated in his interpretations of Nishida’s pure experience, of the interplay of language and silence, of a dialogue envisioned in a Zen oxherding picture, and of the poetic form known as linked verse, which best models how discrete beings help create a world in common. (shrink)

This article extends current theorizations of the ethics of the commons by drawing on feminist thought to propose a relational embodied ethics of the commons. Departing from abstract ethical principles, the proposed ethical theory reconsiders commoning as a process emerging through social actors’ embodied interactions, resulting in the development of an ethics that accounts for their shared corporeal concerns. Such theorizing allows for inclusive alternative forms of organizing, while offering the ethical and political possibility of countering forms of economic competition (...) and addressing the issues of viability that have long bedeviled commoning practices. This, we suggest, is achieved in the context of social organizing processes whereby social actors are able to reproduce their resource systems and communities based on recognition of their actual corporeal vulnerabilities, which drives reciprocity and embodied relationality with the other. (shrink)

In recent years, numerous articles and books in the humanities and the social sciences have been devoted to understanding the ascription of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, mental illness, and other ‘human kind’ concepts to persons. What may be more surprising given the enormous volume of this research and the diversity of its sources is that much of it shares a common commitment to understanding the categories picked out by these concepts in an non- essentialist way. For example, Iris Marion (...) Young suggests of social groups (including races, genders, classes, age groups, and ethnicities) that they. (shrink)

For many, anti-capitalism signifies too much and thus lacks the political conviction needed to inform left-wing strategy and tactics. What remains neglected, though, is how anti-capitalism can function as an organisational form, one that is constituted by the democratic requirements of struggle. At different moments and for different purposes, anti-capitalist organising may rely on vertical, horizontal, centralised, or decentralised formations. We cannot predetermine the organisational particularities of anti-capitalism because it is always a form of forms determined by the demands of (...) struggle. However, we can explore the psycho-political valances of anti-capitalist organisation. The appeal of anti-capitalism, so conceived, lies in its ability to facilitate subjects’ enjoyment and political commitment through formal and psychic lack, rather than through neoliberal excess or ideological surety. Psychoanalytic theory is useful for considering how the anti-capitalist form’s significatory field can foster emancipatory knowledges, acts, and ways of being in politically fraught contexts of struggle. (shrink)

This case study article draws upon experiences of a doctoral student and supervisor to reflect on the way in which we construct ethical narratives around our research. We seek to draw attention to the manner in which strict adherence to ERB guidelines can be problematic and risks causing more harm than it seeks to mitigate. We aim to show that we as researchers should focus on the potential harm caused to particularly vulnerable participants and draw attention to the need to (...) refocus conceptions of ethics away from a narrow, bureaucratic framework and towards moral concerns so as to avoid causing undue harm. (shrink)

Judith Butler's Kritik der ethischen Gewalt represents a significant refinement of her position on the relationship between the construction of the subject and her social subjection. While Butler's earlier texts reflect a somewhat restricted notion of agency, her Adorno Lectures formulate a notion of agency that extends beyond mere resistance. This essay traces the development of Butler's account of agency and evaluates it in light of feminist projects of social transformation.

Current models for individuation in academe exacerbate generational tensions between second and third wave feminists. Feminist pedagogues must be wary of getting caught in the "vicious circle of contempt," where students are expected to compensate for a teacher's past narcissistic wounds. Instead, we must be willing to mourn the wounds we have received at the hands of a contemptuous culture and to acknowledge same-gender attachments that are disavowed in dialectical models of subject production.

What can postmodernism do for, or to, educational research? The article discusses its potential for resisting closure and simplification. Developing a ‘preposterous’, anachronistic postmodern method that is caught up with surrealism and the baroque, the article plays with trompel'oeil paintings and outmoded popular entertainments such as magic lanterns, peep shows and clockwork automata as figures for critique and analysis. It argues for defamiliarisation, fascination, recalcitrance and frivolity as methodic practices for research in the compromised conditions of postmodernity, and as forms (...) of ethical resistance to the risk-averse literalism that pervades contemporary education policy. (shrink)

In developing an "internal" sociology of science, the sociology of scientific knowledge drew on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to reinterpret traditional epistemological topics in sociological terms. By construing scientific reasoning as rule following within a collective, sociologists David Bloor and Harry Collins effectively blocked outside criticism of a scientific field, whether scientific, philosophical, or political. Ethnomethodologist Michael Lynch developed an alternative, Wittgensteinian reading that similarly blocked philosophical or political critique, while also disallowing analytical appeals to historical or institutional contexts. I criticize (...) these Wittgensteinian sociologies and argue for the historical and contemporary significance of methodological criticisms of scientific practice that conjoin epistemological and political categories. I consider two such cases briefly: the Baconian criticism of Scholastic science in the early Royal Society and the criticism of AIDS drug testing protocols by activists. Key Words: Wittgenstein • sociology of scientific knowledge • ethnomethodology • scientific method • interpretive sociology. (shrink)

This essay critiques feminist treatments of maternal-fetal "relationality" that unwittingly replicate features of Western individualism (for example, the Cartesian division between the asocial body and the social-cognitive person, or the conflation of social and biological birth). I argue for a more reflexive perspective on relationality that would acknowledge how we produce persons through our actions and rhetoric. Personhood and relationality can be better analyzed as dynamic, negotiated qualities realized through social practice.

Martínková et al provide an overview of a tendency to use gender terms in key sports contexts, including eligibility criteria and testing, where gender is unintended. They argue that to avoid conceptual confusion and aid clarity, we should disentangle gender and sex, acknowledging that often gender talk should be interpreted as talk of sex. One of their recommendations is that the labels of competitive categories ‘women’s’/’men’s’ should change to ‘female’/’male’. I first make their argument against gendered labelling more precise by (...) showing that important yet neglected moral and practical reasons support their abandonment. I then argue that in the case of WA regulations, those moral reasons also cut against Martínková et al.’s relabelling proposal ‘female’/’male’. I sketch a testosterone-based proposal which circumvents the problem and which WA itself should accept. More generally, I argue we should be more mindful of the risk that competitive category labels unnecessarily harm athletes. (shrink)

The notion of natural kinds has been widely criticized in philosophy of science but also appears indispensable for philosophical engagement with classificatory practices. Rather than addressing this tension through a new definition of “natural kind”, this article suggests materiality as a substitute for naturalness in philosophical debates about scientific classification. It is argued that a theory of material kinds provides an alternative and more inclusive entry point for analyzing classificatory practices, which is specified through an account of “restricted malleability” of (...) materiality and further analyzed as (1) gradual, (2) multi-dimensional, (3) scalable, (4) interactive, and (5) purpose sensitive. (shrink)

The idea of agency has long been used in the nursing literature in the study of nurses' roles regarding the patients they take care of, but it has not often been used to study its relationship with nurses themselves and their status in the healthcare system. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the idea of agency is used in nursing research to better understand how we might advance our thinking around nurses' agency to shape nursing and healthcare (...) with an emancipatory intent. Based on the results of a literature review focused on the study of conceptions, treatments, and applications of the concept of agency in nursing, we present a critical discussion to reflect on the need to consistently define the idea of nurses' agency, to guide research concerned with this topic in theoretical frameworks with emancipatory and social change tenets, and to make a call to develop the idea of agency as a central one to rework nurses' relationship with themselves. The idea of agency provides a valuable analytical framework for the study of a wide range of issues around nurses' status in healthcare organizations and in the healthcare system while offering a means for nurses' emancipation. (shrink)

Inequalities of social goods between gender, racial, or other groups call out for explanation. Such inequalities might be explained by socialization and discrimination. But historically some have attributed these inequalities to biological differences between social groups. Such explanations are highly controversial: on the one hand, they have a very troubling racist and sexist history, but on the other hand, they are empirical claims, and so it seems inappropriate to rule them out a priori. I propose that the appropriate epistemic attitude (...) toward biological explanations of social inequalities is a general but defeasible skepticism. I then turn to the appropriate moral attitude, arguing that when such explanations are inadequately supported, they are offensive. (shrink)