As theories of performativity struggle to disentangle and reconfigure the relationships between act and identity, a heterowoman who relishes the performance of femininity is still aware that she can be read as reactionary. Her choice of sexual partners seems to undermine the efficacy of similar strategies constructed by femme lesbians. One queer option for a heterosexual woman is to ‘act’ like a gay man. As more than one cultural commentator has pointed out, it appears that only a male drag queen (...) can be a ‘lady’ these days. This particular woman does not want to change her biological sex to ‘be’ a gay man. She has learned how to be a ‘lady’ from the ‘feminized fags’ who may have learned from her mother. Their ironic distancing, camp connoiseurship, and parodic appropriation of the notion of a stable gender identity came as part of the package. As a result of this transaction, she acts as if she has balls under her dress. Such mimetic masquerades can be most easily recognized as resistant when performativity is ‘bound’ into a formalized performance. It is implicit that this artifice is not sustainable, nor is this desirable. ‘Doing’ queer means possessing the agency to defy and destabilize gendered behaviours, sexes, and sexualities through continuing and conscious decisions. This article explores the efficacy of heterosexual femme performances that attempt to challenge and subvert ideological normativities through their transactions with gay men. (shrink)

In 346 BC. the Athenians negotiated a peace treaty with King Philip II of Macedon, but afterwards one of the Athenian ambassadors, Demosthenes, accused another, Aiskhines, of accepting a bribe from Philip to contrive that the terms of the treaty should be favourable to him. The case came to trial three years later, and On the False Embassy is the speech which Demosthenes prepared for the prosecution. It is one of the most famous pieces of ancient oratory, and (...) it is also one of the principal sources of information about the politics of its period. This volume is on the same lines as Professor MacDowell's previous edition of Demosthenes' speech Against Meidias. It includes an introduction concentrating especially on the historical circumstances, a revised Greek text based on fresh study of the manuscripts, an English translation on pages facing the text, and the first detailed commentary on the speech for over a hundred years. (shrink)

The words "violence" and "nonviolence" are increasingly misleading translations for the Sanskrit words hiṃsā and ahiṃsā -- which were used by Gandhi as the basis for his philosophy of satyāgraha. I argue for re-reading hiṃsā as “maleficence” and ahiṃsā as “beneficence.” These two more mind-referring English words – associated with religiously contextualized discourse of the past -- capture the primacy of intention implied by Gandhi’s core principles, better than “violence” and “nonviolence” do. Reflecting a political turn in moral accountability detectable (...) through linguistic data, both the scope and the usage of the word “violence” have expanded dramatically. The expanded scope of “violence” reflects greater consciousness of the various forms that serious harm can take, but also makes it harder to convincingly characterize people and actions as “nonviolent.” New translations could clarify the distinction between hiṃsā and ahiṃsā, and thereby prevent some misunderstandings of Gandhi. Training in beneficence would reflect Gandhi’s psychological path to reducing avoidable harm: detachment from the ego, learning to love universally, and seeking truth by experiment. (shrink)

This paper is about the efforts the norwegian psychologist Jan Smedslund made in analyzing and checking philosophically his theory called ‘Psycho-logic’. I am going to reconstruct and discuss the debates between Smedslund and several critics, which have been going on since about 1978, mainly in the “Scandinavian Journal of Psychology”. A result will be that the kind of modal logics Smedslund uses — a type with realistic semantics and epistemology — is not the proper one for the analysis of ‘Psycho-logic’.

If nationalism is the assertion of legitimacy for a nation and its effectiveness as a political entity, why do many nations emphasize images of their own defeat in understanding their history? Using Israel, Serbia, France, Greece and Ghana as examples, the author argues that this phenomenon exposes the ambivalence that lurks behind the passions nationalism evokes. Symbols of defeat glorify a nation's ancient past, while reenacting the destruction of that past as a necessary step in constructing a functioning modern society. (...) As a result, these symbols often assume a foundational role in national mythology. Threats to such symbols are perceived as threats to the nation itself and consequently are met with desperation difficult for outsiders to understand. (shrink)

This study analyzes the ideals of responsibility and accountability, asking such questions as when it is legitimate to blame top officials of an organization for mistakes made by personnel below them in the bureaucratic hierarchy; when things go wrong in a large and complex organization like the Canadian Forces, who is responsible and accountable; and whether a plea of ignorance is a good excuse. The study also analyzes the doctrine of ministerial responsibility in both the British and Canadian parliamentary traditions, (...) asking whether it is realistic to expect that a government minister should be held responsible for everything that goes wrong in his/her department. Finally, traditional military values are examined, considering the kinds of attitudes and values expected from Canada's armed forces and the differences between the military and civilian sectors. (shrink)

The city of Johannesburg pulsates with rhythms that are driven by some of its most fundamental characteristics: pressured economic activity, the mingling and movement of bodies, commuting, and a history of race and class segregation. The collaborative Jozi Rhythmanalogues project attempts to make sense of these rhythms by employing sensory experience as a process of explorative thought. In the course of this project, public spaces are documented over long periods through time-lapse films, which are analysed to reveal patterns of movement. (...) The resulting graphs, representing a kind of ‘automatic writing’ of the city’s rhythms, are interpreted as a graphic score by musical ensembles, producing music, sound and noise. This article reflects on the explorations of spaces, methods and concerns that has led to the development of the Jozi Rhythmanalogues project’s different manifestations, and looks at the ways in which two very different ensembles have interpreted the graphic score. The key questions that emerge relate to the nature of the information that is captured or ‘written’ in the graphs, and what it means to attempt, over and over, to make sense of this information. The idea of ‘sensory thought’ is critical here, as the project in its entirety is concerned with the work of the senses as a thinking process. This phenomenological angle is complicated by the flirtation with abstract data in the measurements that comprise the production of the graphs, revealing a question of movement between poetic and analytical modes of apprehension. (shrink)

Devices of direct democracy are an important structural element in Switzerland's political system. In this article, institutions and functions of Switzerland's direct democracy will be presented. Then the author will pursue whether the direct democracy can be used as a device to prevent a dysfunctional parliamentary system of government. He comes to the conclusion that Switzerland's direct democracy is not an exportable good. We know from the Swiss experience that there is no single model that describes how initiatives and referendums (...) function in every state. (shrink)

This article deals with the emigration and the experiences of the professional group of engineers in their British exile, trying to evaluate the influences these refugee engineers had on the British engineering science. The approach is not limited to engineering research at universities or technical colleges, but tries to include the aspect of research and development on the level of the firm. Limits and constraints of gaining influence in British engineering are discussed, such as different values and traditions as well (...) as the different traditions in technical education and the role of the engineering graduate in industry. Finally attempts are made to establish some fields of engineering where an identifiable influence can be traced without exaggerating the general influence of these German speaking refugee engineers. Those identifiable fields are machine tools, fuel technology and district heating. (shrink)

Common Sense and Logic in Jan Smedslund's 'Psycho-logic'. This paper is about the efforts the norwegian psychologist Jan Smedslund made in analyzing and checking philosophically his theory called 'Psycho-logic'. I am going to reconstruct and discuss the debates between Smedslund and several critics, which have been going on since about 1978, mainly in the "Scandinavian Journal of Psychology". A result will be that the kind of modal logics Smedslund uses - a type with realistic semantics and epistemology - is not (...) the proper one for the analysis of 'Psycho-logic'. (shrink)

Organic farming is spreading throughout Asia, including in Thailand. Little is known about whether farmers’ values change as they make the shift from conventional farming to organic farming. The benefits farmers perceive from making the shift have also scarcely been studied. We investigated these factors in Northeastern Thailand by conducting observations, key informant interviews, semi-structured interviews and questionnaire interviews. We found that as Thai farmers adopted organic methods, they developed an eco-consciousness. In comparing members of a Buddhist temple-based organic farmer (...) support group with members of a non-profit organic agriculture support group, we found that the temple-based group adopted deeper Buddhist eco-spiritual values while the non-profit group remained more commercially oriented. Farmers who adopted Buddhist eco-spiritual values enjoyed greater financial and health benefits from making the organic shift. A higher proportion of the temple-based group eliminated their debts after making the shift . Additionally, a higher proportion of members in the temple-based group felt that their physical health improved after becoming an organic farmer . Interestingly, the less debt farmers carried, the healthier they felt . Participants believed that eliminating the use of agro-chemicals, using organic fertilizers, consuming organic food, and increasing biodiversity on their farms also contributed to improving their health. We conclude that for Thai farmers who are devoutly committed to Buddhism, temple-based organic support programs provided an effective pathway to improving their finances, health and well-being. For Thai farmers generally, a fundamental adoption of eco-conscious values is integral to experiencing deeper non-commercial benefits from organic farming. Findings suggest that the expansion of organic farming systems depends on changing perspectives about well-being. (shrink)

The fear of death resists philosophical attempts at reconciliation. Building on theories of emotion, I argue that we can understand our fear as triggered by a de se mode of thinking about death which comes into conflict with our will to live. The discursive mode of philosophy may help us to avoid the de se mode of thinking about death, but it does not satisfactorily address the problem. I focus instead on the voluntary diminishment of one’s will to live. I (...) argue that we can encourage a natural tendency for the will to live to decline as we approach death. I then consider two objections: Is not the will to live too fundamental for us to control? And even if we can control it, would not a declining will to live result in a general despair that it is better to resist? I argue that both of these objections can be overcome. (shrink)

Tolerance cannot not be concerned with the law, once it takes up in its concept the relationship between truth and justice. And there are several reasons for this. To begin with, the word right enters into many definitions of tolerance: the right to difference, to liberty, to those fundamental public freedoms that constitute human rights. Moreover, law, as opposed to morality, is the public instance where obligation is coupled with legitimate coercion. Finally, juridical institutions offer an excellent vantage point from (...) which to observe the transformations of the idea of tolerance and scan the history of the struggles carried out in its name. (shrink)

The words 'rebellion' and 'revolution' have gained renewed prominence in the vocabulary of world politics and so has the question of justifiable armed 'resistance'. In this book Christopher J. Finlay extends just war theory to provide a rigorous and systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify. He specifies the circumstances in which rebels have the right to claim recognition as legitimate actors in revolutionary wars against domestic tyranny and (...) injustice, and wars of liberation against wrongful foreign occupation and colonialism. Arguing that violence is permissible only in a narrow range of cases, Finlay shows that the rules of engagement vary during and between different conflicts and explores the potential for irregular tactics to become justifiable, such as non-uniformed guerrillas and civilian disguise, the assassination of political leaders and regime officials, and the waging of terrorist war against civilian targets. (shrink)

“Violence” and “nonviolence” are, increasingly, misleading translations for the Sanskrit words hiṃsā and ahiṃsā—used by Gandhi as the basis for his philosophy of satyāgraha. I argue for rereading hiṃsā as “maleficence” and ahiṃsā as “beneficence.” These two more mind-referring English words capture the primacy of intention implied by Gandhi’s core principles. Reflecting a political turn in moral accountability detectable through linguistic data, both the scope and the usage of the word “violence” have expanded dramatically, making it harder to convincingly characterize (...) people and actions as “nonviolent.” New terminology could clarify the distinction between hiṃsā and ahiṃsā, and, thereby, prevent misunderstandings of Gandhi. Training in beneficence would reflect Gandhi’s psychological path to reducing avoidable harm: ego-detachment, universal love, and seeking truth by experiment. -/- NOTE: An extended, unpublished version, with additional arguments and evidence, is also available on PhilPapers as "The Primacy of Intention and the Duty to Truth: A Gandhi-Inspired Argument for Retranslating Hiṃsā and Ahiṃsā, with Connections to History, Ethics, and Civil Resistance". (shrink)

There is a familiar opposition between a ‘Scientific Revolution’ ethos and practice of experimentation, including experimentation on life, and a ‘vitalist’ reaction to this outlook. The former is often allied with different forms of mechanism – if all of Nature obeys mechanical laws, including living bodies, ‘iatromechanism’ should encounter no obstructions in investigating the particularities of animal-machines – or with more chimiatric theories of life and matter, as in the ‘Oxford Physiologists’. The latter reaction also comes in different, perhaps irreducibly (...) heterogeneous forms, ranging from metaphysical and ethical objections to the destruction of life, as in Margaret Cavendish, to more epistemological objections against the usage of instruments, the ‘anatomical’ outlook and experimentation, e.g. in Locke and Sydenham. But I will mainly focus on a third anti-interventionist argument, which I call ‘vitalist’ since it is often articulated in the writings of the so-called Montpellier Vitalists, including their medical articles for the Encyclopédie. The vitalist argument against experimentation on life is subtly different from the metaphysical, ethical and epistemological arguments, although at times it may borrow from any of them. It expresses a Hippocratic sensibility – understood as an artifact of early modernity, not as some atemporal trait of medical thought – in which Life resists the experimenter, or conversely, for the experimenter to grasp something about Life, it will have to be without torturing or radically intervening in it. I suggest that this view does not have to imply that Nature is something mysterious or sacred; nor does the vitalist have to attack experimentation on life in the name of some ‘vital force’ – which makes it less surprising to find a vivisectionist like Claude Bernard sounding so close to the vitalists. (shrink)

The words 'rebellion' and 'revolution' have gained renewed prominence in the vocabulary of world politics and so has the question of justifiable armed 'resistance'. In this book Christopher J. Finlay extends just war theory to provide a rigorous and systematic account of the right to resist oppression and of the forms of armed force it can justify. He specifies the circumstances in which rebels have the right to claim recognition as legitimate actors in revolutionary wars against domestic tyranny and (...) injustice, and wars of liberation against wrongful foreign occupation and colonialism. Arguing that violence is permissible only in a narrow range of cases, Finlay shows that the rules of engagement vary during and between different conflicts and explores the potential for irregular tactics to become justifiable, such as non-uniformed guerrillas and civilian disguise, the assassination of political leaders and regime officials, and the waging of terrorist war against civilian targets. (shrink)

Like lynching and other mass hysterias, xenophobia exemplifies a contagious, collective wave of energy and hedonic quality that can point toward a troubling unpredictability at the core of political and social systems. While earlier studies of mass hysteria and popular discourse assume that cooler heads (aka rational individuals with their logic) could and should regain control over those emotions that are deemed irrational, and that boundaries are assumed healthy only when intact, affect studies pose individuals as nodes of biosocial networks (...) larger than themselves. Thus rather than suggesting that the individual can only prevent societal harm by gaining command and patrolling the borders of an autonomous self, we embrace the notion that affects can exert a positive and transformative force on a social reality that is resistant to top-down policy intervention and any straightforward moral or logical plea. (shrink)

Several studies have examined victim blaming in rape scenarios. However, there is limited research on the analysis of the perception of blame when two or more perpetrators are involved. The present article explores the perception of blame in cases involving rape based on the level of resistance shown by the victim and the presence of one or more perpetrators. A study was carried out involving 351 university students who responded to a survey after reading a hypothetical assault scenario. Six (...) situations were established where the victim showed either low or high resistance, depending on whether the resistance was verbal or physical and verbal, and in the presence of one or two male perpetrators. It is expected that perpetrators are more culpable when acting in groups and that less resistance from the victim leads to greater attribution of blame. The results confirm that more blame is attributed to the perpetrators when they act in groups than when they act alone. Likewise, women consider the victim generally exerts greater resistance and this variable influences the attribution of greater blame. (shrink)

At the beginning of his book, Methode und Beweisziel im ersten Buch der “Physikvorlesung” des Aristoteles, Johannes Fritsche announces that the theme of the work is to be more or less Aristotle’s Physics. It is to be less about the Physics insofar as it treats only two sentences of its first book—the first sentence of chapter one and a sentence taken from its decisive seventh chapter. It is to be more about the Physics insofar as it explicates these two sentences (...) in order to establish the principle according to which the entire Physics is constructed. Fritsche’s book is impressive both in its breadth and its depth. He situates his own position within a broad historical tradition by addressing both ancient commentators, like Simplicius and Philoponus, and modern commentators, like Wieland and Guzzoni. He argues, however, the unpopular position that the books of the Physics do have a systematic relationship to one another, that they are not merely an amalgamation of individual thoughts on the general subject of natural philosophy. One of the most intriguing aspects of Fritsche’s account is his suggestion that the main goal of the first two books of the Physics is to establish the condition for the possibility that there are principles of natural beings. In this, he distinguishes his own position from many in the tradition who claim that Aristotle assumes the existence of such principles without ever actually arguing for them. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, no religious institution in America has done more to explore the link between the environment and spirituality than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Now, for the first time, a selection of the finest of the Cathedral's ecological sermons appears in a single volume.

Rousseau is considered to be at once the most modern political thinker of the 18th century and the most ancient in his allegiance to classical republicanism. These essays address the place of liberty in his moral and political philosophy, and the origins, meaning, strength, weakness and significance of his argument.

Comparative political theory is at best an embryonic and marginalized endeavor. As practiced in most Western universities, the study of political theory generally involves a rehearsal of the canon of Western political thought from Plato to Marx. Only rarely are practitioners of political thought willing (and professionally encouraged) to transgress the canon and thereby the cultural boundaries of North America and Europe in the direction of genuine comparative investigation. Border Crossings presents an effort to remedy this situation, fully launching a (...) new era in political theory. Thirteen scholars from around the world examine the various political traditions of West, South, and East Asia and engage in a reflective cross-cultural discussion that belies the assumptions of an Asian "essence" and of an unbridgeable gulf between West and non-West. The denial of essential differences does not, however, amount to an endorsement of essential sameness. As viewed and as practiced by contributors to this ground-breaking volume, comparative political theorizing must steer a course between uniformity and radical separation--this is the path of "border crossings.". (shrink)

Neoliberalism has installed an unending competitive struggle in the economy. Within this context activists have pushed for a reappraisal of laziness and inactivity as forms of resistance. This idea has been picked up by Maurizio Lazzarato and Giorgio Agamben in different ways. I start with explaining the former’s appraisal of laziness as a release of potentialities unrealizable under financial capitalism. Lazzarato’s appraisal of laziness however resembles neoliberal theories of innovation, because both share the conceptual persona of a subject whose (...) potentialities exceed the current status quo. Potentiality is thus not an unambiguous antagonist of capitalism, as Lazzarato suggests. In order to adequately oppose neoliberalism, Lazzarato should question the role of potentiality in capitalism. Agamben has undertaken such a project. In the second part of the essay I consequently argue that Agamben’s philosophy of inactivity as impotentiality is able to circumvent neoliberalism and the society of the spectacle. (shrink)

Beginning with the influential discussion of the dialectic of progress found in Amy Allen’s The End of Progress, this paper outlines some difficulties encountered by critical theories of normative justification drawing on the early Frankfurt School. Characterizing Adorno and Horkheimer’s critical social theory as a dialectical reflection eschewing questions of normative foundations, I relate their well-known treatment of the dialectic of enlightenment reason and myth to their critique of capitalist society as a negative totality. By exploring the concepts of historical (...) development used by Adorno and Horkheimer to describe both the progressive domination of capitalism, and the formation and cultivation of reflective consciousness, I trace the importance of progression and its inseparable relationship to regression in these early versions of critical theory. The dialectical social theory found here recognizes the persistence of social contradictions on both a methodological level and on the level of theory’s development and expression, a connection potentially obscured by a division of historical progress according to its temporal orientation. Particularly in Adorno’s later work, an opposition to the negative social totality requires notions of cultivation and learning which work against the prevailing forms of conceptual thinking, including the concern for the stability of rational foundations. (shrink)

One of the key ethical debates in Russian religious thought, initiated by Leo Tolstoy, concerned the question of nonresistance to evil by force. The purpose of this article is to assess the influence of Kant’s ethics and philosophy of religion on the course of this debate and to determine the place and significance of the arguments and considerations expressed on this issue by Semyon Frank in the early and late periods (1908 and 1940s) of his work. To this end I (...) reconstruct the general course of the debate, notably the positions and arguments of Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov, Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev. Beginning with Tolstoy, Russ­ian thinkers introduced the original ethical content of the idea of nonresistance derived from the Gospel into the ethics of duty borrowed from Kant. The Tolstoy version of this idea was challenged mainly from two directions: from the Kantian grounding of the legitimacy of coercion and attempts to bring in styles of moral thinking other than the ethic of duty. Ilyin’s apolo­gia for the use of force in the struggle against evil prompted Russian émigré thinkers to take a closer look at Tolstoy’s ethical concept and pay attention to its positive content. On this basis Berdyaev and especially Frank create their version of the Christ-centered ethic of salvation which, in the perspective of “protecting the world against evil” includes the ethic of duty and links it with the possibility of using force, always a wrongful act, but one justified “in a situation of extreme need”. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different approaches (...) to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

Modern medicine provides unprecedented opportunities in diagnostics and treatment. However, in some situations at the end of a patient’s life, many physicians refrain from using all possible measures to prolong life. We studied the incidence of different types of treatment withheld or withdrawn in 6 European countries and analyzed the main background characteristics.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Politics of the 350s and 340s The Emergence of the Culture War, or the Man with the Good Memory.

Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization breaks new ground by describing the global economy and its effects from the perspective of an integrated theology of "the earth as primary revelation" and the institutional powers of this world. It reaches the conclusion that hope lies in nonviolent resistance and ecological and social responsibility based on God's action in Jesus and in the triumph of God over the powers. This book describes today's interrelated social, economic, and (...) ecological crises and makes the case that we face a living hell on earth if we do not address them. It provides an overview of the global economic system and offers a comprehensive theological analysis of the network of primary institutions that make up what Walter Wink calls the "Domination System." It points readers in the direction of hope based on following the way of Jesus, who lived in nonviolent resistance to the powers of his day. This new, revised edition continues the powerful story of the original, extending the analysis of the global economy from the 2008 collapse and recession to its alleged recovery. It addresses the Obama administration's policies on economics, trade, and the environment, and provides further reflections on American foreign and military policy in this so-called New American Century. (shrink)

Writers, readers, critics all have strong personal preferences. Roland Barthes was a case in point. Many were the texts he chose to affirm. Others he rejected, while some were left to hover in the margins of his thinking. Still others barely feature at all, among which, conspicuous by their absence, are the novels and plays of Samuel Beckett. This article examines the political, theoretical and affective reasons for Barthes’s apparent indifference to a writer who, despite early hostility on the part (...) of the literary establishment, came to be seen as the abiding embodiment of late modernity. It contrasts Barthes’s limited response to Beckett with that of another leading critic of the period, Maurice Blanchot. (shrink)

This paper rehabilitates the Stoic conception of blending from the ground up, by freeing the Stoic conception of body from three interpretive presuppositions. First, the twin hylomorphic presuppositions that where there is body there is matter, and that where there is reason or quality there is an incorporeal. Then, the atomistic presupposition that body is absolutely full and rigid, and the attendant notion that resistance (antitupia) must be ricochet. I argue that once we clear away these presuppositions about body, (...) the foundations of Stoic corporealism fall into place. Body is fundamental (not hylomorphic). The two fundamental principles (archai) are bodies: divine active reason (logos) and passive matter (hulē); and these two bodies are two, not matter and form all over again, nor actual and potential, but agent and patient. The independence of the two archai is no threat to the unity of the cosmos, however, because the Stoic theory of body allows for the complete coextension of the archai. The hylomorphic thinker rightly asks, what relation could be tighter than that of the wax and its shape? The Stoic replies: a causal relation, the interaction of agent and patient completely coextended in a through and through blend. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

This article traces ‘difficult guests’ who violate the tacit rules that guide interactions between talk show hosts and their guests, between news anchors and their interviewees. The goal is to theorize the appearance of such guests on television against the background of four case studies. Using the media events and media scandals concepts as well as more recent work on ‘mediatization’, a new category of remarkable media occurrences is developed. Such ‘media incidents’ capture the resistance to media routines as (...) well as the incorporation of resistance into those very routines. I will illustrate how media incidents make visible, for large audiences, the media’s daily habitual construction of reality. Despite their complex, even ambivalent nature, it is argued that media incidents perform a more critical function for citizens in media-saturated societies than both media events and scandals. (shrink)

Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

Control over economic surplus is the biggest contributor towards women's substantive equality in society. Furthermore, surplusgenerating women prioritize spending on family nutrition, health and education, which yields long-term social benefits at macrolevel. Globalization's marginalization of poor men in the Global South, from both the formal and informal economies, diminishes men's strategic indispensability in the community and household, and results in resistance to women's increased independence. Men's perceived sense of loss of control acts as trigger for an increase in domestic (...) and social violence towards women, with debilitating impact on the de facto status of women in society, and with that, the beneficial impact that equality of women could have on future generations. (shrink)

A broad sociocultural perspective defines trauma as the result of an event, a series of events, or a set of circumstances that is experienced as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening, with lasting impacts on an individual’s physical, social, emotional, or spiritual wellbeing. Contexts and practices that aim to be “trauma-informed” strive to attend to the complex impacts of trauma, integrating knowledge into policies and practices, and providing a sanctuary from harm. However, there is a body of critical and (...) decolonial scholarship that challenges the ways in which “trauma-informed” practice prioritizes individualized interventions, reinscribes colonial power relations through its conceptualizations of safety, and obscures the role of systemic injustices. Within music therapy trauma scholarship, research has thus far pointed to the affordances of music in ameliorating symptoms of trauma, bypassing unavailable cognitive processes, and working from a strengths-based orientation. In critiquing the tendency of the dominant trauma paradigm to assign vulnerability and reinforce the individual’s responsibility to develop resilience through adversity, this conceptual analysis outlines potential alternatives within music therapy. Drawing on a case example from a research project with young people in school, I elucidate the ways in which music therapy can respond to power relations as they occur within and beyond “trauma-informed” spaces. I highlight two overarching potentials for music therapy within a shifting trauma paradigm: (1) as a site in which to reframe perceived risk by fostering young people’s resistance and building their political agency and (2) in challenging the assumption of “safe spaces” and instead moving toward practices of “structuring safety.”. (shrink)

Although chemotherapy is one of the most common treatments for cancer, it can be only partially successful. Drug resistance is the main cause of the failure of chemotherapy. In this work, we present a mathematical model to study the impact of both intrinsic and acquired resistances on chemotherapy effectiveness. Our simulations show that intrinsic resistance could be as dangerous as acquired resistance. In particular, our simulations suggest that tumors composed by even a small fraction of intrinsically resistant (...) cells may lead to an unsuccessful therapy very quickly. Our results emphasize the importance of monitoring both intrinsic and acquired resistances during treatment in order to succeed and the importance of doing more experimental and genetic research in order to develop a pretreatment clinical test to avoid intrinsic resistance. (shrink)

The right to resist and the right to rebel have again become relevant as legal problems. Their justifications traditionally derive from natural law, human rights, the principle of the lesser evil or of the social contract. Interpretation of the right to resist expresses the tendencies to the law of people, in particular, the right to self-determination, distinguishing national and international understanding, and underscores the special nature of such right. Also, two-level research of the right to resist should be distinguished research (...) of the right to resist – the first is a debate about the nature character and legislative consolidation of this right, partly focused on preventive-limiting its properties, whereas the second one is updated at the time of social upheaval and legal concerns, and it contains not only the evaluation of the events, but sometimes attempts to justify ex post risk of abuse and original post-legitimation of public authorities. An important condition for the existence of the right to resistance is a legitimate aim. This could be called the internal condition, which is provided by those who implement this right. Other condition (which can be called external) and the base of implementation should recognize certain actions, acts or decisions by public authorities – those that violate human rights are illegal and unfair. At the same time, the purpose and result of the right to resistance may be changes in the public authorities, the termination of abuse of authority and violation of human rights by its agents, return to democratic legal regime or change in the constitutional system, aimed at creating a state of law, as well as in some cases, when combined with the right to self-determination, – the achievement of independence. The author of the present paper considers that the right to resist is an individual right, a human right. The author inclines to the idea of the collective nature of the right to resist implementation, but warns against simply counting the number of persons engaged in it. In other words, it does not matter how many people commit acts, but it does matter how many people support them. Considering the modalities of implementing the right to resist, it should be noted that these forms can be active or passive, expressed in actions directly or indirectly. The right of rebellion is an extreme form of the right to resist, which is carried out in case if the non-violent means of resistance are exhausted or proved ineffective. The conditions (and bases) of the right of rebellion are phenomena, such as the following: (1) massive human rights violations by public authorities (quantitative criterion); (2) systematic human rights violations by public authorities (accumulating criterion); or (3) extraordinary human rights violations by public authorities (criterion by serious, explicit and violent nature of the violation). Ambiguous is an issue of the limits of the right of rebellion, its permission and proportion, as well as whether it is possible to develop a mechanism for exercising this right. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effects of Buddhist ethics on consumers’ materialism, that is, the propensity to attach a fundamental role to possessions. The literature shows that religion and religiosity influence various attitudes and behaviors of consumers, including their ethical beliefs and ethical decisions. However, most studies focus on general religiosity rather than on the specific doctrinal ethical tenets of religions. The current research focuses on Buddhism and argues that it can tame materialism directly, similar to other religions, and through the (...) specific Buddhist ethical doctrines of the Four Immeasurables: compassion, loving kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity. The empirical results show the following: (1) Buddhism reduces materialism directly and through some of the Four Immeasurables, and (2) despite the doctrine of non-existence of the self, positive emotions toward the self are still present, and the self absorbs the effects of Buddhist ethics on materialism. The latter finding suggests a “resistance of the self” that is coherent with the idea of a consumer who leverages the self to go beyond it. (shrink)

Determinations of ability/disability are rooted in coloniality, specifically in categorizations of race, gender, and animality as they bear on social formations. I elucidate this rootedness by weaving the “coloniality of ability” into María Lugones’ accounts of the coloniality of gender and the colonial-modern system as founded on the “human-nonhuman” difference. This enables me to reveal an “ability system” based on the “ability-bestiality” difference and delineate with more specificity liminal sites of oppression and resistance across the heterogeneous socialities of coloniality-modernity. (...) From the perspective of the coloniality of ability that I develop, I focus on the liminality of the white woman Victorian invalid and that of the colonized “bestial” body in order to distinguish between two forms of colonial-modern liminality—“light” and “dark.” I also draw from this discussion two forms of colonial-modern oppression—“dehumanizing” and “bestializing”—and two related modalities of anticolonial resistance—“humanizing” and “decolonial.”. (shrink)