Cultural Context of Multilevel Collective Social Actions: Framing, Reflection, Resonance and the Impact of Global and Local Anti-Poverty Movements In political science as well as in other social sciences much attention has been paid during recent years to the rapid growth of national and transnational activist networks and their increasing impact on domestic and world politics. Together with the proliferation of literature on the topic, concepts of collective action frames, framing processes, mobilizing ideas and meanings and their cultural (...) resonance have gained considerable currency. However, less has been written about the possibilities of and the constraints on the circulation of collective action frames or about the connection between the cultural adaptation of frames and the results of actual collective struggles. The paper explores this understudied issue both theoretically and empirically. After identifying possible links between collective action framing processes and the representational practices of particular cultures based on a review of existing theoretical approaches, the functional consequences are demonstrated by the example of the Global Call for Action against Poverty international campaign and the Czech national variant. (shrink)

This paper examines two topics in Japanese medical ethics: non-disclosure of medical information by Japanese physicians, and the history of human rights abuses by Japanese physicians during World War II. These contrasting issues show how culture shapes our view of ethically appropriate behavior in medicine. An understanding of cultural context reveals that certain practices, such as withholding diagnostic information from patients, may represent ethical behavior in that context. In contrast, nonconsensual human experimentation designed to harm the patient is inherently (...) unethical irrespective of cultural context. Attempts to define moral consensus in bioethics, and to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable variation across different cultural contexts, remain central challenges in articulating international, culturally sensitive norms in medical ethics. (shrink)

The theme of consent is, without question, associated with the origins of bioethics and is one of its most significant paradigms that has remained controversial to the present, as is confirmed by the proposal for its debate during the last World Congress of Bioethics. Seen broadly as a compulsory minimum procedure in the field of biomedical ethics, even today it keeps open the issues that it has raised from the start: whether it is really necessary and whether it can be (...) proven to be effective. My goal will be to attempt to determine the most genuine and relevant meaning of consent, going back from its present dominant normative meaning and, from there, identifying or simply sketching other possible forms of its expression in the world we live in, so as to justify its pertinence and validity. This objective will involve three stages: (1) ‘Consent’ as a privileged paradigm of bioethics (the ethical-juridical sense), (2) The symbolic value of ‘consent’ (the social-cultural sense), and (3) ‘Consent’ as promotion of the human (the humanistic-personal sense) .It is concluded that the common notion of normative consent is not the only one, nor does it hold universal validity; that, from a historical-cultural perspective, new expressions of consent appear, adapted to different social contexts and to possibly be implemented in developing countries; and, finally, that consent is strictly indispensable in situations of extreme dependence, in its symbolic relational character, in as much as it promotes ethical relationships among strangers and ensures that they remain so. (shrink)

Since Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science was founded 49 years ago and since one of its co-publishers, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS), was founded 60 years ago, there have been significant developments in their various cultural contexts—in science, in religion, in culture, in academia, and in the science and religion dialogue. This article is a personal remembrance and reflection that compares the context of IRAS in 1954 when it was first organized with (...) the context of IRAS and Zygon today. It considers the contemporary niche of IRAS in relation to the developments that have occurred over the past 60 years. (shrink)

The moral discourse surrounding end-of-life (EoL) decisions is highly complex, and a comparison of Germany and Israel can highlight the impact of cultural factors. The comparison shows interesting differences in how patient’s autonomy and doctor’s duties are morally and legally related to each other with respect to the withholding and withdrawing of medical treatment in EoL situations. Taking the statements of two national expert ethics committees on EoL in Israel and Germany (and their legal outcome) as an example of (...) this discourse, we describe the similarity of their recommendations and then focus on the differences, including the balancing of ethical principles, what is identified as a problem, what social role professionals play, and the influence of history and religion. The comparison seems to show that Israel is more restrictive in relation to Germany, in contrast with previous bioethical studies in the context of the moral and legal discourse regarding the beginning of life, in which Germany was characterized as far more restrictive. We reflect on the ambivalence of the cultural reasons for this difference and its expression in various dissenting views on passive euthanasia and advance directives, and conclude with a comment on the difficulty in classifying either stance as more or less restrictive. (shrink)

The target article effectively assesses multiple hypotheses for human sexuality, demonstrating support for a complex, integrated perspective. However, care must be taken when extrapolating human universal patterns from specific cultural subsets without appropriate ethnographic contexts. Although it makes a strong contribution to the investigation of human sexuality, the basal reliance on a reductionist perspective constrains the full efficacy of this research.

The author examines, historically and theoretically, issues related to the state and current tendencies of post-Soviet Russian philosophy. The accent falls on the meta-philosophical question, what is philosophy?, or as the Russians often say, what is philosophizing?. In the Russian case, this question has presently to be handled in a cultural context ridden with a sense of discontinuity following the Soviet collapse. The author sketches some concepts intended to shed light on the nature of the relation between a philosophical (...) culture and the wider socio-cultural context in which it is embedded. The model is applied to the case of post-Soviet philosophy in order to see if and to what extent the logic of Soviet philosophizing and its place in the Soviet socio-cultural order has affected current philosophical tendencies in Russia, above all at the meta-philosophical level. The author concludes with a summary and commentary of the views of A.S. Akhiezer. (shrink)

Luther's struggle with the forces and influences of late medieval culture for what he believed contributed to the birth of a new age.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Cultural Context of Post-traumatic Stress DisorderCarolyn Smith-Morris (bio)Keywordspost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), culture, medical anthropology, fight-or-flight responseIn his Clinical Anecdote, Dr. Christopher Bailey gamely imagines the evolutionary underpinnings of his patient's distressing lack of war wounds. As part of a careful and engaged discussion of care for his suffering patient, Dr. Bailey suggests that our evolved fight-or-flight response to the alarms of the African savannah may be at (...) work in Colin's distress. The fight-or-flight response is something of great interest to anthropologists, who rely on Darwin's theory of evolution to explain much in human experience. According to Dr. Bailey's application of the theory, Colin's visceral response to threat is protective in the presence of danger, but destructive (particularly to his mental health) in the absence of such challenges. So Dr. Bailey considers whether we may have an evolved “need” for threat, and that Colin's trauma is in part related to the lack of such threat in his wartime experience.According to Darwin's ideas, evolved traits may be adaptive but may also simply be random appearances that have not yet produced cause for evolutionary eradication. The fight-or-flight response, or any of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis events initiated under either acute or chronic stress, is therefore occurring in Colin's reactions to everyday frustrations, to wartime exposures, and even during the stressful nontrauma of feeling “wimpy.” Dr. Bailey's idea about an evolved need for threat is tautological. That need is not biological, but cultural.Although post-traumatic stress disorder is medically real, it is an event that develops in a particular place and time. Likewise, gender roles that demand scar battles and trophies of a certain form are culturally determined. Culture is central to this anecdote: a culture-specific occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder and culturally driven gender roles for men, especially warriors. Stress is indeed present in Colin's life: our postindustrial culture's separation from everyday death and violence make episodes like war and combat all the more shocking or traumatic; the lack of social recognition for his service also seems to be one of Colin's stressors. Both the shock of warfare and the trauma of his social invisibility are as vivid to his evolutionarily informed body as is the presence of a crouching lioness in the room. So it is the host of cultural expectations, and his inability to mobilize social and cognitive resources to respond to them, that is wounding Colin. Talk therapy should draw out these cultural details [End Page 235] and, as Dr. Bailey has already begun to do, emplot Colin into a more heroic (his)story of his service to our nation.Related ArticlesFeature Article: Clinical Anecdotes: A Painful Lack of WoundsCommentary: The Nature of Proof in PsychiatryCommentary: Truth and Healing a Veteran's DepressionCommentary: Inappropriate RegretCommentary: The Cultural Context of Post-traumatic Stress DisorderCommentary: Explication or Explanation?Commentary: The Importance of What Psychiatrists Care AboutCommentary: Mourning or MelancholiaResponse: A Painful Lack of ConnectionCarolyn Smith-Morris Carolyn Smith-Morris is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Her work focuses on chronic disease and the health impacts of culture change and acculturative stress in North America. She is engaged in several research programs among migrating Mexican workers, among poor African-Americans in Dallas, and for the Gila (pronounced Hee-la) River Indian Community of Southern Arizona, a tribe that suffers from the highest recorded rates of type 2 diabetes in the world. She also holds a research fellowship with the Foundation for Community Empowerment, serves on the Board of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and is a fellow in the Society for Applied Anthropology. She published Diabetes Among the Pima in 2006 and has several articles detailing her applied research on diabetes, reproduction, health care ethics, and end-of-life care. She can be contacted via e-mail at: [email protected], C. 2009. A painful lack of wounds. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 16, no. 3:223–224. [End Page... (shrink)

JOHN E. MURDOCH AND EDITH DUDLEY SYLLA INTRODUCTION Conferences and colloquia are held and their results often published, but very rarely is any account ...

End-of-life decisions concerning euthanasia, stopping life-support machines, or handling advance directives are very complex and highly disputed in industrialized, democratic countries. A main controversy is how to balance the patient’s autonomy and right to self-determination with the doctor’s duty to save life and the value of life as such. These EoL dilemmas are closely linked to legal, medical, religious, and bioethical discourses. In this paper, we examine and deconstruct these linkages in Germany and Israel, moving beyond one-dimensional constructions of ethical (...) statements as “social facts” to their conflicting and multifaceted embedding within professional, religious, and cultural perspectives. (shrink)

Psychedelics require cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study, and we were happy to see a contribution from the field of medical anthropology. Such a study holds the promise of characterizing the ways in which psychedelics are situated in contemporary societies, both within and beyond research and clinical contexts. Here, we offer some friendly criticism of the target article by Noorani while also highlighting various points of agreement and looking ahead to future research in this field.Noorani’s article is structured around an organizing (...) theme of “containment.” The term is not formally defined, but functions more as a poetic metaphor, allowing the author to explore various ways in which psychedelics... (shrink)

Central and East Europeans have a great deal in common, both historically and culturally, with West Europeans and North Americans, but tend to be more interdependent. Interdependence has been shown to be linked to holistic cognition. East Asians are more interdependent than Americans and are more holistic. If interdependence causes holism, we would expect Central and East Europeans to be more holistic than West Europeans and North Americans. In two studies we found evidence that Central and East Europeans are indeed (...) more holistic than Westerners on three tasks, one of which examined categorization and two of which measured patterns of visual attention. These studies support the argument that cross-cultural differences in cognition are due to society level differences in independence/interdependence. (shrink)

Through listening to the voices of students, educators and community members can begin to reconstruct the culture of urban schools that are often full of stories about student deficits, genetic explanations about achievement, and cultural mismatch theories that may be traced to historical and sociological ideologies. The purpose of this heuristic qualitative investigation was to explore the ways in which student voice can contribute to reculturing high schools in urban settings. Data sources for this study included videotaped interviews and (...) observations in two Midwestern urban high schools to explore the stories of 28 culturally and linguistically diverse students in grades 10 through 12. Findings suggested that the teens in these urban high schools want caring teachers who listen attentively, provide engaging learning opportunities, and who demonstrate high expectations for achievement. They did not want teachers who, in essence, perpetuate hegemonic discourses via pedagogical practices, and school environments that resemble prisons. At the same time, students wanted more structure to ?avoid chaos? and asked teachers to give attention to the paradigm of the personal within the school curriculum. We extend the meaning of the study to include student voice as a critical stance for reconstructing the cultural context of urban schools, which entails listening to students to identify complex and sensitive topics for dialogue and inquiry. (shrink)

The characters in Plato's Socratic Dialogues and the sociocultural beliefs and assumptions they present have a historical dramatic setting which ranges over the last quarter of the fifth centuryb.c.—the period of activity of the historical Socrates. That this context is to an extent fictional is undeniable; yet this leaves open the question what the dramatic interplay of (mostly) dead politicians, sophists, and other Socratic associates—not forgetting Socrates himself—signifies for the overall meaning and purpose of individual Dialogues. Are we to assume, (...) with a recent study, that Plato is entirely concerned with his contemporary world and is, as it were, borrowing his characters from the fifth century, or does the fiction reveal something of his real involvement in the values and debates of the recent past? The aim of this paper is to argue that a detailed study of the characterization and dramatic structure of one particular Dialogue,Laches, strongly suggests that Plato is using a perceived tension between past and present to generate not only a philosophical argument but also a commentary on the cultural and political world of late fifth-century Athens and in particular Socrates’ position within it. (shrink)

Psychiatrists encounter persons from diverse cultures who profess experiences (e.g., communicating with spirits) that evoke intuitions of abnormality. This view might not be shared with the person or her/his cultural peers, raising questions concerning the justification of such intuitions. This article explores three positions relevant to the process of justification. The relativist position transfers powers of judgment to the subject’s peers yet neglects individual values and operates with a discredited holistic view of culture. The clinical-ethnographic position remedies this by (...) suspending judgment subject to understanding the individual in a sociocultural context yet finds objections with the universalist-scientific position: objective standards exist and could justify intuitions of abnormality cross-culturally. This article argues that the claim to objectivity is value-laden, reflecting instead a brand of normality and relationship to reality further upheld through epistemological utility and valued technological progress. In conclusion, it is suggested that the clinical-ethnographic position takes personal values and context seriously, both of which are crucial for responsible clinical practice. (shrink)

According to most academics, different generations share common characteristics. This undoubtedly helps to better understand their behavior in different scenarios, predicting their responses. However, this seems questionable and that is the main purpose of this study. This research, although preliminary, try to confirm if millennials have common characteristics, or if, on the contrary, there are differences between them due to the culture in which they are immersed. To this end, it has been contextualized in a sector that is very sensitive (...) to cultural differences, such as tourism. Data collection was carried out through a questionnaire administered in 2019 via e-mail to young South Korean and Spanish millennials. The results suggest that there do not appear to be common personality traits between the countries analyzed. The differences between the two groups for most personality traits and travel motivations were significant. The findings of this research provide several practical implications since it will make possible a more appropriate management of the tourist destination. (shrink)

In the field of Conflict Transformation, Restorative Justice is often perceived as a transformative process focused on healing relationships after a specific harm. The parties considered in a RJ setting are those harmed, those responsible and the community impacted. This is particularly true in the field of criminal and transitional justice, and in an extended and spiritual view, there is reconciliation with the parties and God. Despite cultural differences, RJ theory and concepts have been accepted favorably in the many (...) countries. From a viewpoint focused on methodology and process, however, cultural differences have a significant effect for implementation. For example, important concepts such as control, choice, harm, responsibility, apology, shame, reconciliation and forgiveness vary greatly in the manner in which they are perceived from culture to culture and may create obstacles for successful implementation of a successful process when one culture’s process and definitions are forced upon another. Therefore, promotional factors and the implication of semiotics are an absolute consideration in developing a RJ process within a particular culture. This paper discusses the cultural differences between the United States and Japan with regard to semiotic obstacles in the implementation of a RJ model in the Japanese criminal justice system. While the exploration of cultural differences, particularly between the United States and Japan is not new and has been the focus of many disciplines, little has been considered regarding the assimilation and implementation of a Western RJ model into the Eastern culture of Japan. In sum, is an attempt to clarify and integrate the effects of cultural differences for some factors as they apply to a RJ based reconciliation process focused in Semiotics, Social psychology and the Sociology of law as they apply to the United States and Japan. (shrink)

As neuroethics continues to grow as an established discipline, it has been charged with not being sufficiently sensitive to the way in which the identification, conceptualization, and management of the ethical issues raised by neuroscience and its applications are shaped by local systems of knowledge and structures. Recently there have been calls for explicit recognition of the role played by local cultural contexts and for the development of cross‐cultural methodologies that can facilitate meaningful cultural engagement. In (...) this article, we attempt to fill this perceived gap by providing a culturally situated analysis of the practice of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in Argentina. ECT was introduced as a psychiatric treatment in Argentina in the 1930s but it is largely underutilized. While the use of ECT remains low in several countries, what makes the Argentinian case interesting is that the executive branch of government has taken a stance regarding both the scientific and moral appropriateness of ECT, recommending its prohibition. Here, we begin with a recent controversy over the use of ECT in Argentina and explain the legal recommendation to ban its application. Next, we offer an overview of some of the salient aspect of the international and local discussions on ECT. We argue that the governmental recommendation to ban the procedure should be rethought. While acknowledging the role that contexts and local conditions play in shaping the identification and assessment of the relevant ethical issues, we caution against using contextual and cultural considerations to avoid a necessary ethical debate on controversial issues. (shrink)

Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu is the Zulu version of a traditional African aphorism . Although with considerable loss of culture-specific meaning, it can be translated as: “A human being is a human being through other human beings.” Still, its meaning can be interpreted in various ways of which I would like to highlight only two, in accordance with the grammar of the central concept ‘Ubuntu’ which denotes both a state of being and one of becoming.Firstly, it can be interpreted as a (...) statement of fact about the human condition, i.e. as a descriptive claim about the social nature of human being and personal identity; even the constitutive relation between alterity and identity. Secondly, it can also be interpreted as a value-judgement, i.e. as a normative appreciation of social difference and human diversity; even as an imperative to expose ourselves to others, to encounter the difference of their humanness, in order to fully become our own. The meaning would then be — to paraphrase a translation of Ramose : To be human is to affirm one’s humanity by recognising the humanity of others in its infinite variety of content and form.CONCLUSION :The challenge of a philosophical understanding of the multi-cultural context of apartheid South Africa has still to be met. To meet this challenge is to try and trace the consequences of what it would mean if — to paraphrase Walzer — our crucial commonality is our particularity. Perhaps it will mean accepting that what we are and are becoming, our identity, escapes any reduction to the categories of the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ and eludes a dialectical ‘aufhebung’ of their difference. This may be the case if what we are and are becoming involves the paradox of being and becoming ever more different in the realisation of our self-sameness. Our African aphorism speaks of this paradox and, in so doing, it draws a limit to our philosophical understanding and provides us with a rule of conduct: Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu! (shrink)

Law can be characterised as a highly specialized tool with strong social impact requiring social legitimization and acceptance. Law is also specific, abstract world. World that needs words to exist. To understand law and to share its content it is important to focus on narratives related to it. The article deals with the importance of narration in law as the consequence of discursive peculiarity of law and its dependence on the acceptance of societies. Law is culturally conditioned, and by means (...) of narrative can combine the expectations of society concerning legitimation with legal rationality. The law cannot function exclusively as an abstract and formal structure nor an administrative apparatus, with own ways of legitimization or justification. Through social acceptance law gains its real form, but at the same time it is subordinated to cultural patterns. Changes in narratives change the law and then the real world. The article shows possible ways of analysis of narratives, narrative strategies and forms that are present in law. (shrink)

Recent developments in Western bioethics and biomedicine have called for the need to be culture-sensitive in handling certain bioethical issues. As a result of this anthropological turn in bioethics and biomedicine, there are cultural differences in moral attitudes such as disclosure of terminal illnesses, reproductive technologies, stem cell research, prenatal screening, genetic screening, therapeutic cloning, organ transplant, brain death, physician assisted suicide and so on.This paper offers an examination of the socio-culturally framed ways of dealing with Western and African (...) bioethics particularly as it relates to assisted reproductive technology. It focuses on the ethical issues surrounding assisted reproductive technology from an African perspective making special reference to their religious beliefs by drawing on the Christian and Islamic culture. Effort is made to distinguish between Western and African approaches to assisted reproduction stressing the fact of cultural diversity in issues relating to these reproductive techniques. It argues for the need to take social and cultural meanings embedded in various bioethical issues into consideration in arriving at different conclusions about issues in assisted reproduction in order to give room for adequate understanding.The paper concludes by emphasizing the need to acknowledge cultural diversity in bioethics giving reasons why this diversity is crucial and suggesting ways of handling this diversity. (shrink)

Future economic game research should include: (1) within-culture comparisons between individuals exposed and not exposed to market integration; (2) use of a game (such as the “Sharing Game”) that enables subjects to maximize their earnings while also maximizing those of the other participant; and (3) assessment of performance in a repeated-trials format that might encourage sensitivity to the games' economic contingencies.

Beginning with our cosmic ancestors and the 1950s ancestors of Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, this essay highlights the wider, post-World War II cultural context, including other science and religion organizations, in which IRAS was formed. It then considers eight challenges from today's context. From the context of science there are the challenge of scale that leads us to question our place in the scheme of things and can lead to a challenge to morale concerning whether (...) we make any difference; the challenge of human variability that leads to the question whether there is a single human moral nature; and the challenge of detailed explanation that leads to the question of what is the task of theology in relation to detailed scientific explanation. From the religion context there are the challenge of objectivity—studying religion without practicing religion; and the challenge of pluralism and the variety of cultural and religious perspectives. From the context of the growing and diverse science-and-religion enterprise, considered from the perspective of IRAS developed in the first part of this essay, there are the challenges of apologetics and intellectualization. Finally, from the context of our growing, worldwide consumerist culture that is contributing to the radical alteration of the planetary environment, leading to much suffering, there is the challenge of becoming more motivated to act for the long-term global good. (shrink)

This article discusses ethnoveterinary medical pluralism in Western Kenya. Qualitative methods of data collection such as key informant interviews, open-ended in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), narratives, and participant and direct observations were applied. The study shows that farmers in Nyang’oma seek both curative and preventive medical services for their animals from the broad range of health care providers available to them within a pluralistic medical system. Kleinman’s model of medical pluralism, which describes the professional, folk, and popular sectors, informs (...) this discussion because of its relevance and appropriateness to the study. It is, however, important to note the overlap in the three sectors and to point out that livestock farmers engage in multiple “consultations” based on a combination of their own characteristics and the cost, availability and specialization of health care providers. The study concludes by recognizing the complexity of ethnoveterinary medical pluralism and calls for the integration of a pluralistic perspective into the planning and implementation of animal health care interventions and services. (shrink)

The question to which I seek here to address myself may be formulated in the following way. Is philosophy to be thought of as essentially one and the same subject in all its different manifestations, carried on, certainly, in noticeably differing ways by different people at different times and in different places, but to be understood nevertheless as consisting of one overall body of knowledge? Or should the term ‘philosophy’ be regarded rather as standing for a ‘family resemblance concept’, and (...) the family in question as containing among its members some who may be hardly capable of establishing any mutually agreed channels of communication with each other? In what follows I shall try to display, if not necessarily to disentangle, some of the underlying complexities on which, as it seems to me, answers to these questions may depend. (shrink)