The Yugoslav socialist framework enabled major advances in what concerns the legal, economic and social equality of women, advances which radically changed their traditionally subordinated family and social position. In spite of the postwar period of revolutionary enthusiasm, female political activism and the access of women intellectuals to the male-dominated spheres of journalism, diplomacy, administration and governmental offices did not exist for long. Taking into account memoirs and oral histories of five distinguished women, the article reveals the reasons (...) for the Party’s antifeminist attitudes: a) the political fear of ambitious female “quality staff ”; b) the ideological fear of the women guardians of the traditional and religious foundations of collective identity; c) a cultural mistrust toward the mobile woman who easily transcends family, social and ethnic boundaries. These biographical sources reveal that any attempt at free thought and autonomous action outside of the party line was severely punished. (shrink)

When aggression is conceptualised in terms of a cost-benefit ratio, sex differences are best understood by a consideration of female costs as well as male benefits. Benefits must be extremely high to outweigh the greater costs borne by females, and circumstances where this occurs are discussed. Achievement of dominance is not such a circumstance and evidence bearing upon women's egalitarian relationships is reviewed. Attempts to explain sex differences in terms of sexual dimorphism, sex-of-target effects, social control, and socialisation are (...) found to be inadequate. The suggestion that the stigmatisation of female aggreession arises not from patriarchal imposition but from statistical rarity (resulting from evolutionary pressures) is given serious consideration. Two hypotheses (“internal read-out” versus social/epidemiological representations) are described to explain the relationship between sex differences in behaviour and corresponding lay explanations. (shrink)

The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) exhibits a tragedy in this sense: if the players are fully informed and rational, they are condemned to a jointly dispreferred outcome. In this essay I address the following question: What feature of the PD's payoff structure is necessary and sufficient to produce the tragedy? In answering it I use the notion of a trembling-hand equilibrium. In the final section I discuss an implication of my argument, an implication which bears on the persistence of the problem (...) posed by the PD. (shrink)

Doctoral education is regarded as a crucial engine for development by the knowledge economies, thereby making the research capacity of scholars play a critical factor towards development. Widening participation within doctoral education is seen as a way of enhancing this capacity. However, African scholars produce only 1.4% of all published research, indicating that Africa lacks research capacity. Even though both men and women contribute to the development of their continent and their countries, the number of women holding doctoral degrees on (...) the African continent remains low across all nationalities. In high-income countries, there are 3963 PhDs per million people, whereas in some African countries (such as Tunisia, Egypt and Kenya), the number ranges from 100 to over 1500; however, in most low-income countries (such as Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania), the number is less than 100. Much research in doctoral education examines the reasons for low graduation rates and high attrition rates, but little research examines the contributors to the doctoral study for African women, especially in these times when doctoral education is viewed as a driver of the economy. Based on a qualitative study that interviewed 14 women from African countries, this article aimed to investigate how women account for completing doctoral studies. Data were gathered through semistructured interviews and analysed thematically using a capabilities approach as a theoretical framework. The findings suggest that institutional support, peer support and academic support played a role in their achievement. Contribution: The article contributed to doctoral education scholarship of African women and indicated that religion contributed to African women’s success in doctoral programmes, granting them strength to push until completion. This research may greatly encourage more women to enrol in doctoral programmes when reading other women’s success stories. (shrink)

Prisons are a feminist issue. This chapter offers an account of central issues and themes in feminist philosophical work on prisons, examples of important contributions, and future directions for feminist work in the field. It does so, however, in a way that consciously deploys a feminist methodology that resists the replication of hierarchical norms and structural violence in the very doing of theory and history. In this spirit, it emphasizes the record of struggle across the prison’s history, the resistance efforts (...) that live behind individual academic theories, the conceptual frameworks generated by groups bearing the brunt of carcerality, and it investigates alternative strategies of harm reduction developed across those communities. The chapter closes with an explicit exploration of prison abolitionism, which works not only to radically rethink punishment but also to shift the locus of voice and leadership. In so doing, the chapter aims to review, as much as to create anew, a feminist theoretical analysis of prisons. (shrink)

What is it for an animal to be female, or male? An emerging consensus among philosophers of biology is that sex is grounded in some manner or another on anisogamy, that is, the ability to produce either large gametes (egg) or small gametes (sperm), though the exact nature of this grounding remains contentious. Here we argue for a new conception of this relation. In our view, one’s sex doesn’t depend on the kind of gamete one is capable of making, (...) but on the kind of gamete one is designed to make, where design is understood in terms of an evolutionary or ontogenetic selection process. Specifically, we argue that what it is to be, say, male, is to have a part or process that has the (proximal or distal) biological function of producing sperm. We outline and defend our view, and sketch some implications for scientific and social problems related to sex. (shrink)

Aristotle's account of female nature has received mostly negative treatment, emphasising what he says females cannot do. Building on recent research, this book comprehensively revises such readings, setting out the complex and positive role played by the female in Aristotle's thought with a particular focus on the longest surviving treatise on reproduction in the ancient corpus, the Generation of Animals. It provides new interpretations of the nature of Aristotle's sexism, his theory of male and female interaction in (...) generation, and his account of inherited features. It also discusses a range of more general issues which can and should be re-examined in light of Aristotle's account of female animals: his methodology, hylomorphism, teleology and psychology. Aristotle on Female Animals will be valuable to all those interested in Aristotle's philosophy and the history of gender. (shrink)

Prison as a Torturous Institution Philosophers working on torture have largely failed to address the widespread use of torture in the U.S. prison system. Drawing on a victim-focused definition of torture, I argue that the U.S. prison system is a torturous institution in which direct torture occurs (the use of solitary confinement) and in which torture is allowed to occur through the toleration of sexual assault of inmates and the conditions of mass incarceration. The use and toleration of torture expresses (...) and reinforces the moral exclusion of those subjected to it, particularly African Americans. Importantly, this moral exclusion and the experience of torture may be created and reinforced through institutional practices independently of the intentions of individuals acting within those institutions. By prioritizing torture victims’ experiences and severing the link between torture and intention, my account forces a recognition that, far from being inconsistent with U.S. values, torture is deeply embedded within U.S. institutions. (shrink)

Most modern analytic philosophers have ignored works of Indian philosophy such as Vasubandhu's 'Treasury of Metaphysics'. This neglect is unjustified. The account of the nature of the physical world given in the 'Treasury' is a one-category ontology of dharmas, which are simple, momentary tropes. They include basic physical tropes, the most fundamental level of the physical world, as well as higher-level tropes, including sensible properties such as colours, which are known as derived form. I argue that the relationship between the (...) basic physical tropes and derived form is one of supervenience. Vasubandhu's theory is a powerful and flexible one, which can be adapted so as to be consistent with modern science. (shrink)

Four men in a cell in Rebibbia prison, Rome, awaiting trial on serious charges of subversion. One of them, the political thinker Antonio Negri, spends his days writing. Among his writings are twenty letters addressed to a young friend in France Ð letters in which Negri reflects on his own personal development as a philosopher, theorist and political activist and analyses the events, activities and movements in which he has been involved. The letters recount an existential journey that links a (...) rigorous philosophical education with a powerful political passion, set against the historical backdrop of postwar Italy. Crucially, Negri recalls the pivotal moment in 1978 when the former prime minister of Italy, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades, and how the institutions then pinned that killing onto him and his associates. Published here for the first time, these letters offer a unique and invaluable insight into the factors that shaped the thinking of one of the most influential political theorists of our time and they document Negri’s role in the development of political movements like Autonomia. They are a vivid testimony to one man’s journey through the political upheavals and intellectual traditions of the late 20th century, in the course of which he produced a body of work that has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on radical thought and politics around the world. (shrink)

The “war” in question is World War II. Beauvoir's two major travelogues, America Day by Day and The Long March, chronicle her first visit to the United States, for four months in 1947, and her 1955 trip to China. Their juxtapositions reveal Beauvoir's keen perceptive powers, her feminist proclivities, and her commitment to a philosophy of freedom. While much, though not all, of her description of the United States would be quite recognizable today, the Communist China of those early years (...) is in many important respects unrecognizable (which may make The Long March all the more interesting). This chapter summarizes some key points from each book and, as an incidental but significant reflection of the climate, particularly the racial, political, and intellectual climate of the times, points out some notable omissions from the first published English translation of Beauvoir's account of “her” America. (shrink)

How does Aristotle view the production of females? The prevailing view is that Aristotle thinks female births are teleological failures of a process aiming to produce males. However, as I argue, that is not a view Aristotle ever expresses, and it blatantly contradicts what he does explicitly say about female births: Aristotle believes that females are and come to be for the sake of something, namely, reproduction. I argue that an alternative to that prevailing view, according to which (...) the embryo’s sex is determined solely by “non-teleological necessity,” also misrepresents Aristotle’s view. As I show, the explanation Aristotle gives is more sophisticated and less egalitarian than the alternative account allows: There is some sense in which males are, for Aristotle, the “default” result. I offer instead an interpretation that can accommodate the asymmetry between Aristotle’s biological account of the production of males and females, but which does not imply that females are thereby teleological failures. There is no doubt that Aristotle thinks females are inferior to males in many respects. However, if he thinks that inferiority is grounded in biological facts, it is not the fact that females are the results of a failure of form to be realized. (shrink)

A plausible desideratum for an account of the nature of objects, at, and across time, is that it accommodate the phenomenon of vagueness without locating vagueness in the world. A series of arguments have attempted to show that while universalist perdurantism – which combines a perdurantist account of persistence with an unrestricted mereological account of composition – meets this desideratum, endurantist accounts do not. If endurantists reject unrestricted composition then they must hold that vagueness is ontological. But if they (...) embrace unrestricted composition they are faced with the problem of the many, and cannot plausibly accommodate vagueness. This paper disambiguates two related sub-problems of the problem of the many, and argues that universalist perdurantism is not superior to universalist endurantism with respect to either of these. (shrink)

Women currently earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Explanations abound for why, exactly, this wage gap exists. One of the more potent justifications attributes this pay differential to the unequal effects of marriage on the sexes: the marital asymmetry hypothesis. However, even when marital status is accounted for, a small but significant residual gap remains. This article argues that this is the result of social factors. Entrenched societal sexism causes all of us to harbor unconscious bias about (...) the capabilities and proper gender roles of women. This bias, in turn, leads us to discount work completed by females, especially in professional environments. Employers are not immune from this effect, and the undervaluation of female ability affects hiring practices, leading to the residual wage gap. (shrink)

Historically developed along gender lines and arguably the most sex segregated of institutions, U.S. prisons are organized around the assumption of a gender binary. In this context, the existence and increasing visibility of transgender prisoners raise questions about how gender is accomplished by transgender prisoners in prisons for men. This analysis draws on official data and original interview data from 315 transgender inmates in 27 California prisons for men to focus analytic attention on the pursuit of “the real (...) deal”—a concept we develop to reference a dynamic related to how gender is accomplished by transgender inmates. Specifically, among transgender inmates in prisons for men, there is competition for the attention and affection of “real men” in prisons: the demonstrable and well-articulated desire to secure standing as “the best girl” in sex segregated institutional environments. Our empirical examination sheds light on the gender order that underpins prison life, the lived experience of gender and sexuality for transgender inmates in prisons for men, and how that experience reveals new aspects of the workings of gender accountability. (shrink)

Is game theory good for us? This may seem an odd question. In the strict sense, game theory—the axiomatic account of interaction between rational agents—is as morally neutral as arithmetic. But the popularization of game theory as a way of thinking about social interaction is far from neutral. Consider the contrast between characterizing bargaining over distribution as a “zero-sum society” and focussing on “win-win” cooperative solutions. These reflections bring us to the book under review, Prisoner's Dilemma, a popular introduction to (...) game theory and its relation to ethics by the respected science writer William Poundstone. The book begins with a moral dilemma and ends by discussing the evolution of co-operation. Poundstone emphasizes—correctly, to my mind—the ethical potential of game theory. He concludes his first chapter with this striking claim: “Today's practitioners of game theory are attempting to forge a kind of ethical progress. Is there any way to promote the common good in a prisoner's dilemma? The attempt to answer this question is one of the great intellectual adventures of our time”. (shrink)

I. C. Jarvie interprets Popper's philosophy of science as a theory of the institution of science, explains how the social aspect of his theory developed, and suggests that an updated version of Popper's social theory should be used to study both scientific and nonscientific societies today. Although (1) Jarvie's description of the emergence of Popper's theory suffers because he takes no account Popper's research conducted before Logik der Forschung (1994), (2) his portrayal of Popper's framework overlooks important problems, and (3) (...) his program is by no means new, his essay throws light on the relation between Popper's philosophy of science, his social theory, and his social studies of science. (shrink)

A number of studies have explored the underperformance of learners. However, there is a paucity of research in South Africa, which focuses primarily on how school leadership, commonly referred to as school management teams, accounts for the underperformance of learners and thus the underperformance of schools. To fill this gap, the current study, undertaken in two schools in a district in KwaZulu-Natal province, aimed to explore through a qualitative approach the opinions of SMTs regarding underperformance in the further education (...) and training phase. School management teams were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide and in-depth face-to-face interviews. The interview guideline had a set of broad flexibly worded questions that allowed for in-depth discussion. Data were analysed using a thematic data analysis method. The school management team accounted for, and linked underperformance to a range of reasons. In this article, we present findings which emerged in relation to leadership weaknesses, particularly female leadership weaknesses, socio-economic challenges such as child-headed households and its consequences, teenage pregnancy, violence experienced by female learners, health of learners and educators and poverty. Systemic and structural societal challenges were flagged in the interviews as also impacting on the overall cognitive and psycho social development of learners. School management teams addressed the challenges by implementing a number of interventions that they reported were not successful. There is no simple answer to address the problem and we argue for a social compact which is inclusive of all stakeholders and suggest that intervening at the local level may not have a nation-wide impact but it would have an impact on a particular school. Sensitivity training, which includes gender sensitivity training, and leadership training and support is suggested as part of the interventions. Certain best practices could then be shared with other schools which face similar challenges. (shrink)

David Lewis argued that Newcomb’s Problem and the Prisoner’s Dilemma are “one and the same problem” or, to be more precise, that the Prisoner’s Dilemma is nothing else than “two Newcomb problems side by side” (Lewis Philosophy and Public Affairs 8:235–240, 1979 : 235). It has been objected that his argument fails to take into account certain epistemic asymmetries which undermine the one-problem thesis. Sobel ( 1985 ) acknowledges that many tokens satisfy the structural requirements of both problems, while questioning (...) the generality of the thesis. Bermúdez (Analysis 73:423–429, 2013 ), on the other hand, argues that there is a deeper structural conflict between the two problems in the sense that the epistemic requirements that give Newcomb’s Problem its force are precisely those that prevent it from being a Prisoner’s Dilemma. I argue that the epistemic asymmetry objections raised by Sobel and Bermúdez fail to undermine the one-problem thesis. A different type of objection raised by Bermúdez, one which relies on the contrast between parametric and strategic choices, fares no better. Although NP is a problem that has been primarily studied for its implications to decision theory, it contains enough game theoretic elements to justify the claim that a juxtaposition of two such problems can be thought of as a strategic game. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss ethical issues connected with neuroscientific research on prisoners, focusing specifically on whether participating in such research should always be disregarded when making decisions about early release from prison. It was once routine in some jurisdictions for a prisoner’s participation in medical research to count as “good behaviour”, which could be given weight in decisions about early release. However, medical ethicists now widely regard this practice as ethically problematic, because prisoners might feel pressurised to participate (...) in medical research programmes by the desire to escape a coercive and harsh prison environment, and thus their agreement to take part in the programme might not satisfy the freedom requirement for valid consent. Yet, there may be a tension between traditional medical ethics and theories of punishment (a tension which also arises in other contexts at the interface between medicine and punishment). From the perspective of retributive or communication/reform-based theories of punishment, it might seem unfair for parole boards to disregard willingness to participate in medical research, if the prisoner were motivated by altruistic considerations. This altruism might indicate that the prisoner “deserves” a shorter sentence or may be a sign that the prisoner has reformed. This chapter will consider whether/how this tension between traditional medical ethics and penal theories can be resolved. For example, if the medical research involves relatively safe interventions such as fish oil pills or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), then the above-mentioned worries about prisoners’ ability to provide free consent may be less pressing than if the risks of side-effects were greater. Furthermore, the validity of consent also seems to depend partly on whether the prison conditions are humane or excessively harsh. In addition, problems also arise in this context from within penal theories. Ironically, transparency about what factors will be taken into account in decisions about early release, which would presumably be encouraged by communication/reform theories, could raise the possibility that the prisoner was motivated to participate in the research programme by a desire for early release rather than altruism, thus making it harder to determine whether participation is a genuine sign of reform. (shrink)

It is generally believed that, for a one-off Prisoner’s Dilemma game, it is logical to defect. However, both players cooperating is apparently a better choice than both defecting, hence the dilemma. In this paper, by resorting to Ramsey’s Test, Kripke’s possible world semantics, and Stalnaker/Lewis-style account of conditionals, I show that the first horn of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is an unsound argument. It originates from failing to differentiate between a possible world and a possible set of possible worlds and failing (...) to observe that the set of accessible possible worlds associated with a possible world in general varies from conditional to conditional. This phenomenon can also be illustrated in terms of the recently developed hi-world semantics. Moreover, a meta-argument is constructed to establish the non-existence of a logical argument for defection. (shrink)

This article examines Thomas Hobbes’s notorious claim that “fear and liberty are consistent” and therefore that agreements coerced by threat of violence are binding. This view is to a surprising extent inherited from Aristotle, but its political implications became especially striking in the wake of the English Civil War, and Hobbes recast his theory in far-reaching ways between his early works and Leviathan to accommodate it. I argue that Hobbes’s account of coercion is both philosophically safe from the most common (...) objections to it and politically superior to the seemingly commonsensical alternatives that we have inherited from Hobbes’s critics. (shrink)

Necessitarian accounts of the laws of nature have an apparent difficulty in accounting for counterlegal conditionals because, despite appearing to be substantive, on the necessitarian thesis they are vacuous. I argue that the necessitarian may explain the apparently substantive content of such conditionals by pointing out the presuppositions of counterlegal discourse. The typical presupposition is that a certain conceptual possibility has been realized; namely, that necessitarianism is false. (The idea of conceptual possibility is explicated in terms of recent work (...) in two-dimensional modal semantics.) If this sort of presupposition is made explicit in counterlegal utterances, we obtain a sentence such as: 'If it turns out that the laws of nature are contingent, then if the laws had been otherwise, then such and such would have been the case.' Sentences of this type are non-vacuous, and very often true. I argue that this goes a long way towards resolving the difficulty for necessitarianism. (shrink)

Part 1 of this essay began to develop a philosophical interpretation of The Neapolitan Novels by grounding a vision of the work's moral psychology in the tradition of Italian difference feminism, particularly as it is expressed in the texts of the influential Milan Women's Bookstore Collective. Part 2 advances the interpretive argument by presenting a more detailed literary analysis of the character of Lila Cerullo. After motivating the interest of various aspects of her symbolization by connecting them to important motifs (...) in feminist philosophy and literature, I present evidence of Lila's special status in the work, and the puzzles this status raises. I advance a reading of Lila as a brilliant woman capable of playing the superior role in a hierarchical relationship of entrustment—and of The Neapolitan Novels as a sympathetic yet critical exploration of the viability of such relationships and their connection to female friendship and female freedom. In support of this reading, I give an account of Lila's strange condition of smarginatura, the import of her perplexing earthquake speech in which this condition is explicitly addressed, and Elena Greco's troubling reactions. (shrink)

The principle of “equivalence of care” in prison medicine is a principle by which prison health services are obliged to provide prisoners with care of a quality equivalent to that provided for the general public in the same country. It is cited in numerous national and international directives and recommendations.The principle of equivalence is extremely relevant from the point of view of normative ethics but requires adaptation from the point of view of applied ethics. From a clinical point of (...) view, the principle of equivalence is often insufficient to take account of the adaptations necessary for the organization of care in a correctional setting. The principle of equivalence is cost-effective in general, but has to be overstepped to ensure the humane management of certain special cases. (shrink)

A trenchant and wide-ranging look at this alarming national trend, _Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline_ is unsparing in its account of the problem while pointing in the direction of meaningful and much-needed reforms. The “school-to-prison pipeline” has received much attention in the education world over the past few years. A fast-growing and disturbing development, it describes a range of circumstances whereby “children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” Scholars, educators, parents, students, and organizers (...) across the country have pointed to this shocking trend, insisting that it be identified and understood—and that it be addressed as an urgent matter by the larger community. This new volume from the _Harvard Educational Review _features essays from scholars, educators, students, and community activists who are working to disrupt, reverse, and redirect the pipeline. Alongside these authors are contributions from the people most affected: youth and adults who have been incarcerated, or whose lives have been shaped by the school-to-prison pipeline. Through stories, essays, and poems, these individuals add to the book’s comprehensive portrait of how our education and justice systems function—and how they fail to serve the interests of many young people.". (shrink)

The 1940s and 1950s were marked by intense debates over the origin of drug resistance in microbes. Bacteriologists had traditionally invoked the notions of ‘training’ and ‘adaptation’ to account for the ability of microbes to acquire new traits. As the field of bacterial genetics emerged, however, its participants rejected ‘Lamarckian’ views of microbial heredity, and offered statistical evidence that drug resistance resulted from the selection of random resistant mutants. Antibiotic resistance became a key issue among those disputing physiological vs. genetic (...) explanations of variation in bacteria. Postwar developments connected with the Lysenko affair gave this debate a new political valence.Proponents of the neo-Darwinian synthesis weighed in with support for the genetic theory. However, certain features of drug resistance seemed inexplicable by mutation and selection, particularly the phenomenon of ‘multiple resistance’—the emergence of resistance in a single strain against several unrelated antibiotics. In the late 1950s, Tsutomu Watanabe and his collaborators solved this puzzle by determining that resistance could be conferred by cytoplasmic resistance factors rather than chromosomal mutation. These R factors could carry resistance to many antibiotics and seemed able to promote their own dissemination in bacterial populations. In the end, the vindication of the genetic view of drug resistance was accompanied by a recasting of the ‘gene’ to include extrachromosomal hereditary units carried on viruses and plasmids. (shrink)

Four men in a cell in Rebibbia prison, Rome, awaiting trial on serious charges of subversion. One of them, the political thinker Antonio Negri, spends his days writing. Among his writings are twenty letters addressed to a young friend in France letters in which Negri reflects on his own personal development as a philosopher, theorist and political activist and analyses the events, activities and movements in which he has been involved. The letters recount an existential journey that links a rigorous (...) philosophical education with a powerful political passion, set against the historical backdrop of postwar Italy. Crucially, Negri recalls the pivotal moment in 1978 when the former prime minister of Italy, Aldo Moro, was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades, and how the institutions then pinned that killing onto him and his associates. Published here for the first time, these letters offer a unique and invaluable insight into the factors that shaped the thinking of one of the most influential political theorists of our time and they document Negri’s role in the development of political movements like Autonomia. They are a vivid testimony to one man’s journey through the political upheavals and intellectual traditions of the late 20th century, in the course of which he produced a body of work that has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on radical thought and politics around the world. (shrink)

In this essay Habermas contends that, until 1989, four phases are discernible in how postwar Germany attempted to come to terms with its “unmasterable past.” Between the end of the war in 1945 and the foundation of two German states in 1949, the first reconstruction generation mythologized the Nazi period as a criminal abyss. If this strategy allowed the government of the Federal Republic to assume legal responsibility for reparation claims, it also served to release individuals from working through (...) their own painful pasts. This stage yielded to a second phase, one of “communicative silencing,” during the Adenauer years from 1949-63 in which the second reconstruction generation chose not to speak of the past but rather to concentrate on building the Wirtschaftswunder. The student movement of the 1960s challenged this presentism with demands for disclosure and accountability, and from the mid-1970s until 1989 this quest for unmasking existed in tension with an ongoing desire for evasion. This tension drove the “Historians’ Debate” of those years. Since reunification in 1989, Germany’s attitude toward its past has remained ambivalent. Today a New Right calls for the self-confident reassertion of a German nation unburdened by its past. But the past will lose its hold over Germany, Habermas argues, only through the work of a truly faithful memory. (shrink)

The article devoted to the study of an artistic image of female saint from stylistic and linguocultural perspectives. The image is represented by the characters of Judith and Juliana in Anglo-Saxon literature. Stylistic peculiarities of the image are result of the fact that it emerges as a combination of heroic and religious genres. Thus, two genre pictures of the world account for characteristics of the image: on the one hand, it is described by epithets relating to the sphere of (...) divinity, on the other, by lexis relating to military heroism. As a result, Anglo-saxon female saint stands out among other female images by a considerable degree of activity, which is manifested at all levels of analysis. Female saints are connotated positively and described as ‘bright‘, ‘wise‘, and ‘brave‘. A category binding the image and a sphere of culture is a notion of value, which is reflected in a linguocultural concept. Study ofconceptual space of female saints contributes to reconstructing values and anti-values of the Anglo-Saxon period. An interaction of heroic and religious pictures of the world account for a specific character of an image of the saint in Old English literature, namely the co-existence of concepts typical of these conceptual outlooks. On the one hand, God-related concepts: God, love, glory, on the other, such heroic concepts as strength, bravery, dignity. Anti-values within the image are associated with the macroconcept ‘devil‘ and devil-related concepts like death and feud. (shrink)

What makes something good for me? Most contemporary philosophers argue that something cannot count as good for me unless I am in some way attracted to it, or take delight in it. However, subjectivist theories of prudential value face difficulties, and there is no consensus about how these difficulties should be resolved. Whether one opts for a hedonist or a desire-satisfaction account of..

Although much has been written about the centrality of reflexivity in qualitative research, the literature on researcher’s reflexivity in prison research is limited. I conducted a PhD qualitative study with a sample of 30 women convicted of murder from one female prison in Uganda. This paper demonstrates the value of reflexivity in research with respect to oppressed women. It does this by discussing what reflexivity is and at what stage of the research process reflexivity is deemed important. Most importantly, (...) the paper discusses different forms of reflexivity that I exercised, which include personal reflexivity, feminist reflexivity, emotional reflexivity, methodological reflexivity and reflexivity on research context and participants. The paper demonstrates how these different forms of reflexivity helped in various research aspects such as the evolution of the topic that empowered women to tell their stories in a context that was without any research on women convicted of murder, in recruitment of participants, avoiding harming participants and in dealing with emotion during data collection. (shrink)

This paper aims at addressing how the question of Chinese female sexuality is questioned and challenged by the Chinese woman writer Geling Yan’s novella“White Snake” (1999). By adopting a similar title to the famous traditional Chinese monster story that narrates a white serpent transformed herself into a pretty lady to pursue and experience human love, Geling Yan’s novella carries the mimicry of the theme by portraying her protagonist as a serpent-embodying woman whose sexual power was deemed abnormal and monstrous. (...) This imprisoned woman as a monstrous other, though sinuously gazed, desired and mocked, her monstrous sexuality, not as the un-human, but as the conflation where the social and cultural anxiety encounters the fear of desire and the difference, is given the chance to be re-initiated, re-directed and unleashed into another heterogeneous state and territory of the unsaid and unnamed behind the traditional cultural prison house. (shrink)

In the late 1990s, Mexican feminists mobilized transnationally to demand state accountability for the feminicidios of women in Ciudad Juarez. Feminicidio refers to the misogynous killing of women and the state’s complicity in this violence by tolerating it with impunity. Drawing on debates of the Mexican Federal Congress and interviews with feminist state and non-state actors, I examine feminist legislators’ response to transnational activism, which was to pass the “General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence” and (...) to create the penal-type code of feminicidio, which includes provisions to punish negligent state actors. These laws make the state a target of its own punitive power. To pass these acts, feminist legislators faced resistance from male legislators and the Federal Executive. I build on feminist institutionalism to theorize this resistance as gendered. Gendered state resistance was pervasive because feminist legislators practiced accountability by identifying the complicity of state institutions, including Congress, in perpetuating feminicidio. As part of the process, they built alliances with other female legislators and framed their arguments with notions of modern statehood. Although this framing strategy resulted in innovative legal change, I interrogate the assumption that modernity is the solution to feminicidio, because it can lead gendered state resistance to manifest as a simulation of accountability. (shrink)

The inaccessibility of the Ottoman harems to European males helped perpetuate the image of the harem as purely sexual in nature and contributed to imperialistic discourse that positioned the East as inferior to the West. It was only with the emergence of female travellers and artists that Europe was afforded a brief glimpse into the source of their fantasies; however, whether these accounts catered to or challenged the normative imperialist discourse of the day remains controversial. Emerging scholarship also (...) highlights the way in which harem women themselves were able to control the depiction of their private spaces to suit their own needs, serving to highlight how nineteenth century depictions of the harem were a series of cross-cultural exchanges and negotiations between male Orientalists, female European travellers, and shrewd Ottoman women. (shrink)

Deflationists about truth typically deny that truth is a causal-explanatory property. However, the now familiar 'success argument' attempts to show that truth plays an important causal-explanatory role in explanations of practical success. Deflationists have standardly responded that the truth predicate appears in such explanations merely as a logical device, and that therefore truth has not been shown to play a causal-explanatory role. I argue that if we accept Jackson and Pettit's account of causal explanations, the standard deflationist response is inconsistent, (...) for on this account even logical properties can be causally explanatory. Therefore the deflationist should remain neutral as to whether truth is a causal-explanatory property, and focus instead on the claim that truth, if it is a property, is a merely logical one. (shrink)

Feminist studies of female genital cutting (FGC) provide ample evidence that many women exercise effective agency with respect to this practice, both as accommodators and as resisters. The influence of culture on autonomy is ambiguous: women who resist cultural mandates for FGC do not necessarily enjoy greater autonomy than do those women who accommodate the practice, yet it is clear that some social contexts are more conducive to autonomy than others. In this paper, I explore the implications for autonomy (...) theory of these understandings of the relation between culture, FGC, and women’s agency. I review the range of worldwide FGC practices – including “corrective” surgery for “ambiguous genitalia” in Western cultures as well as the various initiation rites observed in some African and Asian cultures – and the diverse cultural rationales for different forms of FGC. I argue that neither latitudinarian, value‐neutral accounts of autonomy nor restrictive, value‐saturated accounts adequately explain women’s agentic position with respect to FGC. I then analyze a number of educational programs that have enhanced women's autonomy, especially by strengthening their introspection, empathy, and imagination. Such programs, which engage women's autonomy skills without exposing them to autonomy‐disabling cultural alienation, promote autonomy‐within‐culture. This understanding of autonomy as socially situated, however, entails neither endorsement of FGC nor resignation to its persistence. (shrink)

Since their revelation to the public, the sexually transmitted disease experiments in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 have earned a place of infamy in the history of medical ethics. During these experiments, Public Health Service researchers intentionally exposed over 1,300 non-consenting Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, psychiatric patients, and commercial sex workers to gonorrhea, syphilis, and/or chancroid under conditions that have shocked the medical community and public alike. Expert analysis has found little scientific value to the experiments as measured by current (...) or contemporaneous research standards.Such an obvious case of research malfeasance, which violated research norms in place both in the past and now, has been uniformly repudiated. The Guatemala STD experiments were labeled “clearly unethical” by President Barack Obama and “reprehensible” by the Secretaries of State and Health and Human Services. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an interpretation of Hobbes 's account of miracles in Leviathan. Four main theses are defended: that Hobbes affirms a single account of miracles, not several non-equivalent accounts, that Hobbes 's main objective is political – he wants to explain how the doctrine of miracles must be understood in order for it not to pose a threat to political stability, that Hobbes 's discussion is not designed to undermine the doctrine of miracles in its entirety, (...) and that Hobbes 's considered view of miracles is compatible with the modern scientific worldview to which he is committed. (shrink)

_The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ highlights the eponymous subject’s conversion from aimless rage and criminality to a form of militant study while in prison, a conversion dedicated to understanding the societal foundations of power and racial inequality. Central to this understanding is the idea that new philosophical perspectives and ‘thought-patterns’ are necessary to reprogramme dominant or ‘brainwashed’ mindsets towards organising political resistance. In this article, I explore Malcolm X’s concepts of ‘conversion’ and ‘prison’, identifying them, not only as mere spatiotemporal (...) locations, but also as larger frames in which Malcolm conceives of domination and freedom. I identify Malcolm’s three-aspect account of domination through which radical education and mental liberation drive his project of Black nationalism. I then consider the significance of an unexpected ally invoked by Malcolm: the 17th century philosopher Benedict de Spinoza, described as a ‘Black Spanish Jew’ and presented as an oppositional figure to the western philosophical canon. While this alliance is partly rhetorical, if overlooked, both work through problems of ‘epistemic agency’ and ‘democratic civic agency’ as vital for ameliorating domination and enhancing freedom. Malcolm and Spinoza offer distinct but significant contributions to ideas of domination and freedom in terms of both an individual and a collective capacity to think and act. (shrink)

The problem of providing mandated medical care has become commonplace as correctional systems in the United States struggle to manage unprecedented increases in its aging prison population. This study explores older incarcerated women’s perceptions of prison health care policies and their day-to-day survival experiences. Aggregate data obtained from a sample of 327 older women residing in prison facilities in five Southern states were used to identify a baseline of health conditions and needs for this vulnerable group. With an average of (...) 4.2 chronic health conditions, frequently histories of victimization, and high rates of mental health issues, the women’s experiences of negotiating health care was particularly challenging. By incorporating the voices of older women, we expose the contradictions, dilemmas, and obstacles they experience in their attempts to obtain health care. It is clear from the personal accounts shared that, despite court mandates, penal harm practices such as delaying or denying medical treatment as well as occasional staff indifferences are common in women’s prisons. With older women having the greatest need for health care, an age- and gender-sensitive approach is recommended. (shrink)

Many recent studies of norm emergence employ the "prisoner's dilemma" (PD) paradigm, which focuses on the free-rider problem that can block the cooperation required for the emergence of social norms. This paper proposes an expansion of the PD paradigm to include a closely related game termed the "altruist's dilemma" (AD). Whereas egoistic behavior in the PD leads to collectively irrational outcomes, the opposite is the case in the AD: altruistic behavior (e.g., following the Golden Rule) leads to collectively irrational outcomes, (...) whereas egoistic behavior leads to Pareto-optimal outcomes. The analysis shows that PDs can be converted into ADs either by increasing cooperation costs or by diminishing marginal gains from cooperation; therefore ADs are as empirically abundant as PDs. In addition, the analysis shows that altruists are not the only type of actors who fall prey to the AD; egoists can fall into this trap as well if they possess a capacity for interpersonal control. Where group solidarity is defined analytically in terms of the extent of cooperation in both PDs and ADs, this paper presents a model based on rational choice to account for variations in solidarity. According to the proposed analysis, levels of group solidarity depend on the balance in the group between compliant control, which increases cooperation, and oppositional control, which reduces it. That balance, in turn, depends on the allocation of power within the group. (shrink)

The demolition of Sophiatown, Cato Manor, District Six and other areas under the apartheid regime hugely impacted the socio-economic lives of various South Africans. The classification of South African cosmopolitan townships as slums according to the Slums Act of 1934, and the ambitions of achieving social segregation, resulted in the geographical separation of races facilitated by the Group Areas Act of 1950. The act legally justified the forced removal of Indian families from Sophiatown. Then, they were temporarily placed in a (...) military base next to Lenasia. Through the use of oral interviews, this article interrogates the unknown history of the Indian families in their transitional period from Sophiatown to Ammunition Depot 91. Furthermore, the article sheds light on their untold experiences; particularly on the arrival of Indian families in the military camp, their living conditions, health-related matters, the utilisation of coping mechanisms such as religion and recreational activities, perceptions about their stay, effects on transportation and their general experiences in the transition camp. The article accentuates the rapid nature of these removals particularly in Sophiatown which resulted in the lack of adequate alternative accommodation for the Indian residents.Contribution: The article offers fresh perspectives for deeper interrogation of the consequences of forced removals in apartheid South Africa, by reflecting on the memories and lived experiences of interviewees in a case study that has hitherto not been addressed by social historians. (shrink)

This article investigates the textual strategies with which Maeve Murphy's Silent Grace addresses viewers in contemporary Northern Ireland. Borrowing Eric Santner's concept of `narrative fetishism', the analysis examines how the film's representation of the past obscures the historical realities experienced by female political prisoners in Armagh jail in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From this standpoint, its ethical relation to historical `truth' and responsibilities to its local audience are debated.

At 10.17.6–16 Polybius relates how Scipio seized the opportunity offered by his capture of New Carthage in 209 B.C. to increase his fleet of quinqueremes by half as much again. There is a briefer passage on the same subject in Livy 26.47.1–3. Polybius says that the total number of prisoners taken was nearly ten thousand, from whom Scipio separated two groups: first citizens, men and women with their young children, and secondly craftsmen. He freed the former, and made the (...) latter, numbering about 2000, public slaves of Rome. In Livy's account women and children are not mentioned; the prisoners are said to be ten thousand free men. As in Polybius, the citizens are said to have been set at liberty and the two thousand craftsmen made public slaves. In Polybius Scipio is said to have selected from all those not in the first two groups ‘the strongest, the fittest looking and the youngest and mixed them up with his own crews. And making the whole body of oarsmen half as many again as before he succeeded in manning the captured ships as well as his own στε τος νδρας κστ σκει βραχ τι λεπειν το διπλασους εναι τος πρχοντας τν προγενομνων, for the captured ships were eighteen in number and the original ships thirty-five’. The corresponding passage in Livy is as follows: ‘the remaining multitude [multitudinem, a word suggesting a larger number than the two former groups together] of young inhabitants and of strong slaves he handed over to the fleet to increase the number of oarsmen . And [an increase was needed because] he had added eight captured ships to the fleet’. (shrink)

At 10.17.6–16 Polybius relates how Scipio seized the opportunity offered by his capture of New Carthage in 209 B.C. to increase his fleet of quinqueremes by half as much again. There is a briefer passage on the same subject in Livy 26.47.1–3. Polybius says that the total number of prisoners taken was nearly ten thousand, from whom Scipio separated two groups: first citizens, men and women with their young children, and secondly craftsmen. He freed the former, and made the (...) latter, numbering about 2000, public slaves of Rome. In Livy's account women and children are not mentioned; the prisoners are said to be ten thousand free men. As in Polybius, the citizens are said to have been set at liberty and the two thousand craftsmen made public slaves. In Polybius Scipio is said to have selected from all those not in the first two groups ‘the strongest, the fittest looking and the youngest and mixed them up with his own crews. And making the whole body of oarsmen half as many again as before he succeeded in manning the captured ships as well as his own στε τος νδρας κστ σκει βραχ τι λεπειν το διπλασους εναι τος πρχοντας τν προγενομνων, for the captured ships were eighteen in number and the original ships thirty-five’. The corresponding passage in Livy is as follows: ‘the remaining multitude [multitudinem, a word suggesting a larger number than the two former groups together] of young inhabitants and of strong slaves he handed over to the fleet to increase the number of oarsmen. And [an increase was needed because] he had added eight captured ships to the fleet’. (shrink)

Male-to-female transsexualism manifests itself in the form of a discrepancy between the male sex assigned at birth and the subjective experience of belonging to the female gender, which in many cases also involves a somatic transition by cross-sex hormone treatment and genital surgery. Until now, no studies related to MtF transsexualism have been carried out within the framework of a phenomenological/existential approach. This paradigm would make it possible to better articulate the transsexual experience beyond the simplistic diagnostic criteria (...) by which it is currently defined. In this study, I will reread MtF transsexualism in the light of Ludwig Binswanger’s theories on Mannerism and Jean Paul Sartre’s remarks on the self and the body. I will do this largely by focusing on first-hand accounts of the MtF transsexual’s experience, in other words from a first-person viewpoint. Finally, I will present some considerations on the meaning of psychological intervention in this field. (shrink)

Health care is provided in many contexts—not just hospitals, clinics, and community health settings. Different institutional settings may significantly influence the design and delivery of health care and the ethical obligations and practices of health care practitioners working within them. This is particularly true in institutions that are established to constrain freedom, ensure security and authority, and restrict movement and choice. We describe the results of a qualitative study of the experiences of doctors and nurses working within two women’s prisons (...) in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Their accounts make clear how the provision and ethics of health care may be compromised by the physical design of the prison, the institutional policies and practices restricting movement of prisoners and practitioners, the focus on maintaining control and security, and the very purpose of the prison and prison system itself. The results of this study make clear the impact that context has on professional practice and illustrate the importance of sociology and anthropology to bioethics and to the development of a more nuanced account of professional ethics. (shrink)