Sara Mills’ influential Foucauldian study of women’s travel writing, Discourses of Difference, heralded a turn from the consideration of individual female travellers as exceptions towards an analysis of the discursive pressures similarly exerted on all of them, through the awareness of normative expectations regarding the production and the reception of their writings. This article revisits panopticism in the genre by showing how travel writing reveals the intersection between the material plane and the discursive process. Through the parallel analysis of three (...) travel narratives, Anna Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, Isabella Bird’s A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, and Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, I show how their clothing and behaviour are enacted as signs of femininity for the benefit of their contemporaries, in texts whose diaristic form articulates the writing of the self and its exhibition to the public. I thus analyse how these travel narratives illustrate the intersection of the individual and the social in power relations and self-fashioning, and how their authors negotiate surveillance in gender performance. (shrink)

Florence Larocque et Anne-Marie Reynaud.

Pour les lecteurs francophones, voici deux ouvrages qui approfondissent les recherches pionnières mais non traduites d’Ute Gerhard et viennent combler une lacune sur l’histoire des féminismes allemands. Ils complètent les publications récentes d’Alice Primi et de Karen Offen et s’inscrivent dans la lignée des travaux de Marianne Walle, Rita Thalman, Marie-Claire Hoock-Demarle, pour ce qui est de la production en français. Tiré d’une thèse soutenue en 2011 à l’université de Strasbourg, le liv...

Florence Tamagne présente dans ce livre dense, mais qui aurait parfois gagné à être plus ramassé, l'essentiel d'une thèse soutenue en 1998. Il faut se réjouir de cette publication, les travaux sur l'histoire de la sexualité étant fort rares. L'histoire de l'homosexualité présente de surcroît des difficultés propres. Elle souffre plus encore que l'histoire de l'hétérosexualité du silence des acteurs. L'auteur a donc fait feu de tout bois, combiné iconographie et littérature, discours sc...

Dans un contexte de renouveau des publications féministes, paraît en 2020 Ne nous libérez pas, on s’en charge : une histoire des féminismes de 1789 à nos jours, un opus à six mains produit par les historiennes Bibia Pavard, Florence Rochefort et Michelle Zancarini-Fournel. Le titre du livre reprend un slogan féministe des années 1970, qui au-delà de la pointe d’humour, exprime la nécessité d’autonomie des femmes dans leur effort collectif pour être actrices de leur destin, des sujets et (...) non d... (shrink)

In 1566 and 1567, two noted Florentine humanists–—Vincenzio Borghini and Girolamo Mei— carried on a written debate about Florence's origins and early history. That debate reveals significant features and innovations about the ways late humanists approached and employed historical evidence, as well as their own reflections on their methods. We see important roles for both humanistic tools of textual and linguistic analysis, and for antiquarian studies of artifacts and inscriptions. Borghini won the debate, but Mei remained committed to his (...) own emphasis on textual analysis and never accepted Borghini's broad and more eclectic use of artifacts as historical sources. (shrink)

Il est de ces livres qui nous glissent entre les doigts, échappent aux tentatives d’en rendre compte, ironisent sur le projet sérieux que nous avions d’en parler. La morale et ses fables d’Anne Staquet est de ceux-là. Tout d’abord parce qu’il refuse de conclure, et nous prive d’un résultat à pouvoir exposer. En second lieu parce qu’il brouille les cartes de son style oscillant entre roman, pièce de théâtre ou essai philosophique et nous emmène dans une odyssée déstabilisante à (...) la poursuite d’une éthique non prescriptive qui finit par prendre les traits fuyants d’une éthique de la souveraineté. Sans doute, avec un brin d’obstination serait-il possible de résumer de façon classique cet ouvrage: il s’agirait de présenter la thèse générale de l’auteure, donner les grandes lignes de son argumentation et épingler quelques critiques. Quelques éléments sur l’auteure, qui a déjà publié un ouvrage sur la pensée faible de Rovatti et Vattimo (La pensée faible de Vattimo et Rovatti: une pensée-fable. (shrink)

This paper forms part of a wider study examining the history and sociology of nursing education in England between 1860 and 1948. It argues that the question of whether nursing was an art, science and/or social science has been at die ‘heart’ of a wider debate on die occupational status and disciplinary identity of nursing. The view that nursing was essentially an art and a ‘calling’, was championed by Florence Nightingale. Ethel Bedford Fenwick and her allies insisted that nursing, (...) like other professions, was a ‘scientific’ and technical enterprise. Social scientists later came to challenge nursing's claim to professionalism by analysing nursing work first within die context of industrial psychology. But they also advocated a rapprochement between nursing, health services and social science research, a challenge which we are in nursing, still striving to meet This paper argues for a strong coalition of nursing with its former nineteenth century ally, social science, in die continuing struggle for change within nursing and health care policy. Rather than searching for some rarified and purified essence of nursing knowledge, it argues that nurses need to join forces with sociologists and economists in striving to shape die agenda for health services research and provide die evidential basis for health policy transformation more generally. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage collectif issu de séminaires de l’Université de Lausanne présente des travaux portant sur le rapport des femmes au pouvoir dans trois aires linguistiques et culturelles de l’antiquité : l’Egypte pharaonique, le monde grec et le monde romain. La problématique d’ensemble rappelée dans l’avant-propos renvoie aux travaux de Fanny Cosandey sur la reine de France (La reine de France, symbole et pouvoir, Paris 2000). Il s’agit de souligner le caractère temporaire de l’autorité lorsqu’ell...

Sai Island, located in a favourable position in Upper Nubia, just south of the natural barrier represented by the Batn el-Haggar in Northern Sudan, has been continuously settled from Prehistory to modern times being occupied by various people throughout the ages. Nubian cultures of different periods but also Egyptians of the New Kingdom have left plenty of evidence on the island. The history of the systematic scientific exploration of Sai by a French mission started in 1954. The first excavat..

Sai Island, located in a favourable position in Upper Nubia, just south of the natural barrier represented by the Batn el-Haggar in Northern Sudan, has been continuously settled from Prehistory to modern times being occupied by various people throughout the ages. Nubian cultures of different periods but also Egyptians of the New Kingdom have left plenty of evidence on the island. The history of the systematic scientific exploration of Sai by a French mission started in 1954. The first excavat...

Anne Summers est chercheuse honoraire à Birkbeck, université de Londres. Elle est spécialiste de l’histoire de la Grande-Bretagne et particulièrement de l’histoire des femmes. Dans ses précédents ouvrages et articles, elle s’est déjà longuement interrogée au sujet du contexte religieux et culturel dans lequel évoluent les réformatrices qu’elle étudie, par exemple : Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845), Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) et Josephine Butler (1828-1906). Dans son dernier ouvrage, Christian...

An argument against treating our bodies as commodities No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial (...) transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, Our Bodies, Whose Property? challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies and argues against the normalization of markets in bodily services and parts. Anne Phillips explores the risks associated with metaphors of property and the reasons why the commodification of the body remains problematic. What, she asks, is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale? What, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex, reproduction, or human body parts, and the other markets we commonly applaud? Phillips contends that body markets occupy the outer edges of a continuum that is, in some way, a feature of all labor markets. But she also emphasizes that we all have bodies, and considers the implications of this otherwise banal fact for equality. Bodies remind us of shared vulnerability, alerting us to the common experience of living as embodied beings in the same world. Examining the complex issue of body exceptionalism, Our Bodies, Whose Property? demonstrates that treating the body as property makes human equality harder to comprehend. (shrink)

In this book, she offers a new way of addressing dilemmas of justice and equality in multiethnic, multicultural societies, intervening at this critical moment when so many Western countries are poised to abandon multiculturalism.

Democracy and democratization are now high on the political agenda, but there is growing indifference to the gap between rich and poor. Political equalities matter more than ever, while economic inequality is accepted almost as a fact of life. It is the separation between economic and political that lies at the heart of this book.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore artificial moral agency by reflecting upon the possibility of a Moral Turing Test and whether its lack of focus on interiority, i.e. its behaviouristic foundation, counts as an obstacle to establishing such a test to judge the performance of an Artificial Moral Agent. Subsequently, to investigate whether an MTT could serve as a useful framework for the understanding, designing and engineering of AMAs, we set out to address fundamental challenges within (...) the field of robot ethics regarding the formal representation of moral theories and standards. Here, typically three design approaches to AMAs are available: top-down theory-driven models and bottom-up approaches which set out to model moral behaviour by means of models for adaptive learning, such as neural networks, and finally, hybrid models, which involve components from both top-down and bottom-up approaches to the modelling of moral agency. With inspiration from Allen and Wallace as well as Prior, we elaborate on theoretically driven approaches to machine ethics by introducing deontic tense logic. Finally, within this framework, we explore the character of human interaction with a robot which has successfully passed an MTT. Design/methodology/approach – The ideas in this paper reflect preliminary theoretical considerations regarding the possibility of establishing a MTT based on the evaluation of moral behaviour, which focusses on moral reasoning regarding possible actions. The thoughts reflected fall within the field of normative ethics and apply deontic tense logic to discuss the possibilities and limitations of artificial moral agency. Findings – The authors stipulate a formalisation of logic of obligation, time and modality, which may serve as a candidate for implementing a system corresponding to an MTT in a restricted sense. Hence, the authors argue that to establish a present moral obligation, we need to be able to make a description of the actual situation and the relevant general moral rules. Such a description can never be complete, as the combination of exhaustive knowledge about both situations and rules would involve a God eye’s view, enabling one to know all there is to know and take everything relevant into consideration before making a perfect moral decision to act upon. Consequently, due to this frame problem, from an engineering point of view, we can only strive for designing a robot supposed to operate within a restricted domain and within a limited space-time region. Given such a setup, the robot has to be able to perform moral reasoning based on a formal description of the situation and any possible future developments. Although a system of this kind may be useful, it is clearly also limited to a particular context. It seems that it will always be possible to find special cases in which a given system does not pass the MTT. This calls for a new design of moral systems with trust-related components which will make it possible for the system to learn from experience. Originality/value – It is without doubt that in the near future we are going to be faced with advanced social robots with increasing autonomy, and our growing engagement with these robots calls for the exploration of ethical issues and stresses the importance of informing the process of engineering ethical robots. Our contribution can be seen as an early step in this direction. (shrink)

Stimuli that resemble humans, but are not perfectly human-like, are disliked compared to distinctly human and nonhuman stimuli. Accounts of this “Uncanny Valley” effect often focus on how changes in human resemblance can evoke different emotional responses. We present an alternate account based on the novel hypothesis that the Uncanny Valley is not directly related to ‘human-likeness’ per se, but instead reflects a more general form of stimulus devaluation that occurs when inhibition is triggered to resolve conflict between competing stimulus-related (...) representations. We consider existing support for this inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and further assess its feasibility through tests of two corresponding predictions that arise from the link between conflict-resolving inhibition and aversive response: 1) that the pronounced disliking of Uncanny-type stimuli will occur for any image that strongly activates multiple competing stimulus representations, even in the absence of any human-likeness, and 2) that the negative peak of an ‘Uncanny Valley’ should occur at the point of greatest stimulus-related conflict and not (in the presence of human-likeness) always closer to the ‘human’ end of a perceptual continuum. We measured affective responses to a set of line drawings representing nonhuman animal-animal morphs, in which each continuum midpoint was a bistable image (Exp. 1), as well as to sets of human-robot and human-animal computer-generated morphs (Exp. 2). Affective trends depicting classic Uncanny Valley functions occurred for all continua, including the nonhuman stimuli. Images at continua midpoints elicited significantly more negative affect than images at endpoints, even when the continua included a human endpoint. This illustrates the feasibility of the inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and the need for further research into the possibility that the strong dislike of Uncanny-type stimuli reflects the negative affective consequences of cognitive inhibition. (shrink)

Background In 2001 a report on the provision of clinical ethics support in UK healthcare institutions identified 20 clinical ethics committees. Since then there has been no systematic evaluation or documentation of their work at a national level. Recent national surveys of clinical ethics services in other countries have identified wide variation in practice and scope of activities. Objective To describe the current provision of ethics support in the UK and its development since 2001. Method A postal/electronic questionnaire survey administered (...) to the chairs of all 82 clinical ethics services registered with the UK Clinical Ethics Network in July 2010. Results Response rate was 62% with the majority of responding services situated in acute trusts. All services included a clinical ethics committee with one service also having a clinical ethicist. Lay members were present in 72% of responding committees. Individual case consultation has increased since 2001 with 29% of chairs spending more than 50% of their time on this. Access to and involvement in the process of case consultation is less for patients and families than for clinical staff. There is wide variation in committee processes and levels of institutional support. Over half of the responding committees undertook some form of evaluation. Conclusion Clinical ethics services in the UK are increasing as is their involvement in case consultation. However, the significant variation in committee processes suggests that further qualitative research is needed to understand how these committees function and the role they play in their institution. (shrink)

Democracy and democratization are now high on the political agenda, but there is growing indifference to the gap between rich and poor. Political equalities matter more than ever, while economic inequality is accepted almost as a fact of life. It is the separation between economic and political that lies at the heart of this book.

Reasoning well about risk is most challenging when a woman is pregnant, for patient and doctor alike. During pregnancy, we tend to note the risks of medical interventions without adequately noting those of failing to intervene, yet when it's time to give birth, interventions are seldom questioned, even when they don't work. Meanwhile, outside the clinic, advice given to pregnant women on how to stay healthy in everyday life can seem capricious and overly cautious. This kind of reasoning reflects fear, (...) not evidence. (shrink)

The digital shift leads to increasing changes. Employees can deal with changes through informal learning that enables needs-based development. For successful informal learning, self-regulated learning is crucial, i.e., to set goals, plan, apply strategies, monitor, and regulate learning for example by applying resource strategies. However, existing SRL models all refer to formal learning settings. Because informal learning differs from formal learning, this study investigates whether SRL models can be transferred from formal learning environments into informal work settings. More precisely, are (...) all facets relevant, and what are the relational patterns? Because informal workplace learning occurs through interaction with the context, this study investigates the influence of context, i.e., organizational learning culture and job characteristics on SRL. Structural equation modeling of N = 170 employees in various industries showed the relevance of the self-reported metacognitive strategies planning, monitoring, and regulation; the resource strategies help-seeking and effort regulation; and deep processing strategy elaboration. However, there was no evidence for organization strategies. The learning strategies were associated with self-efficacy and mastery-approach goal orientation. Regarding context, results supported indirect effects over self-motivational beliefs of learning strategies. Organizational learning culture was connected with mastery-approach goal orientation, whereas job characteristics autonomy and feedback were related to self-efficacy, which were again related to SRL strategies. Therefore, context can empower employees not only to accomplish their tasks but to develop themselves by applying SRL strategies. The results are discussed, and practical implications are outlined. (shrink)

Involuntary autobiographical memories are spontaneously arising memories of personal events, whereas voluntary memories are retrieved strategically. Voluntary remembering has been studied in numerous experiments while involuntary remembering has been largely ignored. It is generally assumed that voluntary recall is the standard way of remembering, whereas involuntary recall is the exception. However, little is known about the actual frequency of these two types of remembering in daily life. Here, 48 Danish undergraduates recorded their involuntary versus voluntary autobiographical memories during a day (...) using a mechanical counter. Involuntary memories were reported three times as frequently as voluntary memories. Compared to voluntary memories, they were associated less with problem solving and social sharing and more with day dreaming, periods of boredom, no reasons for remembering and predominantly came to mind during unfocused attention. The findings suggest that involuntary recall is a typical way of accessing the personal past. (shrink)

In this original and controversial book Professor Rawls argues that Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is the crowning achievement of his sociological endeavour and that since its publication in English in 1915 it has been consistently misunderstood. Rather than a work on primitive religion or the sociology of knowledge, Rawls asserts that it is an attempt by Durkheim to establish a unique epistemological basis for the study of sociology and moral relations. By privileging social practice over beliefs and (...) ideas, it avoids the dilemmas inherent in philosophical approaches to knowledge and morality that are based on individualism and the tendency to privilege beliefs and ideas over practices, both tendencies that dominate western thought. Based on detailed textual analysis of the primary text, this book will be an important and original contribution to contemporary debates on social theory and philosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, an increasing number of theoretical biologists and philosophers of biology have been opposing reductionist research agendas by appealing to the concept of biological autonomy which draws on the older concept of autopoiesis. In my paper, I investigate some of the ontological implications of this approach. The emphasis on autonomy and autopoiesis, together with the associated idea of organisational closure, might evoke the impression that organisms are to be categorised ontologically as substances: ontologically independent, well-individuated, discrete particulars. However, (...) I argue that this is mistaken. Autopoiesis and biological autonomy, properly understood, require a rigorous commitment to a process ontological view of life. (shrink)

Is there a link between how a firm manages its internal and external stakeholders? More specifically, are firms that give employees stock ownership and more say in running the enterprise more likely to engage with external stakeholders? This study seeks to answer these questions by elaborating on mechanisms that link employees to external stakeholders, such as the community, suppliers, and the environment. It tests these relationships using a sample of 347 private, mostly small-to-medium size firms, which completed a stakeholder impact (...) assessment organized by the non-profit B Lab. The results support the hypotheses that both employee ownership and employee involvement are positively associated with external stakeholder engagement. Further, we found that certification plays a role, as employee ownership contributes to external stakeholder engagement only in certified B Corporations, and not in firms that merely completed the B Lab Impact assessment. Our findings have import for stakeholder engagement frameworks, as we show that there is interplay between internal employee stakeholders and external stakeholders that may be important to overall firm–stakeholder management. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

In recent years, an increasing number of theoretical biologists and philosophers of biology have been opposing reductionist research agendas by appealing to the concept of biological autonomy which draws on the older concept of autopoiesis. In my paper, I investigate some of the ontological implications of this approach. The emphasis on autonomy and autopoiesis, together with the associated idea of organisational closure, might evoke the impression that organisms are to be categorised ontologically as substances: ontologically independent, well-individuated, discrete particulars. However, (...) I argue that this is mistaken. Autopoiesis and biological autonomy, properly understood, require a rigorous commitment to a process ontological view of life. (shrink)

This book explores five Platonic dialogues: Lysis, Charmides, Protagoras, Euthydemus, and the Republic. This book uses Socrates’ narrative commentary as its primary interpretive framework. No one has engaged in a sustained attempt to explore the Platonic dialogues from this angle. As a result, it offers a unique contribution to Plato scholarship. The portrait of Socrates that emerges challenges the traditional view of Socrates as an intellectualist and offers a holistic vision of philosophical practice.

The United States National Preparedness System has evolved significantly in the recent past. These changes have affected the system structures and goals for disaster response. At the same time, actors such as private businesses have become increasingly involved in disaster efforts. In this paper, we begin to fill the gap in the cross-sector literature regarding interactions that have systemic impacts by investigating how the simultaneous processes of systemic change and intensifying cross-sector interaction worked and interacted in the context of the (...) preparedness system. We examine these inter-linkages through a qualitative study in the setting of Hurricane Sandy. Drawing from systems theory, we develop a grounded model that provides an explanation for the system change and highlights how cross-sector interaction relates to the changes observed in the system. (shrink)

Social media platforms have been vested with hope for their potential to enable ‘ordinary citizens’ to make their judgments public and contribute to pluralized discussions about organizations and their perceived legitimacy :60–97, 2018). This raises questions about how ordinary citizens make judgements and voice them in online spaces. This paper addresses these questions by examining how Western citizens ascribe responsibility and action in relation to corporate misconduct. Empirically, it focuses on modern slavery and analyses online debates in Denmark on child (...) slavery in the cocoa industry. Conceptually, it introduces the notion of cosmopolitanism as a general disposition of care and responsibility towards distant others, conceived as a prerequisite for the critical evaluation of corporate responsibility in the Global South. The analysis of online debates shows that citizens debate child slavery in terms of individual consumer responsibility rather than corporate responsibility. Corporations are not considered potential agents of change. As a consequence, online citizen debates did not reflect a legitimacy crisis for the cocoa industry, as debates over responsibility were overwhelmingly concerned with the agency of the Western individual, the individual agency of the speakers themselves. Participants in debates understood their agency strictly as consumer agency. (shrink)