El presente volumen forma parte de una serie de publicaciones internacionales con un enfoque específico en el campo de los estudios hispánicos. Conforman la misma tanto estudios monográficos como volúmenes colectivos en idioma alemán, español, portugués e inglés. Los editores de este número, Angela Schrott y Jan-Henrik Witthaus, son catedráticos de la Universidad de Kassel, Alemania, en Lingüística Románica y Literatura Española e Hispanoamericana, respectivamente.

This paper makes a plea for more reflexive attempts to develop and anchor the emerging concept of responsible research and innovation. RRI has recently emerged as a buzzword in science policy, becoming a focus of concerted experimentation in many academic circles. Its performative capacity means that it is able to mobilise resources and spaces despite no common understanding of what it is or should be ‘made of’. In order to support reflection and practice amongst those who are interested in and (...) using the concept, this paper unpacks understandings of RRI across a multi-disciplinary body of peer-reviewed literature. Our analysis focuses on three key dimensions of RRI that remain particularly opaque. A total of 48 publications were selected through a systematic literature search and their content was qualitatively analysed. Across the literature, RRI is portrayed as a concept that embeds numerous features of existing approaches to govern and assess emerging technologies. Our analysis suggests that its greatest potential may be in its ability to unify and provide political momentum to a wide range of long-articulated ethical and policy issues. At the same time, RRI’s dynamism and resulting complexity may represent its greatest challenge. Further clarification on what RRI has to offer in practice—beyond what has been offered to date—is still needed, as well as more explicit engagement with research and institutional cultures of responsibility. Such work may help to realise the high political expectations that are attached to nascent RRI. (shrink)

As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of decentralized clinical trials, trials conducted in whole or in part at locations other than traditional clinical trial sites, significantly increased. While these trials have the potential advantage of access, participant centricity, convenience, lower costs, and efficiency, they also raise a number of important ethical and practical concerns. Here we focus on a number of those concerns, including participant safety, privacy and confidentiality, remote consent, digital access and proficiency, and trial oversight. (...) Awareness of these ethical complexities will help foster the development of processes and cooperative solutions to promote safe, ethical trials going forward, optimized to decrease burden and increase access for all participants. (shrink)

Companies disclosing negative aspects in sustainability reports often employ legitimation strategies to present mishaps in a favorable light. In incentivized experiments, we find that nonprofessional investors divest from companies with a negative sustainability-related incident, and that symbolic legitimation (which only evasively explains a negative incident) is not a strong enough signal to counter this divestment behavior. Even substantial legitimation (which reports on measures and behavioral change) mitigates the divestment decisions only if the company reports on concrete remediation actions in morally (...) charged situations, such as social or environmental incidents. We elaborate these results in light of signaling and screening theory, and suggest the conceptual extension of “costly signals” to what we call “valuable signals.” We argue that valuable signals need be not only costly for the sender from an economic perspective but also perceived as appropriate by the receiver from a noneconomic perspective. (shrink)

This paper explores the interconnectedness of persons with disabilities, technologies and the environment by problematizing Western notions of the independent, autonomous subject. Drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s reconfiguration of the static subject as active becoming, prevailing discourses valorizing independence are critiqued as contributing to the marginalization of bodies marked as disabled. Three examples of disability “dependencies”—man-dog, man-machine, and woman-woman connectivities—are used to illustrate that subjectivity is partial and transitory. Disability connectivity thus serves a signpost for an expanded understanding of subjectivity (...) and suggests a radically altered ethics that is no longer premised on individual rights. (shrink)

"The term 'model' has become fashionable". What Mary Hesse characterized in the mid-1960s as a trend in logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences, applies today in general for a broad spectrum of disciplines. Today models appear to be of "extraordinary importance" compared to the first half of the twentieth century, when models were neither mentioned nor contemplated, either generally in scientific publications or specifically in the philosophy of science. It is even assumed that models are "the key to science" and (...) that today's science is largely... (shrink)

We surveyed 223 APA members to investigate the roles of therapists' sex, theoretical orientation, interpersonal boundaries, and clients' sex in predicting therapists' assessments of the ethicality of nonerotic dual relationships with their clients. Results indicated that therapists' sex, interpersonal boundaries, and theoretical orientation influenced ethical judgments of these relationships. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

Not at all self-evident, the so-called isomorphisms between the phenomenology and physiology of dreams have been interpreted by Hobson et al. in an arbitrary manner to state that dreams are stimulated by chaotic brainstem stimulation (an assumption also adopted by Vertes & Eastman). I argue that this stimulation is not chaotic at all; nor does it occur in the absence of control from the cerebral cortex, which contributes complexity to brainstem activity as well as meaningful information worth consolidating in the (...) brain during sleep. [Hobson et al.; Vertes & Eastman]. (shrink)

This issue is a continuation of the theme of Catholic Peacemakers in the Americas with a focus on Latin American peacemakers such as ArchbishopOscar Romero and Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J. The relationship between the Catholic Church and Latin American politics is one in which the "cross and crown" symbolize a relationship that dates back to the sixteenth century and the Spanish conquest of indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.

The passion narratives have often been read in ways that reinforce victimization of abused persons, particularly women, who accept any kind of suffering as their way of “carrying the cross” in the footsteps of Jesus. Yet these narratives can also help to galvanize communities of believers toward transformative change. The Johannine Jesus, who goes to calamity's depths for his friends, is one image that offers liberative possibilities.

There is a tension in the Gospel of Matthew between two very different images of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, God is portrayed as being boundlessly gracious and forgiving, while in eight Matthean parables, God is seen as vindictive and punitive. This poses an ethical dilemma: which God is with us and whom should we emulate?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reconsidering Buster Keaton’s HeroinesBarbara E. SavedoffIt has become commonplace to acknowledge that art tends to reflect the prejudices and presuppositions of the age in which it is produced. Such acknowledgement can serve not only to place the prejudicial attitudes expressed by artists and authors in their proper context, it can also reassure us that we have avoided the same prejudices, or at least, that we have achieved a greater (...) awareness of and sensitivity to them. But we should not be too easily reassured by these thoughts of our own enlightened progress, for the prejudices that we think we discover in works of art may sometimes be of our own making.Prejudice is, at least in part, a problem of distorted perception. Freeing oneself of prejudice is thus not simply a matter of disposing of false beliefs; it requires new habits of perception—becoming able to see what one could not see before. Since habits of perception can be deeply ingrained, we may find it difficult to recognize their persistence. Therefore even as we attempt to repudiate prejudicial attitudes, we may find ourselves misled by their continuing distortion of our vision. This can lead not only to continuing bias on our part, it can also lead to unwarranted charges of bias against others. For instance, the distorted vision that can pervade our evaluation of people in real life can also pervade our evaluation of characters in films or novels. When this happens, we may unfairly charge the film or novel with the perpetuation of negative stereotypes. There are also other ways in which we may be misled by our own biases. For example, if we expect to find negative stereotypes in the products of a given age, this may lead us to see the stereotypes that we anticipate—whether they are really there or not. The work of art can thus become a mirror of our own prejudices and preconceptions. [End Page 77]This is, I believe, what has occurred with much of the criticism of the portrayal of women in Buster Keaton’s films. Critical essays, commentaries, and even film-schedule blurbs tend either to downplay the strengths of the heroines in his films or brand them unfairly as stupid and incompetent. This unjust characterization of the heroines has become an unquestioned myth planted early in the minds of Keaton’s audiences. For example, some prints of The General contain an “educational” introduction which, among other things, describes Annabelle as yet another one of Keaton’s scatter-brained heroines. 1 The audience is thus primed to see Keaton’s heroines in this light.In my discussion I will expose the gap between the myths surrounding Keaton’s heroines and the actual characterization of those heroines in the films. I will then explore possible explanations for the durability of the myths by looking at whether there is something about Keaton’s films that provokes these prejudicial readings.IKeaton’s short film, The Balloonatic, begins in an amusement park with the hero vainly pursuing one woman after another until he is finally given a black eye by a young woman he has annoyed with his attentions. Discouraged, he wanders over to watch the launching of a hot air balloon, where he is given a pennant to attach to its top. His task completed, he finds himself atop the runaway balloon. When his rash attempt to shoot a bird perched on the balloon brings him rapidly back down to earth, he discovers himself stranded in the wilderness.The hero quickly sets out to adapt to his wilderness environment, but he is thwarted in his efforts by his inexperience and incompetence in the role of outdoorsman. He tries to fish, but when he casts his line, he catches the hook on his pants. He then dams up a stream so that he can pick up the stranded fish, but unbeknownst to him, they fall through a hole in his creel as soon as he puts them in. When he finally does realize what is happening, his dam breaks and he is carried helplessly down stream by the rush of water. Later in the film, we see the hero trying to... (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 62-64.