This article builds on recent accounts of diffuse and complex agentic practices in the global South by drawing on ethnographic data gathered in northwestern Ghana among the Dagaaba. Contemporary feminist discourses and theories, particularly in contexts in the global South, have sought to draw attention to the multifaceted ways in which women exercise agency in these contexts. Practices that in the past were perceived as instruments of women's subordination or as re-inscribing their oppression have been re/interpreted as agentic. Agentic practices (...) are theorized in more fluid terms than the binary pairing of agent/victim debates permit. Dagaaba contexts are deeply pervaded by beliefs in supernatural power forms, and these forces dis/empower certain forms of agentic acts. This article demonstrates that key factors combining with male power to regulate women's exercise of agency are perceived mystical forces. I argue that, in order not to risk missing agency—or rather “misdescribing” it—in the context of Dagaaba and most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where the belief in mystical forces is profoundly pervasive, the role of these power forms as important determinants of the form that agentic practices assume—and more broadly, the way power works—needs critical attention in feminist theorizing. (shrink)

The Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the journal _Agriculture and Human Values_ provided a crucial intellectual space for the early transdisciplinary critique of the industrial agrifood system. This paper describes that process and presents the concept of “The Doctors of Agrifood Studies” as a metaphor for the key role critical agrifood social scientists played in documenting the unsustainability of conventional agriculture and working to create an alternative, ethical, sustainable agrifood system. After the introduction, the paper details the “Critical (...) Turn” in agrifood studies, followed by a reconsideration of my “Four Questions” framework, focusing on the current tension between the food security and food sovereignty discourses and movements. (shrink)

Partant de l’ethnographie d’un sanctuaire végane néo-zélandais tenu par un couple de femmes se revendiquant de l’anarchisme et du féminisme intersectionnel, cet article interroge l’appréhension de l’animalité par des militantes cherchant à déconstruire les hiérarchies systémiques et les normes de genre dominantes. Entre naturalité et construction humaine, comment l’animalité est-elle considérée? De quelle manière et dans quelle mesure le prisme de lecture queer et féministe contribue-t-il à reconsidérer les animaux non-humains, et à remodeler le travail quotidien à leur côté? L’article (...) analyse l’effort de convergence des luttes qui s’observe dans ce sanctuaire, tout en l’historicisant, en revenant sur les liens historiques entre anarchisme, écologie et cause animale, et entre cause des femmes et cause animale. (shrink)

Higher education has not been spared from the effects of the disruptive aspects of technology. MOOCs, teach bots, virtual learning platforms, and Wikipedia are among technics marking a digi...

Donald Gelpi, SJ saw his life's work as an attempt to construct an integral systematic theology during a time when such projects were deemed passé and undesirable. Such attitudes did not deter him though, and he worked quietly in his office at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley for several decades developing such a system and teaching it in his classes and lectures. During those years, he produced works on theological method, sacramental theology, the Trinity, and Christology.Grounding his systematic (...) theology was a theological method defined by his fellow North American Jesuit, Bernard Lonergan. In his seminal work, Method in Theology, Lonergan articulated eight "functional specialties" for... (shrink)

In this article, I examine the marginalisation and abjection of strongwilled and assertive women in Dagaaba settings in rural north-western Ghana. This is done by paying attention to a local identity category known as pog gandao—‘a woman who is more than a man’. The pog gandao, or what I gloss as the wilful woman, concept is used by men and women locally to stigmatise hard-working and assertive Dagaaba women. Drawing inspiration from the reappropriation and redeployment of queer abjection for the (...) subversion of homophobia and the violence of compulsory heterosexuality, I demonstrate how such naming or shaming into the position of a pog gandao serves to hamper initiatives by enterprising and talented Dagaaba women. Being labelled as pog gandao, it appears, is even to lose one’s status in normative gender presentation as a woman; it means to transcend into a realm beyond the masculine. But this transcendence is not enviable due to its potential to expose the subject in question to perceived supernatural harm, a serious matter in this cultural context whereby the world of human affairs is understood as thoroughly saturated with supernatural forces that structure daily and ritual comportment. I argue that the shaming interpellation of pog gandao works as the most powerful weapon against wilful women in oppressive male-centric institutions of the Dagaaba. And yet, this stigmatised interpellation also has great emancipating potential, and I conclude by exploring ways to reclaim it for undermining female subordination, and for both empowering women and for feminist politics. (shrink)

In this outstanding introduction, Constance Meinwald covers all of Plato's philosophy and shows how he shaped the landscape of Western philosophy. Beginning with a helpful overview of what is known about Plato's life and times, she clearly explains and assesses Plato's fundamental arguments and ideas. These include the importance of Plato's view of what philosophy is and the distinctive way in which his most important arguments are presented in dialogues; his theories of ethics addressed through the fundamental and enduring (...) questions happiness and virtue; his influential treatments of the soul and immortality; the lasting contributions he made to the study of metaphysics and the nature of knowledge through his theory of the Forms; and his enduring and controversial insights into political and social thought in the context of his theories of human nature. Throughout, Constance Meinwwald draws expertly on Plato's most important dialogues to present a thorough and lively picture of his philosophy. Essential reading for students of ancient philosophy and Classics, Plato is an ideal introduction to arguably the greatest of all Western philosophers. (shrink)

The Parmenides is notorious for the criticisms it directs against Plato's own Theory of Forms, as presented in the middle period. But the second and major portion of the dialogue has generally been avoided, despite its being offered as Plato's response to the problems; the text seems intractably obscure, appearing to consist of a series of bad arguments leading to contradictory conclusions. Carefully analyzing these arguments and the methodological remarks which precede them, Meinwald shows that to understand Plato's response we (...) need to recognize his important distinction between two kinds of predication. Read in the light of this distinction, the arguments can be seen to be sound, and the contradictions merely apparent. Meinwald then proceeds to demonstrate the direct application of Plato's crucial innovation in solving the problems of the first part of the dialogue, including the infamous Third Man. On Meinwald's interpretation, the new distinction is associated with developments in metaphysics which take Plato well beyond the problems commonly thought to tell against Platonism. (shrink)

The critical studies in the Sociology of Agriculture can be generally divided into four questions: Agrarian, Environmental, Food, and Emancipatory. While the four questions overlap and all address social justice concerns, there is a chronological sequence to the studies. In this presidential address presented at the joint meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food in Society held in June 2008 in New Orleans, LA, I provide an overview of the four (...) questions and call for researchers and activists in agrifood studies to engage as public social scientists to bring about a more just and equitable agrifood system. (shrink)

The critical studies in the Sociology of Agriculture can be generally divided into four questions: Agrarian, Environmental, Food, and Emancipatory. While the four questions overlap and all address social justice concerns, there is a chronological sequence to the studies. In this presidential address presented at the joint meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society and the Association for the Study of Food in Society held in June 2008 in New Orleans, LA, I provide an overview of the four (...) questions and call for researchers and activists in agrifood studies to engage as public social scientists to bring about a more just and equitable agrifood system. (shrink)

In a series of recently published lectures and essays two Roman Catholic Cardinals—Cardinals Ratzinger and Kasper—have offered significantly different positions of the issue of the relationship of the Universal to the Particular Churches. Cardinal Kasper locates the root of the disagreement in the philosophical foundations of the two views in privileging the Universal over the Particular (or vice versa) as the starting point for ecclesiology. I will explain why I find Josiah Royce’s late work (as informed by C. S. Peirce’s (...) thought) to be a valuable resource for the complexities of such a rich ecclesiological enquiry. I examine the interrelationship between Spirit, Community and the Interpretation of Signs in the mature thought of Royce, I assess his contribution to the preceding discussion, and I offer some insights into his potential value to any ongoing dialogue on the nature and purpose of the Church. (shrink)

The importance of developing cultural competence among healthcare professionals is well recognized. However, the widespread reports of insensitivity and deficiencies in care for culturally diverse patients illuminate the need to review how cultural competence development is taught, learnt and applied in practice. Unless we can alter the ‘hearts and minds’ of practising nurses to provide the care that they know they should, culturally insensitive care will continue operating in subtle ways. This paper explores the ideas behind nurses’ actions and omissions (...) when caring for culturally diverse patients and proposes the need to examine cultural competence development through a moral reasoning lens. Examining cultural competence development through a moral reasoning lens can help empower nurses, whilst nurturing commitment and courage to providing quality care that meets the needs of culturally diverse patients. The model of morality provides a framework that explores how moral motivation and behaviour occur and can provide a vehicle for critically examining the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to provide culturally responsive care. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Le livre porte sur trois maisons de cisterciennes fondées par la famille des Haro, grands feudataires du royaume de Castille. Ces abbayes ne pouvaient rivaliser en nombre et en puissance avec celle de Las Huelgas, fondée en 1187 par le roi Alphonse VIII et sa femme Eléonore d’Angleterre, qui renfermait plus de cent moniales. Les trois maisons ici étudiées, Cañas, fondée en 1169, Vileña en 1222 et Herce en 1246, n’en hébergeaient qu’entre vingt et vingt-cinq, comme beaucoup d’autres abbayes ci...

La pornographie serait-elle l’objet d’un malentendu? Alors qu’elle s’offre une santé particulièrement réjouissante au regard du commerce mondial, il semblerait que les jugements portés sur elle ne parviennent jamais à toucher leur but. C’est que la pornographie brouille cette aptitude à dessiner clairement les limites que l’on souhaiterait repérer entre réel et imaginaire. La condamnation de cette imagerie sous l’étiquette « obscène » révèle ainsi l’incapacité à juger de la place véritable des représentations de la sexualité dans notre société, mais (...) aussi et surtout, elle révèle la difficulté à identifier le réel lui-même, et signe un dialogue de sourds sur le sens que l’on pourrait donner aux choses représentées en général. C’est sans doute qu’il y a méprise sur l’objet même de la représentation. C’est aussi que l’analyse qui ressort de ce phénomène ne parvient que rarement à sortir d’un aveuglement subtilement construit par les appartenances culturelles et les intérêts idéologiques. Effaçant les frontières a priori certaines entre imaginaire et réel, l’image pornographique donnerait au jugement une portée incapable de s’ancrer dans l’un où l’autre monde. (shrink)

Ethnography in the field of postsecondary education has served as a magnifying glass bringing into focus university culture and student life. This paper highlights the ways in which ethnography is especially useful for understanding more recent dynamics and shifts in higher education. The authors utilize existing literature to uphold the relevancy of ethnography, while exploring its opportunities for research on adult students, online education, and for-profit colleges in particular. They conclude with methodological recommendations and directions for both qualitative research and (...) higher education scholarship. (shrink)