From Odysseus' seduction by the song of the Sirens to Oscar Moore's 1991 novel A Matter of Life and Sex , whose protagonist courts death through sex and dies of AIDS, the frustrated relationship between death and desire has fixated the Western imagination. Philosophers have grappled with it and poets have told of its beauty and pain. In this strikingly original work, cultural critic Jonathan Dollimore once again demonstrates his remarkable ability to take on the complex and reveal its (...) relevance with eloquence and grace. Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley, Hölderlin with Foucault. Dollimore, a gifted thinker, is not content to summarize these texts from afar; instead, he weaves a thread through each to tell the magnificent story of the making of the modern individual. An immensely important book, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a challenge to the way we understand desire, sexuality, and the very notion of identity. (shrink)

This paper examines the loss of culture as a possible effect of the neoliberalisation of education, especially higher education. The paper opens with a brief comparison between the humanistic education founded on the idea of culture and its modern-day neoliberal form, with the help of José Ortega y Gasset’s reflections on the mission of higher education. It then discusses certain aspects of the historical development of libraries and of the figure of the public intellectual with a view to bringing (...) into relief some negative repercussions that can, and already do affect the university. The paper also explores aspects of John Dewey’s and Theodor W. Adorno’s thoughts to draw lessons with respect to how experience and culture are not only essential components of education as a whole, but also elements of resilience amidst a series of contemporary challenges that threaten its purpose and meaning. The paper draws to a close with some suggestive yet inconclusive remarks on the promises inherent in existing and possible alternatives to the neoliberalised university. (shrink)

Abraham Drassinower takes a fresh look at Freud, countering his prevalent image as a man pessimistically renouncing the possibility of social, political, and cultural change.

In this book, Diana Senechal confronts a culture that has come to depend on instant updates and communication at the expense of solitude. Schools today emphasize rapid group work and fragmented activity, not the thoughtful study of complex subjects. The Internet offers contact with others throughout the day and night; we lose the ability to be apart, even in our minds. Yet solitude plays an essential role in literature, education, democracy, relationships, and matters of conscience. Throughout its analyses and argument, (...) the book calls not for drastic changes but for a subtle shift: an attitude that honors solitude without descending into dogma. (shrink)

The publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in 1971 coincided with a complex set of changes in the political situation of the west, the role of intellectuals, the state of the social sciences and humanities, and in the development of the welfare state itself. These changes provided the conditions for the creation of a body of thought quite different from the one the sixties had produced, and a significant change from the discipline-dominated thinking of the period after the (...) Second World War. The immediately relevant events included the effective demise of Parsons’ systems theory, the waning of the passions of 1968, and an enrollment crisis in universities’ humanities and social science departments as economic fear drove students into professional programs, creating a sharp downturn in demand for faculty. The optimism that had characterized disciplines in these fields during the 1960s quickly faded. The idea that sociology was soon to become a “science,” the source of the positivism dispute of the sixties, faded along with it. Logical Positivism as a coherent movement collapsed under the weight of the problems of the theory-observation distinction. At the same time Political Theory, which had been taught largely as an historical study – a history of error, as Leo Strauss described the standard textbook of the time, George Sabine’s A History of Political Theory, or as a continuation of the mood of Kulturpessimismus, as in the writings of Sabine’s critic, Leo Strauss – revived, partly in response to the stimulus from the success of Rawls, partly in response to new ideas about participatory democracy rooted in the experience of the sixties. Social theory also changed: the role that Parsons had played as a focus of theoretical discussion was replaced; the work of Ju˝rgen Habermas, particularly his Theory of Communicative Action, reassessed and re-appropriated the classical theoretical tradition in social theory to replace Parsons’ synthetic account, and this work coincided with a systematic reconsideration of the classic social theorists, especially Weber. An additional source of new thinking came from the “dependent” periphery, as thinkers such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, which emancipated Socialist theory from received dogmas about class struggle and recognized the centrality of other antagonisms and the need for open democracy. (shrink)

One serious harm facing communities in the Anthropocene is epistemic loss. This is increasingly recognized as a harm in international policy discourses around adaptation to climate change. Epistemic loss is typically conceived of as the loss of a corpus of knowledge, or less commonly, as the further loss of epistemic methodologies. In what follows, I argue that epistemic loss also can involve the loss of epistemic self-determination, and that this framework can help to usefully (...) examine adaptation policies. (shrink)

The article offers insights into the cultural, historical and political discourses that shape displaced Bhutanese-Nepali youth's reading of what citizenship is and what citizenship can be. The article argues for the need to recognize how displaced communities desire to reclaim legal and cultural citizenship in response to the oppressions they have encountered. The article explores the politics that have produced refugee subjects and how displaced communities interpret the meaning of citizenship in response to the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee climate (...) in the United States (and in the world). The research similarly documents how citizenship narratives can speak of anxiety and loss that communities have experienced and how youth resist interpretations of citizenship that privilege national affiliations. The research advocates that social studies researchers engage with how displaced communities conceptualize citizenship in relation to their experiences and histories of displacement. The article also calls for the need to recognize how transnational and cultural aspect of citizenship shapes marginalized people's everyday experiences. (shrink)

This explorative article conceptualizes the myth as a cultural locus where different concepts are ordered forming semantic networks and as a social narrative reflecting emotional predispositions toward the social significance of an episode in the past. The article analyzes the semantic network formed within the Arthurian myth by the concepts Britain and imperium. It identifies a persistent semilogical dynamic between both concepts but shifting emotional responses and temporalities: loss and longing among the Welsh (sixth century to eleventh century), (...) fixing the memory in the past; joy among the English (twelfth century to fifteenth century), bringing the memory into the present; and anxiety and desire among Welsh and English (sixteenth century) projecting the memory to the future. During the seventeenth century, the semantic network left the Arthurian myth, which fell into a relative oblivion. (shrink)

The interpretation and sense of illness are strictly related to our cultural development, historical situation and beliefs. Scientific discoveries and medical progress over the centuries have led to changes in the concept of illness, changes that affected the interpretation people gave (and give) to illness.

First, a remark on the topic of my paper, which contains an 'and' where one would expect an 'or'. It might seem highly questionable to want to establish a relation between the self-proclaimed 'last anti-political German', teacher of self-overcoming and solitude, and a political thinker with an express commitment to political action and citizen equality. Would a genuine concern with both thinkers not precisely preclude any attempt to fabricate an alliance between them?One way of circumventing this difficulty might be to (...) argue that Nietzsche is really a political thinker, and, more problematically, that he is some version of a radical democrat. Conversely, one might try to demonstrate that Arendt is really a closet Nietzschean — provided, of course, that one takes Nietzsche to be amenable to a modicum of democratic theory.However, such an attempt to force their divergent projects into the straitjacket of mutual consistency would lose more in integrity — and ultimately, in relevance — than it would gain in cohesion. It is not my intention, therefore, to try and merge their respective undertakings into either a watered-down Nietzsche or a spiced-up Arendt, or to cobble together a new political theory out of their different philosophies.Instead of aiming at an ultimate synthesis, my concern in this paper is with a particular field of inquiry where Nietzsche’s thinking finds, to some extent, its analogue in that of Arendt. The purpose of this exercise is not to simply show up a few points of similarity, but rather, to illuminate a particular problem from two perspectives that stand in an analogical, rather than dialectical, relationship to one another.This analogical relationship does not resolve itself into an ultimate synthesis, and is not predicated on a seamless fit between two different fields of reference. On the contrary, this relationship, like any analogy, has an inevitable remainder, something held in abeyance that transcends the relationship with the analogon. Moreover, as will become clear, it is the differences as much as the affinities between Nietzsche and Arendt’s thinking that serve to illuminate the question this paper aims to address.This question concerns modernity as a condition of disintegration or loss, and particularly the loss of a coherent cultural complex — that is, an inter-human domain of “structured sense”, to borrow a term from Nancy — which necessarily circumscribes the meaning of the human. The premise of the paper, then, is that what has been lost in modernity are the cultural conditions for being — or becoming — human, as opposed to enduring only as a form of animal life or, on the other side of the scale, descending into barbarism . This premise derives from the analogous critiques of modernity developed by Nietzsche and Arendt, in so far as both thinkers examine the problem of modernity through the optics of culture.My argument proceeds in three stages. The first part of the paper examines the meaning and status of 'modernity' in Nietzsche's and Arendt’s respective projects. Here I investigate the time of modernity as falling literally 'between past and future', in which the present exists as only as a gap or aporia between the 'no longer' and the 'not yet'. This focus also serves as an introduction to the problem of the meaning of the human in the absence of any conception of a durable world. Part two examines Nietzsche's and Arendt’s analogical understanding of the human in relation to limitation and transcendence, which allows for a consideration, in part three of the paper, of the extent to which modernity entails a negation of both limitation and transcendence, and a concomitant loss of the human.By way of conclusion, I offer a brief consideration of the future of the human, at which point it also becomes clear in which respects the Nietzschean and Arendtian projects ultimately diverge. (shrink)

A leading figure in the emerging field of extinction studies, Thom van Dooren puts philosophy into conversation with the natural sciences and his ethnographic encounters to vivify the cultural and ethical significance of modern-day extinctions. Unlike other meditations on the subject, _Flight Ways_ incorporates the particularities of real animals and their worlds, drawing philosophers, natural scientists, and general readers into the experience of living among and losing biodiversity. Each chapter of _Flight Ways_ focuses on a different species or group (...) of birds: North Pacific albatrosses, Indian vultures, an endangered colony of penguins in Australia, Hawaiian crows, and the iconic whooping cranes of North America. Written in eloquent and moving prose, the book takes stock of what is lost when a life form disappears from the world--the wide-ranging ramifications that ripple out to implicate a number of human and more-than-human others. Van Dooren intimately explores what life is like for those who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving their dead. He bolsters his studies with real-life accounts from scientists and local communities at the forefront of these developments. No longer abstract entities with Latin names, these species become fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life, sparking our sense of curiosity, concern, and accountability toward others in a rapidly changing world. (shrink)

Human beings have a tendency to transform geographical spaces into dwelling places which assume significance in terms of their social, cultural and personal identities. The authors describe the ways in which this occurs, how it is disrupted by a natural disaster - an Australian bushfire - and how the reciprocal relationship between place and person can contribute to personal and communal healing. The discussion draws on a doctoral thesis conducted by the principal author, and is illuminated by excerpts from (...) narratives provided by those who experienced the bushfire. The discussion is informed by insights from phenomenological geography and ecological philosophy. (shrink)

Taking my cue from Judith Schalanskys 2018 work Verzeichnis einiger Verluste, I discuss the striking presence of lists and list-like, enumerative structures in contemporary literature. As a poetic principle, the use of lists and enumerations becomes a means of defamiliarizing the mundane and familiar, and at the same time also shows a preoccupation with existential issues.

Aesthetics is a crucial ecosystem service provided by biodiversity, which is believed to help improve humans’ quality of life and is linked to environmental consciousness and pro-environmental behaviors. However, how aesthetic experience induced by plants/animals influences the belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss among urban residents remains understudied. Thus, the current study aimed to examine how the diversity of pets and in-house plants affect urban residents’ belief in biodiversity loss in different scenarios of aesthetic experiences (...) (positive and negative aesthetic experiences at home due to plants/animals). Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, we found that the people’s aesthetic feeling about their house induced by plants/animals positively affects their belief in the occurrence and significance of biodiversity loss. The diversity of plants and pets also positively influences the level of biodiversity loss belief, but the effect is conditional on the aesthetic experience of the urban residents. Specifically, the positive impact of species diversity on the belief only exists when urban residents feel that their houses’ aesthetics are negatively affected by plants/animals. Moreover, the effect of pet diversity on biodiversity loss belief is less significant and reliable than that of plant diversity. These findings suggest that raising the houses’ aesthetics through in-house planting or pet ownership can potentially enhance biodiversity loss belief and subsequently build an eco-surplus culture among urban residents. (shrink)

"A study of the cultural politics of loss and mourning in France from 1978 to the present. Focuses on national identity, secularism, Jacobin republicanism, and political-cultural exceptionalism"--Provided by publisher.

The five-stage skill-acquisition model developed by Stuart Dreyfus is revisited as an integral part of culture acquisition. This examination sheds light on the role intuitive knowledge plays during the 4th and 5th stages. When modern technology becomes universal and detaches itself from culture, this intuitive knowledge changes. This accounts for the loss of technologies that were socially appropriate and environmentally sustainable.

The SARS-COVID-2 virus that causes the Coronavirus has been having a challenging and devastating impact on finances and jobs worldwide. More specifically, in South Africa, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a crippling effect on jobs. Companies and businesses are struggling to operate and retain workers as revenue streams are drying up. Owners of companies and businesses have been forced to make difficult decisions. An example is the retrenchment of workers by some organizations because of the financial fall-out due to the (...) coronavirus pandemic. Also, before the pandemic, South Africa had unemployment challenges, economic downgrading, and high levels of inequality. These challenges bring to mind what the employment method and strategy will look like during the -COVID-19. In view of these challenges, one question that comes to mind is: given the COVID-19pandemic and the fact that the job losses affected people of all races, should the policies of affirmative action and preferential hiring still be considered in South Africa? Thus, this paper is a philosophical reflection on COVID-19, job losses, affirmative action, and preferential hiring in South Africa. In reflecting on the above, this paper aims to show that affirmative action and preferential hiring should not be considered in South Africa during the -COVID-19. I conclude that in the face of this tragedy, for the sustainability of the economy, everyone needs to work together to re-establish and reconstruct the country and build an inclusive economy. Keywords: Affirmative action, COVID-19 pandemic, Job losses, Preferential hiring, South Africa. (shrink)

One’s generosity to others declines as a function of social distance, which is known as social discounting. We examined cultural similarities and differences in social discounting and the mediating roles of the two aspects of interdependence (self-expression and distinctiveness of the self) as well as the two aspects of independence (harmony-seeking and rejection avoidance). Using the same procedure that previous researchers used to test North Americans, Study 1 showed that compared to North Americans, Japanese discount more steeply a partner’s (...) outcomes compared to their own future outcomes, whereas the decrease in the subjective value of the partner’s outcomes accelerates less as a function of social distance. To examine the cultural similarities and differences in social discounting in more detail, Study 2 tested Japanese and Germans and found that the hyperbolic with exponent model fitted the participants’ discounting behaviors better than the other models, except for the loss condition in Germans where the utility of the q-exponential model was indicated. Moreover, although the social discounting rate was higher in Japanese than in Germans, the cultural difference was limited to the gain frame. However, the decline in a person’s generosity accelerated less as a function of social distance in Japanese than in Germans. Furthermore, the cultural difference in the social discounting in gains was mediated by the level of harmony-seeking, which was higher in Germans than in Japanese. Implications for individuals’ generosity against the backdrop of cultural characteristics are discussed. (shrink)

Philosophers, novelists, and intercultural comparisons : Heidegger, Kundera, and Dickens /​ Richard Rorty Lifeworlds, modernity, and philosophical praxis : race, ethnicity, and critical social theory /​ Lucius Outlaw Modern China and the postmodern West /​ David L. Hall From Marxism to post-Marxism /​ Svetozar Stojanović Incommensurability and otherness revisited /​ Richard J. Bernstein Incommensurability, truth, and the conversation between Confucians and Aritotelians about the virtues /​ Alasdair MacIntyre The commensurability of Indian epistemological theories /​ Karl H. Potter Pluralism, relativism, and (...) interaction between cultures /​ Bimal K. Matilal The problem of relativism /​ Jiang Tianji. Between relativism and fundamentalism : hermeneutics as Europe’s mainstream political and moral tradition /​ Ferenc Feher Conceptual schemes and linguistic relativism in relation to Chinese /​ A.C. Graham The origins of the question : four traditional Japanese philosophies of language /​ Thomas P. Kasulis Meaning as imaging : Prolegomena to a Confucian epistemelogy /​ Roger T. Ames On the dual nature of traditional Chinese thought and its modernization /​ Li Zhilin A planetary macroethics for humankind : the need, the apparent difficulty, and the eventual possibility /​ Karl-Otto Apel Reasonable challenges and preconditions of adjudication /​ Antonio S. Cua The French Revolution and the Holocaust : can ethics be ahistorical? /​ Hilary Putnam Tradition and moral progress /​ Joel J. Kupperman The shape of artistic pasts, East and West /​ Arthur C. Danto. Surrealistic distortion of landscape and the reason of the milieu /​ Megumi Sakabe Why art changes /​ Richard Wollheim The transcendental in a comparative context /​ Frederick J. Streng Reflections on religious pluralism in the Indian context /​ Margaret Chatterjee Three enduring achievements of Islamic philosophy /​ Lenn E. Goodman Two dimensions of religion : reflections based on Indian spiritual experience and philosophical traditions /​ G.C. Pande Between nationalism and nomadism : wondering about the languages of philosophy /​ Graham Parkes The discourse of cultural authenticity : Islamist revivalism and enlightenment universalism /​ Aziz Al-Azmeh Traditional political values and ideas : an examination of their relevance to developments in contemporary African political order /​ Kwame Gyekye On the interpretation of traditional cultures /​ Maria L. Herrera. The concept of progress and cultural identity /​ Roop Rekha Verma Moses, Hsüan-tsang, and history /​ Agnes Heller Secularism : sacred and profane /​ Daya Krishna Scientific progress and content loss /​ Larry Laudan A dialectical view of scientific rationality and progress /​ Marcello Pera Scientific progress reconsidered /​ Ilkka Niiniluoto Does progress in science lead to truth? /​ Lorenz Krüger. (shrink)

Liberal-Democratic changes in the Russian Society have brought a number of acute problems threatening national security and leading to converting Russia into a peripheral socio-cultural system («national self-identification crisis»). Scientific research shows that the main indicator of the said crisis is not only the critical economic differentiation of people into the «poor» and «rich» Russia (with the different ways of life, needs, mentality) but also spiritual degradation, spread of aggressive – depressive syndrome (growth of hatred, feeling of injustice, (...) class='Hi'>loss of meaning of the life, anger, melancholy, hopelessness, loneliness etc.). Twothirds of the citizens (74.9%) interviewed in 2006 think that their social status does not correspond to their personal achievements in education and professional abilities. One of the main reasons of their distrust towards the government bodies is insufficient professional and cultural level, absence of unity of a word and business. It is worth mentioning that books and articles of scientists and ideologists who resist Western liberalism are freely published, but you can hardly see these people close to the President. Russians are openly and secretly under pressure of ideas propagandizing negative past which undermine national self-identification, national pride for the great history of their country. The original sphere of influence of Russian language and Russian culture is shortening under the press of mass-culture. Meanwhile, 67% of Russians expressed their negative attitude towards massive Western cultural expansion. The Futureof Russia is in safeguarding national intellectual and spiritual values, Science, education and in supporting the person of work and creativity. (shrink)

The rapidly declining biosphere integrity, representing one of the core planetary boundaries, is alarming. One of the most widely accepted measures to halt the rate of biodiversity loss is to maintain and expand protected areas that are effectively managed. However, it requires substantial finance derived from nature-based tourism, specifically visitors from urban areas. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) on 535 Vietnamese urban residents, the current study examined how their biodiversity loss perceptions can affect their willingness to pay (...) for the entrance fee and conservation in protected areas. We found that perceived environmental degradation, loss of economic growth, loss of nature-based recreation opportunity, and loss of knowledge as consequences of biodiversity loss has indirect effects on paying willingness through the mediation of the attitude towards conservation. Especially, the perceived knowledge loss also has a direct positive influence on the willingness to pay for the entrance fee and conservation. In contrast, perceived loss of health is negatively associated with the attitude towards conservation. Based on these findings, we suggest that building an eco-surplus culture among urban residents can be a promising way to generate more finance from nature-based tourism for conservation in protected areas and ease the domestic government's and international organizations' funding allocations problems. (shrink)

Demography plays a large role in cultural evolution through its effects on the effective rate of innovation. If we assume that useful inventions are rare, then small isolated societies will have low rates of invention. In small populations, complex technology will tend to be lost as a result of random loss or incomplete transmission (the Tasmanian effect). Large populations have more inventors and are more resistant to loss by chance. If human populations can grow freely, then a (...) population-technology-population positive feedback should occur such that human societies reach a stable growth path on which the rate of growth of technology is limited by the rate of invention. This scenario fits the Holocene to a first approximation, but the late Pleistocene is a great puzzle. Large-brained hominins existed in Africa and west Eurasia for perhaps 50,000 years with, at best, slow rates of technical innovation. The most sophisticated societies of the last glacial period appear after 50,000 years ago and were apparently restricted to west and north-central Eurasia and North Africa. These patterns have no simple, commonly accepted explanation. We argue that increased high-frequency climate change around 70,000–50,000 years ago may have tipped the balance between humans and their competitor-predators, such as lions and wolves, in favor of humans. At the same time, technically sophisticated hunters would tend to overharvest their prey. Perhaps the ephemeral appearance of complex tools and symbolic artifacts in Africa after 00,000 years ago resulted from hunting inventions that allowed human populations to expand temporarily before prey overexploitation led to human population and technology collapse. Sustained human populations of moderate size using distinctively advanced Upper Paleolithic artifacts may have existed in west Eurasia because cold, continental northeastern Eurasia–Beringia acted as a protected reserve for prey populations. (shrink)

The mainstream approach to the understanding of pain continues to be governed by the biomedical paradigm and the dualistic Cartesian ontology. This Volume brings together essays of scholars of literature, philosophy and history on the many enigmatic shades of pain-experience, mostly from an anti-Cartesian perspective of cultural ontology by scholars of literature, philosophy and history. A section of the essays is devoted to the socio-political dimensions of pain in the Indian context. The book offers a critical perspective on the (...) reductive conceptions of pain and argue that non-substance ontology or cultural ontology supports a more humane and authentic understanding of pain. The general ontological features of the self in pain and culturally imbued dimensions of pain-experience are, thus, brought together in a rare blend in this Volume. The essays dwell on the importance of understanding what cultural, social and political forces outside our control do to our pain-experience. They show why such understanding is necessary, both to humanely deal with pain, and to rectify erroneous approaches to pain-experience. They also explore the thoroughly ambivalent spaces between pain and pleasure, and the cathartic and productive dimensions of pain. The essays in this Volume investigate pain-experiences through the fresh lenses of history, gender, ethics, politics, death, illness, self-loss, torture, shame, dispossession and denial. (shrink)

Public parks play important roles in conserving biodiversity, promoting environmental sustainability, fostering community engagement, and enhancing the overall well-being of residents in urban areas. Nevertheless, finance is needed to maintain and expand the greenspaces in the parks. The current study aims to examine how perceptions of biodiversity loss consequences and park visitation frequency influence the residents’ willingness to contribute financially to tree-planting projects in public parks. Employing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics on a dataset of 535 Vietnamese urban residents, (...) we discovered that perceived health loss and knowledge erosion as consequences of biodiversity loss and park visitation frequency are directly positively associated with financial donation willingness. Meanwhile, the perceived economic growth loss was found to be indirectly positively associated with donation willingness through park visitation frequency, whereas the perceived loss of nature-based recreation opportunities exhibits the opposite indirect association. Based on these results, communication strategies focusing on the multifaceted benefits of biodiversity preservation and investments in public parks are recommended to improve urban residents’ financial support to park panting initiatives, accessibility to greenspaces, and connections with nature. These are crucial for promoting an eco-surplus culture that enhances biodiversity conservation and human well-being. (shrink)

The philosophical classic explores the value and significance of leisure, arguing that it is the foundation of any culture, necessary for the development of religion and the contemplation of the nature of God, and issues a warning about the loss of insight due to our substitution of hectic amusements for nonactivity, silence, and true leisure.

This collection of papers explores one of the central debates in the field of bioethics in the new century. It evaluates the controversy between the claim that there is a common morality accepted by all and the opposing view that there are different moral visions and moral rationalities, within which complex bioethical issues demand a solution. Contributions within this volume offer different approaches and perspectives on the pursuit of global ethics in the new century. They are organized under five major (...) themes. The first theme explores the different plausible understandings of the foundations of bioethics and contemporary reflections on the nature and role of moral theory. The second theme analyses the impact of moral loss and moral diversity on the character of bioethics and the search for alternative perspectives in post-traditional and post-modern societies. The third theme examines a number of theoretical issues raised by concrete examples of bioethnological applications, which bear importantly on contemporary debates between the possibility and impossibility of global bioethics. The fourth theme discusses examples of moral conflicts and dilemmas in everyday health care practice regarding the permissible treatment of humans by humans under different ethical perspectives and cultural traditions. The fifth theme explores alternative suggestions for opening up new modes of self-understanding and new strategies for bioethical exploration in the new century. The volume is an important work of reference for philosophers, moral theologians, ethicists, counsellors, doctors, nurses, sociologists, journalists, health care professionals, public policy makers and everyone who is interested in the profound ethical issues arising from modern technological advancements which are not only transforming our lives but are also demanding urgent ethical decision-making and `pragmatic' solutions from a cross-cultural perspective. (shrink)

An important discussion in contemporary ethics concerns the relevance of empirical research for ethics. Specifically, two crucial questions pertain, respectively, to the possibility of inferring normative statements from descriptive statements, and to the danger of a loss of normativity if normative statements should be based on empirical research. Here we take part in the debate and defend integrated empirical ethical research: research in which normative guidelines are established on the basis of empirical research and in which the guidelines are (...) empirically evaluated by focusing on observable consequences. We argue that in our concrete example normative statements are not derived from descriptive statements, but are developed within a process of reflection and dialogue that goes on within a specific praxis. Moreover, we show that the distinction in experience between the desirable and the undesirable precludes relativism. The normative guidelines so developed are both critical and normative: they help in choosing the right action and in evaluating that action. Finally, following Aristotle, we plead for a return to the view that morality and ethics are inherently related to one another, and for an acknowledgment of the fact that moral judgments have their origin in experience which is always related to historical and cultural circumstances. (shrink)

In this study we explore how a selection of Norwegian women account for their decision to undergo weight loss surgery. We argue that women’s descriptions of their experiences leading up to this choice of action illuminate issues regarding social norms of bodily appearance and personal responsibility. The starting point is women’s own experiences within a cultural context in which opting for WLS often attracts moral scrutiny. Inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s notion of consciousness as embodied and de Beauvoir’s ideas concerning (...) women’s situation, we argue that bodily as well as socio-cultural aspects intertwine with women’s choice of surgery as a means of losing weight. Although society’s stigmatization of women with obesity has been well challenged by scholars in the field of critical fat studies, women with obesity still experience the bodily hindrances associated with being overweight in an intense and subjective way. The findings suggest that women confronting the option of WLS do so in a context of pain, dysfunction and social stigma, a combination which illuminates the intricate ambiguity of the obese body as both subject and object. (shrink)

Harris presents neuroscience findings and reveals fantasy as the brain's default mode as it alters identity during unbearable trauma or loss. The book also presents case histories of cultural conflicts, and examines populist bias vs. elite global influence in a neuropsychoanalytic context.

The author claims that recent publications on the theory of music and literature show some new trends in constructivist philosophy of culture. One of them is the idea of subconscious roots of cultural artifacts that has been applied in music studies. It was at this point it becomes clear that in order to identify variants of constructivism as indicators you can use some very simple assumptions, for example, the assumption of the possibility of the ontological significance of the “artistry" (...) of the text. Such an assumption implicitly contains epistemological realism. So it becomes clear that realism is not something completely dead, including those for constructivism. Where constructivism allows the existence of good (“classic") texts, that is, of “high culture", he is tolerant to realism. On the other side, rejection of the classics is a sign of the radical versions of constructivism. There is possibility of fixing the difference between ontologies, which differ among themselves as a state of loss and forgetting the reality. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis essay argues that a prime source of contemporary technological pessimism is the loss of place that accompanied the conquest of space through the construction of large technological systems of transportation and communication. This loss may involve physical destruction, or it may involve the more subtle withdrawal of economic, political, and cultural meaning and power from localities in favor of these far-flung systems.The argument proceeds in five stages. First, key terms are defined, notably “environmental damage” and (...) “technological system.” Second, the origins of the modern ideology of circulation are traced in the development of a capitalist world-economy, and in the historical theories of Enlightenmentphilosophes(with special attention to Turgot and Condorcet). Third, possible relations between that ideology and nineteenth-century systems-building are briefly sketched. Fourth, the ambiguous political character of these systems — at once liberating and constraining — is noted. Finally, the cultural challenge of overcoming spatial alienation is described with reference to some late nineteenth-century writers who sought to trace new pathways both spatially and linguistically. (shrink)

Congenital deafness is one of the most common birth defects reported. Approximately 70% of congenital deafness is non-syndromic, and approximately 80% of non-syndromic hearing loss results from a genetic cause. Middleton et al.’s1998 study highlighted the negative attitudes of culturally Deaf individuals towards genetic testing for genes known to cause hearing loss. While studies concerning genetic testing for deafness genes reference Middleton’s study, to our knowledge a re-evaluation of the attitudes of Deaf individuals towards genetic testing has not (...) been conducted recently. The purpose of this study is to re-establish attitudes of Deaf individuals towards genetic testing of genes known to cause hearing loss. A computer-based questionnaire was distributed to members of the Deaf community. Responses of participants were recorded and analyzed. The primary investigator then attended Deaf community events and the 2015 Alabama Association of the Deaf Conference, and recruited individuals interested in participating in the study. The surveys were distributed to these individuals and their anonymous responses were analyzed. Our results show there are more positive attitudes within the Deaf community towards genetic counseling, genetic testing, and prenatal testing of genes known to cause hearing loss than were previously documented, although negative attitudes are still present. Additionally, our study shows there is a desire among members of the Deaf community to learn more about and potentially receive these services, despite the fact they are rarely offered by healthcare providers. (shrink)

The cognitive gadgets theory proposes to reform evolutionary psychology by replacing the standard nativist and internalist approach to modularity with a cultural constructivist one. However, the resulting “cultural evolutionary psychology” still maintains some controversial aspects of the original neo-Darwinian paradigm. These assumptions are unnecessary to the cognitive gadgets theory and can be eliminated without significant conceptual loss.

With the disenchantment with independence in Africa, economic failure, the crimes of the elites from the independence years, the paralysis of symbolism, and finally the states' loss of dynamism, the 1990s ushered in a so-called phase of democratization. This was about rethinking citizenship and the relationship to politics. This democratization was a response to the notion of diversity. This paper claims that the answer to this diversity issue fell far short of expectations and proceeds different examples taken from social, (...) cultural and political life, including the struggle for recognition and the appearance of terrorist violence in sub-Saharan Africa. Multiparty systems designed to respond to the diversity question produced only many versions of the same by ignoring that true diversity is the encroachment on the same of the strange, the different and the unexpected. (shrink)

This essay introduces, for theological consideration, some recent work in the field of cultural evolutionary theory, specifically the kin‐influence hypothesis. This theory holds that, following the beginnings of industrialization and economic growth, a nation's fertility rate commences a decline, which is further abetted by the consequent and increasing imbalance in the relative influence of kin versus nonkin influences on individuals in favor of the latter. It is further proposed that this process is itself a major independent factor in the (...) emergence of many of the features of what is called modernity, among which is that of secularization. Extending further this work, I argue that, given the historic alignment of family and religious values in Christian nations, a loss of religious belief and practice is, at least in part, the spill over effect of the opposing influence of values emerging from ever more dominant nonfamily social interaction. I conclude with some reflections on possible theological implications. (shrink)

Human beings define their identity primarily by the way they present, design and style their bodies. In doing so, individuals make statements about their affiliation to a social context. Globalisation implies a change of identity among the members of less industrialised cultures, as they are exposed to effects of cultural dominance. For the individual, this exposure can be the stronger, the more autonomous his or her culture of origin used to be before the confrontation. There is a bias of (...) cultural elements that are being transferred, so that the industrialised culture has a strong impact on other cultures. Global consent with regard to behaviour patterns, especially to bodily self-presentation and the related cognitive styles, leads to the obliteration of traditional knowledge, which is interwoven with the behaviour upon which identity had been defined previously. The cultural elements transferred are being used for the construction of globally standardised personal identities, whereat elements concerning the visual design of the human body are of major relevance for defining the self. The loss of variegated identities in favour of belonging to the global society brings about a number of problems, which can be demonstrated in functional models. These models, in turn, may support the planning of interventional strategies and rescue work. In this article, the role of the body within the destabilising effects of cultural change are analysed, and chances for intervention are discussed. (shrink)

Since at least the 1960s, science and technology studies scholars have distinguished between technological and social fixes. The author introduces a new concept for the STS theoretical tool kit—the cultural fix—and illustrates this concept using examples from her own research on pregnancy loss and neonatal intensive care, as well as that of anthropologists Katherine Newman and Sherry Ortner on downward mobility and unemployment in the United States. It is argued that the cultural fix represents a distinctive anthropological (...) contribution to the field. (shrink)

Since at least the 1960s, science and technology studies scholars have distinguished between technological and social fixes. The author introduces a new concept for the STS theoretical tool kit—the cultural fix—and illustrates this concept using examples from her own research on pregnancy loss and neonatal intensive care, as well as that of anthropologists Katherine Newman and Sherry Ortner on downward mobility and unemployment in the United States. It is argued that the cultural fix represents a distinctive anthropological (...) contribution to the field. (shrink)