This article connects value-sensitive design to Gibson’s affordance theory: the view that we perceive in terms of the ease or difficulty with which we can negotiate space. Gibson’s ideas offer a nonsubjectivist way of grasping culturally relative values, out of which we develop a concept of political affordances, here understood as openings or closures for social action, often implicit. Political affordances are equally about environments and capacities to act in them. Capacities and hence the severity of affordances vary with age, (...) health, social status and more. This suggests settings are selectively permeable, or what postphenomenologists call multistable. Multistable settings are such that a single physical location shows up differently – as welcoming or hostile – depending on how individuals can act on it. In egregious cases, authoritarian governments redesign politically imbued spaces to psychologically cordon both them and the ideologies they represent. Selective permeability is also orchestrated according to business interests, which is symptomatic of commercial imperatives increasingly dictating what counts as moral and political goods. (shrink)

Striking similarities across ape gestural repertoires suggest shared phylogenetic origins that likely provided a foundation for the emergence of language. We pilot a novel approach for exploring possible semantic universals across human and nonhuman ape species. In a forced‐choice task, n = 300 participants watched 10 chimpanzee gesture forms performed by a human and chose from responses that paralleled inferred meanings for chimpanzee gestures. Participants agreed on a single meaning for nine gesture forms; in six of these the agreed form‐meaning (...) pair response(s) matched those established for chimpanzees. Such shared understanding suggests apes' (including humans') gesturing shares deep evolutionary origins. (shrink)

In a world which can be increasingly described as a “society of organizations,” it is incumbent upon organizational researchers to account for the role of organizations in determining the well-being of societies and the individuals that comprise them. Workplace spirituality is a young area of inquiry with potentially strong relevance to the well-being of individuals, organizations, and societies. Previous literature has not examined ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality that organizations might expect based upon the co-existence of multiple ethical work (...) climates, nor has previous literature accounted for the relevance of the cosmopolitan source of moral reasoning in the ethical treatment of workplace spirituality. The purpose of this paper is to address these gaps by articulating two such ethical dilemmas related to workplace spirituality: the “quiet desperation” dilemma and the instrumentality dilemma. Moreover, I propose two theoretical contexts that foster “both-and” rather than “either-or” thinking, thereby mitigating the relationships between climate combinations and conflictual aspects of the ethical dilemmas. For the “quiet desperation” dilemma, I propose a person–organization fit perspective to emphasize diversity of individual preferences instead of a managerially prescribed uniformity of spirituality. For the instrumentality dilemma, I propose a multiparadigm approach to workplace spirituality research to avoid the privileging of one research interest over another. I conclude with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

We demonstrate in this article how critical realism can be used to explain indeterminacy in role behaviour systematically. In so doing, we both rebut various criticisms of critical realism made recently by Kemp and Holmwood and attempt to illustrate the weaknesses and absences of approaches that concentrate unduly on the collection of expectations of actors concerning roles and the behaviour of incumbents. Within a framework that recognises that structure and agency are ontologically distinct but necessarily empirically related entities, we argue (...) that structures should be seen as sources of indeterminacy within role behaviour for at least four reasons: the co-determination of roles through the intersection of structures; conflicting role expectations caused by contradictions inhering within structures; asymmetries of power within social relations; and asymmetric repetition within structural reproduction/transformation. In light of this discussion of structural sources of indeterminacy, we then go on to demonstrate how critical realism is also able to analyse systematically the agential sources of indeterminacy within role behaviour and expectations through theories of psychobiography and reflexivity. We thus conclude that critical realism contains the conceptual tools required to illuminate the point of intersection between structure, culture and agency which is central to understanding both role behaviour and the plurality of expectations concerning such behaviour. (shrink)

Despite its lack of conceptual clarity and uniform definition, the term drug‐seeking is used frequently by nurses from a variety of practice environments. The drugs patients are referred to as seeking are often pain medications. This is important because nursing has widely adopted a patient‐centric definition of pain. Nursing also has a robust ethical code that places high value on human dignity and nurses’ role in patient advocacy. A review of literature was conducted with the aims of describing whether/how the (...) term drug‐seeking has changed over time and to determine whether the use of the term in nursing literature is consistent with nursing values. Use of the term has shifted from objective counts of patient requests for medication to a confusing mixture of observable patient behavior and subjective interpretations of patient motivation. Its use is not consistent with nursing values. It is, in fact, a good illustration of stigmatization in nursing. Stigmatization is contrary to nursing values. Nurses in practice, research, education, authors, reviewers, and editors all have a role in ending this stigmatization. (shrink)

Women are cited less frequently than men in a variety of scientific fields. Drawing theoretical resources from Fricker and Hookway, I argue that these gendered citation practices constitute a form of participatory epistemic injustice insofar as they prevent female scientists from fully engaging in the epistemic practices of science. Furthermore, Longino’s notion of “uptake” gives us a way of understanding gendered citation practices as an epistemic harm accrued not simply by individuals but by scientific communities as a whole. Finally, I (...) discuss the cumulative harms of this kind of participatory epistemic injustice for individuals and for marginalized groups. (shrink)

Stigmatization of patients exists in nursing and results in less than optimal nursing care and poor patient outcomes. It is also a violation of our code of ethics. In order to eliminate stigmatization from nursing practice, it is necessary to understand how it develops. Two possible theoretical pathways are proposed to explain the development of stigmatization in nursing. These pathways are informed by a conceptual understanding of stigma and theories of professional socialization, professional formation, symbolic interactionism, and social cognitive theory. (...) Re‐labeling and role‐taking and moral disengagement are proposed as two possible processes that may lead to stigmatization of patients. Both proposed pathways have implications on professional socialization, formation, and the development of professional identity. Devoting attention to and reframing normative behavioral expectations, eliminating labeling, developing empathy, focusing on relationships, and cultivating ethical comportment and moral maturity during nursing formation may reduce the stigmatization of patients by nurses. (shrink)

This article proposes that untethering amerina at Stat. Silv. 1.6.18 from Pliny's mention of varieties of apples and pears called Amerina allows us to read the line as instead referring to a type of pastry originating in Umbrian Ameria, which is within ancient naming practices for pastries and fits better into the context of the catalogue in which the line occurs. In this case, the second half of the catalogue is closely akin to the crustulum et mulsum donative of wealthy (...) Italian patrons in the early empire. (shrink)

Three types of objections have been raised against sweatshops. According to their critics, sweatshops are (1) exploitative, (2) coercive, and (3) harmful to workers. In “The Ethical and Economic Case Against Sweatshop Labor: A Critical Assessment,” Powell and Zwolinski critique all three objections and thereby offer what is arguably the most powerful defense of sweatshops in the philosophical literature to date. This article demonstrates that, whether or not unregulated sweatshops are exploitative or coercive, they are, pace Powell and Zwolinski, harmful (...) to workers. (shrink)

Abstract:Political ecology is an epistemologically plural field of social scientific research. This article seeks to contribute to mapping out the terrain, with emphasis on contributions from Latin America. This is done by sketching out two prototypical forms of political ecology: materialist and poststructuralist, and by exploring the degree to which they can be reconciled in a third form which seeks to avoid the extremes of structural determinism and absolute relativism, by taking recourse to either eclecticism or dialectics. The underlying argument (...) is that, on the basis of ontological materialism and dialectical reasoning, a third form of political ecology can provide the epistemological foundation for illuminating research on why social environmental movements and conflicts emerge at certain historical conjunctures and in specific geographical and cultural contexts, and of how resistance movements against dispossession and the destruction of natural resources are organized and sustained. (shrink)

Fairness of Artificial Intelligence decisions has become a big challenge for governments, companies, and societies. We offer a theoretical contribution to consider AI ethics outside of high-level and top-down approaches, based on the distinction between “reality” and “world” from Luc Boltanski. To do so, we provide a new perspective on the debate on AI fairness and show that criticism of ML unfairness is “realist”, in other words, grounded in an already instituted reality based on demographic categories produced by institutions. Second, (...) we show that the limits of “realist” fairness corrections lead to the elaboration of “radical responses” to fairness, that is, responses that radically change the format of data. Third, we show that fairness correction is shifting to a “domination regime” that absorbs criticism, and we provide some theoretical and practical avenues for further development in AI ethics. Using an ad hoc critical space stabilized by reality tests alongside the algorithm, we build a shared responsibility model which is compatible with the radical response to fairness issues. Finally, this paper shows the fundamental contribution of pragmatic sociology theories, insofar as they afford a social and political perspective on AI ethics by giving an active role to material actors such as database formats on ethical debates. In a context where data are increasingly numerous, granular, and behavioral, it is essential to renew our conception of AI ethics on algorithms in order to establish new models of responsibility for companies that take into account changes in the computing paradigm. (shrink)

Tourism has received relatively scant attention in feminist analysis of women's work under economic restructuring. The industry creates a sector without a shop floor based on the provision of authenticity, leisure, and price-sensitive services. Migrant women from the First World and the Third World labor with national workers in a highly informalized and stratified employment setting. This article examines how structural conditions shape tourism employment in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. Drawing from data including observation, interviews, and a longitudinal business survey, (...) I offer several findings. The tourism industry segments possibilities for women who vary in their ability to produce and interpret/translate authentic cultural experiences. As a result, women working in tourism constitute a nationally and ethnically more diverse workforce compared with other global industry sectors. The particular demands of tourism create an important case to further understand how social location shapes women's working lives in the global economy. (shrink)

Teacher-student relationship in India, with particular reference to Don Bosco's educational method.

This case study applies Integral Ecology to analyze the broad range of strategies environmentalists have undertaken to create protected areas and change forest practices in the Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia, Canada. Rainforest conservation efforts in the region promoted holistic, trans-disciplinary solutions and fostered agreement among diverse stakeholders, modeling an Integral Ecology approach. Environmentalists worked locally and globally, engaging with economic, cultural, political, and scientific systems to create change. The campaign involved transformations at personal and cultural levels that have enabled (...) negotiated solutions involving over twenty million acres of rainforest on British Columbia's coast. (shrink)

'Teoria geral do Estado' trata de temas da ciência política e do Estado em seus variados aspectos. O livro é um tratado geral sobre o Estado, começando por sua noção e suas origens e percorrendo todas as demais informações relacionadas ao tema (soberania, poder político, nação, território, formas de governo), assim como as relações entre Estado, política e direito constitucional.

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 550-573, July 2022.

To evaluate the overall good/welfare of any action, policy or institutional choice we need some way of comparing the benefits and losses to those affected: we need to make interpersonal comparisons of the good/welfare. Yet sceptics have worried either: that such comparisons are impossible as they involve an impossible introspection across individuals, getting ‘into their minds’; that they are indeterminate as individual-level information is compatible with a range of welfare numbers; or that they are metaphysically mysterious as they assume the (...) existence either of a social mind or of absolute levels of welfare when no such things exist. This article argues that such scepticism can potentially be addressed if we view the problem of interpersonal comparisons as fundamentally an epistemic problem – that is, as a problem of forming justified beliefs about the overall good based on evidence of the individual good. (shrink)

Introduction: the figure of this world -- 1. The question of political ontology -- 2. The poetic experience of the world -- 3. The myth of the earth -- 4. The unbearable -- 5. The creature before the law -- 6. The animal for which animality is an issue -- 7. Understanding the happy -- 8. The picture and its captives -- 9. The passing of the figure of this world.

Somites are transient structures which represent the most overt segmental feature of the vertebrate embryo. The strict temporal regulation of somitogenesis is of critical developmental importance since many segmental structures adopt a periodicity based on that of the somites. Until recently, the mechanisms underlying the periodicity of somitogenesis were largely unknown. Based on the oscillations of c-hairy1 and lunatic fringe RNA, we now have evidence for an intrinsic segmentation clock in presomitic cells. Translation of this temporal periodicity into a spatial (...) periodicity, through somite formation, requires Notch signaling. While the Hox genes are certainly involved, it remains unknown how the metameric vertebrate axis becomes regionalized along the antero–posterior (AP) dimension into the occipital, cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and sacral domains. We discuss the implications of cell division as a clock mechanism underlying the regionalization of somites and their derivatives along the AP axis. Possible links between the segmentation clock and axial regionalization are also discussed. BioEssays 22:72–83, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Very soon after I began working on the identity of magic-workers in classical antiquity, I realized that it was necessary to come to terms with a thesis about depictions of erotic magic-working in Greek and Roman literature. It asserted that male writers engaged in a systematic misrepresentation of the realities of magic-working in portraying erotic magic as an exclusively female preserve; the reality was that men were the main participants in this form of magic-working. The thesis is based on the (...) supposition that the truth about erotic magic and the people who performed it is to be found in the formularies or spell-books preserved in papyrus and in defixiones. These two sources of information are said to show us that erotic magic was performed by men and not by the women who are the persons depicted engaging in love-magic in literature. The scholar who first presented the thesis was the late John Winkler. A version of it is to be found in Fritz Graf's general account of Greek and Roman magic. There is agreement over what are taken to be the facts, but views diverge over their interpretation. Winkler appeals to the Freudian notion of denial and transference to offer an explanation not only of the discrepancy between life and literature, but of what he took to be the belief held by the young men who cast erotic spells that the girls who were the objects of their spells were as sexually eager as they were: men, when overwhelmed by sexual desire for unattainable women, through a process of denial transfer that feeling to women, whether old or young, whom they fondly imagine suffer the same intense sexual longings as themselves. (shrink)

Crocodile starts with Rob and Mia having a night out that ends tragically with Rob hitting and killing a cyclist. In a panic, they hide the body and don't report the accident. Years later, racked with guilt, Rob contacts Mia to tell her he's decided to anonymously report the accident so the cyclist's family can get closure. Mia panics, worried that the consequences would be dire for her, her family, and her reputation. In the rest of the episode, Mia takes (...) a series of actions to protect the life she's built. This chapter utilizes the ethical theories of Utilitarianism, Kant, Feminist Ethics of Care, and Aristotelian Virtue Ethics to determine whether Mia's actions are justifiable forms of self‐defense. (shrink)