This article is a discussion of the recently emerging critique of pro‐breastfeeding discourses in academic literature, and what this means for midwives and other professionals who find themselves promoting breastfeeding because of professional expectations or indeed workplace policies. Various strands in the debate are explored, starting with dominant and familiar ‘evidence’ and descriptions of breastfeeding and breastmilk that are carried through to international policies that advocate breast over formula feeding. We then consider evidence predominantly from social science literature that has (...) found some women's experiences of infant feeding to be at variance with the dominant pro‐breastfeeding ideology. We argue that midwives and others delivering maternity care are the means to deliver the policy aspirations contained in the World Health Organization (WHO, 2018) Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative document that makes selective positive claims about breastfeeding without adequately considering its potential drawbacks. We conclude that although the benefits of breastfeeding tend to be exaggerated in promotional material, on balance the weight of evidence still favours breast over formula feeding. We challenge the charge that breastfeeding jeopardises women's financial position by arguing that it is not breastfeeding per se that impacts negatively on women's economic prospects, but rather the way in which society is socially organised. (shrink)

This article argues that traditional, regulative principles of research ethics offer insufficient guidance for research in the narrative study of lives. These principles presuppose an implicit epistemology that conceives of research participants as data sources, a conception that is argued not tenable for narrative research. The case is made by drawing on recent discussions of research ethics in the qualitative and narrative research literature. This article shows that narrative ethics is inextricably entwined with epistemological issues--namely, issues of narrative ownership and (...) the multiplicity of narrative meaning. Finally, practical recommendations are made for the ethical treatment of research participants in narrative research. The article concludes by situating our approach with respect to the broad range of contemporary perspectives on research ethics. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new approach to the critical-theoretic problem of reification understood as a normatively problematic form of naturalizing or dehistoricizing entifcation. Entifcation in general is approached phenomenologically in terms of the mythic outer horizonality of the lifeworld, and reification is shown to stem from the dichotomy between nature and history which, along with a corresponding dichotomy between myth and reason, is characteristic of Enlightenment rationality. Dereification necessitates overcoming these dichotomies, and this implies a critical embrace of myth and (...) mythopoesis in the sense of instituting more normatively appropriate lifeworld horizons. While classical Marxism and radical social theory have typically adhered to the standard model of Enlightenment thought, with the result that the critique of naturalization backfires by reinforcing the dichotomy between nature and history, Luxemburgian spontaneism, rethought through a phenomenology of embodied enaction, is shown to ofer a more viable way of understanding reification and its solution. (shrink)

In this brief note, we respond to Gottlieb and Lasser's (2001/this issue) critical commentary on our work on narrative research ethics. We argue that their concern for privileging voices needs to be balanced against the risk of exploiting some research participants, that conflicts of interest are best resolved through appropriately prioritizing ethical principles and in consultation with others, and that the researcher's ability to protect participants from harm can be enhanced through appropriate clinical training and access to clinical expertise. We (...) welcome Gottlieb and Lasser's specific recommendations for ethical practice in narrative research and encourage further ethical reflection by other researchers in this area. (shrink)

This paper is based on a study of therapists’ experiences of working with suicidal clients. Using a hermeneutic-phenomenological methodology informed by Heidegger, the study provides an understanding of the meaning of therapists’ experiences from their perspective as mental health professionals in New Zealand. In this regard, the findings of the study identified three themes: Therapists’ reaction of shock upon learning of the suicide of their client; Therapists’ experience of assessing suicidal clients as a burden; and finally, Therapists’ professional and personal (...) crises as a result of their experiences and struggling to come to terms with events.The study sheds light on how the experiences of therapists whose clients have committed suicide can be understood. The findings show how mainstream prevention and intervention strategies result from the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of our traditional way of knowing what it means to be human. When therapists discover that phenomena are not necessarily what they appear to be, they feel unsettled and confused about their responsibilities and what it means to live and die as a human being. The study reveals that therapists experience a profound legacy of guilt, doubt and fear when a client commits suicide. Finally, the study proposes that the time has come for the profession to care for its own in order to allow therapist, in turn to care for (and about) the vulnerable other. (shrink)

German philosopher Martin Heidegger stirred educators when in 1951 he claimed teaching is more difficult than learning because teachers must ‘learn to let learn’. However in the main he left the aphorism unexplained as part of a brief four-paragraph, less than two-page set of observations concerning the relationship of teaching to learning; and concluded at the end of those observations that to become a teacher is an ‘exalted matter’. This paper investigates both of Heidegger's claims, interpreting letting learn in the (...) context of Heidegger's larger philosophical project, and suggesting why in light of that project to become a teacher is an exalted concern. The methodology guiding the inquiry is largely hermeneutic, the purpose of the essay to interpret teaching from a Heideggerian perspective: its nature and general method. (shrink)

Concerns regarding corporate ethics have grown steadily throughout the past decade. In order to remain competitive, many organizational leaders are faced with the challenge of creating an ethical environment within their organization. A model is presented showing the process and elements necessary for the institutionalization of organizational ethics. The transformational leadership style lends itself well to the creation of an ethical environment and is suggested as a means to facilitate the institutionalization of corporate ethics. Finally, the benefits of using transformational (...) leadership are demonstrated through the components of a psychological contract, organizational commitment, and ethical culture to institutionalize organizational ethics. (shrink)

In this article, we contribute to sociological literatures on morality, professional and institutional contexts, and morally stigmatized ‘dirty work’ by emphasizing and exploring how they mutually inform one another in lawyers’ work activities. Drawing on interview data with 58 practitioners in the commercial legal industry in Singapore, we analyze how they experience professional and institutional constraints on the expressions of morality in their work. Our findings illustrate how a dominant managerial and economic focus maintains and reproduces a constrained form of (...) morality, limited to instrumental, utilitarian and commercial ends, and subordinated to lucrative client and firm interests. We discuss our findings in terms of the need to research and reform professions in ways that support more rounded and unconstrained moral reflexivity and autonomy in how work is undertaken and valued. This in turn has implications for how organizations and professions might achieve alternative moral institutional orders, and for legal work to avoid the moral and social taints of dirty work. (shrink)

According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton’s scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined by its (...) ‘merely causal’ provenance, in fact he fails to take the causal provenance of photographs seriously enough. To replace Scruton’s notion of the ideal photograph, I offer a substantive account of the causal provenance of photographs, centred on the distinctive role of ‘the photographic event’. I conclude that, with a proper understanding of the photographic process, we have good reason to re-open the question of photography as a representational art. (shrink)

Photography is valued as a medium for recording and visually reproducing features of the world. I seek to challenge the view that photography is fundamentally a recording process and that every photograph is a record—a view that I claim is based on a ‘single-stage’ misconception of the process. I propose an alternative, ‘multi-stage’ account in which I argue that causal registration of light is not equivalent to recording and reproducing an image. Intervention or non-intervention by photographers is more sophisticated than (...) the traditional view allows. Using the multi-stage account, I describe four models for producing photographic images and pictures. (shrink)

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by arguing that they are incompatible with this commitment. In Section II, I classify accounts of photography as either single-stage or multi-stage. In Section III, I analyze the historical basis for single-stage accounts. In Section IV, I explain why the single-stage view led scientists to postulate (...) “latent” photographic images as a technical phenomenon in early chemical photography. In Section V, I discredit the notion of an invisible latent image in chemical photography and, in Section VI, extend this objection to the legacy of the latent image in digital photography. In Section VII, I appeal to the dependency relation to explain why the notion of a latent image makes the single-stage account untenable. Finally, I use the multi-stage account to advance debate about “new” versus “orthodox” theories of photography. (shrink)

Drawing from our interdisciplinary qualitative study of LGBTI conservative Christians and their allies, we name an especially toxic form of shame—what we call sacramental shame—that affects the lives of LGBTI and other conservative Christians. Sacramental shame results from conservative Christianity's allegiance to the doctrine of gender complementarity, which elevates heteronormativity to the level of the sacred and renders those who violate it as not persons, but monsters. In dispensing shame as a sacrament, nonaffirming Christians require constant displays of shame as (...) proof that LGBTI church members love God and belong in the community. Part of what makes this shame so harmful is that parents and pastors often dispense it with sincere expressions of care and affection, compounding the sense that one's capacity to give and receive love is damaged. We foreground LGBTI Christian movements to overcome sacramental shame by cultivating nonhubristic pride, and conclude by discussing briefly their new understandings of love and justice that could have far‐reaching benefits. (shrink)

Discourses of interdisciplinary health‐care are becoming more centralised in the context of global healthcare practices, which are increasingly based on multisystem interventions. As with all dominant discourses that are narrated into being, many others have been silenced and decentralised in the process. While questions of the nature and constituents of interdisciplinary practices continue to be debated and rehearsed, this paper focuses on the discourse of interdisciplinary collaboration using psychiatry as an example, with the aim of highlighting competing and alternative discourses. (...) The fundamental premise of this paper is that collaborative relationships form the basis of interdisciplinary practices in psychiatry. Through a critical engagement and a deconstructive reading of the pretext, context and subtexts of interdisciplinarity, we interrogate the concept of interdisciplinary practice within psychiatry. We contend that an important part of understanding and further conceptualising the discourse is through fracturing it. This process is illustrated in the successive stages of our conceptual map of discourse development: establishing, maintaining and developing discourses. An understanding of interdisciplinary practice is not only critical for psychiatry, but also offers important insights into the performance of collaborative failures and indeed successes across nursing and allied health professions. (shrink)

This article argues that traditional, regulative principles of research ethics offer insufficient guidance for research in the narrative study of lives. These principles presuppose an implicit epistemology that conceives of research participants as data sources, a conception that is argued not tenable for narrative research. The case is made by drawing on recent discussions of research ethics in the qualitative and narrative research literature. This article shows that narrative ethics is inextricably entwined with epistemological issues--namely, issues of narrative ownership and (...) the multiplicity of narrative meaning. Finally, practical recommendations are made for the ethical treatment of research participants in narrative research. The article concludes by situating our approach with respect to the broad range of contemporary perspectives on research ethics. (shrink)

The traditional doctrine that God is impassible is subject to the objection that it is incompatible with belief that God is loving and compassionate. However, the doctrine that God is passible has grave difficulties as well. I argue that Christian believers should take an analogical approach, by believing that God does something relevantly similar to loving us in a way that involves vulnerability to suffering, and thus conceiving of God as loving us in that way, while simultaneously believing that God (...) is in fact impassible. I conclude with answers to several likely objections. (shrink)

This book is a plea for a political philosophy which will reject both the totalitarian State and the Catholic hypothesis of an entirely Christian State which would use its coercive power to repress the propagation of error. The ideal kingdom of free men—a unity of purpose which will transcend all national barriers—should be based, according to the author, on the benevolent neutrality of the State in religious matters, and the predominance of a liberally-minded rather than a dogmatic or absolute form (...) of Christianity. Irish Catholics who read this book may feel that the English form of State and the Anglican form of Church have played too great a part in the formation of the author’s philosophy, and also that the irrelevant shadow of the Inquisition hangs over too much of the discussion. But they will welcome the courteous, fair and distinguished language of the argument, and the present reviewer hopes to make it clear that his fundamental disagreement with the author is not based on any partisan feeling. In the following review, the positions of the author are first summarised, according to the chapter-divisions, without any criticism, because the points raised are too frequently discussed to need comment here. The reviewer prefers to discuss, not questions of method, of administration, of more or less, but a point that seems to be of decisive import for all debate on Chruch and State. (shrink)

Statistical topic models provide a general data - driven framework for automated discovery of high-level knowledge from large collections of text documents. Although topic models can potentially discover a broad range of themes in a data set, the interpretability of the learned topics is not always ideal. Human-defined concepts, however, tend to be semantically richer due to careful selection of words that define the concepts, but they may not span the themes in a data set exhaustively. In this study, we (...) review a new probabilistic framework for combining a hierarchy of human-defined semantic concepts with a statistical topic model to seek the best of both worlds. Results indicate that this combination leads to systematic improvements in generalization performance as well as enabling new techniques for inferring and visualizing the content of a document. (shrink)

In neocolonial contexts of globalization, the epistemological terrain of radical diversity poses significant ethical challenges to transnational feminisms. In view of historical associations between knowledge and discourses of love which were conditioned by imperialist brands of humanism and benevolence under colonialism, this paper argues for a deconstructionist approach to conceptualizing love in relation to knowledge and for an ethics that severs the association with benevolence, instead making alterity the basis for its account.

This comment identifies and elaborates three assumptions that underlie the proposal made by the Rogers, Schröder, and von Scheve article. First, our theories of emotion need to take into account, and be consistent with, supported theories of social outcomes and processes. Second, a thorough understanding of affective processes requires investigation at multiple levels of analysis, which in turn requires multilevel theories—or single-level theories that interact well with theories at other levels. Third, our broad understanding of emotion will be served best (...) when we cultivate a field of intersecting and interacting theories of emotion. (shrink)

We are told by philosophers that photographs are a distinct category of image because the photographic process is mind-independent. Furthermore, that the experience of viewing a photograph has a special status, justified by a viewer’s knowledge that the photographic process is mind-independent. Versions of these ideas are central to discussions of photography in both the philosophy of art and epistemology and have far-reaching implications for science, forensics and documentary journalism. Mind-independence (sometimes ‘belief independence’) is a term employed to highlight what (...) is important in the idea that photographs can be produced naturally, mechanically, accidentally or automatically. Insofar as the process is physical, natural, mechanical or causal it can occur without human agency or intervention, entirely in the absence of intentional states. Presented innocuously, the idea is that although photographs are dependent on natural or mechanical processes, they can be produced independently of human agency – particularly human beliefs. Presented in a stronger form, the claim is that even if human agency is heavily involved in the production process, the definitive features that make the photograph a photograph and determine its salient properties are nonetheless independent of human minds. In epistemic debates, mind-independence is viewed as essential for explaining why photographs occupy a distinct category among images and justifying a variety of claims about their privileged epistemic and affective status in science, forensics, popular culture and journalism. But, in the philosophy of art, claims about mind-. (shrink)

A photographic image is said to provide evidence of a photographed scene because it is a causal imprint of reflected light, an indexical trace of real objects and events. Though widely established in the history, theory, and philosophy of photography, this traditional imprinting model must be rejected because it relies on a “single-stage” misconception of the photographic process: the idea that a photographic image comes into existence at the time of exposure. In its place, a “multistage” account properly articulates different (...) production stages, such as registering and rendering, that are relevant to understanding the relation between a photographic image and the photographed scene. By denying that any photographic image is a causal imprint, the multistage approach proposes a more demanding evaluation of photographic evidence. This has implications for documentary film and photojournalism, along with specialized applications such as forensics, surveillance, and face-recognition technology. (shrink)

Dramatic, profound and far-reaching changes are being visited on schools worldwide that have their genesis a long way from the classroom but which impact heavily on teachers and their work. Most of this reform has been achieved with little or no involvement of teachers themselves. This book sets out to survey the contemporary context of what is happening to the work of teaching, and focuses on Advanced Skills Teachers. It shows how teachers are 'speaking' the changes that are occuring to (...) their work in protracted economically rationalist times. Arguing against the discourses of economy as the major shaping force, the authors present a persuasive case for focusing on the discourses of teaching itself as the only feasible and adequate basis on which to make sense of teaching. And by presenting a range of voices of practising teachers - allowing them to speak for themselves about the difficulty of trying to translate policy-makers' intentions into words and actions - the book graphically illustrates the devastating long-term consequences for the future of schools of poorly-conceptualised reform policies. (shrink)

This Discussion Piece is a response to Mark Windsor's Discussion Piece (2023) 'Photographic Registers are Latent Images', which is a response to my article, (2021) 'Invisible Images and Indeterminacy: Why we need a Multi-stage Account of Photography' JAAC 79(2) 161-174.. -/- I argue that a photosensitive surface does not produce invisible pictorial features when it is exposed to light, and conclude, contra Windsor, that a photographic register is not a latent image. I argue that Windsor does not succeed in defending (...) a single-stage account of photography and I reconfirm that a multi-stage account is correct. (shrink)

Past research suggests that people process verbal quantifiers differently from numerical ones, but this suggestion has yet to be formally tested. Drawing from traditional correlates of dual-process...

In this article, we will consider how the regulation of populations is not just a feature of prisons, but of all institutions and organisations that control members though hierarchies, divisions and norms. While nurses and other allied health professionals are considered to be predominantly self‐regulatory, practice is guided by a code of conduct and codes of ethics that act as rules that serve to uphold the safety of the patient, whether they are a sick person in a hospital bed or (...) an inmate in a prison. The codes of conduct espouse a number of rules that to a certain extent govern the behaviour of individual and groups of practitioners through reciprocal rewards and punishments. Supervision is one method of monitoring the effectiveness of the codes of conduct and ethics while regulating both the minimum standard of individual practice and of training organisations. It is posited that one of the possible effects of clinical supervision is to make the person effectively self‐regulatory as, an autonomous practitioner. We take the view that professional autonomy is a highly problematic concept requiring closer examination. (shrink)

This paper hinges on the idea that our subjectivities---how individuals come to an understanding about themselves, their relationship to each other and their place in the world---are profoundly affected by the intersubjective quality of recognition we receive from others. Rooted within the Hegelian dialectical perspective, the desire for recognition stems from the view that a major part of our identities are formed through social relations. Misrecognition, in its various forms, promotes fundamental injustices. This is a point that the traditional modernist (...) approach to political philosophy bypasses because of its focus on procedural rather than ethical issues of injustice. (shrink)

Through 60 in-depth interviews with African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers, this article examines how the controlling image of the “thug” influences the concerns these mothers have for their sons and how they parent their sons in light of those concerns. Participants were principally concerned with preventing their sons from being perceived as criminals, protecting their sons’ physical safety, and ensuring they did not enact the “thug,” a form of subordinate masculinity. Although this image is associated with strength and toughness, (...) participants believed it made their sons vulnerable in various social contexts. They used four strategies to navigate the challenges they and their sons confronted related to the thug image. Two of these strategies—experience and environment management—were directed at managing characteristics of their sons’ regular social interactions—and two—image and emotion management—were directed at managing their sons’ appearance. By examining parenting practices, this research illuminates the strategies mothers use to prepare their sons to address gendered racism through managing the expression of their masculinity, racial identity, and class status. (shrink)