In this paper I examine the twin concepts of 'playing God', and its secular equivalent – that which I term for the purpose of this discussion 'vexing Nature' – as they relate to arguments against certain human technological actions and behaviours. While noting the popular subscription to the notion that certain acts constitute instances of 'playing God' or interfering in the natural order, philosophers often deny that such phrases have any application to the central ethical issues in the areas where (...) they are most commonly applied. I examine, in detail, the interpretations of these phrases put forward by bio-ethicists Ruth Chadwick and John Harris and argue that the concepts 'playing God' and 'vexing nature' are best understood as an expression of a moral intuition that is both significant and deserving of serious philosophical attention. My contention is that intuitions of this kind often express a concern for the virtue of, and doubt about the intentions of, the agent whose acts are described in these terms, and that these concepts are best understood as part of an historical and cultural continuum specific to the Western tradition. Understood as such, this indicates that debate continues over the purpose of art and technology, and the place of humanity within the natural environment, and that a kind of traditional teleological virtue ethics still exerts a significant influence on popular conceptions of the moral issues underlying this debate. (shrink)

In this article I examine similarities between the science and ethics of biotechnology on the one hand, and those of alchemy on the other, and show that the understanding of nature and naturalness upon which many contemporary ethical responses to biotechnology are predicated is, in fact, significantly similar to the understanding of nature that was the foundation of the practice of alchemy. In doing so I demonstrate that the ethical issues and social responses that are currently arising from advances in (...) the field of biotechnology are interestingly similar to those that arose in reaction to the practice and prevalence of alchemy from its inception in Europe in the mid-twelfth century until at least the early modern period. I argue that a proper conception of the ethical issues and a sensible interpretation of the power and the promise of the science of biotechnology are most likely if we understand such attitudes to nature, and to the ethical issues surrounding technological and scientific developments, in terms of an historical and cultural continuum. That is, we should regard biotechnology as merely the latest in a string of technological and scientific developments rather than, as is often alleged, as something entirely new, requiring its own special ethical response. Finally, I suggest that examining the parallels between the ethical issues generated by alchemy and by biotechnology show us that such issues are best situated and discussed within a framework of virtue ethics, as it allows us to think seriously about the relationship between art and nature and the proper role of humans in relation to their technology.Keywords: Ethics; Alchemy; Biotechnology; Bioethics; Virtue ethics; Notions of nature. (shrink)

In the early and mid-twentieth century, scientific conferences were a popular tool to establish communication between scientists. Organisational efforts, research and funds were spent defining what makes a productive and successful scientific gathering. A unique example of this was the monitoring and evaluation system of the Gordon Research Conferences (GRCs), which conceptualized informal communication in small, specialized meetings as the best method of advancing cutting-edge research. Studying the detailed monitoring reports of the sessions and the evaluation forms filled by the (...) participants, this paper explores how a concrete format of scientific knowledge production and identity formation was created and reproduced. The normative assessment of the participants’ interactions is examined in the contexts of (a) their professional affiliations, (b) the conference presentations and discussions and (c) activities related to play. The study of the GRCs exemplifies how scientists actively conceptualised characteristics like academic affiliation, manners, leisure practices and social categories such as gender as ways to understand, describe and measure how knowledge is best produced and transmitted, turning the conferences into a fertile ground for meta-scientific reflections. (shrink)

Forty-four high school students took part in focus-type group that used an induced hypocrisy paradigm developed from cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957) to reduce cheating behavior. Posttesting following the intervention showed that, contrary to expectations, these students' attitudes toward cheating and self-reported cheating behaviors did not decrease relative to those of 65 control participants who did not participate in the group intervention. All participants reported a greater intention to cheat in the future at posttest as well as an increase in (...) cheating behavior. Although participants did not view cheating favorably, a large majority admitted cheating and indicated that they had never been caught. (shrink)

Nursing, with its socially embedded theory and practice, inevitably operates in the realm of power and politics. One of these political sites is that of religion, which to varying degrees continues to shape beliefs about health and illness, the delivery of healthcare services and the nurse–patient encounter. In this paper, I attempt to complicate nursing's views on religion and politics in healthcare, with the intent of thinking critically and philosophically about questions that arise at the intersection of religion, politics and (...) nursing/healthcare. These questions include the following: What is the domain of religion and politics? How (non)religious are the contemporary societies in which nurses practice? What are the variations and implications of secularism? How is religion entangled with other intersecting social relations of power? How does a political reading of religion and politics matter to the concerns of nursing? (shrink)

Existing scholarly work on corporate social responsibility frequently emphasizes either normative/ethical claims about social progress or instrumental/strategic claims about corporate effectiveness, yet less often acknowledges the moral conditions of those undertaking CSR within a specific cultural context. In this paper, we draw attention to the social conditions in which CSR takes place and the related ethics of the subjects that must enact it. Our approach is to document the lived experiences of practitioners in Romania, a post-communist society. Drawing from fifty-three (...) depth interviews with both corporate responsibility practitioners, and managers in non-profit organizations who together work on CSR projects, we describe their experiences of the social and organizational environment, the CSR practices that are undertaken in this context, and the intended and unintended consequences of such work. Using Bauman’s theorization of ethics, including adiaphora and moral distancing, and Borţun’s interpretation of Romanianness, we then theorize liquid CSR as an ambivalence between adiaphoric practice and the moral impulse to do good, resulting in both intended and unintended consequences. (shrink)

Theories of Truth provides a clear, critical introduction to one of the most difficult areas of philosophy. It surveys all of the major philosophical theories of truth, presenting the crux of the issues involved at a level accessible to nonexperts yet in a manner sufficiently detailed and original to be of value to professional scholars. Kirkham's systematic treatment and meticulous explanations of terminology ensure that readers will come away from this book with a comprehensive general understanding of one of (...) philosophy's thorniest set of topics. -/- Included are discussions of the correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, semantic, performative, redundancy, appraisal, and truth-as-justification theories. There are also chapters or sections of chapters on the liar paradox, three-valued logic, Field's critique of Tarski, Davidson's program, Dummett's theory of linguistic competence, satisfaction, recursion, the extension/intension distinction, and an explanation of how theories of justification, properly understood, differ from theories of truth. -/- A persistent theme is that philosophers have too often failed to recognize that not all theories of truth are intended to answer the same question. When the various questions are made distinct, it is apparent that many of the "debates" in this field are really cases of philosophers talking past one another. There is much less disagreement within the field than has commonly been thought. (shrink)

La femme s'entête répond à La Femme sans tête (dite aussi Femme 100 têtes) de Max Ernst : loin de répéter les mêmes palinodies sur la créativité féminine (bridée, ou exaltée par le surréalisme), elle s'entête, passionnée tout en refusant la polémique à comprendre et à décrire. Voici donc, abondamment illustrés, un riche outil de travail et une série de portraits, souvent totalement inédits, d'artistes et d'écrivains.

The aim of this article is to present the vision that Merleau-Ponty has on the human body approached in a way that could be called the phenomenology of corporeality – in which what is actually important is the experience of being embodied, perception, bodily scheme, the structural unit and the meaning. By deliberately blending ambiguity and clarity of allegations, Merleau-Ponty creates a background which supports perception as a way of access toward the Being.

Employing theoretical resources from Transactional Analysis and drawing from interviews with managers dealing with social or environmental issues in their role, we explain how CSR activity provides a context for dramas in which actors may ignore, or discount aspects of self, others, and the contexts of their work as they maintain and reproduce the roles of Rescuers, Persecutors and Victims. In doing so, we add to knowledge about CSR by providing an explanation for how the contradictions of CSR are avoided (...) in practice even when actors may be aware of them. Specifically, we theorise how CSR work can produce dramatic stories where adversity is apparently overcome, whilst little is actually achieved at the social level. We also add to the range of psychoanalytic tools used to account for organisational behaviours, emphasising how TA can explain the relational dynamics of CSR. (shrink)

Although spiritual practices such as prayer are engaged by many to support well‐being and coping, little research has addressed nurses and prayer, whether for themselves or facilitating patients' use of prayer. We conducted a qualitative study to explore how prayer (as a proxy for spirituality and religion) is manifest—whether embraced, tolerated, or resisted—in healthcare, and how institutional and social contexts shape how prayer is understood and enacted. This paper analyzes interviews with 21 nurses in Vancouver and London as a subset (...) of the larger study. Findings show that nurses' kindness can buffer the loneliness and exclusion of ill health and in this way support the “spirit” of those in their care. Spiritual support for patients rarely incorporated prayer, in part because of ambiguities about permission and professional boundaries. Nurses' engagement with prayer and spiritual support could become a politicized site of religious accommodation, where imposition, religious illiteracy, and racism could derail person‐centered care and consequently enact social exclusion. Spiritual support (including prayer) sustained nurses themselves. We propose that nursing's equity‐oriented knowledge encompass spirituality and religion as sites of exclusion and inclusion. Nurses must be supported to move past religious illiteracy to provide culturally and spiritually sensitive care with clarity about professional boundaries and collaborative models of spiritual care. (shrink)

Knowledge translation has been widely taken up as an innovative process to facilitate the uptake of research-derived knowledge into health care services. Drawing on a recent research project, we engage in a philosophic examination of how knowledge translation might serve as vehicle for the transfer of critically oriented knowledge regarding social justice, health inequities, and cultural safety into clinical practice. Through an explication of what might be considered disparate traditions, we identify compatibilities and discrepancies both within the critical tradition, and (...) between critical inquiry and knowledge translation. The ontological and epistemological origins of the knowledge to be translated carry implications for the synthesis and translation phases of knowledge translation. In our case, the studies we synthesized were informed by various critical perspectives and hence we needed to reconcile differences that exist within the critical tradition. A review of the history of critical inquiry served to articulate the nature of these differences while identifying common purposes around which to strategically coalesce. Other challenges arise when knowledge translation and critical inquiry are brought together. Critique is one of the hallmark methods of critical inquiry and, yet, the engagement required for knowledge translation between researchers and health care administrators, practitioners, and other stakeholders makes an antagonistic stance of critique problematic. While knowledge translation offers expanded views of evidence and the complex processes of knowledge exchange, we have been alerted to the continual pull toward epistemologies and methods reminiscent of the positivist paradigm by their instrumental views of knowledge and assumptions of objectivity and political neutrality. These types of tensions have been productive for us as a research team in prompting a critical reconceptualization of knowledge translation. (shrink)

REIMER‐KIRKHAM S, SHARMA S, PESUT B, SAWATZKY R, MEYERHOFF H and COCHRANE M. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 202–212 Sacred spaces in public places: religious and spiritual plurality in health careSeveral intriguing developments mark the role and expression of religion and spirituality in society in recent years. In what were deemed secular societies, flows of increased sacralization (variously referred to as ‘new’, ‘alternative’, ‘emergent’ and ‘progressive’ spiritualities) and resurgent globalizing religions (sometimes with fundamentalist expressions) are resulting in unprecedented plurality. These (...) shifts are occurring in conjunction with increasing ethnic diversity associated with global migration, as well as other axes of difference within contemporary society. Democratic secular nations such as Canada are challenged to achieve social cohesion in the face of growing religious, spiritual and ethnic diversity. These challenges are evident in the high‐paced, demanding arena of Health care. Here, religious and spiritual plurality enter in, sometimes resulting in conflict between medical services and patients’ beliefs, other times provoking uncertainties on the part of healthcare professionals about what to do with their own religiously or spiritually grounded values and beliefs. In this paper, we present selected findings from a 3‐year study that examined the negotiation of religious and spiritual pluralism in Health care. Our focus is on the themes of ‘sacred’ and ‘place’, exploring how the sacred – that which is attributed as special and set apart as it pertains to the divine, transcendence, God or higher power – takes form in social and material spaces in hospitals. (shrink)

The urgent need for solutions to critical environmental challenges is well attested, but often environmental problems are understood as fundamentally collective action problems. However, to solve to these problems, there is also a need to change individual behavior. Hence, there is a pressing need to inculcate in individuals the environmental virtues — virtues of character that relate to our environmental place in the world. We propose a way of meeting this need, by the judicious, safe, and controlled administration of “classic” (...) psychedelic drugs as a way to catalyze the development of environmental virtues – a form of moral bio-enhancement. Recent evidence shows that psychedelics can be given safely in controlled environments, and can induce vivid experiences of unity and connectedness. These experiences, in turn, can durably increase feelings of nature-relatedness and pro-environmental behaviors. Therefore, we argue that responsible psychedelic use can reliably catalyze the development of a key environmental virtue known as living in place. This is a “master environmental virtue” that subsumes the qualities of respect for nature, proper humility, and aesthetic wonder and awe. Our account advances the environmental virtues debate by introducing a relevant practical proposal, and advances the psychedelic moral enhancement debate by providing a much-needed conceptual framework. (shrink)

Human activities are being increasingly regulated by means of technologies. Smart borders regulating human movement are no exception. I argue that the process of digitization – including through AI, Big Data and algorithmic processing – falls short of respecting (fundamental) rights to the extent to which it ignores what I term to be the problem of indeterminacy. While adopting a data feminist approach in this paper, assuming that data is the ‘new oil’, that is power, I begin theorizing indeterminacy from (...) the imminent risks of datafication as a new instrument of oppression perpetuating injustice and widening inequality gaps. I conclude that technologies regulating human activities must stand ethical scrutiny, especially if they can and do result in (human) rights violations. Unlike the oil being extracted from the ground, data is de facto extracted from people endowed with agency, autonomy, rights and contexts – all which ought to be respected and protected. (shrink)

This study examines ethical transgressions of school psychology graduate students using the critical incidents technique. Program directors of school psychology programs listed in the Directory of School Psychology Graduate Programs were asked to describe ethical violations committed by their students during the past 5 years. Violations dealt primarily with issues involving confidentiality, competence, and professional and academic honesty. Directors believed that the majority of students would not find most ethical issues problematic. Implications for training are discussed.

This study investigated school psychology doctoral students' beliefs concerning their preparation for, and concern about, dealing with 12 ethical issues based on year in graduate school and whether they had taken an ethics course. Two hundred thirty-three doctoral students from 18 of the 44 American Psychological Association accredited programs in school psychology listed in the December 1996 issue of the American Psychologist completed ethical issues surveys. Results showed that students who had taken an ethics course and those with more years (...) of graduate education said they felt more prepared to deal with ethical issues than students who had not taken an ethics course and who had fewer years of graduate education. Participants believed they were least prepared to deal with ethical issues involving child custody cases, possible ethical violations by colleagues, and potentially violent clients. Participants' concern about dealing with ethical issues was negatively related to their number of internship hours. (shrink)

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, mothers impacted by the genetic condition of albinism, whether as mothers of children with albinism or themselves with albinism, are disproportionately impacted by a constellation of health-related stigma, social determinants of health, and human rights violations. In a critical ethnographic study in Tanzania, we engaged with the voices of mothers impacted by albinism and key stakeholders to elucidate experiences of stigma. Their narratives revealed internalized subjective stigma, social stigma such as being ostracized by family (...) and community, and structural stigma on account of lack of access to SDH. An analysis of health systems as SDH revealed stigmatizing attitudes and behaviours of healthcare providers, especially at the time of birth; a lack of access to timely quality health services, in particular skin and eye care; and a lack of health-related education about the cause and care of albinism. Gender inequality as another SDH featured prominently as an amplifier of stigma. The findings pose implications for research, policy, and practice. A concrete avenue to de-stigmatization of mothers impacted by albinism exists by the application of principles of human rights, particularly equality and non-discrimination; contextual analysis of cultural dynamics including relevant ontology; meaningful participation of rights-claimants, such as peer groups of mothers; and accountability of governments and their obligation to ensure access to health information as a key social determinant of the right to health. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss several problems with current Big data practices which, we claim, seriously erode the role of informed consent as it pertains to the use of personal information. To illustrate these problems, we consider how the notion of informed consent has been understood and operationalised in the ethical regulation of biomedical research (and medical practices, more broadly) and compare this with current Big data practices. We do so by first discussing three types of problems that can impede (...) informed consent with respect to Big data use. First, we discuss the transparency (or explanation) problem. Second, we discuss the re-repurposed data problem. Third, we discuss the meaningful alternatives problem. In the final section of the paper, we suggest some solutions to these problems. In particular, we propose that the use of personal data for commercial and administrative objectives could be subject to a ‘soft governance’ ethical regulation, akin to the way that all projects involving human participants (e.g., social science projects, human medical data and tissue use) are regulated in Australia through the Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs). We also consider alternatives to the standard consent forms, and privacy policies, that could make use of some of the latest research focussed on the usability of pictorial legal contracts. (shrink)

The evaluation of new theories and pedagogical approaches to business ethics is an essential task for ethicists. This is true not only for empirical and applied evaluation but also for metatheoretical evaluation. However, while there is increasing interest in the practical utility and empirical testing of ethical theories, there has been little systematic evaluation of how new theories relate to existing ones or what novel conceptual characteristics they might contribute. This paper aims to address this lack by discussing the role (...) of metatheorising in assessing new approaches to ethics. The approach is illustrated through evaluating a new pedagogy and curriculum for ethics education called Giving Voice to Values (GVV). Our method involves identifying a number of metatheoretical lenses from existing reviews of ethical theories and applying these to examine GVV’s conceptual elements. Although GVV has been explicitly presented as a pedagogy and teaching curriculum, we argue that it has the potential to contribute significantly to the development of ethical theory. We discuss the general implications of this metatheoretical method of evaluation for new approaches to business ethics and for GVV and its future development. (shrink)

The bioethical principle of respect for a person’s bodily autonomy is central to biomedical and healthcare ethics. In this article, we argue that this concept of autonomy is often annulled in the maternity field, due to the maternal two-in-one body (and the obstetric focus on the foetus over the woman) and the history of medical paternalism in Western medicine and obstetrics. The principle of respect for autonomy has therefore become largely rhetorical, yet can hide all manner of unethical practice. We (...) propose that large institutions that prioritize a midwife–institution relationship over a midwife–woman relationship are in themselves unethical and inimical to the midwifery philosophy of care. We suggest that a focus on care ethics has the potential to remedy these problems, by making power relationships visible and by prioritizing the relationship above abstract ethical principles. (shrink)

This article explores how ethics and religion interface in everyday life by drawing on a study examining the negotiation of religious and spiritual plurality in health care. Employing methods of critical ethnography, namely, interviews and participant observation, data were collected from patients, health care providers, administrators and spiritual care providers. The findings revealed the degree to which `lived religion' was intertwined with `lived ethics' for many participants; particularly for people from the Sikh faith. For these participants, religion was woven into (...) everyday life, making distinctions between public and private, secular and sacred spaces improbable. Individual interactions, institutional resource allocation, and social discourses are all embedded in social relationships of power that prevent religion from being a solely personal or private matter. Strategies for the reintegration of religion into nursing ethics are: adjusting professional codes and theories of ethics to reflect the influence of religion; and the contribution of critical perspectives, such as postcolonial feminism, to the understanding of lived ethics. (shrink)

This article outlines the emergence of ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) in the mid-20th century, and the current popularity of ABA in the anglophone world. I draw on the work of earlier historians to highlight the role of Ole Ivar Lovaas, the most influential practitioner of ABA. I argue that reception of his initial work was mainly positive, despite concerns regarding its efficacy and use of physical aversives. Lovaas’ work, however, was only cautiously accepted by medical practitioners until he published results (...) in 1987. Many accepted the results as validation of Lovaas’ research, though both his methods and broader understanding of autism had shifted considerably since his early work in the 1960s. The article analyses the controversies surrounding ABA since the early 1990s, considering in particular criticisms made by autistic people in the ‘neurodiversity movement’. As with earlier critics, some condemn the use of painful aversives, exemplified in the campaign against the use of shock therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center. Unlike earlier, non-autistic critics, however, many in this movement reject the ideological goals of ABA, considering autism a harmless neurological difference rather than a pathology. They argue that eliminating benign autistic behaviour through ABA is impermissible, owing to the individual psychological harm and the wider societal impact. Finally, I compare the claims made by the neurodiversity movement with those made by similar 20th- and 21st-century social movements. (shrink)

UNICEF estimates that 1.6 billion children across the world have had their education impacted by COVID-19 and have attempted to continue their learning at home. With ample evidence showing a negative impact of noise on academic achievement within schools, the current pre-registered study set out to determine what aspects of the home environment might be affecting these students. Adolescents aged 11–18 took part online, with 129 adolescents included after passing a headphone screening task. They filled out a sociodemographic questionnaire, followed (...) by a home environment and noise questionnaire. Participants then completed three executive function tasks while listening to a soundtrack of either white noise or home-like environmental noise. For purposes of analysis, based on the noise questionnaire, participants were separated into quieter and noisier homes. Results revealed that measures of the home environment significantly correlated with individual perceptions of noise and task performance. In particular, adolescents coming from noisier homes were more likely to report that they studied in a noisy room and that they were annoyed by noise when studying. In terms of noise and task performance, the Flanker task revealed that while older adolescents were more efficient overall than their younger peers, those older adolescents from noisier homes seemed to lose this advantage. Additionally, reaction times for younger adolescents from noisier homes were less impacted by accuracy compared to their peers from quieter homes, though there was no difference for the older adolescents. This evidence suggests that higher in-home noise levels lead to higher rates of annoyance and may be hindering home-learning, with both younger and older adolescents being impacted. Furthermore, the long-term effect of in-home noise on adolescent executive function task performance indicates that these findings transcend the pandemic and would influence in-school learning. Limitations and advantages of online adolescent research without researcher supervision are discussed, including sociodemographics and adapting tasks. (shrink)

The multi-disciplinary unit Social Responsibility in Action was developed for students with an interest in ethics who were completing undergraduate degrees in Arts, Commerce, Design or Science at an Australian research-intensive university. The academic objectives of this unit were to increase student awareness, knowledge, understanding and critical thinking skills related to various ethical issues. Lecturers from five disciplines collaborated in the design and delivery of SRA, which comprised lectures, tutorials and a research-based project. Anonymous surveys were administered at the start (...) and end of the semester to obtain feedback on student expectations and learning experience, respectively. Data across three student cohorts showed that at the start of semester, 80% of student comments indicated a desire to expand their interest of ethical matters, 59% a desire to gain understanding and knowledge and 59% to gain critical thinking or communication skills. SRA was extremely well received by students, with 98% of respondents indicating that this multi-disciplinary ethics unit had met their expectations. Students also found that the variety of teaching styles, unit content and multi-disciplinary approach stimulated learning. (shrink)

Appeals to the moral value of nature and naturalness are commonly used in debates about technology and the environment and to inform our approach to the ethics of technology and the environment more generally. In this paper, I will argue, firstly, that arguments from nature, as they are used in debates about new technologies and about the environment, are misinterpreted when they are understood as attempting to put forward categorical objections to certain human activities and, consequently, their real significance is (...) often overlooked. Secondly, arguments from nature, particularly as they are used in the context of debates over the use of new technologies, can be understood as appealing to human nature as a way to determine human limitations. Thirdly, arguments from nature can inform our discussion of what it is to be a human being or a person, and this kind of discussion can, in turn, inform our ethical deliberations in such areas of bioethics as euthanasia, abortion, etc. Finally, I conclude that a proper understanding of these arguments can help in establishing which virtues and which vices relate to our relationship with the non-human world—that is, which character dispositions are relevant to an environmental virtue ethics, with human nature as its foundation. A proper understanding of the argument from nature provides the basis for a ‘virtuously anthropocentric’ environmental ethics. (shrink)

From Gnỗthi seautόn (‘Know Thyself’) to cognitive theories of the self there has been a long time, but the paradigm has almost remained the same. This article proposes a reconsideration of their rediscovery filtered through Jean Rhys’ post-colonial sensitivity. Between the ‘core self’ and its iridescent, exotic edges, broadly speaking, the thoroughly analyzed facets of cultural identity interpose.

What might a modern environmental or technological virtue or vice look like? That is, what virtues or vices might relate to our environmental place in the world, rather than our social place in the world? This question is particularly pressing in light of the unique chal­lenges presented by the current environmental and technological milieu. A recurring theme that arises in response to advances in certain technologies, particularly technologies that are seen in some way as “interfering in nature,” is that humans (...) are indulging in the vice of hubris, often referred to by the phrase “playing God.” Taking the notion of hubris as a starting point, the notion of “living in place” can be developed as a primary environmental and technological virtue, with reference to Heidegger’s analysis of the role of technology in human life. A pre-eminent environmental and technological virtue—living in place—can be understood in the light of Heidegger’s notion of “poetic dwelling,” where the role of human art and technology, rather than being primarily to dominate or manipulate nature, is to bring the natural world “into being.”. (shrink)

Continuing the dialogue: postcolonial feminist scholarship and Bourdieu — discourses of culture and points of connection Postcolonial feminist theories provide the analytic tools to address issues of structural inequities in groups that historically have been socially and economically disadvantaged. In this paper we question what value might be added to postcolonial feminist theories on culture by drawing on Bourdieu. Are there points of connection? Like postcolonial feminists, he puts forward a position that aims to unmask oppressive structures. We argue that, (...) while there are points of connection, there are also epistemologic and methodologic differences between postcolonial feminist perspectives and Bourdieu's work. Nonetheless, engagement with different theoretical perspectives carries the promise of new insights — new ways of ‘seeing’ and ‘understanding’ that might enhance a praxis‐oriented theoretical perspective in healthcare delivery. (shrink)

The present research aimed to explore the indirect effect of self-compassion on the relationship between two dimensions of intolerance of uncertainty and life satisfaction. One hundred sixty-four Romanian adult participants formed our sample from the country’s eastern side. Their ages ranged between 18 and 61. The study was conducted in 2021, when the Delta wave of COVID-19 was at its peak. Our findings suggested significant negative associations between prospective anxiety, self-compassion, and life satisfaction. A similar negative significant association was suggested (...) between inhibitory anxiety and self-compassion. Age did not significantly correlate with any of our primary variables. Mediation analyses indicated a total mediating effect of self-compassion on the relationship between participants’ prospective and inhibitory anxiety and their life satisfaction. We discuss the implications of our findings, considering their relevance for therapeutical interventions aimed to promote psychological wellbeing when facing adversity. (shrink)