Literary fiction gives us a window into ourselves and into those who may seem most unfamiliar to us. We therefore have a moral imperative to read, just as, as psychotherapists, we have a moral imperative to listen. Literary study teaches us to read closely, to listen for structure as well as content, and it also instructs us about different ways of paying attention. Inversely, because the practice of psychotherapy values connection and process, rather than simply interpretation, it shows us how (...) we can bring ourselves more fully to literature. In this paper I propose ways of engaging the field of phenomenological psychology in this dialectical relationship of literature and psychotherapy. By using as a case study a recent experience of teaching Aimee Bender’s (2000) novel An Invisible Sign of My Own in an interdisciplinary seminar on literature and psychology, I illustrate how literature and clinical discourses can inform and challenge each other as we seek to understand the meaning and lived experience of neuroses. I argue that the very act of reading can give the reader the sense and structure of experience that, if explored in a dialogal context, helps us gain access to phenomena that is neither simply self-generated nor simply observed in the other. I term this access evocation: A response that is a calling forth of the reader’s own lived experiencing. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that moral rules and principles, such as ‘Keep your promises,’ ‘Respect autonomy,’ and ‘Distribute goods according to need ,’ should play an essential role in our moral deliberation. Particularists have challenged this view by arguing that principled guidance leads us to engage in worse decision making because principled guidance is too rigid and it leads individuals to neglect or distort relevant details. However, when we examine empirical literature on the use of rules and principles in other (...) domains, we find that people can learn to use rules discriminately and that rule-based models tend to outperform even expert judgment. I argue that this evidence poses a problem for the moral particularist. If the particularist claims that we should not rely on decision-making rules when making practical decisions and it turns out that these rules help us make better decisions, then the particularists’ prescriptive account is deficient. However, if the particularist claims that we should rely on practical decision-making rules but not on moral rules, she needs to explain how practical rules are different from moral rules and why we should rely on the former but not the latter. (shrink)

Without proper recognition of the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and racism that Asian Americans and other racial minorities in the United States are facing, we cannot successfully address structural b...

Recent, well-publicized scandals, involving unethical conduct have rekindled interest in academic misconduct. Prior studies of academic misconduct have focussed exclusively on situational factors (e.g., integrity culture, honor codes), demographic variables or personality constructs. We contend that it is important to also examine how␣these classes of variables interact to influence perceptions of and intentions relating to academic misconduct. In a sample of 217 business students, we examined how integrity culture interacts with Prudence and Adjustment to explain variance in estimated frequency of (...) cheating, suspicions of cheating, considering cheating and reporting cheating. Age, integrity culture, and personality variables were significantly related to different criteria. Overall, personality variables explained the most unique variance in academic misconduct, and Adjustment interacted with integrity culture, such that integrity culture had more influence on intentions to cheat for less well-adjusted individuals. Implications for practice are discussed and future research directions are offered. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

This paper shares findings of a qualitative project exploring teacher candidates’ reflections on their own social studies inquiry teaching using video capture and annotation technology (VCAT). Teacher candidates’ annotated video and written reflections were collected and analyzed. Findings include important understandings of teacher candidates’ scholarship-aligned recognitions of strengths and areas for growth as well as areas where they had underdeveloped or novice negotiated conceptions of inquiry-centered instruction.

As countries around the world work to restrict unhealthy food and beverage marketing to children, the U.S. remains reliant on industry-self regulation. The First Amendment’s protection for commercial speech and previous gutting of the Federal Trade Commission’s authority pose barriers to restricting food marketing to children. However, false, unfair, and deceptive acts and practices remain subject to regulation and provide an avenue to address marketing to young children, modern practices that have evaded regulation, and gaps in the food and beverage (...) industry’s self-regulatory approach. (shrink)

The evolution of modern human life history has involved substantial changes in the overall length of the subadult period, the introduction of a novel early childhood stage, and many changes in the initiation, termination, and character of the other stages. The fossil record is explored for evidence of this evolutionary process, with a special emphasis on middle childhood, which many argue is equivalent to the juvenile stage of African apes. Although the “juvenile” and “middle childhood” stages appear to be the (...) same from a broad comparative perspective, in that they begin with the eruption of the first molar and the achievement of the majority of adult brain size and end with sexual maturity, the detailed differences in the expression of these two stages, and how they relate to the preceding and following stages, suggest that a distinction should be maintained between them to avoid blurring subtle, but important, differences. (shrink)

Lapses in ethical conduct by those in corporate and public authority worldwide have given business researchers and practitioners alike cause to re-examine the antecedents to personal ethical values. We explore the relationship between ethical values and an individual’s long-term orientation or LTO, defined as the degree to which one plans for and considers the future, as well as values traditions of the past. Our study also examines the role of work ethic and conservative attitudes in the formation of a person’s (...) long-term orientation and consequent ethical beliefs. Empirically testing these hypothesized relationships using data from 292 subjects, we find that long-term perspectives on tradition and planning indeed engender higher levels of ethical values. The results also support work ethic’s role in fostering tradition and planning, as well as conservatism’s positive association with planning. Additionally, we report how tradition and planning mediate the influence of conservatism and work ethic on the formation of ethical values. Limitations of the study and future research directions, as well as implications for business managers and academics, are also discussed. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's and Charlotte Delbo's writings about the Holocaust trouble our preconceptions about those who do evil and those who suffer evil. Their jarring terms “banal evil” and “useless knowledge” point to limitations and temptations facing scholars of evil. While Arendt helps us to resist the temptation to mythologize evil, Delbo helps us to resist the temptation to domesticate suffering.

In response to the obesity epidemic, much discussion in the public health and child advocacy communities has centered on restricting food and beverage marketing practices directed at children. A common retort to appeals for government regulation is that such advertising and marketing constitutes protected commercial speech under the First Amendment. This perception has allowed the industry to function largely unregulated since the Federal Trade Commission 's foray into the topic, termed KidVid, was terminated by an act of Congress in 1981. (...) The FTC has since focused on self-regulation as a potential solution to such concerns. However, this method of control has proven ineffective to protect children, and has led to growing recognition that federal regulation may be necessary.Since KidVid, the evidence has only mounted that children are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of advertising. Over the same time period, the exposition of commercial speech jurisprudence has plateaued, as the Supreme Court has not decided a pure commercial speech case since 2002. (shrink)

Previous research reveals that when leaders enact environmentally specific transformational leadership, they positively affect corporate environmental responsibility. While this research provides important insights into how leaders create and shape corporate environmental responsibility, confidence in the validity of these findings is limited because the psychometric properties of the measurement of environmentally specific transformational leadership has not yet been assessed. The goal of the current research was to develop and validate a measure of environmentally specific transformational leadership. To this end, four studies (...) were conducted, which together produced a reliable and valid scale from which future research can stem. Theoretical and practical limitations are discussed. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the processes by which entrepreneurial opportunities are cocreated between entrepreneurs and their stakeholders. The longitudinal case study of de novo firm Wakefield Seafoods seeks to understand the underlying dynamics of phenomena that play out over time as stakeholders emerge and their contributions become essential to the opportunity formation process. The king crab data show that under conditions of uncertainty, characterized by incomplete or missing knowledge, entrepreneurial processes of experimentation, failure, and learning were effective in forming (...) and exploiting an opportunity. Moreover, contrary to existing literature that either emphasizes heroic entrepreneurs or downplays their value, this article shows that both the vision of the entrepreneur and the stakeholder contributions are critical. This detailed examination of process data shows that the cumulative actions made by entrepreneurs in concert with their stakeholders formed an opportunity that coalesced into a new market. (shrink)

The menopause transition is associated with an increased risk of depressed mood. Preliminary evidence suggests that increased sensitivity to psychosocial stress, triggered by exaggerated perimenopausal estradiol fluctuation, may play a role. However, accurately quantifying estradiol fluctuation while minimizing participant burden has posed a methodological challenge in the field. The current pilot project aimed to test the feasibility of capturing perimenopausal estradiol fluctuation via 12 weekly measurements of estrone-3-glucuronide (E1G), a urinary metabolite of estradiol, using participant-collected urine samples in 15 euthymic (...) perimenopausal women ages 45-55 years. Furthermore, it aimed to correlate E1G fluctuation (standard deviation across the 12 E1G measurements) with weekly mood and cardiovascular, salivary cortisol, and subjective emotional responses to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) at weeks 4, 8 and 12. Protocol acceptability and adherence was high; furthermore, E1G fluctuation was positively associated with anhedonic depressive symptoms and weekly negative affect. E1G fluctuation was also associated with increased heart rate throughout the TSST as well as higher levels of rejection, anger, and sadness. E1G fluctuation was not significantly associated with TSST blood pressure or cortisol levels. This study suggests a feasible method of assessing estradiol fluctuation in the menopause transition and provides support for the hypothesis that perimenopausal estradiol fluctuation increases sensitivity to psychosocial stress and vulnerability to depressed mood. (shrink)

Becoming a Candidate: Political Ambition and the Decision to Run for Office explores the factors that drive political ambition at the earliest stages. Using data from a comprehensive survey of thousands of eligible candidates, Jennifer L. Lawless systematically investigates what compels certain citizens to pursue elective positions and others to recoil at the notion. Lawless assesses personal factors, such as race, gender and family dynamics, that affect an eligible candidate's likelihood of considering a run for office. She also focuses (...) on eligible candidates' professional lives and attitudes toward the political system. (shrink)

This manuscript highlights examples of strategies that have made strides in improving the quality of health care environments, systems-level improvements to support self-management, and collaborations between primary care and public health to support effective approaches to prevent obesity among children and adults in the U.S.

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values contains articles concerned with ethics in and around scientific practice. These articles ask how organizational routines both produce and diffuse concerns about the risks and benefits of scientific research and products, and why context remains elusive in formal ethical analysis. These cases are from diverse settings, with several touching on issues of economic inequality and participation in scientific research. Each article describes in some way how cultural and institutional configurations shape ethical (...) thinking and the distribution of goods and harms in science. (shrink)

This paper is one of four interrelated action papers resulting from the 2008 National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control. Summit participants engaged in discussions on the current state of the law with respect to obesity, nutrition and food policy, physical activity, and physical education. Participants also identified gaps in the law at all jurisdictional levels and relevant to numerous sectors and disciplines that have a stake in obesity prevention and control.The companion paper, “Assessment of Laws and (...) Legal Authorities for Obesity Prevention and Control,”identified numerous laws and policies enacted to target the three domains of healthy lifestyles, healthy places, and healthy societies. That paper identified several gaps in the law that require attention and action. This paper addresses those gaps and presents applicable laws and legal authorities that public health professionals and lawyers can consider to implement to close the gaps. (shrink)

Philosophical theorizing is often, either tacitly or explicitly, guided by intuitions about cases. Theories that accord with our intuitions are generally considered to be prima facie better than those that do not. However, recent empirical work has suggested that philosophically significant intuitions are variable and unstable in a number of ways. This variability of intuitions has led naturalistically inclined philosophers to disparage the practice of relying on intuitions for doing philosophy in general (e.g. Stich & Weinberg 2001) and for doing (...) moral philosophy in particular (Appiah 2008; Doris & Stich 2005; Horowitz 1998; Nadelhoffer & Feltz 2008; Sinnott Armstrong 2008). In this paper, we will draw on naturalistic considerations to offer some solace to philosophers who rely on intuitions. We wouldn’t call this a defense of intuitions, exactly, since we are sympathetic with much of the naturalists’ critique. But we want to introduce into the debate some neglected naturalistic reasons to be optimistic about intuitions, focusing especially on ethical intuitions. (shrink)

We discuss the authors' conceptualization of replication, in particular the false dichotomy of direct versus conceptual replication intrinsic to it, and suggest a broader one that better generalizes to other domains of psychological research. We also discuss their approach to the evaluation of replication results and suggest moving beyond their dichotomous statistical paradigms and employing hierarchical/meta-analytic statistical models.

This paper offers a close reading of PAW Media animation My Name is Danny. Drawing across a growing body of recent Central and Western Desert experimental cinema, this paper asks what is at stake in the turn to animation. Rather than escapism or otherworldly fabrications which have little to do with lived experience of the “real,” animation in this context has potent everyday exigencies and politics. The capacity for bringing to life literally – animate – is here linked to the (...) primacy of a sentient landscape; an object world already alive and enlivened with motion, movement, sensation. The question for contemporary filmmaking is how to engage country and its viscera today. How to keep country/ancestor/story alive literally through sentient forms of affective exchange; a project which animation, as this paper will explore, uniquely provides. Drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, as well as the animation theory of Cholodenko, Lemarre and others, this paper argues for a radical reconsideration of animation not as incompatible with tradition but in fact as facilitating traditional ontologies of affect and sensation in a national context of remote Aboriginal Australia “under occupation.”. (shrink)

The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects commercial speech from government interference. Commercial speech has been defined by the US Supreme Court as speech that proposes a commercial transaction, such as marketing and labeling. Companies that produce products associated with public health harms, such as alcohol, tobacco, and food, thus have a constitutional right to market these products to consumers. This article will examine the evolution of US law related to the protection of commercial speech, often at the expense (...) of public health. It will then identify outstanding questions related to the commercial speech doctrine and the few remaining avenues available in the United States to regulate commercial speech including the use of government speech and addressing deceptive and misleading commercial speech. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Cycle of Violence and Feminist Constructions of Selfhood Jennifer L. Rike University ofDetroit Mercy Violence is the heart and secret soul ofthe sacred" (Girard 1977, 31). René Girard reaches this shocking conclusion by tracing the dynamics ofthe generation ofviolence in history, and the ingenious ways in which humanity has learned to funnel violence into ritual sacrifice to avoid apocalypse. His argument pivots upon his understanding ofhumanity as (...) inherently flawed, as fated to conflict in the struggle to survive. Ifthe sacred mechanism of ritual sacrifice is not deployed, violence takes on a power and personality all its own: "If left unappeased, violence will accumulate until it overflows its confines and floods the surrounding area. The role ofsacrifice is to stem this rising tide... and redirect violence into 'proper' channels" (10). Girard's theory about the violent origins ofthe sacred institutions of ritual sacrifice, law, and myth highlights perhaps the chief paradox of religion: it has been used to promote as much as to oppose violence. Today, as feminists explore how women in particular have been the objects ofsuch violence, they too have turned to Girard to understand this paradox, and yet most have ended up criticizing Girard for falsely universalizing typically Eurocentric and androcentric conceptions of humanity, violence, and religion (Shea, Kirk-Duggan, Nowak 24-6).' While they may be right on certain points, it is also possible that the rush offeminist scholars to charge 1 Nancy Jay has also criticized Girard for androcentrism, in particular because "he still grounds all community and culture on male control of male violence" (130). 22Jennifer L. Rike Girard with androcentrism reflects their own refusals to confront how the dark face of violence appears in women as well as in men. Rather than evaluating specific feminist criticisms ofGirard in this regard, I propose a more global approach—to delineate in greater detail how feminist constructions of selfhood need to be informed by Girard's theory of the violent origins ofthe sacred in order for feminism to achieve its own goals. In Girard's view, the ritual ofsacrifice and the law are generated out ofthe socio-psychological mechanisms ofacquisitive mimesis and scapegoating as the sacred's way of controlling violence. In ways he leaves largely implicit, these mechanisms reflect the devastating cyclical effects of violence upon its victims. Girard stops short of reflecting on the roles gender plays in the cyclical processes of violence, and yet, as my subsequent analyses shall demonstrate, there can be little doubt that women participate in these processes in ways both like and unlike men. Women have been scapegoated throughout history, but not all women end up as victims ofviolence and the rituals constructed to appease it. Nor do many women remain simply victims of the tides of violence: many repeat the cycle of victimization and themselves become perpetrators. Moreover, some escape the cycle ofviolence by a variety ofmeans whose patterns are well worth scrutinizing. My point is that women's modes of participation in the processes through which violence makes and remakes itself are far more complex than has been recognized, and merit our full attention. From the perspective of feminist constructions of selfhood, the question then becomes, how does gender affect one's experience of acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating, victimage and perpetration? To claim that only women are victims and only men—and the women they have co-opted—are perpetrators may be politically correct, but that claim ignores some hard but ultimately helpful truths about what women must do to bring about the changes necessary for revolutionizing our society by transforming its violent ways into peaceful ones. My plan, then, is to suggest how Girard might be used to advance the theory and praxis of feminism further by delving into the psychological mechanisms underlying acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating. I shall argue that using object relations theory to understand the ways in which violence splits the human psyche complements Girard's conception of acquisitive mimesis and scapegoating to disclose the complete dynamics ofthe cycle ofviolence. Such understanding is essential to feminist reconstructions of selfhood, because it makes the defeat of sexism and violence possible by exposing them at their roots. Feminist Constructions ofSelfhood23 My project has four steps... (shrink)

The evidence reveals that young children are targeted by food and beverage advertisers but are unable to comprehend the commercial context and persuasive intent of marketing. Although the First Amendment protects commercial speech, it does not protect deceptive and misleading speech for profit. Marketing directed at children may fall into this category of unprotected speech. Further, children do not have the same First Amendment right to receive speech as adults. For the first time since the Federal Trade Commission's original attempt (...) to regulate marketing to children in the 1970s , the political, scientific, and legal climate coalesce to make the time well-suited to reevaluate the FTC's authority for action. This paper analyzes the constitutional authority for the FTC to regulate television food marketing directed at children as deceptive in light of the most robust public health evidence on the subject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:74 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Jennifer L. Holland “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust”: Children and Young Adults in the Anti-Abortion Movement During the last three decades of the twentieth century, children across the United States regularly encountered adults who both hailed them as survivors of a holocaust and pleaded with them not to perpetrate one. These adults were not talking about (...) war, at least not in a traditional sense. They were talking about legal abortion. Children and young adults often heard this pitch in school presentations like one made in the mid-1970s by a California anti-abortion group, United Parents Under God, in which pictures of aborted fetuses (whose “feet will never kick a football... run on a playground... or play hopscotch”) and their imagined lost life stories were the centerpiece. Next to pictures of aborted fetuses were pictures of two prematurely born infants of color (the only people of color in the presentation) who were supposedly in danger under Roe v. Wade. With murder hovering in the air, activists asked their teen audience, “Is someone you love next?” According to these California anti-abortion activists, young people were physically and intellectually vulnerable to pro-choice views because they inhabited “atheistic” classrooms “where evil can no longer be called ‘evil.’” “You are quite literally ‘trapped’ in a completely ‘pagan’ situation in our secular society and schools and we must reach you anyway we can,” they continued. In the so-called “pro-life” worldview, liberals were brainwashing children and young people through the media, public schools, and many other institutions. Jennifer L. Holland 75 “Women’s liberal abortion speakers,” political scientists, “who typically work for the STATE” and for whom the “ends justify the means,” and new “secular-science textbooks”—all were trying to frighten teenagers to “into killing [their] OWN OFFSPRING,” activists said. Anti-abortion women, “ordinary women... who LOVE you” according to the California presentation, sought to protect children while feminist “witches... distort [ed] God’s purposes of sexuality.”1 In order to counteract what they viewed as corruption, anti-abortion activists had to wage a counter -battle, politicizing children in order to make them innocent again. In practice, that meant bringing the abortion wars—with their attendant graphic imagery and discussions of immorality, murder, and “holocausts ”—into the haven of childhood. From the movement’s early days, anti-abortion activists waged their fight in the name of innocent young people; abortion, they said, was a genocide of children. While these activists were certainly not the only US movement to use the supposed vulnerability of children to elicit public support for their cause, they also did something different. For the anti-abortion movement, children and young adults were more than just endangered innocents; they were also potential perpetrators. Young people, it seemed, were more liberal than their elders, having allegedly been reared in and indoctrinated by liberal culture. They seemed, in short, to be a potentially pro-choice generation. Thus, adult activists spoke more to and about young people at the end of the century. Adults needed young people to speak for fetuses as “Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust,” but they also needed to convert and save America through them. The anti-abortion narrative of childhood vulnerability offered the restoration of social hierarchies as a solution to the problem of abortion. It was “women’s liberal abortion speakers” and feminist “witches” who were the sources of societal indoctrination. Pro-choice women separated sex and reproduction, thus undermining women’s role in society and changing their relationships with men. More subtly, anti-abortion 1. United Parents Under God, “That They May Live: A Presentation on Abortion,” n.d., folder 1, United Parents Under God Ephemeral Materials, Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. This publication was probably created in the early to mid-1970s because the few citations contained within are from between 1970 and 1973. 76 Jennifer L. Holland activists—who were almost always white—mourned the loss of past racial hierarchies while also envisioning theirs as a civil rights movement. In the California presentation mentioned above, activists explicitly compared abortion to mandated... (shrink)

Legal and ethical concerns have been raised since the inception of the commercial mug shot website industry in the United States. These issues include the violation of the presumption of innocence, privacy interests, humiliation, extortion, and sensationalizing crime. These websites lend comparison to Bedlam asylum, which allowed visitors to mock and humiliate the patients. The popularity of these websites renders it essential that the legality and ethics of these websites be reevaluated. The deontological and utilitarian perspectives offer converging assessments regarding (...) the need to regulate the industry and to modify the practices of law enforcement agencies and news organizations. (shrink)

Living with cancer: a state of perpetual emergency -- Notes -- References -- PART IV: Environmental aesthetics and resistance -- 12. The great turning -- 13. The underestimated power effects of the discourses and practices of the food justice movement -- Pessimist premise -- General system failure -- The transformative strength of the three Foucaults -- How practices and discourses of the food justice movement illustrate the three Foucaults -- The biopolitical disaster of industrial agriculture -- Via Campesina: peasant knowledge, (...) land and power -- Urban agriculture: eaters' resistance and practices for a new food system -- Slow Food: putting eaters' culture back into "agriculture" -- Conclusion: get your hands dirty! -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 14. Interrogating the neoliberal biopolitics of the sustainable development-resilience nexus -- The political genealogy of sustainable development -- From security to resilience -- The disastrous and politically debased subject of resilience -- Conclusion: development contra neoliberalism? -- References -- 15. The aesthetics of triage: Towards life beyond survival -- Mechanism of a triage -- Photographic triage -- The cinematic triage -- Beyond survival -- References -- 16. End piece: Dealing with disastrous life -- Extra/ordinary disasters -- Dread life -- Towards a new critical framework? -- References -- Index. (shrink)

Obesity is a public health problem in the United States. Experts have identified the regulation of food marketing as a policy strategy to address obesity and poor nutrition. However, the First Amendment can be a barrier to reducing exposure to problematic food marketing. In recent years, courts have become increasingly protective of speech, and particularly of “commercial speech,” or advertising, which can make it more difficult to regulate certain marketing practices.

Abstract:In the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake on January 12, 2010, the representative victim-survivor in multiple media sites appeared to the world in the face of the Haitian child-cum-orphan. This poignant image of loss and suffering lent urgency to a range of altruistic responses—or rather, paternalistic interventions—by white families in the U.S. I argue that in both narrative and practice, dominant constructions of normative (white) motherhood were exaggerated and made hypervisible, which propelled the actual lived experience of Haitian mothers (...) further into oblivion. In this article, I examine the discursive formations that produce Haitian women as “deviant black mothers” in transnational contexts. In similar ways, “the beggar mother” construct in the Dominican national media engenders powerful ideas about maternal neglect that link up with constructions of migrant illegality, criminality, and poverty. Drawing upon black and transnational feminist empirical analysis, I demonstrate how such discursive formations affectively circulate within transnational imaginaries and quotidian racial intimacies to effect forms of surveillance, objectification, and regulation of Haitian women and, by extension, their children who face an ever-greater risk of “statelessness.”. (shrink)

I explore both the potential and the perils of Twitter as a space for constituting a Deweyan public aimed at transforming how "we" (here, I mean not only citizens of the United States but global citizens) affectively receive and thereby respond to and resist sexual violation. In the course of this brief exploration, I operate with a pragmatic notion of "truth," namely, as democratically formulating a hypothesis concerning the nature of a social problem that enables fruitful amelioration of the problem. (...) I specifically focus on the viral #WhyIDidntReport Twitter campaign provoked by Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court hearing. (shrink)

Not all hospital inpatients need the level of care uniquely available in the acute-care setting. In the United States, these longer-term, nonacute inpatients tend to be some combination of chronically ill, poor, homeless, undocumented, uninsured, and disabled—all groups who have struggled for health equity, political recognition, and voice. Even so, these “permanent patients” continue to receive care in one of the most expensive settings. This phenomenon is the result of federal legislation that creates an affirmative duty to care for all (...) able to access our emergency departments without also making safe housing available to all. A handful of federal laws and policies as well as a potpourri of state laws and policies are involved. (shrink)

The authors, one a trained geneticist and the other a trained ethicist, designed and team-taught a bioethics course where nineteen third- and fourth-year undergraduate students were enrolled at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the fall 2016 semester. The syllabus, including democratically-chosen ethical debate topics, peer-led student working groups, and varied assessment methods were novel aspects of the course. The students, being either philosophy or biology majors or minors, successfully completed the course and indicated being highly satisfied with the (...) course at its completion. Although there were limitations to a course such as this one, educators at similar small liberal arts institutions could offer a bioethics course by following our suggestions, including collaborative teaching and assessment and incorporating students’ preferences into the scheduled curriculum. (shrink)

: Hannah Arendt's and Charlotte Delbo's writings about the Holocaust trouble our preconceptions about those who do evil and those who suffer evil. Their jarring terms "banal evil" and "useless knowledge" point to limitations and temptations facing scholars of evil. While Arendt helps us to resist the temptation to mythologize evil, Delbo helps us to resist the temptation to domesticate suffering.

This article is an exploration of the differences between science and technology studies and the history of technology, taken as independent intellectual fields. The differences range from stylistic and professional, to matters of theory, narrative, and inference. These make true interdisciplinarity challenging, although scholars do bridge the disciplines. Both provide important resources for critical technological literacy by promoting historical thinking and by providing tools for exploring reflexivity by the social contextualization of scholarly activities and knowledge production in general.

The relationships between female sex workers and their noncommercial male partners are typically viewed as sites of HIV risk rather than meaningful unions. This ethnographic case study presents a nuanced portrayal of the relationship between Cindy and Beto, a female sex worker who injects drugs and her intimate, noncommercial partner who live in Tijuana, Mexico. On the basis of ethnographic research in Tijuana and our long-term involvement in a public health study, we suggest that emotions play a central role in (...) sex workers’ relationships and contribute in complex ways to each partner's health. We conceptualize Cindy and Beto's relationship as a “dangerous safe haven” in which HIV risk behaviors such as unprotected sex and syringe sharing convey notions of love and trust and help sustain emotional unity amid broader uncertainties but nevertheless carry very real health risks. Further attention to how emotions shape vulnerable couples’ health remains a task for anthropology. (shrink)

Self-compassion is a mechanism of symptom improvement in post-traumatic stress disorder, however, the underlying neurobiological processes are not well understood. High levels of self-compassion are associated with reduced activation of the threat response system. Physiological threat responses to trauma reminders and increased arousal are key symptoms which are maintained by negative appraisals of the self and self-blame. Moreover, PTSD has been consistently associated with functional changes implicated in the brain’s saliency and the default mode networks. In this paper, we explore (...) how trauma exposed individuals respond to a validated self-compassion exercise. We distinguish three groups using the PTSD checklist; those with full PTSD, those without PTSD, and those with subsyndromal PTSD. Subsyndromal PTSD is a clinically relevant subgroup in which individuals meet the criteria for reexperiencing along with one of either avoidance or hyperarousal. We use electroencephalography alpha-asymmetry and EEG microstate analysis to characterize brain activity time series during the self-compassion exercise in the three groups. We contextualize our results with concurrently recorded autonomic measures of physiological arousal, parasympathetic activation and self-reported changes in state mood and self-perception. We find that in all three groups directing self-compassion toward oneself activates the negative self and elicits a threat response during the SC exercise and that individuals with subsyndromal PTSD who have high levels of hyperarousal have the highest threat response. We find impaired activation of the EEG microstate associated with the saliency, attention and self-referential processing brain networks, distinguishes the three PTSD groups. Our findings provide evidence for potential neural biomarkers for quantitatively differentiating PTSD subgroups. (shrink)