We usually think nothing of our practice of ‘giving up’ on someone who has behaviors or attitudes that are morally criticizable—after all, it is my prerogative to choose with whom I will associate, and exclusion seems to be an unobjectionable part of my toolkit of social sanctions. However, this paper will argue that it is in many cases impermissible to give up on a morally unpleasant person—in fact, it would be to make an unjustified exception for oneself.

Social factors have a powerful influence on human health and longevity. Yet the social dimensions of health are often obscured in public discussions due to the overwhelming focus in health policy on medical care, individual-level risk factor research, and changing individual behaviours. Likewise, in philosophical approaches to health and social justice, the debates have largely focused on rationing problems in health care and on personal responsibility. However, a range of events over the past two decades such as the study of (...) modern famines, the global experience of HIV/AIDS, the international women’s health movement, and the flourishing of social epidemiological research have drawn attention to the robust relationship between health and broad social arrangements. In Health Justice, Sridhar Venkatapuram takes up the problem of identifying what claims individuals have in regard to their health in modern societies and the globalized world. Recognizing the social bases of health and longevity, Venkatapuram extends the ‘Capabilities Approach’ of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum into the domain of health and health sciences. In so doing, he formulates an inter-disciplinary argument that draws on the natural and social sciences as well as debates around social justice to argue for every human being’s moral entitlement to a capability to be healthy. An ambitious integration of the health sciences and the Capabilities Approach, Health Justice aims to provide a concrete ethical grounding for the human right to health, while advancing the field of health policy and placing health at the centre of social justice theory. With a foreword by Sir Michael Marmot, chair of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. (shrink)

The final report of the WHO's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health is the first to apply social epidemiological analysis to global health.

Chiefly, on materialism and Indic philosophy.

Objective To determine the knowledge and attitudes of healthcare personnel regarding the provision of non-beneficial futile care in the intensive care units at the major public hospitals in Trinidad and Tobago. Method Prospective data collection was done using a questionnaire administered to the medical and nursing staff of the intensive care units. The questionnaire was designed to capture the opinions regarding the futile care offered to terminally ill patients at the intensive care units. The responses were based on a five-point (...) Likert scale. The influence of factors such as age, gender, duration of work experience, religious belief, ethnicity, occupational category and educational status on the responses were analysed. Results A total of 274 completed responses were obtained from doctors and nurses. The frequency with which the respondents encountered ethical or legal problems in the intensive care unit varied widely from ‘daily’ to ‘yearly’. The majority felt that knowledge of ethics is important, and only 32% knew the legal issues pertaining to their work. Eighty percent of doctors and nurses had no knowledge of an existing Hospital Ethics Committee and its role in ethical dilemmas. Although 62% said their decisions regarding futile care will be influenced by their scientific knowledge, only 32% agreed to withdraw care. Eighty percent said that the government should pass appropriate laws regarding withdrawal of futile care. Conclusions Most healthcare providers in intensive care unit are not knowledgeable in the ethical and legal issues of non-beneficial futile care. There is a need to devise means to bring awareness and educate intensive care unit healthcare providers in this subject. (shrink)

Many scholars and activists have argued that the International Criminal Court holds potential for advancing the rights of women and girls, leading to extensive feminist engagement with and investment in the Court. As the ICC enters its second decade of existence, this article offers a reflection on both the possibilities and the challenges facing feminists. Can the international criminal law really offer a site for enhancing the rights of women? And if so, how? To explore these questions I focus on (...) the interaction between feminist activism and international criminal law institutions in relation to crimes of sexual and gender-based violence. I argue that some of the feminist strategies deployed to get sexual violence onto the international agenda have resulted in perverse outcomes. This should lead us to greater critical reflection regarding how international law conceives of sexual violence and direct our future engagements with international legal institutions. In particular feminist activists and scholars need to move away from focusing on the number of prosecutions towards challenging the international criminal law to characterise the nature of the harm in accordance with a recognition of sexual rights. (shrink)

This essay delves into the essentialities of object-giving sources within the formulation of epistemic objectivity. It explores the relationship between objectivity and intentional states, particularly in the context of immediate and transcendent experiences. A key focus of this paradigm is the examination of inferences and how they are held in X’s intentional processes. These claims about inferences contribute to the perception of objectivity by highlighting the epistemological transitions of things that occur in the constitutive ideation. Additionally, the activity within X’s (...) episteme leads to significant articulations that reflect a structural realism of experiences. The essay also introduces a convention of the experiential-intentional process so that the causality manipulations could be avoided by the precents of sources of ideation. In this instance, the central niche is occupied by transcendental reflections of intentionality, which are fundamentally founded on experiences and objectivity, and they possess a distinct rhetorical quality. They manifest as acts, propositional forms, and constituents, all of which contribute to the understanding and justification of objectivity. To establish such a framework that upholds objectivity, certain prerequisites must be met. Firstly, the framework must possess justificational resources that prevent causality manipulations. Secondly, pre-reflective sources should not inter-define causality in epistemic circumstances, although this does not exclude the emergence of causal relations, and thus this approach offers a correlational explanation. Lastly, transcendental reflections should remain compatible with the experiential-intentional process, allowing for the accommodation of subjectivity in the justification of objectivity. (shrink)

One of the important aspects of educational philosophy is that it helps to construct a comprehensive system of education. During different periods, India has witnessed various stages of development. New priorities have emerged in education with the influences of monastic scholastic, realistic, idealistic and pragmatic trends. While education institutions have evolved, there remain several gaps between the philosophical ideals proposed by educational institutions and their everyday functioning. The paper brings forth the urgent need to bridge the gaps in order to (...) attain a comprehensive philosophy of education, in principle and in action. The authors posit that the Indian philosophy of education, normatively speaking, could extend the culture and tradition of the philosophical positions of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda. Such an approach could help in developing an integrated approach of teachers towards education and assist in strengthening their role in shaping the inner potential of a learner in a constructive manner. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Public Health is an outstanding reference source to this exciting subject and the first collection of its kind. Comprising over forty chapters by a team of international contributors the handbook covers the following central topics: What is global health?; methodology in public health science; social determinants and health equity; politics and economics; health policy and law; globalization; macroeconomics; securitization; and specific public health challenges such as obesity, cancer, alcohol, tobacco and infectious diseases. Essential (...) reading for students and researchers in political philosophy, bioethics, public health ethics and the philosophy of medicine the handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such public health professionals and epidemiologists. (shrink)

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is believed to be Beijing’s most ambitious project so far. Two types of apprehensions are often voiced to support this claim. First, it is widely argued that despite enjoying enduring strategic partnership for over five decades, Pakistan and China don’t match economically. The Chinese will get weary of the many challenges coming with the corrupt, inefficient and globally isolated Pakistan, seriously undermining the conclusion of the Chinese mammoth investment in CPEC Secondly, Pakistan’s prevailing environment of (...) insecurity which is rife with Islamic militancy and domestic insurgency is thought to be posing serious threats to the construction of the corridor. This paper aims to explain why, despite possible concerns, the China Pakistan economic corridor will succeed. (shrink)

On the life and philosophy of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Christianity and comparing it with the views of Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950 on Vedanta; a study.

ABSTRACT The current study is a qualitative investigation aimed at exploring the lived experiences of Tibetan youth who had escaped to India as unaccompanied minors and since then have been living as refugees in India without their parents. The study attempts to explore the challenges, struggles and coping of this unique population of youth refugees growing up in exile in India without the support of parents. Ten Tibetan refugee youth now studying at university level were interviewed in depth. Interpretative phenomenological (...) analysis was used to analyse their narratives. Major findings included the unique sociocultural, political and emotional challenges they faced related to acclimatisation, status of their own political identity, difficulties pertaining to retaining their Tibetan culture in a host country, and loneliness. Their adaptation in the host country was perceived to be facilitated by their unique Buddhist spiritual and cultural beliefs, strong faith in the Dalai Lama, community bonding and peer support and the use of social media to communicate with family in Tibet. The Tibetan refugee youth derived a sense of growth from their adversities related to appreciating the value of family, personal growth in the form of self-reliance, and finding meaning in life by feeling part of a larger purpose related to the Tibetan cause. Implications for practice: The study highlights the unique psychosocial issues of Tibetan refugee youth in exile in India. Culturally sensitive psychosocial support and an understanding of traditional spiritual and religious coping mechanisms may be integrated into health services for the Tibetan refugees who lack family support and may not be familiar with the Western constructs of mental health. (shrink)

"In comparison to medicine, the professional field of public health is far less familiar. What is public health, and perhaps as importantly, what should public health be or become? How do causal concepts shape the public health agenda? How do study designs either promote or demote the environmental causal factors or health inequalities? How is risk understood, expressed, and communicated? Who is public health research centered on? How can we develop technologies so the benefits are more fairly distributed? Do people (...) have a right to public health? How should we integrate ethics into public health practice? The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Public Health addresses these questions and more, and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising twenty-six chapters by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, the handbook is divided into four clear parts: Concepts and Distinctions Reasons and Actions Distribution and Inequalities Rights and Duties. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Public Health is a field-defining and sustained reflection on the various ethical, political, methodological and conceptual aspects of global public health. As such it is an essential reference source for students and scholars working in political philosophy, bioethics, public health ethics, and the philosophy of medicine, as well as for professionals and researchers in related fields such public health and epidemiology"--. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have consistently argued for broadened definitions of work that include the invisible family and emotion work done predominantly by women. This article focuses on women's resistances to placing these various activities into the common category of work. Drawing from interviews with teleworkers, it examines how and why women narrowed the meaning of work and explores some of the costs that may accompany a more expansive definition of work.

Trust is a central dimension in the relation between human beings and technologies. In many discourses about technology, the relation between human beings and technologies is conceptualized as an external relation: a relation between pre-given entities that can have an impact on each other but that do not mutually constitute each other. From this perspective, relations of trust can vary between _reliance_, as is present for instance in technological extensionism, and _suspicion_, as in various precautionary approaches in ethics that focus (...) on technological risks. Against these two interpretations of trust, this article develops a third one. Based on a more internal account of the relations between human beings and technologies, it becomes possible to see that every technological development puts at stake what it means to be a human being. Using technologies, then, implies trusting ourselves _to_ technologies. We argue that this does not imply an uncritical subjection to technology. Rather, recognizing that technologies help to constitute human subjectivity implies that human beings can get actively involved in processes of technological mediation. Trust then has the character of _confidence_: deliberately trusting oneself _to_ technology. (shrink)

In recent years, political theorists have come to recognize the central role of affect in social and political life. A host of scholars, coming from a number of distinct traditions, have variously drawn our attention to the importance of the emotions to the tradition of the history of political thought, as well as to normative political theory. This attentiveness to affect is often cast as a break with earlier, Enlightenment-inspired liberal approaches towards politics, approaches that marginalized the emotions, dismissing the (...) passions as potentially dangerous, or neglected them altogether. According to the conventional liberal view, emotions are said to have no place in the public sphere, while proceduralist institutions abstract away from citizens’ affective attachments, now cast as private preferences of individuals qua citizens. In this paper we challenge this prevalent view. We argue that no less a liberal theorist than John Rawls is deeply attentive to the place of emotions in his account of liberalism. This may seem counterintuitive given that Rawls' work has been frequently criticized for epitomizing some of the deepest problems of contemporary liberal theory, as a result of the emphasis on rationalism and reasonableness in his account of liberal justice. However, against this prevalent reading, we demonstrate that Rawls is in fact highly concerned with the role of affect and presents us with an account of the embedded liberal subject. By drawing out these dimensions of Rawls' thought, we hope to contribute to upending the conventional view of liberalism as affect-blind in order to encourage a more nuanced reading of the liberal tradition. (shrink)

I argue for a conception of health as a person's ability to achieve or exercise a cluster of basic human activities. These basic activities are in turn specified through free-standing ethical reasoning about what constitutes a minimal conception of a human life with equal human dignity in the modern world. I arrive at this conception of health by closely following and modifying Lennart Nordenfelt's theory of health which presents health as the ability to achieve vital goals. Despite its strengths I (...) transform Nordenfelt's argument in order to overcome three significant drawbacks. Nordenfelt makes vital goals relative to each community or context and significantly reflective of personal preferences. By doing so, Nordenfelt's conception of health faces problems with both socially relative concepts of health and subjectively defined wellbeing. Moreover, Nordenfelt does not ever explicitly specify a set of vital goals. The theory of health advanced here replaces Nordenfelt's (seemingly) empty set of preferences and society-relative vital goals with a human species-wide conception of basic vital goals, or ‘central human capabilities and functionings’. These central human capabilities come out of the capabilities approach (CA) now familiar in political philosophy and economics, and particularly reflect the work of Martha Nussbaum. As a result, the health of an individual should be understood as the ability to achieve a basic cluster of beings and doings—or having the overarching capability, a meta-capability, to achieve a set of central or vital inter-related capabilities and functionings. (shrink)

The recent investigations into knowledge and its elements viz facts, skills and objects have become prominent in various subfields of philosophy and other areas like linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. These investigations have been mainly on understanding the relation between the intentionality and its referential entities to know how they enrich knowledge with their existence. This article starts with an exploration of the fundamental aspects of judgemental sense from the knowledge origins perspective. To explain the consequences of this, (...) I start with reconstructing the notion of categorial intuitions described in Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigations by relating it to ‘knowledge origination’ as an intuitive fulfilment of signifying acts. This offers a relation of perceptual synthesis, operating implicitly among the signifying intentions upon grasping intended objects, in view of language structures such as copulas. This leads to the synthesis of intuitive aspects mainly from the categorial elements for a judgemental sense or thinking and the attitude from the very sphere of perception. The tension between categorial intuitions is understood as foundational acts and founded acts. Husserl’s sixth Logical Investigation describes the notion of passive synthesis, the genesis of categoriality in every realm of sensibility that allows one to formulate the relational role among the ‘act of knowing’ and phenomenological approaches to the judgemental sense. Thus, the investigation focuses on perceptual judgements and categories, which fulfils the judgemental sense of categorial elements and attitude. (shrink)

Philosophers who study care—most often, care ethicists—are involved in an ongoing discussion about the concept of care. Despite the significant progress made in this discussion, certain conflicting images of care seem to persist in the literature. On one hand, as feminist theorists across disciplines have highlighted, care is a complex social practice that is mired in inequality and injustice. The deeply gendered nature of caring and the unequal division of care-work creates and cements structural inequalities. On the other hand, care (...) is also thought of as a moral value or an ideal. The ethics of care—a moral theory with decidedly feminist roots—is predicated on the idea that caring is somehow morally valuable. A discrepancy thus arises: care is a social practice that compounds injustices. But it is also a moral value. What is it about care that makes it malleable to such variations? To pick out this complexity and capture the conceptual nuances at play, this paper suggests that we frame the concept of care as a thick ethical concept. I will first demonstrate why this framing is helpful. Then, I will provide accounts of the descriptive and evaluative elements of the concept of care. I hope to show that it is through a thick conceptual framing that we can make sense of care—both as a complex social practice and an important moral value in the worlds that we inhabit. (shrink)

This article argues that college-educated women play a crucial part in successful resistance against genocide because they are more likely to forge secure interregional networks and, consequently, better able to shelter victims of mass-persecution than their male peers. We develop our argument through a study of Jewish rescue networks in the Netherlands during the Holocaust. College-educated women were especially valuable during rescue efforts due to their ability to operate as defiant conformists. These women – a small minority who were anything (...) but traditional – could more fully exploit their biographical availability and university networks by concealing interregional resistance work through the strategic performance of traditional feminine roles. Statistical analyses of geocoded rescue networks reveal that rescue networks involving college-educated women were more successful because they funneled Jews across the country without getting exposed. More in-depth exploration of distinct networks identifies three dramaturgical strategies that college-educated women deployed to facilitate clandestine and geographically expansive rescue work: 1) strategic coquetry; 2) strategic self-devaluation; 3) strategic motherhood and wedlock. Taken together, our findings suggest we should focus on how gender and other forms of social status interact to produce the relational and dramaturgical underpinnings of civilian agency in times of emergency. (shrink)

Situational and experiential factors provide a moral lens through which people judge the morality or otherwise of actions. The research in this volume goes a step further and illustrates that individual differences may interact with these situational and experiential factors to explain the acquisition of positive attitudes to immoral behaviour.

Drawing from the Boulding''s (1956) framework for general systems theory, the need to employ richer paradigm in the study of organizations (Pondy and Mitroff, 1979) is reiterated. It is argued that a better understanding of organizational ethical behavior is contingent upon viewing organizations as symbol processing systems of shared language and meanings. Further, it is proposed that organizations, like individuals, develop into collectivities of shared cognitions and rationale, over a period of time. The study adapts Kohlberg''s (1983) model of moral (...) development to examine if organizations can be viewed as passing through different stages of moral development depending on the type of moral reasoning employed to explain their behaviors in the face of ethical crises. Several cases raising questions about the ethics of corporate behavior were researched. An instrument entitled Organization Response Analysis was constructed using statements made by various spokespersons representing five of these organizations. The instrument was administered to 246 graduate and undergraduate students of business (N = 246). Results indicated a great degree of concurrence among respondents of differing genders, levels of education and work experience in determining the stages of moral development of organizations. Limitations of the current study and implications for future research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Quantum trajectory-based descriptions of interference between two coherent stationary waves in a double-slit experiment are presented, as given by the de Broglie–Bohm and modified de Broglie–Bohm formulations of quantum mechanics. In the dBB trajectory representation, interference between two spreading wave packets can be shown also as resulting from motion of particles. But a trajectory explanation for interference between stationary states is so far not available in this scheme. We show that both the dBB and MdBB trajectories are capable of producing (...) the interference pattern for stationary as well as wave packet states. However, the dBB representation is found to provide the ‘which-way’ information that helps to identify the hole through which the particle emanates. On the other hand, the MdBB representation does not provide any which-way information while giving a satisfactory explanation of interference phenomenon in tune with the de Broglie’s wave particle duality. By counting the trajectories reaching the screen, we have numerically evaluated the intensity distribution of the fringes and found very good agreement with the standard results. (shrink)

The present article identifies how social determinants of health raise two categories of philosophical problems that also fall within the smaller domain of ethics; one set pertains to the philosophy of epidemiology, and the second set pertains to the philosophy of health and social justice. After reviewing these two categories of ethical concerns, the limited conclusion made is that identifying and responding to social determinants of health requires inter-disciplinary reasoning across epidemiology and philosophy. For the reasoning used in epidemiology to (...) be sound, for its scope and (moral) purpose as a science to be clarified as well as for social justice theory to be relevant and coherent, epidemiology and philosophy need to forge a meaningful exchange of ideas that happens in both directions. (shrink)

Since the early twentieth century, various strands of “anticolonial” scholarship have been and are concerned with how colonial encounters and practices constitute differences. In recent years, this scholarship maps the uneven implications of “coloniality” for subjects and bodies marked as different, for example, “feminine,” “raced,” “queer,” or trans. Along with feminism, anticolonial scholarship's analytical goals—to link the body with body politics—are closely tied to its political ones: to correct the wrongs of colonial encounters and practices. The current avatars of anticolonial (...) scholarship include postcolonial, decolonial, and settler-colonial variants. (shrink)

This theoretical paper argues for prioritarianism as an ethical underpinning for digital health in contexts of extreme disadvantage. In support of this claim, the paper develops three prioritarian principles for making ethical decisions for digital health programme design, grounded in the normative position that the greater the need, the stronger the moral claim. The principles are positioned as an alternative view to the prevailing utilitarian approach to digital health, which the paper argues is not sufficient to address the needs of (...) the worst off. As researchers of digital health, we must ensure that the most globally marginalised are not overlooked by overtly technocentric implementation practices. Consequently, the paper concludes by advocating for use of the three principles to support stronger critical reflection on the ethics involved in the design and implementation of digital health programmes. (shrink)

This study evaluates the relationship between diversified relationships established under the umbrella of the Stimuli-Organism-Response framework to study the consumer continuation intention of the Airbnb platform from a Malaysian perspective. A web-based survey was conducted among Malaysian Airbnb consumers, and a sample of 303 respondents was obtained. SmartPLS has been used for data analysis. The statistical output of the respondent’s data indicates that social overload and information overload influence consumer continuation intention. Moreover, the satisfaction and trust in the platform partially (...) mediate the relationship between the stimuli and behavioral response. Further, perceived health risk strengthens the negative relationship between continuation and trust in the platform. The theoretical implications include enacting a SOR framework to understand the consumer’s internal state of mind and ability to influence the consumer platform continuation intention. The practical implications suggest that the managers and business owners focus on limiting the social exposure at the host destination and the flow of information from the application. (shrink)

The interpretive and subjective nature of qualitative research has led to growing utilization of arts-based strategies for data collection, analysis and dissemination. The defining characteristic of all such strategies is that they are largely subjective and intended to invoke personal responses in the ‘audience.’ Following that direction, many qualitative researchers are using metaphor to capture themes emerging from their analysis. In this article, we explore ethical aspects of using metaphor in describing results of qualitative health research and illustrate some of (...) the complexities using a case study of research conducted by one of the authors. Our analysis is designed to sensitize researchers and ethics reviewers to some unique ethical issues inherent to this approach towards data analysis and presentation. Issues related to participant dignity, respect and vulnerability led us to suggest that researchers should take these points into consideration in designing their research and seeking informed consent. Metaphors can be linguistic devices, but also conceptual aids that help develop patterns in analysis or that facilitate re-interpretation. However, there is a thin line between artistic licence for better expression and distorting the participants’ actual experience and meanings. Researchers, and reviewers, must be aware of the danger to participant dignity and integrity when aesthetics overshadow actuality. The use of metaphor may also trigger tensions between researchers and participants, especially if member checking is used. The implications of participant withdrawal must be considered and conveyed to ethics reviewers and participants. It is important to have a plan in place for dealing with some of these issues. These should be detailed in the proposal and communicated to participants. Institutional research ethics boards should, on their part, be prepared to ask questions if such details are lacking in the proposal. (shrink)

Background:Scholarly work is needed to develop the conceptual and theoretical understanding of trust to nursing practice. The transition from hospital care to complex pediatric homecare involves nurses in myriad roles, including management and care provision. Complex pediatric homecare transforms children, families, professionals, and communities, but its exact implications are unclear.Research objectives:To conduct an ethical inquiry into the role and responsibilities of nurses in the qualitative experience of adults involved in the hospital-to-home transition of young, ventilator-dependent children.Research design:We followed methods described (...) by Franco Carnevale. We used a sociologically grounded theoretical orientation—trust—to re-interpret qualitative data for an ethical inquiry into a specific facet of that data.Participants and study context:The participants included 26 adults, including 14 nurses, involved in the hospital-to-home transition in a Canadian province. Participants represented family, hospital, home, and government.Ethical considerations:The Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board at the University of Calgary approved this study.Findings:First, the concept and practice of trust was salient to the experience of transition. For example, responsibilities’ allocation between hospital-based professionals to mothers, home-based nurses, and non-professionals necessitated reliance and vulnerability. Second, the consequences of distrust connected to recognized challenges. For example, tensions along rural–urban, medical-family, and professional–personal divide each revealed suspicion and uncertainty that led to isolation and anxiety for all involved. Third, recommendations to improve the experience and mitigate the challenges of transition can be grounded in trust promotion. For example, transition-specific education programs and codes of ethics would promote openness, recognize mutual vulnerability, and advance trust in transition.Conclusions:The challenges to transition evidenced distrust, while trust represents a powerful tool to counter these challenges and their implications. A climate of trust could bridge divides between mothers and professionals; rural and urban professionals; and professionals with differing relationships with the family. (shrink)

This article looks at Husserlian ideas as an analytical tool to explain the cognitive aspects of experiences that range between knowledge acts in inferences and Mulligan’s contemporary perspective of meaning formation, through reflections of relations. The essay also takes into consideration the views of Levinas and Hintikka, for whom experiences form the foundations of intuitive capacity. These perspectives are essential concerning epistemic evidence to self (I/me-ness): mental objects and spatiotemporal relations are the structural notions of episteme on their own; their (...) dynamics were tightly coordinated at an intentional process to strengthen episteme; this coordination appeared to be a state change caused in epistemic evidence. (shrink)

This article investigates the conceptual foundations of technological innovation and development projects that aim to bring ethical and social issues into the design stage. Focusing on the ethics and social impact of technological innovation and development has been somewhat of a trend lately, for instance in ELSA research and in such initiatives as the Dutch Responsible Innovation programme. I argue that in order to succeed in doing social responsible and ethical sound design, a proper understanding of the relation between technology (...) and society is required. I propose to move away from an externalist framework, in which technology and society are depicted as being defined independently, towards an interdependent framework, where technology and society are regarded to be mutually defining. This move is necessary in order for such innovation projects not to reinforce outdated concepts about technology, which in the longer run will prove counterproductive to the actual aims of the projects themselves. (shrink)