The analytical model of political ideologies offered in this article describes the connection between rising levels of distrust towards societal institutions in modern democracies and how such developments has challenged traditional and long-standing political parties in the Western world, such as the Danish political party Radikale Venstre [the Danish Social-Liberal Party]. Through use of a tripartite model of trust developed by Arman Teymouri Niknam during his interpretation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s attitudes towards trust brought together with different aspects of Axel Honneth’s (...) social-philosophical framework, Teymouri Niknam and Leif Hemming Pedersen show how distrust may be able to act as a progressive tool in the creation of a more just, diverse and equal future and also how a virtuous and healthy form of democracy is an ideal that can be challenging to realise in practice. Teymouri Niknam and Hemming Pedersen are thus able to point to the ways in which a healthy democracy needs a balance of virtuous trust and distrust in order to achieve a good amount of both stability and progress, thus pointing to a difficult balancing act that many traditional political parties find themselves struggling with especially at this point in time in many contemporary democracies. (shrink)

This article merges the ‘terminologies of social change’ from recognition theory and mediatization research to argue that the mediatization of society has eased and accelerated processes of what recognition theorist Axel Honneth calls individualization and social inclusion. This, however, cannot be understood unambiguously as moral progress. Thus, the first part of the article outlines the conceptualization of social change in Honneth’s recognition-theoretical framework, including the critique of recognition theory’s account of power, which problematizes Honneth’s inherent idea of moral progress. Considering (...) this critique, the article follows Douglas Giles’ suggestion that we must distinguish between affirmational and transformational struggles for recognition. The discussion is subsequently related to the conceptualization of social change in mediatization research, which shows that the closely interrelated phenomena of a social relocation of media and a re-orientation of the self help facilitate and constitute the individual’s increased possibilities, but also dependence, with respect to intersubjective recognition from peer groups in many contemporary societies. This provides the starting point for exemplifying how the conditions for affirmational and transformational recognition struggles, and thus individualization and social inclusion, have changed in a mediatized world. This exemplification draws primarily on an in-depth case study of mediated recognition in the lives of four young Danes aged 15 to 30 years with different subcultural identity positions. The main empirical illustrations involve the experiences of the 22-year-old hijabi football freestyler Maarika, who uses her Muslim identity actively on her social media channels to be a role model and to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims and female footballers. (shrink)

The paper lists all the predictions and observations of eclipses of Jupiter's satellites 1668–1678 and compares them with modern computations of the these eclipses by J. H. Lieske. We discuss Roemer's method that led to his discovery of the retardment of light and finally we shall interpret Roemer's calculations.

Professionals within the mental health services face many ethical dilemmas and challenging situations regarding the use of coercion. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the significance of participating in systematic ethics reflection groups focusing on ethical challenges related to coercion. In 2013 and 2014, 20 focus group interviews with 127 participants were conducted. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim. The analysis is inspired by the concept of ‘bricolage’ which means our approach was inductive. Most participants report (...) positive experiences with participating in ethics reflection groups: A systematic and well-structured approach to discuss ethical challenges, increased consciousness of formal and informal coercion, a possibility to challenge problematic concepts, attitudes and practices, improved professional competence and confidence, greater trust within the team, more constructive disagreement and room for internal critique, less judgmental reactions and more reasoned approaches, and identification of potential for improvement and alternative courses of action. On several wards, the participation of psychiatrists and psychologists in the reflection groups was missing. The impact of the perceived lack of safety in reflection groups should not be underestimated. Sometimes the method for ethics reflection was utilised in a rigid way. Direct involvement of patients and family was missing. This focus group study indicates the potential of ethics reflection groups to create a moral space in the workplace that promotes critical, reflective and collaborative moral deliberations. Future research, with other designs and methodologies, is needed to further investigate the impact of ethics reflection groups on improving health care practices. (shrink)

Background:To better understand the kinds of ethical challenges that emerge when using coercion in mental healthcare, and the importance of these ethical challenges, this article presents a systematic review of scientific literature.Methods:A systematic search in the databases MEDLINE, PsychInfo, Cinahl, Sociologicals and Web of Knowledge was carried out. The search terms derived from the population, intervention, comparison/setting and outcome. A total of 22 studies were included.Ethical considerations:The review is conducted according to the Vancouver Protocol.Results:There are few studies that study ethical (...) challenges when using coercion in an explicit way. However, promoting the patient’s best interest is the most important justification for coercion. Patient autonomy is a fundamental challenge facing any use of coercion, and some kind of autonomy infringement is a key aspect of the concept of coercion. The concepts of coercion and autonomy and the relations between them are very complex. When coercion is used, a primary ethical challenge is to assess the balance between promoting good and inflicting harm. In the included studies, findings explicitly related to justice are few. Some studies focus on moral distress experienced by the healthcare professionals using coercion.Conclusion:There is a lack of literature explicitly addressing ethical challenges related to the use of coercion in mental healthcare. It is essential for healthcare personnel to develop a strong awareness of which ethical challenges they face in connection with the use of coercion, as well as challenges related to justice. How to address ethical challenges in ways that prevent illegitimate paternalism and strengthen beneficent treatment and care and trust in connection with the use of coercion is a ‘clinical must’. By developing a more refined and rich language describing ethical challenges, clinicians may be better equipped to prevent coercion and the accompanying moral distress. (shrink)

In recent years, the attention on the use of coercion in mental health care has increased. The use of coercion is common and controversial, and involves many complex ethical challenges. The research question in this study was: What kind of ethical challenges related to the use of coercion do health care practitioners face in their daily clinical work?

A systematic literature review on evaluation of clinical ethics support services in mental healthcare is presented and discussed. The focus was on (a) forms of clinical ethics support services, (b) evaluation of clinical ethics support services, (c) contexts and participants and (d) results. Five studies were included. The ethics support activities described were moral case deliberations and ethics rounds. Different qualitative and quantitative research methods were utilized. The results show that (a) participants felt that they gained an increased insight into (...) moral issues through systematic reflection; (b) there was improved cooperation among multidisciplinary team members; (c) it was uncertain whether clinical ethics support services led to better patient care; (d) the issue of patient and client participation is complex; and (e) the implementation process is challenging. Clinical ethics support services have mainly been studied through the experiences of the participating facilitators and healthcare professionals. Hence, there is limited knowledge of whether and how various types of clinical ethics support services influence the quality of care and how patients and relatives may evaluate clinical ethics support services. Based on the six excluded ‘grey zone articles’, in which there was an implicit focus on ethics reflection, other ways of working with ethical reflection in practice are discussed. Implementing and evaluating clinical ethics support services as approaches to clinical ethics support that are more integrated into the development of good practice are in focus. In order to meet some of the shortcomings of the field of clinical ethics support services, a research project that aims to strengthen ethics support in the mental health services, including patients’ and caregivers’ views on ethical challenges, is presented. (shrink)

Little is known about how health care professionals deal with ethical challenges in mental health care, especially when not making use of a formal ethics support service. Understanding this is important in order to be able to support the professionals, to improve the quality of care, and to know in which way future ethics support services might be helpful.

In many Western countries, studies have demonstrated extensive use of coercion in nursing homes, especially towards patients suffering from dementia. This article examines what kinds of strategies or alternative interventions nursing staff in Norway used when patients resist care and treatment and what conditions the staff considered as necessary to succeed in avoiding the use of coercion. The data are based on interdisciplinary focus group interviews with nursing home staff. The study revealed that the nursing home staff usually spent a (...) lot of time trying a wide range of approaches to avoid the use of coercion. The most common strategies were deflecting and persuasive strategies, limiting choices by conscious use of language, different kinds of flexibility and one-to-one care. According to the staff, their opportunities to use alternative strategies effectively are greatly affected by the nursing home’s resources, by the organization of care and by the staff’s competence. (shrink)

Coercion in mental health care gives rise to many ethical challenges. Many countries have recently implemented state policy programs or development projects aiming to reduce coercive practices and improve their quality. Few studies have explored the possible role of ethics in such initiatives. This study adds to this subject by exploring health professionals’ descriptions of their ethical challenges and strategies in everyday life to ensure morally justified coercion and best practices. Seven semi-structured telephone interviews were carried out in 2012 with (...) key informants in charge of central development projects and quality-assurance work in mental health services in Norway. No facilities used formal clinical ethics support. However, the informants described five areas in which ethics was of importance: moral concerns as implicit parts of local quality improvement initiatives; moral uneasiness and idealism as a motivational source of change; creating a normative basis for development work; value-based leadership; and increased staff reflexivity on coercive practices. The study shows that coercion entails both individual and institutional ethical aspects. Thus, various kinds of moral deliberation and ethics support could contribute to addressing coercion challenges by offering more systematic ways of dealing with moral concerns. However, more strategic use of implicit and institutional ethics is also needed. (shrink)

BackgroundNorway has extensive and detailed legal requirements and guidelines concerning involvement of next of kin during involuntary hospital treatment of seriously mentally ill patients. However, we have little knowledge about what happens in practice. This study explores NOK’s views and experiences of involvement during involuntary hospitalisation in Norway.MethodsWe performed qualitative interviews-focus groups and individual-with 36 adult NOK to adults and adolescents who had been involuntarily admitted once or several times. The semi-structured interview guide included questions on experiences with and views (...) on involvement during serious mental illness and coercion.ResultsMost of the NOK were heavily involved in the patient’s life and illness. Their conceptions of involvement during mental illness and coercion, included many important aspects adding to the traditional focus on substitute decision-making. The overall impression was, with a few exceptions, that the NOK had experienced lack of involvement or had negative experiences as NOK in their encounters with the health services. Not being seen and acknowledged as important caregivers and co sufferers were experienced as offensive and could add to their feelings of guilt. Lack of involvement had as a consequence that vital patient information which the NOK possessed was not shared with the patient’s therapists.ConclusionsDespite public initiatives to improve the involvement of NOK, the NOK in our study felt neglected, unappreciated and dismissed. The paper discusses possible reasons for the gap between public policies and practice which deserve more attention: 1. A strong and not always correct focus on legal matters. 2. Little emphasis on the role of NOK in professional ethics. 3. The organisation of health services and resource constraints. 4. A conservative culture regarding the role of next of kin in mental health care. Acknowledging these reasons may be helpful to understand deficient involvement of the NOK in voluntary mental health services. (shrink)

Although Professor Lewin is not testing existing views that, for people in politics, 'egoism rules' on deep theoretical grounds, he strongly argues that empirical facts do not support such views and thus opens a new chapter in the debate on ...

Much fuss has been made of the “spatial turn” in recent years, across a range of disciplines. It is hard to know if the attention has been warranted. A confusion of terms has been used—such as space, place, spatiality, location—and each has signified a cluster of often contradictory and confusing meanings. This phenomenon is common to a range of disciplines in the humanities. This means, first, that it is not always easy to recognize what is being discussed under the rubric (...) of space, and second, that over-extended uses of the cultural turn have stymied meaningful engagement with materiality in discussions of space. This article shows how materiality has been marginalized both by a casual vocabulary and a vigorous a priori epistemological holism on the part of scholars, and how the spatial turn has been too closely linked to the cultural turn to allow it to develop its fullest explanatory potential. It demonstrates how historians might profitably theorize the significance of place and space in their work , and sets out some challenges for using space more effectively in explanatory systems. Inspired by environmental history, sociology, and science and technology studies, I propose a way of establishing space as different from conventional historical handling of materiality, and end by identifying some methodological problems that need to be solved if we are to proceed on a surer footing. (shrink)

The relative merits and demerits of historically prominent views such as the correspondence theory, coherentism, pragmatism, verificationism, and instrumentalism have been subject to much attention in the truth literature and have fueled the long-lived debate over which of these views is the most plausible one. While diverging in their specific philosophical commitments, adherents of these historically prominent views agree in at least one fundamental respect. They are all alethic monists. They all endorse the thesis that there is only one property (...) in virtue of which propositions can be true, and so, in this sense, take truth to be one. The truth pluralist, on the other hand, rejects this idea. There are several properties in virtue of which propositions can be true. The literature on truth pluralism has been growing steadily for the past twenty years. This volume, however, is the first of its kind—the first collection of papers focused specifically on pluralism about truth. Part I is dedicated to the development, investigation, and critical discussion of different forms of pluralism. An additional reason to look at truth pluralism with interest is the significant connections it bears to other debates in the truth literature—the debates concerning traditional theories of truth and the deflationism/inflationism divide being cases in hand. Parts II and III of the volume connect truth pluralism to these two debates. (shrink)

Sustainability challenges typically occur across sectoral boundaries, calling the state, market, and civil society to action. Although consensus exists on the merits of cross-sector collaboration, our understanding of whether and how it can create value for various, collaborating stakeholders is still limited. This special issue focuses on how new combined knowledge on cross-sector collaboration and business models for sustainability can inform the academic and practitioner debates about sustainability challenges and solutions. We discuss how cross-sector collaboration can play an important role (...) for the transition to new and potentially sustainability-driven business models given that value creation, delivery, and capture of organizations are intimately related to the collaborative ties with their stakeholders. Sustainable alternatives to conventional business models tend to adopt a more holistic perspective of business by broadening the spectrum of solutions and stakeholders and, when aligned with cross-sector collaboration, can contribute new ways of addressing the wicked sustainability problems humanity faces. (shrink)

Digitalization is often associated with optimistic grand narratives about a future society in academic discourse. While the word is frequently linked with hopes and expectations of societal rebirth and beneficial changes for societies and organizations, there has been little attention given to systematically investigating the risks associated with digitalization. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between digitalization and risk, thereby characterizing “the digital risk society.” By conducting a narrative summary and thematic analysis of 34 academic papers three aggregated themes (...) were outlined: First, in the digital risk society, intangible technologies serve as solutions while simultaneously introducing new risks. Second, as an increasing number of tasks are delegated to machines with opaque inner functions, society is suffering from dehumanization. Third, scholars are calling for new approaches to govern these technologies, spurred by concerns over their potentially harmful use. (shrink)

The twentieth century saw a vigorous debate over the nature of rights. Will theorists argued that the function of rights is to allocate domains of freedom. Interest theorists portrayed rights as defenders of well-being. Each side declared its conceptual analysis to be closer to an ordinary understanding of what rights there are, and to an ordinary understand- ing of what rights do for rightholders. Neither side could win a decisive victory, and the debate ended in a standoff.

Background: A fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is an important challenge, but qualitative research exploring clinicians’ consideration in daily clinical prioritisation in healthcare services for the aged is scarce.Objectives: To explore what kind of criteria, values, and other relevant considerations are important in clinical prioritisations in healthcare services for older patients.Design: A semi-structured interview-guide was used to interview 45 clinicians working with older patients. The interviews were analysed qualitatively using hermeneutical content analysis and template organising style.Participants: 20 (...) physicians and 25 nurses working in public hospitals and nursing homes in different parts of Norway.Results and interpretations: Important dilemmas relate to under-provision of community care and comprehensive approaches, and over-utilisation of certain specialised services. Overt ageism is generally not reported, but the healthcare services for the aged seem to be inadequate due to more subtle processes, for example, dominating considerations and ideals and operating conditions that do not pay sufficient attention to older patients’ needs and considerations of justice. Clinical prioritisations are described as being dominated by adapting traditional biomedical approaches to the operating conditions. Many of the clinicians indicate that there is a potential for improving end of life decisions and for reducing exaggerated use of life-prolonging treatment and hospitalisations.Conclusion: The interviews in this study indicate that considerations of justice and patients’ perspectives should be given more attention to strike a balance between specialised medical approaches and more general and comprehensive approaches in healthcare services for older patients. (shrink)

Social interaction and the constitution of mediated and nested space in the court of appeal -- Conclusion -- Concluding remarks: On becoming juridical -- Ways of spacing law and politics -- Becoming juridical -- Towards hybrid juridical spaces -- References -- Index.

Recent advances have highlighted the outstanding role of the innate immune system for instructing adaptive immunity. Translating this knowledge into successful immunotherapies like vaccines, however, has proven to be a difficult task. This essay is based on the hypothesis that immune responses are tightly scaled to the infectious threat posed by a given microbial stimulus. A meticulous immunological risk‐assessment process is therefore instrumental for eliciting well‐balanced responses and maintaining immune homeostasis. The immune system makes fine distinctions, for example, between live (...) and dead bacteria, or pathogenic and non‐pathogenic microorganisms. Here, I discuss recent evidence for some of the mechanisms underlying these distinctions and speculate on strategies for therapeutically targeting the immunological risk‐assessment machinery. (shrink)

Here is a well-known thought about truth: Truth consists in correspondence with reality. A sentence is true just in case what it says corresponds with how the world is. Theories of truth that incorporate this thought are naturally regarded as robust or “heavyweight”. Truth is to be understood in a realist fashion. The world decides what is true and what is not. A recent incarnation of the correspondence view is found in truth-maker theories, whose adherents maintain that truths are true (...) in virtue of there being something – a truth-maker – in the world that makes them so.2. (shrink)

Progress -- Loss -- Return -- Amenability -- Citation tactics -- Affective subjects.

Entrepreneurial agency—the individual power to change environments—is central to entrepreneurship research. Yet, from a social inequality perspective, beliefs in an entrepreneurial agency might differ based on the social class environments individuals are born into. Drawing on social cognitive theories, our findings across three data sets among students from Germany and entrepreneurs from the United States indicate that social class origins are associated with entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) beliefs in adulthood. Exploring the underlying mechanisms, we find that students’ early entrepreneurial experiences in (...) education and practice are indicative of reproducing the class gap in ESE. When individuals collect mastery experiences such as social mobility or entrepreneurial success, their lower social class origins turn out to be associated with enhanced entrepreneurial agency beliefs. We discuss the implications for further research on social class, inequality, and entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Including empirical examples and theoretical clarifications on many of the analytical issues raised in his recently published Down to Earth, this conversation with Bruno Latour and his collaborator, Danish sociologist Nikolaj Schultz, offers key insights into Latour’s recent and ongoing work. Revolving around questions on political ecology and social theory in our ‘New Climatic Regime’, Latour argues that in order to have politics you need a land and you need a people. This interview present reflections on such politics, such land (...) and such people, and it ends with a call for a sociology that takes up the task of connecting the three by investigating what he and Schultz call ‘geo-social classes’. The interview was conducted by Jakob Stein in Paris in November 2018. (shrink)

forthcoming in Philosophy & Public Affairs [2008].

This is a new analysis of rights, particularly of the paradigm: the claim-right. The new analysis makes better sense of rights than the leading alternatives do. The new analysis handles all of the well-known counterexamples to the Will and Interest theories; it seems not to generate counterexamples of its own; and it solves many long-standing puzzles in the theory of rights. Moreover, the central concepts of the new theory are as salient and forceful as are rights themselves.

Rights dominate most modern understandings of what actions are proper and which institutions are just. Rights structure the forms of our governments, the contents of our laws, and the shape of morality as we perceive it. To accept a set of rights is to approve a distribution of freedom and authority, and so to endorse a certain view of what may, must, and must not be done.

The ongoing Post Office scandal in the UK and the 2021 Child Daycare Benefit Scandal in the Netherlands make up exemplary cases of how digital automation has changed and in fact severely harmed trust relations ranging from trust in oneself over trust in social roles, trust in institutions, trust in technology and general trust. By looking closer at how digital automation in these cases generated ruptures in the lives of ordinary citizens and also affected the involved institutions and society at (...) large I discuss how we may begin to discuss the impact of digitalization on trust in societies. I start with an introduction to the panoramic view of trust, followed by a short description of the two scandals. Based on the exploration of the two cases I take an ex post facto perspective on the dynamic social events as they unfolded in the scandals in order to analyze how the introduction of digital automation tools affected trust relations. I draw attention to some of the most noticeable changes in the four relations of trust, which is trust in institutions, interpersonal trust, trust in oneself and trust in technology. (shrink)

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine whether psychosocial working conditions may be a mediator between indoor physical working conditions and the type of vague general health symptoms included in the diagnosis of sick building syndrome (SBS). The study was based on survey data from 1505 British white-collar workers from 20 different organizations. A path analysis revealed that there was a significant direct relation between physical working conditions and vague symptoms and also psychosocial job strain (Effort-Reward Imbalance ratio), (...) which in turn also strongly related to the vague symptoms. The findings thus suggested a mediating role between physical working conditions and symptoms for psychosocial job strain. Due to the cross-sectional study design no conclusions on causality can be drawn. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that many microfinance institutions increasingly focus on financial performance at the expense of the social component of their dual objectives. Existing studies typically assume that capital providers and managers mainly drive this so-called mission drift. In this study, we investigate whether ‘personal mission drift’ at the credit officer level can further explain the reduced emphasis on poorer clients among microfinance institutions. We present both qualitative and quantitative evidence that more experienced credit officers tend to serve fewer vulnerable (...) clients. Specifically, we show that all else being equal, credit officer experience is negatively correlated with the provision of small loans, loans to young clients, and loans to clients with disabilities. Our qualitative analysis suggests that perceived client risk and preferences for increased time efficiency mainly drive more experienced credit officers’ relative neglect of more vulnerable clients. This drift appears to be reinforced by the industry’s incentive schemes. Therefore, credit officer incentives and training should be designed to prevent this mission drift, which is observed at the microfinance institution level but is actually initiated at the credit officer level. (shrink)

This second volume in the series "Studies in Hellenistic Civilization", published for the Danish Research Council for the Humanities, offers a comprehensive analysis of the Stoic theory of Oikeiosis.

In this article, I critically assess Hélène Landemore's new model of Open Democracy, asking whether it requires of citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of the mini-public. To address this question, I, first, discuss three institutional mechanisms in Open Democracy, all of which can be read to grant citizens democratic control. I argue that neither the capacity to authorize the selection mechanism (random sortition), nor the lottocratic conception of political equality, nor the self-selection mechanisms of Landemore's model deliver the (...) form of control that would insulate Open Democracy from the charge of blind deference. I then discuss the direct democracy mechanisms that Landemore incorporates into her model. Although these devices grant citizens control and, by extension, offer the resources for repudiating the charge of blind deference, they also, I argue, subvert the logic of Landemore's lottocratic model, rendering Open Democracy predictably unstable. Given the deliberative asymmetries between the mini-public and the citizenry, a high frequency of bottom-up challenges is to be expected that would throw the whole system into jeopardy. Thus, the challenge for lottocrats is to show how democratic control can be achieved in a lottocratic system without undermining the benefits of the legislature by lot. (shrink)

From Stoicism to Platonism describes the change in philosophy from around 100 BCE, when monistic Stoicism was the strongest dogmatic school in philosophy, to around 100 CE, when dualistic Platonism began to gain the upper hand - with huge consequences for all later Western philosophy and for Christianity. It is distinguished by querying traditional categories like 'eclecticism' and 'harmonization' as means of describing the period. Instead, it highlights different strategies of 'appropriation' of one school's doctrines by philosophers from the other (...) school, with all philosophers being highly conscious of their own identity. The book also sets out to break down the traditional boundaries between, on the one hand, the study of Greco-Roman philosophy in the period and, on the other hand, that of contemporary Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian writings with a philosophical profile. In these ways, the book opens up an immensely fruitful period in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In this article I explore the contemporary relationship of theology to philosophy through the call for a `renewed philosophy of being' by Pope John Paul II. I argue that in fact three understandings of being appear in this call: the first, phenomenological, appears as the bringing to description of the situation of contemporary nihilism, exemplified by Nietzsche both in his published works and his Nachlaß; the second, metaphysical, can be understood as the moralistic voice taken up by contemporary theologians in (...) addressing philosophy. This voice, I argue, is the voicing of the subjectivity of the (Cartesian) subject, and can be understood as the unfolding of the being-historical of the subject, explained in Martin Heidegger's use of the term `history of being' or Seinsgeschichte . This voice arises out of the `modernity' of the eighteenth century up to the present: it is a voice of extreme nihilism, but expressing itself as an imperative — not what `is', but what `should be'. This voice is also to be found in John Paul II. The third understanding is a possibility only arising out of the extreme nihilism encountered in the first two understandings of being. This understanding makes possible the genuine asking of the `question of being', the Seinsfrage, also laid out by Heidegger. As such, the question of being, when genuinely asked, alters the human comportment to God. Inasmuch as being presses in on man through a lack, an emptiness, that reasserts the fundamental orientation toward the future that unfolds from out of the being of beings, so the region of concealment and the withdrawal of the nihilating of the nothing, which is the region proper to divinity, can be understood and seen all over again. (shrink)