This volume insists that, if we are to properly face the challenges of the coming century, we need to re-examine international politics and development through the prism of ethics and morality. International relations must now contend with a widening circle of participants reflecting the diversity and unevenness of status, memory, gender, race, culture and class. Contributors to this volume challenge North America's privileged position in world politics, suggest initiatives for improving the quality of human existence in tangible ways, and critique (...) the conventional wisdom on how we think we can create peace and justice. Re-Framing the International shows that, when we develop projects for world reform, we must remember that the most basic prevailing assumptions of modern law, politics, and culture are by no means as obvious, natural, or progressive as we formerly thought. (shrink)

James Bohman’s account of what might be involved in thinking about ‘democracy across borders,’ and specifically of what might be involved in thinking about a potential shift from dêmos to dêmoi, compels both affirmation and resistance. His account is both elegant and sharply focussed: positive attributes that nevertheless affirm a very particular understanding of elegance, and a precise focus that manages to evade many considerations that might be considered important by people seeking to think about democracies and their futures in (...) many different situations. (Published: 5 February 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010, pp. 21-36. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i1.4851. (shrink)

Aims and background: Little is known about how participants perceive prevention trials, particularly trials designed to prevent mental illness. This study examined participants’ motives for participating in a trial and their views of randomisation and the ability to withdraw from a randomised controlled trial for prevention of depression. Methods: Participants were older adults reporting elevated depression symptoms living in urban and regional locations in Australia who had consented to participate in an RCT of interventions to prevent depression. Participants rated their (...) agreement with various statements describing motivations for enrolment in the trial and opinions regarding randomisation and withdrawal. Results: The majority of participants expressed a triad of altruistic motivation for participation, relative lack of concern about randomisation and commitment to the trial. Certain subgroups of participants, such as women and those with higher depression scores, reported higher levels of concern about specific issues. Conclusions: The findings suggest that participants enrolled in prevention trials for mental illness are likely to hold positive attitudes towards research trials. The identification of relationships between key person factors and trial-related attitudes enabled profiling of participant groups, which can inform recruitment strategies and interactions of participants and research projects in future prevention trials. (shrink)

Despite All Critique (2014) -- World Politics and Western Reason (1980) -- The Doubled Outsides of the Modern International (2005) -- The Subject of Security (1995) -- The Protection of Nature and the Nature of Protection (2005) -- Social Movements/World Politics (1994) -- Europe is Not Where It is Supposed to Be (2000) -- They Seek it Here, They Seek it There : Looking for Politics in Clayoquot Sound (2003) -- Violence, Modernity, Silence : From Weber to International Relations (1993) (...) -- Hobbes, Origins, Limits (2011) -- War, Terror, Judgement (2002) -- International, Imperial, Exceptional (2005) -- Which Democracy for Which Demos? (2013) -- The Political Theory of Boundaries and the Boundaries of Political Theory : Interview With Raia Prokhovnik (2012). (shrink)

Knowledge of eukaryotic life cycles and associated genome dynamics stems largely from research on animals, plants, and a small number of “model” (i.e., easily cultivable) lineages. This skewed sampling results in an underappreciation of the variability among the many microeukaryotic lineages, which represent the bulk of eukaryotic biodiversity. The range of complex nuclear transformations that exists within lineages of microbial eukaryotes challenges the textbook understanding of genome and nuclear cycles. Here, we look in‐depth at Foraminifera, an ancient (∼600 million‐year‐old) lineage (...) widely studied as proxies in paleoceanography and environmental biomonitoring. We demonstrate that Foraminifera challenge the “rules” of life cycles developed largely from studies of plants and animals. To this end, we synthesize data on foraminiferal life cycles, focusing on extensive endoreplication within individuals (i.e., single cells), the unusual nuclear process calledZerfall, and the separation of germline and somatic function into distinct nuclei (i.e., heterokaryosis). These processes highlight complexities within lineages and expand our understanding of the dynamics of eukaryotic genomes. (shrink)

Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative (...) outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. If participants lack competence or are prone to biases, a correct deliberative outcome requires limiting participation. The central question for public argumentation, therefore, is how to strike a balance between both ideals. Rather than advocating a preferred normative framework, our main purpose is to illustrate the complexity of this theme. (shrink)

In 2018-2019, at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, we developed and piloted a narrative-based health systems science intervention for patients living with HIV and medical students in which medical students co-wrote patients’ life narratives for inclusion in the electronic health record. The pilot study aimed to assess the acceptability of the “life narrative protocol” from multiple stakeholder positions and characterize participants’ experiences of the clinical and pedagogical implications of the LNP. Students were recruited from (...) KSOM. Patients and staff were recruited from the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent/Adult Center for Infectious Disease and Virology at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center. Ten patients, seventeen students, and ten MCA staff participated in the pilot study. Qualitative methods were used to gather data from students’, patients’, and staff’s perspectives. Three themes emerged from the thematic analysis: patients’ life narratives conveyed their unique life experiences and voices; the protocol could result in wide-ranging effects on HIV care; the LNP enabled students to contribute value to patients’ healthcare. Across groups, participants considered the LNP an acceptable intervention. The LNP, its limitations, and implications for HIV care, narrative medicine, and health information technology are presented. (shrink)

A successful blending of extensive historical documentation with close systematic argument exhibiting the coherence and substance of this Scottish philosophical movement. By starting with the Common Sense criticism of the sceptical strain in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, Grave vividly conveys the philosophic context and orientation of this school. The main protagonist is Thomas Reid, although the roles of Stewart, Oswald, Beattie, and others, are also explained. By resisting the temptation of writing the history of Common Sense philosophy through the (...) spectacles of the contemporary ordinary language philosophy, Grave shows that the claims as well as the perplexities of an appeal to common sense have a complex history. A cogent and comprehensive discussion of a movement that has both historical and philosophic interest for philosophy today.--R. J. B. (shrink)

Changes being introduced to deregulate the Dutch health care system after decades of extensive state control are to be welcomed, and will in future require consumers to be ‘well‐informed, cost‐conscious and assertive patients, who are aware of their responsibility for their own health.’ R.B. Kool MD, PhD and E.J.J.M. Kimman PhD are attached to the Department of Business Ethics in the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics at The Free University, P.O. Box 7161, 10107 MC Amsterdam.

Changes being introduced to deregulate the Dutch health care system after decades of extensive state control are to be welcomed, and will in future require consumers to be ‘well‐informed, cost‐conscious and assertive patients, who are aware of their responsibility for their own health.’ R.B. Kool MD, PhD and E.J.J.M. Kimman PhD are attached to the Department of Business Ethics in the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics at The Free University, P.O. Box 7161, 10107 MC Amsterdam.