The purpose of this symposium is to explore the ways in which literature, broadly construed to include poetry and narrative in a variety of modes of representation, can change the world by providing interventions in justice. Our approach foregrounds the relationship between the activity demanded by some individual literary works and some categories of literary work on the one hand and the way in which those works can make a tangible difference to social reality on the other. We consider three (...) types of active literary engagement: doing philosophy, ideological critique, and necessary rather than contingent performance. Kate Kirkpatrick opens with Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation (2013), reading the narrator as not only a critic of colonial and postcolonial discourse but also a literary exemplar of the search for justice when it is difficult to know to what level of explanation to attribute its absence. Rafe McGregor demonstrates how the final season of Prime Video’s The Man in the High Castle (2015–19) makes a radical break from the previous three, exposing the misanthropy at the core of right-wing populism and calling for a fundamentally democratic response from the left. Finally, Karen Simecek argues that poetry in performance has a potentially reparative function for the ethically lonely – the vulnerable, the oppressed, and the persecuted – in society. (shrink)

Effective robots and autonomous systems must be trustworthy. This chapter examines models of trustworthiness from a philosophical and empirical perspective to inform the design and adoption of autonomous systems. Trustworthiness is a property of trusted agents or organisations that engenders trust in other agent or organisations. Trust is a complex phenomena defined differently depending on the discipline. This chapter aims to bring different approaches under a single framework for investigation with three sorts of questions: Who or what is trustworthy?–metaphysics. How (...) do we know who or what is trustworthy?–epistemology. What factors influence what or who should we trust?–normativity. A two-component model of trust is used that incorporates competence (skills, reliability and experience) and integrity (motives, honesty and character). It is supposed that human levels of competence yield the highest trust whereas trust is reduced at sub-human and super-human levels. The threshold for trustworthiness of an agent or organisation in a particular context is a function of their relationship with the truster and potential impacts of decisions. Building trustworthy autonomous systems requires obeying the norms of logic, rationality and ethics under pragmatic constraints–even though there is disagreement on these principles by experts. Autonomous systems may need sophisticated social identities including empathy and reputational concerns to build human-like trust relationships. Ultimately transdisciplinary research drawing on metaphysical, epistemological and normative human and machine theories of trust are needed to design trustworthy autonomous systems for adoption. (shrink)

Robotic and Autonomous Agricultural Technologies (RAAT) are increasingly available yet may fail to be adopted. This paper focusses specifically on cognitive factors that affect adoption including: inability to generate trust, loss of farming knowledge and reduced social cognition. It is recommended that agriculture develops its own framework for the performance and safety of RAAT drawing on human factors research in aerospace engineering including human inputs (individual variance in knowledge, skills, abilities, preferences, needs and traits), trust, situational awareness and cognitive load. (...) The kinds of cognitive impacts depend on the RAATs level of autonomy, ie whether it has automatic, partial autonomy and autonomous functionality and stage of adoption, ie adoption, initial use or post-adoptive use. The more autonomous a system is, the less a human needs to know to operate it and the less the cognitive load, but it also means farmers have less situational awareness about on farm activities that in turn may affect strategic decision-making about their enterprise. Some cognitive factors may be hidden when RAAT is first adopted but play a greater role during prolonged or intense post-adoptive use. Systems with partial autonomy need intuitive user interfaces, engaging system information, and clear signaling to be trusted with low level tasks; and to compliment and augment high order decision-making on farm. (shrink)

Moving away from the strong body of critique of pervasive ‘bad data’ practices by both governments and private actors in the globalized digital economy, this book aims to paint an alternative, more optimistic but still pragmatic picture of the datafied future. The authors examine and propose ‘good data’ practices, values and principles from an interdisciplinary, international perspective. From ideas of data sovereignty and justice, to manifestos for change and calls for activism, this collection opens a multifaceted conversation on the kinds (...) of futures we want to see, and presents concrete steps on how we can start realizing good data in practice. (shrink)

The sequencing of the human genome and decreasing costs of sequencing technology have led to the notion of ‘personalized medicine’. This has been taken by some authors to indicate that personalized medicine will provide individualized treatments solely based on one’s DNA sequence. We argue this is overly optimistic and misconstrues the notion of personalization. Such interpretations fail to account for economic, policy and structural constraints on the delivery of healthcare. Furthermore, notions of individualization based on genomic data potentially take us (...) down the road of genetic reductionism obscuring the role of environmental factors in disease and ill health. We propose that one should see personalized medicine as a way of using personal genomic information to stratify individuals into subpopulations and suggest that personalized medicine be seen within a broader idea of personalized healthcare, reflecting healthcare that integrates personal genomic data into cultural, environmental and personal contexts. (shrink)

As the ubiquity of technology-mediated communication grows, so does the number of questions about the costs and benefits of replacing in-person interactions with technology-mediated ones. In the present study, we used a daily diary design to examine how people’s emotional experiences vary across in-person, video-, phone-, and text-mediated interactions in day-to-day life. We hypothesised that individuals would report less positive affect and more negative affect after less life-like interactions (where in-person is defined as the most life-like and text-mediated as the (...) least life-like). In line with this hypothesis, the analysis of 527 unique interactions reported by 102 individuals (mean age = 19.3; 85.6% female) over the course of 7 days reveals that people feel lonelier, sadder, less affectionate, less supported, and less happy following less life-like interactions. Additional analyses show that the links between life-like communication and momentary experiences are independent of properties of individual interactions such as interaction length and participants’ overall evaluations of interaction quality. These findings provide initial evidence that there may be inherent properties of common technology-mediated communication tools that may lead to momentary changes in affective experiences and make social connection more challenging. (shrink)

Establishing interdisciplinary academic departments has been a common response to the challenge of addressing complex problems. However, the assumptions that guide the formation of such departments are rarely questioned. Additionally, the designers and managers of interdisciplinary academic departments in any field of endeavour struggle to set an organisational climate appropriate to the diversity of their members. This article presents a preliminary analysis of collaborative dynamics within two interdisciplinary university departments in Australia focused on sustainability. Social network diagrams and metrics of (...) coauthorship and cosupervision are analysed qualitatively. A "vicarious interdisciplinarity" was identified among key academics working narrowly in order to earn the resources that allow them to support others working interdisciplinarily. Those supported in this way appear to benefit from the esteem and nonredundant collaborative connections their mentors provide via this strategy, but they experience uncertainty about their own career opportunities in similar settings. This article thus unearths a conundrum of succession for interdisciplinary academic environments, and suggests that simple colocation of diverse academic stars is an inadequate strategy to achieve effective intradepartmental collaboration. (shrink)

In Australia research projects proposing the use of linked data require approval by a Human Research Ethics Committee . A sound evaluation of the ethical issues involved requires understanding of the basic mechanics of data linkage, the associated benefits and risks, and the legal context in which it occurs. The rapidly increasing number of research projects utilising linked data in Australia has led to an urgent need for enhanced capacity of HRECs to review research applications involving this emerging research methodology. (...) The training described in this article was designed to respond to an identified need among the data linkage units in the Australian Population Health Research Network and HREC members in Australia. (shrink)

This essay details the resurgence of wellness program as employed by large corporations with the aim of reducing healthcare costs. The essay narrows in on a discussion of how Big Data collection practices are being utilized in wellness programs and the potential negative impact on the worker in regards to privacy and employment discrimination. The essay offers an ethical framework to be adopted by wellness program vendors in order to conduct wellness programs that would achieve cost-saving goals without undue burdens (...) on the worker. The essay also offers some innovative approaches to wellness that may well better serve the goals of healthcare cost reduction. (shrink)

The proportion of the world’s population living in urban areas is increasing rapidly, with the vast majority of this growth in developing countries. As growing populations in urban areas demand greater food supplies, coupled with a rise in rural to urban migration and the need to create livelihood options, there has been an increase in urban agriculture worldwide. Urban agriculture is commonly discussed as a sustainable solution for dealing with gaps in the local food system, and proponents often highlight the (...) many social, environmental, and economic benefits. We argue that the sustainability of urban agriculture should not be assumed. There is a need for research to take a bottom-up approach, exploring the influence that city-level conditions have on livelihood decisions by farmers and how this shapes the practice of urban agriculture. This paper uses a case study for an in-depth look at urban agriculture in Delhi, India to understand from the farmers’ perspective how urban agriculture is practiced and what factors influence farmers’ livelihood decisions. Using a team-based, multi-method Rapid Assessment Process, data were collected through preliminary key informant interviews, field observations, semi-structured interviews with urban farmers, and geographic information systems mapping. This research provides an in-depth description of market-oriented urban agriculture in a developing country, explores how farmers’ livelihood decisions are embedded in the urban context, and discusses the potential of urban agriculture as a sustainable city-system. (shrink)

Whilst previous observational studies have linked negative thought processes such as an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles with depression, the directionality of these associations and the potential role that these factors play in the transition to adulthood and parenthood has not yet been investigated. This study examined the association between locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression in young adulthood and whether parenthood moderated these associations. Using a UK prospective population-based birth (...) cohort study: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, we examined the association between external locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence with odds of depression in 4,301 young adults using logistic regression models unadjusted and adjusted for potential confounding factors. Interaction terms were employed to examine whether parenthood moderated these associations. Over 20% of young adults in our sample were at or above the clinical threshold indicating probable depression. For each standard deviation increase in external locus of control in adolescence, there was a 19% higher odds of having probable depression in young adulthood, after adjusting for various confounding factors including baseline mood and different demographic and life events variables. Similarly, for each SD increase in negative cognitive styles in adolescence, there was a 29% higher odds of having probable depression in the adjusted model. We found little evidence that parenthood status moderated the relationship between external locus of control or negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression following adjustment for confounding factors. Effect estimates were comparable when performed in the complete case dataset. These findings suggest that having an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles in mid- to late adolescence is associated with an increased likelihood of probable depression in young adulthood. (shrink)

Linos G. Benakis, Byzantine Philosophy Β’, Athens 2013, pp. 544.

Research involving recently deceased humans that are physiologically maintained following declaration of death by neurologic criteria—or ‘research involving the recently deceased’—can fill a translational research gap while reducing harm to animals and living human subjects. It also creates new challenges for honouring the donor’s legacy, respecting the rights of donor loved ones, resource allocation and public health. As this research model gains traction, new empirical ethics questions must be answered to preserve public trust in all forms of tissue donation and (...) in the practice of medicine while respecting the legacy of the deceased and the rights of donor loved ones. This article suggests several topics for immediate investigation to understand the attitudes and experiences of researchers, clinical collaborators, donor loved ones and the public to ensure research involving the recently deceased advances ethically. (shrink)

Down Girl is a broad, original, and far ranging analysis of what misogyny really is, how it works, its purpose, and how to fight it. The philosopher Kate Manne argues that modern society's failure to recognize women's full humanity and autonomy is not actually the problem. She argues instead that it is women's manifestations of human capacities -- autonomy, agency, political engagement -- is what engenders misogynist hostility.

Handwashing is important in preventing infectious diseases like COVID-19. The current public health emergency has required rapid implementation of increased handwashing in the general public; however, rapidly changing health behavior, especially on this scale, is difficult. This study considers attitudes and affective responses to handwashing as possible factors predicting COVID-19 related changes to handwashing behavior, future intentions, and readiness to change during the early stages of the pandemic in the United States. Income was explored as a potential moderator to these (...) relationships. To explore these issues, data from 344 community participants were analyzed. Results indicate that stronger affective responses toward handwashing relate to increases in handwashing since the outbreak of COVID-19, and both attitudes and affect uniquely predict handwashing intentions. Income significantly moderated the relationship between affect and readiness to change. Those with low income were more influenced by both affective responses and attitudes. These results suggest messages targeting both cognitions and affective responses are needed to increase the handwashing behavior during a global pandemic and these variables are critical in increasing readiness to change in low-income individuals. (shrink)

More than two hundred years after its publication, David Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals is still widely regarded as either a footnote to the more philosophically interesting third book of the Treatise, or an abbreviated, more stylish, version of that earlier work. These standard interpretations are rather difficult to square with Hume's own assessment of the second Enquiry. Are we to think that Hume called the EPM “incomparably the best” of all his writings only because he preferred that (...) later style of exposition? Or worse, should we take his preference for the second Enquiry as a sign of aging literary vanity? Does Hume's stated preference for the EPM in no way speak to its philosophical content? (shrink)

The French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean‐Paul Sartre are renowned philosophers of freedom. But what “existentialist freedom” is is a matter of disagreement amongst their interpreters and, some argue, between Beauvoir and Sartre themselves. Since the late 1980s several scholars have argued that a Sartrean conception of freedom cannot justify the ethics of existentialism, adequately account for situations of oppression, or serve feminist ends. On these readings, Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about freedom—making existentialist ethics, resistance to oppression, and feminism (...) coherently defensible. This article identifies four conceptions of freedom in order to clarify the questions of whether and how they disagreed, arguing that some incompatibilist readings of Sartre and Beauvoir conflate or confuse these conceptions in ways that render their conclusions unconvincing. However, there are stronger grounds on which to claim that Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about morality—and the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the evolution of David Hume's ethics, focusing on moral judgment, moral motivation and ethical normativity. In chapter one, I argue that previous scholars have missed a crucial distinction between two different sympathetic processes at work in the Treatise. The first sympathetic process, "particular sympathy" is analogous to ordinary empathy and variable in just the way empathy is, but a second, non-variable process, "extensive sympathy" is the source of our moral sentiments. In chapter two, I give an account (...) of Hume's understanding of ethical normativity in the Treatise, arguing that he holds that society, our intimate relationships, and even our ability to be actively concerned with our long-term interests all depend on our adopting extensive sympathy as a standard by which to regulate our character and our passions. The view of moral motivation which then emerges is one on which our moral sentiments play the role of redirecting our natural passions and desires. ;In chapters three and four, I consider the second Enquiry, arguing that what had changed by the time of that work was not primarily the doctrine of Hume's ethics, but his view of the project of writing moral philosophy. In the Treatise, Hume seeks to explain and justify moral standards and judgments, while in the second Enquiry Hume also seeks to inspire people to regulate their lives by those standards and judgments. Only if we are alert to Hume's project in the second Enquiry will we at last resolve debates over whether Hume abandoned the doctrine of sympathy by the time of that work. Similarly, we need to understand the project of that work if we are to understand the section therein on our "interested obligation to virtue," and the appendix to that work called, "A Dialogue." ;In concluding, I place Hume against the map of contemporary ethics, arguing that philosophers with a broad variety of non-Humean and Humean committments have reason to take Hume's ethics seriously, in part because the account of Hume's ethics for which I have argued changes the map of contemporary ethics. (shrink)

This unique book brings together international scholars from around the globe to examine how different feminist theories are being used in early childhood research, policy and pedagogy. The array of feminist discourses captured by the authors offer contextualised possibilities for disrupting dominant patriarchal beliefs and producing change. The authors address and challenge how early childhood experiences, institutions and practices produce gendered effects across and within diverse contexts and demonstrate how feminism(s) in action can be used to reconceptualise research methods, government (...) policy, children's learning, teaching practice and educational resources. In this way, the book contributes to creating new knowledge connections and community alliances in the global effort to end gender-based inequalities across local and global communities. (shrink)

Although the implications of Hume's distinction between philosophical anatomy and painting have been the subject of lively scholarly debates, it is a puzzling fact that the details of the distinction itself have largely been a matter of interpretive presumption rather than debate. This would be unproblematic if Hume's views about these two species of philosophy were obvious, or if there were a rich standard interpretation of the distinction that we had little reason to doubt. But a careful review of the (...) literature shows neither to be the case. We are far from scholarly consensus about Hume's vision of philosophical anatomy and painting, and what unity there is rests on extremely unsteady ground and leaves important questions unanswered. In this article, my aim is three-fold: first, to show that the appearance of well-grounded scholarly unity about Humes distinction is illusory; second, to dispose of those misinterpretations of Hume's distinction that are sufficiently at odds with the text that they can be demonstrated to be false in this context; and third, to explore in sufficient detail the numerous questions one might raise about the content of Hume's distinction so that the stage might at last be properly set for a truly full account of Hume's distinction between philosophical anatomy and painting. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Humean Moral Sentiments as Responsibility Conferring Exclusion and Humean Moral Disapproval A Spectator's Standard of Virtue Looking Forward References Further Reading.

The premise of environmental management pivots on managing the people-environment relationship. Yet this field remains dominated by the idea of managing the environment not the relationship, and as such continues to enact dualistic and reductionist traditions. Deep ecology's relational ontology offers a means of moving beneath and beyond such traditions. Specifically, the theory of internal relations as manifest within Arne Naess's gestalt ontology - if developed with regard to relational work emerging within cultural geography - is an aspect of deep (...) ecology that has relevance and implications for environmental management's theory and practice. Such a stance provides qualified support for Warwick Fox's identification of the significance of Self-realisation within deep ecological philosophy, and counters attempts by some deep ecology proponents to write Fox and his work out of the history and future prospects of deep ecology. (shrink)

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one”, Simone de Beauvoir A symbol of liberated womanhood, Simone de Beauvoir's unconventional relationships inspired and scandalised her generation. A philosopher, writer, and feminist icon, she won prestigious literary prizes and transformed the way we think about gender with The Second Sex. But despite her successes, she wondered if she had sold herself short. Her liaison with Jean-Paul Sartre has been billed as one of the most legendary love affairs of the twentieth (...) century. But for Beauvoir it came at a cost: for decades she was dismissed as an unoriginal thinker who 'applied' Sartre's ideas. In recent years new material has come to light revealing the ingenuity of Beauvoir's own philosophy and the importance of other lovers in her life. This ground-breaking biography draws on never-before-published diaries and letters to tell the fascinating story of how Simone de Beauvoir became herself. (shrink)

Conflict over who belongs in women-only spaces is now part of mainstream political debate. Some think women-only spaces should exclude on the basis of sex, and others think they should exclude on the basis of a person’s self-determined gender identity. Many who take the latter view appear to believe that the only reason for taking the former view could be antipathy towards men who identify as women. In this paper, we’ll revisit the second-wave feminist literature on separatism, in order to (...) uncover the reasons for women-only spaces as feminists originally conceived them. Once these reasons are understood, those participating in debates over women-only spaces will be in a better position to adjudicate on whether shifting from sex to gender identity puts any significant interests at stake. (shrink)

Gender staff in the World Bank -- the world's largest and most influential development institution -- have a policy problem. Having prioritised efforts to get women into paid employment as the ȁ8cure-allȁ9 for gender inequality they must deal with the work that women already do -- the unpaid labour of caring, socialisation, and human needs fulfilment. This article explores the most prominent policy solution enacted by the Bank to this tension between paid and unpaid work: the restructuring of normative heterosexuality (...) to encourage a two-partner model of love and labour wherein women work more and men care better. Through a case study of Bank gender lending in Ecuador I argue that staff are trying to (re)forge normative arrangements of intimacy, a policy preference that remains invisible unless sexuality is taken seriously as a category of analysis in development studies. Specifically, I focus on four themes that emerge from the attempt to restructure heteronormativity in the loan: (1) the definition of good gender analysis as requiring complementary sharing and dichotomous sex; (2) the Bank's attempt to inculcate limited rationality in women such that they operate as better workers while retaining altruistic attachments to loved ones; (3) the Bank's attempt to inculcate better loving in men, such that they pick up the slack of caring labour when their (partially) rational wives move into productive work, and; (4) the invocation of a racialised hierarchy resting on the extent to which communities approximate ideals of sharing monogamous partnership. Aside from providing clear evidence that the world's largest development institution is involved in micro-processes of sexuality adjustment alongside macro-processes of economic restructuring, I also critique the Bank's sexualised policy interventions and suggest that they warrant contestation. (shrink)

This paper explores how political theory may help us map algorithmic logics against different visions of the political. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theories of agonistic pluralism, this paper depicts algorithms in public life in ten distinct scenes, in order to ask the question, what kinds of politics do they instantiate? Algorithms are working within highly contested online spaces of public discourse, such as YouTube and Facebook, where incompatible perspectives coexist. Yet algorithms are designed to produce clear “winners” from information contests, (...) often with little visibility or accountability for how those contests are designed. In isolation, many of these algorithms seem the opposite of agonistic: much of the complexity of search, ranking, and recommendation algorithms is nonnegotiable and kept far from view, inside an algorithmic “black box.” But what if we widen our perspective? This paper suggests agonistic pluralism as both a design ideal for engineers and a provocation to understand algorithms in a broader social context: rather than focusing on the calculations in isolation, we need to account for the spaces of contestation where they operate. (shrink)

In this entry, we survey key discussions on the role of narrative in theology and philosophy of religion. We begin with epistemological questions about whether and how narrative offers genuine understanding of reality. We explore how narrative intersects with the problems of evil and divine hiddenness. We discuss narrative's role in theological reflection and practice in general, and in black and feminist theologies specifically. We close by briefly exploring the role of narrative in theorization about life's meaning.

In the Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (Aesthetic Letters), Friedrich Schiller asserts the importance of play for human beings. He claims, “man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays” (Schiller, 2005, 131). Play is so pivotal that it qualifies as the activity resonating the state of human fullness. So, naturally, one might ask, what does play consist in for Schiller? (...) While a Kantian approach might see play as the relation that manifests when a disinterested subject beholds something beautiful, Schiller uses more artistic and embodied examples of play throughout the Aesthetic Letters. In offering an alternative reading to Paul Guyer’s analysis of Schillerian play as serious (forgoing creativity and imagination), intellectual (objective and grounded in the intellect, rather than feeling), and negative (reliant on constraints) I draw out two important elements of Schillerian play: play force (the harmonious relation of two types of drives found in nature) and the forms of play (actual instances of aesthetic play.). (shrink)

Internalists about reasons following Bernard Williams claim that an agent’s normative reasons for action are constrained in some interesting way by her desires or motivations. In this paper, I offer a new argument for such a position—although one that resonates, I believe, with certain key elements of Williams’ original view. I initially draw on P.F. Strawson’s famous distinction between the interpersonal and the objective stances that we can take to other people, from the second-person point of view. I suggest that (...) we should accept Strawson’s contention that the activity of reasoning with someone about what she ought to do naturally belongs to the interpersonal mode of interaction. I also suggest that reasons for an agent to perform some action are considerations which would be apt to be cited in favor of that action, within an idealized version of this advisory social practice. I then go on to argue that one would take leave of the interpersonal stance towards someone—thus crossing the line, so to speak—in suggesting that she do something one knows she wouldn’t want to do, even following an exhaustive attempt to hash it out with her. An internalist necessity constraint on reasons is defended on this basis. (shrink)

Human microbiome research makes causal connections between entire microbial communities and a wide array of traits that range from physiological diseases to psychological states. To evaluate these causal claims, we first examine a well-known single-microbe causal explanation: of Helicobacter pylori causing ulcers. This apparently straightforward causal explanation is not so simple, however. It does not achieve a key explanatory standard in microbiology, of Koch’s postulates, which rely on manipulations of single-microorganism cultures to infer causal relationships to disease. When Koch’s postulates (...) are framed by an interventionist causal framework, it is clearer what the H. pylori explanation achieves and where its explanatory strengths lie. After assessing this ‘simple’, single-microbe case, we apply the interventionist framework to two key areas of microbiome research, in which obesity and mental health states are purportedly explained by microbiomes. Despite the experimental data available, interventionist criteria for explanation show that many of the causal claims generated by microbiome research are weak or misleading. We focus on the stability, specificity and proportionality of proposed microbiome causal explanations, and evaluate how effectively these dimensions of causal explanation are achieved in some promising avenues of research. We suggest some conceptual and explanatory strategies to improve how causal claims about microbiomes are made. (shrink)

Among contemporary ethicists, Hume is perhaps best known for his views about morality’s practical import and his spectator-centered account of moral evaluation. Yet according to the so-called “spectator complaint”, these two aspects of Hume’s moral theory cannot be reconciled with one another. I argue that the answer to the spectator complaint lies in Hume’s account of “goodness” and “greatness of mind”. Through a discussion of these two virtues, Hume makes clear the connection between his views about moral motivation and his (...) understanding of moral evaluation by providing us with two portraits of the Humean moral agent. (shrink)

The corporate social responsibility literature has increasingly explored relationships between civil society and social movements, including non-governmental organizations, and corporations, as well as the role of NGOs in multi-stakeholder governance processes. This paper addresses the challenge of including a plurality of civil society voices and perspectives in business–NGO relations, and in CSR as a process of governance. The paper contributes to CSR scholarship by bringing insights from feminist literature to bear on CSR as a process of governance, and engaging with (...) leaders of women’s NGOs, a group of actors rarely included in CSR research. The issues raised inform contributions to the CSR literature relating to the role of women’s NGOs with regard to the gender equality practices and impacts of corporations, and with respect to defining the meaning and practice of CSR. The paper frames marginalized NGOs as important actors which can contribute to pluralism, inclusion and legitimacy in CSR as a process of governance. It identifies several key barriers to the participation of women’s NGOs in CSR, and concludes by making suggestions for future research, as well as practice. (shrink)

People in liberal societies tend to feel a little uncomfortable talking about male genital cutting, but generally do not think it is morally abhorrent. But female genital cutting is widely consider...