Inaugural lecture as Professor of Women's Studies in the Social Science Faculty at the University of Utrecht.

In this article the relevance of the feminist ethic of care for current Dutch social policies is elaborated. It starts from the observation that Dutch society is witnessing two intertwined processes: the relocation of politics and the relocation of care. Together these processes result in the need for new normative frameworks for social policy. Care has to become part of the practices of active citizenship, which should be based on notions of relationality and interdependence. Basic moral concepts of the ethic (...) of care, like attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, trust and asymmetrical reciprocity are introduced. In the final part, the ethic of care is applied to two topical issues: policies on combining paid labour and care and generation-sensitive policies. Finally some norms are proposed to guide social policymaking. (shrink)

Contributors to this volume demonstrate how the ethics of care factors into a variety of social policies and institutions, and can indeed be useful in thinking about a number of different social problems. Divided into two sections, the first looks at care as a model for an evaluative framework that rethinks social institutions, liberal society, and citizenship at a basic conceptual level. The second explores care values in the context of specific social practices or settings, as a framework that should (...) guide thinking. (shrink)

Resumo: O presente artigo analisa a política de ensino integral no estado de Pernambuco, implementada por atores privados desde 2008, com enfoque privilegiado sobre as formas de contratação de docentes e sua incidência no território. A hipótese aqui considerada faz analogia ao pensamento de Lévi-Strauss, por ocasião de sua passagem pelo Brasil em 1930, quando remarcou o arrasamento da população indígena pela cultura do homem branco e seus interesses econômicos sustentados pelo discurso da modernidade. Problematiza-se, assim, em que medida o (...) avanço do segmento empresarial na educação pública assemelha-se à constatação tecida nos “Tristes trópicos” (1955) à medida que arrasa uma cultura educacional que passa da estabilidade e reflexividade para o pragmatismo e a racionalidade econômica. A concepção teórica que sustenta o debate sobre o tema apoia-se em Robert Castel (1998) e Cingolani (2005), os quais destacam que a precariedade nas relações de trabalho conduz a um processo de precarização das condições de vida, posto que trabalhadores sujeitados a trabalhos intermitentes, contratos por tempo determinado, tempo parcial, entre outros, resultam em vulnerabilidade social. Palavras-chave: Trabalho Docente; Privatização; Precariedade; Política Educacional. Sad tropics: the business culture of precarity applied to public education. Abstract: This article analyzes the policy of full-time education in the state of Pernambuco, implemented by private actors since 2008, with a privileged focus on the ways of hiring teachers and its impact on the territory. The hypothesis here considered makes analogy with the thought of Lévi-Strauss, on his passage in Brazil in 1930, when he remarked the destruction of the indigenous population by the white man's culture and his economic interests supported by the discourse of modernity. Is problematized how much the advance of the entrepreneurial segment in public education is similar to the observation made in "Sad tropics" (1955) as it devastates an educational culture that moves from stability and reflexivity to pragmatism and economic rationality. The theoretical conception that sustained the debate about the theme is based on Robert Castel (1998) and Cingolani (2005), who point out that the precarity in work relations leads to a process of precariousness in living conditions, since subjected to intermittent work, fixed-term contracts, part-time work, among others, result in social vulnerability. Keywords: Teaching Work; Privatization; Precarity; Educational Politics. Tropiques tristes : la culture entrepreneuriale de la précarité appliquée à l'éducation publique. Resumé: Cet article analyse la politique d'éducation à temps pleins dans l'État de Pernambuco, mise en œuvre par des acteurs privés depuis 2008, en se concentrant de manière privilégiée sur les formes d'embauche des enseignants et leur impact sur le territoire. L'hypothèse envisagée ici fait analogie à la pensée de Lévi-Strauss, à l'occasion de son passage au Brésil en 1930, lorsqu'il remarquait la destruction de la population indigène par la culture de l'homme blanc et ses intérêts économiques soutenus par le discours de la modernité. Le problème est donc de savoir dans quelle mesure l'avancée du segment entrepreneurial dans l'enseignement public est similaire à l'observation faite dans "Tristes trópicos" (1955) car elle dévaste une culture éducative qui passe de la stabilité et de la réflexivité au pragmatisme et à la rationalité économique. La conception théorique qui soutient le débat sur le sujet est basée sur Robert Castel (1998) et Cingolani (2005), qui soulignent que la précarité dans les relations de travail conduit à un processus de précarisation des conditions de vie, puisque soumis au travail intermittent, aux contrats à durée déterminée, au temps partiel, entre autres, entraînent une vulnérabilité sociale. Mots clés : Travail Enseignant ; Privatisation ; Précarité ; Politique Éducative. Data de registro: 29/05/2022Data de aceite: 28/06/2022. (shrink)

IntroductionThe prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role in cognition, particularly in executive functions. Cortical reactivity measured with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation combined with Electroencephalography is altered in pathological conditions, and it may also be a marker of cognitive status in middle-aged adults. In this study, we investigated the associations between cognitive measures and TMS evoked EEG reactivity and explored whether the effects of this relationship were related to neurofilament light chain levels, a marker of neuroaxonal damage.MethodsFifty two healthy middle-aged adults from (...) the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative cohort underwent TMS-EEG, a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, and a blood test for NfL levels. Global and Local Mean-Field Power, two measures of cortical reactivity, were quantified after left prefrontal cortex stimulation, and cognition was set as the outcome of the regression analysis. The left inferior parietal lobe was used as a control stimulation condition.ResultsLocal reactivity was significantly associated with working memory and reasoning only after L-PFC stimulation. No associations were found between NfL and cognition. These specific associations were independent of the status of neuroaxonal damage indexed by the NfL biomarker and remained after adjusting for age, biological sex, and education.ConclusionOur results demonstrate that TMS evoked EEG reactivity at the L-PFC, but not the L-IPL, is related to the cognitive status of middle-aged individuals and independent of NfL levels, and may become a valuable biomarker of frontal lobe-associated cognitive function. (shrink)

Widely regarded as one of the most important and influential sports books of all time, C. L. R. James's _Beyond a Boundary_ is—among other things—a pioneering study of popular culture, an analysis of resistance to empire and racism, and a personal reflection on the history of colonialism and its effects in the Caribbean. More than fifty years after the publication of James's classic text, the contributors to _Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket_ investigate _Beyond a Boundary_'s production and reception and its implication (...) for debates about sports, gender, aesthetics, race, popular culture, politics, imperialism, and English and Caribbean identity. Including a previously unseen first draft of _Beyond a Boundary_'s conclusion alongside contributions from James's key collaborator Selma James and from Michael Brearley, former captain of the English Test cricket team, _Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket_ provides a thorough and nuanced examination of James's groundbreaking work and its lasting impact. Contributors. Anima Adjepong, David Austin, Hilary McD. Beckles, Michael Brearley, Selwyn R. Cudjoe, David Featherstone, Christopher Gair, Paget Henry, Christian Høgsbjerg, C. L. R. James, Selma James, Roy McCree, Minkah Makalani, Clem Seecharan, Andrew Smith, Neil Washbourne, Claire Westall. (shrink)

This piece sets the scene for the inaugural addresses by Rosi Braidotti and Selma Sevenhuijsen which follow and provides background information on the history of women's studies in the Netherlands.

Resumé Dans cette étude, nous nous proposons d’analyser de la perspective sémiotique de la traduction l’œuvre intitulée De la part de la princesse morte de Kenizé Mourad, écrivaine francophone, qui a une identité multiculturelle étant donné qu’elle est princesse ottomane du côté de sa mère et princesse indienne du côté de son père. Née à Paris dans des conditions de la Deuxième guerre mondiale, et orpheline de mère à l’âge d’un an et demi, Kenizé Mourad a été élevée dans le (...) contexte culturel français car son père en Inde ignorait qu’elle était vivante. Dans cette œuvre, elle raconte l’histoire tragique de sa mère en exil, la Princesse Selma, petite-fille du Sultan Mourad V, padischah ottoman. Nous abordons le texte et ses deux traductions turques intitulées toutes les deux Saraydan Sürgüne pour étudier les conséquences de la transformation des expressions neutres en français en des locutions idiomatiques en turc. Nous menons à bien cette interrogation au prisme de la notion de surinterprétation conçue dans le cadre de la Systématique de la désignification en traduction comme « un commentaire excessif du sens de l’original » tout en analysant en quoi les expressions idiomatiques constituent la surinterprétation et de quelle manière elles naturalisent le discours original. (shrink)

When making decisions, humans can observe many kinds of information about others' activities, but their effects on performance are not well understood. We investigated social learning strategies using a simple problem-solving task in which participants search a complex space, and each can view and imitate others' solutions. Results showed that participants combined multiple sources of information to guide learning, including payoffs of peers' solutions, popularity of solution elements among peers, similarity of peers' solutions to their own, and relative payoffs from (...) individual exploration. Furthermore, performance was positively associated with imitation rates at both the individual and group levels. When peers' payoffs were hidden, popularity and similarity biases reversed, participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered. We conclude that when peers' solutions can be effectively compared, imitation does not simply permit scrounging, but it can also facilitate propagation of good solutions for further cumulative exploration. (shrink)

L. Jonathan Cohen; XI*—Guessing, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 189–210, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/7.

This research aimed to show the political stance of the Muslim majority represented by the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia (MoRA RI) towards non-Muslim leadership through the translation of the Qur’an. It examined the differences in the translation of the Qur’an based on the theory of translation as a political act. A total of 19 phrases or collocated words ittahaza awliya were found in the corpus of the Qur’an. The researchers approached the study with a critical (...) discourse analysis approach, and conducted contrastive analysis on translations of these collocated words in four editions of translations of the Qur’an published officially by MoRA RI from 1965 to 2019. The results proved that interference in translation of the collocation ittaḥaẓa awliya is caused by the influence of the source text, and that the political situation and ideology influenced the translation of the Qur’an in Indonesia. The political direction of the Indonesian government, especially MoRA RI, tended to provide more opportunities for non-Muslims to become leaders today, as seen in the 2019 edition. While the translation edition published before tended to close the possibility of non-Muslims becoming leaders. This finding shows the government’s stance on democracy for non-Muslims, which according to previous research findings has declined with the rise of Islamic populism in Indonesia.Contribution: This article provides an explanation of one side of the difficulty of translating collocation [ittaḥaẓa awliya] in the Qur’an and at the same time shows the political direction of the government of the Republic of Indonesia regarding the politics of non-Muslim leadership. (shrink)

Current sociological theories appear to have lost their general persuasiveness in part because, unlike the theories of the ‘classical era’, they fail to maintain an integrated stance toward society, and the practical role that sociology plays in society. The authors explore various facets of this failure and possibilities for reconstructing sociological theories as integrated wholes capable of conveying a moral and political immediacy. They discuss the evolution of several concepts (for example, the social, structure, and self) and address the significant (...) disputes (for example, structuralism versus humanism, and individual versus society) that have dominated twentieth-century sociological thought. Their ideas and analyses are directed towards an audience of students and theorists who are coming to terms with the project of sociological theory, and its relationship with moral discourses and political practice. The authors of these essays are sociological theorists from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. They are all established, but not ‘establishment’ authors. The book contains no orthodoxies, and no answers. However, the essays do contribute to identifying the range of issues that will constitute the agenda for the next generation of sociological theorists. (shrink)

In this chapter we explore the ethical justifications for criminal detentions prior to adjudication. Because defending pretrial detentions cannot be justified on purely forward-looking grounds, any plausible justification for pre-conviction detention must be partly backward-looking. Reflecting on the aims of the criminal law more broadly suggests that pretrial detentions, like post-conviction detentions, may be justified on “hybrid” grounds—but only if certain backward-looking retributive criteria and forward-looking instrumental criteria are met. We conclude that while it is possible in principle to justify (...) pretrial detention, there is reason to think that much of the pretrial detention in the U.S. is not, in fact, justified. We then argue that as a result, current pretrial detention practices in the U.S. unjustifiably diminish a special sort of moral agency that is necessary for holding persons responsible in the first place. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 205 Seiten: 37-86.

L. D. Harris; IV*—Solving the “Naval Battle”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 45–62, https://doi.org/10.1093/ari.

This article offers a critical reflection of Lizal’isidinga laKho (hymn 116) and Wazidala iinto zonke (hymn 16) written by Tiyo Soga and recorded in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) hymnal book. From the perspective of black theology of liberation (BTL), I historicise and contextualise hymn 116 and hymn 16 to debunk the argument that Tiyo Soga was alien to the lives, experiences of suffering and pain of his people. The article posits that hymn 116 and hymn 16 are (...) black spirituals that articulate the contexts Soga found himself as a black person during the times of the frontier wars. Therefore, utilising blackness as a heuristic approach, I argue that the songs do not just historicise the experiences of black people in the times of the frontier wars, but they are prayers and/or laments from Soga that ask God to spare the lives, the culture, and value systems of black people in a world that seeks the destruction of their being, history, and culture. The songs emphasise the black struggle for justice and liberation encouraging black people never to succumb to the definitions given to them by those who seek the destruction of black personhood. The article locates Soga within the frontier wars to illustrate his own experiences as black person, then examines and presents Lizal’isidinga laKho, Wazidala iinto zonke as black spirituals born in a time of war to give hope to those who have been conquered and subjugated in the unjust wars of colonisation. Hymns 116 and 16 contribute to the decolonial turn discourse –unthinking of the west – because they emphasise the black struggle for liberation and justice.Contribution: The contribution of this article is its focus on the way in which the intersection of religious studies, social sciences, and humanities generates an interdisciplinary contested discourse. (shrink)

This provocative study revives a classical idea about rationality by developing analogies between the structure of personality and the structure of society in the context of contemporary work in the philosophy of mind, ehtics, decision theory, and social choice theory.

This book presents three of the works of Abdu'l-Bahá, son of the founder of the Bahá'i Faith, dealing with social and political issues.00In 'The Secret of Divine Civilization' (1875) Abdu'l-Bahá supports the administrative and broader social reforms of Mirzá Hosayn Khán, but looks mainly for organic reform through the efforts of Iranian intellectuals to waken and educate the masses. In this work, Abdu'l-Bahá gives virtuous and progressive Islamic clerics a leading role among these intellectuals, indeed most of his appeals are (...) directed specifically to them. 'A Traveller's Narrative' (1889/90) is an authoritative statement of the broad lines of Bahá'i social and political thinking. 'The Art of Governance' (1892/93) was written as Iran entered a pre-revolutionary phase, and ideas that we recognise today as the precursors of political Islam were spreading. It sets out the principles underlying the ideal relationship between religion and politics and between the government and the people.00In addition to presenting the first parallel text translations of these works, the Persian texts incorporate notes on variants in the early published sources. An introduction outlines the intellectual and political landscape from which Abdu'l-Bahá wrote, and in which his expected readers lived. (shrink)

As little as a decade ago most moral philosophers still believed that the exercise of their craft did not include defending positions on actual moral problems. More recently they have come to their senses, one happy result being a spate of articles in the last few years on the subject of abortion. These discussions have contributed much toward an understanding of the abortion issue, but for the most part they have not attempted a full analysis of the morality of abortion. (...) Such an analysis is too large a task for a single paper, but a sketch of it will be undertaken here, the details to be filled in elsewhere. (shrink)

I wish here to consider a certain type of argument often produced as a refutation of ethical egoism. Such an argument asks us to consider a situation in which the interests of two people conflict. It is then pointed out that the consequence of applying both ethical egoism and some widely accepted conceptual truth concerning the moral words to this situation is in some way ‘absurd’. Ethical egoism is therefore to be rejected. My strategy, in trying to show that this (...) kind of argument is unsound, is this: I will first produce a simple refutation of ethical egoism of my own; I will show why it is unsound; I will try to show that these other arguments fail in the same way. (shrink)

If skepticism is once again fashionable, then much of the credit must go to Peter Unger who gives a sustained defense of an ultra-pyrrhonian position in his book, Ignorance: A case for Skepticism. Starting with a version of the traditional argument that we know nothing about the external world, Unger plunges deeper into skeptical waters by next arguing that there is at most hardly anything which we know to be so; and he scarcely pauses before proceeding to defend the stronger (...) conclusion of ‘universal ignorance,’ the thesis that nobody ever knows anything to be the case. I view Unger's thesis and the arguments that led him to it as a challenge to be overcome, not by an appeal to dogmatism - which Unger sees as the only alternative to skepticism - but by recourse to hard-biting arguments of the sort in which Unger himself puts his faith. In what follows I shall attempt to restate Unger's three main skeptical arguments with a view to showing that their bite is not nearly so hard as he imagines. (shrink)

At a time when mysticism is at last emerging as a respectable field of study for philosophers and religious phenomenologists, we find this new field in considerable disarray. We see, for example, Eliot Deutsch defending as philosophically intelligible and as significant śankara's non-dualistic interpretation of the mystic's experience. 1 There is R. C. Zaehner, on the other hand, labelling śankara's mysticism ‘profane’ and sharply distinguishing it from the fuller, or ‘sacred’, mysticism of the theist. 2 A third modern-day interpreter, W. (...) T. Stace, finds both the ‘monism’ of śankara and the dualism of the theist inadequate and proposes ‘pantheism’ as the most plausible interpretation of the mystic's experience. 3 Still another interpreter, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, rejects, as did Bertrand Russell much earlier, 4 every metaphysical claim put forward by the mystic; any such claim, be it monist, pantheist, or dualist, is but an ‘ontological fairy tale’. 5. (shrink)

Bredo C. Johnsen1 misconceives my strictures concerning acceptance of the following principle : If A both knows that p and knows that p entails q, then A can come to know that q.Johnsen seems unaware that my criticism was intended to apply only after is made to appear in its most plausible light; that is, only after its consequent is interpreted as: ’It is logically possible for A to know that q.’ Without this interpretation might be dismissed simply on the (...) grounds that A suffers from some physical or psychological disability that prevents him from drawing inferences from what he knows.Properly interpreted, remains acceptable as long as the propositions substituted for p and q are such that it is at least logically possible for A to get evidence enough to make them known. Agreement on this point is itself enough to render Johnsen's own examples irrelevant. For instance, even though it may be physically impossible for A to get adequate evidence that in the constellation Andromeda there is a planet intermediate in size between Venus and Earth, the foregoing is still a fit substitution instance for q; but since such a q does not suffice to falsify the consequent of, it does nothing to generate any skeptical argument, either. (shrink)

No fruitful discussion of the logic of religious belief can afford to ignore George Mavrodes' classification of propositional concepts, i.e. concepts predicable of propositions singly or in sets , as an analytical tool for pinning down the ‘person-oriented’ and ‘content-oriented’ factors in such ‘epistemic activities’ as religious proving, experiencing, and verifying. Mavrodes shows in particular that the formal model of logical soundness, i.e. valid form and true premises, has but limited application to proving, experiencing, and verifying as ways of giving (...) good reasons for religious belief. In this essay, I will show how Mavrodes' analysis of the logic of religious belief can be extended by substituting a procedural model of logical soundness for the truth-functionally formal model that he adopts. I will show further why it is desirable and, in certain instances, vital to extend his analysis in this manner. Along the way, I will explain why the extension that I am advocating augments Mavrodes' original analysis without substantially altering it or sacrificing any of its original analytical virtues. (shrink)

The author contends that analysis is dependent on the criteria of "the scientific world-View." otherwise, There would be "no basis for excluding analyses which were simply precise formulations of unverifiable realms of being.".

Quine and others have put many problems to quantified modal logic. Their purpose is to show the logic to be paradoxical or at least very peculiar. Many of these problems center around the interplay between modality, quantification and identity.

THE first-century Skeptic philosopher Agrippa was said by Sextus Empiricus to have based his attack against the possibility of philosophical understanding on five "tropes" or ploys--for sophisticated Skeptics did not refer to their considerations as arguments, lest that imply the concession that there is a recognized and recognizable criterion of truth. Rather they appealed only to the plausibility of their tropes, as a means of suggesting that philosophical questions are best left unasked, since they appear to be in principle unanswerable. (...) Agrippa's tropes rested on the following considerations. (shrink)