International human rights treaties and declarations lay out the interconnection of civil and political rights with economic, social, and cultural rights. However, it was not until 1993 at the 2nd UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna that governments agreed that all of women’s rights are an integral part of human rights. Promoting women’s economic, social, and cultural rights is a critical human rights advocacy issue. Poverty leaves women more exposed to violence and less able to escape it, and severely (...) restricts women’s ability to organize and fight for change. The article describes work by AI and other NGOs on violence against women and its connection with women's poverty and lack of education, healthcare, housing, and access to land in Africa. Besides the burgeoning of African women’s organizations calling for protection of all women’s human rights, a second hopeful development has been approval in July 2003 of an historic Protocol on the Rights of women in Africa. (shrink)

Economics has developed into one of the most specialised social sciences. Yet at the same time, it shares its subject matter with other social sciences and humanities and its method of analysis has developed in close correspondence with the natural and life sciences. This book offers an up to date assessment of economics in relation to other disciplines. -/- This edited collection explores fields as diverse as mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, sociology, architecture, and literature, drawing from selected contributions to the (...) 2005 Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET). There is currently much discussion at the leading edges of modern economics about openness to other disciplines, such as psychology and sociology. But what we see here is that economics has drawn on (as well as contributed to) other disciplines throughout its history. In this sense, in spite of the increasing specialisation within all disciplines, economics has always been an open discipline and the chapters in this volume provide a vivid illustration for this. -/- Open Economics is a testament to the intellectual vibrancy of historical research in economics. It presents the reader with a historical introduction to the disciplinary context of economics that is the first of its kind, and will appeal to practising economists and students of the discipline alike, as well as to anybody interested in economics and its position in the scientific and social scientific landscape. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: Economics in relation to other disciplines Richard Arena, Sheila Dow and Matthias Klaes Part I. Economics in relation to the humanities and social sciences 1. The social science of economics Brian J. Loasby 2. Economics and literature Bruna Ingrao 3. Happiness: what Kahneman could have learnt from Pietro Verri Pier Luigi Porta Part II. Economics in relation to the life and natural sciences 4. Newtonian physics, experimental moral philosophy and the shaping of political economy Sergio Cremaschi 5. Evolutionary biology and economic behaviour: re-visiting Veblen's instinct of workmanship Mark Harrison 6. Medicine and economics in pre-classical economics Alain Clément and Ludovic Desmedt Part III. Economics and mathematics 7. Mathematics as the role model for neoclassical economics Nicola Giocoli 8. The role of econometric method in economic analysis: A reassessment of the Keynes-Tinbergen debate, 1938-43 Giovanna Garrone and Roberto Marchionatti IV. Economics and architecture 9. Economics and architecture Maurice Lagueux 10. Economic policies and urban development in Latin America Michele Alacevich and Andrea Costa V. Economics and geography 11. ‘Space’ in economic thought Giovanna Vertova 12. Economics, geography and colonialism in the writings of William Petty Hugh Goodacre Part VI. Economics and sociology 13. Economics and sociology: Gustav Schmoller and Werner Sombart on social differentiation Joachim Zweynert 14. Is Homo Oeconomicus a 'bad guy'? Isabelle This Saint-Jean -/- . (shrink)

This collection of essays by Sheila Jasanoff explores how democratic governments construct public reason, that is, the forms of evidence and argument used in making state decisions accountable to citizens.

In the past twenty years, the field of science and technology studies (S&TS) has made considerable progress toward illuminating the relationship between scientific knowledge and political power. These insights have not yet been synthesized or presented in a form that systematically highlights the connections between S&TS and other social sciences. This timely collection of essays by some of the leading scholars in the field attempts to fill that gap. The book develops the theme of "co-production", showing how scientific knowledge both (...) embeds and is embedded in social identities, institutions, representations and discourses. Accordingly, the authors argue, ways of knowing the world are inseparably linked to the ways in which people seek to organize and control it. Through studies of emerging knowledges, research practices and political institutions, the authors demonstrate that the idiom of co-production importantly extends the vocabulary of the traditional social sciences, offering fresh analytic perspectiveson the nexus of science, power and culture. (shrink)

Philosophical inquiry into pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering is a growing area of interest to academic philosophers. This volume brings together a diverse group of philosophers to speak about topics in this reemerging area of philosophical inquiry, taking up new themes, such as maternal aesthetics, and pursuing old ones in new ways, such as investigating stepmothering as it might inform and ground an ethics of care. The theoretical foci of the book include feminist, existential, ethical, aesthetic, phenomenological, social and political theories. (...) These perspectives are then employed to consider many dimensions of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering, which are of central importance to human existence, but are only rarely discussed in philosophical cannons. Topics include pregnancy and embodiment, breast-feeding, representations – or the lack thereof – of pregnant and birthing women, adoption, and post-partum motherhood. (shrink)

STS research has devoted relatively little attention to the promotion and reception of science and technology by non-scientific actors and institutions. One consequence is that the relationship of science and technology to political power has tended to remain undertheorized. This article aims to fill that gap by introducing the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. Through a comparative examination of the development and regulation of nuclear power in the US and South Korea, the article demonstrates the analytic potential of the imaginaries concept. (...) Although nuclear power and nationhood have long been imagined together in both countries, the nature of those imaginations has remained strikingly different. In the US, the state’s central move was to present itself as a responsible regulator of a potentially runaway technology that demands effective containment. In South Korea, the dominant imaginary was of atoms for development which the state not only imported but incorporated into its scientific, technological and political practices. In turn, these disparate imaginaries have underwritten very different responses to a variety of nuclear shocks and challenges, such as Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl, and the spread of the anti-nuclear movement. (shrink)

An important function of the self is to identify external objects that are potentially personally relevant. We suggest that such objects may be identified through mere ownership. Extant research suggests that encoding information in a self-relevant context enhances memory , thus an experiment was designed to test the impact of ownership on memory performance. Participants either moved or observed the movement of picture cards into two baskets; one of which belonged to self and one which belonged to another participant. A (...) subsequent recognition test revealed that there was a significant memory advantage for objects that were owned by self. Acting on items had no impact on memory. Results are discussed with reference to the importance of self-object associations in cognition. (shrink)

Though feminists are correct to note that conventional standards of sexiness are oppressive, we argue that feminism should reclaim sexiness rather than reject it. We argue for an aesthetic and ethical practice of working to shift from conventional attributions of sexiness to respectful attributions, in which embodied sexual subjects are appreciated in their full individual magnificence. We argue that undertaking this practice is an ethical obligation, since it contributes to the full recognition of others’ humanity. We discuss the relationship of (...) ethical to aesthetic considerations and argue that the respectful notion of sexiness is a genuinely aesthetic one, even though it does not involve assessment in relation to standards. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the standard interpretation of the superiority theory of humor attributed to Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes, according to which the theory allegedly places feelings of superiority at the center of humor and comic amusement. The view that feelings of superiority are at the heart of all comic amusement is wildly implausible. Therefore textual evidence for the interpretation of Plato, Aristotle, or Hobbes as offering the superiority theory as an essentialist theory of humor is worth careful consideration. (...) Through textual analysis I argue that not one of these three philosophers defends an essentialist theory of comic amusement. I also discuss the way various theories of humor relate to one another and the proper place of a superiority theory in humor theory in light of my analysis. (shrink)

Scholars in science and technology studies have recently been called upon to advise governments on the design of procedures for public engagement. Any such instrumental function should be carried out consistently with STS’s interpretive and normative obligations as a social science discipline. This article illustrates how such threefold integration can be achieved by reviewing current US participatory politics against a 70-year backdrop of tacit constitutional developments in governing science and technology. Two broad cycles of constitutional adjustment are discerned: the first (...) enlarging the scope of state action as well as public participation, with liberalized rules of access and sympathetic judicial review; the second cutting back on the role of the state, fostering the rise of an academic-industrial complex for technology transfer, and privatizing value debates through increasing delegation to professional ethicists. New rules for public engagement in the United Sates should take account of these historical developments and seek to counteract some of the anti-democratic tendencies observable in recent decades. (shrink)

The Niobrara and Codell unconventional tight reservoir play at the Wattenberg field, Colorado, has potentially two billion barrels of oil equivalent, requiring hundreds of wells to access this resource. Due to the formations’ high heterogeneity and variable thicknesses, we model the facies at the well-bore scale and upscale it to the seismic scale to guide the development strategy and evaluate future exploration targets. A facies classification from well data supervises the prestack seismic inversion and multiattribute transformation workflows to build a (...) 3D facies model. The 3D facies model captures the reservoir heterogeneity throughout the study area and suggests the location of sweet spots for future hydraulic fracturing and refracturing. The term “sweet spot” refers to the parts of the rock formation that potentially have the highest hydrocarbon production. The significance of sweet spot identification includes improved recovery from the Niobrara, Codell, and potential deeper intervals for future exploration of drilling targets. Furthermore, sweet spot information also assists in keeping the well in formation, which is difficult to do without the seismic data. Keeping the well in formation is key for the efficiency of hydraulic fracturing operations and improved production. (shrink)

'An extremely readable book that should provoke both economists and students of economic methodology to think more deeply about what they are doing.' Roger E. Backhouse, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Economics, University of BirminghamEconomic Methodology provides an accessible introduction to the subject-matter of and literature on the methodology of economics. It presents issues in economics in order to demonstrate the need for methodological awareness and debate. The core of the book then explains the content and development of (...) thought in methodology in relation to issues in economics, with an especial emphasis on the most recent thinking in the area. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Environmentalists can make individuals more eco-friendly by dispelling many of the myths and misconceptions about the natural world. By learning what in nature is and is not dangerous, and in what contexts the danger is real, individuals can come to aesthetically appreciate seemingly unappreciable nature. Since aesthetic attraction can be an extremely valuable tool for environmentalists, with potentialbeyond that of scientific education, the quest for an eco-friendly is neither unnecessary nor redundant. Rather, an eco-friendly aesthetic ought to be pursued in (...) conjunction with other efforts to protect nature. (shrink)

Building on recent theories ofscience in society, such as that provided bythe `Mode 2' framework, this paper argues thatgovernments should reconsider existingrelations among decision-makers, experts, andcitizens in the management of technology.Policy-makers need a set of ` technologies ofhumility' for systematically assessing theunknown and the uncertain. Appropriate focalpoints for such modest assessments are framing,vulnerability, distribution, and learning.

From Hippocrates to paternalism to autonomy : the new hegemony -- From autonomy to consent -- Consent, autonomy, and the law -- Autonomy at the end of life -- Autonomy and pregnancy -- Autonomy and genetic information -- Autonomy and organ transplantation -- Autonomy, consent, and the law.

This article argues that climate change produces discordances in established ways of understanding the human place in nature, and so offers unique challenges and opportunities for the interpretive social sciences. Scientific assessments such as those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change helped establish climate change as a global phenomenon, but in the process they detached knowledge from meaning. Climate facts arise from impersonal observation whereas meanings emerge from embedded experience. Climate science thus cuts against the grain of common sense (...) and undermines existing social institutions and ethical commitments at four levels: communal, political, spatial and temporal. The article explores the tensions that arise when the impersonal, apolitical and universal imaginary of climate change projected by science comes into conflict with the subjective, situated and normative imaginations of human actors engaging with nature. It points to current environmental debates in which a reintegration of scientific representations of the climate with social responses to those representations is taking place. It suggests how the interpretive social sciences can foster a more complex understanding of humanity’s climate predicament. An important aim of this analysis is to offer a framework in which to think about the human and the social in a climate that seems to render obsolete important prior categories of solidarity and experience. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive study of the Odyssey's plot, which shows how the motifs of disguise and recognition are used to articulate the central values of Homeric society. The story of Odysseus' homecoming is discussed in relation to family dynamics, heroic competition, the social institutions of marriage and hospitality, gender relations, and the enduring power of song.

A demanding introduction to logic and critical thinking, this book offers more traditional means of teaching the art of reasoning at a time when the field has become almost mathematical. Francis Dauer has rethought the framework for teaching reasoning in general and formal logic in particular, the desired epistemological context, and the role of the fallacies. The result is a coherent and very readable work, informed by Dauer's extensive experience teaching and writing on the subject.

This paper explores the politics of representing events in the world in the form of data points, data sets, or data associations. Data collection involves an act of seeing and recording something that was previously hidden and possibly unnamed. The incidences included in a data set are not random or unrelated but stand for coherent, classifiable phenomena in the world. Moreover, for data to have an impact on law and policy, such information must be seen as actionable, that is, the (...) aggregated data must show people both something they can perceive and something that demands interrogation, explanation, or resolution. Actionable data problematize the taken-for-granted order of society by pointing to questions or imbalances that can be corrected or rectified, or simply better understood, through systematic compilations of occurrences, frequencies, distributions, or correlations. The paper describes and analyzes three different modes of authorized seeing that render data on global environmental phenomena such as climate change both visible and actionable. It argues that the political force of environmental data compilations derives from the divergent epistemological standpoints and expert practices associated with producing views from nowhere, everywhere, and somewhere. (shrink)

Land art requires careful evaluation when assessing its aesthetic and ethical value. Critics of land art charge that it is unethical in that it uses nature without such use being justified by some future good. Other critics charge that land art harms nature aesthetically. In this essay, the author canvasses these charges and argues that some land art is ethically and aesthetically defensible, and that some has great and rare potential in both realms.

Reflections on my experience of conducting research in Botswana are used to highlight tensions and conflicts that arise from adhering to the western conceptualization of bioethics and the need to be culturally sensitive when carrying out research in one's own culture. Cultural practices required the need to exercise discretionary judgement guided by respect for the culture and decision-making protocols of the research participants. Ethical challenges that arose are discussed. The brokerage role of nurse educators and leaders in contextualizing western bioethics (...) is emphasized. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider how far the notion of schools of thought is compatible with methodological pluralism. Should economics instead be categorised simply as pluralist or non?pluralist? The notion of structured pluralism is developed, where categories, connections and (crucially) absence of connection apply at a variety of levels. Schools of thought provide some of that (provisional, mutable) structure, encapsulating, among other things, the use of language within each community. Awareness, and understanding, of the different categories and (...) meanings of different schools of thought is necessary for successful communication, and thus for the benefits of pluralism. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze hat sich schon früh mit dem Werk Henri Bergsons beschäftigt, der die überragende Gestalt der französischen Philosophie vor Sartre war. Seine Monographie »Le bergsonisme« , die zentrale Begriffe bei Bergson erschließt und dessen kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Erkenntnisanspruch der exakten Wissenschaften weiterführt, gilt in Frankreich bis heute als Standardwerk.Bereits 1957 stellte Deleuze einen Band mit Textauszügen aus allen wichtigen Werken Bergsons zusammen, der hier unter dem Titel »Philosophie der Dauer« zum ersten Mal auf Deutsch erscheint. Er bildet (...) gleichsam die Materialsammlung zum »Bergsonisme«, und mit diesem Band begann die Wiederentdeckung Bergsons in Frankreich nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Deleuze’ kongeniale Aneinanderreihung von Textpassagen aus »Zeit und Freiheit«, aus »Materie und Gedächtnis« und der »Schöpferischen Evolution«, aber auch aus den Aufsatzbänden und dem Spätwerk bietet einen guten Überblick über das Bergson’sche Denken. Dabei wird deutlich, dass es neben der Intuition als Methode, dem Gedächtnis als Medium zeitlicher Erfahrung und dem Lebensschwung als Ursache aller Veränderung vor allem die Dauer ist, die begrifflich im Mittelpunkt von Bergsons Philosophie steht. Mit Dauer ist dabei nicht die starre zeitliche Abfolge von Unveränderlichem gemeint, sondern der kontinuierliche Wandel: Dauer ist das übergreifende begriffliche Konzept, mit dem die Philosophie, im Gegensatz zu den experimentellen Wissenschaften, das »immerwährende Fließen der Dinge« zu erfassen vermag.Sämtliche Texte wurden von Margarethe Drewsen einheitlich neu übersetzt; der Band lässt sich wie eine kompakte Einführung in Bergsons Denken lesen. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that one of the most intense ways women are encouraged to enjoy sublime experiences is via attempts to control their bodies through excessive dieting. If this is so, then the societal-cultural contributions to the problem of eating disorders exceed the perpetuation of a certain beauty ideal to include the almost universal encouragement women receive to diet, coupled with the relative shortage of opportunities women are afforded to experience the sublime.

Genetic testing has become a vehicle through which basic constitutional relationships between citizens and the state are revisited, reaffirmed, or rearticulated. The interplay between the is of genetic knowledge and the ought of government unfolds in the context of diverse imaginaries of the forms of human well-being, freedom, and flourishing that states have a duty to support. This article examines how the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States governed testing for Alzheimer’s disease, and how they diverged in defining potential (...) harms, benefits, and objects of regulation. Comparison before and after the arrival of direct-to-consumer genetic tests reveals differences in national understandings of what it means to protect life and citizenship: in the United Kingdom, ensuring physical wellness through clinical utility; in the United States, protecting both citizens’ physical well-being and freedom to choose through a framework of consumer protection; and in Germany, emphasizing individual flourishing and an unburdened sense of human development that is expressed in genetic testing law and policy as a commitment to the stewardship of personhood. Operating with their own visions of what it means to protect life and citizenship, these three states arrived at settlements that coproduced substantially different bioconstitutional regimes around Alzheimer’s testing. (shrink)

Advance care directives for health care have been promoted as a way to improve end-of-life decision making. These documents allow a patient to state, in advance of incapacity, the types of medical treatments they would like to receive, to name a surrogate to make those decisions, or to do both. Although studies have shown that both physicians and patients generally have positive attitudes about the use of these documents, relatively few individuals have actually completed one.What underlies this discrepancy between attitudes (...) and behavior with regard to advance care directives? One obvious explanation is lack of access. Emanuel et al. estimated that approximately 90 percent of the population desire an advance care directive, and they pointed to access as the major barrier. Yet interventions that increase accessibility have typically failed to yield more than a 20 percent completion rate. Thus, it appears that access is not the sole determinant of advance care directive completion. (shrink)

The International Olympic Committee has always been plagued by what queer theorist Judith Butler calls gender trouble. In 2000, the IOC discontinued their practice of sex-testing because medical experts could not agree on what defined a genetic female and so an adequate medical testing measure could not be found. In response to outside pressure, the IOC adopted a policy enabling transsexual athletes to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games. This article argues that the IOC policy on sex reassignment does not (...) operate to guard against discrimination and harassment against transsexual athletes but that it operates to maintain the popular illusion that there are two, binary gender designations. While both transsexual and Olympic bodies have unique histories and vastly different experiences in the social and political realms, using psychoanalysis we contend that the need to test gendered bodies is incited by an anxiety about bodily deterioration, aging, and, ultimately, mortality. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy has taken too long to engage seriously with aesthetics and has been even slower in confronting natural beauty in particular. There are various possible reasons for this neglect, including the relative youth of feminist aesthetics, the possibility that feminist philosophy is not relevant to nature aesthetics, the claim that natural beauty is not a serious topic, hesitation among feminists to perpetuate women's associations with beauty and nature, and that the neglect may be merely apparent. Discussing each of these (...) possibilities affords a better understanding of, but none justify the neglect of natural beauty in feminist aesthetics. (shrink)

Despite triggering one of the largest civilian death tolls in modern history, the policy and human consequences of economic sanctions on Iraq between 1990-2003 remain largely unexamined. This lack of scrutiny mirrors the euphemism and mis-information surrounding the embargo itself and the Oil-for-Food program ostensibly adopted to protect Iraq's civilian population. But it also reflects incomprehension among Western publics - long removed from the realities of hunger and economic destitution - of the intimate link between economic conditions and mortality. Iraq (...) suffered an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths because of a catastrophic undermining of civilian livelihood triggered by the embargo; an outcome termed slow famine in the demographic literature. With much of the population fully dependent on daily food rations of less than 21 cents per person for much of the sanctions period, OfF `relief' was inherently incapable of substituting for a functioning civil economy. Recent positive accounts of the impact of OfF, in the form of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-Food Program, are refuted by close analysis of malnutrition and mortality rates across the sanctions period. The example of Iraq reveals the danger in treating economic sanctions as a cheap, `non-violent' tool for conflict resolution. In reality their deadly power is terrorizing for societies not protected from their application by permanent member status on the UN Security Council, a threat which continues to generate global insecurity. The Iraq experience reveals how current, narrowly framed, international law prohibitions on starvation as a weapon of war need to be extended to cover interference with civilian livelihood and hence access to food. (shrink)

Hume's appeal to "force and vivacity" presents a challenge to those of us who try to render his views as plausible as possible. Of course, if we reject "folk psychology" or an appeal to our consciousness, the challenge becomes insurmountable. Fortunately, in today's philosophical climate such appeals are no longer universally rejected, and at least in some quarters there may be interest in discerning what such appeals may reveal. But even granting such an appeal, is there anything given to our (...) consciousness that will do the kind of work Hume intends for force and vivacity? I shall attempt to make an affirmative answer as plausible as I can. Recall that Hume appeals to force and vivacity to distinguish impressions from ideas, memory from other ideas, and beliefs from fictions of the fancy. In my defense of Hume, I shall urge that, taken separately, each of these appeals has some plausibility and to this extent provides some tentative suggestions on what it is like to perceive, remember, and believe. Before proceeding to this defense, several preliminaries are called for. (shrink)