Development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa propose to alleviate hunger in rural areas by introducing new agricultural practices and technologies, yet there is limited empirical evidence of how an agricultural intervention can lead farming households to transition to food security. Research on food security pathways considers agricultural interventions that increase farmers’ income to be particularly effective for reducing food insecurity. Consistent with this stance, Malawian agricultural policy aims to address hunger by encouraging smallholder farmers to intensify and commercialize maize production. This (...) paper explores if smallholders’ market and livelihood orientations do indeed lead them to favor an income pathway to food security. Qualitative analysis of 60 smallholder farmer interviews in Malawi found that, upon achieving improvements in production yields and diversity, rather than commercialize, many farmers re-organized their production and consumption to reduce market dependency. Farmers deployed this strategy to increase their food security, explaining that the choice to self-provision food and farming inputs was both an expression of farming identity and a lived understanding of their marginal position in commodity markets. The author finds that, in failing to consider how production relations affect food access, scholarship inadequately theorizes farm-level food security transitions and reproduces discursive framings of hunger. Food sovereignty narratives more accurately captured what mattered for Malawian smallholders’ food security, suggesting that engagement with this concept could improve scientific understandings of food security transitions. (shrink)

Attempts a faithful account of Bruno's thought as expressed in his writings and to give an analysis of his thought as he developed it in regard to the issue of the infinitive.

What is the right thing to do? -- "You have nothing to fear if you've done nothing wrong" -- Between culpable and blameless -- Are all mistakes equal? -- Report, disclose, protect, learn -- A just culture in your organization -- The criminalization of human error -- Is criminalization bad for safety? -- Without prosecutors, there would be no crime -- Three questions for your just culture -- Why do we blame?

Ethical issues are pivotal to the practice of psychiatry. Anyone involved in psychiatric practice and mental healthcare has to be aware of the range of ethical issues relevant to their profession. An increased professional commitment to accountability, in parallel with a growing "consumer" movement has paved the way for a creative engagement with the ethical movement. The bestselling 'Psychiatric Ethics' has carved out a niche for itself as the major comprehensive text and core reference in the field, covering a range (...) of complex ethical dilemmas which face clinicians and researchers in their everyday practice. This new edition takes a fresh look at recent trends and developments at the interface between ethics and psychiatric practice. Coming ten years after the third edition, the editors have observed several emerging aspects of psychiatric practice requiring coverage, as a result, 5 new chapters have been added, including cutting edge topics - such as neuroethics. All other chapters have been fully revised and updated. The book will continue to be essential reading for psychiatrists, psychologists, other mental health professionals, and bioethicists, as well as of interest to policy makers, managers and lawyers. (shrink)

This new edition of Psychiatric Ethics continues to serve as the most authoritative and comprehensive text on the many complex ethical dilemmas which face the clinician in everyday practice. In addition to addressing questions about drug therapy, sex therapy, suicide, and child psychiatry, among others, this up-to-date revision adds six new chapters discussing abuses in psychiatry in Japan and Nazi Germany; a conceptual analysis of what mental illness is; psychiatry as a profession; the ethical aspects of psychogeriatrics; and deinstitutionalization. This (...) book is essential reading for all mental health professionals. (shrink)

Attempts a faithful account of Bruno's thought as expressed in his writings and to give an analysis of his thought as he developed it in regard to the issue of the infinitive.

_Examining inequality through the lenses of moral traditions_ Rising inequality has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years from scholars and politicians, but the moral dimensions of inequality tend to be ignored. Is inequality morally acceptable? Is it morally permissible to allow practices and systems that contribute to inequality? Is there an ethical obligation to try to alleviate inequality, and if so, who is obligated to take that action? This book addresses these and similar questions not through a (...) single lens of morality but through a comparative study of ethical traditions, both secular and religious, Western and non-Western. The moral and political traditions considered are: liberalism, Marxism, natural law, feminism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Confucianism. The types of inequality examined include property, natural resources, products, wealth, income, jobs, and taxation. The editors open the book with an introduction providing information on contemporary dimensions of the problem of economic inequality, and the book concludes with a summary of the perspectives represented. _Economic Inequality and Morality_ is unusual in that it addresses similarities and differences on the questions of inequality within and across moral traditions. Authors of the individual studies answer a common set of topic-related questions, giving the reader a broad perspective on how a broad range of traditions view and respond to inequality. (shrink)

Practical Ethics in Architecture and Interior Design Practice presents the basics of design practice through ethical scenarios, ushering design students into real-world experiential learning. Each chapter begins with a detailed story involving a complicated set of practical and ethical dilemmas, exemplifying those encountered each day in the world of professional practice. Practice-based topics such as contracts and project delivery methods, marketing design services, cross-cultural collaboration, virtual connectivity, social justice and sustainable design, soft skills, and other related professional practice themes are (...) anchored in realistic scenarios. While all the stories are fictional, in writing them the authors drew from over 75 combined years of professional experience in architecture and interior design, as well as many years of academic experience in teaching professional practice and ethics to architecture and interior design students. Each story is followed by discussion questions and suggested additional resources. This book provides a unique integrated perspective into the allied fields of architecture and interior design with topics relevant to both fields as well as specific to each profession. It prepares students of both disciplines for the broad issues of professional practice and encourages them to become ethical practitioners ready to contribute effectively to design teams and to ask the right questions. (shrink)

The attitudes of women patients with cancer were explored when they were invited to participate in one of three randomised trials that included chemotherapy at two university centres and a satellite centre. Fourteen patients participating in and 15 patients declining trials were interviewed. Analysis was based on the constant comparative method. Most patients voiced positive attitudes towards clinical research, believing that trials are necessary for further medical development, and most spontaneously argued that participation is a moral obligation. Most trial decliners, (...) however, described a radical change in focus as they faced the actual personal choice. Almost no one got an impression of clinical equipoise between treatments in the trials, and most patients expressed discomfort with randomisation. A patient’s choice to participate was mainly determined by whether the primary focus was on treatment effect or on adverse effects. Both knowledge about and feelings towards trials originated mostly from the media, although paradoxically the media were largely seen as untrustworthy. Mistrust was shown towards the pharmaceutical industry, and although most patients originally trusted that doctors primarily pursued the interest of patients, they did not trust the adequacy of doctors or industry in maintaining self-regulation. Thus, public control measures were judged to be essential. (shrink)

In this new edition of the classic book on the moral conduct of war, Sidney Axinn provides a full-length treatment of the military conventions from a ...

“One who elects to serve mankind by taking the law into his own hands thereby demonstrates his conviction that his own ability to determine policy is superior to democratic decision making. [Defendants’] professed unselfish motivation, rather than a justification, actually identifies a form of arrogance which organized society cannot tolerate.” Those were the words of Justice Harris L. Hartz at the sentencing hearing of three nuns convicted of trespassing and vandalizing government property to demonstrate against U.S. foreign policy. Citizens engaging (...) in civil disobedience are indeed at times accused of being arrogant because they apparently think their own political judgment is superior to that of the democratic majority. This paper examines and evaluates the claim that dissenters are epistemically arrogant. Contrary to the dominant viewpoint in the literature, I argue that epistemic arrogance involves inflating the epistemic worth of one’s view. Indeed, the most plausible charge against civil dissenters consists of two claims: (A) civil dissenters have a higher degree of rational certainty in P than is warranted, and (B) civil dissenters use a method of expression that requires a higher level of rational certainty than is warranted in the propositions that their political view is right and the injustice they fight is substantial. I argue that civil disobedience does not necessarily involve epistemic arrogance. Whether an act of civil disobedience evinces epistemic arrogance has to be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the extent to which each dissenter lives up to (A) and (B). (shrink)

This article addresses two great global challenges of the 2020s. On one hand, the accelerating climate crisis and, on the other, the deepening crisis of representation within liberal democracies. As temperatures and water levels rise, rates of popular confidence in existing democratic institutions decline. So, what is to be done? This article discusses whether sortition – the ancient Greek practice of selecting individuals for political office through lottery – could serve to mitigate both crises simultaneously. Since the 2000s, sortition has (...) attracted growing interest among activists and academics. Recently it has been identified in countries like the UK and France as a mechanism for producing legitimate political answers to the climate challenge. However, few theoretical reflections on the potentials and perils of sortition-based climate governance have yet emerged. This article contributes to filling the gap. Based on a critique of the first successful case of sortition used to enhance national environmental policy – in Ireland in 2017–18 – we argue that sortition-based deliberation could indeed speed up meaningful climate action whilst improving the health of democratic systems. However, this positive outcome is not preordained. Success depends not only on green social movements getting behind climate sortition but also on developing flexible, context-specific designs that identify adequate solutions to a number of problems, including those of power ; expertise ; and participation. (shrink)

Physics, the fundamental science of matter and energy, encompasses all levels of nature from the subatomic to the cosmic, and underlies much of the technology around us. Understanding the physics of our universe is an essential aspect of humanity's quest to understand our environment and our place within it. Doing physics enables us to explore the interaction between environment and human society, and can help us to work towards the future sustainability of the planet. This Very Short Introduction provides an (...) overview of how this pervasive science came to be and how it works: who funds it, how physicists are trained and how they think, and how physics supports the technology we all use. Sidney Perkowitz presents the theories and outcomes of pure and applied physics from ideas of the Greek natural philosophers to modern quantum mechanics, cosmology, digital electronics and energy production. Considering its most consequential experiments, including recent results in elementary particles, gravitational waves and materials science, he also discusses outside the lab, the effects of physics on society, culture, and humanity's vision of its place in the universe. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable. (shrink)

In this fascinating work, Sidney Hook critiques "scientifically inadequate ways of belief" in the hope that, if we recognize the ways in which they are confused with "genuinely scientific ways of belief," society will be better positioned to assess rationally the social, political, and economic belief systems that vie for our allegiance. In reviewing the powerful ideas of Christianity, mythology, Marxism, nationalism, democracy, and other belief systems, Hook remains firm in his conviction that no such system can long survive (...) if it resists the rational dictate of true scientific method - testing and reformulating beliefs based upon the ability to reach concrete solutions to human problems. (shrink)

This article is a qualitative study charting the dimensional range of a particular type of translative phenomenon, namely, intralingual translation within educational practice. Theoretically, the article is based on a broadened concept of translation that encompasses any kind of sign translation, including the transcending of a language-internal comprehension barrier, such as the one between scientific and lay linguistic registers. Further, the article assumes that such intralingual translation is conceptually identical with the interpretive procedures found in didactic practice, given that the (...) central aim of (much) pedagogy is to make sense of new and unfamiliar knowledge – typically embedded in abstract, scientific concepts – to learners. The article also draws on the Bakhtinian concept of “dialogized heteroglossia,” i.e., the view that different language varieties may be fused into, and brought into dialogue with each other within, one and the same text. Empirically, the article investigates intralingual translation in didactic practice through analyses of textbooks and one classroom lecture in five different academic disciplines, spanning both the natural and social sciences and the humanities. The analyses identify a handful of different translational strategies, some of which are shared across several disciplines, and others of which are unique to a single discipline only. (shrink)

The New Transnational Activism shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, and the (...) opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book. (shrink)

Nursing faces an uncertain future as technological developments, structural changes within health systems and rapidly evolving health needs create new and challenging possibilities. This article draws on the results of a qualitative study undertaken with a range of Queensland nurse leaders to explore their perceptions of these changes. The study re‐surfaced, and allows for a re‐examination of, four issues that have long created tension within nursing and which continue to have a negative impact on the profession as a whole. These (...) are as follows: professionalisation; preparation of graduates; myths and narratives of nursing; and leadership. We provide a metaphor that imagines all of these tensions operating in dynamic interplay. The image is that of a Newton's Cradle – a model for energy and momentum. The metaphor allows one to see the wide context of changes affecting nursing and the significance of the interconnections. If tensions within nursing maintain their own integrity through containment, understanding and development, they remain in alignment, and energy is conserved rather than wasted or misdirected. It suggests that with increased awareness and attention paid to internal challenges, and by taking a broad‐based approach to systemic improvements, nursing could become more effective, progressive and proactive in shaping its own future. (shrink)

Two of the dominant frameworks for criticizing capitalism and liberal democracy in contemporary political theory is Socialist republicanism, on the one hand, and radical democracy, on other hand. Whereas radical democratic thinkers have for decades criticized liberal democracy for being elitist, hierarchical and outright anti-popular, socialist republicans have for the last 10 years developed critiques of capitalism centred on the neo-republican idea of freedom as non-domination and proposed various arguments for workplace democracy and cooperative forms of ownership. Despite the common (...) ambition of uncovering hierarchical relations of economic, political and social power, and creating new egalitarian and participatory modes of political organization, no systematic comparison of socialist republicanism and radical democracy exists. This paper fills this gap by comparing the different understandings of institutions and political action and their diverging historical and political relations to socialism. (shrink)

The nature and aim of science, by E. Nagel.--Truth and provability, by L. Henkin.--Completeness, by L. Henkin.--Computability, by S. C. Kleene.--Necessary truth, by W. V. Quine.--What is a scientific theory? By P. Suppes.--Science and simplicity, by N. Goodman.--Scientific explanation, by C. G. Hempel.--Observation and interpretation, by N. R. Hanson.--Probability and confirmation, by H. Putnam.--Utility and acceptance of hypotheses, by I. Levi.--Space and time, by A. Grünbaum.--Problems of microphysics, by P. Feyerabend.--Aspects of explanation in biological theory, by M. Beckner.--Psychologism and methodological (...) individualism, by S. Morgenbesser.--Science, fact, and value, by M. Scriven.--The justification of induction, by M. Black. (shrink)