Drawing on recent feminist discussions, this collection critically reassesses ideas about agency, exploring the relationship between agency and coercion in greater depth and across a range of disciplinary perspectives and ethical contexts.

Summary As part of the events marking Nero’s assumption of the toga virilis in 51 CE, he along with Britannicus led the circus procession (pompa circensis) in advance of games in the Circus Maximus. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct this pompa circensis, both in its processional elements and route through the city. The presence of potential successors along with images of the deified and honored dead of the imperial family shows how this ceremony evolved and expanded in (...) the Principate to become a dynastic ceremony. The route of the newly modified pompa circensis, marked by monuments built by or dedicated to members of the imperial family, also had become increasingly dynastic. An essential element of the pompa circensis was the participation of the senate and equestrian order as well as the urban plebs, an act of performed consensus fully realized when the procession ended in the Circus Maximus. This circus procession, as reconstructed here, has further implications for the larger question of the imperial succession under Claudius. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall make the following propositions: in order to conceptually capture and represent the acts of political protest in a state of exception, we will need to reorient and supplement our representational apparatuses and also our theoretical frameworks for thinking about the gendered modes of protest under emergency laws and political abandonment. Through an analysis of the ‘naked protest’ of the Meira Peibis in Manipur, a ‘state of exception’ in democratic India, I shall argue that a series (...) of supplementations to our current thinking on intersectionality, bare life and political subjectivation are required if we are to make sense of political acts of resistance, refusal and disavowal of the law of exception. (shrink)

This book addresses two central questions: What does it mean to shift the epistemic centre of human rights thinking and to decolonise global human rights? And, how to study the 'active' conceptual, empirical, epistemic and political life of rights in 'most of the world'? To address these questions, this book introduces and develops the framework of vernacular rights cultures. The study of vernacular rights cultures is an interdisciplinary, conceptual, epistemic, methodological and empirical project. It intervenes in the current impasse of (...) human rights debates to offer a framework through which the complexity and dynamism of rights-based mobilisations might be analytically captured, not simply as those which are mimetic, and engaged in the translation, enactment and localization of 'global human rights', but rather as those which have their specific languages of rights and entitlements grounded in specific political imaginaries, justificatory premises and subjectivities. Through a conceptual and ethnographic tracking of the Urdu/Arabic word haq across subaltern citizen mobilizations in India and Pakistan, the book analyses the deployment of rights in the vernacular in South Asia including the political, epistemic and ethical agency released by this rights politics. By focusing on the claims for rights/haq by marginalised and very poor women including dalit and indigenous women within grassroots mobilisations demanding rights to food, employment, public information/accountability and land rights in rural movements in India and Pakistan, the book documents the specific gendered political imaginaries that inform rights struggles in the subcontinent. (shrink)

In this article, I raise a question and acknowledge a ‘feminist debt’. The ‘feminist debt’ is to the politics of location, and the question asks: what particular stipulations and enablements does a critical reflexive feminist politics of location put in place for knowledge production and for doing feminist theory? I suggest that there are at least three stipulations/enablements that a critical reflexive politics of location puts in place for knowledge production. Firstly, it demands/enables scholarly accounts to reveal their location within (...) the prevailing entanglements of power relations and to highlight the politics of struggle that underpin these. Secondly, it demands/enables conceptual work from different geographical spaces – and in particular, it facilitates the production of conceptual work in non-standard background contexts and conditions. And finally, a critical reflexive politics of location demands/enables a methodological response to capture the different conceptual and analytical and empirical knowledges produced in different locations. (shrink)

This paper is a theoretical and empirical investigation into whether persons in subordinate social contexts possess agency and if they do, how do we recognise and recover their agency given the oppressive conditions of their lives. It aims to achieve this through forging closer links between the philosophical arguments and the ethnographic evidence of women's agency. Through such an exercise, this paper hopes to bridge the existing gap between feminist theoretical interventions and feminist politics as well as to increase 'sociological (...) awareness' within feminist philosophical arguments. In order to think about women's agency in oppressive social contexts, the paper evaluates the suitability of existing theoretical frameworks for examining, describing and capturing the autonomy of persons and concludes that a new and a more complex thinking is required to facilitate thinking about human agency within oppressive transcultural contexts. The social context of subordination, the exhibition of agency within and oppressive context and the application of the new theoretical framework is illustrated in an extensive empirical study of the contact with modernity and its accompanying ideas of autonomy and individual rights of rural women belonging to two districts in Rajasthan, North western India. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Legal CommentarySumy Menon, Senior Associate in ResearchThis case involves the balancing of a young person’s right to autonomy and the desire to protect her from harm. No Singapore court decision has determined whether the doctor owes a duty to the parents of the doctor’s 16-year-old patient, to warn them that their child is engaging in sexual activities, and who subsequently has had an abortion. Similarly, the issue of whether (...) the doctor has a duty to protect the minor in such circumstances has also not been tested in the Singapore courts. Nonetheless, it is very unlikely that either duty will be found in this case.The general rule is that doctors owe a duty of confidentiality to their patients. This duty extends to children, and although no Singapore court has ruled on the matter, the law in England is clear.1 It is enshrined in section 4.2.3.1 of the Ethical Code & Ethical Guidelines of the Singapore Medical Council. It is not absolute and a number of exceptions have been carved out. The confidentiality duty can be overridden by legislation, court order, the public interest, or other justifiable circumstances that the doctor believes warrants disclosure.The age of consent for non-commercial consensual sexual activities in Singapore is 16.2 Therefore, there is no statutory responsibility on Dr. C under the criminal law to report the patients’ sexual activities to the authorities or anyone else. There is no other legislation or court order that compels disclosure. It is highly unlikely that the public interest would be served by disclosure. The consequences of such disclosure to the public interest were aptly put in a recent English case, when J. Silber held that if a confidentiality duty was not imposed, it “would probably or might well deter young people [End Page 262] from seeking advice and treatment on contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, and this would have undesirable and troubled consequences”.3 The last exception offers the greatest latitude for doctors to disclose if they believe there are other justifiable circumstances that would shift the balance in favour of disclosure. There are strong reasons to maintain confidentiality in Miss M’s case and although an argument can be made for disclosure, that argument is relatively weak.Miss M’s parents are understandably worried about her but Dr. C should not breach the duty of confidentiality owed to the patient even though she is only 16 years old. It is irrelevant that Miss M’s parents are paying for their daughter’s treatment. The doctor-patient relationship is between Dr. C and Miss M, and her parents have never been involved in the consultations or treatment decision-making process. They have not insisted on attending the consultations with their daughter, nor did they appear to object to Miss M consenting to treatment. Prior to their complaint, they had not sought any update or information about their daughter’s condition from Dr. C. Miss M specifically asked Dr. C not to reveal the contents of their conversations to her parents at the first consultation and the doctor agreed after attempting to convince her that it would be preferable to include her parents in the consultations. Miss M was obviously concerned about confidentiality and sought clarification from Dr. C. It appears as though Dr. C determined that Miss M had the capacity to exclude her parents from the consultations, and later to make her own treatment decisions, as a mature minor, and their doctor-patient relationship proceeded on that basis.It may be in the public interest for Dr. C to disclose confidential information about Miss M, even if she refuses to consent to it, if the doctor believes it is necessary to protect her from serious harm. Any such decision must be made with the patient’s best interests in mind. Examples of such harm include situations where the patient is at risk of serious physical abuse or has voiced a desire to commit suicide. Engaging in sexual activity with an older boy is unlikely to result in such serious harm, although harm may result. In this case, that harm manifested itself in an unwanted pregnancy... (shrink)

Here is Lukcs among his friends, lovers, and peers in those important years before 1918, when he converted to Communism and Marxism at the age of thirty-nine.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Legal CommentarySumy Menon, Senior Associate in ResearchThe principle of autonomy must be balanced against the need to protect the person from harm. The question is how to strike that balance and what tips it over to either side. In this case, the right for Mdm. W to make her own decision whether to undergo electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) must be balanced against the concern of the doctors and her relatives (...) regarding the possible consequences of not receiving the treatment. However, this question does not even arise if Mdm. W has capacity to make that decision. Mdm. W is the decision-maker for ECT treatment if she has capacity to make that decision.1The statutory regime that underpins decision-making for persons who may lack capacity is the Singapore Mental Capacity Act (SMCA).2 It is grounded in five Statutory Principles.3 The first three are the presumption the person has capacity, has the right to make an unwise decision, and the requirement that all practicable steps be taken to help the person make a decision. The fourth principle requires decisions made on behalf of the person lacking capacity to be taken in his or her best interests, and the final one states that the less restrictive option must be selected when making decisions for persons lacking capacity.The best practice is for the doctor to conduct a formal mental capacity assessment to determine whether Mdm. W can refuse consent for ECT. A formal assessment is appropriate in these circumstances because the decision is an important one concerning serious medical treatment.4 A trained specialist should conduct this assessment. The two-stage test for mental capacity is laid out in the SMCA.5 The first stage appears to be met because it requires the person to be suffering from an impairment or disturbance that affects the function of [End Page 227] the mind or brain, and Mdm. W has bipolar disorder. The second stage requires the bipolar disorder to render Mdm. W unable to make a decision at the time the decision needs to be made. The SMCA states that a person is unable to make a decision if he or she cannot understand the information, weigh up the information, remember the information or communicate the decision.6If the formal assessment concludes that Mdm. W lacks capacity to refuse ECT treatment, then the decision should be taken in her best interests.7 Mdm. W ’s relatives have no legal right to make decisions on her behalf unless she has appointed one or more of her relatives to be her healthcare proxy under a valid Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA).8 If she made such an LPA, then the appointed proxy is the final decision-maker unless the treatment is life-sustaining or the doctor reasonably believes the treatment is necessary to prevent a serious deterioration in Mdm. W’s health.9 It is arguable that a clear and present danger of suicide may be reasonably classified by the doctor as a serious deterioration in Mdm. W’s health, although this issue has not been tested in the Singapore courts, which would mean that the appointed proxy would have to yield to the doctor as the final decision-maker. If Mdm. W did not make such an LPA, then the decision must be taken in her best interests, and is likely to be taken jointly between the healthcare team and the relatives.The best interests test involves a holistic appraisal of factors,10 balancing the benefits and burdens of the proposed ECT. The relevant factors that should be considered here include whether, when or if Mdm. W is likely to regain capacity, her beliefs and values, her past and present wishes, and the views of her relatives.11 We do not have any information about the first two factors but we do know Mdm. W rejected ECT and her relatives think she should have ECT. Another relevant factor is that Mdm. W is unlikely to cooperate with the pre-treatment fasting requirements or agree to undergo general anaesthesia. Therefore, Mdm. W will need to be restrained for eight hours before each treatment. There will be a total of six... (shrink)

日本思想史の真髄に迫る論考と座談。天皇制・丸山眞男・日本仏教・慈円の考察から日本文化に潜む外来と固有の対立・融合を読み解く。.

Reconstructing Popper's research programme for the Human Sciences, Noretta Koertge (Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975]) has given a deductive?nomological account of explanations of actions by means of a Rationality Principle. It is argued here that such a Rationality Principle is fundamentally redundant. Neither is it logically necessary in order to deduce a cognitive action?explanandum, nor can it be given a semantic non?empty interpretation, at least not within Koertge's own syllogism. Any attempt to save the Rationality Principle as unfalsifiablc but nevertheless indispensable (...) for action explanations is rejected in the light of possible alternative action explanations by empirical and therefore in principle falsifiable psychological laws. (shrink)

Robustness with respect to climate models is often considered by philosophers of climate science to be a crucial issue in determining whether and to what extent the projections of the Earth’s future climate that models yield should be trusted. Parker (2011) and Lloyd (2009, 2015) have introduced influential accounts of robustness for climate models with seemingly conflicting conclusions. I argue that Parker and Lloyd are characterizing distinct notions of robustness and providing complementary insights. Confidence, if warranted, need be by virtue (...) of causally consistent climate models rather than by agreement upon projections by a diverse range of models. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FDA Releases Draft Guidance on Regulation of Genetically Engineered AnimalsJohn P. Gluck (bio) and Mark T. Holdsworth (bio)On 18 September 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a draft set of guidelines for those involved in developing genetically engineered animals with heritable recombinant DNA (rDNA) constructs and is requesting comment from industry and the public about their content. The document does not impose new regulations but (...) details how existing laws and regulations apply to genetically engineered (GE) animals and offers advice to developers on how to negotiate the laws in the most efficient and productive manner. The draft guidance document is not legally enforceable at this juncture, but the guidelines are recommendations reflecting the FDA's "current thinking on a topic."The modification of GE animals being developed for commercialization, which are the focus of the document, fall into six categories: modifications intended to (1) enhance food quality—e.g., faster growing fish and meats with better nutritional profiles; (2) improve animal health via increased resistance to disease—e.g., mastitis in dairy cattle and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE); (3) create so-called "biopharm" animals capable of producing therapeutic products such as insulin, clotting factors, and tissues for human transplantation; (4) reduce the barriers to human animal interaction—e.g., hypoallergenic pets; (5) develop valid animal models of human disease—e.g., Parkinson's disease, Lesh-Nyhan's syndrome, and cancer; and (6) improve production of industrial or consumer products such as fiber. The timing of the guidelines coincides with the FDA's belief in an expected boon in the number of GE animals approaching the stage of commercialization.The FDA's involvement in the approval process emerges from the new animal drug provisions of the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act and the definition of what constitutes a drug. The Act defines a new animal drug as "an article (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of... animals." A rDNA construct intended to affect the structure or function of an animal meets the definition of a new animal drug, regardless of whether the resulting GE animals are intended for human food or the production of pharmaceuticals or any other substances. [End Page 393]Before proceeding to a review of the draft guidelines, it is important briefly to set the controversies around GE animals in historical and ethical context.The Ethical DebateFrom its inception, the intentional genetic modification or genetic engineering of molecules, plants, and animals by the techniques of gene splicing has consistently elicited strong responses from both the scientific community and the public. There are some data to suggest that although the concerns of scientists fall primarily into the category of possible biohazards, those of the public also reflect great concern about the intrinsic moral issues, such as whether there is something fundamentally wrong with this line of work, making it a form of forbidden knowledge (see, e.g., Gaskell 1997). When news of Paul Berg's attempts in 1970 to graft the primate tumor virus (SV 40) onto the intestinal tract bacteria Escherichia coli for the purpose of studying how normal cells may be transformed into cancerous cells was shared with colleagues, he was strongly encouraged to reflect on the potential public health risks if somehow the altered bacteria broke containment and entered the environment. Thanks to Berg's leadership, these concerns soon resulted in conferences held in Asilomar, California, and New Hampton, New Hampshire, where the ethical responsibilities of microbiologists involved in this research were discussed. These initial discussions resulted in what has come to be known as "The Moratorium Letter" (Shattuck 1996) published in the journal Science in 1974. This letter, signed by 11 leaders in the field, actually recommended restrictions on several types of experiments that were considered to be particularly risky and stated "that adherence to our major recommendations will entail postponement or possibly abandonment of certain types of scientifically worthwhile experiments" (Berg 1974). An international conference on the issues came to similar conclusions about the need for a research moratorium for the sake of public safety. Recommendations arising from conference participants led to the formation of the National Institutes... (shrink)

Madhyamaka and Yogācāra are two Mahāyāna schools which have distinct systems. In the seventh century East Asia, the doctrinal distinction between the two schools was received as doctrinal contrast in the polemic circumstance of Emptiness-Existence controversy. In this context, Ji 基, the putative founder of East Asian Yogācāra school, has been normally considered by scholars to have advocated ‘Existence’ in opposition to ‘Emptiness’. It is problematic, however, to brand Ji’s Yogācāra position simply as anti-Madhyamaka. Although Ji evidently expresses evident criticism (...) on such a Madhyamaka exegete as Bhāvaviveka in some of his works, he also describes Bhāvaviveka in an amicable or even respective way in other works. By analyzing Ji’s extant works, this article argues that Ji’s scholastic attitude toward Madhyamaka changed from criticism to approval. (shrink)

The ‘mind-made body’ is seen as a subtle body attained by a Buddhist adept during meditative practice. Previous research has elucidated this concept as having important doctrinal significance in the Buddhist cosmological system. The P?li canonical evidence shows that the manomaya-k?ya is not merely a spiritual byproduct of meditative training, but also a specific existential mode of being in the system of the three realms. Studies of the manomaya-k?ya to date, however, have focused mostly on early P?li materials, and thus (...) do not encompass theoretical development and soteriological significance of this notion in later tradition. As a beginning step to fill this gap, this article explores the meanings of the manomaya-k?ya represented in the?r?m?l?dev? S?tra and the two treatises of the Ratnagotravibh?ga??stra and the Foxing lun, which are doctrinally based on the?r?m?l?dev? S?tra in their discussion of the manomaya-k?ya. Through the observation of the manomaya-k?ya in these Mah?y?na texts, this article seeks to demonstrate how the concept is used in the broader cosmological and soteriological system of Mah?y?na tradition. For this purpose, I first review the meanings of the manomaya-k?ya in early Buddhist texts and then observe the cosmological and soteriological meaning of the notion by analyzing the theoretical connection between the three Mah?y?na texts. (shrink)

Since 1985, the US Animal Welfare Act and Public Health Service policy have required that researchers using nonhuman primates in biomedical and behavioral research develop a plan “for a physical environment adequate to promote the psychological well-being of primates.” In pursuing this charge, housing attributes such as social companionship, opportunities to express species-typical behavior, suitable space for expanded locomotor activity, and nonstressful relationships with laboratory personnel are dimensions that have dominated the discussion. Regulators were careful not to direct a specific (...) set of prescriptions (i.e., engineering standards) for the attainment of these goals, but to leave the design of the programs substantially up to “professional judgment” at the local level. Recently, however, the Institute of Medicine, in its path-finding 2011 report on the necessity of chimpanzee use in research, bypassed this flexible and contingent concept, and instead, required as a central precondition that chimpanzees be housed in “ethologically appropriate” environments. In so doing, obligations of ethical treatment of one great ape species were elevated above the needs of some research. The evolution and significance of this change are discussed. (shrink)

In "Studies In The Logic Of Explanation" (Philosophy of Science, XV, 1948) Hempel and Oppenheim analyze the basic pattern of scientific explanation. One of the difficult problems which they acknowledge is "whether and how the analysis of explanation can be extended from the case where all general ex- planatory principles invoked are of a strictly universal or 'deterministic' form to the case where explanatory reference is made to statistical hypotheses." It is hoped that the remarks which follow may contribute a (...) little toward clarifying the issue. (shrink)

Peter Railton (1978) has introduced the influential deductive-nomological-probabilistic (DNP) model of explanation which is the culmination of a tradition of formal, non-pragmatic accounts of scientific explanation. The other models in this tradition have been shown to be susceptible to a class of counterexamples involving intervening causes which speak against their sufficiency. This treatment has never been extended to the DNP model; we contend that the usual form of these counterexamples is ineffective in this case. However, we develop below a new (...) version which overcomes these difficulties. Thus we claim that all of the models in this tradition, DNP included, have an equal status with respect to sufficiency. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to describe the nature of dental practice and to identify some recent innovations which have effect on cost containment in dentistry. The first of these innovations is dental insurance or prepaid dental services. Dental insurance has only recently emerged as a significant economic factor. The chronic and prevalent nature of dental disease mandates that the management of these programs incorporate insurance devices which limit demand and utilization. These devices amount to cost containment measures. The (...) second factor to be discussed is advertising. Advertising has been foisted on the dental profession by recent rulings of the Federal Trade Commission in an effort to promote competition. The Reagan administration, despite a market oriented approach to health care, had attempted to blunt some of the FTC actions. Advertising, nevertheless, has the potential to stimulate competition and restrain price escalation. The third factor includes a discussion of alternative delivery systems. These commercially oriented dental enterprises have the potential to compete with established practices as well as increase the demand for services. (shrink)

Maimonides real opinion regarding it. Then, as now, the Aristotelian theory of an eternal material universe seemed more plausible to many people than did the Biblical view of creation exnihilo. While creation is the orthodox view in both Judaism and Christianity, the tension between those two explanatory models goes back a long way. 1 Referring to the heretical views of Elisha ben Abuya, in the early Talmudic period, David Hartman argues as follows.

The article reinterprets the sources of Parisian flânerie with the view of exploring 19th-century understandings of cultural and aesthetic modernity. It distinguishes between two separate though interconnected formulaic narratives about the flâneur. The first is the popular flâneur, associated with a new type of urban commercial culture characteristic of the 1840s; while the second is the avant-garde flâneur, embodied in Baudelaire's critical texts of the 1850s and 1860s. Juxtaposing these two different narratives of flânerie allows us to draw two conclusions. (...) The first is that the 19th century's evaluations of cultural modernity were considerably more optimistic than later interpretations would lead one to believe. The second is that the realms of popular and avant-garde cultures were far more porous and inter-dependent than canonical literary criticism has contended. (shrink)

It is correctly asserted that the intensity of the current debate over the use of animals in biomedical research is unprecedented. The extent of expressed animosity and distrust has stunned many researchers. In response, researchers have tended to take a strategic defensive posture, which involves the assertion of several abstract positions that serve to obstruct resolution of the debate. Those abstractions include the notions that the animal protection movement is trivial and purely anti-intellectual in scope, that all science is good (...) (and some especially so), and the belief that an ethical consensus can never really be reached between the parties. (shrink)

The devastating impact of the national opioid epidemic has given rise to hundreds of lawsuits. This article details the extremely broad range of legal claims, compares the opioid cases to other public health litigation efforts, including tobacco, and describes the special mechanism — a multidistrict litigation — through which more than 700 opioid-related cases have been consolidated thus far, with settlement almost certain to follow.

The question of the relationship between mind and body as posed by Descartes, Spinoza, and others remains a fundamental debate for philosophers. In _Damasio’s Error and Descartes’ Truth_, Andrew Gluck constructs a pluralistic response to the work of neurologist Antonio Damasio. Gluck critiques the neutral monistic assertions found in _Descartes’ Error _and _Looking for Spinoza_ from a philosophical perspective, advocating an adaptive theory—physical monism in the natural sciences, dualism in the social sciences, and neutral monism in aesthetics. (...) class='Hi'>Gluck’s work is a significant and refreshing take on a historical debate. (shrink)