The epidemic of COVID-19 appears to be reshaping the world, separating before and after, present and past. Its perceived novelty raises the question of what role the past might play in the present epidemic and in responses to it. Taking the view that the past has not passed, but is present in is material and immaterial remains, and continuously emerging from these, we argue that it should not be studied as closed narration but through the array of its traces, which (...) constitute the texture of the present. To that end, and building on long-term ethnographic research on past and present epidemics in western Kenya, we assemble here some preliminary observations on the first weeks of COVID-19 in Kenya. We explore how the acute epidemic crisis currently unfolding is intertwined with layered fragments of earlier epidemic events, attending to material infrastructures, institutional practices, and ritual responses, to the presence of virally loaded bodies, pharmaceuticals, and their residues, and to the resurgence of often painful memories and emotions. People in this region have experienced a long century of epidemics and anti-epidemic measures of varying duration and intensity, from colonial and postcolonial sleeping sickness and smallpox to HIV/AIDS and more recently cancer, alongside actual or anticipated outbreaks of cholera and Ebola. This local perception of one long epidemic qualifies the notion of a radical temporal break that the COVID-19 pandemic is often associated with in European conversations. (shrink)

"This is an extremely interesting and innovative collection with unusual empirical richness, with ethical and epistemological discussions cutting across ...

There is wide agreement that community engagement is important for many research types and settings, often including interaction with ‘representatives’ of communities. There is relatively little published experience of community engagement in international research settings, with available information focusing on Community Advisory Boards or Groups (CAB/CAGs), or variants of these, where CAB/G members often advise researchers on behalf of the communities they represent. In this paper we describe a network of community members (‘KEMRI Community Representatives’, or ‘KCRs’) linked to a (...) large multi-disciplinary research programme on the Kenyan Coast. Unlike many CAB/Gs, the intention with the KCR network has evolved to be for members to represent the geographical areas in which a diverse range of health studies are conducted through being typical of those communities. We draw on routine reports, self-administered questionnaires and interviews to: 1) document how typical KCR members are of the local communities in terms of basic characteristics, and 2) explore KCR's perceptions of their roles, and of the benefits and challenges of undertaking these roles. We conclude that this evolving network is a potentially valuable way of strengthening interactions between a research institution and a local geographic community, through contributing to meeting intrinsic ethical values such as showing respect, and instrumental values such as improving consent processes. However, there are numerous challenges involved. Other ways of interacting with members of local communities, including community leaders, and the most vulnerable groups least likely to be vocal in representative groups, have always been, and remain, essential. (shrink)

Community Engagement (CE) has been presented by bio-ethicists and scientists as a straightforward and unequivocal good which can minimize the risks of exploitation and ensure a fair distribution of research benefits in developing countries. By means of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Kenya between 2007 and 2009 we explored how CE is understood and enacted in paediatric vaccine trials conducted by the Kenyan Medical Research Institute and the US Centers for Disease Control (KEMRI/CDC). In this paper we focus on the role (...) of paid volunteers who act as an interface between villagers KEMRI/CDC. Village Reporters’ (VRs) position of being both with the community and with KEMRI/CDC is advantageous for the conduct of trials. However it is also problematic in terms of exercising trust, balancing allegiances and representing community views. VRs role is shaped by ambiguities related to their employment status and their dual accountability to researchers and their villages. VRs are understandably careful to stress their commitment to self-less community service since it augments their respectability at community level and opens up opportunities for financial gain and self-development. Simultaneously VRs association with KEMRI/CDC and proximity to trial participants requires them to negotiate implicit and explicit expectations for material and medical assistance in a cultural setting in which much importance is placed on sharing and mutuality. To ensure continuity of productive interactions between VRs, and similar community intermediaries, and researchers, open discussion is needed about the problematic aspects of relational ethics, issues concerning undue influence, power relations and negotiating expectations. (shrink)

Fieldworkers (FWs) are community members employed by research teams to support access to participants, address language barriers, and advise on culturally appropriate research conduct. The critical role that FWs play in studies, and the range of practical and ethical dilemmas associated with their involvement, is increasingly recognised. In this paper, we draw on qualitative observation and interview data collected alongside a six month basic science study which involved a team of FWs regularly visiting 47 participating households in their homes. The (...) qualitative study documented how relationships between field workers and research participants were initiated, developed and evolved over the course of the study, the shifting dilemmas FWs faced and how they handled them. Even in this one case study, we see how the complex and evolving relationships between fieldworkers and study participants had important implications for consent processes, access to benefits and mutual understanding and trust. While the precise issues that FWs face are likely to depend on the type of research and the context in which that research is being conducted, we argue that appropriate support for field workers is a key requirement to strengthen ethical research practice and for the long term sustainability of research programmes. (shrink)

Identities ascribed to research staff in face-to-face encounters with participants have been raised as key ethical challenge in transnational health research. ‘Misattributed’ identities that do not just deviate from researchers' self-image, but obscure unequivocal aspects of researcher identity – e.g. that they are researchers – are a case of such ethical problem. Yet, the reasonable expectation of unconcealed identity can conflict with another ethical premise: confidentiality; this poses challenges to staff visiting participants at home. We explore these around a case (...) study of ‘follow-up’ staff, observed during an ethnographic study of a Kenyan HIV ‘trial community’, which included participant observation, conversations, and interviews with staff (n = 79) and participants (n = 89). We found that because of the need to maintain confidentiality and because of some suspicions towards researchers, research staff drew upon alternative identities – presenting themselves to non-participants as relatives or friends, rather than as researchers. Several staff experienced this as necessary but uncomfortable. Simultaneously, staff and participants forged close relations in line with their fictional identities, which however also posed challenges because they entailed personal responsibilities that were difficult to live up to, due to limited resources, and the trial's limited duration. Similar challenges may arise in transnational HIV treatment programmes and should be explored further in that context. (shrink)

Ist die Einwirkung eines freien Willens räumlich möglich ohne Widerspruch gegen die Arbeitserhaltung? ist ein unveränderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1898. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernährung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitäten erhältlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bücher neu und trägt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und (...) historischem Wissen auch für die Zukunft bei. (shrink)

This essay introduces ideas from Confucius, Xunzi, the Six Dynasties, and Kant about beauty, music, morality, and what we might today call “aesthetic education.” It asks how beauty and morality are related and how they ideally should be related to each other. We know that beauty and morality can drift apart, and we may wonder how aesthetic education might work best. Should the arts be a means for developing morality? Or should it be the other way around? These questions are (...) still relevant today. But our world has changed, not only since Confucius, but also since Kant. We may ask what to make of their ideas in our present time. I argue that there are good reasons for keeping morality and aesthetics apart, somewhat in the spirit of Kant, and in opposition to the idea of “fusing” the two. (shrink)

Ereignet sich anstelle von Klang oder Sprache, Musik oder Lärm lediglich Stille oder vielmehr das, was wir für Stille halten, kommt ein unerwartetes Aufmerken in Gang. Die Stille kann auffordern, genauer hinzuhören, aber auch genauer hinzusehen. Ein plötzliches Aufmerken geschieht jedoch nur, wenn die Stille den Wahrnehmenden unerwartet trifft. Einer im Alltäglichen zumeist durch die Priorität des Bewussten, Bekannten oder Vertrauten untergeordneten Stille, können Arbeiten, wie jene von Aernout Mik, eine konkrete Erfahrbarkeit geben. Was er erfahrbar werden lässt, ist aber (...) nicht die Stille, sondern das, was in der Regel überhört wird. In der Verkehrung des vermeintlich Unhörbaren in ein Hörbares zeigt sich mit der Stille ein Möglichkeitsraum, dessen Besonderheit die Autorin mit der Frage, was sich in der Erfahrung von Stille zeigt, nachgeht. Ist also von einer Stille als ästhetischem Phänomen die Rede, ist nicht eine Stille innerhalb der Rezeption genuin stiller Kunstwerke gemeint, sondern der bewusste Entzug des Auditiven. Damit widerspricht die Autorin zugleich einer Vorstellung von Stille als mess- oder bestimmbarer Grösse und stellt die Stille aus der ästhetischen Erfahrung heraus ins Zentrum ihrer Betrachtungen. (shrink)

Mathematicians often say that their theorems, proofs, and theories can be beautiful. They say mathematics can be like art. They know how to move creatively and freely in their domains. But ordinary people usually cannot do this and do not share this view. They often have unpleasant memories from school and do not have this experience of freedom and creativity in doing mathematics. I myself have been a mathematician, and I wish to highlight some of the creative aspects in doing (...) mathematics. I always had the feeling that there is much freedom in mathematics and that one can do as one pleases as long as one avoids contradictions (and one can even live with contradictions for a while). In mathematics one only needs to define something and there it is! Just imagine it, and it immediately exists. Where else, besides fiction, does one have such power? --- This essay has three parts. In the first, I lay out some historical facts and views that I will need later. Second, I insert an interlude with Kant, pointing out some of his claims and insights in aesthetics, and some aspects in mathematics that I think he overlooked or underestimated. Third, I will bring out some aspects of higher mathematics that I will show are similar to art. These aspects are in the doing and creating of mathematics, not in the finished theories. They are usually not found in textbooks. I want to show that a researcher in mathematics is like a painter or composer, exploring and creating. To see this, one has to adopt a first-person perspective. In this way I will show that aesthetics plays a role and leaves its traces also in mathematics. (shrink)

The plan for this volume emerged during the international Leipzig conference commemorating the centenary of the death of Gustav Fechner.

ABSTRACT:Workplace transgressions elicit a variety of opinions about their meaning and what is required to address them. This diversity in views makes it difficult for managers to identify a mutually satisfactory response and to enable repair of the relationships between the affected parties. We develop a conceptual model for understanding how to bridge these diverging perspectives and foster relationship repair. Specifically, we argue that effective relationship repair is dependent on the parties’ reciprocal concern for others’ viewpoints and collective engagement in (...) the justice repair process. This approach enhances our understanding of the interdependency between justice and reconciliation/reintegration, while also providing theoretical insight into the processes underlying restorative conferencing, innovations that promise to help managers heal damaged organizational bonds. (shrink)

This essay will inform the reader about Kant’s views on mathematics and aesthetics. It will also critically discuss these views and offer further suggestions and personal opinions from the author’s side. Kant (1724-1804) was not a mathematician, nor was he an artist. One must even admit that he had little understanding of higher mathematics and that he did not have much of a theory that could be called a “philosophy of mathematics” either. But he formulated a very influential aesthetic theory (...) that is contained in his “Critique of the Power of Aesthetic Judgment” (1790), and his views on mathematics, especially those that compare it with philosophy, are distinctive and worthy of our attention. Hence, combining mathematics and aesthetics, asking whether mathematics can be beautiful and why and how it can or cannot be so called, according to Kant’s theory, will be particularly interesting. This essay has three parts: it discusses mathematics, aesthetics, and the aesthetics of mathematics, primarily in Kantian perspectives but also in ways that critically evaluate those perspectives. (shrink)

Heinz Robert Schlettes skeptische Religionsphilosophie - bereits in ihrer Entstehungszeit quer zum Mainstream - hat in besonders intensiver Weise fundamentale Infragestellungen der Religion durch die Moderne einbezogen. Im Stichwort Empörung hat sie den humanen Gehalt der Religions-kritik aufgenommen - und sowohl religions-philosophisch identifiziert als auch für eine heute noch rechtfertigbare religiöse Haltung reklamiert. Schlettes Ansatz heute in die veränderten Konstellationen einer globalisierten Säkularisierungsdynamik und neuen Religionspräsenz wie eine Sonde einzuführen, verspricht erhellend aufklärerische Wirkung. Dies unternehmen die hier versammelten Beiträge im (...) Spektrum aus Philosophie, Theologie und literarischem Essay. (shrink)

The present study examines the influence of constrained autonomy and incentives on the experience of freedom in decision-making in everyday settings. We tested the prediction that both factors constitute independent influences on the experience of freedom against the alternative that an incentive might outbalance the influence of a constraint. The experimental setting incorporated a decision about whether to continue a psychological experiment. The choice set of the participant was either restricted or not and the tasks announced were either attractive or (...) unattractive. The results confirmed the original prediction by showing the primary effects of constraint and incentive on the experience of freedom in the decision. Additionally, positive affect completely mediated the effect of incentive, while constraint retained a significant direct effect. The study demonstrates the existence of differentiated influences on the experience of freedom, and illustrates the connections further re.. (shrink)

Jean-Baptiste Say is largely forgotten in modern economics; if he is remembered and studied, it is for Say’s Law, which was misinterpreted by John Maynard Keynes, and ended up providing the basis for the General Theory. In this chapter, we review Say’s Law and a more correct interpretation. We then use this to highlight the contributions of Say to modern macroeconomics, the microfoundations of macroeconomics, and entrepreneurship theory. Say was an influential French thinker – modern classical liberalism owes much to (...) him, and would be enriched by a rediscovery of his writings. (shrink)