In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

Using Alastair MacIntyre's work as a methodological guide for doing ethics in the Christian tradition, the contributors to this work offer essays on three subjects: description of MacIntyre's approach; reflections on moral issues; and selected essays on family, abortion, feminism and more.

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not been (...) inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

_Sociologies of Religion: National Traditions_ presents fourteen histories of the sociological study of religion in a diverse set of nations. The authors narrate the stories behind major personages, theoretical traditions, seminal works, research institutes, and professional associations.

Is there only one bioethics? Is a global bioethics possible? Or, instead, does one encounter a plurality of bioethical approaches shaped by local cultural and national traditions? Some thirty years ago a field of applied ethics emerged under the rubric `bioethics'. Little thought was given at the time to the possibility that this field bore the imprint of a particular American set of moral commitments. This volume explores the plurality of moral perspectives shaping bioethics. It is inspired by (...) Kazumasa Hoshino's critical reflections on the differences in moral perspectives separating Japanese and American bioethics. The essays include contributions from Hong Kong, China, Japan, Texas, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The volume offers a rich perspective of the range of approaches to bioethics. It brings into question whether there is unambiguously one ethics for bioethics to apply. (shrink)

This article explores the dynamics of the discourse and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in France to illustrate the interplay between endogenous and exogenous factors in the development of CSR in a country. It shows how the cultural, socioeconomic, and legal traditions influence the way ideas are raised, the kinds of questions considered relevant, and the sorts of solutions conceived as desirable and possible. Furthermore, the article traces how expectations and practices evolve as a result of various social (...) and economic factors within a country, and increasingly, as a result of global influences such as the international academic discourse, the international practices of multinational companies, nongovernmental organizations and trade unions, and initiatives of supranational organizations. The article closes with reflections about what can be learned from the French experience with CSR and how to stimulate such cross-border learning. (shrink)

By analyzing the modern change of the national traditional sports culture, the interactive influence between the modern change of the national traditional sports culture and the reconstruction of ethnic college students’ value consciousness is discussed in this article, and the result shows that to integrate the national traditional sports culture into ethnic college students’ value consciousness of sports culture would help the inheritance and development of the national traditional sports culture.

This concluding chapter addresses the conceptual questions that arise in connection with identifying a philosophical tradition, and giving it a distinctive national label. It argues against the common identification of ‘Scottish philosophy’ with the ‘School of Common Sense’, and argues that Francis Hutcheson initiated an approach to philosophical questions that pre-dates the appeal to common sense developed by Reid. It contends that the ‘School of Common Sense’ was just one attempt to formulate a satisfactory response to David Hume. By (...) examining the work of Andrew Seth and Henry Jones, it explores the idea of a shared philosophical agenda, and argues that a common project rooted in a long-standing institutional framework is what sustained the Scottish philosophical intellectual tradition. The chapter ends by considering the factors that may be said to have brought that tradition to an end. (shrink)

Cet article explore la production du savoir dans le cadre d'une « anthropologie nationale». Au Mexique s'est développée de façon précoce une des plus importantes anthropologies « nationales » du monde postcolonial; malgré son « succès », elle a toujours été hantée par l'absorption de ses principaux représentants dans l'appareil d'État et par un sentiment de discontinuité et d'isolement intellectuel. Quatre aspects de l' anthropologie mexicaine sont abordés dans le contexte historique où ils ont émergé: le rôle de l'anthropologie dans (...) la construction d'une image de la nation (1850-1900); les stratégies d'intervention dans la modernisation et l'incorporation des populations indigènes et «attardées» (1880-1930); son rôle dans la régulation de l'orthodoxie du développement (1940-1968), puis dans la reformulation de l'image de la nation face à l'urbanisation massive (depuis 1968). (shrink)

Since Ranke, German historiography has been dominated by historicism. History defies conceptualism and systematic analysis; it requires empathetic understanding of the individualities which compose history, a narrative account of the intentions and actions of great individuals and states. Value judgments are to be suspended; military power and foreign policy are stressed. Defeat in World War I had little impact on German historical scholarship. Hintze's attempts at structural analysis and Kehr's efforts to study foreign policy within the framework of domestic history (...) met opposition. Traditional methodological and political assumptions remained important after 1945 in the work of G. Ritter, H. Rothfels, and others; at the same time these assumptions were increasingly questioned by a new generation of historians committed to democratic values who sought to integrate the methods of political science, sociology, and economics with those of history. (shrink)

I attempt to make a fresh start on the subject of the interaction between the Isaiah prophets and Mesopotamian culture. The results will probably surprise and even alarm, since they threaten to overturn a great deal of previous scholarship and to gore a number of sacred cows. First is the idea that 1st Isaiah is either the work of the historical prophet or was composed, along with the rest of the Hebrew Bible, in the Persian or Hellenistic period. I have (...) no doubt that some passages are to be connected with the historical prophet, but not merely one or two but indeed the bulk of 1st Isaiah’s prophecies, albeit often pre-exilic in origin, are, in my view, too late to be contemporary with Isaiah himself. (shrink)

Review of Stetter, J., & Ramond, C... Spinoza in 21st-century American and French philosophy: metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Often understood as synonymous with “oral history” in Indigenous title and rights cases in Canada, “oral tradition” as theorized by Jan Vansina is complexly imbricated in the European genealogy of “scientific history” and the archival science of Diplomatics with roots in the development of property law and memory from the time of Justinian. Focusing on Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, which resulted in the first declaration of Aboriginal title in Canada, this paper will discuss Tsilhqot’in law in the context of (...) the court’s deployment of Vansina’s theory and its genealogy, and conclude that “oral tradition” functions as a legal fiction enabling the court to remain in the familiar archive of its own historiography while claiming to listen to the Elders. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 2 Seiten: 386-388.

What does it imply for Nigerian philosophers to conscientiously and engagingly reflect on Nigeria as a place of philosophy and as a dynamic plural context of socioeconomic, political, cultural and ethnic problems? Any answer to this question automatically constitutes the opening salvo to the reflection on the evolution of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy and philosophizing. This book represents such an initial salvo in in its attempt to hammer out the conditions for the possibility of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy (...) by placing that endeavor in between the triadic challenges of the Nigerian political economy, the African philosophical theorizing and the global epistemological hegemony. How do these three dynamics condition the evolution and functional relevance of the philosophical enterprise in Nigeria? How have Nigerian philosophers responded to them? What is Nigerian philosophy? How can there be a "Nigerian" philosophy when there are no Nigerians? This book is also an attempt to contribute to the trajectory of philosophy education in Nigeria within the context of a postcolonial educational system and university dynamics that stultifies the role of the intellectuals in development. From Plato to Wiredu, from Bodunrin to Bourdieu, and from Heidegger and Nietzsche to Fanon, Mignolo and Santos, the book traces a trajectory of dynamics rethinking of existing paradigms and epistemological assumptions that could enable a robust evolution of a Nigerian tradition of philosophy that possesses sufficient clout to confront its historicity and its place in Nigeria's development impasse. (shrink)

Summing up the decade's state independence of Ukraine, it is necessary to note certain positive changes in the life of the people, in particular in the spiritual sphere, which is most often associated with national and religious rebirth. One can argue about the pace and scale of these processes, but they undoubtedly changed the direction of the historical development of our state, which seeks to rethink its past, to decide on its present presence in the cultural world, to make (...) the right civilizational choice. (shrink)