The lack of importance traditionally ascribed to human-nonhuman animal relationships in the social sciences has meant that while commercial sex in the human realm has been well documented, very few socio-cultural studies of commercial sex involving nonhuman animals have been undertaken to date. However, the growing recognition that nonhuman, as well as human, animals are “actors” means that their role in the sex trade, becomes problematic and eminently worthy of academic attention. This article considers a very particular instance of commercial (...) animal sex—that practiced on stud farms in West Wales, where the breeding of autochthonous Welsh cobs is of immense political, social, economic, and cultural significance. This study found that in this context Welsh cobs are expected to embody specific gender ideals in what is an inherently inter-subjective relationship. Through their animals' performances, human caregivers are able to negotiate their own ideas about gender roles, and these in turn determine those individual animals used for breeding and those not. (shrink)

Distant Views of the Holy Land. By Felicity Cobbing and David M. Jacobson. Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2015. Pp. vi + 321, illus. $200. [Distributed by ISD, Bristol, CT].

In Campbell Soup Co. v. Allstate Insurance Co. ), the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan, Southern Division, held that a health plan's coordination of benefits clause, covered under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, does not preempt a similar no-fault automobile insurance clause in the absence of irreconcilable conflict. The court found that ERISA's policy of shielding plans from unanticipated claims could only be furthered when the plan had expressly disavowed such claims. Because the ERISA (...) plan in this case did not specifically subordinate itself to the no-fault policy, the district court found that the no-fault COB clause controlled. However, to escape this ruling, ERISA plans need only redraft their COB clauses specifically to disclaim liability in case of conflict with provisions of no-fault insurance policies. This caveat substantially limits the scope of the court's ruling. (shrink)

The Photographs of the American Palestine Exploration Society. By Rachel Hallote, Felicity Cobbing, and Jeffrey B. Spurr. The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. 66. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2012. Pp. xix + 352, illus. $89.95. [Distributed by ISD, Bristol, Conn.].

Peter Geach's puzzle of intentional identity is to explain how the claim ‘Hob thinks a witch has blighted Bob's mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob's sow’ is compatible with there being no such witch. I clarify the puzzle and reduce it to the familiar problem of negative existentials. That problem is a paradox of representations that seem to include denials of commitment , to carry commitment to what they deny commitment to, and to be true. The best proposed (...) solutions can be understood through this paradox; I evaluate them, and defend a new solution. (shrink)

This essay argues for a 'relationist' treatment of intentional identity sentences like (1) "Hob believes that a witch blighted Bob's mare and Nob believes that she killed Cob's sow" (Geach 1967). According to relationism, facts of the form "a believes that p and b believes that q" are not in general reducible to facts of the form "c believes that r". We first argue that extant, non-relationist treatments of intentional identity are unsatisfactory, and then go on to motivate and explore (...) a relationist alternative in some detail. We show that the general thesis of relationism can be directly motivated via cases already discussed in the literature, and then develop a particular version of relationism couched in the possible worlds framework. The resulting theory avoids the problems facing its non-relationist rivals, and yields a natural account of the truth-conditions of (1), truth-conditions which can be generated in a compositional manner by a version of dynamic semantics. The theory also helps us to cleanly separate semantic questions about intentional identity from metasemantic ones. (shrink)

concepts typically are defined in terms of lacking physical or perceptual referents. We argue instead that they are not devoid of perceptual information because knowledge of real-world situations is an important component of learning and using many abstract concepts. Although the relationship between perceptual information and abstract concepts is less straightforward than for concrete concepts, situation-based perceptual knowledge is part of many abstract concepts. In Experiment 1, participants made lexical decisions to abstract words that were preceded by related and unrelated (...) pictures of situations. For example, share was preceded by a picture of two girls sharing a cob of corn. When pictures were presented for 500 ms, latencies did not differ. However, when pictures were presented for 1,000 ms, decision latencies were significantly shorter for abstract words preceded by related versus unrelated pictures. Because the abstract concepts corresponded to the pictured situation as a whole, rather than a single concrete object or entity, the necessary relational processing takes time. In Experiment 2, on each trial, an abstract word was presented for 250 ms, immediately followed by a picture. Participants indicated whether or not the picture showed a normal situation. Decision latencies were significantly shorter for pictures preceded by related versus unrelated abstract words. Our experiments provide evidence that knowledge of events and situations is important for learning and using at least some types of abstract concepts. That is, abstract concepts are grounded in situations, but in a more complex manner than for concrete concepts. Although people's understanding of abstract concepts certainly includes knowledge gained from language describing situations and events for which those concepts are relevant, sensory and motor information experienced during real-life events is important as well. (shrink)

Over the past two years, the College of Business (COB) profiled in this article spent time reflecting on where it had been, what it was doing, and where it needed to go in terms of teaching ethics. Based on this analysis, the COB developed an initiative to teach ethics to students, faculty, business people, government employees and officials, and others across its state so all of key stakeholder groups would have a greater appreciation for the benefits of ethical decision-making, the (...) need to exhibit ethical leadership, and the role that business and the free enterprise system can play in promoting the need to earn one’s reputation by doing the right thing. The current article discusses the process the COB followed to implement their ethics initiative. (shrink)

Ante el gran interés suscitado en nuestros días por la Es- cuela de Constanza y la Estética de la Recepción que le es propia, propone- mos un ensayo introductorio de alta di- vulgación, que haga contactar al lector no iniciado con la riqueza literaria y hu- manística de la susodicha Escuela, y de sus dos grandes pensadores: H. R. Jauss y W. Iker. Desde esta perspectiva jausista, presentamos los tres ángeles bíblicos por excelencia: el ángel de Ja- cob, el ángel (...) de Getsemaní, y el texto paulino de 2Cor 12, con el doblón meta- fórico del “aguijón en la carne” en el “ángel de Satanás”, que adquieren así un particular relieve y significatividad en los pintores Gauguin y Picasso. (shrink)

El trabajo, realizado principalmente en base a fuentes primarias, procura dar cuenta del transito del sector obrero minero Boliviano -núcleo proletario central del siglo pasado- desde la aplicación de las reformas estructurales del año 85, cuando se cierran las principales minas estatales, a la actualidad. Durante el “evismo”, la acción colectiva del sector minero fue central para forzar la nacionalización de la principal reserva estañífera del país, trayendo consigo una nueva elite de gestión ministerial en el área. A su turno, (...) presentamos el recorrido trazado en tiempos recientes por la antes fortísima Central Obrera Boliviana. Su carácter opositor en relación con los gobiernos neoliberales encontró una línea de continuidad para con la actual gestión de gobierno. Sin embargo, esta perspectiva no ha sido la dominante, por primera vez en su historia el ente matriz de los trabajadores se ha subordinado al campo de articulación popular comandado por el indigenismo. (shrink)