The HealthyFood program offers members up to 25% cash back monthly on healthy food purchases. In this randomized controlled trial, we tested the efficacy of financial incentives combined with text messages in increasing healthy food purchases among HF members. Members receiving the lowest cash back level were randomized to one of six arms: Arm 1 : 10% cash back, no weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 2: 10% cash back, generic weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 3: 10% cash back, (...) personalized weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 4: 25% cash back, personalized weekly text, standard monthly text; Arm 5: 10 + 15%NET cash back, personalized weekly text, standard monthly text; and, Arm 6: 10 + 15%NET cash back, personalized weekly text, unbundled monthly text. In the 10 + 15%NET cash back, the cash back amount was the baseline 10% plus 15% of the net difference between healthy and unhealthy spending. The generic text included information on HF and healthy eating, while the personalized text had individualized feedback on purchases. The standard monthly text contained the cash back amount. The unbundled monthly text included the amount lost due to unhealthy purchases. The primary outcome was the average monthly percent healthy food spending. Secondary outcomes were the percent unhealthy food spending, and the percent healthy and unhealthy food items. Of the members contacted, 20 opted out, and 2841 met all inclusion criteria. There were no between-arm differences in the examined outcomes. The largest mean difference in percent healthy spending was between Arm 1 and Arm 2, and the largest mean difference in percent unhealthy spending was also between Arm 1 and Arm 2, but no differences were statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. None of the tested financial incentive structures or text strategies differentially affected food purchasing. Notably, more than doubling the cash back amount and introducing a financial disincentive for unhealthy purchases did not affect purchasing. These findings speak to the difficulty of changing shopping habits and to the need for innovative strategies to shift complex health behaviors. NCT02486588 Increasing Engagement with a Healthy Food Benefit. The trial was prospectively registered on July 1, 2015. (shrink)

This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social (...) groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory. (shrink)

A survey of Western feminist ethics over the past thirty years reveals considerable diversity; nonetheless, much recent work in this area is characterized by its adoption of a naturalistic approach. Such an approach is similar to that found in contemporary naturalized epistemology and philosophy of science, yet feminist naturalism has a unique focus. This paper explains what feminist naturalism can contribute to moral philosophy, both by critiquing moral concepts that obscure or rationalize women’s subordination and by paying attention to real-life (...) practices of moral inquiry, including those used by women. (shrink)

The theme of human biology recurs continually both in feminist and in anti-ferminist literature. Reflection on human biology has seemed to promise answers to the urgent questions of why women everywhere are subordinated and whether and how that subordination can be ended. Invariably, anti-feminists have justified women's subordination in terms of perceived biological differences between the sexes, and feminists have responded to their claims in a variety of ways. In this paper, I want to look critically at the ways in (...) which feminists in the liberal and Marxist traditions have responded to the biologically based challenges of anti-feminism, and to suggest an alternative way of conceptualising the relation between human biology and the social status of women. (shrink)

The World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development has recently confirmed the widely held belief that women across the world tend to perform different work from men who otherwise are situated similarly. Women also work longer hours than similarly situated men. In analyzing the justice of these gendered disparities in time-use, WDR 2012 uses a moral framework that is largely distributive. Although this framework illuminates some aspects of the injustice of the situation, I contend that it obscures other crucial (...) aspects, making the analysis inadequate overall. I argue that a more comprehensive and illuminating moral understanding can be reached by analyzing these time-use disparities in terms of global gendered exploitation. This alternative framework also better enables identifying those politically responsible for the injustice and points toward a vision of global gender justice that is morally more plausible. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) theory could be modified to describe how listeners rapidly incorporate context to generate predictions about speech despite inter-talker variability. However, in order to do so, the content of predicted percepts must be expanded to include phonetic information. Further, the way listeners identify and represent inter-talker differences and subsequently determine which prediction method to use would require further specification.

The terms “ideal theory” and “nonideal theory” are used in contemporary Anglophone political philosophy to identify alternative methodological approaches for justifying normative claims. Each term is used in multiple ways. In this article Alison M. Jaggar disentangles several versions of ideal and nonideal theory with a view to determining which elements may be helpful in designing models of real-world justice that are contextually relevant, morally plausible, and practically feasible.

The main purpose of this paper is to offer an account of academic freedom. By way of context, it begins with a brief history of challenges to academic freedom at the University of Colorado. It then turns to the following questions. Who enjoys academic freedom and which of their activities does it protect? What is the relationship of academic freedom to constitutionally and internationally protected civil liberties? From whom or what does academic freedom provide protection? Is academic freedom compatible with (...) public accountability? What are the rationales for academic freedom? (shrink)

The supplemented edition of this important reader includes a substantive new introduction by the author on the changing nature of feminist methodology. It takes into account the implications of a major new study included for this first time in this book on poverty and gender (in)equality, and it includes an article discussing the ways in which this study was conducted using the research methods put forward by the first edition. This article begins by explaining why a new and better poverty (...) metric is needed and why developing such a metric requires an alternative methodological approach inspired by feminism. Feminist research is a growing tradition of inquiry that aims to produce knowledge not biased by inequitable assumptions about gender and related categories such as class, race, religion, sexuality, and nationality."Just Methods" is designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in a range of disciplines. Rather than being concerned with particular techniques of inquiry, the interdisciplinary readings in this book address broad questions of research methodology. They are designed to help researchers think critically and constructively about the epistemological and ethical implications of various approaches to research selection and research design, evidence-gathering techniques, and publication of results.A key theme running through the readings is the complex interrelationship between social power and inequality on the one hand and the production of knowledge on the other. A second and related theme is the inseparability of research projects and methodologies from ethical and political values. (shrink)

The essays in this interdisciplinary collection share the conviction that modern western paradigms of knowledge and reality are gender-biased.

Western moral and political theorists have devoted much attention to the victimization of women by non-western cultures. But, conceiving injustice to poor women in poor countries as a matter of their oppression by illiberal cultures yields an imcomplete understanding of their situation.

The World Bank’s World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development 2012 makes many recommendations for addressing the severe gender disparities that it finds persisting across much of the world. This paper proposes that the recommendations focus too exclusively on remedies at the national level while paying insufficient attention to transnational arrangements. The imbalance of the report’s analysis places too much responsibility for addressing the disparities on local and national actors, while underplaying the responsibilities of transnational actors, including the World Bank (...) itself. The idea of transnational cycles of gendered vulnerability provides a methodological approach for better assigning responsibility for global gender disparities. (shrink)

Written by leading scholars in feminist theory, Feminist Frameworks was one of the first anthologies in its field and, in the third edition, remains on the cutting edge. Comprehensive, the book covers current issues, problems, theory, and historical texts regarding the oppression of women. With the third edition comes a new section, "Why Theory?" in Part II, explaining the value of feminist theory. Also, the emerging areas of multicultural feminism and global feminism are covered in Part IV. Introductions to each (...) major theme expose students to the readings in a meaningful context. (shrink)

Reviewed Work: Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition" by Charles Taylor, Amy Gutmann, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, Susan Wolf.

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains (...) how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The feminist conception of discourse offered below differs from classical discourse ethics. Arguing that inequalities of power are even more conspicuous in global than in local contexts, I note that a global discourse community seems to be emerging among feminists, and I explore the role played by small communities in feminism's attempts to reconcile a commitment to open discussion, on the one hand, with a recognition of the realities of power inequalities, on the other.

Neoliberal globalization has deepened the impoverishment and marginalization of many women. This system is maintained by the debt supposedly owed by many poor nations in the global South to a few rich nations in the global North, because the obligation to service the debt traps the people of the South within an economic order that severely disadvantages them. I offer several reasons for thinking that many of these alleged debt obligations are not morally binding, especially on Southern women.

Across the world, the lives of men and women who are otherwise similarly situated tend to differ from each other systematically. Although gender disparities varywidely within and among regions, women everywhere are disproportionately vulnerable to poverty, abuse and political marginalization. This article proposes thatglobal gender disparities are caused by a network of norms, practices, policies, and institutions that include transnational as well as national elements. These interlaced and interacting factors frequently modify and sometimes even reduce gendered vulnerabilities but their overall (...) effect is to maintain and often intensify them. Women’s vulnerabilities in different areas of life mutually reinforce each other and I follow other authors in referring to such causal feedback loops as cycles of gendered vulnerability. I argue that these cycles now operate on a transnational as well as national scale and I illustrate this by discussing the examples of domestic work and sex work. If global institutional arrangements do indeed contribute to maintaining or intensifying distinctively gendered vulnerabilities, these arrangements deserve criti cal scrutiny from philosophers concerned with global justice. (shrink)

This paper seeks to reconceptualise the basis for trusting teachers in current educational discourses. It proposes moving away from trust based on ‘absolute accuracy’ to trust as encapsulated in the practice of parrhesia. On the surface, parrhesia appears to be the opposite of Sartre’s concept of ‘bad faith’. Paradoxically, however, our attempts to be sincere in our accounts are inevitably tainted by this. This paradox is especially evident in autobiographical writing, an activity that is both parrhesiastic in nature and susceptible (...) to bad faith. This does not mean that we should abandon trust in these ways of accounting for oneself, however. Rather, parrhesiastic practices in autobiographical writing can offer a different understanding of how we account for ourselves and our practices, one that does not pertain to a narrow definition of truth as accuracy, but instead leads to a form of self-criticism where one situates oneself in relation to the ‘truth’ of their accounts in new ways. Towards the end of the paper, I explore three ‘parrhesiastic techniques’ and their relationship to accounting for oneself as a teacher, to reimagine these techniques from technicist to existential ways of relating to our practices. (shrink)

Behavioral immune system describes psychological mechanisms that detect cues to infectious pathogens in the immediate environment, trigger disease-relevant responses and facilitate behavioral avoidance/escape. BIS activation elicits a perceived vulnerability to disease which can result in conformity with social norms. However, a response to superficial cues can result in aversive responses to people that pose no actual threat, leading to an aversion to unfamiliar others, and likelihood of prejudice. Pathogen-neutralizing behaviors, therefore, have implications for social interaction as well as illness behaviors (...) and responses to health communications. In this study, we investigate how PVD influences conformity, attitudes to other people and to lockdown regulations through the lens of the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory. RST describes personality in terms of biologically-driven approach and avoidance motivations which support personal goals. Participants from the United Kingdom public completed an RST personality questionnaire and then read either coronavirus morbidity-mortality statistics and current United Kingdom government lifestyle regulations, just the regulations, or no information at all. They all completed the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease scale to assess BIS-relevant Germ Aversion and Perceived Infectability, followed by questions measuring social conformity, warmth toward others and attitudes toward lockdown measures. Significantly lower PVD scores were observed in the no-information condition, with the other conditions showing no difference. In terms of RST, approach behaviors related to goal-drive persistence work alongside fear in explaining conformity to social norms. Reward related approach behaviors partially explained warmth toward others, indicating that social rewards gained through interaction continue to be strong drivers of behavior. We found no role for RST traits in attitudes toward lockdown. Overall, coronavirus-related behavior is not driven purely by fear, but also by social and/or protection goals regulated by approach motivation. This study presents new insights into public perceptions of coronavirus and government regulated lifestyle restrictions, helping to explain social behaviors in terms of biologically driven mechanisms. Such understanding is vital if we are to successfully motivate public behavior to constrain spread of the virus. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to identify an invidious bias that is embedded in much research into sex differences. I shall argue that bias against women is endemic in any such research programme that fails to take account at every stage of women's social inequality. It is primarily because its view of the relation between sexual difference and sexual inequality is too simplistic that much sex differences research rationalizes and so perpetuates women's subordination.

An essay on the article "Reason and Feeling in Thinking about Justice," by Susan Moller Okin is presented. It offers a history of the original position in philosophical reasoning for explaining a sense of justice and examines feminist criticisms against such thinking for failure to appreciate differences and otherness while focused on universality and impartiality. The author relates the choice feminist theories on ethic of sympathy or care for others in place of an ethic of justice in general.