Stereotypical images of Appalachians abound in entertainment media. When CBS proposed transplanting a poor Appalachian family to California for a reality television show titled The Real Beverly Hillbillies, Appalachians and advocacy groups were outraged. This article explores ethical issues raised by stereotypical portrayals of Appalachians and potential harm from those stereotypes as well as the reality from which they emerged. Using the theories of Levinas, Kant, and Aristotle, we then examine the ethics of stereotyping Appalachians and other subcultures in (...) entertainment media. Finally, we propose a decision tree to aid producers of entertainment media in creating ethical portrayals of fictional characters and real people. (shrink)

Introduction: Depression, biology, aggression -- Underbelly -- The biological unconscious -- Bitter melancholy -- Chemical transference -- The bastard placebo -- The pharmakology of depression.

Grosz gives a critical overview of Lacan's work from a feminist perspective. Discussing previous attempts to give a feminist reading of his work, she argues for women's autonomy based on an indifference to the Lacanian phallus.

Though emotion conveys memory benefits, it does not enhance memory equally for all aspects of an experience, nor for all types of emotional events. In this review, I outline the behavioral evidence for arousal's focal enhancements of memory and describe the neural processes that may support those focal enhancements. I also present behavioral evidence to suggest that these focal enhancements occur more often for negative experiences than for positive ones. This result appears to arise because of valence-dependent effects on the (...) neural processes recruited during episodic encoding and retrieval, with negative affect associated with increased engagement of sensory processes, and positive affect leading to enhanced recruitment of conceptual processes. (shrink)

Globalization is often seen as the final stage in the transition towards a market economy. It is argued that a side-effect of globalization is cultural homogeneity and loss of life world, or ‘McDonaldization’. McDonaldization represents the rationalization of society in the quest for extreme efficiency. More recently, Meštrović has argued that the rationalization of emotions has also occurred and that Western societies are entering a postemotional phase. In postemotional societies there has been a separation of emotion from action. The result (...) is synthetic, manufactured emotions manipulated and standardized for mass consumption. In this paper I explore what it means to nurse in a ‘postemotional society’ and what impact this dulling of the emotions has had on a profession that locates ‘care’ as its central defining concept. My aim is to generate critical discussion of the shape and direction of contemporary society and the role of nursing within it. (shrink)

A new resolution of the mind-body problem that reconciles materialism and idealism.

Process models are valuable conceptual tools to help in understanding the approaches to value creation in social enterprises. This teaching case illustrates the application of a process model about creating, building, and sustaining a social enterprise with a mission to provide clean water to communities in need. The social enterprise generates revenue in support of community water projects and works with community stakeholders in different locations throughout the world to provide sustainable clean water solutions. The case study uses primary data (...) from semi-structured interviews, direct observations of a community project, and archival sources to demonstrate application of the process model. The study shows how the social enterprise developed as a promising idea; was implemented through an operating model with resources to support social impact; and continues to build and evolve while guided by the social mission. The paper concludes with a discussion and teaching note on ways to use the case for educational purposes to enhance learning about the social value creation process. (shrink)

The Internet has been used as a place for and site of an array of research activities. From online ethnographies to public data sets and online surveys, researchers and research regulators have struggled with an array of ethical issues around the conduct of online research. This paper presents a discussion and findings from Buchanan and Ess's study on US-based institutional review boards and the state of internet research ethics.

This set of seven experiments examines reasoning about the inheritance and acquisition of physical properties in preschoolers, undergraduates, and biology experts. Participants (N = 390) received adoption vignettes in which a baby animal was born to one parent but raised by a biologically unrelated parent, and they judged whether the offspring would have the same property as the birth or rearing parent. For each vignette, the animal parents had contrasting values on a physical property dimension (e.g., the birth parent had (...) a short tail; the rearing parent had a long tail). Depending on the condition, the distinct properties had distinct functions (“function-predictive”) were associated with distinct habitats (“habitat-predictive”), or had no implications (“non-predictive”). Undergraduates' bias to view properties as inherited from the birth parent was reduced in the function- and habitat-predictive conditions. This result indicates a purpose-based view of inheritance, whereby animals can acquire properties that serve a purpose in their environment. This stance was not found in experts or preschoolers. We discuss the results in terms of how undergraduates' purpose-based inheritance reasoning develops and relates to larger-scale misconceptions about Darwinian evolutionary processes, and implications for biology education. (shrink)

This article is an interview with Elizabeth Povinelli, by Mathew Coleman and Kathryn Yusoff. It addresses Povinelli’s approaches to ‘geontologies’ and ‘geontopower’, and the discussion encompasses an exploration of her ideas on biopolitics, her retheorization of power in the current conditions of late liberalism, and the situation of the inhuman within philosophical and anthropological economies. Povinelli describes a mode of power that she calls geontopower, which operates through the governance of Life and Nonlife. The interview is accompanied by a (...) brief contextualizing introduction. (shrink)

Is moral responsibility the same in all contexts? Is it acceptable for our practices of holding responsible to ignore the reality of trauma, inequality, and oppression? Hundreds of philosophers, drawing on P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment,” have argued for accounts of moral responsibility that would, at least implicitly, answer these questions in the affirmative. Yet these affirmative answers are not, I shall argue, Strawson’s view. Strawson argues for a real-world approach to moral responsibility, a facet of his (...) work that should be acknowledged. That facet should also be extended, using insights from feminist philosophers, philosophers of race, and social and political philosophers. The reinterpretation of Strawson I discuss here makes better sense of moral responsibility, and also supports the improvement of our practices in assigning moral responsibility. We can’t understand the nature and limits of our moral demands—demands on ourselves and others—while ignoring the actual conditions in which those demands are deployed. (shrink)

Background The opioid epidemic has enabled rapid and unsurpassed use of big data on people with opioid use disorder to design initiatives to battle the public health crisis, generally without adequate input from impacted communities. Efforts informed by big data are saving lives, yielding significant benefits. Uses of big data may also undermine public trust in government and cause other unintended harms. Objectives We aimed to identify concerns and recommendations regarding how to use big data on opioid use in ethical (...) ways. Methods We conducted focus groups and interviews in 2019 with 39 big data stakeholders who had interest in or knowledge of the Public Health Data Warehouse maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Results Concerns regarding big data on opioid use are rooted in potential privacy infringements due to linkage of previously distinct data systems, increased profiling and surveillance capabilities, limitless lifespan, and lack of explicit informed consent. Also problematic is the inability of affected groups to control how big data are used, the potential of big data to increase stigmatization and discrimination of those affected despite data anonymization, and uses that ignore or perpetuate biases. Participants support big data processes that protect and respect patients and society, ensure justice, and foster patient and public trust in public institutions. Recommendations for ethical big data governance offer ways to narrow the big data divide, enact shared data governance, cultivate public trust and earn social license for big data uses, and refocus ethical approaches. Conclusions Using big data to address the opioid epidemic poses ethical concerns which, if unaddressed, may undermine its benefits. Findings can inform guidelines on how to conduct ethical big data governance and in ways that protect and respect patients and society, ensure justice, and foster patient and public trust in public institutions. (shrink)

In my original review (Kensinger, 2009), I proposed that to understand the effects of emotion on memory accuracy, we must look beyond effects of arousal and consider the contribution of valence. In discussing this proposal, the commentators raise a number of excellent points that hone in on the question of when valence does (and does not) account for emotion's effects on memory accuracy. Though future research will be required to resolve this issue more fully, in this brief response, I address (...) some of the concerns outlined by the commentators and suggest a few steps that may help to elucidate the dimensions that should be incorporated in models of emotional memory. (shrink)

This paper makes an argument for greater consideration of negativity in queer engagements with biological or natural systems. Focusing on one particular paper by Karen Barad – “Nature’s Queer Performativity ” – I argue that this work tends to under-read the negativity and confusion that queer entails, and so it renders nature, and the politics we might extract from it, more palatable than perhaps they should be. What interests me is that Barad’s argument about nature’s queer performativity begins and ends (...) with sodomy. While it has been a highly cathected site of analysis for some early and influential work in queer theory, sodomy has been little discussed in feminist and queer science studies where Barad’s work has been so influential. I argue that sodomy spoils any identitarian queer politics that attempt to depathologize or reaffirm the natural world. (shrink)

ArgumentMontpellier vitalists upheld a medical perspective akin to modern “holism” in positing the functional unity of creatures imbued with life. While early vitalists focused on the human organism, Jean-Charles-Marguerite-Guillaume Grimaud investigated digestion, growth, and other physiological processes that human beings shared with simpler organisms. Eschewing modern investigative methods, Grimaud promoted a medically-grounded “metaphysics.” His influential doctrine of the “two lives” broke with Montpellier holism, classifying some vital phenomena as “higher” and others as “lower” and attributing the “nobility” of the human (...) species to the predominance of the former. In place of Montpellier teaching that attributed health to the holistic equilibration of vital activities, Grimaud embraced spiritualist dualisms of soul and body, Creator and created. Celebrating the divinely-ordained “wisdom” evident in involuntary physiological processes, he argued that such life functions were incomprehensible to human investigators. While Grimaud's work encouraged inquiry into the division between the central and “vegetative” nervous systems that became paradigmatic in nineteenth-century neuroscience, it also opened Montpellier vitalism to charges of conservatism and obscurantism that are still lodged against it to the present day. (shrink)

Prior research has examined value antecedents to sustainable consumption, including religious or cultural values. We bridge together these usually separated bodies of literature to provide an ethically-based examination of both religious and cultural values in one model to understand what drives sustainable consumption as well as outcomes on consumer well-being. In doing so, we also fulfill calls for more research on socio-demographic antecedents to ethical consumption, particularly in the domain of sustainable consumption. We examine this relationship using data from the (...) religiously and culturally diverse country of Singapore, collected from a door-to-door, representative sample utilizing numerous quality control techniques. Our path analysis and logical follow-up tests reveal that both religious and cultural values influence sustainable consumption, and then sustainable consumption positively influences consumer well-being. Implications are provided for consumer ethics, business’ ethical practices, and belief congruence theory. (shrink)

Western philosophy owes its origin to the dialogues of Plato. Not only does Plato provide us with a methodology that remains significant today, his views in many ways correspond to the revolutionary philosophies of Paulo Freire and bell hooks. In reflecting on Plato's view of education in the Cave Allegory in Book VII of the Republic (1991), one can readily see its affinity with Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2009); however, it is also important to keep in mind that (...) the two philosophers have different goals. While Plato focuses on metaphysics and the desire for human beings to move away from the realm of becoming toward that of being, Freire espouses the need for a revolutionary education that will transform the world by making it fully human. Nevertheless they both strive for a revolutionary form of education, and they both encounter similar problems in that people do not always heed the call for transformative ways of thinking. This paper begins by examining the ways in which Plato and Freire address the strengths and limitations of the dialogical method. The question then becomes: how do we solve some of the problems associated with the dilemmas that dialogue may confront? By appealing to bell hooks' Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (2000), I attempt to demonstrate how her method of consciousness-raising can be utilized as a practical application to the dialogical methods of both Plato and Freire in order to create a type of dialogue that can be truly transformative. (shrink)

Political debate in an election season is artificially constrained by the media's focus on electability as the primary determinant of news coverage. What gets lost under this criterion is the wealth of ideas that lesser known candidates can bring to the debate. This article argues that political coverage by the mainstream media should be more responsible in its efforts to cultivate public discourse by redefining the standards for who gets covered and challenging the prevailing notions of electability. It also argues (...) for a view of campaign news that is less driven by events and that gives voters more information about candidates' ideas on key issues of the day. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism theory aims to describe, explain, and evaluate the ways in which producers and consumers use the market to support social and environmental values. The literature draws insights from empirical studies of sectors that largely take place on the legal market, such as textiles and agri-food. This paper takes a first step toward theorizing ethical consumerism in semi-legal sectors where market activities occur legally and illegally. How does extant theory extend to sectors such as sex work, cigarettes, and recreational (...) drugs? This study draws on the case of recreational cannabis (marijuana) in Portland, OR (USA). Data from 33 interviews, structured fieldwork at 64 dispensaries, and the US Census Bureau American Community Survey are analyzed using qualitative, quantitative, and spatial methods. The findings are compared to 12 suggestions that emerge from the literature on fair trade, organics, alternative agriculture, and political consumerism. I argue that not all ethical consumerism theory extends to semi-legal sectors. Cannabis closely resembles theoretical expectations in terms of supply/demand, prioritization of ethical issues, and pervasiveness of false claims, but differs in terms of who organizes, which types of strategies are pursued, and how ethical products are framed. The differences stem from several pervasive stigmas about cannabis. I also argue that the stigmas that set cannabis apart from other (more legal sectors) and present challenges to ethical consumerism in cannabis are directly related to the War on Drugs. These insights suggest that prohibition (and its lingering effects) can inhibit the emergence of ethical consumerism. (shrink)

A guide to help educators navigate the often-stressful landscape of contemporary higher education through the pursuit of mindfulness and presence.