This paper investigates how deans and directors at the top 50 global MBA programs (as rated by the "Financial Times" in their 2006 Global MBA rankings) respond to questions about the inclusion and coverage of the topics of ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability at their respective institutions. This work purposely investigates each of the three topics separately. Our findings reveal that: (1) a majority of the schools require that one or more of these topics be covered in their MBA (...) curriculum and one-third of the schools require coverage of all three topics as part of the MBA curriculum, (2) there is a trend toward the inclusion of sustainability-related courses, (3) there is a higher percentage of student interest in these topics (as measured by the presence of a Net Impact club) in the top 10 schools, and (4) several schools are teaching these topics using experiential learning and immersion techniques. We note a fivefold increase in the number of stand-alone ethics courses since a 1988 investigation on ethics, and we include other findings about institutional support of centers or special programs; as well as a discussion of integration, teaching techniques, and notable practices in relation to all three topics. (shrink)

En 1713, l’empereur Kangxi ordonne la compilation d’un traité de mathématiques, d’astronomie et d’harmonie musicale. Pour ce projet, il recrute des lettrés par un examen extraordinaire et surveille étroitement leur travail. Seuls deux d’entre eux feront ensuite une carrière de hauts fonctionnaires. Au milieu du XVIIIe siècle, un enseignement de mathématiques est instauré à l’Université impériale. La dynastie Qing a ainsi intégré à la formation de quelques-uns des lettrés, qui visaient à faire carrière dans l’administration, la transmission d’une certaine expertise (...) dans ce domaine. (shrink)

Although widely studied in other domains, relatively little is known about the metacognitive processes that monitor and control behaviour during reasoning and decision-making. In this paper, we examined the conditions under which two fluency cues are used to monitor initial reasoning: answer fluency, or the speed with which the initial, intuitive answer is produced, and perceptual fluency, or the ease with which problems can be read. The first two experiments demonstrated that answer fluency reliably predicted Feeling of Rightness judgments to (...) conditional inferences and base rate problems, which subsequently predicted the amount of deliberate processing as measured by thinking time and answer changes; answer fluency also predicted retrospective confidence judgments. Moreover, the effect of answer fluency on reasoning was independent from the effect of perceptual fluency, establishing that these are empirically independent constructs. In five experiments with a variety of reasoning problems similar to those of Alter et al., we found no effect of perceptual fluency on FOR, retrospective confidence or accuracy; however, we did observe that participants spent more time thinking about hard to read stimuli, although this additional time did not result in answer changes. In our final two experiments, we found that perceptual disfluency increased accuracy on the CRT, but only amongst participants of high cognitive ability. As Alter et al.’s samples were gathered from prestigious universities, collectively, the data to this point suggest that perceptual fluency prompts additional processing in general, but this processing may results in higher accuracy only for the most cognitively able. (shrink)

Transdisciplinarity includes the assumption that within new institutional settings, scientific research becomes more closely responsive to practical problems and user needs and is therefore often subject to considerable application pressure. This raises the question whether transdisciplinarity affects the epistemic standards and the fruitfulness of research. Case studies show how user-orientation and epistemic innovativeness can be combined. While the modeling involved in all cases under consideration was local and focused primarily on features of immediate practical relevance, it was informed by theoretical (...) insights from basic research. Conversely, industrial research turns out sometimes to produce theoretical understanding. These findings highlight an interactive relationship between science and technology (moderate emergentism), which is distinct from the traditional view of a one-sided dependence of technology on science (cascade model) and from the newly received independence account (emergentism). (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Andrew Sayer discusses how he became a realist and then the development of his work over the subsequent decades. He comments on his postdisciplinary approach, his early work on economy and its influences, how he came to write Method in Social Science and the transition in Realism and Social Science to normative critical social science and moral economy. The interview concludes with discussion of his three most recent books and the themes that connect them, not least (...) the ongoing problem of a ‘diabolical double crisis’ of capitalism: extreme inequality and climate change. (shrink)

Caroline New is an energetic activist who has interpolated critical realist ideas into the front-line of political activism. In this wide-ranging interview, she begins by reflecting on her life and how she became a realist and her account is illustrated with personal anecdotes recalling memories of well-known philosophers and activists from the time. She discusses how her position set her apart from other feminists and she examines the interacting threads of longstanding debates on the political left, as well as longstanding (...) debates within critical realist circles, such as the relative importance of quantitative methods in social research and the scope for agency as a source of intentional change. Finally she brings some of her ideas to bear on contemporary issues. This engaging interview notably provides some of the social context in which critical realism developed, while also pointing towards its future potential. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview, Dave Elder-Vass discusses his main contributions to critical realist theory over two decades. In the first half, he explains his early work on emergence, agency, str...

Heikki Patomäki is Professor of World Politics (Global Political Economy) at the University of Helsinki.1 In Part 1 of this interview (Patomäki and Morgan 2023) he discussed his work and career up...

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Heikki Patomäki discusses his early work and career up to the Global Financial Crisis. He provides comment on his role as a public intellectual and activist, his diverse academic interests and influences, and the many and varied ways he has contributed to critical realism and critical realism has influenced his work. In Part 2 he discusses his later work, the predicament of humanity and the role of futures studies.

In this wide-ranging interview, Bob Jessop discusses the development of, and many of the main themes in, his work over the last fifty years. He explains how he became interested in realism and Marx...

In this wide-ranging interview Professor Margaret Archer discusses a variety of aspects of her work, academic career and influences, beginning with the role the study of education systems played in...

Cognition in work teams has been predominantly understood and explained in terms of shared cognition with a focus on the similarity of static knowledge structures across individual team members. Inspired by the current zeitgeist in cognitive science, as well as by empirical data and pragmatic concerns, we offer an alternative theory of team cognition. Interactive Team Cognition (ITC) theory posits that (1) team cognition is an activity, not a property or a product; (2) team cognition should be measured and studied (...) at the team level; and (3) team cognition is inextricably tied to context. There are implications of ITC for theory building, modeling, measurement, and applications that make teams more effective performers. (shrink)

In this interview, Ruth Groff discusses how she came to be a realist, her role as a community organizer, her relationship to critical realism, and various issues arising from her published work over the years. Discussion ranges across the nature of positivism and its legacy, the concept of falsehood, realism about causal powers, mind-independent reality, the history of philosophy, and the underlying interest in ideology-critique that runs through her thinking.

In this wide-ranging interview Berth Danermark discusses several things. First, his route into realism via community activism, an interest in the theory and practice of Marx and Engels and the philosophy of Mario Bunge, and inspiration drawn from Herman Hesse. Second, the formation of the Nordic Network for Critical Realism and realism's enduring foothold in Scandinavia. Third, the career trajectory that took him from research on urban planning to the formation of the Swedish Institute for Disability Research (SIDR). He discusses (...) how the well-known introduction to critical realism and applied social science, Explaining Society, came to be written, some misconceptions regarding critical realism and methods, the challenges involved in undertaking disability research and the development of and influences for his work of concepts such as interdisciplinarity and critical methodological pluralism, as well as issues related to transdisciplinary research and professional collaboration. The interview concludes with some advice for researchers. (shrink)

Professor Nicholas Rescher (1928-) is an unusually prolific philosopher who has published more than 175 books between 1960 and 2016.1 When I first came across his work I thought that it might be th...

In this wide-ranging interview Priscilla Alderson discusses how she came to research parental and childhood consent and became a sociologist and how, late in her career, she became convenor of the critical realism group started by Roy Bhaskar at the Institute for Education in London. She discusses aspects of her seminal research over the years on multiple subjects, such as the rights of children, and reflects on what critical realism has added to her social research.

In this interview, Daniel Little provides an overview of his life and work in academia. Among other things, he discusses an actor-centred approach to theory of social ontology. For Little, this approach complements the assumptions of critical realism, in that it accords full ontological importance to social structures, causal mechanisms, and enduring and influential normative systems. The approach casts doubt, however, on the idea of ‘strong emergence' of social structures, the idea that social structures have properties and causal powers that (...) cannot, in principle be explained by their constituents (social actors) and their relationships. Little’s approach to social ontology endorses instead the idea of relative explanatory autonomy. During the interview, many points of convergence become evident between this actor-centred approach to social ontology and the fundamental insights of critical realism. According to Little, analysis of social ontology also turns out to be especially relevant to philosophy of history. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this wide-ranging interview Professor Douglas V. Porpora discusses a number of issues. First, how he became a Critical Realist through his early work on the concept of structure. Second, drawing on his Reconstructing Sociology, his take on the current state of American sociology. This leads to discussion of the broader range of his work as part of Margaret Archer’s various Centre for Social Ontology projects, and on moral-macro reasoning and the concept of truth in political discourse.

William Outhwaite is well-known as an early proponent of critical realism and for his work on European politics, critical theory and on Jürgen Habermas. In this wide-ranging interview, he discusses his life and career, including how he came to write on subjects that intersected with and developed themes Roy Bhaskar was also working on at the time. This work resulted in three early books, Understanding Social Life, Concept Formation in Social Science and New Philosophies of Social Science, the last of (...) which makes the case for the incorporation of critical theory and hermeneutics into critical realism. He goes on to discuss various issues, including, briefly, his involvement in an early discussion group with Bhaskar, his participation in the Realism and the Human Sciences conferences and how he and Margaret Archer came to edit Andrew Collier’s Festschrift. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging interview Graham Scambler provides an overview of his long academic career. He discusses how he became a medical sociologist, his early work on epilepsy and stigma, his part in the development of sociology textbooks for medical students, the diversity of his work and his many collaborations, his ‘theoretical turn’, his longstanding interest in critical realism and his attitude to ‘bridge building’ between philosophy and empirical work.

This chapter aims to lay out a map of the diverse epistemological perspectives within the Islamic theological tradition, in the conceptual framework of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. In order achieve that goal, it aims to consider epistemological views in light of their historic context, while at the same time seeking to “translate” those broadly medieval perspectives into contemporary philosophical language. In doing so, the chapter offers a succinct overview of the main epistemic trends within the Islamic theological tradition concerning (...) religious epistemology. The chapter is divided into two main sections designated for discussions of differing accounts found in distinct trends of the tradition, namely the Rationalist and Traditionalist trends. The discussion concerning the Rationalist trend focuses on the philosophical-theologians of the dominant Mu’tazilite, Ash’arite, and Maturidite schools. The section on Islamic Traditionalism focuses on the Atharite scripturalism of Ibn Qudāma, and in particular the thought of Ibn Taymiyya. In order to map out these historic positions in light of contemporary religious epistemology, reference is made to a threefold typology of current views in the literature: (1) theistic evidentialism, (2) reformed epistemology, and (3) fideism. As such, the remainder of the chapter will attempt to outline the different approaches toward religious epistemology in the Islamic theological tradition with this threefold typology in mind. (shrink)

With this paper, we walk out some central ideas about posthumanisms and the ways in which nursing is already deeply entangled with them. At the same time, we point to ways in which nursing might benefit from further entanglement with other ideas emerging from posthumanisms. We first offer up a brief history of posthumanisms, following multiple roots to several points of formation. We then turn to key flavors of posthuman thought to differentiate between them and clarify our collective understanding and (...) use of the terms. This includes considerations of the threads of transhumanism, critical posthumanism, feminist new materialism, and the speculative, affirmative ethics that arise from critical posthumanism and feminist new materialism. These ideas are fruitful for nursing, and already in action in many cases, which is the matter we occupy ourselves with in the final third of the paper. We consider the ways nursing is already posthuman—sometimes even critically so—and the speculative worldbuilding of nursing as praxis. We conclude with visions for a critical posthumanist nursing that attends to humans and other/more/nonhumans, situated and material and embodied and connected, in relation. (shrink)

What psychological mechanisms enable people to reappraise a situation to change its emotional impact? We propose that reappraisal works by shifting appraisal outcomes—abstract representations of ho...

This essay offers a discussion and contextualisation of a series of letters exchanged between Jordi Cat and Paul Feyerabend from 1989 to 1994. These letters provide insights into Feyerabend’s later thought on a variety of themes including quantum holism, the disunity of science, the development of logical empiricism, and science activism. In doing so, we provide some original analysis and exegesis of Feyerabend’s evolving views on scientific methodology and quantum mechanics by focusing on Feyerabend’s changing attitudes towards Bohm, Bohr, and (...) his eventual colleague Hans Primas and his later sympathies with the algebraic approach. We also highlight Feyerabend’s role in the growth of the Disunity of Science movement and how he connected disunity to practical considerations in the philosophy of action. (shrink)

Information is clearly vital to public health, but the acquisition and use of public health data elicit serious privacy concerns. One strategy for navigating this dilemma is to build 'trust' in institutions responsible for health information, thereby reducing privacy concerns and increasing willingness to contribute personal data. This strategy, as currently presented in public health literature, has serious shortcomings. But it can be augmented by appealing to the philosophical analysis of the concept of trust. Philosophers distinguish trust and trustworthiness from (...) cognate attitudes, such as confident reliance. Central to this is value congruence: trust is grounded in the perception of shared values. So, the way to build trust in institutions responsible for health data is for those institutions to develop and display values shared by the public. We defend this approach from objections, such as that trust is an interpersonal attitude inappropriate to the way people relate to organisations. The paper then moves on to the practical application of our strategy. Trust and trustworthiness can reduce privacy concerns and increase willingness to share health data, notably, in the context of internal and external threats to data privacy. We end by appealing for the sort of empirical work our proposal requires. (shrink)

In his article ‘The case against ethics review in the social sciences’, Schrag asserts that the social sciences should not be subject to ethical review. He recounts a number of examples where ethical review has seemingly failed. He further suggests some alternative models for dealing with ethical review in the social sciences. Finally, he concludes, and we concur, that there is a lack of empirical evidence as to the benefit of research ethics review.

The ethical obligation to provide a reasonably safe discharge option from the inpatient setting is often confounded by the context of homelessness. Living without the security of stable housing is a known determinant of poor health, often complicating the safety of discharge and causing unnecessary readmission. But clinicians do not have significant control over unjust distributions of resources or inadequate societal investment in social services. While physicians may stretch inpatient stays beyond acute care need in the interest of their patients (...) who are experiencing homelessness, they must also consider the implications of using an inpatient hospital bed for someone without the attendant level of medical need. Caring for patients in an inpatient setting when they no longer require acute care means fewer beds for acute care patients. And when a patient who is experiencing homelessness declines a medically safer option such as a skilled nursing facility, then clinicians may be faced with the sole option of discharge to the street, which raises troubling questions of nonmaleficence and social justice. Here we investigate the different forms of injustice that play out when patients are discharged to the street, and offer a map of the interwoven ethical responsibilities of clinicians, hospitals, and skilled nursing facilities. (shrink)

This collection of new essays interprets and critically evaluates the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. It offers innovative historical scholarship on Feyerabend's take on topics such as realism, empiricism, mimesis, voluntarism, pluralism, materialism, and the mind-body problem, as well as certain debates in the philosophy of physics. It also considers the ways in which Feyerabend's thought can contribute to contemporary debates in science and public policy, including questions about the nature of scientific methodology, the role of science in society, citizen science, (...) scientism, and the role of expertise in public policy. The volume will provide readers with a comprehensive overview of the topics which Feyerabend engaged with throughout his career, showing both the breadth and the depth of his thought. (shrink)

Following the traditional order in his time of a course on “Old Logic”, or Ars Vetus, Ockham, after commenting on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s Categories, comes to his Expositio in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, of which is offered here a French translation and an orthographic edition of the part considered then as the Proem (chapter 1 of Bekker’s edition, 16a1-18, for us famous because of the “semiotic triangle” of the written, vocal and mental signs, in relation, taking into account the realities (...) [pragmata, res], with truth and falseness), a part itself divided in three parts (Bekker 16a1-2, 3-9, 9-16) — the exegesis of the Venerable Inceptor insisting very strongly on the beginning of the second part (16a3-4, thus on two lines) and, notably, even more especially on what a “passion of the soul” means, in other words, for Ockham himself and particularly for us, a “concept” (a remarkable exegesis whose structure and reprise are also considered). (shrink)

This article explores impact investing within the renewable energy sector. Drawing on ethical decision making and sensemaking, this article contributes to an enhanced understanding of the complex ethical sensemaking process of impact investors when facing plausible situations in a world of contested truths. Addressing the ethical tensions faced by impact investors with mixed motives, this study investigates the way decision makers use context-specific reasons to make sense of and shape the renewable energy investment process. This represents an initial attempt to (...) understand ethical sensemaking in impact investing made within the renewable energy sector using a multi-stakeholder approach. Our findings show that prosocial, personal, reputational, and economic motives are the main drivers of REI, with prosocial and personal motives being value-based, and reputational and economic motives being evidence-based. We find three different modes of ethical sensemaking, allowing for the construction of the four motives noted above. These motives are based on the context-specific reasons of impact investing decision makers in the RE sector. This article contributes to the academic discourse on ethical sensemaking with some key processes involved in ethical decision making, and a better understanding of the underlying motivations of impact investing in the RE sector. (shrink)

TheConceptual Feature framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high-dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm”. Healthy adults selected the lexical item most related to a probe word in a 4-item written word array comprising the target (...) and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe-target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co-occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is first to enrich the exposition on the contribution of the magistri artium in Claude Panaccio’s Le Discours intérieur by an in-depth scrutiny of a quotation from the Latin al-Fārābī ending the presentation of logic in the Divisio scientiarum (ca. 1250) of the Parisian Arts Master Arnoul of Provence (Arnulfus Provincialis). Once accomplished this revision using the various Latin versions or adaptations of the Farabian Enumeration of the sciences (Iḥṣāʾ al-ʿulūm) by Gerard of Cremona and (...) Gundissalinus, it is clear that, despite a certain duality in its manuscript tradition, the relevant passage in Arnulfus Provincialis’s Divisio scientiarum does not merely distinguish inner logos and external logos, but also considers, like its source, a third logos, and that in a way susceptible to refine the characterization of al-Fārābī’s triadic logos as Le Discours intérieur reports this triade at the occasion of its judicious comparison with a parallel doctrine in John Damascene (Ekdosis akribès tès orthodoxou pisteôs alias De fide orthodoxa) interpreted differently by Thomas Aquinas following Albert the Great. (shrink)

Major theme in the history of philosophy, the problem of universals has been transmitted to the Latin West mainly through the exegesis that, in his Second commentary on the Isagoge, Boethius gave of the famous Porphyrian questionnaire on the genera and species. Our study focuses on the series of philosophical key concepts, sometimes difficult to define, which, in this seminal commentary, form the redactional framework, often misunderstood, of the Boethian Solution of an Aporia that claims to have demonstrated the impossibility (...) of the existence of the genera and species (among others by the argument of the regressus ad infinitum), as well as the redhibitory defects of their (consonant or not consonant) intellections. For Boethius, all this is basically about the relation between thought and reality. (shrink)

Reliance upon fossil fuels and limited greenspace contribute to poor indoor and outdoor air quality and adverse health outcomes, particularly in communities of color. This article describes justice-informed public health and legal interventions to increase access to greenspace and accelerate the transitions to renewable energy and away from gas appliances.

La première édition, accompagnée d’une traduction française annotée, du témoignage des Communia logice sur l’abstraction, en fait la double abstraction, et la séparation - un thème philosophique dans la mouvance de Métaphysique, E, 1 notoirement présent, on l’a vu, à la même époque chez Thomas d’Aquin - est ici précédée d’une étude d’histoire littéraire et doctrinale de cette compilation exégétique de questions sur la logique contenue dans un manuscrit ayant appartenu à Pierre de Limoges, maître à la Faculté des arts (...) de l’Université de Paris au plus tard en 1260-1261 et peut-être responsable de l’insertion inattendue ainsi que de la structuration par amalgame dudit témoignage, en forme de débat sur le sujet des sciences mathématiques, dans le commentaire sur le prédicament de la quantité dans les Catégories. (shrink)

The U.S. agricultural sector relies heavily on agricultural migrant workers, and Florida has a history of (im)migrant labor. However, this system is historically rooted in colonization, and its systems of oppression remain. Currently, migrant workers operate in various systems of oppression, including social, health, and environmental inequities, all of which have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature regarding decoloniality, muted group theory, and decolonial intersectionality has a strong history of uncovering how multiple oppressions overlap for vulnerable and marginalized (...) groups in the US. We draw on this literature to ask: 1) how can examining participants’ stories through decolonial intersectionality help explore structural and institutional racism and the dominance of muting? and 2) how can participants recount how they resist oppression and/or unmute in telling their stories? To answer these questions, literary portraits were co-created with farmworkers and community liaisons about participants’ experiences. The authors used decoloniality, muted group theory, and decolonial intersectionality to analyze participants’ creative non-fiction stories. Farmworkers recounted through their stories that they were often devalued, had their humanity questioned, and negotiated their survival, especially during COVID-19. However, they were able to resist the oppressions of coloniality through their families, faith, pride, and love. Recommendations include using storytelling techniques to align with farmworkers’ wants in research as well as assist in communicating about issues regarding health and safety. Non-profit organizations, centers of faith, and universities can assist in serving the needs of agricultural migrant workers related to childcare, food security, and worksite and home safety issues. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relations among critique, destruction and negation, on the one hand, and creation, affirmation, love, and care on the other, in Nietzsche’s writings from Daybreak to Zarathustra. In doing this, it traces a movement in Nietzsche's thought that can be understood as an integration of critique in the process of affirmation, which consolidates in Nietzsche’s project of self-overcoming. In contrast to readings that use the metaphor of art and the creativity of the artist, this paper presents (...) pregnancy as a cipher to understand Nietzsche’s project as well as the dynamics that are involved. A key issue addressed throughout the entire paper concerns the way in which Zarathustra says that he loves those who want their own downfall (Untergang) and go “zu Grunde” (or perish). To fully grasp the meaning of these rather puzzling utterances, the paper analyzes Nietzsche's engagement with Pascal (as a very particular case of “going under”). (shrink)

The Idea of Disability in the Eighteenth Century is a wide-ranging collection of essays that explores philosophy, biography, and texts about and by disabled people living in the eighteenth century. The book, which introduces and affirms the notion that disability studies predates most United States and United Kingdom findings by more than a hundred years, will be of interest to philosophers, historians, sociologists, and literary scholars.

Focal brain metabolic effects detected by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) represent prospective indices of clinical status and guides to treatment design. Sampling bilateral pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), anterior middle cingulate cortex (aMCC), and thalamus in 40 adult patients and 16 healthy controls, we examined relationships of the neurometabolites glutamate+glutamine (Glx), creatine+phosphocreatine (Cr), and choline-compounds (Cho) with OCD diagnosis and multiple symptom types. The latter included OC core symptoms (Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale - YBOCS), depressive symptoms (...) (Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale - MADRS), and general functioning (Global Assessment Scale - GAS). pACC Glx was 9.7% higher in patients than controls. Within patients, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with YBOCS and MADRS, while Cr correlated positively with the GAS. In aMCC, Cr and Cho correlated negatively with MADRS, while Cr in thalamus correlated positively with GAS. These findings present moderate support for glutamatergic and cingulocentric perspectives on OCD. Based on our prior metabolic model of OCD, we offer one possible interpretation of these group and correlational effects as consequences of a corticothalamic state of elevated glutamatergic receptor activity alongside below-normal glutamatergic transporter activity. (shrink)

This paper explores how pregnancy discrimination at work is perceived by both employers and pregnant employees. Using a public, qualitative dataset collected by the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission that offers perspectives from both employers and pregnant employees, we explore the unfair and unethical treatment of pregnant employees at work. Our findings show how pregnant workers are expected to conform with workplace systems that are treated as sacred. We suggest that employer valorization of the mythical figure of ‘ideal worker’ (...) disadvantages pregnant workers. We observe how, even if this contravenes maternity protection laws, some employers self-justify discrimination against pregnant employees who they perceive to have transgressed ‘appropriate’ workplace behaviors as ethical and reasonable. To illuminate and conceptualize the notion of transgression, our analysis has led us to the ideas of philosopher Georges Bataille, specifically his reflections on how individuals who ‘transgress’ social norms are treated as taboo, as well as his metaphorical descriptions of people and practices as either sacred or profane. We theorize that pregnant workers who are treated as profane should be reclassified as sacred, opening up this idea for debate so as to disrupt long-standing patterns of discrimination. (shrink)