Corporate governance and finance are dynamic academic fields that offer myriad opportunities for business ethics analysis. Within the corporate governance triad in recent years, shareholders have increased their power over boards of directors and executives through both regulation and movements to change corporate by-laws. The impact of board characteristics on firm performance has proven elusive, leading to questions concerning board processes and individual director beliefs and behaviors. At the same time, CEOs have lost considerable power, leaving many struggling to regain (...) their control and maintain their compensation levels, while others adopt a stewardship approach to their posts. In the field of finance, the recent financial debacle has led to a reexamination of financial regulation and of the fundamental nature and purpose of the industry. All of these issues provide business ethicists fodder for investigation and analysis. (shrink)

In _Politics with Beauvoir_ Lori Jo Marso treats Simone de Beauvoir's feminist theory and practice as part of her political theory, arguing that freedom is Beauvoir's central concern and that this is best apprehended through Marso's notion of the encounter. Starting with Beauvoir's political encounters with several of her key contemporaries including Hannah Arendt, Robert Brasillach, Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon, and Violette Leduc, Marso also moves beyond historical context to stage encounters between Beauvoir and others such as Chantal Akerman, (...) Lars von Trier, Rahel Varnhagen, Alison Bechdel, the Marquis de Sade, and Margarethe von Trotta. From intimate to historical, always affective though often fraught and divisive, Beauvoir's encounters, Marso shows, exemplify freedom as a shared, relational, collective practice. _Politics with Beauvoir_ gives us a new Beauvoir and a new way of thinking about politics—as embodied and coalitional. (shrink)

This paper describes how I came to know a younger, mentally ill resident during fieldwork in an urban nursing home. I describe my efforts to establish a connection with this man, revealing the manner in which the academic and personal become fused in ethnographic research. In his discourse David conveys an unsettling universe filled with extreme power asymmetries, where he continually gravitates between the roles of victim and victimizer. His various identities are in a state of constant flux, at times (...) blurring the boundaries of culturally recognized categories. While fragmentation and multiplicity are often glorified within postmodernism, I suggest that persons with psychosis may find them imprisoning rather than liberating. (shrink)

The millennial vision quest -- Who are the changers? -- The great name debate -- How to read this book -- Magicians, manipulators, and muses -- The trouble with generalization -- History speaks -- The world of men and everyday affairs -- First things first -- Coming to your senses -- Hearing -- Smell -- Taste -- Sight -- Touch -- Emotion -- What to do with all of this information -- Activities -- Allies -- The importance of support -- (...) The ally relationship -- Who are the allies? -- Who allies are not! -- Ally-inviting conversations -- A note to you allies out there -- Strength : a warning label -- Ambivalence -- The trouble with change -- Safety first -- Building a net -- Walking against traffic -- Among other things -- Confidence and doubt -- A word about cultural ambivalence -- Structure and routine -- Morning, noon, and night -- Realistic routines -- Breaking it down -- When the heart is hurting -- When nothing seems to work -- The forest for the trees -- Living the daily life -- Stages of growth -- The stages of change -- Identifying your stage -- The stuff of myth and legend -- Haunted by the past -- The way-back-when time -- Rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations -- Setting goals -- Rules for successful goals -- Rewarding growth -- Inviting witnesses -- Obstacles to goals and growth -- Failure -- Boredom -- Giving away credit -- Reaffirming vows -- The final chapter. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Peter Fitzpatrick provides a unique contribution to international studies, most especially to contemporary interdisciplinary studies of International Law (IL) and International Relations (IR). Peter provides a significant theoretical contribution to the interdisciplinary study of IL and IR not only as a critical thinker of modern law, but also as a critical thinker of the modern international. On the one hand, his supplementary critical legal thinking contributes to a ‘decolonial deconstructionist’ rethinking of the politics of (...) international law. His close reading of how modern international law (auto)grounds ‘itself’, for instance, offers a strident critique of the racist, imperial, and colonial lines of discrimination involved in the negative (auto)constitution of this (supposedly) universal legal being. On the other hand, he provides a conception of the ‘(inter)national’ which displaces conventional, modern understandings of the legal and political organization of ‘humanity’ and ‘the world’, problematizing their foundational assumptions and spatialized geometrical frames as being based on oppositional dualisms (‘inside/outside’, ‘national/international’, ‘empire/modernity’, ‘theological/secular’, etc.), while offering a deconstructionist engagement with the ‘constitutive outside’ of the modern (inter)national. As a form of postcolonial counter-archive, Peter’s work enacts a decolonial deconstruction of ‘our’ (inter)national ‘selves’, including the (inter)national commonality ‘itself’. Before an incalculable, quasi-ontological heteronomy, a dissymmetrical Law of originary sociability which I (re)articulate here with/as the ‘and’ of the world(s), Peter’s supplementary critical thinking of the (inter)national contributes to imagining the world, humanity, and our social being(s), including law and language, otherwise. (shrink)

This study examined differences between university students who were caught and sanctioned for cheating, students admitting to cheating but who were not caught, and students reporting that they had never cheated. Our findings showed that noncheaters are older, have better grade point averages, and have more sophisticated moral and epistemological reasoning skills. Qualitative analyses revealed that denial of responsibility and injury were the most common neutralization techniques and differed between the sanctioned and self-reported cheaters. We discuss the need to examine (...) the extent to which reasoning skills have a causal impact on cheating behaviors. (shrink)

Industry groups engage in venue shifting when they seek to overturn or alter restrictive regulations imposed by one political venue through another. A critical step in this process is resolving uncertainties surrounding the preference of the targeted venue and the nature of the relevant policy proposal. While existing studies emphasize a long-term trial-and-error process of policy learning, we focus on nascent industries and argue that ventures seek other information sources to resolve these uncertainties quickly. In particular, nascent industry groups are (...) likely to perceive that the targeted venue will support their policy proposal if the targeted venue is ideologically distant from the venue that has enacted the restrictive regulations, if the targeted venue has recently supported other nascent industry groups’ similar policy proposals, or if the industry groups themselves are more exposed to industry peers’ success in promoting the same policy proposal in other jurisdictions. Under these conditions, the industry groups invest more to influence the targeted venue in response to restrictive regulations enacted by other venues. We find support for our theory by examining how from 2013 to 2019 the small unmanned aircraft systems industry trade associations in the United States lobbied state governments to nullify local regulations. (shrink)

This study examines the theory of planned behavior and the multidimensional ethics scale. Variables from both are included to determine which ones significantly correlate with student ethical behavioral intention in an academic setting. Using a survey, responses are collected from undergraduate business students from two southwestern universities in the United States using a scenario-based approach, looking at individual situations and group situations. SmartPLS was used to assess the results for four scenarios. From the theory of planned behavior, attitude was a (...) significant predictor of behavioral intention across all four scenarios while subjective norm was significant in one scenario. From the multidimensional ethics scale, moral equity and relativism were significant in one group scenario while moral equity and utilitarianism were each significant in an individual scenario. The findings indicate support for the use of the TPB and the MES when exploring ethics in an academic setting and for the need to study both individual and group situations. A discussion of the findings and implications is given. (shrink)

All three corporate governance systems in North America are currently embroiled in fundamental transformations. Most of Mexico’s corporations are run by a small group of controlling shareholders and operate in an economic system rife with corruption. Recent political reforms and a desire to tap global equity markets have heightened their interest in improving corporate governance structures. United States corporations face a dispersed ownership base that has tended toward inattentiveness, allowing such infamous scandals as Enron to rock the global investing community. (...) A backlash against the ensuing, restrictive Sarbanes-Oxley legislation is now underway. Like Mexico’s, Canada’s major corporations are led by a handful of controlling shareholders, but corruption is uncommon. New corporate governance guidelines are under debate, and the Ontario Securities Commission is wresting control from the Toronto Stock Exchange. Although these three corporate governance systems vary in terms of ownership dispersion, level of corruption, and legislative intervention, they currently share a common focus on fundamental reform. (shrink)

How educators and students process and respond to emotions can either enhance or impede the development of the whole child. Social and emotional learning (SEL) refers to the processes of developing social and emotional competencies, which depend on individuals’ capacity to recognize, understand, and manage emotions (i.e., emotional intelligence or EI). Consensus across disciplines about the importance of EI highlights the need to advance the science of how to teach SEL. RULER, an evidence-based approach to teaching EI, provides an educational (...) framework that encompasses a set of practices for comprehensive SEL integration across a school or district. In this article, we describe RULER, explain how it teaches EI, and summarize evidence of its effectiveness. (shrink)

Unconsented intimate exams on men and women are known to occur for training purposes and diagnostic reasons, mostly during gynecological surgeries but also during prostate examinations and abdominal surgeries. UIEs most often occur on anesthetized patients but have also been reported on conscious patients. Over the last 30 years, several parties—both within and external to medicine—have increasingly voiced opposition to these exams. Arguments from medical associations, legal scholars, ethicists, nurses, and some physicians have not compelled meaningful institutional change. Opposition is (...) escalating in the form of legislative bans and whistleblower reports. Aspiring to professional and scientific detachment, institutional consent policies make no distinction between intimate exams and exams on any other body part, but patients do not think of their intimate regions in a detached or neutral way and believe intimate exams call for special protections. UIEs are found to contribute to moral erosion and moral distress of medical students and compromise the sacred trust between the medical community and the general public. This paper refutes the main arguments in favor of the status quo, identifies a series of harms related to continuing the current practice, and proposes an explicit consent policy for intimate exams along with specific changes to medical school curriculum and institutional culture. Because patients are the rights-holders of their bodies, consent practices should reflect and uphold patient values which call for explicit consent for intimate exams. (shrink)

Abstract:To date, our understanding of ethical decision making and behavior in organizations has been concentrated in the area of moral judgment, largely because of the hundreds of studies done involving cognitive moral development. This paper addresses the problem of our relative lack of understanding in other areas of human morality by applying a recently developed construct—moral approbation—to illuminate the link between moral judgment and moral action. This recent work is extended here by exploring the effect that organizations have on ethical (...) behavior in terms of the moral approbation construct. (shrink)

In the Italian national elections in 2013, the Movimento Cinque Stelle, founded just four years earlier, gained 25 percent of votes, more than any other party. Analyses and interpretations are divided between those who consider M5S a member of the family of European populism and those who see M5S’s propositions as akin to the values of the left and social movements. The debate on M5S fits into the context of important ongoing trends in European politics: the growth of populist political (...) movements; the emergence of outsider parties able to challenge stable political systems; changing relationships between parties and social movements; changes in the forms of political organizing. This article investigates the political and cultural nature of this party by analyzing its discourse on democracy, its organizational choices and its main issues; comparing these elements with populism and the left; and linking its fundamental characteristics to contemporary economic processes usually termed “digital capitalism.”. (shrink)

We have a thriving biotechnology industry in the United States. There are over 1,450 biotechnology companies developing diagnostic and treatment technologies in medicine, creating more nutritional foods, and innovating new industrial processes. Yet this $28.5 billion sector of the economy is not without controversy. The “bio” in biotechnology comes from living, biological entities - people, plants, animals, and even bacteria. In the realm of biobanking, people are the source of the raw material for the discovery of genes for research, diagnosis, (...) and therapy, raising a host of issues about rights and responsibilities, fiduciary duties and societal obligations. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which nurses perceive the ethical dimensions of clinical practice situations involving patients, families and health care professionals. Using the composite theory of basic moral principles and the professional standard of care established by legal custom as a framework, situations involving ethical dilemmas were gleaned from the nursing literature. They were reviewed for content validity, clarity and representativeness in a two-stage process by expert panels. The situations were presented in a (...) written format to a convenience sample of nurses (n = 125), who were primarily staff nurses (65.6%). Respondents' judgements about whether the main issue of each situation concerned ethics ranged from a low of 0.8% to a high of 40%. From analyses of the categories into which the majority of subjects placed each situation, it was concluded that these nurses generally perceived ethics as the main issue in situations that directly involve patients' autonomy. Analysis yielded unanticipated findings about the themes in ethical situations to which nurses in practice may respond. (shrink)

This article focuses on the effectiveness of antihomophobia discourses and explores the process of teaching and learning about heteronormativity. The author offers an interrogation of the regulatory fictions within heteronormativity and frameworks of resistance and examines attempts to move beyond established views of sexual minority students and explore the ways in which queer research has, and continues to, bring a counternarrative to staid liberal notions of reform and the well-intentioned rhetoric of diversity and difference. This analysis raises critical questions about (...) the possibility of moving beyond standard antihomophobia curricula and questions approaches such as the one-off lecture format and other condensed discussions of heteronormativity and homophobia. (shrink)

The separation of ownership and control is said to have exploded the atom of property in the modern corporation. This article suggests that if the atom ever did split, it may have recently been “fu...

The knowledge production of researchers interested in improving the health‐care of young clients through the employment of emancipatory research methodologies may be limited by the complexity that working with young children presents to the research process. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether emancipatory research methodologies have application within the context of research with children. Critical examination of the challenges inherent in emancipatory research with children reveals that the application of aspects of these approaches presents possibilities for contributing (...) significantly to our knowledge development for the nursing of children. (shrink)

In this comprehensive introduction to animal ethics, Lori Gruen weaves together poignant and provocative case studies with discussions of ethical theory, urging readers to engage critically and empathetically reflect on our treatment of other animals. In clear and accessible language, Gruen provides a survey of the issues central to human-animal relations and a reasoned new perspective on current key debates in the field. She analyses and explains a range of theoretical positions and poses challenging questions that directly encourage readers (...) to hone their ethical reasoning skills and to develop a defensible position about their own practices. Her book will be an invaluable resource for students in a wide range of disciplines including ethics, environmental studies, veterinary science, women's studies, and the emerging field of animal studies and is an engaging account of the subject for general readers with no prior background in philosophy. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 7-9, March‐April 2022.

In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current situation. Now as then, it is argued, there is the risk that a systemic economic crisis and the crisis of representative politics will in turn lead to authoritarian outcomes. Rarer, however, is the idea that the current political and economic crisis may lead to a “progressive” outcome. This article examines both options (...) under the light of the thinking of one of the most important interpreters of political crisis and change in the 1920s and 1930s: Antonio Gramsci. One of the central arguments in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is the crisis of parliamentarism and democratic politics. Gramsci did not limit his analysis to the crisis however. His theoretical undertaking also consisted in the attempt to imagine the conditions for moving beyond the democratic crisis in a progressive manner. What emerges is an existing continuity between the Gramscian categories of Cesarism-Bonapartism, economic-corporative State, hegemonic crisis and contemporary politics, particularly with reference to phenomena such as populism, technocracy and neo-liberalism; the utility of the conceptual category of Passive Revolution to comprehend the current forms of exerting power and building social consent; the potential fruitfulness of Gramsci’s schemata on counter-hegemonies, to understand the changes in the party-organization and the possibilities of building counter-hegemonies. (shrink)

Some bioethicists argue that conscientious objectors in health care should have to justify themselves, just as objectors in the military do. They should have to provide reasons that explain why they should be exempt from offering the services that they find offensive. There are two versions of this view in the literature, each giving different standards of justification. We show these views are each either too permissive (i.e. would result in problematic exemptions based on conscience) or too restrictive (i.e. would (...) produce problematic denials of exemption). We then develop a middle ground position that we believe better combines respect for the conscience of healthcare professionals with concern for the duties that they owe to patients. Our claim, in short, is that insofar as objectors should have to justify themselves, they should have to do it according to the standard that we defend rather than according to the standards that others have developed. (shrink)

Recent research indicates that among young women, Blacks have lower employment rates than whites. Evidence is provided about whether young Black women's lower employment rates stem from structural features of the labor market, discrimination, or changing family or individual characteristics. Data show that Black women exit full-time employment at higher rates because they are more likely to be laid off, to leave because they work in temporary/seasonal jobs, and to leave for other reasons. Structural features of the labor market are (...) key in explaining Black women's higher rates of lay-offs, exits from temporary/seasonal work, and exits for other reasons. Individual characteristics and discrimination play a role in Black women's higher rates of lay-offs and exits for other reasons while family characteristics are important in explaining Black women's higher rates of leaving temporary/seasonal work and leaving for other reasons. Evidence suggests that Black women's higher exit rates are indicative of disadvantage in the labor market. (shrink)

"In Entangled Empathy, scholar and activist Lori Gruen argues that rather than focusing on animal rights, we ought to work to make our relationships with animals right by empathetically responding to their needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and unique perspectives. Pointing out that we are already entangled in complex and life-altering relationships with other animals, Gruen guides readers through a new way of thinking about and practicing animal ethics. Lori Gruen is Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator of Wesleyan (...) Animal Studies at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Ethics and Animals and co-editor, with Carol Adams, of Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Animals and the Earth."--Back cover. (shrink)

This article takes up the problematic of the ‘new normal’ and its necessary twin, the ‘will to religion’. The notion of the ‘new normal’ describes the shift to the persistent presence, indeed requirement, for religious assessment in all manner of public and institutional life. The idea of the will to religion reflects a broadly Foucauldian perspective on the care of the self and the requirement to confess—in this instance to confess one’s belonging to a religious category. The article calls for (...) a robust attention to the discursive construction of a normal in which we are all religious, and to which values are constituted as ‘universal’ or that we owe our moral and intellectual condition to religion. The article points to four consequences of this shift to a ‘new normal’ in which we are all religious, including the essentialization of religious identities, the overemphasis on religion, the infiltration of particular measures of religiosity, and the spread of religious freedom protectionism. (shrink)

The COVID-19 global pandemic has led to significant disruptions in the lives of high-performance athletes, including the postponement of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, the cancellation of many international and national competitions, and drastic changes in athletes’ daily training environment. The purpose of this research was to examine the interplay between the mental health and mental performance of Canadian national team athletes and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these variables from the perspective of mental performance consultants and (...) mental health practitioners. Twelve individuals working in these roles with national team athletes participated in focus groups and interviews during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Findings from the inductive reflexive thematic analysis revealed three main themes: factors impacting athlete mental health, consequences of COVID-19 for athletes, and impact of the pandemic on practitioners. Interestingly, athletes with prior good mental performance skills were perceived to be more equipped to cope with challenges related to the pandemic, which concurrently seemed to facilitate good mental health throughout the pandemic. Furthermore, even though the pandemic had several debilitative consequences on athletes’ mental health, it imposed a break from training and competition that allowed them to rest and enjoy their life outside of sport. Finally, participants discussed the need for more mental health resources and better access to practitioners supporting mental performance and mental health in the Canadian sport system. (shrink)

This article discusses the ways in which the ambiguous concept of equality has been used in the British debate regarding the financing of political election campaigns. It identifies three concepts of equality commonly used in that debate: ‘equality of arms’ between political parties, ‘equality of influence’ between citizens, and ‘equality of access’ to the so‐called ‘marketplace of ideas’. The article than discusses each of these concepts of equality in greater detail, and, in doing so, identifies four broader principles underlying the (...) use of these concepts in the election financing debate. The article concludes that, although the language of equality is used often and with great effect in the election financing debate, the concepts of equality being invoked are rarely independently valuable concepts. Instead, the concepts of equality used are valued in the election financing debate because they promote one of the four underlying principles. These principles themselves, however, involve complex questions of democracy and distributional fairness, and are not uncontroversial. I thus suggest that future debates regarding election financing could be enhanced by a more direct discussion of the merits of these underlying principles. (shrink)

Telling stories after a loved one’s death helps surviving family members to find meaning in the experience and share perceptions about whether the death was consistent with the deceased person’s values and preferences. Opportunities for physicians to evaluate the experience of a patient’s death and to expose the ethical concerns that care for the dying often raises are rare. Narrative medicine is a theoretical perspective that provides tools to extend the benefits of storytelling and narrative sense–making to physicians. This case (...) study describes narrative writing workshops attended by physicians who care for dying patients. The narratives created revealed the physicians’ concerns about ethics and their emotional connection with patients. This case study demonstrates that even one–time reflective writing workshops might create important opportunities for physicians to evaluate their experiences with dying patients and families. (shrink)

This article examines the implications of the escalation in institutional inves power and heterogeneity for two dominant theories of corporate governanceagency theory and stakeholder theory. From this analysis, a new view of the agency relationship between institutional investors and their portfolio firms emerges, which recognizes the institutions’ market power, complex role as financial intermediaries, and possible involvement in simultaneous and opposing agency contracts. We also conclude that stakeholder theorists should reconsider these newly empowered shareholders’moral standing in relation to their portfolio (...) firms, and they should reexamine the identities and goals of these modern investors. To that end, we demonstrate that a novel, intragroup application of Mitchell, Agle, and Wood’s stakeholder framework to heterogeneous institutional investors illuminates their varying levels of stakeholder salience. (shrink)

Two recent cases raise the question: Should the body be considered a form of property? Patients generally do not share in the profits derived from the applications of research on their body parts and products. Nor is their consent for research required so long as the body part is unidentified and is removed in the course of treatment. A market in body parts and products would require consent to all categories of research and ensure that patients are protected from coercion (...) and given the chance to be paid fairly for their contributions. Such a market might force us to rethink our policies prohibiting organ sales. Donors, recipients, and society will benefit from a market in body parts so long as owners—and no one else—retain control over their bodies. (shrink)

This paper has two major goals: First, I argue that Catharine MacKinnon’s and Andrea Dworkin’s anti-pornography activism was an act of public reason and their arguments public reasons arguments. Thus, MacKinnon’s argument that pornography is best understood as a practice of sex discrimination is a public reason argument—and so can be defended as grounded in liberal political principles. Political liberalism, as I defend it, can support MacKinnon’s approach to pornography as embodied in a civil rights ordinance. By way of contrast, (...) I will take up another feminist position on pornography, Drucilla Cornell’s, that differs from, and in fact is quite critical of, the MacKinnon/Dworkin anti-pornography position. My primary aim here is to show that Cornell’s arguments fail—as they stand—as public reason arguments, and thus further highlight the crucial aspects of MacKinnon’s feminist approach that are compatible with public reason, and so with liberal political principles. This is not to say that one could not provide a public reason argument for a position like Cornell’s. However, as she offers it, her position is not compatible with the norms of public reason. Second, I show why the obscenity route to the regulation of pornographic material—the traditional liberal approach—is actually antithetical to the version of political liberalism I am interested in defending. The conclusion of these arguments is that contrary to the mainstream view, liberalism is hospitable to the arguments of MacKinnon and Dworkin, and so as liberals we have not only good reason to take their arguments very seriously, but even stronger their arguments flow from fundamental liberal political values. (shrink)

Due to COVID-19’s strain on health systems across the globe, triage protocols determine how to allocate scarce medical resources with the worthy goal of maximising the number of lives saved. However, due to racial biases and long-standing health inequities, the common method of ranking patients based on impersonal numeric representations of their morbidity is associated with disproportionately pronounced racial disparities. In response, policymakers have issued statements of solidarity. However, translating support into responsive COVID-19 policy is rife with complexity. Triage does (...) not easily lend itself to race-based exceptions. Reordering triage queues based on an individual patient’s racial affiliation has been considered but may be divisive and difficult to implement. And while COVID-19 hospital policies may be presented as rigidly focused on saving the most lives, many make exceptions for those deemed worthy by policymakers such as front-line healthcare workers, older physicians, pregnant women and patients with disabilities. These exceptions demonstrate creativity and ingenuity—hallmarks of policymakers’ abilities to flexibly respond to urgent societal concerns—which should also be extended to patients of colour. This paper dismantles common arguments against the confrontation of racial inequity within COVID-19 triage protocols, highlights concerns related to existing proposals and proposes a new paradigm to increase equity when allocating scarce COVID-19 resources. (shrink)

Working in and around the ‘chain of command’: power relations among nursing staff in an urban nursing homeBy most accounts, the discipline of nursing enjoys considerable hegemony in US nursing homes. Not surprisingly, the ethos of this setting is influenced, in large part, by nursing’s value system. This ethos powerfully impacts both the residents who live in nursing homes and the staff who work there. Using ethnographic methods, this project explored power relations among nursing assistants and nurses in an urban (...) nursing home in the United States. Factors contributing to tensions among nursing staff were the stigma attached to nursing homes and those who work in them, as well as the long history of class conflict and power struggles within the discipline of nursing. The latter struggles, in turn, reflected nursing’s quest for professional status in the face of medicine’s hegemony over health‐care. Ultimately, these factors coalesced to produce a local work environment characterized by conflict — and by aides’ resistance to nurses’ domination. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of becoming-animal offers a mode of interaction that goes beyond the symbolic language and conceptual thought that are often used in the western philosophical tradition to circumscribe the limits and define the nature of an ethical engagement. They fail, however, to provide a robust account of how becoming may yield an ethical exchange between the human being and the animal other. In order for this process to generate such an outcome, it must be accompanied (...) by commitment to and care for the animal. Primatologist Barbara Smuts brings this becoming to the flesh in ways that enable a committed, caring and collaborative ethical interaction between species. (shrink)

BackgroundMedical aid in dying was introduced in Quebec in 2015. Quebec clinical guidelines recommend that MAiD be approached as a last resort when other care options are insufficient; however, the law sets no such requirement. To date, little is known about when and how requests for MAiD are situated in the broader context of decision-making in end-of-life care; the timing of MAiD raises potential ethical issues.MethodsA retrospective chart review of all MAiD requests between December 2015 and June 2017 at two (...) Quebec hospitals and one long-term care centre was conducted to explore the relationship between routine end-of-life care practices and the timing of MAiD requests.ResultsOf 80 patients requesting MAiD, 54% received the intervention. The median number of days between the request for MAiD and the patient’s death was 6 days. The majority of palliative care consults came less than 7 days prior to the MAiD request and in another 25% of cases occurred the day of or after MAiD was requested. 35% of patients had no level of intervention form, or it was documented as 1 or 2 at the time of the MAiD request and 19% were receiving life-prolonging interventions.InterpretationWe highlight ethical considerations relating to the timing of MAiD requests within the broader context of end-of-life care. Whether or not MAiD is conceptualised as morally distinct from other end-of-life options is likely to influence clinicians’ approach to requests for MAiD as well as the ethical importance of our findings. We suggest that in the wake of the 2015 legislation, requests for MAiD have not always appeared to come after an exploration of other options as professional practice guidelines recommend. (shrink)

We read with interest Lanphier and Anani’s manuscript on trauma-informed ethics consultation. Their model rightly integrates trauma-informed principles within the ethics c...

Examines art and literature of the Americas through the lens of the questionnaire, a genre as central as the manifesto to the history of the avant-garde. Demonstrates how modernism and the avant-garde were debated at the very moment of their development and consolidation"--Provided by publisher.

There isn’t much understanding in some marriages. My sister has six [children] and another has eight. I said to one of them that she shouldn’t have any more. And she said “What can I do? When my husband comes home drunk, he foxes me to sleep with him.” And that is what happens to a lot of women. And if the women don’t do it, the men hit them, or treat them badly. Or the men get jealous and think their (...) wives are with other men.—Rene, a 29-year old Peruvian womanGender violence is a major yet often underrecognized obstacle to reproductive choice. In both the abortion rights movement in the United States and the reproductive health movement globally, the “enemy” of self-determination and choice is usually seen as imposing from the top down. In the North, it is the government—through the courts, the legislature, and bureaucratic rulemaking—that threatens to “take away” women’s reproductive autonomy. The image is one of the public sphere invading that which is private—of the state interfering with a woman’s right to control her own body. (shrink)