In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act that ended the entitlement of poor families to government assistance. The debate leading up to that transformation in welfare policy occurred in the shadow of Speenhamland—an episode in English Poor Law history. This article revisits the Speenhamland episode to unravel its tangled history. Drawing on four decades of recent scholarship, the authors show that Speenhamland policies could not have had the consequences that have been attributed to (...) them. The article ends with an alternative narrative that seeks to explain how the Speenhamland story became so deeply entrenched. (shrink)

The 1800?4 scientific expedition that was commissioned by Bonaparte and captained by Nicolas Baudin was a vast note?producing machine. Recording information in the form of notes was indeed its mode of being. The expedition, conceived in the late eighteenth century, represents in its scope and achievements Enlightenment knowledge?gathering at its most ambitious: the exhaustive collection, measurement, description and classification of objects of the natural world. Aiming at encyclopædic inclusiveness and at the same time seeking accurate knowledge, the achievements of the (...) expedition were remarkable. Some 72,120 items (including drawings and writings) were brought back to France: raw material for future research, as well as quantities of notes, reports and narratives that in themselves constituted fragments of new knowledge about the natural world. Underpinning this plethora of note?taking was a particular understanding of what constituted science and the scientific enterprise at this time in post?Revolutionary France, and this understanding welded together both officers and naturalists in a common aim. The written traditions of sea?voyaging intersected with the reporting requirements of the emerging natural sciences, producing a unique social and intellectual interaction and cross?fertilisation, supported by the methods of recording. (shrink)

In recent years students of medieval literature and its history have begun increasingly to appreciate the value of their primary source materials — the manuscripts. Editors of Middle English texts are less apt nowadays, having found their “best text,” to jettison as worthless all other surviving copies and renderings of it. It is recognized that a “corrupt” text may reflect the activity of a contemporary editor, critic, or adapter rather than that of a merely careless copyist. Medieval scribes, whether professional (...) or amateur, clerical or lay, were producing works of literature for their original consumers; close examination of scribal behavior, whether it be script, spelling, or choice and ordering of material, provides insight into the way literary texts were received, understood, and disseminated. The studies of paleographer, dialectologist, textual critic, and literary historian can and should be complementary. (shrink)

Beyond the Centaur questions the accuracy and usefulness of the virtually unquestioned ancient consensus that persons are composed of unequally valued, hierarchically stacked antagonistic components, usually soul or mind and body. Part I explores the gradual historical development of this notion of person. Part II consists of a thought experiment, examining an understanding of persons, not as stacked components, but as intelligent bodies -- one entity. It explores how a new understanding of persons can affect in important and fruitful ways (...) how we live: how we move, feel, think, believe, and die. (shrink)

The paper analyses the interrelationship between Armstrong’s egalitarian theory and his treatment of the ‘attachment theory’ of resources, which is the dominant rival theory of resources that his theory is pitched against. On Armstrong’s theory, egalitarianism operates as a default position, from which special claims would need to be justified, but he also claims to be able to incorporate 'attachment' into his theory. The general question explored in the paper is the extent to which ‘attachment’ claims can be ‘married’ to (...) an egalitarian theory. The more specific argument is that a properly constrained attachment theory is more plausible than Armstrong’s egalitarian theory. It also criticizes attachment and improvement accounts as justifying permanent sovereignty over resources. The paper argues that neither of those arguments aim to justify the international doctrine of permanent sovereignty. (shrink)

This article is interested in the general question of what justifies territorial rights over unoccupied places, including places that are not occupied but are situated within the territorial borders of a state. This question arises because one of the most common defenses of rights over territory makes use of the idea of occupancy and has difficulty explaining such rights in places that are not occupied. It explores this question through an examination of the claims and arguments in the Canadian Arctic, (...) which provides an historically specific test case for the merits and plausibility of the various arguments appealed to. It argues that territorial rights in unoccupied places, including the Canadian Arctic, are justified on different grounds than in occupied parts of the territory, and that the justification also affects the kinds of rights—particularly over resources—that such states can claim. (shrink)

This chapter examines Rawls's argument in A Theory of Justice, which attempts to derive liberal rights and rules of justice from an original position or contract among people denied full knowledge of their identities. This chapter examines problems relating to the derivation of principles from the original position, the conception of the original position itself, and the relation of self‐interest to the capacity of justice.

This book, a collection of articles on women's contributions to the history of philosophy, can accurately be described as long-awaited. Originally conceived in, I gather, roughly its present form in 2006, it is now finally in 2019 reaching the light of day. Although unavoidable delays are always a pity, in this case the result is certainly worth the wait, and the significantly high quality of the volume has not been undercut by its belated appearance. In 2006, the editors secured contributions (...) from most of the leading contributors to the field of women in the history of philosophy, and since twelve years is not all that long a time, they remain leading contributors. Anyone interested in teaching, writing about, or... (shrink)

This article sets out to examine the role of teacher research and enquiry in the professional development of teachers. The context derives from the initiative of the Scottish Executive to enhance the status and working conditions of teachers. We consider the extent to which continuing professional development activities arising out of the Chartered Teacher Programme encourage teachers to value research, equip them to become research-minded and support them to engage in research and enquiry in their own professional contexts.

In Culture and Agency, I distinguished between the ‘Cultural System', namely all items logged into the universal cultural archive, and ‘Socio-Cultural' interaction, na...

If you developed Alzheimer disease, would you want to go all the way to the end of what might be a decade‐long course? Some would; some wouldn't. Options open to those who choose to die sooner are often inadequate. Do‐not‐resuscitate orders and advance directives depend on others' cooperation. Preemptive suicide may mean giving up years of life one would count as good. Do‐it‐yourself methods can fail. What we now ask of family and clinicians caring for persons with dementia, and of (...) patients given no better option than to go on with lives they may not want, is unacceptable. To explore how one might better control one's own dying and avoid burdening others with overwhelming care and morally painful choices, we propose a thought experiment: an advance directive implant that would enable persons with early dementia, while competent, to arrange their own deaths without the subsequent intervention of anyone else. (shrink)

In his carefully documented article, “From reciprocity to autonomy in physician-assisted death: an ethical analysis of the Dutch Supreme Court ruling in the Albert Heringa case,” Berand Florijn (20...

Distinguished gerontologists, ‘guardians of later life’ who had long kept age and ageism at the heart of their work, were asked by the author why the turn to ageism had not been able to raise age consciousness more effectively in the media or the public. Their frank responses constitute a valuable archive of reflections about how intersectional concepts and activist passions develop in an emerging and contentious multi-disciplinary field. The essay further situates their learned critiques in the history of age (...) studies over the last 30 years. Among the sorrowful and galvanizing revelations provoked by the Eldercide of the COVID-19 era is this: ‘ageism’ has become widely recognized as a keyword not only good to think with but necessary to act on. (shrink)

George Berkeley's first published work, An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision was prepared simultaneously with his second, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. In the New Theory, Berkeley argues that visual objects are in the mind, mind‐dependent ideas, but he appears to leave tactile objects outside the mind in mind‐independent space. The position the New Theory refutes is not the one that Berkeley identifies as causing problems for the Principles. But he still sees the New Theory (...) as contributing an important step in the argument of the Principles. He is frequently said to have employed a language analogy, to have compared vision to language, and indeed he does just that through the New Theory. Berkeley apparently assumed that anyone who read both the New Theory and the Principles would be in a position to appreciate the usefulness of the New Theory for the moral and theological aims of the Principles. (shrink)

This paper examines three types of normative arguments that are put forward in defence of liberal nationalism.

This chapter argues that the analysis of the previous chapters indicates the problems attached to conceiving of morality as rooted in a neutral or Archimedean point from which different principles can be assessed and validated, but that it is more fruitful to root morality within a particular tradition. The problem of moral scepticism and relativism and pluralism are discussed as well as the implications of this approach to moral theorizing for ethical political principles.

The nation is usually taken to be an expression, and ?nationalism? a defence, of culture. But we may have sanguinary national conflict (as in Northern Ireland or the former Yugoslavia) where cultural difference is small; and we may have minimal conflict (as in Switzerland or Belgium) where cultural difference is great. This essay proposes a shift, away from seeing nations as grounded in culture, to seeing them as grounded in ?identity? ? often forged by historical forces having nothing to do (...) with culture per se. This essay rejects a cultural argument for liberal nationalism (associated with the work of Raz, Miller and Kymlicka among others) precisely because it confounds national identity with common culture. Since nations diverge despite a common culture, ?common culture? cannot explain them. Identity is more fundamental. It persists where culture changes. (shrink)

This chapter defines ‘nationalism’ and its related terms, and examines various accounts of the origin and persistence of national identities, and their relevance to developing an ethics of nationalism. It distinguishes between three types of constructivist arguments, and argues that only one type seems adequate in explaining how national identities originate and maintain themselves.

This chapter considers whether collective self-determination, which justifies a right of jurisdiction, can also generate a right to control natural resources. It discusses the limits of that argument, focusing especially on the limits of justice. Part One deals with territorial claims over unoccupied islands, the seabed, the Arctic, and Antarctica. These are viewed as resources by the rival claimants, and their respective claims should be conceived of as property claims. The second part of the chapter deals with cases where there (...) are natural resources—oil, fertile land, water, coal—on land that is co-extensive with an area occupied by a group. It develops a middle ground between a strong resource rights conception, associated with current views of state sovereignty, and the cosmopolitan view that thinks of groups as having no special claims to resources within their midst, indeed thinking of it as a kind of undeserved advantage. (shrink)

We have a complicated, sometimes contradictory, perception of the use of political violence. This article discusses the possible legitimacy of a particular kind, referred to as “resistance violence,” or violence carried out by vulnerable targeted social groups. After providing distinctions regarding who, when, and why resistance violence happens, this article considers two examples that highlight different factors. By considering the work of various philosophers including Locke, Arendt, Fanon, and Fricker, this article proposes two theses: first, that epistemic contextualization requires that (...) the legitimacy of resistance violence always be evaluated with the understanding that vulnerable social groups often reside outside the parameters of legal/criminal/judicial protection. And, second, that resistance violence is a politically legitimate option and need not promise practical success to be worth pursuing due to the fact that resistance actors often see violence as establishing their dignity and humanity. (shrink)

This text is the introduction of M. S. Archer,, Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenetic Society, Heidelberg-New York-London, Springer, 2014. In the last two decades, Sociological reactions to ‘the current crisis' and its repercussions have prompted two main responses amongst social theorists. On the one hand, some have simply embraced the overt – meaning empirically observable – contributory factors and consequential outcomes as the concatenation of contingency. In - Sociologie – Nouvel article.

Economics was invented to deal with material scarcityScarcity, and is therefore biased towards increasing materially production. Many of the world’s current problems, however, are caused by excessive use of the resources of the natural world, often driven by an excessive desireDesire to accumulate the moneyMoney that stands proxy for them. In order to respond to these, then, we need to return the concept of ‘enoughEnough’ to the centre of moral and social, and therefore political and economic, thinking. ‘Enough’ for an (...) individual turns out to be concretely contextual and intrinsically relational. At the same time, it has objective boundaries, set not least by ecological limits combined with justice, both local and global. Therefore we need both good judgement and healthy societies to be truly satisfied, as individuals, with enoughEnough. One of the factors that exacerbates our weakness for excessExcess is the monetarisation of goodsGoods. Economists, I suggest, might need to be attentive to the importance, the specific complexities, and the risks of quantifying ‘enoughEnough’. (shrink)

Recent studies in music education have investigated the ways in which different groups construe music and music education, and the ways in which these constructions are culturally bound. A Cultural Psychology of Music Education explores the ways in which the discipline of cultural psychology can contribute to our understanding of how music learning and development occurs in a range of cultural settings, and the subsequent implications of such understanding for the theory and practice of music education. The book opens with (...) an overview of the theoretical underpinnings of a cultural psychology of music education. Ten eminent music education scholars and researchers provide chapters that illustrate the application of this approach to key issues in music education; its theory and practice. These chapters provide opportunities to look more deeply into the practices of music education in order to understand the role culture plays in shaping children's musical learning and thinking, the learning and teaching of music teachers, the formal and informal institutions and structures within and through which learning and teaching occur, and, the intersection of these processes and structures in the development of musical thought and practice. As the first major publication to explore a cultural psychology of music education, this volume signals new directions for the study of music educational theory and practice, and the continuing transformation of the discipline. It draws together a number of music education researchers working within a cultural psychology framework establishing a basic reference in this developing field. A fascinating subject, this volume will be of interest to music educators, students and researchers of music education, and music psychologists. (shrink)

We contend in this paper that the trade union role in social policy is expanding due to the debate on women's issues. The Centrale de l'enseignement du Québec is seen as a forerunner of this trend, with its policy positions on questions previously seen as personal. The method of promotion of these interests is also new, with caucusing and networking. The significance of these changes goes beyond unionized women workers and affects all women.

The Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River figure prominently in scripture. The ecosystem of this area has been damaged as a result of technology thoughtlessly applied in the context of anthropocentrism. A contrasting relational approach toward the natural world is offered by ecofeminism, which speaks for those whose voices, both human and nonhuman, have been ignored or negated. This article discusses the environmental history of the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the adjacent wetlands and forests. It applies (...) an ecofeminist hermeneutic to Mark 4:35-41, the story of Jesus’s calming the Wind and the Sea, as a religious rationale for the ethical use of science and technology. (shrink)