This collection brings together fourteen contributions by authors from around the globe. Each of the contributions engages with questions about how local and global bioethical issues are made to be comparable, in the hope of redressing basic needs and demands for justice. These works demonstrate the significant conceptual contributions that can be made through feminists' attention to debates in a range of interrelated fields, especially as they formulate appropriate responses to developments in medical technology, global economics, population shifts, and poverty.

Cognitive biases play an important role in creating and perpetuating problems that lead to foodborne illness outbreaks. By using insights from behavioral ethics, we argue that sometimes people engage in unethical behavior that increases the likelihood of foodborne illness outbreaks without necessarily intending to or being consciously aware of it. We demonstrate these insights in an analysis of the 2011 Listeriosis outbreak in the U.S. from the consumption of contaminated cantaloupes. We then provide policy implications that can improve our understanding (...) of other kinds of disease outbreaks and epidemics. (shrink)

Canada’s population is aging, and seniors constitute the fastest growing demographic in the nation. The chronic health conditions, limited social support, functional decline, and cognitive impairment experienced by seniors may necessitate admission to a personal care home (PCH) setting up until the time of their death. The ethical problems that arise in the care of dying patients are numerous and complicated. The care of dying seniors in PCHs, however, is largely provided by frontline workers such as healthcare aides (HCAs), who (...) usually have little training in palliative care or ethics. Research examining the identification and resolution of ethical problems in care of the dying has been conducted from the perspectives of nurses and physicians in various clinical settings, but the voice of HCAs in PCHs is virtually absent from clinical ethics. Given that the inability to satisfactorily resolve ethical issues in clinical practice is associated with feelings of guilt, powerlessness, avoiding contact with patients, failing to provide good physical care, and increased staff turnover, an empirical examination of HCAs’ experiences of ethically challenging situations is warranted.We conducted a phenomenological study to access the lived experience of HCAs (N=12) working in proprietary and nonproprietary care homes as they encountered situations they deemed ethically challenging in providing end-of-life care to dying seniors. The findings reported here explicate: (1) the types of situations that are ethically problematic for HCAs; (2) the meanings they assign to these situations, and (3) the impact such situations have on the provision of end-of-life care. (shrink)

Although workplace bullying is common and has universally harmful effects on employees’ outcomes, little is known about workplace bullies. To address this gap in knowledge, we draw from the tenets of social exchange and displaced aggression theories in order to develop and test a model of workplace bullying that incorporates the effects of employees’ individual differences, perceptions of their work environments, and perceptions of supervisory treatment on their tendencies to bully coworkers. The results of mediated moderation analyses that examine responses (...) from two samples of working adults support our hypotheses. Specifically, we find evidence of an indirect relationship between entitlement and coworker bullying through perceptions of abusive supervision that is stronger for employees who report lower levels of felt accountability than employees who report higher levels of felt accountability. This study makes important theoretical and practical contributions to abusive supervision research, bullying research, and organizational efforts to promote ethical work environments devoid of interpersonal mistreatment by providing novel insight into how employees’ entitlement and felt accountability combine to influence their tendencies to perceive themselves as victims of abusive supervision and culprits of coworker bullying. (shrink)

I argue that hopes and claims about the liberating power of liberal education are typically exaggerated, naive and wrong. Reflecting upon and borrowing terms from Jim Shelton's essay on "The Subversive Nature of Liberal Education," I use the work of Ivan Illich, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron to argue that social education—training in efficient and productive consumeristic life—absorbs, muffles and domesticates any radical content liberal arts education may manage to provide. As with virtually all education, liberal education conserves (...) the society from which it emerges. (shrink)

In this essay Charles Harvey offers a worried reflection on the range, extent, depth, affects, and effects of the perpetual assessment of the person in industrial nations in the contemporary world. Harvey begins his analysis by appealing to the work of Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard to provide an interpretive framework of our situation. He then focuses and concretizes these ideas through examples from his own life and, by extension, the readers. Finally, in light of Pierre (...) Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, Harvey speculates on the implications for selfhood in the contemporary world. Throughout the essay, Harvey uses assessment procedures in higher and public education as exemplary instances of his thesis. (shrink)

In his book, Physical Relativity, Harvey Brown challenges the orthodox view that special relativity is preferable to those parts of Lorentz's classical ether theory it replaced because it revealed various phenomena that were given a dynamical explanation in Lorentz's theory to be purely kinematical. I want to defend this orthodoxy. The phenomena most commonly discussed in this context in the philosophical literature are length contraction and time dilation. I consider three other phenomena of this kind that played a role (...) in the early reception of special relativity in the physics literature: the Fresnel drag effect in the Fizeau experiment, the velocity dependence of electron mass in beta-ray deflection experiments by Kaufmann and others, and the delicately balanced torques on a moving charged capacitor in the Trouton-Noble experiment. I offer historical sketches of how Lorentz's dynamical explanations of these phenomena came to be replaced by their now standard kinematical explanations. I then take up the philosophical challenge posed by the work of Harvey Brown and Oliver Pooley and clarify how those kinematical explanations work. (shrink)

I defend the widely held view challenged by Harvey Brown in his recent book that special relativity is preferable to those parts of Lorentz’s electron theory it replaced because various phenomena that special relativity reveals to be of purely kinematical origin were given a dynamical explanation in Lorentz’s theory. The phenomena most commonly discussed in this context in the philosophical literature are length contraction and time dilation. I consider three other such phenomena that played a role in the early (...) reception of special relativity in the physics community: the Fresnel drag effect in the Fizeau experiment, the velocity dependence of electron mass in the -ray deflection.. (shrink)

Michel Foucault’s “Standing Vigil for the Day to Come” was a review of Roger Laporte’s novel, La Veille, published by Gallimard earlier that year. Although Laporte’s work never received the wide readership it deserved, Foucault held it in high esteem, praising it in his assessment as one of the “most original” and “most difficult” of his time and, subsequently, urging Derrida to read it. This article is most appropriately situated in the series of literary reviews Foucault composed between 1961 and (...) 1966, in which his marked attempts to understand the relationship between language and thought drew him to the works of Roussel, Klossowski, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, and, of course, Laporte. Foucault finds Laporte’s treatment of the subject-matter particularly satisfying because it provides a non-reductive account of thought and its relationship to language; thought is neither identical with nor distinct from language. Foucault sees Laporte as relying on an important Nietzschean insight that thought is both too funda- mental and too archaic to be reduced to philosophy or to require a Cartesian ego. In this way La Veille is naturally of interest to Foucault because it deals with the relationship of a writer to an anonymous other; it is this other — not the writer — that makes writing possible. With the role of the subject de-emphasized, Foucault finds in Laporte a starting point for talking about language in contemporary literature and thought in post- Cartesian philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation by Jennifer HarveyMichelle WolffDear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation Jennifer Harvey grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2014. 262 pp. $25.00Absent of opaque theory and disembodied ideology, Jennifer Harvey’s Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation presents an indispensable introduction to the problem of “whiteness” illustrated with concrete examples from US (...) history. Harvey’s text clearly communicates the trouble with invoking universalism, colorblindness, and most specifically reconciliation as means of improving race relations. Alternatively, in the spirit of the Black Power movement, Harvey suggests that reparations more effectively atone for racism. [End Page 202]Harvey begins with a sympathetic account of churches seeking integration as the logical counter to segregation within the context of midcentury US history. While these approaches align with the ideals of the civil rights movement, Harvey goes on to elucidate the limitations of what she calls a “reconciliation paradigm.” Pointedly, Harvey asserts that reconciliation efforts fail to acknowledge the problem of whiteness (11). She therefore provocatively contends that “to be white is to be in a state of profound moral crisis” (56). This is because white identity has been constituted by violence, consistently benefits materially from that violence, and remains indistinguishable from white supremacy’s agenda (52–55). For this reason, black identity, according to Harvey, is never parallel to white identity. Reconciliation, then, problematically masks such difference via appeals to universalism.Harvey adroitly reorients approaches to problem solving away from white progressive efforts and good intentions by attending instead to African American experience, history, and requests (11–12). For this reason, she prioritizes Black Power movements over civil rights movements (65). The former Harvey understands as properly focusing on power differentials, rather than separation, as the primary issue (106). In so doing, Harvey underscores white folks’ culpability in failing to secure reparations for African Americans.In the final section of her book, Harvey describes specific US churches’ attempts at reparations programs. This section, including some of the most demonstrative and relatable chapters, contains concrete examples that echo the defensiveness, pain, and good will that frequently surface on the part of white folks in conversations about race (228–29). The process of collecting these stories and histories appears to have been nearly as beneficial as Harvey’s proposed reparations program, for history functions as confession here (206). In addition, even these constructive chapters resist an optimistic gloss on the flawed and painstaking work of reparations programs (211).Although Harvey touches on other forms of reparations, she consistently returns to economic efforts as most pressing. While financial and material reparations are immediate and measurable, and therefore consistent with the author’s preference for pragmatism over theory, they obfuscate the pervasive disadvantages that people of color suffer in the United States today. Equal candidates for employment with identical resumes, for example, too frequently experience the bias of gender and race as signified in the candidate’s name. One’s gender performance and sexual identity can exacerbate such discrimination. These gesture at the role of social currency that permeates communal life even more thoroughly than material wealth. This is to say that reparations are an important aspect for “interrupting whiteness,” and yet they cannot be the conclusion to a more just and equitable church and society.Harvey’s extraordinarily accessible text propels conversations on ethical living in classrooms, churches, and politics. Her assessment of the problem [End Page 203] of whiteness and constructive alternative suggestion for reparations efficiently prime readers for open dialogue and practical action.Michelle WolffDuke UniversityCopyright © 2016 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Michel Janssen and Harvey Brown have driven a prominent recent debate concerning the direction of an alleged arrow of explanation between Minkowski spacetime and Lorentz invariance of dynamical laws in special relativity. In this article, I critically assess this controversy with the aim of clarifying the explanatory foundations of the theory. First, I show that two assumptions shared by the parties—that the dispute is independent of issues concerning spacetime ontology, and that there is an urgent need for a constructive (...) interpretation of special relativity—are problematic and negatively affect the debate. Second, I argue that the whole discussion relies on a misleading conception of the link between Minkowski spacetime structure and Lorentz invari-ance, a misconception that in turn sheds more shadows than light on our understand-ing of the explanatory nature and power of Einstein’s theory. I state that the arrow connecting Lorentz invariance and Minkowski spacetime is not explanatory and uni-directional, but analytic and bidirectional, and that this analytic arrow grounds the chronogeometric explanations of physical phenomena that special relativity offers. (shrink)

In order to examine whether the usual identification of neoliberal ideas with an ideological discourse is valid, this paper starts off with an analysis of what Marx terms commodity fetishism in Capital, based on which a certain sense of the concept of ideology may be inferred which would result in its being both true and false. In order to determine whether this definition of ideology may be applied to neoliberal theory, we look at its fundamental features and how they continue (...) with or break away from economic liberalism as studied in Michel Foucault’s Birth of biopolitics. Attention is later moved to the characteristics detected by David Harvey in the socalled flexible accumulation as the latest stage of capitalism which coincides with the political implementation of neoliberal doctrine. At the end of the road travelled, it is hypothesised that this theory would be a form of ideology containing a dimension of both truth and falsehood, in line with Marx’s thought. (shrink)

In technologically grounded organizations, culture is bound tightly to the material characteristics of the technology that the organization manufactures, distributes, or services. Technological grounding helps explain why high-technology organizations often experience cultural integration problems following a merger. Examining the recent merger of US West and Qwest, this article analyzes how powerful actors strategically used the process of technological grounding to enroll a core technology to situate postmerger integration in technological terms, creating a discourse of inevitability that then justified publicly Qwest's (...) cultural domination of US West. (shrink)

This article examines Michel Foucault’s critical investigation of neoliberalism in the course published as Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France, 1978-1979. Foucault’s lectures are interrogated along two axes. First, examining the way in which neoliberalism can be viewed as a particular production of subjectivity, as a way in which individuals are constituted as subjects of “human capital.” Secondly, Foucault’s analyses is augmented and critically examined in light of other critical work on neoliberalism by Wendy Brown, David (...) class='Hi'>Harvey, Christian Laval, Maurizo Lazzarato, and Antonio Negri. Of these various debates and discussions, the paper argues that the discussion of real subsumption in Marx and Negri is most important for understanding the specific politics of neoliberalism. Finally, the paper argues that neoliberalism entails a fundamental reexamination of the tools of critical thought, an examination of how freedom can constitute a form of subjection. (shrink)

I examine Harvey Brown’s account of relativity as dynamic and constructive theory and Michel Janssen recent criticism of it. By contrasting Einstein’s principle-constructive distinction with a related distinction by Lorentz, I argue that Einstein's distinction presents a false dichotomy. Appealing to Lorentz’s distinction, I argue that there is less of a disagreement between Brown and Janssen than appears initially and, hence, that Brown’s view presents less of a departure from orthodoxy than it may seem. Neither the kinematics-dynamics distinction nor (...) Einstein’s principle- and constructive theory distinction ultimately capture their disagreement, which may instead be a disagreement about the role of modality in science and the explanatory force of putatively nomic constraints. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to deal seriously with the Foucauldian concept of governmentality. Instead of charting its emergence and its uses in Foucault’s disperse texts, the essay contends with governmentality as a concept able to refresh our very understanding of politics. Governmentality is described as the best concept through which to interrupt the “natural” relationship linking modern western States to sovereignty. This is why governmentality is coupled with apparently distant legal and political historically oriented lines of thought. The essay (...) thus proposes a new approach to the history of modern State informed by an enriched concept of governmentality. (shrink)

Résumé La ville productive, au-delà de l’usine industrielle représente le territoire de la vie ET du travail de l’ère postfordiste. Des multitudes de précaires/intermittents produisent la ville même par de nouvelles formes de vie, d’expérimentations, d’affects et de création, perçus comme autant de bruits parasites et non fonctionnels par les institutions. De Paris à Rio en passant par Buenos Aires, nous interrogeons ce rapport conflictuel fondamentalement biopolitique entre le contrôle des espaces urbains par les pouvoirs institués et les appropriations subjectives (...) de territoires de la ville par les multitudes constituantes de nouvelles formes de démocratie. (shrink)

We have chosen to include here two unpublished texts by Giselle which seemed to us to express the originality of her truly political life, as someone who was both extremely close to Felix Guattari in theoretical terms, and was a very concrete actor on the front lines of various citizen movements, which assert a specific relation to political action and to life.

O ensaio investiga a dimensão histórica da sexualidade no Ocidente e destaca as etapas de produção de referenciais hegemônicos para as vivências e representações dos saberes sobre Sexo e Sexualidade. Destaca algumas interpretações políticas e éticas desses modelos históricos e suas derivações comportamentais e educacionais. Aponta possibilidades de abordagens da Educação Sexual na escola, com propostas de sensibilização de crianças e adolescentes para a compreensão positiva e humanista dessa dimensão. Define a concepção de Educação Sexual Emancipatória. The essay investigates the (...) historical dimension of sexuality in the West and highlights the stages of production of hegemonic references to the experiences and representations of knowledge about sex and sexuality. Highlights some ethical and political interpretations of historical models and their derivations behavioral and educational. Points possible approaches to sex education in school, with proposals to raise awareness of children and adolescents to understand that positive, humanistic dimension. Defines the concept of Sex Education Emancipation. (shrink)

This essay presents a personal remembering of Rudolf Haller and deals with his interpretation and evaluation of Meinong’s theory of impossible and incomplete objects in order to better understand the objects of fiction and imagination.

This paper extends the analysis of liberal principles in social choice recently proposed by Mariotti and Veneziani (2009a) to infinitely-lived societies. First, some novel characterisations of inegalitarian leximax social welfare relations are derived based on the Individual Benefit Principle (IBP), which incorporates a liberal, non-interfering view of society. This is surprising because the IBP does not explicitly incorporate any preference for inequality, nor does it assign priority to well-off members of society. Second, some impossibility results are derived that highlight a (...) general tension between standard fairness and efficiency axioms in social choice, and a liberal Principle of Non-Interference that generalises IBP. (shrink)

La logica di Croce -- Croce oggi -- Lo storicismo assoluto e l'ideologia sociale -- Il negativo e l'ombra del male -- Il concetto della natura e la storia -- Universalismo e mondo tedesco nella Kulturphilosophie di Ernst Cassirer -- Storicismo e marxismo di Gramsci.

This book explains why anti-realism is so popular with philosophers of science by showing that many contemporary philosophers of science and language, who define themselves as empiricists, in fact have evolved into linguistic idealists.

This essay examines the educational opportunities of people in poverty who receive social welfare assistance. The dominant political theory underlying social policy (including education policy) in the United States has evolved from 1960s and 1970s welfare liberalism into 1980s and 1990s style neo-conservatism—a theory that embraces principles of the market and individual liberty as paramount social values. Against this backdrop, I review two recent books that provide compelling evidence for this turn and I call for increased understanding of the relationship (...) between social welfare policies and higher education opportunities for those in poverty. (shrink)