Background: Nonhuman animals are regularly enhanced genomically with CRISPR and other gene editing tools as scientists aim at better models for biomedical research, more tractable agricultural animals, or animals that are otherwise well suited to a defined purpose. This study investigated how genome editors and policymakers perceived ethical or policy benefits and drawbacks for animal enhancement and how perceived benefits and drawbacks are alike, or differ from, those for human genome editing. Methods: We identified scientists through relevant literature searches as (...) well as conference presentations. Policymakers were identified through rosters of genome editing oversight groups (e.g., International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, World Health Organization) or efforts aimed at influencing policy (e.g., deliberative democracy groups). Interviews covered participants’ views on ethical differences between interventions affecting somatic or germline cells and distinctions between using gene editing for disease treatment, prevention, and enhancement purposes. Results: Of the 92 participants interviewed, 81 were genome editing scientists, and 33 were policymakers, with 22 interviewees being both scientists and policymakers. Multiple areas were identified in which the ethical implications of genomic enhancements for nonhuman animals differ from those for human animals including with respect to experiential welfare; germline edits; environmental sustainability; and justice. Conclusions: Overall, respondents viewed that animal enhancement is unburdened by the ethical complexities of human enhancement. These views may be related to participant perceptions of animals’ lesser moral status and because germline editing in animals is common practice. (shrink)

Social movements are using education to generate critical consciousness regarding the social and environmental unsustainability of the current food system, and advocate for agroecological production. In this article, we explore results from a cross-case analysis of six social movements that are using education as a strategy to advance food sovereignty. We conducted participatory research with diverse rural and urban social movements in the United States, Brazil, Cuba, Bolivia, and Mexico, which are each educating for food sovereignty. We synthesize insights from (...) critical food systems education and the political ecology of education in analyzing these cases. We compare the thematic similarities and difference between these movements’ education initiatives in terms of their emergence, initial goals, expansion and institutionalization, relationship to the state, theoretical inspirations, pedagogical approach, educational topics, approach to student research, and outcomes. Among these thematic areas, we find that student-centered research on competing forms of production is an integral way to advance critical consciousness about the food system and the political potential of agroecological alternatives. However, what counts, as success in these programs, is highly case-dependent. For engaged scholars committed to advancing education for food sovereignty, it is essential to reflect upon the lessons learned and challenges faced by these movements. (shrink)

The Politics of Feminist Knowledge Transfer draws together analytical work on gender training and gender expertise. Its chapters critically reflect on the politics of feminist knowledge transfer, understood as an inherently political, dynamic and contested process, the overall aim of which is to transform gendered power relations in pursuit of more equal societies, workplaces, and policies. At its core, the work explores the relationship between gender expertise, gender training, and broader processes of feminist transformation arising from knowledge transfer activities. Examining (...) these in a reflective way, the book brings a primarily practice-based debate into the academic arena. With contributions from authors of diverse backgrounds, including academics, practitioners and representatives of gender training institutions, the editors combine a focus on gender expertise and gender training, with more theory-focused chapters. (shrink)

Most of us have moral heroes--people such as Mother Teresa or Gandhi--who have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place. We admire such people, and may even seek to become more like them. But at the same time, we don't believe that anyone who falls short of their example is thereby bad or evil. We believe, in other words, both in the importance of moral ideals and exemplars and in the possibility of goodness short of perfection. This (...) book aims to give a rigorous philosophical account and defense of these claims from within a broadly Neo-Aristotelian perspective. (shrink)

Generation Y is a cohort of the population larger than the baby boom generation. Consisting of approximately 80 million people born between 1981 and 2000, Generation Y is the most recent cohort to enter the workforce. Workplaces are being redefined and organizations are being pressed to adapt as this new wave of workers is infused into business environments. One critical aspect of this phenomenon not receiving sufficient research attention is the impact of Gen Y ethical beliefs and ethical conduct in (...) workplace contexts. It is widely accepted that distinct generational experiences shape ethical ideologies and ethical ideologies in turn affect the way people function in the workplace. Thus, Gen Y’s unique cohort experiences are likely to shape their ethical ideologies and consequent workplace judgments and actions. In this article, we examine Gen Y’s ethical ideology and study its impact on workplace functioning regarding leadership style, teamwork, and judgments about ethical violations. Our analyses indicate that Gen Y’ers tend toward situationalism (high idealism and high relativism), and their socially connected orientation produces more lenient judgments of collaborative vs. unilateral ethical violations. However, Gen Y’ers do exhibit individual variation. Relativist Gen Y’ers are more tolerant of ethical violations, whereas, Gen Y Idealists are less tolerant of ethical violations. High Idealists also show stronger teamwork and leadership characteristics. In addition, Gen Y’ers possessing servant leader traits exhibit incrementally better teamwork, and greater perceived unacceptability of ethical violations. We conclude by discussing implications of these findings for managing ethical climates and conduct. (shrink)

One of six commentaries on “Obesity: Chasing an Elusive Epidemic,” by Daniel Callahan, from the January‐February 2013 issue.

This paper critically investigates the implementation of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights (UNGPs) into the corporate setting through the concept of ‘translation’. In the decade since the creation of the UNGPs, little academic research has focussed specifically on the corporate implementation of human rights. Drawing on qualitative case studies of two multinational corporations—an oil and gas company and a bank—this paper unpacks how human rights are translated into the corporate context. In doing so, the paper focuses (...) on the “resonance dilemma” translators encounter, the strategies used to make human rights understandable and palatable, and the difficulties that emerge from this process. We contend that the process of making human rights understandable and manageable can change their form and content, which may act as an obstacle to human rights realisation and corporate accountability for human rights. (shrink)

Today, esthetic thought takes pride in the fact that it no longer scorns familiar objects nor any form of everyday culture. Refusing to limit its domain to Fine Arts, it analyzes the products of artisans and industry, urban environment, costumes and customs, tattooing and graffiti. It thus confirms a tendency of contemporary creativity that rejects the separated status of art and defies the regulations of good taste.

Human Rights Education (HRE) has traditionally been articulated in terms of cultivating better citizens or world citizens. The main preoccupation in this strand of HRE has been that of bridging a gap between universal notions of a human rights subject and the actual locality and particular narratives in which students are enmeshed. This preoccupation has focused on ‘learning about the other’ in order to improve relations between plural ‘others’ and ‘us’ and reflects educational aims of national identity politics in citizenship (...) education. The article explores the learning of human rights through narratives in relations, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Sharon Todd. For this re-thinking of relations in learning human rights, the article argues that HRE needs to address both competing historical narratives on the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) as well as unique life narratives of learners. (shrink)

National Action Plans on business and human rights are a growing phenomenon. Since 2011, 42 such plans have been adopted or are in-development worldwide. By comparison, only 39 general human rights action plans were published between 1993 and 2021. In parallel, NAPs have attracted growing scholarly interest. While some studies highlight their potential to advance national compliance with international norms, others criticise NAPs as cosmetic devices that states use to deflect attention from persisting abuses and needed regulation. In response to (...) wider critiques of international human rights norms, and their failure to exact universal state compliance, experimentalist governance theory highlights the dynamic, dialogic and iterative character of human rights implementation as well as the role of stakeholders. In this article, we apply experimentalist governance theory to evaluate the role and character of business and human rights NAPs. Rather than attempting to evaluate NAPs’ ultimate consequences for rights-holders, which appears premature, we focus on NAPs processes. Specifically, we analyse NAPs processes in twenty-five states against five experimentalist governance criteria relating to stakeholder participation; agreement on a broad problem definition; local contextualisation; monitoring and peer review and periodic revision and learning. According to our findings, NAPs on business and human rights in most states demonstrate resemblance to the traits of experimentalist governance. In particular, our analysis points to the emergence of relatively sophisticated and demanding institutional governance mechanisms within NAPs — including the institutionalisation of complex deliberative processes. Nevertheless, our paper also identifies some significant shortcomings in NAPs, related to the lack of inclusion of vulnerable groups and the lack of explicit indicators and targets. (shrink)

In various parts of the world—of which Mexico is one example— archaeology has been not only an academic discipline but has followed other motivations and goals, some valid and others more disputable: formation of a nationality, a need to know ancient roots, importance of a distinct art for understanding past societies or simply the promotion of tourism by attracting people to visit recently-excavated monuments or those that are already famous. In this paper, I intend to present the case of Mexico.

A nation is not a creation of the brain but a collective experience. It does not equal the sum of the individuals that compose it but transcends that sum like a global personality that is not only juridical (although there once was a “League of Nations”) but also moral in the highest sense of the word.We may ask ourselves if liberty is indetermination, nonalienation and autonomy in its accomplishment; if it is congenial in the genetic code of the nation for (...) its entire existence or, on the contrary, if there is not a sort of dialectic, that is, historic, aleatory and problematic relationship between these two realities. In fact, there is danger in the desire to find a similarity, even by analogy, between the life of nations and a biological process. The nation is a historical phenomenon appearing through a chain of circumstances in 19th-century Europe, theorized by Europe and often born elsewhere as a reaction to European imperialism. The Nation is largely a bourgeois idea and reality. (shrink)

This essay considers Simone Weil's experiences in factories and her social–political reflections on work, time and energy, in conjunction with arguments from theorists Melissa Gregg, Theodor Adorno and Sara Ahmed, to raise questions about supposedly humane interventions, including the cultivation of resilience, in the contemporary workplace. The transition from time‐sense in factory work at the turn of the century is examined, along with the growth of corporate time management ideologies and practices in the mid–late 20th century, and finally, the associated (...) forms of disciplining resilience/elasticity in the worker that bring together certain notions of time, space and psychological investments. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that although it is important to attend to injustices surrounding women's epistemic exclusions, it is equally important to attend to injustices surrounding women's epistemic inclusions. Partly in response to the historical exclusion of women's knowledge, there has been increasing effort among first-world actors to seek out women's knowledge. This trend is apparent in efforts to mainstream gender in climate change negotiation. Here, one is told that women's superior knowledge about how to adapt to climate change (...) makes them “poised to help solve and overcome this daunting challenge.” Pulling from the work of Miranda Fricker, I argue that such claims risk epistemically objectifying women. To illuminate the risk of women's epistemic objectification in climate change discourse, I offer a feminist analysis of current efforts to seek women's environmental knowledge, cautioning throughout that such efforts must reflect just epistemic relations. (shrink)

Results of R. Miller in 2009 proved several theorems about algebraic fields and computable categoricity. Also in 2009, A. Frolov, I. Kalimullin, and R. Miller proved some results about the degree spectrum of an algebraic field when viewed as a subfield of its algebraic closure. Here, we show that the same computable categoricity results also hold for finite-branching trees under the predecessor function and for connected, finite-valence, pointed graphs, and we show that the degree spectrum results do not hold for (...) these trees and graphs. We also offer an explanation for why the degree spectrum results distinguish these classes of structures: although all three structures are algebraic structures, the fields are what we call effectively algebraic. (shrink)

This paper provides a case example of interventionist discourse analysis as a tool to provoke organizational change. I focus on one ‘nexus of practice’ [Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (2004). Nexus analysis: Discourse and the emerging internet. Routledge] – the Educating for Change Curriculum Conference – across 11 years to illustrate how the analysis was used to contribute to racial justice efforts. The paper contributes to a methodological and theoretical trajectory in the field of Critical Discourse Studies focused on how (...) discourse analysis can contribute to justice-oriented efforts. (shrink)

The World Health Organisation recently listed air pollution as the most significant threat to human health. Air pollution comprises particulate matter (PM), metals, black carbon and gases such as ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO). In addition to respiratory and cardiovascular disease, PM exposure is linked with increased risk of neurodegeneration as well as neurodevelopmental impairments. Critically, studies suggest that PM crosses the placenta, making direct in utero exposure a reality. Rodent models reveal that neuroinflammation, neurotransmitter imbalance (...) and oxidative stress are triggered following gestational/early life exposure to PM, and may be exacerbated by concomitant mitochondrial dysfunction. Gestational PM exposure (potentiated by mitochondrial impairment in the metabolically active neonatal brain) not only impacts neurodevelopment but may sensitise the brain to subsequent cognitive impairment. Having reviewed this field, we conclude that strategies are urgently required to reduce exposure to PM during this sensitive developmental period. (shrink)

Even appropriate, ethically sound recommendations can generate angst. In this case, the principal investigator is concerned about the ethics consult recommendation to not inform the participan...

What circumstances create the need for an institution that conforms to civil recourse theory? I consider polities that vary in the extent to which they instantiate justice and argue that only a moderately non-ideal polity has a need for such an institution. When a polity gets close to the ideal, the polity needs institutions of corrective justice. When the polity gets very far from the ideal, tort law is at best instrumentally justified. Somewhere in between those two extremes, a civil (...) recourse conception has significant justificatory advantages over both corrective justice and instrumental accounts. Even under these conditions, however, it remains difficult to explain within the confines of civil recourse theory why enforcement of tort law’s primary norms should remain in the hands of the victim. I suggest a possible explanation, but it requires us to jettison the claim that the wrongs of tort law are genuine wrongs. (shrink)

Here I argue that aspects of Nietzsche's thought may be productively compared with the role played by the concept of ubuntu in talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I show that Nietzsche respects and writes for humanity conceived of in a vital sense, thereby imagining a sense of authenticity that may prove significant to talk of cultural renaissance in South Africa. I question the view that Nietzsche is an individualist, drawing on debate between Conway (1990) and Gooding-Williams (2001), concerning (...) the interpretation of ‘The Dance-Song' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as on the notion of reciprocity intrinsic to the concept of ubuntu (Shutte, 1993). South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 85-97. (shrink)

In 2004, the agricultural economies of many rural communities in the United States were impacted by the cessation of a price-support and supply-control program for tobacco production. Tobacco was not only an important livelihood, but also was central to social and cultural life. Using a social–ecological systems lens and the adaptive cycle metaphor, we examine the reorganization of agriculture in communities that previously produced tobacco under the program. Specifically, we seek to understand how transitional policy that provided financial support to (...) tobacco farmers interacted with other social, cultural, physical and human capitals to condition system reorganization. We conducted semi-structured interviews with farmers, extension agents, and policy makers in Kentucky as well as examined trends in income and number of farmers before and after the transition as indicators of reorganization. We determined that the financial support was perceived as helpful in supporting the transition and that tobacco farmers reorganized their livelihoods primarily around existing, remnant assets and endogenous capacities. In addition, we determined that though the agricultural system may be reorganizing economically, it is not necessarily supportive of the same social bonds and values that co-existed with tobacco economy. Understanding agricultural economies as part of complex social–ecological systems that consist of interconnected values, identities, ecology and social ties is important for developing policies to support systems and communities through economic transitions. (shrink)

To speak of lateral specialization is to take up the old question found in myths and religions from the.dawn of humanity. Gastaut has remarked that the prehistoric skulls he collected and examined presented a larger number of trepannings on the left than on the right. At the very begining, man's. cranium was treated asymmetrically by the trepanners.