Joyce, Rosemarie Since the middle of last century, there has been a gradual change in Australian society with regard to how one understands and practises authority and obedience. In the past, those who were in positions of authority, be it church or civil, could expect to be revered and their decisions to be obeyed even if there was no personal agreement with the decision in question. But the situation has changed and continues to change. Many would agree that (...) those who exercise authority today have to earn the respect they require to be shown and that they do not always have the unilateral right to make decisions that affect the general community! (shrink)

It is commonly believed that disability disqualifies people from full participation in or recognition by society. This view is rooted in eugenic logic, which tells us that our world would be a better place if disability could be eliminated. In opposition to this position, I argue that that disability is inherent in the human condition and consider the bioethical question of why we might want to conserve rather than eliminate disability from our shared world. To do so, I draw together (...) an eclectic, rather than systematic, configuration of counter-eugenic arguments for conserving disability. The idea of preserving intact, keeping alive, and even encouraging to flourish denoted by conserve suggests that disabilities would be better understood as benefits rather than deficits. I present, then, a reading of disability as a potentially generative resource rather than unequivocally restrictive liability. In other words, what I consider here is the cultural and material contributions disability offers to the world. (shrink)

What has come to be called critical disability studies is an emergent field of academic research, teaching, theory building, public scholarship, and something I'll call "educational advocacy." The critical part of critical disability studies suggests its alignment with areas of intellectual inquiry, sometimes awkwardly called identity studies, rooted in the political and social transformations of the mid-20th century brought forward by the broad civil and human rights movement. These movements pressed both the law and the social order toward an expansion (...) of rights for people previously marginalized or excluded from full participation in exercising the obligations and benefits of equal citizenship. The ideas of... (shrink)

we always get to this difficult conversation one way or another when I'm talking to friends who have kids with disabilities. It goes like this: "If there had been a test for autism when my wife was pregnant with our son," my close friend tells me, "she would definitely have had an abortion." He tells me this with candor because he knows I know that this does not mean that he regrets having the son, grown up now, that they do (...) have. Parents with disabled children are usually rightfully wary about engaging in such conversations, but perhaps because I have a significant congenital genetic disability myself, we talk together about this with intimacy and mutual understanding. With his reflection about what we now... (shrink)

Berger and Miller assert that race and ethnicity based cultural competence is a failure because medicine grounds its conceptualization of cultural competence on a “flawed” understanding of r...

In this essay, we suggest practical ways to shift the framing of crisis standards of care toward disability justice. We elaborate on the vision statement provided in the 2010 Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) “Summary of Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations,” which emphasizes fairness; equitable processes; community and provider engagement, education, and communication; and the rule of law. We argue that interpreting these elements through disability justice entails a commitment to both (...) distributive and recognitive justice. The disability rights movement's demand “Nothing about us, without us” requires substantive inclusion of disabled people in decision‐making related to their interests, including in crisis planning before, during, and after a pandemic like Covid‐19. (shrink)

Dive et al. argue to limit the scope, scale, and quantity of results in genomic screening programs at the population level. Their analysis offers two interrelated reasons for this recommendation: f...

Dynamic body feedback is used in dance movement therapy, with the aim to facilitate emotional expression and a change of emotional state through movement and dance for individuals with psychosocial or psychiatric complaints. It has been demonstrated that moving in a specific way can evoke and regulate related emotions. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of executing a unique set of kinetic movement elements on an individual mover’s experience of happiness. A specific sequence consisting of movement elements that (...) recent studies have related to the feeling of happiness was created and used in a series of conditions. To achieve a more realistic reflection of DMT practice, the study incorporated the interpersonal dimension between the dance movement therapist and the client, and the impact of this interbodily feedback on the emotional state of the client. This quantitative study was conducted in a within-subject design. Five male and 20 female participants participated in three conditions: a solo executed movement sequence, a movement sequence executed with a DMTh who attuned and mirrored the movements, and a solo executed movement sequence not associated with feelings of happiness. Participants were only informed about the movements and not the feelings that may be provoked by these movements. The effects on individuals were measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and visual analog scales. Results showed that a specific movement sequence based on movement elements associated with happiness executed with a DMTh can significantly enhance the corresponding affective state. An additional finding of this study indicated that facilitating expressed emotion through movement elements that are not associated with happiness can enhance feelings such as empowerment, pride, and determination, which are experienced as part of positive affect. The results show the impact of specific full-body movement elements on the emotional state and the support outcome of DMT on emotion regulation. (shrink)

Confirmation theory is intended to codify the evidential bearing of observations on hypotheses, characterizing relations of inductive “support” and “counter­support” in full generality. The central task is to understand what it means to say that datum E confirms or supports a hypothesis H when E does not logically entail H.

The disconnect problem arises wherever there is ongoing and severe discordance between the scientific assessment of a politically relevant issue, and the politics and legislation of said issue. Here, we focus on the disconnect problem as it arises in the case of climate change, diagnosing a failure to respect the necessary tradeoff between authority and autonomy within a public institution like science. After assessing the problematic deployment of scientific authority in this arena, we offer suggestions for how to mitigate climate (...) change’s particular disconnect problem, as well as more general proposals for reforming science advising. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 10, October 2024, Page 35-37.

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 24-26.

The exportation of unethical practices to low- and middle-income countries has been conceived as a prevalent practice which needs to be examined more closely. Such a practice might point towards the exploitation of vulnerable population groups. We conducted a survey among Mexican research ethics committee members to explore the issue of ethics dumping in Mexico by understanding how its existence and contributing factors and norms are perceived by these ethics committee members. We designed an exploratory survey based on a five-point (...) Likert scale, following an established, validated and published methodology. The questionnaire included both open close-ended questions. The aspects covered in the questionnaire were introductory questions on the existence of ethical issues; general perception on ethics dumping in Mexico; lack of voluntariness, undue inducement, and therapeutic misconception as exploitation risks; existence of exploitative practices; norms facilitating ethics dumping; acceptable levels of benefit to Mexico; boundaries of ethics dumping. The survey was administered to a sample of research ethics committee members from public and private Mexican hospitals in 2016. Most of the ethics committee members believed clinical trials are generally ethically sound, though almost a majority think that ethics dumping is a common occurrence and that it is a serious issue. Most agree that ethics dumping needs to be addressed. They also identified other issues such as ethical issues related to patient participation and ethics committees. Further, most committee members agree that undue inducement and therapeutic misconception affect voluntariness, and that both individuals and communities receive appropriate benefits. From the perspective of Mexican research ethics committee members, ethics dumping commonly exists in Mexican clinical trials, as well as several related issues such as ethical issues on patient participation and ethics committees, as well as voluntariness issues. Further, most members believed these issues need to be addressed. However, most were also of the opinion that clinical trials are generally ethically compliant. This points to the need for further studies on the reasons for these perspectives. (shrink)

We find the idea that infant crying arises from thermoregulation more consistent with a coregulatory account of its evolutionary history than it is with the informational account advocated in the target article.

Weaving together personal experience, disability studies scholarship, and art criticism, this paper explores the relationship between embodied experience of the world and the demands placed on us to conform to it. Misfitting forces us to recognize the fundamental distinction between flesh and world, and with it both the limits and possibilities of the human capacity to act and to be. The fundamental misfit all humans share is that we emerge from the sheltering womb into a material world that is indifferent (...) to our individual existence. That is to say, mortality is the fundamental misfit of the human condition. It is in this sense that flesh emplaced in world is always a relationship of misfitting. The existential and social repair that misfitting calls for is attentive care and love, an attitude of welcome and openness to all body-minds, whether expected or unexpected, whether fit or misfit. (shrink)

I have at least four close friends who seem to be ideal qualified recipients of WET. My friends have a variety of eyes: some prosthetic, some wandering, some misaligned, some absent, some shrouded...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Call to Wonder reimagining disabilityRosemarie Garland-ThomsonComing to WonderI came to wonder last summer on a research visit to the Ringling Brothers Museum in Sarasota, Florida. Scattered with garish posters and peculiar objects, the museum’s circus archive was a cabinet of curiosities documenting a lost world of the extraordinary. Circuses, sideshows, and early museums were entertainment venues that offered good jobs to people with disabilities at a time well (...) before disability rights or accessible workplaces integrated people with disabilities into public life. At the Circus Museum, I came to understand more fully that many of the people on the freakshow’s broadsides are my ancestors, people with rare congenital disabilities that gave them uncommon appearances and occasioned for them some creativity in carrying out the tasks of daily living.That muggy summer day in Sarasota, the archivist opened for us one by one the thin but wide drawers of the filing cabinets designed to store rare and valuable documents. As each assemblage of posters revealed its strange contents, I came to recognize a lost community of ancient ancestors. All manner of human variation in extravagant shapes, sizes, and forms peered out of the drawers, beckoning our attention and igniting our wonder. The dwarf musicians, legless cyclists, exotic albinos, fat ladies, hermaphrodites, and giants who entertained and charmed circus audiences then have today been transformed into people with disabilities. Civil rights legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, an [End Page 483] accessible designed and built public environment, and broad awareness of disability inclusion offer these unusual people opportunities for education and wider employment opportunities today. Many of my friends and colleagues resemble these circus celebrities and performers. All of us now go about our lives quite differently from these lost ancestors. We have lives, work, families, communities, and environments that are much more compatible with our ways of being. Nonetheless, my shudder of sympathetic recognition witnesses our congruence, despite the decades and centuries that separate us from them. As I move along the unsettling archive they have left me, my vanished ancestors stare back at me from the scrapbooks, circus posters, tattered photos, and ancient prints tucked into the drawers and cabinets along our tour. Their steady returning gaze demands my response. They pull from me an unsettling merger of awe and tenderness, familiarity and strangeness. They have awakened in me the ancient affect of wonder.For me, the most compelling occupant of these archival coffins was the “The Little Man of Nuremberg,” the armless calligrapher, Matthias Buchinger (Figure 1). This prodigy of ornate micrography gazed frankly back at me with dignified contemplation, inviting me into his elaborate realm of the miniature (see Schjeldahl 2016). His diminutive hands peeked out of the velvet cuffs, startling me with their familiarity to my own unusual arms and hands. Famous during his lifetime (1674–1739) as “The Greatest Living German,” Buchinger was a calligrapher, artist, performer, and entrepreneur who was an early exemplar of a genre of legless and armless disabled performers who inspired wonder and awe in their audiences and communities.1 Buchinger’s 1724 engraving offers his viewers an early 18th-century resume or social media page. The illustration’s loquacious caption describes, “the wonderful Little Man of about 29. Inches high, born without Hands, Feet, or Thighs, June the 2, 1674. In Germany.” The “last of nine Children,” he goes on to verify his own reproductive robustness by detailing that he “has been married four times, and has had issue Eleven children, one by his first Wife, three by his second, six by his third, and one by his present Wife.”Amazement apparently requires detail for its realization. His self-portrait engraving continues to variously solicit our wonder. “This little Man performs such Wonders as had never been done by any; but Himself,” he assures us. These wonders include playing various instruments, including the flute, bagpipe, dulcimer, and trumpet. Moreover, he designs and makes musical instruments and draws coats of arms and pictures of life “with Pen.” His astonishing feats include playing cards and dice, performing tricks with “Cups and Balls, Corn, and Live Birds,” playing at “Skittles or Nine Pens to... (shrink)

The AJOB Neuroscience insight article, “A Cross-Cultural Neuroethics View on the Language of Disability,” gathers social science empirical data detailing the words that structure the human variatio...

One of the most recent and original adaptations of Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is the ballet version choreographed by Liam Scarlett and performed by the Royal Ballet in 2016 and the San Francisco Ballet in 2017 and 2018. What emerges from this translation is an economical, emotionally wrenching, and visually elegant drama of family tragedy from which we can draw a cautionary tale about contemporary bioethical dilemmas in family making that new and forthcoming biomedical (...) technologies present. This performance of bodies interacting suggests the need for an ethics of acceptance and recognition as people navigate complex familial relationships involving procreative liberty, questions of moral personhood, and parental obligation. In the Frankenstein ballet, the narrative genre of dance—what I'll call “story in the flesh”—invites viewers to identify with the characters and enter into the complexity of interpersonal relations. The ballet becomes a compelling testimony about possible unintended outcomes set in motion by well‐intended fallible humans like themselves. (shrink)

Short overview of the From Small Beginnings Project and its relevance for resisting eugenics in contemporary society.

The present article examines the textual transmission of the Aristotelian Mechanics, a treatise on mechanical questions now generally ascribed to the Peripatetic School. The treatise was edited three times in the nineteenth century, namely by Johannes van Cappelle, Immanuel Bekker and Otto Apelt ; most recently, an edition was produced in the twentieth century by Maria Elisabetta Bottecchia. Bottecchia's edition is a clear improvement over the previous editions in the extent of its research. Whereas the other editors of the Mechanics (...) altogether consulted a total of nine manuscripts, Bottecchia considered nearly the complete manuscript material for her critical edition of the text. When I started my project I did not expect to find significant new results which would make a completely new critical edition of the text necessary. (shrink)

The sheer impact of the recent global financial turmoil and scandals (such as Enron and WorldCom) has demonstrated that unbridled commercial entrepreneurs who are allowed to pursue their short-term opportunities regardless of the consequences has led to a massive depreciation of the wealth of nations, social livelihood and environmental degradation. This article suggests that the time has come for entrepreneurs to adopt a more integrative view of business that blends economic, social and environmental values. Social entrepreneurs present such a proposition (...) through their deep commitment towards the social vision, appreciation of sustainable practices, innovativeness, ability to build social networks and also generate viable financial returns. It could be expected that social entrepreneurs often possess certain distinct personality characteristics which define their behaviours/actions. Personality traits are partly developed by innate nurturing, socialization and education. These tacit traits are also formed values/beliefs held and play an important role in driving social entrepreneurial decision making. Thus, personality traits may influence the intentions and the manner in which the individual acts. We hold that if social entrepreneurship is to be effective and impactful, business and management education can facilitate the development of these critical personality traits. Thus, this study primes at determining the personality traits that influence social entrepreneurs’ start-up intentions. It also reinforces the findings that personality traits do influence entrepreneurship in general. This study examines the influence of the Big Five personality traits on social entrepreneurship dimensions. The findings reveal that agreeableness positively influences all dimensions of social entrepreneurship, whereas openness exerts a positive influence on social vision, innovation and financial returns. Methodologically, this study develops valid and reliable scales for social entrepreneurship and verifies the adopted Big Five personality measure of Schmit et al. (Pers Psychol 53:153–193, 2000) using the five-point Likert scale. The implication of this study is that element of appreciation of social responsibility, sustainability and character development needs to be integrated within the business education curriculum to support social entrepreneurs in realizing genuine value and impact to the causes and communities they serve. Future business leaders also need to be equipped with entrepreneurship skills, while exuding independent and reflective thinking in the pursuit life-long learning. The originality of this study lies in its focus on personality traits on social rather than commercial entrepreneurship. It is hoped that the findings will trigger a paradigm shift towards greater social entrepreneurship through education by nurturing sustainable development values in future business graduates. (shrink)

Feminist educators and theorists are stretching the boundaries of what it means to do religion and science. They are also expanding the theoretical and practical frameworks through which we might present curricula in thosefields. In this paper, I reflect on the implications of feminist pedagogies for the interdisciplinary field of religion and science. I begin with a brief discussion of feminist approaches to education and the nature of the feminist classroom as a setting for action. Next, I present some theoretical (...) and practical issues to consider when developing a feminist praxis and an antisexist curriculum. This leads into a discussion of the role of language and critical reflection in the religion and science classroom, the risks associated with reflective discourse, and considerations in the use of ‘feminist’ teaching tools such as small group work, journals, and portfolio assessment. Iconclude with a reflection on how feminist pedagogy promotes an epistemology that speaks to the hearts and minds of participants in the dialogue of religion and science. (shrink)

This article looks at the relationship between logistical power and the assemblages of sites that constitute modern states. Rather than treating states as centralizing institutions and singular sites of power, we treat them as multi-sited. They gain power by using logistical methods of problem solving, using infrastructures to enforce and depersonalize relations of domination and limit the autonomy of elites. But states necessarily solve diverse problems by different means in multiple locations. So, educating children is not continuous with governing colonies (...) even though both are necessary to nineteenth-century states. For this reason, states use logistical means of coordination to link sites, and they make the power of the state seem unitary even though the exercise of state power is not. (shrink)

To address the burden of maternal morbidity and mortality in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs), research with pregnant women in these settings is increasingly common. Pregnant women in LMIC‐context may experience vulnerability related to giving consent to participate in a clinical trial. To recognize possible layers of vulnerability this study aims to identify factors that influence the decision process towards clinical trial participation of pregnant women in an urban middle‐income setting. This qualitative research used participant observation, in‐depth interviews, and focus (...) group discussion with medical staff and pregnant women eligible for trial participation, at a regional hospital in Accra, Ghana. Besides lack of familiarity with modern scientific concepts, specific factors influencing the decision‐making process were identified. These include a wide power difference between health provider and patient, and a different perception of risk through externalization of responsibility of risk management within a religious context as well as a context shaped by authority. Also, therapeutic misconception was observed. The combination of these factors ensued women to rely on the opinion of the medical professional, rather than being guided by their own motivation to participation. Although being a (pregnant) woman per se should not render the label of being vulnerable, this study shows there are factors that influence the decision process of pregnant woman towards trial participation in a LMIC context that can result in vulnerability. The identification of context‐specific factors that can create vulnerability facilitates adaptation of the design and conduct of research in a culturally competent manner. (shrink)

Humanist and scientific analyses of the Anthropocene concept may be distinctive as a coinvestigation across disciplinary borders. While scientists only in 2023 hypothesized the Anthropocene’s inception in the 1950s (as measured by atomic residue), humanists have for several decades been investigating the concept as a probable reality and argue for its longer chronology. The six books reviewed here identify the early modern period, especially the eighteenth century, as a convincing moment of transition, indicating a longer era of relevant anthropogenic activity. (...) This periodization has important implications for addressing the ongoing environmental crisis, which will require both humanist and scientific knowledge. (shrink)