Seit ihrer Begründung im 18. Jahrhundert war die Ästhetik auch ein Korrektiv der Logik, indem sie die Sinnlichkeit des Menschen - Wahrnehmungen, Gefühle, Erinnerungen sowie deren Ausdruck in Kunst, Literatur und Wissenschaft - in den Blick genommen hat. In diesem Band wird die Vielfalt ästhetischer Perspektiven dokumentiert: Als Gesellschaftskritik und Erkenntnistheorie, als Lehre vom Schönen und Theorie der Kunst ist die Ästhetik nicht wegzudenken, wenn man den Menschen in seiner kulturellen Existenz begreifen möchte.

The recent expansion of online genetic-genealogical networks has been hailed as a development that could break racial taboos in the United States by providing irrefutable evidence of the myriad historical and genetic links—many originating in slavery—connecting white and black families. These predictions are countered, however, by a scholarly literature on “white ignorance,” defined as an active historical project that works to prevent privileged groups from apprehending their links to, and positionality within, systems of racial oppression. This paper mobilizes concepts from (...) the fields of agnotology and epistemic ethics to assess how far genetic-genealogical technologies can contribute to redressing racialized epistemic inequities between slave and slaveholder descendants, by inducing the latter to respond to the former’s kinship claims and give access to data that could help reconstruct their linked family histories. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data that foreground the experiences of African American genealogists, the study outlines the structural and affective dimensions that have converged to enable white ignorance regarding genealogies of slavery and discusses ethical and technical solutions proposed by genealogical practitioners to redress the racialized power dynamics that continue to condition access to, and public acceptance of, family history knowledge relating to slavery. (shrink)

This paper offers observations on people’s lived experience of the food system in Michigan during the early Covid-19 pandemic as an initial critical foray into the everyday pandemic food world. The Covid-19 crisis illuminates a myriad of adaptive food behaviors, as people struggle to address their destabilized lives, including the casual acknowledgement of the pandemic, then anxiety of the unknown, the subsequent new dependency, and the possible emergence of a new normal. The pandemic makes the injustices inherent in the food (...) system apparent across communities, demonstrating that food injustice destabilizes all members of the food system, regardless of their social location. The challenges of eating in a pandemic also reinforce the importance of building a sustainable food system; the challenges of food sovereignty and food sustainability are inextricably linked, and the pandemic lays this bare. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical TraditionSarah B. PomeroyMadeleine M. Henry. Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. 201 pp. Cloth, $29.95.Pericles declared that the best women are those who are known neither for praise nor blame (Thuc. 2.45.2). Despite the invisibility of respectable women in fifth-century Athens, skeletal biographies including the names of (...) their fathers, husbands, sons, and, occasionally, daughters can be constructed. A vignette in Plutarch or a private oration may flesh out the story. Although etiquette discouraged giving the name of a respectable woman while she was alive, she is named in her epitaph. The historian can narrate the entire life of such a woman in a single paragraph.The most famous woman in classical Athens, the only one who rates an entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary2 (Oxford, 1970) and could be the subject of a full-length biography, is the hetaira Aspasia. Yet even a book devoted to Aspasia who is named in multiple sources including comedy, philosophy, history, and biography fills only 130 pages of text, most of which treat post-classical traditions about Aspasia rather than the life of the woman herself.Chapter 1, a mere nine pages about “Aspasia in Greek History,” is the only part of this book that discusses Aspasia’s actual biography. Henry accepts P. J. Bicknell’s suggestion that Aspasia was an upper-class Milesian whose older sister was married to the Alcibiades who became the grandfather of the notorious Alcibiades (AC 51 [1982] 240–50). An orphan, when she was an adolescent Aspasia came to Athens with her sister and brother-in-law. If this reconstruction is accurate, we must wonder why her brother-in-law did not secure a proper marriage for his young sister-in-law, rather than permit her to become Pericles’ concubine, but perhaps an alliance with the first man in Athens was attractive to the elder Alcibiades. Furthermore he had no legal obligation to dower his sister-in-law. Estate planning and heirship strategies probably influenced Pericles, on his part (cf. Plut. Pericles 16.3–4), for he already had legitimate sons born from his first wife and had no need of another full-fledged marriage. Despite the affection with which Pericles treated Aspasia (Plut. Pericles 24.5–6), he does not seem to have made any arrangements for her future after his death. Lysicles, in turn, who is reported to have married Aspasia, probably regarded a connection with her as a “dynastic marriage” linking himself in this way with the deceased [End Page 648] Pericles. Aspasia made the best of her situation, attempting to bridge the gap between notoriety and respectability: she seems to have confined her attentions to only one man at a time and bore sons whose parentage was never doubted.The very existence of Poristes (“Provider”), the son of Aspasia and Lysicles, is questioned by Henry (43) who suggests that word was used of Aspasia herself. I think it is at least as likely that Lysicles chose his son’s name as his own epithet to refer to his fatherly concern for the Athenians, much the way that the names of Themistocles’ children testify to their father’s political interests. Furthermore, although Henry does not refer to the larger sweep of women’s history, Aspasia lived during the Peloponnesian War, a watershed in the history of Athenian women, when on account of the absence of men at war and the desertion of slaves, the luxury of secluding respectable women had to yield to harsh necessity (see Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves [New York, 1975] 66–67). Therefore the traditions that Aspasia lived in the same household with Pericles’ married sons and their wives and that she conversed with married women are believable.In chapter 2, “The Story Told by Comedy,” Henry rejects the testimony of the comic poets, found also in Plutarch (Pericles 24.5), that Aspasia ran a brothel. Yet since her concubinage is evidence of the lack of a dowry, it would have been advantageous for Aspasia to arrange... (shrink)

Identifying the referent of novel words is a complex process that young children do with relative ease. When given multiple objects along with a novel word, children select the most novel item, sometimes retaining the word‐referent link. Prior work is inconsistent, however, on the role of object novelty. Two experiments examine 18‐month‐old children's performance on referent selection and retention with novel and known words. The results reveal a pervasive novelty bias on referent selection with both known and novel names and, (...) across individual children, a negative correlation between attention to novelty and retention of new word‐referent links. A computational model examines possible sources of the bias, suggesting novelty supports in‐the‐moment behavior but not retention. Together, results suggest that when lexical knowledge is weak, attention to novelty drives behavior, but alone does not sustain learning. Importantly, the results demonstrate that word learning may be driven, in part, by low‐level perceptual processes. (shrink)

Books were materially and metaphorically botanical in the early modern period. This article uses The Garden of Cyrus, Thomas Browne’s wide-ranging philosophical tract, to illustrate how the often self-conscious links between books and gardens could operate in epistemologically significant ways. It argues that Browne’s repeated positioning of his book as a garden creates a productive model for aesthetic, theological and scientific experimentation and innovation. The framework of the garden constructs a space in which the foremost, apparently contradictory, models of knowledge (...) associated with the seventeenth-century garden—the analogical approach of the doctrine of signatures and the empirical approach associated with the “new science”—can coexist. Extrapolating from the book of nature to suggest the inherently discursive and rhetorical forms of Browne’s knowledge as well as its limitations, the article concludes by proposing a new spatial model for this kind of coterminous literary and experimental approach: the elaboratory. (shrink)

School gardens and garden-based learning continue to gain great popularity in the United States, and their pedagogical potential, and ability to impact students’ fruit and vegetable consumption and activity levels have been well-documented. Less examined is their potential to be agents of food system reskilling and transformation. Though producer and consumer are inextricably linked in the food system, and deskilling of one directly influences the other, theorists often focus on production-centered and consumption-centered deskilling separately. However, in a school garden, the (...) production/consumption disconnect is erased, by virtue of the design of the site itself and how it is utilized by the actors within it. School gardens provide the critical component of education in alternative food networks, and contribute to the producer/consumer reskilling that is a necessary part of food system transformation. We conducted a case study of an established school garden program during its transition from autonomous non-profit to official, district-funded program of a rural school district in the Midwest. By participating in the full “seed to plate” life cycle of a garden crop, students in the garden were actively involved in the reconnection of producer and consumer, while educators were fostering in students an appreciation for fresh, healthy foods and actively challenging the “McDonaldization” of both students’ diets and education. Based upon these findings, we argue that school gardens in rural areas could leverage the dominant role of rural America in developing and shifting food system paradigms. (shrink)

In this article, we describe the notion of dialogue move intended as the minimal unit for the analysis of dialogues. We propose an approach to discourse analysis based on the pragmatic idea that the joint dialogical intentions are also co-constructed through the individual moves and the higher-order communicative intentions that the interlocutors pursue. In this view, our goal is to bring to light the pragmatic structure of a dialogue as a complex net of dialogical goals, which represent the communicative purposes (...) that the interlocutors intend to achieve through their utterances. Dialogue moves are shown to represent the necessary interpretive link between the general description of the dialogical context or type and the syntactical analysis of the sentences expressed by the individual utterances. In the concluding part of this article, we show how this method can be used and further developed for analyzing various types of real-life dialogues, outlining possible uses and lines of empirical research based thereon. (shrink)

The remodel the structure of chromatin (RSC) nucleosome remodeling complex is a conserved chromatin regulator with roles in chromatin organization, especially over nucleosome depleted regions therefore functioning in gene expression. Recent reports in Saccharomyces cerevisiae have identified specificities in RSC activity toward certain types of nucleosomes. RSC has now been shown to preferentially evict nucleosomes containing the histone variant H2A.Z in vitro. Furthermore, biochemical activities of distinct RSC complexes has been found to differ when their nucleosome substrate is partially unraveled. (...) Mammalian BAF complexes, the homologs of yeast RSC and SWI/SNF complexes, are also linked to nucleosomes with H2A.Z, but this relationship may be complex and extent of conservation remains to be determined. The interplay of remodelers with specific nucleosome substrates and regulation of remodeler outcomes by nucleosome composition are tantalizing questions given the wave of structural data emerging for RSC and other SWI/SNF family remodelers. (shrink)

This article discusses ways in which feminist scholars draw upon agency in relation to the complex subject matter of women's engagement in so-called `fundamentalist' movements. While postcolonial critiques generally reject the term `fundamentalism', and in particular the way it is linked to Islam, feminist perspectives have a vested interest in looking at contemporary developments in different religions from the perspective of women's lives. Against the patriarchal reputations of fundamentalist movements, feminist scholarship increasingly tends to emphasize women's agency, thereby effectively breaking (...) with widespread notions of `false consciousness'. After briefly discussing two such examples, the question is raised whether this emphasis on agency does not risk evacuating structural constraints in the construction of subjectivity, thus neutralizing the productive tension, at the heart of women's studies, between structure and agency. In conclusion, the article joins other calls for new ways of thinking about subjectivity. (shrink)

Alexithymia is a dimensional trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings and an externally oriented thinking (EOT) style. Here, we explored interrelationships between alexithymia and measures assessing how individuals process and regulate their responses to environmental and body-based cues. Young adults (N= 201) completed self-report questionnaires assessing alexithymia, sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), interoceptive accuracy (IA), sensory processing styles, and current levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Whereas EOT was related to low orienting sensitivity, problems with emotional appraisal (difficulties identifying (...) feelings/difficulties describing feelings) were related to heightened sensory sensitivity. In addition, features of SPS improved the prediction of alexithymia above and beyond that accounted for by IA. We suggest that EOT is linked to problems maintaining a representation of one’s emotions in working memory and that low IA and problems with emotional appraisal are linked to atypicalities in sensory processing that may impact embodiment. A latent profile analysis revealed five classes of individuals distinguished by the relative strength of different alexithymic traits and by differences in IA and sensory processing styles. The classes identified included two lexithymic, one modal, and two alexithymic groups, showing different susceptibilities to SPS. Overall, our findings lend support to the view that alexithymia is associated with atypicalities in both bottom–up and top–down processes that impact emotion processing and regulation. They also raise the possibility that individuals with different alexithymia subtypes may differ with regard to a range of factors, including not only SPS but also early life experiences, mental health outcomes, and susceptibility to various personality disorders. (shrink)

To ensure accurate chromosome segregation during mitosis, the spindle checkpoint monitors chromosome alignment on the mitotic spindle. Indjeian and colleagues have investigated the precise role of the shugoshin 1 protein (Sgo1p) in this process in budding yeast.1 The Sgo proteins were originally identified as highly conserved proteins that protect cohesion at centromeres during the first meiotic division. Together with other recent findings,2 the study highlighted here has identified Sgo1 as a component that informs the mitotic spindle checkpoint when spindle tension (...) is perturbed. This discovery has provided a molecular link between sister chromatid cohesion and tension‐sensing at the kinetochore–microtubule interface. BioEssays 27:588–591, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper discusses the contribution of Madame Du Châtelet to the reception of Newtonianism in France prior to her translation of Newton’s Principia. It focuses on her Institutions de physique, a work normally considered for its contribution to the reception of Leibniz in France. By comparing the different editions of the Institutions, I argue that her interest in Newton antedated her interest in Leibniz, and that she did not see Leibniz’s metaphysics as incompatible with Newtonian science. Her Newtonianism can be (...) seen to be in the course of development between 1738 and 1742 and it was shaped by contemporary French debates and the achievement of French Newtonians like Maupertuis in confirming his theories. Her Institutions therefore is linked to the same drive to disseminate Newtonianism undertaken by popularisations such as Voltaire’s Elements de la philosophie de Newton and Algarotti’s Newtonianismo per le dame.Author Keywords: Emilie du Châtelet; Isaac Newton; Voltaire; French reception of Newtonianism. (shrink)

Our paper contributes to emerging management research on the effects of societal inequality. It aims to study the relationship between societal-level inequality and perceived unequal HR practices within organizations based on relationships which we term “relation-based inequality” (RBI). We further examine the moderating effect of country corruption on the RBI-employee commitment link. Thus, whereas previous research has looked at single countries, there is still much to know about societal effects of inequality and corruption on employee perceptions and attitudes at work (...) across countries. By surveying 691employees from five countries and using country-level indicators we take a first step in this direction, and establish that inequality (income, health and education) is linked to higher levels of relation-based HR practices. We also show that the effect of RBI is different for continuance, affective and normative commitment, and contingent on country corruption levels. (shrink)

In this article, we suggest that attending to the roles of heritage and territory could help reshape local food systems in the US: first, by incorporating more producer voices and visions into the conversation; and second, by considering more deeply the characteristics of the places where food is produced. Using the Wisconsin artisanal cheese network as a case study, we have traced how artisanal producers frame their collective heritage and links to their territory. They describe a heritage that includes a (...) cultivation of embedded, “situated” agricultural knowledge(s) and a commitment to specific quality practices as well as a connection to terroir—the specific ecologies and social contexts of their farm or region. We argue that their articulation of this heritage and terroir is both an emergent, ongoing process of adapting to changing market, cultural, and geographic conditions and an effort to recover valued traditions and practices and (re)connect to specific places. (shrink)

With more countries implementing Open Notes, the practice of providing patients with unhindered access to their clinical visit notes, research on this practice is finally increasing. Many studies report positive findings, especially around self-reported outcomes, such as feeling more in control of one’s care, increased medication adherence and a strengthened patient–doctor relationship. 1 However, comparatively less research has been done on the potential ramifications that may also arise from Open Notes. Blease’s recent article underscores this and demonstrates why Open Notes (...) must also be considered in terms of nocebo effects, negative side effects that arise from negative expectations. 2 The article presents a compelling and well-thought-out argument for how nocebo effects may vary across different populations by linking patient–clinician communication inequalities with and by presenting preliminary evidence of nocebo effects. Blease’s argument does not detract from Open Notes, but rather takes a balanced approach by imploring us... (shrink)

A child’s death is a profound loss for mothers and affects hundreds of thousands of women. Mothers report inconsolable and progressive grief that is distinct from depression and impacts daily emotions and functions. The brain mechanisms responsible for this relatively common and profound mental health problem are unclear, hampering its clinical recognition and care. In an initial exploration of this condition, we used resting state functional MRI (fMRI) scans to examine functional connectivity in key circuits, and task-based fMRI to examine (...) brain network activity in grieving mothers in response to pictures of their deceased child and as well as recognizable deceased celebrities and unfamiliar individuals. We compared nine mothers who had lost an adult child and aged-matched control mothers with a living child of a similar age. Additionally, we collected diffusion imaging scans to probe structural connectivity and complemented the imaging studies with neuropsychological assessments. Increased functional activation in Ventral Attention/Salience Networks accompanied by a reduced activation in the medial prefrontal cortex in response to the deceased child’s picture robustly distinguished the grieving mothers from controls. Heightened resting-state functional connectivity between the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) and the amygdala distinguished the grieving mothers from the controls and correlated with subjective grief severity. Structurally, maternal grief and its severity were associated with alterations in corticolimbic white matter tracts. Finally, grieving mothers performed worse than controls on neuropsychological tests of learning, memory, and executive function, linked with grief severity. Reduced activation in cortical regions inhibiting emotions and changes in the PVT circuitry—a region involved in long-term emotional memories and decision making under conflict—distinguish grieving mothers from controls. Notably, the magnitude of neurobiological changes correlates with the subjective severity of grief. Together, these new discoveries delineate a prevalent and under-recognized mental health syndrome and chart a path for its appreciation and care. (shrink)

Essays explore the significance of Julia Kristeva’s concept of intimate revolt for social and political philosophy. Over the last twenty years, French philosopher, psychoanalyst, and novelist Julia Kristeva has explored how global crises threaten people’s ability to revolt. In a context of widespread war, deepening poverty, environmental catastrophes, and rising fundamentalisms, she argues that a revival of inner psychic experience is necessary and empowering. “Intimate revolt” has become a central concept in Kristeva’s critical repertoire, framing and permeating her understanding of (...) power, meaning, and identity. New Forms of Revolt brings together ten essays on this aspect of Kristeva’s work, addressing contemporary social and political issues like immigration and cross-cultural encounters, colonial and postcolonial imaginations, racism and artistic representation, healthcare and social justice, the spectacle of global capitalism, and new media. “This book is important for Kristeva scholars, as it expands and deepens areas of her work that have been dismissed by her critics. Further, it links Kristeva’s philosophy to historical philosophers, contemporaries, and how her philosophy applies to pressing problems today. All of the essays are well done and valuable.” — Danielle Poe, author of Maternal Activism: Mothers Confronting Injustice. (shrink)

A common way to understand memory structures in the cognitive sciences is as a cognitive map​. Cognitive maps are representational systems organized by dimensions shared with physical space. The appeal to these maps begins literally: as an account of how spatial information is represented and used to inform spatial navigation. Invocations of cognitive maps, however, are often more ambitious; cognitive maps are meant to scale up and provide the basis for our more sophisticated memory capacities. The extension is not meant (...) to be metaphorical, but the way in which these richer mental structures are supposed to remain map-like is rarely made explicit. Here we investigate this missing link, asking: how do cognitive maps represent non-spatial information?​ We begin with a survey of foundational work on spatial cognitive maps and then provide a comparative review of alternative, non-spatial representational structures. We then turn to several cutting-edge projects that are engaged in the task of scaling up cognitive maps so as to accommodate non-spatial information: first, on the spatial-isometric approach​ , encoding content that is non-spatial but in some sense isomorphic to spatial content; second, on the ​ abstraction approach​ , encoding content that is an abstraction over first-order spatial information; and third, on the ​ embedding approach​ , embedding non-spatial information within a spatial context, a prominent example being the Method-of-Loci. Putting these cases alongside one another reveals the variety of options available for building cognitive maps, and the distinctive limitations of each. We conclude by reflecting on where these results take us in terms of understanding the place of cognitive maps in memory. (shrink)

This research uses data from 18 countries to investigate cross-national differences in the effect that men’s income relative to their spouses has on their involvement in housework. The author hypothesizes that gender expectations will be more salient in men’s household bargaining in contexts where the traditionally masculine and breadwinning-related activities of paid work and earning income are highly valued. Results from analyses of International Social Survey Program data support this hypothesis: Men’s behavior is more consistent with a gender deviance neutralization (...) account than an exchange-bargaining account in cultural contexts where paid work and income are highly valued. The analyses point to the role that expectations about masculinity play in men’s involvement in housework and highlight the significance of cultural context for understanding the link between paid and unpaid work. (shrink)

As the number of people affected by dementia increases rapidly, dementia has been transformed into an epidemic which endangers global health and wealth, and many populations are now living in what Jain terms a time of prognosis, in fear of the disease. Through its strong association with ageing and memory loss, dementia is conceived of as a linear decline into loss of self and death, and those with dementia as other. More significantly, imagined as a threat that signifies both a (...) loss of able-bodied workforce and a large population dependent on care and support, dementia inevitably feeds into the ‘crisis-of-care’ narrative that is prominent in many ageing societies. With one of the fastest ageing populations in the world, and an extremely low birth rate, the dementia prognosis is particularly acute in Japan and dementia is strongly linked to the idea of a ‘care crisis’. This situation has produced an increasing number of cultural representations of dementia and care and this paper considers three of these cultural texts, all rooted in the historical and cultural contexts in which they were produced: the novel The Twilight Years; the film Memories of Tomorrow; and the comic book Pecoross’ Mother and Her Days. The analysis concentrates upon their representations of care, seeing this as a space where the ethical relationship between self and other can be negotiated and where time with dementia can be imagined and re-imagined. The analysis of these texts from a feminist ethics perspective demonstrates the potential of popular and creative representations to interrogate and potentially expand the meanings of dementia, ageing and living in prognosis. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The political works of Adam Blackwood offer a powerful defence of absolute monarchy, and one which explicitly sets political power within a religious framework. Critiquing the resistance theories of his contemporaries, Blackwood was sceptical about the political value of natural law and of any appeal to popular sovereignty, at least in contemporary Europe. Blackwood was deeply troubled by the way Christianity was being used to justify resistance, often in Protestant texts that aligned Christianity and natural law, and he insisted (...) that true Christianity taught obedience. Though he has often been likened to his contemporary Jean Bodin, a closer examination of Blackwood’s writing reveals significant differences, especially on the linked issues of natural law, the value of historical argument, and religion. For Blackwood, sovereign power in general had to be underpinned by religion, the one constant in a world of diverse and mutable social practices, and its particular, local manifestation had to be understood historically, as the product of conquest and force. Aware of the potential tensions between Catholic Christianity and monarchical authority, Blackwood also developed a distinctive piety in an attempt to bolster the alliance he advocated between religious and political authority. (shrink)

Hume claims that judgment is the active device through which beliefs influence emotions. Without such a device, Hume reasons that beliefs and emotions would not in­teract at all, because beliefs are always about ideas while emotions are reactions to events in the world. Judgment is the link between the theoretical and the applied aspects of the human being, and is, if Hume is right, crucial for any system of philosophical counseling to be successful. No client would attempt to modify his (...) or her beliefs, or reflect on the thoughts of philosophers, without some expectation of an emotional payoff. The counseling process hinges on a link between reason and the emotions, but what is the nature of this link? Since judgment is itself (if we are lucky) a primarily rational process, the question of the connection between reason and the emotions seems to be left unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between reason and the emotions by taking judgment to be judgment of truth or falsity. Once a belief is deemed to be true by the client, an assessment is made as to how this truth will affect the client’s well being. I argue that this is true even if the client is severely depressed or believes that he/she does not deserve good treatment or good fortune, or seems otherwise unconcerned with his/her well being. If the truth is judged to be a threat to the well being of the client, an emotional reaction ensues. Likewise, if the truth is judged to be a benefit to the client, an emotional reaction will occur. I argue further that even though different truths will be taken as either benefits or threats depending on the client, the ultimate interpretation of the true statement as either benefit or threat will automatically generate an emotional response. If this ontology is correct, then the philosophical counselor will take as his/her primary role 1) a practitioner of epistemology (determining when beliefs are justified and true) and 2) a trainer in interpretation (determining when beliefs are to be interpreted as blessings or threats.). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and DanceSarah H. WattsElizabeth Mackinlay. Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and Dance (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007).Elizabeth Mackinlay, a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, documents her unique pedagogical approaches and ways of thinking about the teaching and learning (...) of music and dance in her book, Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and Dance. A university-level anthropology course dealing with the music and dance traditions of Australia’s Yanyuwa women was the setting for this “ethnographic case study” (p. 17). Through this course, Mackinlay sought to help students connect Indigenous Australian performance practices to social and political issues while fostering awareness of gender issues and learning processes within Indigenous Australian music and dance performance contexts. These objectives were met through a distinctive approach—by disposing of the strict lecture class format and bringing the field into the classroom. Disturbances and Dislocations documents the experiences of Mackinlay, her students, and several Yanyuwa women who come together as part of the course to engage in hands-on, authentic music and dance exchanges that bring the Yanyuwa women’s voices to the fore. [End Page 90]From the very beginning of the book, Mackinlay highlights her unique point of view as author of this work. She is a “white, middle class, educated woman” (p. 15) researching the experiences of and teaching university-level courses relating to Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a cultural background that is not her own. She is a political, educational, and ethnic outsider to the groups of peoples she studies. The wife of an Aboriginal man and mother to Aboriginal children, she is afforded links to the Yanyuwa people that provide her with a measure of status as a family member within the community. The dichotomy of being at once an insider and an outsider in the Yanyuwa community lends a fascinating level of complexity to Mackinlay’s exploration and analysis of the presence and impact of Yanyuwa culture-bearers in her classroom. The warmth, honesty, and openness with which she addresses her unique role in this learning exchange is engaging to the reader, and allows her personal situation to add humanity and life to the words on the page.The eight-chapter book commences with an introductory section that reflects upon her personal experiences in engaging in scholarship relating to Indigenous Australian issues. Additionally, the reader is introduced to the site of the ethnography, her classroom, in which her personal and professional lives intertwine. The next chapter further establishes the context of the ethnography by discussing a pilot project that laid foundations for the main study presented in the book. In this 1999 pilot project, a group of Mackinlay’s students, largely white women, participated in hands-on music and dance workshops under the guidance of Mackinlay and several Yanyuwa women. Student responses from this pilot project indicated that they felt awkward at times, but valued the time spent with the Yanyuwa guests and wished for more of these types of class sessions. Mackinlay determined that this cultural exchange could be even richer if more class time could be dedicated to it, an important observation for her own work, and also for others who seek to furnish cultural encounters for students.The fourth chapter delves into a theoretical discussion of the meanings of the inclusion of the study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in contemporary classroom settings. Issues of political positioning, representation of Indigenous voices, identity, and “speaking from and of in-between spaces” (p. 64) as one with a foothold in both white and Indigenous worlds are all addressed, engaging the reader in Mackinaly’s own complex journey of coming to terms with her own teaching and scholarly pursuits. It is refreshing to the reader that Mackinlay acknowledges her unique viewpoint as facilitator of this course and this research study. While she is an authority in this realm, she highlights her own backgrounds and biases, her individual lens... (shrink)

Identifying links between human personality and attributed robot personality is a relatively new area of human–robot interaction. In this paper we report on an exploratory study that investigates human and robot personality traits as part of a human–robot interaction trial. The trials took place in a simulated living-room scenario involving 28 participants and a human-sized robot of mechanical appearance. Participants interacted with the robot in two task scenarios relevant to a ‘robot in the home’ context. It was found that participants’ (...) evaluations of their own personality traits are related to their evaluations of the robot’s personality traits. The statistical analysis of questionnaire data yields several statistically significant results: Participants do not tend to assign their personality traits to match the robots’, For individual personality traits, participants rated themselves as having stronger personality characteristics compared to the robot, Specific significant correlations were found between participants’ and robot personality traits, and Significant group differences for participant gender, age and technological background are highlighted. The results are discussed in light of developing personalized robot companions. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Cambridge Platonists had stronger philosophical links to Scottish moral philosophy than the received history allows. Building on the work of Michael Gill who has demonstrated links between ethical thought of More, Cudworth and Smith and moral sentimentalism, I outline some links between the Cambridge Platonists and Scottish thinkers in both the seventeenth century and the eighteenth century. I then discuss Hume's knowledge of Cudworth, in Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, The (...) Natural History of Religion and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. (shrink)

Until recently, the problem of traumatic brain injury in sports and the problem of performance enhancement via hormone replacement have not been seen as related issues. However, recent evidence suggests that these two problems may actually interact in complex and previously underappreciated ways. A body of recent research has shown that traumatic brain injuries, at all ranges of severity, have a negative effect upon pituitary function, which results in diminished levels of several endogenous hormones, such as growth hormone and gonadotropin. (...) This is a cause for concern for many popular sports that have high rates of concussion, a mild form of TBI. Emerging research suggests that hormone replacement therapy is an effective treatment for TBI-related hormone deficiency. However, many athletic organizations ban or severely limit the use of hormone replacing substances because many athletes seek to use them solely for the purposes of performance enhancement. Nevertheless, in the light of the research linking traumatic brain injury to hypopituitarism, this paper argues that athletic organizations’ policies and attitudes towards hormone replacement therapy should change. We defend two claims. First, because of the connection between TBI and pituitary function, it is likely many more athletes than previously acknowledged suffer from hormone deficiency and thus could benefit from hormone replacement therapy. Second, athletes’ hormone levels should be tested more rigorously and frequently with an emphasis on monitoring TBI and TBI-related issues, rather than simply monitoring policy violations. (shrink)

Henri Bergson is generally recognized as one of the most influential philosophers in the history of historical avant-gardism. Nevertheless, it has been widely neglected that Bergson’s philosophy also played a crucial role for the radically new concept of art that Marcel Duchamp developed based on his critical attitude towards the avant-gardes. First and foremost, this is apparent in view of Duchamp’s paintings The Passage from Virgin to Bride and Bride of 1912, as they both feature an idea of transition laying (...) the foundation for his Large Glass and associated works. But there is also another cross-connection that one wouldn’t expect at the first glance. As this paper argues, Duchamp paradoxically also draws on Bergson’s ideas with his ready-mades, pointing to that productive interplay of intuition and intellect, which Bergson defined as a vital source for any kind of imagination and agency. Thus, Duchamp’s idea of choosing his ready-mades in terms of a “rendezvous with fate,” which he also reflected in his writing experiments The and Rendezvous, can be closely linked to his declared interest in Bergson’s “primacy of change,” leading him to explore the idea of “plastic duration.”. (shrink)

Increased technological and pharmacological interventions in patient care when patient outcomes are uncertain have been linked to the escalation in moral and ethical dilemmas experienced by health care providers in acute care settings. Health care research has shown that facilities that are able to attract and retain nursing staff in a competitive environment and provide high quality care have the capacity for nurses to process and resolve moral and ethical dilemmas. This article reports on the findings of a systematic review (...) of the empirical literature (1980 — February 2007) on the effects of unresolved moral distress and poor ethical climate on nurse turnover. Articles were sought to answer the review question: Does unresolved moral distress and a poor organizational ethical climate increase nurse turnover? Nine articles met the criteria of the review process. Although the prevailing sentiment was that poor ethical climate and moral distress caused staff turnover, definitive answers to the review question remain elusive because there are limited data that confidently support this statement. (shrink)

People with higher levels of emotional intelligence (EI: adaptive emotional traits, skills and abilities) typically achieve more positive life outcomes, such as psychological wellbeing, educational attainment, and job-related success. Although the underpinning mechanisms linking EI with those outcomes are largely unknown, it has been suggested that EI may work as a ‘stress buffer’. Theoretically, when faced with a stressful situation, emotionally intelligent individuals should show a more adaptive response than those with low EI, such as reduced reactivity (less mood deterioration, (...) less physiological arousal), and faster recovery once the threat has passed. A growing number of studies have begun to investigate that hypothesis in respect to EI measured as both an ability (AEI) and trait (TEI), but results are unclear. To test the ‘stress-buffering’ function of EI, we systematically reviewed experimental studies that explored the relationship between both types of EI and acute stress reactivity or recovery. By searching 4 databases, we identified 45 eligible studies. Results showed that EI was only adaptive in certain contexts, and that findings differed according to stressor type, and how EI was measured. In terms of stress reactivity, TEI related to less mood deterioration during sports-based stressors (e.g. competitions), physical discomfort (e.g. dental procedure), and cognitive stressors (e.g. memory tasks), but did not appear as helpful in other contexts (e.g. speeches). Furthermore, effects of TEI on physiological stress responses, such as heart rate, were inconsistent. Effects of AEI on subjective and objective stress reactivity were often non-significant, with high levels detrimental in some cases. However, data suggest that both higher AEI and TEI relate to faster recovery from acute stress. In conclusion, results provide mixed support for the stress-buffering effect of EI. Limitations and quality of studies are also discussed. Findings could have implications for EI training programmes. (shrink)

A paradigm shift in public health and medicine has broadened the field from a singular focus on the ill effects of negative states and psychopathology to an expanded view that examines protective psychological assets that may promote improved physical health and longevity. We summarize recent evidence of the link between psychological well-being and physical health, with particular attention to outcomes of mortality and chronic disease incidence and progression. Within this evolving discipline there remain controversies and lessons to be learned. We (...) discuss measurement-related challenges, concerns about the quality of the evidence, and other shortcomings in the field, along with a brief discussion of hypothesized biobehavioral mechanisms involved. Finally, we suggest next steps to move the field forward. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the question of the ways in which pleasure, as associated specifically with eating food, can help us understand the philosophical complexities of pleasure and how it can be neither purely physical nor purely intellectual. Philosophers have argued for centuries that intellectual pleasure is superior to physical pleasure, but here we make it clear that they are inextricably linked and interdependent on one another. We appeal to Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, but rely heavily on the ideals (...) of Epicurus for an understanding of the relationship between moderation and pleasure. In the end, we argue for a balanced approach to eating that can serve as a model for both physical, sexual, and intellectual pleasures. (shrink)

Around fifteen years before the chemical substance alumina could be decomposed in the laboratory, it was identified as a compound and predicted to contain a new element called ‘aluminium’. Using this episode from early nineteenth-century chemistry as a case study for the use of analogical reasoning in science, this paper examines how chemists relied on chemical classifications for the prediction of aluminium. I argue that chemists supplemented direct evidence of chemical decomposition with analogical inferences in order to evaluate the composition (...) of substances. Since they were established on the basis of relevant similarities in chemical properties, classifications were taken to reflect so-called ‘chemical analogies’ between substances. In combination with the knowledge that analogous properties indicated similarities in composition, this enabled chemists to infer the composition of experimentally indecomposable substances by analogy. The trust in such analogical inferences, even if they could not be confirmed through experiment, was justified by pragmatic considerations. Whereas the possibility of decomposing a substance depended on the available laboratory techniques, chemical analogies were thought to last independently of internal composition. It was therefore more practical to keep well-established classes of substances together rather than separate them on the basis of experimental results that might evolve as new techniques were developed. Besides highlighting the links between analogical reasoning and classification, this paper also illustrates the importance of analogy in the evaluation of elementary nature in the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

This reply addresses observations of Drs. Larsen, Kruse, and Sweeny, and Scherer in their reviews of our published work on the link between positive psychological assets and outcomes of physical health. Inspired by Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative we argue that the interplay between the emotion spectrum and health is likely a complex and heterogeneous amalgam of known and yet unidentified elements melding at the individual level. When exploring the emotion–health link, researchers are challenged to grapple with complex system models by (...) considering multiple hierarchies of information that span individual-level factors, genetic blueprints, and cultural and environmental context. Research is needed to more fully elucidate the mechanism through which emotion influences health, with careful consideration of differences across race/ethnicity, culture, and context. (shrink)

While cloning, stem cells, and regenerative medicine are often imagined in a futurial idiom—as expectations, hype, hope and promises—this article approaches the remaking of genealogy in such contexts from a historical route. Through a series of somewhat disparate historical connections linking Australian sheep to the development of clinical IVF and the cloning of Dolly at the Roslin Institute in Scotland in 1996, this article explores the linkages through which agriculture, embryology, and reproductive biomedicine are thickly intertwined. Key to this examination (...) is not only the history of experimental sheep breeding, and its somewhat unexpectedly genealogical connections to national identity , but also the re-emergence of a distinctive frontier ethos in the context of assisted conception, and later human embryonic stem cell derivation. I have set this scene of genealogical interconnection against the criss-crossing traffic between Britain and Australia, and the wool trade, to emphasise the importance of global, as well as local, connections in the bloodlines of animals such as Dolly. In sum, this article examines the idea of the ‘biological frontier’ by exploring its histories as a means to offset the assumption that this frequently encountered idiom describes a future that is, or must be, by definition, unknown and unknowable. (shrink)

Disney’s animated villains have recently changed to show less conventionally villainous traits: They look and express themselves more like sympathetic characters, and they are usually only outed as villains late in the plot. This shift has prompted much academic com­mentary on the psychological and cultural significance of Disney’s new villains. We add to the existing literature on Disney’s new villains in two ways. First, we analyze shifts in the vocalizations of villains between the 1990s and 2010s. Second, we integrate this (...) analysis in a biocultural account of Disney’s shifting overall representations of villains. We argue that while Disney has long employed evolutionarily explicable cues to villainy, such as a foreign accent and an unappealing exterior, the company is now reacting to challenges to norms of social representation that proscribe the linking of such overt traits with immorality. Con­sequently, recent Disney films do not employ socially stigmatizing cues. However, Disney continues to employ nonstigmatizing cues, such as evil laughter and abiding anger, because these cues foster antipathy in audiences at no sociomoral risk. (shrink)

This essay examines Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) in light of new archival findings on the medical practices of Dr. James Norcom (Dr. Flint in the narrative). While critics have sharply defined the feminist politics of Jacobs’s sexual victimization and resistance, they have overlooked her medical experience in slavery and her participation in reform after escape. I argue that Jacobs uses the rhetoric of a woman-led health reform movement underway during the 1850s to persuade (...) her readers to end slavery. This essay reconstructs both contexts, revealing that Jacobs links enslaved women’s physical and sexual vulnerability with her female readers’ fears of male doctors’ threats to modesty and of their standard bleed-and-purge treatments. Jacobs illustrates that slavery damages women’s health as much as heroic medicine, and thus merits the political activism of her readers. Specifically, Jacobs dramatizes her conflicts with the rapacious physician-master at moments that are crucial to women’s health: marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood. Ultimately, this essay advances a new understanding of the role of health reform in social change: it galvanized other movements such as women’s rights and abolition, particularly around issues of bodily autonomy for women and African Americans. (shrink)

Although environmental ethicists often focus on applying ethics to policy, the ethics embedded in policy documents such as Agenda 21 are also significant. Though largely ignored by ethicists after early responses to the document focused on intrinsic value, Agenda 21's ethics are particularly valuable for their ability to resonate with many people and link politics, technical studies, and ethics. For instance, their use draws attention to the need to ethically evaluate sustainability indexes and identifies limitations of existing indexes. At a (...) broad level, this study of the ethics of Agenda 21 also suggests that the ethics of international environmental policy documents deserves more attention. (shrink)

Gils-Schmidt and Salloch recognise that human and climate health are inextricably linked, and that mitigating healthcare-associated climate harms is essential for protecting human health.1 They argue that physicians have a duty to consider how their own practices contribute to climate change, including during their interactions with patients. Acknowledging the potential for conflicts between this duty and the provision of individual patient care, they propose the application of Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian account of practical identities to help navigate such scenarios. In this commentary, (...) we argue that by focusing attention on this physician–patient level, the authors overlook the complexity of climate change, both within the healthcare sector and beyond. We recognise the importance of individual agency in tackling this issue, and we also recognise that the authors do briefly acknowledge the importance of considering these broader complexities; however, we emphasise the need for climate and health discussions/action to be situated in a wider framework of systemic change. Our concern is that overemphasis on patient-level interactions risks normalising the prioritisation of individual-level approaches to addressing climate change, detracting from such a broader approach. Physician training emphasises the need for trust, confidentiality and shared decision-making in the doctor–patient relationship. …. (shrink)

There have always been some uninhabitable places, but in the last century human beings have produced many more of them. These anti-landscapes have proliferated to include the sandy wastes of what was once the Aral Sea, severely polluted irrigated lands, open pit mines, blighted nuclear zones, coastal areas inundated by rising seas, and many others. _The Anti-Landscape_ examines the emergence of such sites, how they have been understood, and how some of them have been recovered for habitation. The anti-landscape refers (...) both to artistic and literary representations and to specific places that no longer sustain life. This history includes T. S. Eliot’s _Wasteland_ and Cormac McCarthy’s _The Road_ as well as air pollution, recycled railway lines, photography and landfills. It links theories of aesthetics, politics, tourism, history, geography, and literature into the new synthesis of the environmental humanities. _The Anti-Landscape_ provides an interdisciplinary approach that moves beyond the false duality of nature vs. culture, and beyond diagnosis and complaint to the recuperation of damaged sites into our complex heritage. _This is the first volume in the new series _Studies in Environmental Humanities_._. (shrink)

Worry proneness is a transdiagnostic trait that predicts increased negative affect (NA), potentially in the service of preventing negative emotional contrasts. Although discrete types of NA vary along the dimension of arousal, the extent to which trait worry predicts high vs. low arousal forms of NA in daily life is unclear. This distinction has important implications for conceptualising how worry may perturb adaptive emotionality in various disorders. The present study (not pre-registered) aimed to isolate the effects of trait worry on (...) high (N = 88) and low (N = 122) arousal NA in daily life using ecological momentary assessment while controlling for potential physical and psychological confounds. Participants were assessed for trait worry and depressive symptoms at baseline then reported their affect, heart rate, and exercise three times per day for one week. Multilevel models revealed that trait worry predicted both increased high and low arousal NA after controlling for momentary heart rate, daily exercise, and depression. In contrast, baseline depressive symptoms only predicted low arousal NA in daily life. Findings support the contrast avoidance model of worry and suggest that worry is linked to increased state NA in daily life, independent of arousal. (shrink)

Food is a powerful symbol in the struggle to transition to a more sustainable pathway since the food choices citizens make have deep environmental and social impacts within their communities and around the world. Using transformative learning theory, this research explored the learning that took place among individual adults who consumed goods directly from local organic producers, and how this behavior affected their worldview. Learning was classified as instrumental, communicative, or transformative. Ultimately, we considered if the learning created lasting change, (...) directed toward a more sustainable society, among learners. Three different models of producer/consumer interfaces located in Atlantic Canada were considered: a market-garden operation, an education and outreach center, and a community shared agriculture project. It was found that all participants experienced some form of learning, either instrumental or communicative, through their participation in organic agriculture. Closing the gap between producer and consumer through direct contact with the farmer at a market, visiting the farm, or participating in food production oneself is both a desirable step in reaching a more sustainable lifestyle and a powerful learning tool in linking the consumer to a host of other environmental and social issues. (shrink)

Personal space is the distance that people tend to maintain from others during daily life in a largely unconscious manner. For humans, personal space-related behaviors represent one form of non-verbal social communication, similar to facial expressions and eye contact. Given that the changes in social behavior and experiences that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, including “social distancing” and widespread social isolation, may have altered personal space preferences, we investigated this possibility in two independent samples. First, we compared the size of (...) personal space measured before the onset of the pandemic to its size during the pandemic in separate groups of subjects. Personal space size was significantly larger in those assessed during the onset of the pandemic. Lastly, we found that the practice of social distancing and perceived risk of being infected with COVID-19 were linked to this personal space enlargement during the pandemic. Taken together, these findings suggest that personal space boundaries expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic independent of actual infection risk level. As the day-to-day effects of the pandemic subside, personal space preferences may provide one index of recovery from the psychological effects of this crisis. (shrink)

Responsible innovation is gathering momentum as an academic and policy debate linking science and society. Advocates of RI in research policy argue that scientific research should be opened up at an early stage so that many actors and issues can steer innovation trajectories. If this is done, they suggest, new technologies will be more responsible in different ways, better aligned with what society wants, and mistakes of the past will be avoided. This paper analyses the dynamics of RI in policy (...) and practice and makes recommendations for future development. More specifically, we draw on the theory of ‘trading zones’ developed by Peter Galison and use it to analyse two related processes: the development and inclusion of RI in research policy at the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ; the implementation of RI in relation to the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project. Our analysis reveals an RI trading zone comprised of three quasi-autonomous traditions of the research domain – applied science, social science and research policy. It also shows how language and expertise are linking and coordinating these traditions in ways shaped by local conditions and the wider context of research. Building on such insights, we argue that a sensible goal for RI policy and practice at this stage is better local coordination of those involved and we suggest ways how this might be achieved. (shrink)