This article argues that the common law constitution can be thought of as the working out of a tradition within which notions of gender, national identity and citizenship are conveyed and secured. It looks at the making and interpretation of Commonwealth Caribbean Constitutions in the latter half of the twentieth century. It shows how the language of the common law constitution was employed to bolster the competence of West Indian male nationalists to govern and to legitimize measured progress for women. (...) The article also explores the fundamental role played by common law constitutionalism in the conceptualization of Caribbean constitutions as evolutionary and the veneration of ordinary existing laws as an expression of valuable norms about gender relations. Narratives of continuity as well as discontinuity are identified with the Caribbean common law constitution. As judicial decisions on gender equality become more liberal, problematic earlier decisions are categorized as ‘badly decided’, signifying a clean break from the past and the abandonment of harmful practices. This article claims that these narratives of discontinuity are associated with the conventional faith in the common law's capacity for change and that they substantially conceal the force and persistence of gender asymmetries in Caribbean societies and the ideologies that have enabled and sustained them. (shrink)

Reflections on a contemporary issue relating to Catholic higher education in the United States at a time of anxiety and anguish for higher education everywhere.

I aim to explode a famous thesis about “the rise of fictionality,” argued in an essay of that title by Catherine Gallagher. I also have in mind related claims that the eighteenth or the nineteenth century first distinguished fiction from nonfiction or first differentiated literature from other modes of discourse. Gallagher places the rise of fictionality exactly where Ian Watt placed the rise of the novel—England, 1720 to 1740—and she connects it to the development of a credit economy. This article (...) argues that the relationship between fiction and credit goes deeper than this, insofar as fiction was classically theorized in relation to modal concepts like probability and as such had a direct relationship to what Aristotle called endoxa: what is believed by all or by most. Probability was understood in relation not to what happens but to what is thought to happen: that is, to a socially constituted sense of what and who is credible. The article takes account of the multiple disciplines in which fictionality was theorized in the premodern period, but it emphasizes the centrality of rhetoric and the dissemination of a model of fictionality through the early modern grammar schools. Finally, it reads Shakespeare’s Othello to show that probable fiction was not only an available concept but a crucial tool for the analysis of social life. In Othello, ideologies of race and gender define the unequal terms on which credibility is established. Probable fiction is directly tied to the work of making and unmaking social worlds. (shrink)

Whether an individual doctoral study or a large-scale multidisciplinary project, researchers working across cultures face particular challenges around power, identity, and voice, as they encounter ethical dilemmas which extend beyond the micro-level of the researcher-researched relationship. In using a cross-cultural perspective on how to conceptualise research problems, collect data, and disseminate findings in an ethical manner, they also engage with the geopolitics of academic writing, language inequalities, and knowledge construction within a globalised economy. It is increasingly recognised that existing ethical (...) codes and paradigms either do not sufficiently address such issues or tend to be rather restrictive and insensitive to multiple and complex cultural and contextual differences. This book extends our understanding of the ethical issues and dilemmas faced by researchers in comparative and international education. It asks what the relevance of postcolonial theory is for understanding research ethics in comparative and international education; whether Western ethical practices in qualitative social research are incompatible with cultures outside the West; how a ‘situated’ approach can be developed for exploring research ethics across cultures and institutions; and how ‘informed consent’ can be negotiated when the process appears to contradict community values and practices. In sharing experiences from a wide range of cultural and institutional contexts, the authors offer both theoretical resources and practical guidance for conducting research ethically across cultures. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. _. (shrink)

Purpose Telemedicine has been advancing for decades and is more indispensable than ever in this unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic. As shown, eHealth appears to be effective for routine management of chronic conditions that require extensive and repeated interactions with healthcare professionals, as well as the monitoring of symptoms and diagnostics. Yet much needs to be done to alleviate digital inequalities that stand in the way of making the benefits of eHealth accessible to all. The purpose of this paper (...) is to explore the recent shift in healthcare delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic towards telemedicine in healthcare delivery and show how this rapid shift is leaving behind those without digital resources and exacerbating inequalities along many axes. Design/methodology/approach Because the digitally disadvantaged are less likely to use eHealth services, they bear greater risks during the pandemic to meet ongoing medical care needs. This holds true for both medical conditions necessitating lifelong care and conditions of particular urgency such as pregnancy. For this reason, the authors examine two case studies that exemplify the implications of differential access to eHealth: the case of chronic care diseases such as diabetes requiring ongoing care and the case of time-sensitive health conditions such as pregnancy that may be compromised by gaps in continuous care. Findings Not only are the digitally disadvantaged more likely to belong to populations experiencing greater risk – including age and economic class – but they are less likely to use eHealth services and thereby bear greater risks during the pandemic to meet ongoing medical care needs during the pandemic. Social implications At the time of writing, almost 20% of Americans have been unable to obtain medical prescriptions or needed medical care unrelated to the virus. In light of the potential of telemedicine, this does not need to be the case. These social inequalities take on particular significance in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Originality/value In light of the COVID-19 virus, ongoing medical care requires exposure to risks that can be successfully managed by digital communications and eHealth advances. However, the benefits of eHealth are far less likely to accrue to the digitally disadvantaged. (shrink)

These thirteen articles provide theoretical and historically informed analyses of thepowerful currents that are shaping the late twentieth-century political and culturallandscape.

BackgroundSuicide research aims to contribute to a better understanding of suicidal behaviour and its prevention. However, there are many ethical challenges in this research field, for example, regarding consent and potential risks to participants. While studies to-date have focused on the perspective of the researchers, this study aimed to investigate the views and experiences of members of Human Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) in dealing with suicide-related study applications.MethodsThis qualitative study entailed a thematic analysis using an inductive approach. We conducted semi-structured (...) interviews with a purposive sample (N = 15) of HREC Chairs or their delegates from Australian research-intensive universities. The interview guide included questions regarding the ethical concerns and challenges in suicide-related research raised by HREC members, how they dealt with those challenges and what advice they could give to researchers.ResultsThe analysis identified four main themes: (1) HREC members’ experiences of reviewing suicide-related study applications, (2) HREC members’ perceptions of suicide, suicide research, and study participants, (3) Complexity in HREC members’ decision-making processes, and (4) HREC members’ relationships with researchers.ConclusionsReliance on ethical guidelines and dialogue with researchers are crucial in the assessment of suicide-related study applications. Both researchers and HREC members may benefit from guidance and resources on how to conduct ethically sound suicide-related studies. Developing working relationships will be likely to help HRECs to facilitate high quality, ethical suicide-related research and researchers to conduct such research. (shrink)

This article introduces the special issue on questions, questioning, and institutional practices. We begin by considering how questioning as a discursive practice is a central vehicle for constructing social worlds and reflecting existing ones. Then we describe the different ways questions and question have been defined, typologized, and critiqued, in general and within seven institutions including policing, the courts, medicine, therapy, research interviews, education, and mediated political exchanges. The introduction concludes with a preview of the articles in the special issue.

This essay offers a Kierkegaardian analysis of and response to the harmful effects of destabilization that can be caused by engaging with certain technological media. It argues that the intellectual technological ethic that is at work in social media platforms reflects two types of despair discussed in Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death. It advises using a Kierkegaard-inspired Socratic rhetorical strategy of communication that ironically employs technology for depicting this despair and awakening individuals to its presence in their lives. Moreover, this (...) essay suggests that the edifying themes of “misery” and “guilt” can be communicated indirectly and thereby offer one intervention that could possibly help the current technological age move from the immediate aesthetic sphere of existence to the religious sphere. Considering the important role of upbuilding in Kierkegaard's oeuvre, the final portion explores how even someone who does not identify with a religious tradition or community may encounter what Kierkegaard terms the paradox of the eternal in time in ways that foster the development of authentic selfhood. (shrink)

In recent years ethical discussion has centred round the problem of the relation between the idea of right and the idea of good. Previously it had been more or less generally assumed that moral philosophy was principally concerned with the idea of good, and followed its course by asking such questions as: What is the meaning of good? or, What are the characteristics which anything must have in order to be good? or even, What things are good? The idea of (...) right was generally regarded as subordinate, and it was perhaps more often implied than stated that an action was right if by it something good was realized. (shrink)

Kant holds that the a human subject's free causation, as well as the deliberations and decision preceeding it, are literally timeless. This paper tries to defend this doctrine of timeless agency by first distinguishing three senses of "cause", then showing the relationship between cause and time-determination in the theoretical philosophy, and finally relating the timelessness of free agency to the status of the representations of perception. The result is that whereas agency has no time in isolation, it may borrow enough (...) time for its purposes from the theoretical realm. Kant meint, daß die freie Verursachung durch ein menschliches Subjekt, genauso wie die Überlegungen und die Entscheidung, die ihr vorausgehen, buchstäblich zeitlos sind. Der Beitrag versucht, diese Lehre von einem zeitlosen Handeln zu verteidigen. Zunächst wird zwischen drei verschiedenen Bedeutungen von "Ursache" unterschieden. Dann wird die Beziehung zwischen Ursache und Zeitbestimmung in der theoretischen Philosophie dargestellt. Schließlich wird die Zeitlosigkeit freien Handelns mit dem Status der Gegenstände der Wahrnehmung in eine Beziehung gesetzt. Das Ergebnis ist, daß das Handeln, während es für sich selbst betrachtet keine Zeit hat, für seine Zwecke doch genügend Zeit aus der theoretischen Sphäre entlehnen kann. (shrink)

In what particular manner human beings are free moral agents and to what extent they can reasonably expect to attain a good life are two intertwined questions that rose to prominence in antiquity and have remained so to the present day. This book analyzes and compares the approaches of two significant authors from different schools at the turn of the third century CE, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Clement of Alexandria. These contemporaries utilize their respective Peripatetic and Christian commitments in their (...) employment of the shared Greek classics toward these shared ethical questions. (shrink)

La nueva estrategia militar norteamericana hacia América Latina, consiste en construir socialmente el enemigo bajo tres parámetros: Terrorismo, Populismo Radical y Narcotráfico, cuyos ejes cumplen la función de ligar toda actividad política popular o de insubordinación contra los Estados Unidos con ..

This commentary begins by explaining how Mangan's important work leads to a question about the relation between non-sensory experiences and perception. Reflection on affect then suggests an addition to Mangan's view that may be helpful on this and perhaps some other questions. Finally, it is argued that acceptance of non-sensory experiences is fully compatible with epiphenomenalism.