An overview and assessment of the current state of research on individual consumption of Fair Trade (FT) products is given on the basis of 51 journal publications. Arranging this field of ethical consumption research according to key research objectives, theoretical approaches, methods, and study population, the review suggests that most studies apply social psychological approaches focusing mainly on consumer attitudes. Fewer studies draw on economic approaches focusing on consumers’ willingness to pay ethical premia for FT products or sociological approaches relying (...) on the concept of consumer identity. Experimental, qualitative and conventional survey methods are used approximately equally often. Almost all studies draw on convenience or purposive samples and most studies are conducted in the USA or the United Kingdom. Several problems in current research are identified: amongst others, studies’ rather narrow theoretical focus, potential hypothetical and social desirability bias of conventional survey data, and a lack of generalizability of empirical findings. In turn, we suggest that research would benefit from both a multiple-motives and a multiple-methods perspective. Considering competing theories can help to single out key behavioral determinants of individual FT consumption. The combination of different methods such as conventional surveys and field experiments contributes to uncovering respondents’ truthful answers and improves generalizability of results. Scholars in the field of ethical consumption research should use experiments to detect causal relations proposed by theories and conduct cross-country surveys to gather insights as to how differences in market structures, cultural traits, and other path dependencies affect patterns of individual FT consumption. (shrink)

Balancing speed and quality during crises pose challenges for ensuring the value and utility of data in social science research. The COVID-19 pandemic in particular underscores the need for high-quality data and rapid dissemination. Given the importance of behavioural measures and compliance with measures to contain the pandemic, social science research has played a key role in policymaking during this global crisis. This study addresses two key research questions: How FAIR ( findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) are social science data (...) on the COVID-19 pandemic? Which study features are related to the level of FAIRness scores of datasets? We assess the FAIRness of n = 1131 articles, retrieved through a keyword search in the Web of Science database, employing both automated and manual coding methods. Our study inclusion criteria encompass empirical studies on the COVID-19 pandemic published between 2019 and 2023 with a social science focus and explicit reference to the underlying dataset(s). Our analysis of n = 45 datasets reveals substantial differences in FAIRness for different types of research on the COVID-19 pandemic. The overall FAIRness of data is acceptable, although particularly Reusability scores fall short, in both the manual and the automatic assessment. Further, articles explicitly linked to the Social Science concept in the OpenAlex database exhibit a higher mean overall FAIRness value. Based on these results, we derive recommendations for balancing ethical obligations and the potential tradeoff between speed and data (sharing) quality in social-scientific crisis research. (shrink)

Contract cheating is currently one of the most serious academic integrity issues around the globe. Numerous studies have been conducted, mostly in English speaking countries. So far, no such research has been conducted in Czechia, and consequently there have been no specific data available on Czech students’ fraudulent behaviour. For this study, we created a questionnaire to obtain primary data on student usage of essay mills and their self-reported exposure to contract cheating. The questionnaire focused on students and graduates of (...) Czech universities and collected a total of 1016. Of that number, 8% of respondents admit having engaged in contract cheating. The questionnaire responses yielded useful information and insight into students’ attitudes regarding contract cheating and the extent of this phenomenon in Czechia. We now know more about their reasons for contract cheating and have insight into their thoughts regarding possible discovery. (shrink)

This Element provides an introduction to the hiddenness argument, as presented by John Schellenberg, and its up-to-date discussion in a comprehensible way. It concludes with a brief assessment of where things stand, from the author's point of view, and why divine hiddenness should not reduce a reflective theist's confidence in theism.

The article is a description of Rimas Kociunas’ seminar “The picture of human life and the therapeutic process: the introduction of an existential psychotherapist”, held in Moscow from February 13 to 16, 2020. The seminar was devoted to the study of the basic philosophical principles of existential psychotherapy on which work with a client is based. A specificity of existential therapy is the lack of specific technical methods and methods of working with a client, therefore the content of therapeutic work (...) is determined by a particular vision of a person and his problems. From the point of view of existential therapists, the personality is in constant interaction with the world, the result of which is continuous formation; therefore, instead of studying the qualities and structures of the personality, one should study its life world and ways of building relationships with reality. (shrink)

The article is an overview of the VI Scientific and Practical Conference «Internet beyond 2020» (April 22-24, 2021) organized by the online school of Internet research with the support of the Higher School of Economics. The conference program included workshop reports and round tables on the role of the global network, the evolution of art and education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference brought together representatives of social sciences and humanities (sociologists, cultural scientists, linguists), artists, designers, and specialists in the (...) field of Internet studies. The organizers and participants of the conference tried to answer various questions, including the following. Is a modern person witnessing the emergence of fundamentally new anthropological practices? Is it possible to obtain a comprehensive picture of digital realities from single events of Internet studies, as well as predict the emergence and development of yet unknown social and anthropological transformations? Is it possible for a post-pandemic narrative conceptualizing the heterogeneous eventuality of our time to emerge? (shrink)

In this paper we examine optimal bidding without the independence axiom in a unified framework which allows for a clear graphical representation. Thus, we can show very simply the independence axiom to be a necessary and sufficient condition on preferences for strategical equivalence of the two first-price and second-price auctions, respectively, and for the second-price sealed-bid auction to be demand revealing. The analysis reveals that the betweenness property is necessary and sufficient for the ascending-bid auction to be demand revealing while (...) optimal bids exceed (are less than) bidders' valuations, iff preferences are quasiconcave (quasiconvex). Furthermore, it can be shown that fanning out (fanning in) leads to a higher (lower) selling-price in open than in sealed-bid auctions. (shrink)

The “smart village” flourishes – at least in policy papers that envision the revitalization of rural areas through the civic deployment of networked media and telecommunications. Yet, while such aspirations are widespread, little is known about the views of those tasked with supervising and supporting digitally driven public participation for rural progress. To address the lack of insight into what these intermediary administrators conceive as catalysts and challenges for the realization of smart village conceptions, we surveyed representatives of regions in (...) Germany who oversee rural development schemes, most notably within the European LEADER framework. For these key actors, digital participation does not mainly hinge on broadband access and IT availability. Instead, they emphasize the importance of human and administrative resources as well as multi-actor collaboration, which we discuss in terms of digital readiness, digital willingness, and digital activity. Building the smart village, we conclude, seems not so much a matter of technological infrastructure, but rather of sociotechnical infrastructuring. (shrink)

L’Euromed-MemoriaCarte, un projet initié dans le cadre de la Fondation Espace des savoirs Europe-Méditerranée (Stiftung Wissensraum Europa-Mittelmeer e.V., WEM), est une carte virtuelle des lieux de mémoire « euro-méditerranéens», tant en Méditerranée au sens strict que dans ses extensions en Europe et en Afrique subsaharienne. L’objectif de la carte, correspondant aux objectifs de la Fondation WEM, est de contribuer au développement d’une conscience « euro-méditerranéenne» par l’échange et l’intégration des savoirs dans un espace partagé euro-méditerranéen. En ce qui concerne particulièrement (...) l’élaboration de la carte, il s’agit de contribuer à la simplification et à la lisibilité de la masse et de la complexité des informations en faisant appel à un système de codage et de symboles qui se réfèrent à des lieux de mémoire. À travers ces lieux, chargés d’une superposition des savoirs des cultures des deux rives de la Méditerranée, la carte ne visualise pas seulement un héritage partagé mais aussi les enchevêtrements et le dynamisme culturels de l’espace euro-méditerranéen. Parce que les lieux sont vus à la fois de façon géographique et topographique, se pose alors la question de savoir si la carte est vraiment partie prenante du « tournant topographique» ou plutôt d’un tournant « post-topographique» qui prend en compte à nouveau les faits géographiques et historiques. Ce thème, ainsi que les concepts d’espace, de lieu et de mémoire sont discutés à la fin de la contribution. (shrink)

Over a century ago European explorers in Eastern Turkestan (southern Xinjiang) made a remarkable discovery: the Sunni inhabitants of Khotan were engaged in elaborate veneration of the Shiʿi twelve Imams, whom they believed to be buried at various holy sites in the Khotan region. This paper investigates Khotan’s net work of holy sites and the narratives that were attached to them, from the sixteenth century to the present. While the political landscape of the present may sometimes make the Sunni-Shiʿi divide (...) appear natural, the case of Eastern Turkestan, which had its own, idiosyncratic approach to sectarian identity, reminds us that the maintenance of such a Sunni-Shiʿi consensus on sectarian designation was dependent on networks of knowledge reproduction that did not embrace the entirety of the Muslim world. Pre-Islamic sacred geographies, the power of locally networked holy sites, the phenomenon of textual appropriation, and a popular and eclectic manuscript tradition overwhelmed weak sectarian distinctions, bringing Muslim followers of the Hanafi legal tradition to pray at the purported tombs of Twelver Imams. (shrink)

National human rights institutions (NHRIs) are key domestic mechanisms for promotion and protection of human rights. The institutions' broad mandate, competencies, and special status between state and nonstate actors on the one hand, and special status between the national and international levels on the other hand enable them to engage effectively in the field of business and human rights. Since 2009, NHRIs have been engaging with the international human rights system in order to increase understanding and raise awareness of their (...) role in addressing business and human rights issues. As a result, they have contributed to the development of the UN “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework and obtained an evolving role within all pillars of the framework and in its implementation. This paper presents how these domestic institutions, bridging the national and international levels, fit into the UN legal regime for corporate responsibility for human rights and what contribution they make to the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles. (shrink)

In this comment we critically review an argument against the existence of objective physical outcomes, recently proposed by Healey [1]. We show that his gedankenexperiment, based on a combination of “Wigner’s friend” scenarios and Bell’s inequalities, suffers from the main criticism, that the computed correlation functions entering the Bell’s inequality are in principle experimentally inaccessible, and hence the author’s claim is in principle not testable. We discuss perspectives for fixing that by adapting the proposed protocol and show that this, however, (...) makes Healey’s argument virtually equivalent to other previous, similar proposals that he explicitly criticises. (shrink)

In this paper we want to briefly illustrate the ways in which technical, ethical and political judgements of various kinds are interwoven in the processes of healthcare decision-making in the UK. Drawing upon the research for the “Choices in Health Care” project we will borrow the notion of the hidden curriculum from education to illuminate the nature of resource allocation decision processes. In particular we will indicate some of the fundamental but largely hidden political factors in play in these processes (...) and the importance of the inchoate and implicit notion of “NHS values” in shaping UK resource allocation policies. We suggest that these more diffuse, holistic and system level value judgements are both central to understanding priority setting and at the same time difficult to reduce or abstract out into lists of single values/principles. (shrink)

Given the prevalence of misconduct in research and among students in higher education, there is a need to create solutions for how best to prevent such behaviour in academia. This paper proceeds on the assumption that one way forward is to prepare students in higher education at an early stage and to encourage a smoother transition from academic integrity to research integrity by incorporating academic integrity training as an ongoing part of the curriculum. To this end, this paper presents three (...) checklists developed as part of the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project _Bridging Integrity in Higher Education, Business and Society_ (BRIDGE, 2020-1-SE01-KA203-077973). The aim of the checklists is to help students and their supervisors to bridge academic integrity and research integrity in research training. The checklists target master students, doctoral students, and their supervisors. This paper presents the theoretical background of the checklists, how they were developed, their content, and how they may be used in supervising thesis/dissertation work to promote a transition from academic integrity to research integrity. (shrink)

Vitalism has been given different definitions and diverse figures have been labelled as vitalists throughout the history of ideas. Concentrating on the seventeenth century, we find that scholars identify as vitalists authors who endorse notions that are in diametrical opposition with each other. I briefly present the ideas of dualist vitalists and monist vitalists and the philosophical and theological considerations informing their thought. In all these varied forms of vitalism the identifiable common motives are the essential irreducibility of life and (...) the universality of life. (shrink)

Der Begriff der Digitalität ist erst in jüngster Zeit ins Zentrum der Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaft gerückt. Er entspricht nicht dem Verständnis von Digitalisierung im Sinne der Entwicklung von Technologien, der Erfassung und Speicherung von Daten und der Automatisierung von Abläufen. Vielmehr reflektiert Digitalität auf kulturelle und gesellschaftliche Realitäten und Lebensformen, die mit der Digitalisierung einhergehen und diese im Wechselspiel wiederum ermöglichen. Ziel des Bandes ist es, das Phänomen der Digitalität näher zu bestimmen und den Blick auf kulturelle, philosophische, didaktische und (...) soziologische Aspekte des Lebens in einer digitalisierten Welt zu richten. Folgende Fragen stehen dabei im Zentrum: In welchem Verhältnis stehen die Phänomene „Digitalisierung“ und „Digitalität“? Wie verändern sich Lehr- und Lernprozesse im Kontext von Digitalisierung und Digitalität? Welche Herausforderungen, Chancen und Probleme ergeben sich aus der Digitalität für die Zukunft der Gesellschaft und der Universitäten? Wie lässt sich die Kultur der Digitalität gezielt gestalten und vermitteln? (shrink)

There is an increasing number of female migrants among the international migrants in Russia. The purpose of this study is to identify the social risks female migrants face. Statistics and data from surveys were analyzed, interviews were held with experts providing practical assistance to women and focus groups were conducted with female migrants. The employment sector in which young female migrants face the most risks and are likely to work illegally is commercial sex services. The social risks are mainly related (...) to a lack of knowledge about the culture, their illegal status; risky behavior is also a big issue. The conclusion is that the social risks are linked to the gender asymmetry existing in the labor market and to the more vulnerable position of women with regard to sexual exploitation and trafficking. (shrink)

Imagining super rich women in the real and fictional world has long been a struggle. Those few depictions that do exist are scattered across time periods and literary genres, reflecting the legal restrictions that, at different points in time, would not allow women to accumulate assets independent of the patriarchal forces in their lives. The scarcity of extremely wealthy women in literature and film is confirmed by Forbes magazine’s list of the fifteen richest fictional characters that features forty different fictional (...) men and only nine women, with never more than two female characters nominated in a single year. This article explores the depiction of three exceptionally wealthy women: Cruella de Vil in The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956) by Dodie Smith, Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens, and the figure of the stepmother in various adaptations of “Cinderella.” I demonstrate how the protagonists’ wealth allows them to manipulate others and disconnect themselves from patriarchal and societal expectations. Further, I argue that these affluent antagonists are “rogued” by their respective narratives, highlighting their perceived anti-feminine and emasculating behaviour resulting in a mode of narration that greedily gazes at and shames their appearances and supposed unattractiveness. While this genealogy of rich rogues reiterates the narrow scope of imagining wealthy women on the page and on the screen, there are moments in the narratives that disrupt stereotypical depictions of these wealthy characters who defy the labels imposed on them. (shrink)

This article analyzes the features of the intellectual and cultural environment in which the ideas of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century liberalism developed. Based on the assumption of l...

There has been a long-standing opposition to genetically modified organisms worldwide. Some studies have tried to identify the deep-lying philosophical, conceptual as well as psychological motivations for this opposition. Philosophical essentialism, psychological essentialism, and vitalism have been proposed as possible candidates. I approach the plausibility of the claim that these notions are related to GMO opposition from a historical perspective. Vitalism and philosophical essentialism have been associated with anti-GMO stance on account of their purported hostility to species and organismic mutability. (...) I show that vitalism has often been associated to various mutabilist theories, whereas the case for philosophical essentialism as motivating GMO opposition depends on the now discredited Essentialism Story that had constructed essentialism as a predominant view in pre-Darwinian science. Further, as philosophical essentialism taken seriously is incompatible with the reality of genetic engineering, it is unlikely to be a reason for opposition. Psychological essentialism, involving an instinctive repulsion from the practice of manipulating what is thought to be the essence of living beings, is a more likely reason for resistance to transgenesis. Yet even here, historical considerations are crucial. Not only lay people tend to essentialize genes, but scientists themselves can be shown to have been complicit in essentialist tendencies. From the advent of modern genetics, the imagery of the all-powerful genes, often depicted by scientists themselves metaphorically as material counterparts of the now obsolete vitalistic agent, has permeated the language of leading scientific figures, whose influence in shaping public opinion should not be downplayed. Enthusiasm for genetic engineering and the abhorrence from it might both derive from the same unrealistic image of the essential gene, the revision of which thus holding out the hope for transcending the present impasse of the GMO controversy. (shrink)

Wasted Chances? The Current Political Debate on DNA Phenotyping and Biogeographical Ancestry Analysis in Criminal Investigation in Germany. This paper discusses diverse understandings of ‘responsible science’ in heated political debates. It takes a current public debate around a German law amendment draft concerning the use of novel forensic genetic techniques, namely DNA‐phenotyping and biogeographical ancestry analysis, as an example. A distinction is being made between an understanding that emphasizes scientific debate and precision, and another one that focuses on political agency. (...) The paper also addresses the question whether and how science studies scholars, given their depth of expertise in the analysis of complex problems spanning disciplinary boundaries, should contribute to national debates in policy fields where no such dialogue exists yet. (shrink)

Images are at the heart of strategies of persuasion. They render certain aspects visible and leave others unrepresented; and they may shape processes of scientific reasoning and imagination. By tracing diagrammatic images in the anthropological sciences throughout the 20th century, the contributions to this special issue highlight some dominant pictorial traditions for rendering human evolution and diversity visible. This article aims to provide an overview of and an introduction to the special issue ‘Visibility Matters’.

From a religious-historical perspective this work investigates the message and theology of the so-called Book of the Watchers as a separate book of early Judaism of the third century BC. Starting with the literary profile of the text, the study goes on to illuminate its importance in the context of the Ptolemaic supremacy over Palestine. From this perspective the Book of the Watchers appears as a powerful appeal addressed to a broad Jewish audience to recognize the relevance of its religion (...) and of the traditional way of life. (shrink)

In the article, the author analyzes the conditions for a subject’s existence in the post-informational society, which lead to forming a new style of thinking in the younger generation, functioning outside the textocentric paradigm. The author raises the actual problem of the education system, since it is impossible to build a successful learning process without meeting the demands of the time, without taking into account the peculiarities of perceiving the world by modern people. In the youth environment, the screen (clip) (...) style of thinking has long prevailed, which in the process of cognition is based on visual images. In the course of the study, the author comes to the conclusion that, responding to the new style of thinking, it is necessary to strive for a combination of methods of working with linear text and visual sources of information, to which a modern person is so receptive. This harmonious combination is provided by a comic strip with rich didactic potential. The article describes the positive aspects of using comics in the educational process and examines an example of using comics in philosophy classes. (shrink)

Focusing on Giorgio Agamben’s early writings this paper investigates the peculiar status of aesthetics that is disclosed by these texts, highlighting particularly the shift that emerges therein from aesthetic to ethical concerns. Agamben’s idea of a ‘destruction of aesthetics’ will bring attention to the question of the destination of aesthetics. The claim that only ruins can outline the original structure of works of art, providing a possible basis for creative criticism, will also be examined in the conclusion.

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 24 Heft: 2 Seiten: 185-204.

Članak je pisan sa svrhom upoznavanja čitatelja s temeljnim sadržajem nove knjige R. Gibellinija, Teološke perspektive za XXI. stoljeće. Ta se knjiga tematski nadovezuje na njegovu prethodnu knjigu, Teologija dvadesetog stoljeća. Nakon panorame teološke misli XX. stoljeća, R. Gibellini se pita o zadaćama i perspektivama teološke misli u neposrednoj budućnosti. Budući da je knjigu koju predstavljamo njezin autor R. Gibellini zamislio kao bilancu u perspektivi budućnosti, bilancu koja se oslanja na teologiju XX. stoljeća, u prvom dijelu članka daje se prikaz (...) četiri teološka pravca XX. stoljeća. Ostala tri dijela članka prikazuju teološke perspektive XXI. stoljeća: perspektive teologije korelacije, perspektive teologije u doba mondijalizacije i perspektive teologije ekumenizma i međureligijskog dijaloga. Priloge su napisali međunarodno poznati teolozi. Oni se u razmišljanjima kreću uzduž bitnih linija promišljanja koja su izronila tijekom XX. stoljeća, napose pak u njegovim posljednjim desetljećima, i koje su otvorene daljnjem razvijanju na početku XXI. stoljeća.This article aims to introduce the readership to the basic content of R. Gibellini’s latest book en­titled Theological Perspectives for the 21st Century, which is, thematically speaking, an extensi­on of his previous book, bearing the title Theology of the 20th Century. Following the panoramaof theological thought in the 20th century, R. Gibellini turns to the tasks and perspectives oftheology and its reflections in the near future.Considering that Gibellini conceived the book here presented as a balance from the perspectiveof the future, a balance that draws on the theology of the 20th century, the first section of thearticle brings an overview of the four theological currents of the 20th century. The other threesections centre on the theological prospects of the 21st century: the prospects of the theology ofcorrelation, the prospects of theology in the era of globalisation, and the prospects of the theo­logy of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. The book was contributed to by internationallyrenowned theologians. Their reflections follow the significant lines of thought that emergedduring the 20th century in general and its last decades in particular, and that are open to furtherdevelopment at the beginning of the 21st century. (shrink)

Referring to the video testimony of Holocaust survivor Mrs. K. and interviewer and psychoanalyst Kurt Grünberg, I propose to analyse the body movement behavior in interaction in this interview as the “Gestalt” of memory units. According to the theory of embodiment and following Daniel Stern, I show how it is possible to co-construct sense while watching nonverbal aspects of giving testimony. Using different methods of movement analysis such as KMP, LMA, NEUROGES and MEA, this study was conducted by means of (...) phenomenological inquiry. I suggest that a hermeneutic perspective on movement aspects can thus be used to enrich the transcript and provide a broader and highly specific understanding of this testimony. Movement can thus be seen as an integral part of transmission. (shrink)