The paper discusses two answers to the question, How to address the harmful effects of technology? The first response proposes a complete separation of science from culture, religion, and ethics. The second response finds harm in the logic and method of science itself. The paper deploys a feminist technoscience approach to overcome these accounts of neutral or deterministic technological agency. In this technoscience perspective, agency is not an attribute of autonomous human users alone but enacted and performed in socio-material configurations (...) of people and technology and their ‘intra-actions’. This understanding of agency is proposed as an alternative that opens up for the reconfiguration of design and use for more ethical effects, such as the cultivation of cognitive justice, the equal treatment and representation of different ways of knowing the world. The implication of this approach is that design becomes an adaptive and ongoing intra-active process in which more desirable configurations of people and technology become possible. (shrink)

van der Velden, Matthew In the context of twenty-first-century Australia, Catholic secondary colleges are facing an ever-dwindling number of student enrolments coming from a Catholic background. Students that identify themselves as members of the Roman Catholic Church occupy a wide spectrum of positions along the faith and sacramental journey of the Catholic tradition. In Catholic colleges around Australia, there are a number of Catholic students, sometimes referred to as 'cradle Catholics', who received all of the sacraments of initiation during (...) their childhood, through either sacramental programs attached to their Catholic primary schooling or catechesis sessions provided by their parish. However, there are also a large number of Catholic students who have not received all of the sacraments of initiation, often only receiving baptism as an infant. Additionally, at Catholic colleges there can also be a large number of students who are members of other faith communities, such as Anglicans and members of other Protestant Churches, whose baptism is recognised by the Roman Catholic Church, yet are unable to fully participate in the sacramental opportunities provided by their school, such as the Eucharist and reconciliation. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is a powerful process for supporting students such as these to access a more fully formed Catholic faith and sacramental life. (shrink)

One dark and rainy night, Yuso sexually assaults and tortures Zelan. In escaping from the scene of his crime, he falls heavily and becomes an impotent paraplegic. Instead of treating his fate as divine retribution for his wicked acts, Yuso sees it as sheer bad luck. He shows no remorse for what he has done, and vainly hopes that he will recover his powers, which he now treats as involuntarily hoarded resources to be used on less rainy days. In the (...) presence of others, he pretends that he has turned over a new leaf. He asks for religious and educational books, hoping to make up for his poor education and deprived social background. But he immediately discards them when he is alone in favor of the pornographic magazines which he has bribed a nurse to smuggle in for him. His deception and various obscene acts committed in the hospital are exposed; by the time he comes up for trial, everyone knows that he is still a lustful, sadistic, and unrepentant man. Most retributivists have a sufficient justification for punishing Yuso independently of the social consequences of his punishment. Two features of the case might cause some difficulties. First, Yuso has already experienced considerable suffering and deprivation both before and after his crime, and retributivists might disagree about the relevance of the suffering to his punishment. Secondly, Yuso is unrepentant, and it is unlikely that punishment will change him. This might, as we shall see, create a problem for those who think that the justifying aim of punishment is the moral reform of the offender. (shrink)

Intensive professional testing of children with disabilities is becoming increasingly prominent within the field of children’s rehabilitation. In this paper we question the high quality ascribed to standardized assessment procedures. We explore testing practices using a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach analyzing data from interviews and participant observations among 20 children with disabilities and their parents. All the participating children have extensive experience from being tested. This study reveals that the practices of testing have certain limitations when confronted with the lived experience of (...) those who are being tested. Testing seems to transmit the experts’ view of what is important, correct and admirable, and the way in which an individual child fulfills such requirements and fits in with the predetermined standard. Regular testing may result in insecurity on the part of the tested individual, and possibly to a lack of confidence in their body and the way it functions. For the individual being tested the meaning of testing is primarily related to passing or not passing the test requirements. Given the meaning of testing, children with disabilities may experience repeated testing as an ordeal that they are expected to put up with. By illuminating the experiences of the ones exposed to testing, this paper offers new insight for professionals to gauge more accurately the quality of contemporary testing practice. (shrink)

John Braithwaite and Philip Pettit, Not Just Deserts: A Republican Theory of Criminal Justice, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1990, vii + 229 pp.

The modern critical approach to things hagiographical still wavers when it comes to taking leave of twelve lines of iambic invective, branded with wonderful delicacy of touch on the saintly foreheads of two Palestinian brothers, Theodore and Theophanes, the so-called “Graptoi”. Barry Baldwin, noting that C.A. Trypanis, unlike the great B. Bury and others, was inclined to disbelieve the story, could not help expressing the hope that it was true (An Anthology of Byzantine Poetry, Amsterdam 1985, pp. 142–3). It is (...) of course only one of the many stories concocted by iconodule propaganda. The central question has to be formulated in more general terms: how is history made? History here primarily in the sense of the construction of the past by the Byzantines themselves, was embodied in historical narratives moving between hagiography and historiography. Trying to lay bare the basis and elements of such constructs will always remain a major task of critical historical scholarship. (shrink)

A comparison between the Prolegomena of Chapter II of De iure praedae and the Prolegomena of De iure belli ac pacis leads to the conclusion that the ideas of Grotius on legal systematization have changed considerably between 1604 and 1625. Whereas Grotius starts in IPC with general principles with a rather unclear distinction between leges and regulae, in IBP he gives first the philosophical and theological basis of international law, intertwined by a concise set of general legal rules, mostly derived (...) from Roman law after its reception in Western Europe. The general outlines of legal systematization in the early-modern period are expounded. In the attempts of legal systematization the concept of subjective rights is essential. These subjective rights are not, as is sometimes assumed, a medieval renewal of legal technique, but can be found essentially already in classical Roman law of the first centuries AD.The institutional system is not yet visible in De iure praedae, it might be different for De iure belli ac pacis. Significant here are possibly the expressions ius ad bellum and ius in bello. (shrink)

This study is focused on unsustainable agri-food systems, especially intensive livestock farming and its resulting environmental harms. Specifically we focus on the development of technologies that seek to mitigate these environmental harms. These technologies are generally developed as incremental innovations in response to government regulation. Critics of these technological solutions allege that these developments legitimate unsustainable food production systems and are incapable of supporting agri-food systems transformation. At the same time, technology developers and other actors seek to present these technologies (...) as the legitimate solution to agri-environmental harms. Our study seeks to explore the perceptions and constructions of legitimacy for technologies that are developed to reduce ammonia emissions in intensive livestock farming in Flanders (Belgium). We use a qualitative case study, employing semi-structured interviews and workshops, with technology developers of ammonia-emission reducing technologies and stakeholders in the intensive livestock farming industry in Flanders. What our study shows is that technologies developed to reduce emissions are dependent on regulative legitimacy. The normative and cognitive legitimacy of these technologies is lacking, both due to ties to the intensive livestock industry and due to uncertainty over the performance of these technologies. With the delegitimation of intensive livestock farming, the legitimacy of these technologies is also under threat. In response, technology developers are looking to (re-)construct this legitimacy through knowledge claims over the performance of their technologies. We show several ways for other actors to deal with this, centred on either re-legitimising technologies to maintain the status quo, or to contest these knowledge claims and use them to disrupt path dependencies. (shrink)

A prominent way of justifying civil disobedience is to postulate a pro tanto duty to obey the law and to argue that the considerations that ground this duty sometimes justify forms of civil disobedience. However, this view entails that certain kinds of uncivil disobedience are also justified. Thus, either a) civil disobedience is never justified or b) uncivil disobedience is sometimes justified. Since a) is implausible, we should accept b). I respond to the objection that this ignores the fact that (...) civil disobedience enjoys a special normative status on account of instantiating certain special features: nonviolence, publicity, the acceptance of legal consequences, and conscientiousness. I then show that my view is superior to two rivals: the view that we should expand the notion of civility and that civil disobedience, expansively construed, is uniquely appropriate; and the view that uncivil disobedience is justifiable in but only in unfavorable conditions. (shrink)

Script analysis is often used in research that focuses on gender and technology design. It is applied as a method to describe problematic inscriptions of gender in technology and as a tool for advancing more acceptable inscriptions of gender in technology. These analyses are based on the assumption that we can design technologies that do justice to gender. One critique on script analysis is that it does not engage with the emergent effects of design. The authors explore this critique with (...) the help of two vignettes taken from their design research. In this article they ask: How to design for gender if gender and design are emergent? The authors present two design strategies, degendering design and undesigning design and propose a new approach to doing justice to gender in design. This perspective foregrounds ethics in the design process, in particular the accountability of technology designers. (shrink)

Tainted political symbols ought to be confronted, removed, or at least recontextualized. Despite the best efforts to achieve this, however, official actions on tainted symbols often fail to take place. In such cases, I argue that political vandalism—the unauthorized defacement, destruction, or removal of political symbols—may be morally permissible or even obligatory. This is when, and insofar as, political vandalism serves as fitting counter-speech that undermines the authority of tainted symbols in ways that match their publicity, refuses to let them (...) speak in our name, and challenges the derogatory messages expressed through a mechanism I call derogatory pedestalling: the glorification or honoring of certain individuals or ideologies that can only make sense when members of a targeted group are taken to be inferior. (shrink)

The central topic of this paper is a mobile phone application, ‘InformaCam’, which turns metadata from a surveillance risk into a method for the production of public proof. InformaCam allows one to manage and delete metadata from images and videos in order to diminish surveillance risks related to online tracking. Furthermore, it structures and stores the metadata in such a way that the documentary material becomes better accommodated to evidentiary settings, if needed. In this paper I propose InformaCam should be (...) interpreted as a ‘forensic device’. By using the conceptualization of forensics and work on socio-technical devices the paper discusses how InformaCam, through a range of interventions, rearranges metadata into a technology of evidence. InformaCam explicitly recognizes mobile phones as context aware, uses their sensors, and structures metadata in order to facilitate data analysis after images are captured. Through these modifications it invents a form of ‘sensory data forensics'. By treating data in this particular way, surveillance resistance does more than seeking awareness. It becomes engaged with investigatory practices. Considering the extent by which states conduct metadata surveillance, the project can be seen as a timely response to the unequal distribution of power over data. (shrink)

Many have argued that certain statues or monuments are objectionable, and thus ought to be removed. Even if their arguments are compelling, a major obstacle is the apparent historical value of those commemorations. Preservation in some form seems to be the best way to respect the value of commemorations as connections to the past or opportunities to learn important historical lessons. Against this, I argue that we have exaggerated the historical value of objectionable commemorations. Sometimes commemorations connect to biased or (...) distorted versions of history, if not mere myths. We can also learn historical lessons through what I call repudiatory honouring: the honouring of certain victims or resistors that can only make sense if the oppressor(s) or target(s) of resistance are deemed unjust, where no part of the original objectionable commemorations is preserved. This type of commemorative practice can even help to overcome some of the obstacles objectionable commemorations pose against properly connecting to the past. (shrink)

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Several extensions of the basic modal language are characterized in terms of interpolation. Our main results are of the following form: Language ℒ' is the least expressive extension of ℒ with interpolation. For instance, let ℳ be the extension of the basic modal language with a difference operator [7]. First-order logic is the least expressive extension of ℳ with interpolation. These characterizations are subsequently used to derive new results about hybrid logic, relation algebra and the guarded fragment.

Geneticization is a broad term referring to several related processes such as a spreading tendency to use a genetic model of disease explanation, a growing influence of genetics in medical practice, and the slow changing of individual and societal attitudes towards reproduction, prevention and control of disease. These processes can be demonstrated in medical literature on preventive genetic screening and counselling programs for β-thalassaemia in Cyprus, the United Kingdom and Canada. The preventive possibilities of the new genetic and diagnostic technologies (...) have been quickly understood and advocated by health professionals, and their educational strategies have created a web of social control, in marked contrast to the alleged voluntary decision-making process and free choice. Genetic diagnostic technologies have led to considerable changes in control and management of β-thalassaemia, and have generated a number of unresolved incongruities. (shrink)

In the essay On Liberty , Mill put forward his famous principle that society may only interfere with those actions of an individual which concern others and not with actions which merely concern himself. The validity of this principle depends on there being a distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions. But the concept of self-regarding actions has been severely criticised on the ground that all actions affect others in some way and are therefore other-regarding. The notion of self-regarding actions appears (...) to be completely discredited. Very recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with the traditional debunking of Mill on this score. Two serious and important attempts to reinterpret the principle were made by Mr J. C. Rees in an article entitled ‘A Re-Reading of Mill on Liberty’, and by Mr Alan Ryan in two brief but extremely useful contributions. My aim is to discuss these reinterpretations of Mill, and on the basis of this, build up what I think is the correct account of Mill's notion of self-regarding actions. (shrink)

Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fair that everyone should bear the burdens of tackling injustice. We extend this fairness-based argument for civil disobedience to defend some acts of uncivil disobedience. Focusing on uncivil environmental activism—such as ecotage (sabotage with the aim of protecting the environment)—we (...) argue that some acts of uncivil disobedience can be morally superior to their civil counterparts, when and because such acts target people who are responsible for environmental threats. Indeed, insofar as some acts of uncivil disobedience can more accurately target responsible people, they can better satisfy the demands of fairness compared to their civil counterparts. In some circumstances, our argument may require activists to engage in uncivil disobedienceeven whencivil disobedience is available. (shrink)