BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic introduced new challenges to provide care and educate junior doctors (resident physicians). We sought to understand the positive and negative experiences of first-year resident physicians and describe potential ethical issues from their stories.MethodWe used narrative inquiry (NI) methodology and applied a semistructured interview guide with questions pertaining to ethical principles and both positive and negative aspects of the pandemic. Sampling was purposive. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Three members of the research team coded transcripts in duplicate (...) to elicit themes. Discrepancies were resolved through discussion to attain consensus. A composite story with threads was constructed.Results11 residents participated across several programmes. Three main themes emerged from the participants’ stories: (1) complexities in navigating intersecting healthcare and medical education systems, (2) balancing public health and the public good versus the individual and (3) fair health systems planning/healthcare delivery. Within these themes, participants’ journeys through the first wave were elicited through the threads of (1) engage us, (2) because we see the need for the duty to treat and (3) we are all in this together.DiscussionCases of the ethical issues that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic may serve as a foundation on which ethics teaching and future pandemic planning can take place. Principles of clinical ethics and their limitations, when applied to public health issues, could help in contrasting clinical ethics with public health ethics.ConclusionEfforts to understand how resident physicians can navigate public health emergencies along with the ethical issues that arise could benefit both residency education and healthcare systems. (shrink)

In this autobiographical essay, I reflect on my practice as an anthropologist through the medium of a dream experience. This dream occurred shortly before I was due to attend a ritual among the Booran Oromo in northern Kenya. In my discussion, I draw on analytical materialfrom anthropology, psychology, literature and philosophy. Using these different, but complementary approaches, I give three interpretations of the dream. The first two were provided to me by members of the culture, and are based on the (...) indigenous Oromo knowledge system. The third proposes a self‐analysis of the dream in terms of its structure and function. The entire exegesis is underpinned by an essay on dreams and dreaming by Foucault (1984). The analysis of the dream serves to situate my work in both theoretical and existential terms. The classic in this genre of writing is, of course, Lévi‐Strauss's (1973) Tristes Tropiques. (shrink)

Political science; philosophy; revolutions; Arab countries; politics and government; 21st century.

Eliade, Mircea, 1907-1986; religious; thoughts; philosophy.

This paper contributes to debates over algorithmic discrimination with particular attention to structural theories of racism and the problem of “proxy discrimination”—discriminatory effects that arise even when an algorithm has no information about socially sensitive characteristics such as race. Structural theories emphasize the ways that unequal power structures contribute to the subordination of marginalized groups: these theories thus understand racism in ways that go beyond individual choices and bad intentions. Our question is, how should a structural understanding of racism and (...) oppression inform our understanding of algorithmic discrimination and its associated norms? Some responses to the problem of proxy discrimination focus on fairness as a form of “parity,” aiming to equalize metrics between individuals or groups—looking, for example, for equal rates of accurate and inaccurate predictions between one group and another. We argue that from the perspective of structural theories, fairness-as-parity is inapt in the algorithmic context; instead, we should be considering social impact—whether a use of an algorithm perpetuates or mitigates existing social stratification. Our contribution thus offers a new understanding of what algorithmic racial discrimination is. (shrink)

A "figure of reversible exchange" can be discerned in the fragments of Heraclitus. Again and again we encounter this rhetorical pattern: in the first part of a fragment multiplicity is framed and contained within unity, only for this movement subsequently to be inverted. This inversion, a chiasmus, is not merely a discursive tool of emphasis through contrast; its usage in forming watery and unstable contrasts between the Many and the One, and between Becoming and Being, suggests that the figure operates (...) in Heraclitus with metaphysical stakes. An invitation to an analysis of the philosophical stakes of the language of the Heraclitus fragments has long been open: whereas in the Rhetoric Aristotle criticizes... (shrink)

This article demonstrates the ways in which Goldenberg raises questions of the body, transcendence and epistemology and shows how they are all ultimately questions to do with authority. The author examines the source of authority, asks how it is ascertained and what it promises. The article outlines how these become complex questions when a female figure is projected as paradigmatic for example, Fatimah.

This article analyses the drama surrounding the activism of female imams in North America. The image of Muslim women presiding over mixed congregational prayers evokes dramatically divergent responses among different Muslim constituencies, highlighting the disputed nature of fundamental issues pertaining to identity, community and authority. Provocative questions are raised: Can Islamic texts and communities of interpreters accommodate female religious authorities? Is it in the interest of Muslim women to seek empowerment within a domain of communal life in which male authority (...) has traditionally been dominant in all Sunni and most Shi'ite denominations? Do efforts to advance women within such contexts promise to help bridge the gap between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’, or merely underscore existing divisions and political motivations? In particular we explore two prominent figures, Amina Wadud and Asra Nomani, and each woman's understanding of basic textual debates, conception of Muslim women's needs, and perspective on themes pertaining to ‘Islamic—North American’ relations. Throughout this article, an attempt will also be made to clarify a central paradox of the North American imamah phenomenon: that it is both a highly contingent response to specific cultural and political circumstances and a manifestation of long-term negotiations within the larger Muslim community that favour the opening of new spaces for women within religious and social life. (shrink)

Background:Despite growing evidence that participation in psychological trauma research is well tolerated by children and parents, ethics boards may voice concerns regarding research with families...

Modernism (Art); aesthetics; philosophical aspects; philosophy, modern; 20th century.

Much attention has been given to determining whether an adolescent patient has the capacity to consent to research. This study explores the factors that influence adolescents' decisions to participate in a research study about youth violence and to determine positive or negative feelings elicited by being a research subject. The majority of subjects perceived their decision to participate to be free of coercion, and few felt badly about having participated. However, adolescents who were alone in the room during the assent (...) process were more likely to report that they chose freely to be a research subject. This study may influence the ways physicians communicate with adolescent patients around research assent within a clinical care environment. 1This article was presented at the Annual Meetings of The Pediatric Academic Societies in Baltimore, MD and The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in Atlanta, GA in May, 2001. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Muslim philosophers; biography.

Voluntary participation is connected to cultural, political, religious and social contexts. Social and societal factors can provide opportunities, expectations and requirements for voluntary activity, as well as influence the values and norms promoting this. These contexts are especially central in the case of voluntary participation among students as they are often responding to the societal demands for building a career and qualifying for future assignments and/or government requirements for completing community service. This article questions how cultural values affect attitudes towards (...) volunteerism, using data from an empirical research project on student volunteering activity in 13 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific region. The findings indicate that there are differences in motivation between countries which represent different cultural values. This article sets these findings in context by comparing structural and cultural factors which may influence volunteerism within each country. (shrink)

This article sets out to demonstrate the role of the ‘one-legged devil’, also called General Kassam. Kassam was one of the pioneer generals of the Mau Mau, a guerrilla movement that operated from the central Kenya forests as they participated in the war of liberation from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. Was Kassam a one-legged general from the word go? Methodologically speaking, the article is partially based on interviews conducted with the general before his death (...) at the age of 89 in 2011. Being an insider, Kassam helped to give an in-depth understanding of the Mau Mau war of independence by relating the role of the Kavirondo people of western Kenya in Mau Mau historiography. Were they enticed by the colonial government to abandon the idea of the armed struggle as a way of writing off colonialism? Or did the Kavirondo embrace the theology of non-violence and eventually left the central Kenya group to battle it alone? Or were the people of western Kenya dissuaded to take part in the struggle by the Christian ‘gospel of love’ that abhorred violence, leading to abandoning their colleagues from central Kenya at the last minute? Theoretically speaking, the article is largely informed by John Walton’s theory of reluctant rebels. Walton argues that rebels are always incited by the leading elites in a society that undergoes war or civil war at any given time in history.Contribution: The article contributes to growing knowledge by discussing the Mau-Mau Movement in Kenya’s quest for freedom, from the 1950s to early 1960s, to demonstrate the religious role of armed conflicts in Africa. In this case, General Kassam, a baptised Anglican Christian, whose loyalty to the ancestral pantheons drove him to the quasi-religious war of independence, is the key subject in this article. In this war of independence in Kenya, a seeming conflict between African religion and Christian religion appears as a key emerging issue. The article is relevant to the HTS Journal and the world of scholarship because it is a theo-anthropocentric piece of work which deals with God, creation, and inevitable human conflicts – all of which have answers before God. (shrink)

El texto traducido como el ‘Tratado de los derechos’ fue escrito por el cuarto imam chiita, Zayn al-‘Abidin. La traducción es, a la vez, acertada e imprecisa, pues huqūq incluye el sentido de ‘derechos’ pero no se reduce, en absoluto, a él. El propósito de este ensayo es hacer una contribución al entendimiento del término haqq, cuyo plural es huqūq, apelando a un texto del islam temprano y considerando la pluralidad y superposición de sus niveles semánticos, con miras a (...) nutrir potenciales ejercicios de teoría política y jurídica comparada. Como resultado pueden identificarse 8 niveles de sentido diferentes, pero interconectados, que comprenden dimensiones ético-religiosas, jurídicas y ontológicas. (shrink)

Kingship in Kaśmīr, from the Pen of Jonarāja, Court Paṇḍit to Sulṭān Zayn al- ‘Ābidīn, Critically Edited with Annotated Translation, Indexes and Maps. By Walter Slaje. Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis, vol. 7. Halle an der Saale: Universitätsverlag Halle- Wittenberg, 2014. Pp. 326, 1 pl, maps. €78.