This article looks at Frances Burneys contribution to life writing through her composition, preservation and curatorship of her own personal archive and management of family papers. It charts Burneys chronic anxieties about the possible interpretation of the record that she had created, and the tension between self-expression and self-exposure which underlay her very revealing difficulties with editing, archivism and publication.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Their Father’s Library: Books Furnish Not Only a Room, But Also a Tradition ELIZABETH POWERS Although they shared close life dates and became famous in the same years for their epistolary novels, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Fanny Burney (1752–1840) would seem to have been worlds apart literarily. (Goethe had in his Weimar library a copy of Evelina, while Burney was probably not ignorant of the (...) Europe-wide sensation The Sorrows ofYoung Werther.) What might be called their literary apprenticeship, however, was remarkably similar, consisting not of schooling in a traditional institution in which students (and, importantly, most eighteenth-century writers) were drilled in the classical curriculum, but, instead, from wide reading within the confines of their fathers’ libraries. It is true that Goethe and his younger sister Cornelia were supplied at home with a number of tutors and that their progress was monitored by their father, but their acquaintance with literature was fostered within the confines of the family home. Burney had no formal education at all. Indeed, on the appearance of Evelina, her father (according to her diary) remarked : “[S]he has had very little Education but what she has given herself,—less than any of the others!” Burney, however, had the advantage of growing up in a milieu in which books mattered. While the Goethes were eminently respectable, on the mother’s side part of what was the patriciate of the city of Frankfurt, the Burney household in London was bursting with wits and with what can only be called celebrities. The Burneys knew God and the world: David Garrick, Dr. Johnarion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 116 in their father’s library son, Hester Thrale. As Virginia Woolf noted of the famous father, Dr. Charles Burney, he was a musician “who could talk of intellectual things and ask clever people to his house.” Goethe has given plenty of evidence of roaming freely among his father’s books, a collection of 1,700 calfskin-bound volumes. When Burney went to serve at the court of King George III, Queen Charlotte was disappointed at how few books the author of Evelina possessed. (Similarities accumulate: Goethe also served at court, as minister in the duchy of Weimar.) But why cart around a load of books? As Burney wrote in her diary: “[M]y Father’s most delightful Library, as I then told her [the Queen], with my free access to it, had made [owning my own books] a thing unnecessary... ” Libraries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, whether private or public affairs, were not like contemporary public libraries, catering to a wide array of tastes, but were repositories of what Matthew Arnold termed “the best that is known and thought in the world.” Let’s call it the Western intellectual and cultural heritage. Most respectable homes would possess at a minimum a Bible, while the holdings in private homes, as evident in the library of Goethe’s father, could reach astounding proportions. According to Burney biographer Claire Harman, Fanny’s brother left at his death one of the finest private libraries of the age. Moreover, the antiquity of the works in the venerable libraries scattered across Europe from Dublin to Saint Petersburg, and especially their survival despite centuries of vicissitudes, was testimony to the authoritative nature of the transmission. Anyone who took the Bible in hand, who took lessons from it, adhering, for instance, to the injunctions of the Ten Commandments, was conscious of subscribing to values shared by preceding generations. Literary practitioners, also showing obeisance to authoritative predecessors, followed earlier models, in the process contributing to an evolving literary heritage. There was no purity in this transmission. It was truly promiscuous, but its quasi-biological character, like a mother’s left-handedness in a child, can be seen in the family Elizabeth Powers 117 resemblances among writers of different eras. Just as individuals perpetuate traits of their parents, so literature and the other arts recycled features of artistic predecessors. Writers as diverse in background and language and religion as Ariosto and Milton transmitted the dna, so to speak, of such epical forebears as Homer and Virgil. This sort of family legitimacy was... (shrink)

This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than (...) asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof. (shrink)

This article examines the processes through which civilian fear was turned into a practicable investigative object in the inter-war period and the opening stages of the Second World War, and how it was invested with significance at the level of science and of public policy. Its focus is on a single historical actor, Solly Zuckerman, and on his early war work for the Ministry of Home Security-funded Extra Mural Unit based in Oxford’s Department of Anatomy (OEMU). It examines the process (...) by which Zuckerman forged a working relationship with fear in the 1930s, and how he translated this work to questions of home front anxiety in his role as an operational research officer. In doing so it demonstrates the persistent work applied to the problem: by highlighting it as an ongoing research project, and suggesting links between seemingly disparate research objects (e.g. the phenomenon of ‘blast’ exposure as physical and physiological trauma), the article aims to show how civilian ‘nerve’ emerged from within a highly specific analytical and operational matrix which itself had complex foundations. (shrink)

This paper examines technical, ethical and ecological science perspectives on environmental valuation, and discusses problems in terms of the implications for practical policy -making. It suggests that all these perspectives raise legitimate concerns about the use of stated preference methods, but concludes that such methods still have a role to play in policy making for nature conservation provided they are applied in the right circumstances, designed very carefully, and used in conjunction with other decision-making tools.

Recently, scholars across disciplines raised ethical, legal and social concerns about the notion of human intervention, control, and oversight over Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. This observation becomes particularly important in the age of ubiquitous computing and the increasing adoption of AI in everyday communication infrastructures. We apply Nicholas Garnham's conceptual perspective on mediation to users who are challenged both individually and societally when interacting with AI-enabled systems. One way to increase user agency are mechanisms to contest faulty or flawed AI (...) systems and their decisions, as well as to request redress. Currently, however, users structurally lack such mechanisms, which increases risks for vulnerable communities, for instance patients interacting with AI healthcare chatbots. To empower users in AI-mediated communication processes, this article introduces the concept of active human agency. We link our concept to contestability and redress mechanism examples and explain why these are necessary to strengthen active human agency. We argue that AI policy should introduce rights for users to swiftly contest or rectify an AI-enabled decision. This right would empower individual autonomy and strengthen fundamental rights in the digital age. We conclude by identifying routes for future theoretical and empirical research on active human agency in times of ubiquitous AI. (shrink)

The Emergency Department is a crucial medical treatment unit of hospital specializing in emergency medicine. EDs are responsible for providing immediate healthcare facilities to patients arriving without prior appointment. Thus, evaluating patient satisfaction is of immense importance for efficient service delivery. Very few studies are found in Pakistan, related to patients’ satisfaction and utilization of ED services both from demand and supply perspective of ED-Services Supply Chains. Data was collected to assess 200 patient’s satisfaction towards quality of healthcare services of (...) ED of Sindh Government Qatar Hospital, Orangi town-a tertiary care hospital in Karachi. Structured questionnaire was developed to interview patients and their attendants. Results of SPSS analysis revealed that 55% of patients were transferred to ED within 5 minutes, which shows efficient patient queues and flow management. 64.5% patient’s average LOS was between 40-60 minutes. 71% get the availability of basic facilities in ED. Majority of patients i.e. 96.5% and 90.5%, showed satisfaction with the time spent and treatment given by the doctor. Majority of the patients are satisfied with the services and performance of ED of a tertiary care hospital and 76% patients showed willingness to recommend ED of Government Qatar Hospital, Karachi to others. (shrink)

Dans un format concis et accessible, la sociologue Anne Revillard propose d’initier un public, averti ou non, aux enjeux relatifs à l’emploi des personnes handicapées. En six chapitres, l’ouvrage dresse le constat d’une population en situation de handicap doublement marginalisée et propose une recension critique des dispositifs d’action publique pour l’emploi des personnes handicapées. Le lecteur appréciera la bibliographie fournie de cet ouvrage qui recense aussi bien les travaux français qu...

It is often acknowledged that mindfulness facilitates emotion regulation on a long-term scale. Only few empirical studies support the hypothesis that even a brief mindfulness induction among subjects without previous experience of meditation allows an effective reduction of both positive and negative emotions. To the best of our knowledge, this hypothesis has never been tested when comparing mindfulness to other regulation strategies known to be effective. The current study investigates the effects of mindfulness, reappraisal and expressive suppression during the regulation (...) of positive emotions. Forty-five participants without previous meditation experience watched four positive video clips while applying a specific regulation strategy: mindful attention, reappraisal, expressive suppression or no strategy. Video clips were matched for intensity and positive emotions index. Each of them was evaluated on two dimensions, valence and arousal. Moreover, participants’ facial expressions were recorded during the presentation of the video clips. Results showed that participants report less positive affect in reappraisal and mindful attention conditions compared to expression suppression and a control condition; and the facialexpression – activation of AU12 and AU6 – varies with the regulation strategy applied. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of mindfulness in decreasing both the evaluative judgment of positive video clips and the related facial expression, among participants without previous mindfulness experience. (shrink)

Catherine Driscoll est professeure associée en études culturelles et de genre à l’Université de Sydney. Ses recherches portent sur trois domaines : la jeunesse et les filles (l’accent étant mis sur l’adolescence, les médias et la culture populaire), les théories culturelles (l’accent étant mis sur la modernité et le modernisme), les études culturelles en milieu rural (l’accent étant mis sur l’Australie et les recherches ethnographiques). Les ouvrages ici présentés s’inscrivent dans les deux p...

L’immense parc des infrastructures en ruine, obsolescentes ou en passe de le devenir, représente un enjeu de transformation sans précédent. À la fois marqueurs idéologiques d’une modernité prométhéenne et symboles d’un service public en déliquescence, la crise écologique, technique et politique des grandes infrastructures notamment énergétique, interrogent notre capacité à transformer nos modèles sociétaux.

La pratique du copier-coller chez les étudiant.e.s est assimilée à du plagiat et la réponse apportée par l’institution se résume à « surveiller et punir ». Cette pratique mérite cependant d’être interrogée dans le cadre des littératies universitaires par rapport à la nécessaire prise en compte des littératies numériques. Le fait qu’elle soit conçue comme une « méconduite » d’un point de vue déontologique est à comprendre par rapport à un cadre normatif qui en appelle à l’honnêteté académique et institue (...) l’auteur et les sources comme des composantes essentielles des écrits de savoirs, sans guère en expliciter les enjeux. Comment penser le copier-coller et qu’en faire? En quoi peut-on passer de l’inacceptable au didactisable, et que prendre en compte? Dans la perspective d’une réflexivité critique dans le champ des littératies universitaires, nous proposons des éléments de contextualisation qui permettent de problématiser le copier-coller, en tant que geste d’écriture, en tant qu’objet de débats, et de manière à mieux outiller les étudiant.e.s face aux attentes universitaires et en termes de compétences littéraciques en général. Nous nous intéressons à la réception du copier-coller, à l’énonciation par copier-coller et aux confusions qui entourent les attentes à l’égard des écrits des étudiant.e.s. Le contexte est compris comme un cadre interprétatif qui sert à construire un objet didactique en tant que tel. (shrink)

Desde la mirada de los estudios de la cultura y la hegemonía del poder esta investigación explora desde la perspectiva de sus habitantes, el sentir popular y la apropiación de la celebración religiosa de San Pedro y San Pablo en la parroquia Picoazá (Portoviejo – Ecuador). Para el fin se acude a la metodología cualitativa, utilizando la entrevista como herramienta de corte etnográfico. Los resultados plantean un colectivo apegado a la religión con connotaciones significativas en la organización social y cultural (...) del entorno, dando paso a la reproducción de tradiciones heredadas de generación en generación. Las mismas que a la par, fetichizan y esencializan la actividad, e invisibilizan otros aspectos inherentes a las prácticas culturales. (shrink)

War often comes down to one thing: money. The role of economics in the study of both peace and war is arguably then the most important single factor when it comes to the study of defence. This excellent new book from Fanny Coulomb will be of interest not only to those involved in the burgeoning field of defence economics - it will also be of vital interest to students and academics from international relations, defence studies, philosophy and political science (...) backgrounds. (shrink)

New and classic essays on Antigone and feminist philosophy.

Ethical decisions are contextualized in the dialectic of a multidimensional system, including situation, setting, culture, and generation. There may be further gaps between the ethical considerations of professionals and folk values. The experience of promoting equal opportunities in Hong Kong illustrates some of these challenges. Whereas the rule of law under a Western legal system advocates human rights, the traditional emphasis on harmony and preference for balancing in conflict resolution underlie the gaps in the interpretation of these ideals. The case (...) of the Hong Kong secondary school places allocation system highlights the conflicting perspectives of law, gender stereotypes, psychological knowledge, as well as ethical principles of justice and fairness in promoting equal opportunities in educational assessment and placement. The cultural perspective highlighted in this case illustrates the complex contexts of ethical decisions. (shrink)

Si la loi salique empêche les femmes de régner par elles-mêmes, elle leur confère finalement un pouvoir considérable lors des minorités royales. Incapables d’usurper, les reines mères se voient régulièrement confier le gouvernement en même temps que l’éducation de leur jeune fils à la mort de l’époux. L’amour maternel, inscrit dans le registre des lois naturelles, est un argument régulièrement évoqué, tant pour contrer la naturelle incapacité des femmes à gouverner que les jurisconsultes avancent pour justifier la loi salique, que (...) pour appuyer l’autorité sans pareille des régentes. Mais au-delà d’une rhétorique du pouvoir, le lien filial qui unit mère et fils, lesquels sont aussi reine et roi, permet la reconstitution d’un couple royal qui représente à la fois continuité dynastique et stabilité politique. A ceci près que, dans cette figure du pouvoir reconstituée, le fils procède de la mère quand la reine devait son titre à l’époux. Ainsi, le devoir de maternité imposé à la souveraine permet certes un accroissement de la puissance monarchique, ne serait-ce que par la transmission, au jeune monarque, des héritages maternels et paternels, mais assure aussi à la reine de France une puissance que les bornes imposées par l’institution ne peuvent contenir, en contrôlant, par l’exercice de la régence, la source même de son autorité. (shrink)

Le film Coup pour coup de Marin Karmitz met en scène, peu avant la grève, une ouvrière en proie à la « crise de nerfs ». Tout en confrontant les représentations liées à la « crise de nerfs » aux réalités des années 68, il s’agit, dans une approche psychodynamique, d’analyser ce qui se joue dans le passage de la souffrance individuelle que constitue la « crise de nerfs » à l’identification puis à la résistance collective des ouvrières.

In this chapter, the authors wish to study the transformation of online profiles created during a user’s lifetime into the profile of a deceased person. To this end, they first focus on the possibilities available to the bereaved to maintain the deceased’s profile and how they manage this. When these perpetuated profiles are taken in hand, they undergo changes. This phenomenon of transformation is what the authors have termed “profilopraxy,” whereby the deceased’s profile is changed so that it complies with (...) the idea that the bereaved have of the person, and/or the affixment of death stigmas to make the profile recognizable as that of a dead person. As the most obvious way of affixing these stigmas involves announcing the death of the deceased, the authors analyze this announcement. They identify the enunciators who make the announcement, the places where it appears and the way it is formulated. On this basis, the authors show that the characteristics of social networking sites profoundly upset traditional hierarchies, since friends and family both intervene on the profile pages to affix death stigmas and shape them for posterity. As a result, the transformation of a living person’s profile into a dead person’s profile stems from a co-enunciation involving viewpoints that are not always similar. Tensions may even be expressed among the co-enunciators active on a profile. Moreover, some choose to use other spaces in which to produce a representation of the deceased, thus creating an image that better fits the one they wish to see handed down to posterity. (shrink)

Although the centrosome was first described over 100 years ago, we still know relatively little of the molecular mechanisms responsible for its functions. Recently, members of a novel family of centrosomal proteins have been identified in a wide variety of organisms. The transforming acidic coiled‐coil‐containing (TACC) proteins all appear to play important roles in cell division and cellular organisation in both embryonic and somatic systems. These closely related molecules have been implicated in microtubule stabilisation, acentrosomal spindle assembly, translational regulation, haematopoietic (...) development and cancer progression. In this review, I summarise what we already know of this protein family and will use the TACC proteins to illustrate the many facets that centrosomes have developed during the course of evolution. BioEssays 24:915–925, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Metamorphosis in frogs is a critical developmental process through which a tadpole changes into an adult froglet. Metamorphic changes include external morphological transformations as well as important changes in the wiring of sensory organs and central nervous system. This review aims to provide an overview on the events that occur in the visual system of metamorphosing amphibians and to discuss recent studies that provide new insight into the molecular mechanisms that control changes in the retinal growth pattern as well as (...) the formation of new axonal pathways in the central nervous system. BioEssays 23:319–326, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction: Why Birth?Fanny SöderbäckWhen asked to put together a special international issue of philoSOPHIA, I was faced with the task of picking a topic that would touch and interest feminist scholars of all continents. Birth—and, by extension, pregnant embodiment, motherhood, reproductive technologies, a woman’s right to choose, and other related topics—stood out to me as an issue that has concerned, and that continues to concern, feminist thinkers from (...) across the world. Since Simone de Beauvoir’s early analysis and critique of patriarchy as a system that reduces women to mothers and confines them to the realm of reproduction, feminists have been wrestling with the question of whether birth and motherhood pose a threat to or promote women’s liberation. Many of the topics so pertinent to feminist debates—from emancipatory issues such as abortion rights, the right to work, and women’s health, to more conceptual concerns such as embodiment, desire, sexual difference, and female subjectivity—force us to return to the question of birth, and to what it means that women can, and do, give birth.It was only after I had settled on a topic and invited the six authors included here to contribute that I found out that I was pregnant with my first child. More than any scholarly project I have embarked on before, this one has, as a consequence, been deeply personal. For each step of the editorial process, for each new batch of drafts, peer reviews, discussions with authors, and copyedits, I have witnessed my body change, the baby growing and moving inside me, her little feet exploring my inside, her face looking back at me from ultrasound screens, her presence causing numbness in my hands, swelling in my feet, uncomfortable nights, and, of course, unprecedented joy and anticipation. I have negotiated my maternity leave, taken birthing classes, read books about breastfeeding and parenting, fought with obstetricians and resisted their [End Page 1] tendency to medicalize my experience, gone through phases of intense nesting, and faced fears and strengths I did not know I harbored. I have, in short, experienced some version of what generations of pregnant and birthing women have experienced before me, and yet for me it has all been new and unknown, frightening and exhilarating all at once.Never before have I been so acutely aware of the important role experience holds in feminist scholarship. If (male) philosophers for millennia have been concerned with death, and if death is the one event those writing about it have yet to experience, birth is perhaps the only experience we all—constitutively—share, insofar as we have all been born. And without resorting to biological determinism or heterosexism, it is worth noting that women have a special relationship to birth. Insofar as we live in a society that expects us to do so, we either give birth, choose not to give birth, or struggle to be able to give birth. As several of the essays included here will testify, each of these paths has become increasingly marked by technological advancements. In the first instance, every woman who gives birth has to respond to a series of wanted or unwanted technological interventions—or the lack thereof. From ultrasounds and genetic screenings to the possibility of inducing labor, giving surgical birth, and accessing various pain medicines during labor—or, as in the case of many nations in the developing world, the sometimes dire consequences that are the result of limited access to such technological-medical tools—pregnant women across the globe are in different ways shaped by the technology that accompanies their journey of gestation. In the second instance, the access to contraception and the victories won in the fight for abortion rights constitute a revolution in the lives of women—perhaps the most important of all gains that make up our emancipation. And finally, in the third instance, reproductive technologies have revolutionized our capacity not only to reproduce, but to do so later in life, outside of a heterosexual framework, and across national borders. Much of this can be framed as progress, but, as should be expected, these technological advancements not only force us to confront... (shrink)

Love cannot be everlasting, much as we might desire it to be so. So, what is love in a life that begins and ends? How does it feel to love as a finite being, imperfectly as we may? In Western philosophy and religious thought, love has often been characterized as a source of constancy and commitment. Love in Time reveals the opposite to be true. From the ways our beloveds (and their qualities that endear them to us) change over time, (...) to the possibility of our feelings toward our beloveds-or their feelings toward us-changing, love, Bialek shows, is an endeavor fraught with uncertainty. Yet it is that very uncertainty that entices us to our beloveds. Love is not a refuge from the vagaries of worldly life, impervious to its changing conditions. Rather, it is an orientation to a future that we do not yet know. In this book, Fannie Bialek explores the temporal experience of lovers spending time with their beloveds. Love in time, like any temporal experience, is composed of moments of not knowing what will happen next. It is an experience of vulnerability in this way, the lover exposed to an unknown future and waiting to see how it plays out. Attending to these vulnerabilities, Love in Time develops a fresh ethics of love that centers uncertainty and humility. It is an ethics of love that speaks to the uncertainty of the present and beyond. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous présentons une étude de faisabilité sur l’annotation des passages entre guillemets, phénomènes linguistiques polyphoniques qui résistent souvent à une lecture univoque et à un schéma d’annotation simplificateur. La faisabilité de l’annotation a été testée à travers une étude inter-annotateurs qui a montré, avec un accord pour 80% des annotations effectuées, que des valeurs stables (dénomination, citation, autonymie, commentaires modalisants) pouvaient être postulées. Les cas de désaccord, en partie inévitables face à la complexité du phénomène, peuvent être (...) en partie réduits par un repérage systématique des marques formelles (marques typo-dispositionnelles, éléments du lexique et formules syntaxiques) et un inventaire détaillé des contextes d’emploi pour chaque valeur. Certaines valeurs demeurant ambiguës, il convient toutefois de prévoir dans l’annotation des cas de cumul de valeurs (le passage entre guillemets cumule plusieurs valeurs compatibles) ou d’ambiguïtés (plusieurs interprétations différentes sont possibles) en cas de désaccord des annotateurs. (shrink)

The adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has implications for a company's relationships with its stakeholders. Specifically, by engaging in social dialogue, companies can promote direct relationships with employees, or indirect relationships with them, through elected staff representatives. This study investigates the relationships between companies' involvement in CSR and their engagement in social dialogue, both with employees and elected staff representatives. The results of two surveys, carried out among company representatives and elected staff representatives, indicate that employers do not implement (...) CSR to bypass elected staff representatives. Instead, CSR relates positively to direct relationships with employees and these relationships are not substitutes for dialogue with elected staff representatives, but instead, a factor that can weaken it. (shrink)

This book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people are affected by the impacts of climate change is no longer doubted, including with implications for people movement (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). Climate Change and People on the Move tackles unique questions concerning international responsibility for people movement arising from the inequities inherent to climate change. Corrective and (...) distributive justice provide the analytical backbone, and are explored in a substantial theoretical chapter and then applied to subsequent contextual analysis. Corrective justice supports analysis as to whether people movement in the climate change context could be conceived or framed as harm, loss, or damage which is compensable under international law, either through fault-centred regimes or no-fault regimes (i.e. insurance). Distributive justice supports analysis as to whether such movement could be conceived or framed as a disproportionate burden, either for those faced with movement or those faced with sheltering people on the move, from which duties of re-distribution may stem. This book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to the impacts of climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice. (shrink)