Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition.” An Essay by Charles Taylor with commentary by Amy Gutmann, editor, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf.

This paper problematises the ways women’s leadership has been understood in relation to male leadership rather than on its own terms. Focusing specifically on ethical leadership, we challenge and politicise the symbolic status of women in leadership by considering the practice of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. In so doing, we demonstrate how leadership ethics based on feminised ideals such as care and empathy are problematic in their typecasting of women as being simply the other to men. We apply (...) different strategies of mimesis for developing feminist leadership ethics that does not derive from the masculine. This offers a radical vision for leadership that liberates the feminine and women’s subjectivities from the masculine order. It also offers a practical project for changing women’s working lives through relationality, intercorporeality, collective agency and ethical openness with the desire for fundamental political transformation in the ways in which women can lead. (shrink)

This short article argues that an adequate response to the implications for governance raised by ‘Big Data’ requires much more attention to agency and reflexivity than theories of ‘algorithmic power’ have so far allowed. It develops this through two contrasting examples: the sociological study of social actors used of analytics to meet their own social ends and the study of actors’ attempts to build an economy of information more open to civic intervention than the existing one. The article concludes with (...) a consideration of the broader norms that might contextualise these empirical studies, and proposes that they can be understood in terms of the notion of voice, although the practical implementation of voice as a norm means that voice must sometimes be considered via the notion of transparency. (shrink)

When radiocarbon dating techniques were applied to archaeological material in the 1950s they were hailed as a revolution. At last archaeologists could construct absolute chronologies anchored in temporal data backed by immutable laws of physics. This would make it possible to mobilize archaeological data across regions and time-periods on a global scale, rendering obsolete the local and relative chronologies on which archaeologists had long relied. As profound as the impact of 14C dating has been, it has had a long and (...) tortuous history now described as proceeding through three revolutions, each of which addresses distinct challenges of capturing, processing and packaging radiogenic data for use in resolving chronological puzzles with which archaeologists has long wrestled. In practice, mobilizing radiogenic data for archaeological use is a hard-won achievement; it involves multiple transformations that, at each step of the way, depend upon a diverse array of technical expertise and background knowledge. I focus on strategies of triangulation and traceability that establish the integrity of these data and their relevance as anchors for evidential reasoning in archaeology. (shrink)

Social justice demands that we attend carefully to the epistemic terrains we inhabit as well as to the epistemic resources we summon to make our lived experiences tangible to one another. Not all epistemic terrains are hospitable—colonial projects landscaped a good portion of our epistemic terrain long before present generations moved across it. There is no shared epistemicterra firma,no level epistemic common ground where knowers share credibility and where a diversity of hermeneutical resources play together happily. Knowers engage one another (...) on a politically saturated,unlevel knowing fieldwhere members of dominant groups work to forcibly maintain their epistemic home-terrain advantage. I use the metaphor of the unlevel knowing field to capture these oppressive epistemic structures. The unlevel knowing field is a hungry place where all knowledge that fails to nurture and sustain dominant ways knowing risks being dragged onto the dominator's epistemic home turf to be mined, coopted, consumed, or destroyed. Knowledge and willful ignorance circulate with equal vigor in this hungry world. From the standpoint of oppressed/resisting peoples, the unlevel knowing field is a minefield, an epistemic twilight zone, which must be traversed with considerable care and endless attention. The harms epistemic injustice produces are not disembodied harms. Repeated acts of injustice weather our bodies, dull our minds, weaken our hearts, and traumatize the spirit of our communities. They create public-health precarities and invite mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual illness into our being. Epistemic oppression is a cruel thief. It is disorienting, exhausting, and deadly. It triggers anger, anxiety, depression, and resistance. It steals our time, energy, and attention away from more beautiful things. (shrink)

We conducted and analyzed qualitative interviews with 12 persons working on the Healthy Public Housing Initiative in Boston, Massachusetts in 2001. Our goal was to generate ideas and themes related to the ethics of the community-based participatory research in which they were engaged. Specifically, we wanted to see if we found themes that differed from conventional research that is based on an individualistic ethics. There were clearly distinct ethical issues raised with respect to projects and individuals who engage in community-based (...) collaborations. The differences that arose from the interviews were seeking equality between the partners, the need for the community partner to defend the community, dealing with unflattering data, meeting community expectations and producing tangible benefits to the community. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, an immense wave of scholarship has recovered the voices of the many women who contributed to early modern philosophy, transforming our picture of the period. It is now typical for...

We explore our role as researchers and witnesses in the context of an emerging partnership with the Penelakut Tribe, the aim of which is to locate the unmarked graves of children who died while attending the notorious Kuper Island Indian Residential School on their territory (southwest British Columbia). This relationship is in the process of taking shape, so we focus on understanding conditions for developing trust, and the interactional expertise necessary to work well together, with a good heart. We suggest (...) that, in some respects, this may be usefully understood as a practice of witnessing on several dimensions. (shrink)

We distinguish between citizens of a state and strangers in a categorical way that seems clear and has the force of law behind it. In fact nationality is a highly contested phenomenon and one that is desired by many who are considered to be aliens or strangers. They range from guest-workers, to immigrants, to asylum seekers and they are often viewed with deep suspicion, even fear. The Kantian injunction to be hospitable to others is not being heeded, but should be (...) the major consideration in any new legislation. It may now be necessary to consider a new law of asylum, as many Western states seek to bar such people from entry even if they are fleeing persecution. Moreover, we will only be able to resolve this persecutory, exclusionist tendency if we develop a strong, secure sense of self. (shrink)

This third edition anthology provides a contemporary survey of current international issues for study across social science disciplines. New chapters discuss the reproductive justice in the US, immigration politics and medical duty during pandemics, climate change implications for bioethics, acoustic weaponry technologies, and vaccine politics.

According to orthodox representationalism, perceptual states have constitutive veridicality or accuracy conditions. In defense of this view, several philosophers—most notably Tyler Burge—employ a realist strategy that turns on the purported explanatory ineliminability of representational posits in perceptual science. I argue that Burge’s version of the realist strategy fails as a defense of orthodox representationalism. However, it may vindicate a different kind of representationalism.

Intellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that, and consequently that the knowledge involved in skill is propositional. In support of this view, the intentional action argument holds that since skills manifest in intentional action and since intentional action necessarily depends on propositional knowledge, skills necessarily depend on propositional knowledge. We challenge this argument, and suggest that instructive representations, as opposed to propositional attitudes, can better account for an agent’s reasons for action. While a propositional-causal theory of action, according (...) to which intentional action must be causally produced “in the right way” by an agent’s proposition-involving reasons, has long held sway, we draw on Elizabeth Anscombe’s insights offer a path toward an alternative theory of action. In so doing, we reject the implicitly Cartesian conception of knowledge at the core of the intentional action argument, while hanging on to the idea that mental states are representations of a certain kind. Our argument provides theoretical support for anti-intellectualism by equipping philosophers with an account of non-propositional, practical content. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

A recent report by Blumenthal et al.1 provides convincing evidence that at least 15% of Caenorhabditis elegans genes are co‐transcribed within over a thousand operons. Polycistronic transcription of gene clusters is very rare in eukaryotes. The widespread occurrence of operons in C. elegans thus raises some interesting questions about the origin and function of these multigenic transcriptional units. BioEssays 24:983–987, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc.

The classical distinction between leisure and work is often used to define features of the emancipated life. In Aristotle leisure is defined as time devoted to purposeful activity, and distinguished from the labour time expended merely to produce life’s necessities. In critical theory, this classical distinction has been adapted to provide an image of emancipated life, as purposively driven, fulfilling and meaningful activity. Aspects of this adapted definition undermine the classical leisure/work distinction to the extent that the demand for meaningful (...) work, i.e., a leisure-work conjunction, is now used as a critical perspective on unfulfilling, oppressive labour. Rancière, however, is critical both of this idea of an extended franchise for leisure and of its dependence on craft and artisanal labour as the model of satisfying, skilled work. Instead of Aristotelian leisure, or ‘fulfilling’ work, Rancière identifies in the state of reverie an alternative marker for the emancipated life. The theme is consistent across the scattered archival, historiographical, philosophical, literary and aesthetic contexts his writing treats. But since reverie is defined as disengagement from action, the position raises a number of difficulties. This article examines how Rancière connects reverie to emancipation. It focuses on two questions: the nature of the relation between his definition of reverie and the classical, Aristotelian concept of action; and, whether, given the constitutive non-relation between reverie and action that he outlines, Rancière’s position can address the persistent problem in critical theory of the motivation for the emancipated life. It is argued that his highlighting of the potential communicative significance of modes and scenes of emancipated life is relevant to this problem. The key argument is that rather than developing a ‘theory’, his approach to emancipation focuses on and values communicable experiences of emancipation, and that states of reverie are one such type of valued experience. (shrink)

Progressive family policy regimes typically aim to promote and protect women’s opportunities to participate in the workforce. These policies offer significant benefits to affluent, two-parent households. A disproportionate number of low-income and impoverished families, however, are headed by single mothers. How responsive are such policies to the objectives of these mothers and the needs of their children? This chapter argues that one-size-fits-all family policy regimes often fail the most vulnerable household and contribute to intergenerational poverty in two ways: by denying (...) at-risk children adequate parenting, and by undermining their mothers’ legitimate interest in nurturing and caring for their own children. The capabilities of these mothers and the well-being of their children are better served by policies which recognise maternal caregiving as a productive and valuable occupation meriting equal respect and social support. (shrink)

This paper examines the outcomes of Preserving the Past Together, a workshop series designed to build the capacity of local heritage managers to engage in collaborative and community-based approaches to archaeology and historic preservation. Over the past two decades practitioners of these approaches have demonstrated the interpretive, methodological, and ethical value of integrating Indigenous perspectives and methods into the process and practice of heritage management and archaeology. Despite these benefits, few professional resources exist to support the development of collaborative relationships (...) between local heritage managers and Tribal nations. Filling this need, Preserving the Past Together’s interactive workshops and keynote lectures involved participants in a discussion of the central themes in collaborative and Indigenous approaches to archaeology today, highlighting the local challenges and opportunities that exist for archaeologists, heritage managers, and Tribal nations to work together to care for the past. This paper presents an overview of the event series’ goals, the strategies it used to foster collaboration among the diverse stakeholders of the Salish Sea, and the next steps the project’s co-directors are taking to further support communication and collaboration between stewards and stakeholders in the Pacific Northwest. (shrink)

In this paper I explore some possible reasons why white feminists philosophers have failed to engage the radical work being done by non-Western women, U.S. women of color and scholars of color outside of the discipline. -/- Feminism and academic philosophy have had lots to say to one another. Yet part of what marks feminist philosophy as philosophy is our engagement with the intellectual traditions of the white forefathers. I’m not uncomfortable with these projects: Aristotle, Foucault, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin, (...) and countless others have provided us with some very powerful conceptual tools.. However, as Sandra Harding observes, conventional standards for what counts as “good science” (or in this case “good philosophy”) always bear the imprint of their creators. So, I think about whether the tools my discipline hands me ever serve as strategies for exclusion. -/- My conversation begins with intersectionality, which for feminists working outside of philosophy, is a predictable point of departure; but as a white feminist philosopher I have specific reasons for starting here. The fact that intersectionality is, at once, such a widely recognized strategy for making visible women of color’s issues and concerns in academic and policy discussions, and so neglected by philosophers is telling. I want to invite philosophers to think more seriously about intersectionality and other pluralist approaches as strategies for calling attention to whiteness of philosophy in general and feminist philosophy in particular. I want us to consider what feminist philosophy would be like if women of color’s writing, experiences, and communities drove philosophical inquiry. -/- Since most philosophers are unfamiliar with intersectional methodologies, I begin with a basic explanation of the foundational claims of this approach. Next, I explore some reasons why white feminists working in philosophy may be resistant to this method. I identify both disciplinary and personal reasons for this hesitancy and argue that intersectionality serves as a useful strategic tool for examining white authority in the emergent feminist canon. Finally, I explore the role intersectional thinking might play in creating a feminist critical race philosophy by outlining four projects that I think will challenge and enrich feminist work in the discipline. (shrink)

Arising out of the heightened sensory perceptions of extended lockdown, this creative investigation began with contemplation of flowering street-trees. Through 262 days of lock down, residents of Melbourne retreated to the hyper-local, often reinforced by a 5-km travel bubble and a one-hour daily time limit outdoors. The sublime ephemeral springtime flowers of street-trees were amplified by the extreme sensory and social constraints of social distancing. Drawing us into a suspended moment of slow encounter, we attuned to the contained glowing pulse (...) of plants. The works were created using photogrammetry, a technique for generating 3D models from a large set of photographs taken from all angles of the botanical specimen. Whilst the point-cloud models remain the central artefact of vegetal/digital, it has been presented in a range of formats throughout 2022–23, including multichannel video loops, augmented reality, webXR, gestural interactive works and still prints. This work invites an embodied experience of attuning to both the vegetal and the digital. This is consistent with my alignment with queer and autistic politics, of siding with the object. Increasingly, queer cultural practices are employing new materialism and posthumanism to interrogate the agency of things and the culturally constituted hierarchies of objects and subjects. The reconfiguration of embodied relations is necessary in order to reconceive a viable future. (shrink)

Records of online collaborative mathematical activity provide us with a novel, rich, searchable, accessible and sizeable source of data for empirical investigations into mathematical practice. In this paper we discuss how the resources of crowdsourced mathematics can be used to help formulate and answer questions about mathematical practice, and what their limitations might be. We describe quantitative approaches to studying crowdsourced mathematics, reviewing work from cognitive history (comparing individual and collaborative proofs); social psychology (on the prospects for a measure of (...) collective intelligence); human–computer interaction (on the factors that led to the success of one such project); network analysis (on the differences between collaborations on open research problems and known-but-hard problems); and argumentation theory (on modelling the argument structures of online collaborations). We also give an overview of qualitative approaches, reviewing work from empirical philosophy (on explanation in crowdsourced mathematics); sociology of scientific knowledge (on conventions and conversations in online mathematics); and ethnography (on contrasting conceptions of collaboration). We suggest how these diverse methods can be applied to crowdsourced mathematics and when each might be appropriate. (shrink)

The book offers an original defence of a new materialist thesis that focuses on the biological core of humans to develop a theory of human rights.

To explore the reason why some biographies by or about politicians are more successful than others, and to help publishers consider the range of factors that may impact on their commissioning decisions, we sought to establish a range of likely influencing factors and to combine them in a formula. This is not a magic prediction tool, but rather a range of considerations that need to be worked through for various publishing propositions before decisions are made. As an exercise, and a (...) starting point for wider discussions, it may benefit a group of individuals preparing for an editorial meeting at which commissioning is to be considered. (shrink)

Aaron Antonovsky, the medical sociologist, defined the sense of coherence as a pervasive sense that the events in one’s life are comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful or worthwhile. Research on the sense of coherence indicates that it is positively correlated with resilience and adaptive coping with disabilities and illnesses. The collection of first–person narratives published in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics on genetic testing can be understood as expressions of the human effort to restore or sustain a sense of coherence in the (...) face of illness, uncertainty, or even curiosity about one’s origins and future wellbeing. While the medical usefulness of the genetic testing that was discussed in the collection of narratives was often modest, the contribution of testing to the sense of coherence was often greater. Understanding the sense of coherence as a possible motive for genetic testing might reshape the way that we conceive of the benefits and the burdens of genetic testing and the disclosure of incidental findings. (shrink)

Amid intensifying calls for an international convention on the rights of older persons, it is timely and important to examine the different narratives of aging that are informing and shaping debates on the human rights of older persons and to explore their implications. The article examines the dominant and competing narratives of aging emerging from public policy and gerontological studies, most notably, aging as a crisis or burden; aging as pathology; conceptions of successful, productive or active aging; and finally, aging (...) and vulnerability. The implications of each of these narratives are analysed. The article then explores the extent to which these different narratives are taken up or challenged in advocacy for an international convention on the rights of older persons. The aim of the discussion is to make explicit and interrogate the narratives of aging which advocacy for a new convention on the rights of older persons may be perpetuating or challenging. (shrink)

Giving permission to embodied knowing to inform nursing research methodology: die poetics of voice(s)This paper originated from my experience of trying to find an authentic way to research women's experience of the pre‐menstruum. I describe how personal change informed an evolving methodological approach. This change occurred when I felt tension between two strong voices. Conflict and insecurities originated from the pressure of my academic voice to conform to the dominant culture in what often seemed a disempowering way; a way that (...) denied my body voice by emphasizing theory over experience. The construction of a poetic of voice (s) to illustrate how I eventually found an embodied voice is used to provide space for the reader's own interpretive process. The evolving embodied voice integrates my experience as a woman/nurse/researcher, validating my knowing bodily, practically, experientially and academically that I was able to help the participants to disclose their embodied knowing. This approach has wider implications when considering the value nurse researchers and academics give to embodied wisdom. (shrink)

Current policy in relation to special needs prioritises early intervention and inclusive education, at least as 'good intentions'. This article argues for a paradigmatic shift away from individualist models of learning and disability. The social context of play is emphasised as the crucial arena for realising such good intentions, as long as it is geared to responding to, and developing, the self-determination, control, and identity of young disabled children becoming disabled adults in a disabling society.

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic women's (...) "motherwork.". (shrink)

Industrialized agriculture currently substitutes many of the ecological functions of soil micro-organisms, macroinvertebrates, wild plants, and vertebrate animals with high cost inputs of pesticides and fertilizers. Enhanced biological diversity potentially offers agricultural producers a means of reducing the cost of their production. Conservation of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes may be greatly enhanced by the adoption of certain crop management practices, such as reduced pesticide usage or measures to prevent soil erosion. Still, the vast monocultures comprising the crop area in many (...) Canadian agricultural landscapes are often of limited conservation value, thus the inclusion of appropriate wildlife habitat in and around arable lands is a fundamental prerequisite for the integration of wild species within agricultural landscapes. This review of current literature considers the potential for non-crop areas within agricultural landscapes to be reservoirs of agronomically beneficial organisms including plants, invertebrates, and vertebrate species. Non-crop habitats adjacent to crop land have been identified as significant for the maintenance of plant species diversity, for the conservation of beneficial pollinating and predatory insects, and as essential habitat for birds. A key component for enhancement of biodiversity is the reintroduction of landscape heterogeneity by (1) protection and enhancement of key non-crop areas, (2) smaller fields and farms, and (3) a greater mixture of crops, through rotation, intercropping and regional diversification. The benefits of increased biodiversity within arable lands are reviewed for various species groups. In the Canadian context, any serious attempt to derive significant agronomic benefit from increased biodiversity will require considerable changes in the agricultural programs and policies which shape mainstream industrialized agriculture. The problems of crop depredation by vertebrate species, weed and insect competition, which still represent significant impediments to the creation and proper management of wildlife habitat, are also discussed. (shrink)

Recently, the theory theory has led to much interesting research. However, this is the first book to look at the theory in extensive detail and to systematically contrast it with other theories.

Alison Wylie is one of the few full-time academic philosophers of the social and historical sciences on the planet today. And fortunately for us, she happens to specialise in archaeology! After emerging onto the archaeological theory scene in the mid-1980s with her work on analogy, she has continued to work on philosophical questions raised by archaeological practice. In particular, she explores the status of evidence and ideals of objectivity in contemporary archaeology: how do we think we know about the (...) past? Her other key interests include feminist initiatives in Anglo-American archaeology, and ethical conflicts in current archaeological practice. Kathryn Denning recently asked about her adventures in archaeology and academia and her thoughts on archaeology’s past, present, and future. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe idea that metaphorical meaning is guided by speakers’ experiences of the world is central to Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Yet little is known about the ways in which speakers’ understandings of objects in the world around them influence how they use words in metaphorical and non-metaphorical ways. This article is a corpus linguistic analysis of the collocational patterns of metaphorical and non-metaphorical bridge instances from the Corpus of American English Corpus of Contemporary American English. The study shows that metaphorical and (...) non-metaphorical uses of words are systematically linked to different types of real world experiences. It is argued that lexical metaphors are, in fact, lexico-encyclopedic conceptual metaphors, and that they are constrained by cognitive salience. (shrink)

A literary text or fiction, while making use of the referential or descriptive resources of our ordinary language, nevertheless does not make use of them in a referential or a descriptive manner. Reference may indeed seem to be made to persons or circumstances or events, in the sense that such things are mentioned in the literary text and may even be linked together by it into some kind of a story. Reference is not made to them, in the sense that (...) these persons or circumstances or events have no existence in the actual world in which the text is written or read, or else that it is irrelevant to the nature of the text as a piece of literature if they do have such an existence. (shrink)