This article analyzes positions on pornography using Q-methodology. Eighty-five respondents sorted a sample of 86 opinion statements on definitions of pornography, personal reactions to it, its causes and effects, and social policy recommendations. Factor analysis was used to identify clusters of individuals in the United States who share common subjectively defined points of view on pornography. The three patterns of responses that emerged from the analysis were labeled Religious-Conservative, Liberal, and Antipornography Feminist. Using the empirical data, we examine the logical (...) and ethical structures of these points of view and their political and legal implications. We conclude that the viewpoints are too incompatible to sustain stable and effective political alignments among the adherents. (shrink)

In some applications, researchers using the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the effect of a policy may struggle to determine whether they have identified a “good match” between the control group and treated group. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of the mean and maximum Absolute Standardized Mean Difference (ASMD) as a test of balance between a synthetic control unit and treated unit, and provide guidance on what constitutes a poor fit when using a synthetic control. We explore (...) and compare other potential metrics using a simulation study. We provide an application of our proposed balance metric to the 2013 Los Angeles (LA) Firearm Study [9]. Using Uniform Crime Report data, we apply the SCM to obtain a counterfactual for the LA firearm-related crime rate based on a weighted combination of control units in a donor pool of cities. We use this counterfactual to estimate the effect of the LA Firearm Study intervention and explore the impact of changing the donor pool and pre-intervention duration period on resulting matches and estimated effects. We demonstrate how decision-making about the quality of a synthetic control can be improved by using ASMD. The mean and max ASMD clearly differentiate between poor matches and good matches. Researchers need better guidance on what is a meaningful imbalance between synthetic control and treated groups. In addition to the use of gap plots, the proposed balance metric can provide an objective way of determining fit. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the effects of time spent in household labor on the gender gap in earnings. We identify that part of the gender gap in earnings directly attributable to women's greater household labor time. After controlling for years of work experience, hours worked per week, occupation, industry, union membership, and education, we find that household labor time can directly account for 8.2 percent of the gender gap in earnings. In addition to the direct effect of women's household (...) responsibilities on earnings, they also may affect occupational location, work experience, and number of hours worked per week, and through these variables, their earnings. These findings indicate that we cannot truly understand women's earnings relative to those of men without considering the impact of their unpaid labor on their paid work. (shrink)

The literature on sado‐masochism (S/M) and dominance and submission (D/S) tends to focus either on the psychodynamics of perversion or, in more magnanimous moments, on rites of reversal in the power relations of participants. This paper shifts the focus of analysis to the altered states of consciousness achieved in consensual S/M, bondage and fetish play and demonstrates the self‐conscious affinity between S/M and ecstatic religious practices like those well documented in the anthropological literature. The paper will explore sensory and other (...) shifts used to produce what one informant called "that transformative experience." It is posited that "dominance/ submission" and "top/bottom" are not simply asymmetrical relations in terms of power relations, but that they evoke fundamentally different states of consciousness. Further, altered states in consensual bondage and fetish play differ significantly in hetero‐ and homosexual play. The reasons for this appear to have both historical and political implications which are explored briefly in the paper. (shrink)

Ethical decisions related to computer technology and computer use are subject to three primary influences: (1) the individual's own personal code (2) any informal code of ethical behavior that exists in the work place, and (3) exposure to formal codes of ethics. The relative importance of these codes, as well as factors influencing these codes, was explored in a nationwide survey of information system (IS) professionals. The implications of the findings are important to educators and employers in the development of (...) acceptable ethical standards. (shrink)

When faced with an ambiguous ethical situation related to computer technology (CT), the individual's course of action is influenced by personal experiences and opinions, consideration of what co-workers would do in the same situation, and an expectation of what the organization might sanction. In this article, the judgement of over three-hundred Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) members concerning the actions taken in a series of CT ethical scenarios are examined. Respondents expressed their personal judgement, as well as their perception (...) of their co-workers' judgement, and their understanding of the organization's judgement of the actions described in the scenarios. The findings show that there are differences in respondents' judgements for self, co-workers, and organization. Definitive patterns were also found between groups with and without organizational codes related to CT. (shrink)

Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Carlos Almaraz, Robert Arneson, John Baldessari, Lewis Baltz, Robert Bechtle, Jeff Brouws, Laurie Brown, Angela Buenning, Darlene Campbell, Mark Campbell, Gary Carlos, Fandra Chang, Stephane Couturier, Robert Dawson, Joe Deal, Richard Diebenkorn, John Divola, Beth Yarnelle Edwards, Kota Ezawa, William A. Garnett, Jeff Gillette, Joe Goode, Todd Hido, David Hockney, Salomon Huerta, Robert Isaacs, Thomas Lawson, Jean Lowe, Alex MacLean, Richard Meisinger, Jr., Richard Misrach, Rick Monzon, Barrie Mottishaw, Martin Mull, Deborah Oropallo, Bill Owens, Rondal (...) Partridge, John Register, Ed Ruscha, Peter Saul, Mary Snowden, Joel Sternfeld, Larry Sultan, Rudy Vanderlans, Camilo Jose Vergara, Henry Wessel, Amir Zaki. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Changing Theories of Undergraduate Theatre Studies, 1945–1980Anne Berkeley (bio)IntroductionThe history of theatre study in American undergraduate education is a story of prodigious quantitative success. Although it took two centuries to secure the right to perform plays at American colleges, it took only eighty years for the curriculum to grow from a few isolated courses at the turn of the twentieth century to well over 14,000 in the 1970s.1 By (...) far the steepest growth occurred during the unprecedented expansion of higher education between 1945 and 1979. But academic theatre's meteoric rise after the war years conceals more problematic qualitative achievements. Throughout its ascendancy, vexing questions persisted concerning the quality, standards, and evaluation of theatre programs. In academic journals and books, theorists explored with alacrity broad opportunities for educational theatre in the university. But they also bickered constantly about objectives and practices and their role in academe, ultimately providing a decidedly ambivalent assessment of accomplishment.According to Oscar G. Brockett, the fundamental questions are, What place, if any, should theatre have in a university? and, For what are students being educated?2 This study traces answers to these questions given by scholars and educators between 1945 and 1979.3 It explores the connections between the scholarship about theatre studies and the programs that developed, what scholars and educators wanted it to become, and what it became in the context of liberal arts education. These years are important because they are the golden age of higher education, a time of unprecedented expansion. Following World War II the G.I. Bill greatly increased student enrollment, and academic and research programs surged. At this time, the [End Page 57] university's governing interests were established by the politics of the Cold War, and the desire to surpass the Soviet Union at everything motivated the expansion of higher education.4 The National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 (legislation made possible by a prosperous economy) injected vast financial resources into program development, and federal programs such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) were established.An earlier study of theatre curriculum between, roughly, the Civil War and the Second World War provides a useful background against which to interpret the data for this later period.5 From the earlier study we learn that academic theatre suffered from religious hostility for two centuries but that by the end of the nineteenth century there were extracurricular dramatic clubs and productions. The emergence of the modern research university brought with it the expansion and diversification of knowledge, the differentiation of the colonial college's general curriculum into discrete disciplines, and the departmentalization of the curriculum. As principles and aims for liberal arts education, and the bachelor of arts degree, began to take shape, reconstruction of the curriculum included the introduction of departments of speech and literature, which included dramatic curricula.6 Academic theatre first began in classical and later modern language departments as a way of teaching literature in another language; later speech and English departments added courses in oral interpretation and playwriting.After George Pierce Baker opened the theatre department at Yale in 1925, theatre became an autonomous field of study in increasing numbers of universities. During this early period several developments took place: curriculum for theatrical studies developed out of extra-curricular theatre, theatre was identified and justified as a humanistic study, the seeds were planted for the university's eventual role in nonprofit and professional regional theatres, and the study of theatre as a legitimate academic discipline was developed. During this period, too, most theorists argued that theatre was one of the liberal arts and should be taught as part of the humanities. Late in the period there developed a small but increasingly vocal group of scholars and teachers who began to argue that theatre departments should teach technical skills of theatrical performance as well as humanistic inquiry. Thus was born the so-called craft or culture dichotomy: should educational theatre emphasize the crafts of performance or the humanism that prevailed in general (unspecialized) liberal study?The Forties and Fifties: The Curriculum Diversifies... (shrink)

Dirigé par Maureen Daly Goggin, professeure de lettres à l’Arizona State University, et par Beth Fowkes Tobin, professeure de lettres et de Women Studies à l’University of Georgia, ce livre collectif rassemble vingt contributions (essentiellement venues des États-Unis, mais aussi d’Europe) précédées d’une introduction et complétées d’une forte bibliographie de 27 pages, d’un index des noms propres et des noms communs, d’une présentation des auteurs et accompagnées de 77 illustrations commenté...

William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague. By William Joseph Gavin. Anti‐foundationalism Old and New. Edited by Tom Rockmore and Beth Singer.

• Ann Taylor, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths. York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. Oxford Text Archive, first edition, 2003.

This article analyzes the experiences of ecologists who used data they did not collect themselves. Specifically, the author examines the processes by which ecologists understand and assess the quality of the data they reuse, and investigates the role that standard methods of data collection play in these processes. Standardization is one means by which scientific knowledge is transported from local to public spheres. While standards can be helpful, the results show that knowledge of the local context is critical to ecologists' (...) reuse of data. Yet, this information is often left behind as data move from the private to the public world. The knowledge that ecologists acquire through fieldwork enables them to recover the local details that are so critical to their comprehension of data collected by others. Social processes also play a role in ecologists' efforts to judge the quality of data they reuse. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I shall explore the relationship between the control required for action and the control required for moral responsibility. I shall argue that there is an incongruity between Frankfurt’s account of guidance control presented in his theory of action and his commitment to the claim that alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility. This inconsistency centres around the role of abilities to do otherwise in our analyses of action and moral responsibility. After outlining the problem for (...) Frankfurt, I shall then motivate one way of resolving this tension. This solution provides a unified role for abilities to do otherwise in our analyses of control. (shrink)

The A-Theory of time has long struggled with the results of special relativity. One proposed solution is to stipulate the existence of a physically or metaphysically privileged frame which defines the global present for all observers. Recently this proposal has cropped up in literature on spatially closed universes (SCUs) which seem to naturally instantiate such structures. This paper examines the privileged frame proposal through the lens of SCUs, arguing that even in these space-times which seem overwhelmingly friendly to A-theoretic accounts (...) the theory face insurmountable challenges. (shrink)

Fair competition law and public health law talk past each other when discussing pharmaceutical pricing and distribution. The former cannot agree on the relevant definition of consumer welfare. The latter does not fully comprehend the highly complex but inherently collective nature of pharmaceutical drug acquisition in the United States. This essay proposes to inject public health discourse into this debate to enrich it, focus it, and render it more accessible to those who must live by its outcome.

In this paper, I expand our framework for epistemic injustice by shifting focus from epistemic evaluations of individuals in information exchange to epistemic evaluations of individuals engaging their know-how in performance. I call the injustice to individuals qua knowers-how performative injustice, and I argue that performative injustice has distinct features worth understanding apart from varieties of epistemic injustice devoted to information exchange. I develop an account of the performative authority that is unfairly evaluated in cases of performative injustice and show (...) how, in some cases, cognitive penetration can affect observers’ evaluations. Finally, I show how stereotype threat may short circuit what would otherwise be cases of performative injustice, which in turn reveals the significance of its systemic manifestations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay explores the phenomenology of hunger in reference to work by Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir. Considering the wealth of references to hunger in phenomenological literature, very little has been written that acknowledges the importance of hunger in French existential phenomenology in particular. With reference to work by the above authors, this essay examines how hunger alters one’s basic experience of space and time, no less one’s sense of social belonging. Phenomenology illuminates dimensions of the human (...) experience of hunger that remain veiled in other discourses, and it is vital that efforts to understand hunger engage the profound narratives of disorientation, illness and shame that come to the fore in this body of work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wild LoveCynthia Willett’s Biosocial Eros EthicsAnn V. MurphyI’ll frame my comments in honor of Cynthia Willett’s work in light of two recent anecdotes:Anecdote I: It happened that one evening as I was reading Willett’s most recent monograph Interspecies Ethics—in particular the chapter on animals’ capacity for laughter and humor—my wonderful (if somewhat insubordinate) Airedale terrier, Nora Mae Murphy, heard me laughing, trotted into the living room, jumped on the (...) couch, looked at me with concern, stared down at the book in my hand, then placed her paw on my arm as if to check my pulse, eyes wide and ears slicked back. Nora is used to me reading philosophy at night; but she is not used to me laughing loudly while doing so. Clearly, she was curious. I smiled in recognition of what Nora’s behavior had enabled me to realize: I don’t often laugh when I read philosophy, not like I did that night while reading Willett’s work.Anecdote II: Cindy came out to New Mexico last spring to give the keynote address at our department’s annual graduate student conference. The afternoon she arrived, a few graduate students had arranged to take her on a hike in a nature preserve, a beautiful tract of land alongside the Rio Grande, which winds through Albuquerque. The next day, two of [End Page 50] the graduate students were in my office and I asked how the hike went. The students looked at each other, shuffled a bit, and stared at the floor until one announced, “Well, we kind of got locked in the preserve.” Me: “You got locked in the nature preserve?” “Yep, but it all worked out okay. She was cool with it,” one student reported. The other added: “Yeah, she’s pretty wild.”That conversation happened months before I was asked to speak on and to Willett’s work, but that conversation, that compliment, that word—“wild”—came to mind many times as I was preparing these comments in her honor. And I mean “wild” in the best sense: as rowdy and irreverent and joyful. There is a wildness to Willett’s texts in their performative aspect, one that marks them as singular. Bucking certain philosophical tendencies to overindulge a metaphorics of war and violence, Willett’s own work evinces an entirely different philosophical orientation, one that takes love, and more specifically eros, as its bedrock. The wildness of Willett’s ethical philosophy comes into play in the truly variable scenes in which Willett locates eros and its promise. It’s a wild kind of love that informs Willett’s ethics, one that refuses domestication, refuses to be hemmed in by the borders between species, refuses to be fixed. The scope that Willett assigns eros is broad, countering the tendency to reduce it to the sexualized and sentimental contexts in which it is often placed.1At the heart of Willett’s deliberations across her four monographs and many articles is an abiding concern with, and celebration of, eros as a site of social, political, and ethical promise. A preoccupation with eros is evident in her work from the very beginning. In her first monograph, Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities (1995), Willett frames her project in reference to Audre Lorde’s claim (in Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”) that European American culture has perpetuated an understanding of power that parses the erotic from the spiritual and political and as a consequence has “suppressed the deepest source of power and knowledge in our lives” (Lorde 1984, 55, cited in Willett 1995, 7). This first book suggests new conceptions of freedom and ethical subjectivity based on social eroticism, a project furthered in her second monograph The Soul of Justice: Social Bonds and Racial Hubris (2001), where hubris is understood with and against the Greeks as an assault on this primary sociality. “In response to the Greeks we might say that the person is born, not of honor, but of love. Sociality, or social eros, and not honor is the origin and the goal of the person and the positive core of freedom... (shrink)

Despite the fact that ethics consultations are an accepted practice in most healthcare organizations, many clinical ethicists continue to feel marginalized by their institutions. They are often not paid for their time, their programs often have no budget, and institutional leaders are frequently unaware of their activities. One consequence has been their search for concrete ways to evaluate their work in order to prove the importance of their activities to their institutions through demonstrating their efficiency and effectiveness.

A few weeks ago, a rural hospital administrator phoned with a question posed by his management team. “If you were going to give us some ethics resources,” he queried, “just exactly what would they...

Hospital ethics committees have evolved as a response to complicated legal, ethical, and social dilemmas that accompany modern medicine. In the United States, their growth has been augmented by Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards and the Patient Self-Determination Act. There appears to be an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices are relatively similar. Finally, there is heightened awareness of the needs for quality standards and assessment of the outcomes of ethics consultations.

Andrew Marr has built this masterful study of Mutio Oddi on a set of ironies. He begins with a bitter blow of fortune: Oddi, in the middle of an apparently promising life as mathematician and architect in his native Urbino, had fallen afoul of his lord the Duke, accused of participating in a plot to depose him. After years of apparently unjust imprisonment, he was released in 1610, but into exile. Yet Oddi managed to recast his career in Milan and (...) then in Lucca, building upon a varied set of skills, and even returned eventually to Urbino. That varied set of skills had resulted from yet another, earlier, set of reversals and recoveries: he had turned to mathematics only after first training as an artist in the studio of Federico Barocci, a field he had been forced to abandon due to problems with his eyesight. Oddi was widely respected in his day, not only for his achievements themselves but also for his persistence and ingenuity in overcoming such obstacles. Yet to modern historians of .. (shrink)