Tax administrators are empowered by the state to secure compliance with tax obligations. Enforcing compliance on the ground is complex, and street-level administrators often engage in the “art of the possible,” leading to dilemmas in the field. This paper examines tax administrators’ practices with regard to Jamaican property tax defaulters with outstanding tax liabilities in excess of 3 years. Drawing on interviews with tax administrators and other key agents, we find that tax administrators reposition themselves from objective enforcers to empathizing (...) officials engaging in schemes of action, doing what they can do rather than what they should do. This is a practical-sense approach to securing compliance. We identify two forms of empathy, assimilated and cynical, and conclude that administrators’ empathetic identification with defaulters does not necessarily arise solely from concern for social cohesion, or inter-subjective compassion, but also sometimes from self-interest. (shrink)

This article describes how female managers with physical impairment negotiate their relationships in the workplace. It locates discussion of physical impairment and disability within an Interactional Model of Disability. Drawing on 20 interviews, this research identifies the factors that are central to the experience of female managers with disability in the workplace, including power, passing, and surface acting. When dealing with others who had power over them, the leaders adopted approaches such as passing, in an attempt to minimize the visibility (...) of both their impairment and their disability. This involved the leaders using surface acting to present an optimistic demeanor even when their actual feelings were very different. It will be argued that the use of surface acting and the reliance on passing begins to explain why people with disability are invisible in the workplace leadership literature and why this is damaging to diversity agendas in organizations. (shrink)

Social care responses to extra-familial harm require social workers to work across the binaries of welfare and justice, victim and perpetrator, parent and professional, risk and protection. This paper examines the ethical consequences of working in this manner, through qualitative data (focus groups, interviews, observations, case file analysis and documentary review) from three children's social care organisations in England who trialled new child protection pathways for significant harm outside of family homes/relationships. The extent to which these pathways created five conditions (...) for a welfare response to extra-familial harm are considered, before these results are brought into conversation with Bourdieu’s meta theory of capital, habitus and doxa, and Fenton's practice theory of ethical stress. The challenges identified evidence of the importance foregrounding social work values in the pursuit of welfare-based response to extra-familial harm. They also offer a rationale for studying theories of care ethics in social work in the context of interagency practice. (shrink)

Function theorists routinely speculate that a viable function theory will be equally applicable to biological traits and artifacts. However, artifact function has received only the most cursory scrutiny in its own right. Closer scrutiny reveals that only a pluralist theory comprising two distinct notions of function--proper function and system function--will serve as an adequate general theory. The first section describes these two notions of function. The second section shows why both notions are necessary, by showing that attempts to do away (...) with one of them fail. This demonstration draws on examples from the artifactual realm to motivate major points of the argument. The third section is an outline of artifact function. It confirms the conclusions of the second section, and also begins the task of describing some of the special features of artifact function needing accommodation within the general theory. (shrink)

This short essay examines the relationship between academic research and policy with particular emphasis on the question of whether a critical criminology can engage in academic critique at the same time as engaging in policy oriented research. Recognising that critical criminology falls between theory and politics criminologists are urged to adopt pragmatic, strategic positions as they negotiate their role in contentious debates and practical minefields. It is concluded that a critical criminology must try not only to think the unthinkable about (...) crime, but also to speak the unspeakable about the conditions in which and by which it is known. (shrink)

This article will reveal how local scientific determination and ambition, in the face of rejection by funders, navigated a path to success and to influence in national policy and international medicine. It will demonstrate that Birmingham, England's ‘second city’, was the key centre for cutting-edge biological psychiatry in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. The ambitions of Frederick Mott – doyen of biochemistry, neuropathology and neuropsychiatry, until now celebrated as a London figure – to revolutionize psychiatric treatment through science, chimed (...) with those of the City and University of Birmingham's Joint Board of Research for Mental Diseases. Under Mott's direction, shaped by place and inter-professional working, the board's collaborators included psychiatrist Thomas Chivers Graves and world-renowned physiologist J.S. Haldane. However, starved of external money and therefore fresh ideas, as well as oversight, the ‘groupthink’ that emerged created the classic UK focal sepsis theory which, it was widely believed, would yield a cure for mental illness – a cure that never materialized. By tracing the venture's growth, accomplishments and contemporary potential for biochemical, bacterial and therapeutic discoveries – as well as its links with scientist and key government adviser Solly Zuckerman – this article illustrates how ‘failure’ and its ahistorical assessment fundamentally obscure past importance, neglect the early promise offered by later unsuccessful science, and can even hide questionable research. (shrink)

Extending her earlier work on a theory of human rights in her 1993 Operative Rights, Singer (emerita, American philosophy presumably, City U. of New York) critiques philosophies from Rousseau to Kymlicka in clarifying her views--influenced by Dewey and Mead (George Herbert, not Margaret)--and applying them to such issues as multiculturalism, minority rights, and conflict resolution. The analysis pivots on her concept of "a normative community" rather than natural rights. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

_Wittgenstein's Art of Investigation_ is one of the first to focus on and provide an original and detailed analysis of Wittgenstein's grammatical investigations. Beth Sarkey offers us new insight into the historical context and influences on method which will help students understand the intricacies and depth of his work.

This book focuses on material culture as a subject of philosophical inquiry and promotes the philosophical study of material culture by articulating some of the central and difficult issues raised by this topic and providing innovative solutions to them, most notably an account of improvised action and a non-intentionalist account of function in material culture. Preston argues that material culture essentially involves activities of production and use; she therefore adopts an action-theoretic foundation for a philosophy of material culture. Part 1 (...) illustrates this foundation through a critique, revision, and extension of existing philosophical theories of action. Part 2 investigates a salient feature of material culture itself—its functionality. A basic account of function in material culture is constructed by revising and extending existing theories of biological function to fit the cultural case. Here the adjustments are for the most part necessitated by special features of function in material culture. These two parts of the project are held together by a trio of overarching themes: the relationship between individual and society, the problem of centralized control, and creativity. (shrink)

For graduate students to succeed as professionals, they must develop a set of general “survival skills”. These include writing research articles, making oral presentations, obtaining employment and funding, supervising, and teaching. Traditionally, graduate programs have offered little training in many of these skills. Our educational model provides individuals with formal instruction in each area, including their ethical dimensions. Infusion of research ethics throughout a professional skills curriculum helps to emphasize that responsible conduct is integral to succeeding as a researcher. It (...) also leads to the consideration of ethical dimensions of professional life not covered in traditional ethics courses. (shrink)

Inherent in providing healthcare for youth lie tensions among best interests, decision-making capacity, rights, and legal authority. Transgender youth experience barriers to needed gender-affirming care, often rooted in ethical and legal issues, such as healthcare provider concerns regarding youth capacity and rights to consent to hormone therapy. Even when decision-making capacity is present, youth may lack the legal authority to give consent. The aims of this paper are therefore to provide an empirical analysis of minor trans youth capacity to consent (...) to hormone therapy and to address the normative question of whether there is ethical justification for granting trans youth the authority to consent to this care. Through qualitative content analysis of interviews with trans youth, parents, and healthcare providers, we found that trans youth demonstrated the understandings and abilities characteristic of the capacity to consent to hormone therapy and that they did consent to hormone therapy with positive outcomes. Employing deontological and consequentialist reasoning and drawing on a foundation of empirical evidence, human rights, and best interests we conclude that granting trans youth with decisional capacity both the right and the legal authority to consent to hormone therapy via the informed consent model of care is ethically justified. (shrink)

Corporate Philanthropy is multi-dimensional, differs between sectors and involves both individual and organisational decision-making to achieve business and social goals. However, the CP literature characteristically focuses on strategic decisions made by business leaders and ignores the role of employees, especially those in lower status and lower paid positions. To redress this imbalance, we conducted a qualitative study of employees’ involvement in CP processes in ten workplaces in the South East of England to identify whether and how they are involved in (...) CP decision-making and to capture their perspective on the nature of CP and the benefits generated by such activities. We specifically chose to study workplaces where employees are involved in the actual execution of the CP strategy, prioritising companies with a visible presence on the high street. The results illustrate the benefits of involving employees in CP decision-making, which we argue derives in part from the ‘liminal-like states’ that typify CP activities organised by shop floor staff, involving the temporary overturning of hierarchies, humanising of workplaces and opportunities for lower level staff to prioritise their personal philanthropic preferences and signal their charitable identity to colleagues and customers. Whilst the data also suggest that CP decision-making remains predominantly top-down and driven by profit-oriented goals, we conclude that employees should be involved in choosing charitable causes as well as in designing and implementing workplace fundraising, in order to maximise the advantages of CP for the company and for wider society. (shrink)

Vermaas and Houkes advance four desiderata for theories of artifact function, and classify such theories into non-intentionalist reproduction theories on the one hand and intentionalist non-reproduction theories on the other. They argue that non-intentionalist reproduction theories fail to satisfy their fourth desideratum. They maintain that only an intentionalist non-reproduction theory can satisfy all the desiderata, and they offer a version that they believe does satisfy all of them. I reply that intentionalist non-reproduction theories, including their version, fail to satisfy their (...) first desideratum. Thus neither type of function theory satisfies all the desiderata. This suggests that the list of desiderata may well be inconsistent, and that ultimately we may have to decide whether to give up the first desideratum or the fourth one. I recommend giving up the fourth one on the grounds that this choice preserves the phenomenologically salient social aspects of artifact function. Vermaas and Houkes attempt to satisfy their desiderata Why this attempt fails What is to be done? (shrink)

“My first long haul flight that didn’t fill up and an empty row for me. I have been blessed by the algorithm ”. The phrase ‘blessed by the algorithm’ expresses the feeling of having been fortunate in what appears on your feed on various social media platforms, or in the success or virality of your content as a creator, or in what gig economy jobs you are offered. However, we can also place it within wider public discourse employing theistic conceptions (...) of AI. Building on anthropological fieldwork into the ‘entanglements of AI and Religion’, this article will explore how ‘blessed by the algorithm’ tweets are indicative of the impact of theistic AI narratives: modes of thinking about AI in an implicitly religious way. This thinking also represents continuities that push back against the secularisation thesis and other grand narratives of disenchantment that claim secularity occurs because of technological and intellectual progress. This article will also explore new religious movements, where theistic conceptions of AI entangle technological aspirations with religious ones. (shrink)

This paper attempts to outline an autonomous feminism; a feminism with its own voice, and one that will transcend the binaries in which Marxism and liberalism are still caught. Its first step is to make clear the semio-linguistic foundations of all human social systems. These foundations consist of an open-ended set of social imaginary signifiers embedded in complex abduction or analogy-producing schemas, the creative conjugating of which makes possible the establishing of social orders such as families, monarchies or patriarchies. The (...) second is to show that the semiotics of these orders require dominant or central signifiers, such as father or king, that must be supported by subordinate or peripheral ones. Third, the paper shows that women have consistently functioned as subordinate signifiers in these order-producing semio-linguistic codes. Fourth and finally, the paper details the semiotic difficulties of overthrowing this underlying governing code and thus breaking women out of their assigned subordinate positions. (shrink)

Tool use rivals language as an important domain of cognitive phenomena, and so as a source of insight into the nature of cognition in general. But the favoured current definition of tool use is inadequate because it does not carve the phenomena of interest at the joints. Heidegger's notion of equipment provides a more adequate theoretical framework. But Heidegger's account leads directly to a non-individualist view of the nature of cognition. Thus non-individualism is supported by concrete considerations about the nature (...) of tools and tool use. (shrink)

A paradigm case of demanding involves making utterances designed to influence addressees to accede.1 It would be incoherent to say, "I demand that you do x, but I am not saying that you ought to do x," or "I demand that you do x, although I am fully aware that you cannot do x." The extraordinary nature of demanding may be gleaned from anomalous utterances such as "employees may demand time off by notifying scheduling managers at least one month in (...) advance" and "faculty members may demand an extension of the tenure clock in writing to the provost." Demanding is less anomalous in protest rhetoric and in fact an important strategy for marginalized groups who are "criticized for not handling conflicts and controversies... (shrink)

This book details a pragmatic approach to the ethical and religious implications of a Darwinian perspective, drawing on the work of thinkers both secular and religious. The approach taken by James, Santayana, Addams, and Dewey should be of interest to scholars of religious naturalism and humanistic ethics.

Every day, medical interpreters encounter the vulnerabilities of patients with limited English proficiency and systemic barriers to doing the right thing for patients. The narratives in this issue of NIB demonstrate a love of the interpretive practice. There are many stories of advocacy that go above and beyond what is expected of them. Yet, even with national standards, tensions exist as to the boundaries of their role—how much advocacy is expected and how much is above and beyond? What are the (...) emotional costs of advocating for patients who are so vulnerable and in a system that is both huge and changing all the time? Overall, the narratives convey a sense of being situated within teams and within healthcare organizations as moral communities. As you read their stories, circle back to this context every now and then to ground the narratives and yourself in what it means to be a member of a team and moral community. I hope this grounding will help us be better at what we do together. (shrink)

The presence of parents or other guardians (commonly termed ‘supervision’) and parental knowledge are factors that are both robustly negatively associated with a range of anti-social and risky behavioural outcomes such as adolescent crime. However, parental presence/supervision and parental knowledge are both (i) regularly used inaccurately as proxies for parental monitoring, (ii) poorly defined and operationalised, and (iii) rarely linked to negative behavioural outcomes with plausible mechanisms that adequately explain their association. These problematic aspects of the parental monitoring literature are (...) a barrier to research into adolescent outcomes and the varied role of parents. This theoretical paper facilitates solutions these problems by clarifying the concepts of parental presence, supervision and knowledge. This discussion delineates presence from supervision and knowledge from monitoring. It specifies how presence and knowledge are not parenting actions, and neither constitute parental monitoring. These concepts are clarified within the parameters of a recent framework of goal-directed parental action and parental monitoring. Doing so constitutes under-labouring that facilitates future discovery of their distinct and yet inter-related mechanisms of influence on adolescent action and development. These structured conceptual developments are also of benefit for our better future understanding of parenting and parental monitoring by providing a framework within which to re-situate existing empirical research findings. (shrink)