The article focuses on the temporal and epistemic economy connected to the transatlantic travels of the categorical triad of ‘race-class-gender’. It looks at conditions and forces that have fuelled the dynamics of the discourse on differences and inequality among women and analyses feminist discourse and its aporias as a particular environment for the travels of theories. Furthermore, it follows the changes the triad of ‘race-class-gender’ undergoes on its transatlantic route from the United States to a German-speaking context and it outlines (...) the theoretical challenges connected to an intersectional perspective that aims to overcome a theoretical stagnation that itself finds symptomatic expression in the ritual citing of ‘race-class-gender’. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss Milton Friedman’s thesis that the social responsibilityof business is to maximize the shareholders’ profit. I examine the underlyingassumption of self-interest and argue, contrary to the neoliberal thesis ofderegulation, that the profit motive must be constrained by strong state regulations.Furthermore it facilitates keeping the division between business andgovernment intact. The financial crisis shows that the emphasis on a profitmotive without the external constraints of tight regulations has serious implicationsfor the trustworthiness of business. In the latter (...) part of the paper I willdiscuss trust in relation to self-interest. The overemphasis on self-interest isparticularly unfortunate in connection with business, and not least the financialsector, as this institution is grounded in trust, without which it cannot survive.Seen from this angle, it can be claimed that a business model, celebratingprimarily self-interest, profit-motive and deregulation, is not going to be sustainablein the long run. (shrink)

In this thesis I critically examine the traditional account of privacy as a negative right of non-interference and offer instead an alternative framework based on obligations and trust. Privacy is most often described as a value best protected as a right, more accurately as a negative right of non-intrusion. This means that privacy is associated with the private sphere: the individual should be left to decide when he wants to be alone and what he wants to share with others. I (...) begin with an examination of three different distinctions between the public and the private and then I go on to examine two models of privacy: the separation model, where privacy consists of restricted access, and the control model which consists in individual control over certain aspects of one's life. I argue that these models fail to meet many privacy concerns. This becomes most apparent when examining the privacy challenges associated with information technology and biobanks. My alternative account of privacy recognizes how deeply privacy is embedded in social norms and structure. Privacy does not apply to situations where an individual is in isolation, but rather depends on relations to others. This means that privacy is a relational concept: it is an important value in structuring relations between individuals or social institutions. I argue that the framework of rights does not provide an appropriate framework for protecting privacy. Instead, I introduce a framework based on obligations and trust, inspired by Onora O’Neill’s account of perfect and imperfect obligations. (shrink)

This paper explores background features in the development of Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity by following him through what I have termed his conventional stage, his critical stage, and his stage of outrage. Next to examining some of his various criticisms during those stages, I also ask what the challenges were to which these criticisms responded and why Nietzsche eventually responded to these challenges with outrage. Outrage towards Christianity is unmistakably expressed in Nietzsche’s late work The Antichrist: A Curse on Christianity. (...) To understand Nietzsche’s outrage better we need to explore the role of ‘Antichrist’ in the title of that work and the meaning of ‘curse’ in its subtitle. (shrink)

Delayed responses are a common phenomenon in experience sampling studies. Yet no consensus exists on whether they should be excluded from the analysis or what the threshold for exclusion should be. Delayed responses could introduce bias, but previous investigations of systematic differences between delayed and timely responses have offered unclear results. To investigate differences as a function of delay, we conducted secondary analyses of nine paper and pencil based experience sampling studies including 1,528 individuals with different clinical statuses. In all (...) participants, there were significant decreases in positive and increases in negative affect as a function of delay. In addition, delayed answers of participants without depression showed higher within-person variability and an initial strengthening in the relationships between contextual stress and affect. Participants with depression mostly showed the opposite pattern. Delayed responses seem qualitatively different from timely responses. Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying these differences. (shrink)

Au cœur des interactions, les pronoms personnels tiennent une place déjà largement analysée en linguistique, particulièrement pour ce qui concerne les interactions numériques. C’est dans cette perspective que se situe cet article, qui a pour objet l’étude d’un chat de prévention au suicide, et plus particulièrement des interactions entre appelants en détresse et écoutants bénévoles. Notre étude s’attache à analyser la place singulière du pronom nous au sein de ce corpus, afin d’en saisir les particularités et les fonctions, dans le (...) contexte spécifique de la prévention au suicide ; dans cette optique, nous accordons une importance spécifique au nous de distanciation, dans une logique d’analyse de discours socialement située. (shrink)

One of the key doctrines of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is his definition of truth as _adaequatio intellectus et rei_. The aim of this study is to make clear that the medieval doctrine presents the essential meaning of the term 'truth'. It also throws light on the much discussed continuity between medieval and modern thought.

Concreteness ratings are frequently used in a variety of disciplines to operationalize differences between concrete and abstract words and concepts. However, most ratings studies present items in isolation, thereby overlooking the potential polysemy of words. Consequently, ratings for polysemous words may be conflated, causing a threat to the validity of concreteness‐ratings studies. This is particularly relevant to metaphorical words, which typically describe something abstract in terms of something more concrete. To investigate whether perceived concreteness ratings differ for metaphorical versus non‐metaphorical (...) word meanings, we obtained concreteness ratings for 96 English nouns from 230 participants. Results show that nouns are perceived as less concrete when a metaphorical (versus non‐metaphorical) meaning is triggered. We thus recommend taking metaphoricity into account in future concreteness‐ratings studies to further improve the quality and reliability of such studies, as well as the consistency of the empirical studies that rely on these ratings. (shrink)

This article describes the Metaphorical Source Domain Identification Procedure (MSDIP), which can be used to code source domains in metaphor identification. In the first part of the article, we describe the complexity of source-domain coding in corpus analysis. We argue that, in many cases, discourse is underspecified and multiple source-domain candidates may be relevant for a specific metaphorical expression. For instance, if a word like “fight” or “target” is used metaphorically, it could refer to either the source domain of war (...) or sports. To make these issues explicit for analysts, we developed MSDIP, which builds on and extends the Metaphor Identification Procedure Vrije Universiteit (MIPVU). In the second part of the article, we explain the coding steps of MSDIP and subsequently report on a reliability analysis, demonstrating the reproducibility of the procedure. We end with a number of detailed sample analyses, demonstrating the role of co-text and context in selecting the likeliest source-domain candidate through MSDIP. These analyses show that MSDIP is both reliable and flexible in dealing with the complexities of real-life discourse during source-domain coding. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the 2008 financial crisis in Iceland through the lens of Donaldson’s concept of normalization of questionable behavior. We study the report published by the Special Investigation Commission, an investigation initiated by the Icelandic Parliament near the end of 2008. The report provides a detailed and systematic account of the processes leading up to the crisis. Our aim is to determine the extent to which the behaviors of professionals in the Icelandic financial sector can be explained (...) as a gradual fading of moral concerns to the point that they perceived the sale of high-risk products to unassuming customers for their own short-term benefit to be morally unproblematic. In doing so, we consider both character and circumstance explanations of moral misbehavior. We expand on Donaldson’s initial description of normalization of questionable behavior by applying the concept of moral neutralization, which is defined by criminologists Sykes and Matza as the process of convincing oneself that an option that initially conflicted with one’s own moral beliefs is actually morally acceptable. We find indications that individuals in the Icelandic financial sector did engage in moral neutralization in their attempts to frame their own actions in an acceptable light. In our study, we identify one way of neutralizing away moral dissonance not captured in the original theoretical framework. Icelandic bankers justified their behavior by claiming that they did not break any relevant rules or regulations when they engaged in what were later labeled questionable activities. Our name for this kind of justification is claim of having breached no rule. (shrink)

De la souffrance au dévoilement dans l’espace numérique Les Sciences humaines et sociales offrent un regard renouvelé sur la souffrance depuis une trentaine d’années avec l’observation de terrains à risques, de terrains difficiles avec notamment l’émergence du SIDA. À cette époque, les chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales aux États-Unis et en France ont été encouragés à travailler sur de « nouvelles » pratiques dites « à risques ». Il s’agissait de rendre légitime cet objet de recherch...