Background: Little is known about what factors may contribute to the growth of a consultation service or how a practice may change or evolve across time. Methods: This study examines data collected from a busy ethics consultation service over a period of more than two decades. Results: We report a number of longitudinal findings that represent significant growth in the volume of ethics consultation requests from 19 in 1990 to 551 in 2013, as well as important changes in the patient (...) population for which ethics help is requested. The findings include (1) a steady growth in requests from primary care providers (e.g., physicians and nurses), as well as increases in ancillary services (e.g., social workers); (2) a decrease in length of stay (days) before ethics help is requested; (3) an increase in the reasons that individuals ask for help from ethics; (4) an upsurge in consults requests from areas outside the intensive care unit (ICU); (5) a decrease in patients that died during hospitalization (e.g., live discharges); and (6) growth in the numbers of patients lacking decision-making capacity. Conclusions: We believe the increases in consult requests reflect appropriate and necessary growth because recent consultations have also been associated with consultations requiring (7) additional interventions and (8) reasonably high time intensity scores. (shrink)

A proposal by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) to identify individuals who are qualified to perform ethics consultations neglects case complexity in candidates’ portfolios. To protect patients and healthcare organizations, and to be fair to candidates, a minimum case complexity level must be clearly and publicly articulated. This proof-of-concept study supports the feasibility of assessing case complexity. Using text analytics, we developed a complexity scoring system, and retrospectively analyzed more than 500 ethics summaries of consults performed at (...) an academic medical center during 2013. We demonstrate its use with seven case summaries that range in complexity from uncomplicated to very complicated. We encourage the ASBH to require a minimum level of case complexity, and recommend that attestation portfolios include several cases of moderate complexity and at least one very complex case. (shrink)

Unlimited paid time off policies are currently fashionable and widely discussed by HR professionals around the globe. While on the one hand, paid time off is considered a key benefit by employees and unlimited paid time off policies are seen as a major perk which may help in recruiting and retaining talented employees, on the other hand, early adopters reported that employees took less time off than previously, presumably leading to higher burnout rates. In this conceptual review, we discuss the (...) theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the potential effects of UPTO on leave utilization, well-being and performance outcomes. We start out by defining UPTO and placing it in a historical and international perspective. Next, we discuss the key role of leave utilization in translating UPTO into concrete actions. The core of our article constitutes the description of the effects of UPTO and the two pathways through which these effects are assumed to unfold: autonomy need satisfaction and detrimental social processes. We moreover discuss the boundary conditions which facilitate or inhibit the successful utilization of UPTO on individual, team, and organizational level. In reviewing the literature from different fields and integrating existing theories, we arrive at a conceptual model and five propositions, which can guide future research on UPTO. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and societal implications of UPTO. (shrink)

BackgroundThe EU’s 2006 Paediatric Regulation aims to support authorisation of medicine for children, thus effectively increasing paediatric research. It is ethically imperative to simultaneously establish procedures that protect children’s rights.MethodThis study endeavours (a) to evaluate whether a template consent form designed by the Standing Working Group of the German-Research-Ethics-Committees (AKEK) adequately informs adolescents about research participation, and (b) to investigate associated phenomena like therapeutic misconception and motives for research participation. In March 2016 a questionnaire study was conducted among 279 pupils (...) (mean age 13.1 years) of a secondary school in northern Germany.ResultsA majority of participants showed a general good understanding of foundational research ethics concepts as understood from the AKEK consent form. Nevertheless, our data also suggests possible susceptibility to therapeutic misconception. Own health concerns and pro-social considerations were found to be significant motivational factors for participating in research, while anticipation of pain lessens likelihood of participation. Advice from trusted others is an important decisional influence, too. Furthermore, data security was found to be a relevant aspect of adolescents’ decision-making process.ConclusionBearing in mind adolescents’ generally good understanding, we infer the lack of knowledge about medical research in general to be one source of therapeutic misconception. To further improve the quality of consent we propose a multi-staged approach whereby general research education is completed before an individual becomes a patient or potential participant. To the best of our knowledge this is the first German questionnaire-study addressing issues of informed consent in a large under-age sample. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the question of the sources of normativity in John Duns Scotus. Confronted with different conceptions of the sources of normativity listed by Christine M. Korsgaard, Duns Scotus’ conception turns out to be hybrid because he iterweaves realistic and voluntaristic elements. In Scotus’ ethics one can find the sources of normativity analizing: (1) subjective condition of the agent such as beeing free and rational; (2) objective foundations of moral norms such as natural law; (3) external authority (...) of the law maker (God’s will). The following questions have been raised: “Why is the will, according to Scotus, rational?”; “What are the conditions for the exeptions of the Second Tablet Commadments ?”; “Can one call Scotus’ position a type of metaethical voluntarism or Divine Command Ethics?”. The article also highlights the varius meanings of the term “voluntarism” with reference to Scotus’ ethics. (shrink)

Big Data evangelists often argue that algorithms make decision-making more informed and objective—a promise hotly contested by critics of these technologies. Yet, to date, most of the debate has focused on the instruments themselves, rather than on how they are used. This article addresses this lack by examining the actual practices surrounding algorithmic technologies. Specifically, drawing on multi-sited ethnographic data, I compare how algorithms are used and interpreted in two institutional contexts with markedly different characteristics: web journalism and criminal justice. (...) I find that there are surprising similarities in how web journalists and legal professionals use algorithms in their work. In both cases, I document a gap between the intended and actual effects of algorithms—a process I analyze as “decoupling.” Second, I identify a gamut of buffering strategies used by both web journalists and legal professionals to minimize the impact of algorithms in their daily work. Those include foot-dragging, gaming, and open critique. Of course, these similarities do not exhaust the differences between the two cases, which are explored in the discussion section. I conclude with a call for further ethnographic work on algorithms in practice as an important empirical check against the dominant rhetoric of algorithmic power. (shrink)

Treatment pressures are communicative strategies that mental health professionals use to influence the decision-making of mental health service users and improve their adherence to recommended treatment. Szmukler and Appelbaum describe a spectrum of treatment pressures, which encompasses persuasion, interpersonal leverage, offers and threats, arguing that only a particular type of threat amounts to informal coercion. We contend that this account of informal coercion is insufficiently sensitive to context and fails to recognize the fundamental power imbalance in mental healthcare. Based on (...) a set of counterexamples, we argue that what makes a proposal coercive is not whether service users will actually be made worse off if they reject the proposal, but rather whether they have the justified belief that this is the case. Whether this belief is justified depends on the presence of certain contextual factors, such as strong dependency on professionals and the salient possibility of formal coercion. (shrink)

Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) propose that the use of a chemical restraint that affects only a particular conscious state is ethically permissible if, and only if, (1) it is the least restrictive...

A common theme in social science studies of algorithms is that they are profoundly opaque and function as “black boxes.” Scholars have developed several methodological approaches in order to address algorithmic opacity. Here I argue that we can explicitly enroll algorithms in ethnographic research, which can shed light on unexpected aspects of algorithmic systems—including their opacity. I delineate three meso-level strategies for algorithmic ethnography. The first, algorithmic refraction, examines the reconfigurations that take place when computational software, people, and institutions interact. (...) The second strategy, algorithmic comparison, relies on a similarity-and-difference approach to identify the instruments’ unique features. The third strategy, algorithmic triangulation, enrolls algorithms to help gather rich qualitative data. I conclude by discussing the implications of this toolkit for the study of algorithms and future of ethnographic fieldwork. (shrink)

Forced migration changes people’s lives and their sense of self-continuity fundamentally. One memory-based mechanism to protect the sense of self-continuity and psychological well-being is autobiographical meaning making, enabling individuals to explain change in personality and life by connecting personal experiences and other distant parts of life to the self and its development. Aiming to replicate and extend prior research, the current study investigated whether autobiographical meaning making has the potential to support the sense of self-continuity in refugees. We therefore collected (...) life narratives from 31 refugees that were coded for autobiographical reasoning, self-event connections, and global narrative coherence. In line with prior research, results suggest that autobiographical meaning making relates to a higher sense of self-continuity and less psychological distress. Yet, if refugees experienced many continuing postdisplacement stressors in addition to their forced displacement, autobiographical meaning making was associated with higher self-discontinuity and greater psychological distress, especially with trauma-related symptoms such as memory intrusion and hyperarousal. Altogether, results indicate that autobiographical meaning making helps to compensate the effects of extreme biographical disruptions on the sense of self-continuity, as long as the stress caused by the biographical change is not overwhelming or too protracted. (shrink)

In European industrialized countries, a large number of companies in the healthcare, hotel, and catering sectors, as well as in the technology sector, are affected by demographic, political, and technological developments resulting in a greater need of skilled workers with a simultaneous shortage of skilled workers (CEDEFOP, 2015, 2016). Consequently, employers have to address workers who have not been taken into account such as low-skilled workers, workers returning from a career break, people with a migrant background, older people, and jobseekers (...) and train them, in order to guarantee the professionalization of this workforce (Festing and Harsch, 2018). Continuing vocational education and training (CVET) is seen as an indispensable tool; because CVET has advantages for both employers and employees, it helps to increase the productivity of companies (Barrett and O’Connell, 2001), to prevent the widening of socioeconomic disparities (Dieckhoff, 2007), and to open up career opportunities for the workforce (Rubenson and Desjardins, 2009). However, participation rate on CVET seems to differ, depending on institutional factors (such as sector and size of the company) and individual characteristics (such as qualification level, migration background, age and time of absence from work) (e.g., Rubenson and Desjardins, 2009; Wiseman and Parry, 2017). In contrast to previous research, our study aims to provide a holistic view of reasons for and against CVET, combining the different perspectives of employers and (potential) employees. The analysis of reasons and barriers was carried out based on semi-structured interviews. Fifty-seven employers, 73 employees, and 42 jobseekers (potential employees) from the sectors retail, healthcare and social services, hotels and catering, and technology were interviewed. Results point to considerable differences in the reasons and barriers mentioned by the disadvantaged groups. These differences are particularly significant between employees on the one side and employers, as well as jobseekers, on the other side, while the reasons to attend CVET of jobseekers are more similar to those of employers. The results can be used to tailor CVET more closely to the needs of (potential) employees and thus strengthen both the qualification and career opportunities of (potential) employees and the competitiveness and productivity of companies. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which competing institutional logics influence the knowledge base of the police, ideas about good police practice and organizational identities. A tension between the humanistic professional police logic and the instrumental New Public Management (NPM) logic is discussed in the context of policing. While the humanistic professional police logic gradually emerged in the 1960s and 70s, over the past twenty years the police force has been reformed in line with the NPM logic. Through qualitative interviews (...) and a quantitative study of the police force, the article investigates the ways in which the ideas of what constitutes a normative good practice are shaped in relation to these two, opposing, logics. A central finding is that despite many years of NPM as the dominant steering logic, a humanistic professional logic persists. However, the shift towards the NPM logic transforms the knowledge base in a more evidence-oriented direction and affects the ideas of normative good practice, especially among police management. (shrink)

Conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) presents many opportunities in the psychotherapeutic landscape—such as therapeutic support for people with mental health problems and without access to care. The adoption of CAI poses many risks that need in-depth ethical scrutiny. The objective of this paper is to complement current research on the ethics of AI for mental health by proposing a holistic, ethical, and epistemic analysis of CAI adoption. First, we focus on the question of whether CAI is rather a tool or an (...) agent. This question serves as a framework for the subsequent ethical analysis of CAI focusing on topics of (self-) knowledge, (self-)understanding, and relationships. Second, we propose further conceptual and ethical analysis regarding human-AI interaction and argue that CAI cannot be considered as an equal partner in a conversation as is the case with a human therapist. Instead, CAI’s role in a conversation should be restricted to specific functions. (shrink)

Understanding Chinese philosophy requires knowledge of the referential framework prevailing in Chinese intellectual traditions. But Chinese philosophical texts are frequently approached through the lens of Western paradigms. Analysing the most common misconceptions surrounding Western Sinology, Jana Rošker alerts us to unseen dangers and introduces us to a new more effective way of reading Chinese philosophy. Acknowledging that different cultures produce different reference points, Rošker explains what happens we use rational analysis, a major feature of the European intellectual tradition, to (...) read Chinese philosophy. We rely on impossible comparisons, arrive at prejudiced assumptions and fail to arrive at the truth, the consequence of applying a different methodology to the process of perceiving, understanding and interpreting reality. Instead of transferring concepts and categories from Western sinology onto socio-cultural Chinese contexts, Rošker constructs a new methodology of reading, understanding and interpreting Chinese philosophy. She opens our eyes to the basic problems of Western paradigms, encourages intercultural approaches and allows us to master a more autochthonous understanding of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

The ethics review of qualitative health research poses various challenges that are due to a mismatch between the current practice of ethics review and the nature of qualitative methodology. The process of obtaining ethics approval for a study by a research ethics committee before the start of a research study has been described as “procedural ethics” and the identification and handling of ethical issues by researchers during the research process as “ethics in practice.” While some authors dispute and other authors (...) defend the use of procedural ethics in relation to qualitative health research, there is general agreement that it needs to be supplemented with ethics in practice. This article aims to provide an illustration of research ethics in practice by reflecting on the ways in which we identified and addressed ethical and methodological issues that arose in the context of an interview study with mental health service users and relatives. We describe the challenges we faced and the solutions we found in relation to the potential vulnerability of research participants, the voluntariness of consent, the increase of participant access and the heterogeneity of the sample, the protection of privacy and internal confidentiality, and the consideration of personal and contextual factors. (shrink)

Despite the widespread use of automated decision-making (ADM) systems, they are often developed without involving the public or those directly affected, leading to concerns about systematic biases that may perpetuate structural injustices. Existing formal fairness approaches primarily focus on statistical outcomes across demographic groups or individual fairness, yet these methods reveal ambiguities and limitations in addressing fairness comprehensively. This paper argues for a holistic approach to algorithmic fairness that integrates procedural fairness, considering both decision-making processes and their outcomes. Procedural fairness (...) emphasizes the importance of fair decision-making procedures, which aligns with theories of relational justice that stress the quality of social relations and power dynamics. We highlight the need for substantive procedural fairness to ensure better outcomes and address forward-looking responsibilities. Additionally, we propose leveraging Public Engagement, a core dimension within the well-established Responsible Research and Innovation framework, to enhance procedural fairness in ADM systems. Our contribution underscores the value of Public Engagement in fostering fairer ADM processes, thereby expanding the current focus beyond technical outcome-based approaches to encompass broader procedural considerations. (shrink)

It is of fundamental importance to understand how the individual processes of gene expression, transcription, and translation, as well as mRNA and protein stability, act in concert to produce dynamic cellular proteomes. We use the concept of response times to illustrate the relation between degradation processes and responsiveness of the proteome to system changes and to provide supporting experimental evidence: proteins with short response times tend to be more strongly up‐regulated after 1 hour of TNFα stimulation than proteins with longer (...) response times. Furthermore, based on process‐dependent response times, we demonstrate that synthesis and degradation act in concert to enable rapid responses. Finally, by building on a previously published data set quantifying the mammalian gene expression cascade, we speculate on how combinations of stable and unstable mRNAs and proteins may be wired to transcriptional or translational regulation to support gene function. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDie Diskussionen um Sterbehilfe und Patientenverfügung sowie der Ruf nach einer Stärkung der Palliativmedizin nehmen viel Platz in der deutschen Presselandschaft ein. Da Zeitungen einerseits Meinungen und Wissen der Bevölkerung abbilden, andererseits auch zu deren Meinungsbildung und Information beitragen, wurde eine Analyse der Darstellung der Sterbehilfedebatte und der Palliativmedizin durchgeführt. Als empirisches Material dienten 433 Artikel aus den Jahren 2006 und 2007, die mithilfe einer Suche nach den Schlagworten „Palliativmedizin“, „Hospiz“, „Sterbebegleitung“, „Patientenverfügung“, „Patientenautonomie“ und „Sterbehilfe“ in den Print-Archiven verschiedener deutscher (...) Zeitungen identifiziert wurden. Diese Artikel wurden einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse unterzogen. Mit Würde, Selbstbestimmung, Unterversorgung und Unsicherheit zeigten sich vier Hauptargumente innerhalb der Sterbehilfedebatte. Würde wird dabei als Argument sowohl für wie gegen aktive Sterbehilfe benutzt. Eine Unsicherheit zeigt sich in der Terminologie der Sterbehilfe. Das Bild der Palliativmedizin ist gekennzeichnet von der Hoffnung, dass sie eine Alternative zur Sterbehilfe bieten kann, sofern sie weiter ausgebaut und besser finanziert wird. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen die in verschiedenen Studien aufgezeigte Bedeutung der Begriffe Würde und Selbstbestimmung für die Einstellung der Bevölkerung zu Sterbehilfe, Suizidbeihilfe und Patientenverfügungen. Das Potential und die noch zu gering ausgebauten Strukturen der Palliativmedizin werden zunehmend erkannt. Demgegenüber erschwert das mangelnde Wissen um die Sterbehilfe-Terminologie und die rechtlichen Grundlagen der Therapiebegrenzung und Patientenverfügungen eine Diskussion um die Sterbehilfe auch auf fachlicher Ebene. (shrink)

In this study the awake patient's intraoperative situation and experiences during regional anaesthetics and surgery are reflected upon by using the work of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau‐Ponty. Merleau‐Ponty's phenomenological idea of the body as being at the centre of the world highlights the patient's embodied position and bestows significance onto the body as a whole, as a lived body. A case, based on the findings from a previous interview study, is presented as a contextual starting point where a patient (...) goes from having a familiar body recognized as her own to having a partially anaesthetized body experienced as an unknown object. The intraoperative caring space is described in this context as the mutual ground where the awake patient and the nurse anaesthetist (NA) can interact to create meaning. The NA can act as the patient's bodily extension to bridge the gap between the patient's experiences and the situation. This calls for the NA's proximity and genuine presence in order to meet and understand the patient's awake experiences. Learning from the patient's situatedness gives information that is valuable for NAs to share with patients who are less experienced with this contextual situation. The challenge for the NA is not to perform routine‐based care, but to acknowledge every patient's lifeworld and uniqueness thus enabling the patient to move easily along the mind–body–world continuum. The core of intraoperative care is to provide support and promote well‐being of awake patients in the intraoperative environment. The use of a philosophical perspective is relevant for nurses who work in an intraoperative setting where patients undergo regional anaesthetics. This study shows how nursing research using phenomenological philosophy can help uncover new meanings known only to the patients living the experience. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether it is possible to develop theoretical methods to reconcile absolute principles on the one hand and relative tenets on the other. I will look at this question through the lens of classical Chinese logic and, more concretely, through the elaborations of the Chinese logician Hui Shi on this relationship. The examination of this problem proceeds from a general introduction of the basic framework of semantically determined classical Chinese logic, through an illumination of Hui (...) Shi’s specific contributions to the field, to a tentative explanation of his conception of the nature of the relation between absoluteness and relativity, embedded in more general structures of his thought and illustrated by his interpretation of the possibility of unifying identity and difference. (shrink)

This multilevel meta-analysis examines whether emotional intelligence can be enhanced through training and identifies training effects’ determinants. We identified 24 studies containing 28 samples aiming at increasing individual-level EI among healthy adults. The results revealed a significant moderate standardized mean change between pre- and post-measurement for the main effect of EI training, and a stable pre- to follow-up effect. Additionally, the type of EI model, dimensions of the four branch model, length, and type of publication turned out to be significant (...) moderators. The results suggest that EI trainings should be considered effective interventions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:594 Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Liberty Walther Barnes and Christin L. Munsch The Paradoxical Privilege of Men and Masculinity in Institutional Review Boards In the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz, the great wizard admonishes Dorothy and her friends to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Dorothy and company turn to see a man standing before a (...) large control panel operating the smoke, holographic image, and voice of the great wizard. Realizing he has been discovered, the man gives up manipulating the switches and the nebulous wizard vanishes.1 Hegemonic masculinity is analogous to the “all-powerful” wizard.2 In order to maintain its grandeur, power, and mystique, the mechanics of masculine ideology—as well as the social actors who participate in its reproduction —must be kept hidden.3 A crucial aim of feminist research is to 1. The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming (Culver City, CA: Metro-Goldwyn -Mayer, 1939). 2. See R. W. Connell, Masculinities: Knowledge, Power and Social Change (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1995); R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender & Society 19 (2005): 829–61; Michael Kaufman, “Me, Feminism, and Men’s Contradictory Experiences of Power,” in Theorizing Masculinities, ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994), 142– 63; and Michael S. Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity” in Brod and Kaufman, Theorizing Masculinities, 119–42. 3. Michael Flood and Bob Pease, “Undoing Men’s Privilege and Advancing Gender Equality in Public Sector Institutions,” Policy and Society 24, no. 4 (2005): 119–38; Allan G. Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Liberty Walther Barnes and Christin L. Munsch 595 pull back the curtain on men’s lives and masculine institutions in order to demystify socially constructed masculinities, particularly in their most powerful forms. As early feminist scholars note, male privilege renders women’s lives invisible.4 But male privilege renders aspects of men’s lives invisible, too. In this article we highlight how institutional review boards (IRBs) in universities and hospitals erect barriers to research that render particular aspects of men’s lives invisible. We draw on our experiences of submitting ten applications for a series of methodologically diverse studies of masculinity to eight IRBs. First, we argue that, despite their original function of protecting subordinated groups, IRBs are gendered institutions in which members base their decisions on culturally dominant, normative images of women and men. We show how this results in the stringent protection of male research participants, the safeguarding of participants’ personal masculinity, and the shielding of men’s lives from social inquiry. Second, we argue that IRBs are gendering institutions. Our experiences reveal how the privileging and protection of masculinity results in mandatory protocol modifications that idealize hegemonic masculinity. These modifications require researcher-participant interactions that socialize men to engage in gender “appropriate” behavior and reify gendered expectations. Third, our experiences reveal the ways in which IRBs protect the institution itself and privilege the universities, hospitals, and (predominantly male) medical doctors they represent. Consequently, the ways they reproduce social inequality remain impervious to academic inquiry. IRBS AS GENDERED AND GENDERING INSTITUTIONS Every university and hospital in the United States where human research is conducted houses a human research protections program, or IRB, to oversee academic research. Universities with hospitals typically our Patriarchal Legacy (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997); Michael Kimmel, Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men (New York: Harper Collins, 2008). 4. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Howard M. Parshley (New York: Knopf, 1951); Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); Dorothy E. Smith, “Women’s Perspective as a Radical Critique of Sociology,” in Feminist Perspectives on Social Research, ed. Sharlene N. Hesse-Biber and Michelle L. Yaiser (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 84–96. 596 Liberty Walther Barnes and Christin L. Munsch maintain two types of IRB committees: a social-behavioral committee that oversees studies in the social sciences, and a biomedical committee to supervise clinical drug trials, experimental medical treatments, and tissue and blood research. The duty of the... (shrink)

On the philosophy of education and views of Aurobindo Ghose, 1872-1950; articles.

Discussing the meaning of childhood, friendship, justice and fairness, happiness, and death, Jana Mohr Lone considers how listening to children’s ideas can expand our thinking about societal issues and deepen our respect for children’s perspectives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended in-person public education across the United States, a critical infrastructure of care that parents—especially mothers—depend on to work. To understand the nature and magnitude of school closures across states, we collected detailed primary data—the Elementary School Operating Status database —to measure the percentage of school districts offering in-person, remote, and hybrid instruction models for elementary schools by state in September 2020. We link these data to the Current Population Survey to evaluate the association between school (...) reopening and parents’ labor force participation rates, comparing 2020 labor force participation rates to those observed prepandemic in 2019. We find that, across states, the maternal labor force participation rate fell to a greater extent than that of fathers. In 2019, mothers’ rate of labor force participation was about 18 percentage points lower than fathers’. By 2020, this gap grew by 5 percentage points in states where schools offered primarily remote instruction. We show that schools are a vital source of care for young children, and that without in-person instruction, mothers have been sidelined from the labor force. The longer these conditions remain in place, the more difficult it may be for mothers to fully recover from prolonged spells of nonemployment, resulting in reduced occupational opportunities and lifetime earnings. (shrink)

Joanna Crosby and Dianna Taylor: The theme of this special section of Foucault Studies, “Foucauldian Spaces,” emerged out of the 2016 meeting of the Foucault Circle, where the four of you were participants. Each of the three individual papers contained in the special section critically deploys and/or reconceptualizes an aspect of Foucault’s work that engages and offers particular insight into the construction, experience, and utilization of space. We’d like to ask the four of you to reflect on what makes a (...) space Foucauldian, and whether or not you’d consider the space created by the convergence of and intellectual exchanges among an international group of Foucault scholars at the University of New South Wales in the summer of 2016 to be Foucauldian. (shrink)

The past years have witnessed a growing awareness of the role of institutions of knowledge production in reproducing the global climate crisis, from research funded by fossil fuel companies to the role of mainstream economics in fuelling the idea of growth. This essay argues that rethinking knowledge production for post-carbon futures requires engaging with the co-determination of modes of knowing and modes of governing. The ways in which knowledge production is embedded in networks of global capitalism shapes how we (can) (...) think about the future. The essay argues for an attentivity to the material and infrastructural sides of knowledge production, which will enable us to re-think transition to post-carbon futures in ways that recognize the deep structural, spatial and social inequalities underpinning knowledge production. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore what it means for an object to be eerie. We argue that the Eerie is an index of phenomenology’s limits: it is a complex, contradictory moment in the dialectics of subject/...

The “histone code” conjecture of gene regulation is our point of departure for analyzing the interplay between the (quasi)digital script in nucleic acids and proteins on the one hand and the body on the other, between the recorded and organic memory. We argue that the cell’s ability to encode its states into strings of “characters” dramatically enhances the capacity of encoding its experience (organic memory). Finally, we present our concept of interaction between the natural (bodily) world, and the transcendental realm (...) of the digital codes. (shrink)

Specific Chinese models for theories of knowledge were premised upon a structurally ordered external reality; since natural (or cosmic) order is organic, it naturally follows the 'flow' of structural patterns and operates in accordance with structural principles that regulate every existence. In this worldview, our mind is also structured in accordance with this all-embracing, but open, organic system. The axioms of our recognition and thought are therefore not arbitrary, but follow this rationally designed structure. The compatibility of both the cosmic (...) and mental structures is the basic precondition that enables humans to perceive and recognize external reality. The present study shows that this paradigm of structural epistemology can already be found in the earliest Chinese theories of knowledge. The introduction of Chinese models and their incorporation into Western discourses fills an important theoretical gap in the Western model of structuralism. This book offers an insight into epistemological systems that arose outside the discourses of the Euro-American tradition. It can thus help us to eliminate and supersede certain culturally conditioned prejudices as to the superiority and omnipresence of Western theoretical models, while demonstrating incontrovertibly that the results of Western discourses are by no means the only force driving theoretical innovation at the present time. (shrink)

Based on “laws” of contagion and similarity, it is understood that people tend to believe that meanings associated with one object may be transferred onto another, and the meanings of the first may “contaminate” the second. The perceived contamination may influence the individual’s way of interacting with the object. We aimed to produce a rich description of individual differences that predict intuitive judgments in response to scenarios involving activation of contagion heuristics. Adolescents and adults in Germany completed a survey and (...) provided rated responses to hypothetical scenarios. They also gave open-ended remarks on one scenario: whether they would wear a sweater that had belonged to Adolf Hitler if they were cold. Content analysis produced a composite description of reflections with insights into historical consciousness in contemporary Germany. Also examined was the extent to which quantitative responses were related to demographics, personality characteristics, supernatural beliefs, and responses to other scenarios. (shrink)