This innovative book takes a new look at environmental ethics and the need for ecological and biological integrity. Laura Westra explores the necessity for radical alteration not only of interpersonal ethics, but also of social institutions and public policy. In the process, Westra denies the validity of majority rule in environmentally ethical concerns. Issues discussed in the book include the link between ecological integrity and human health; an environmental evaluation of business and technology; biotechnology and transgenics in agriculture and (...) aquaculture; and the environmental ethics of the ancient Greeks and Kant. Living in Integrity is a valuable book for philosophers and environmentalists alike. (shrink)

In the Algerian War of Independence, women famously used both traditional and modern clothing as part of their revolutionary efforts against French colonialism. This paper uncovers some of the principal lessons of this historical episode through a phenomenological exploration of agency, religion, and political transformation. Part I draws primarily on the philosophical insights of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty alongside the memoirs of Zohra Drif, a young woman member of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, in order to explore the (...) worldly and habitual nature of human agency in contrast to the Enlightenment stress on individual rationality and autonomy. Part II turns to John Russon’s phenomenological interpretation of religion in order to argue for the ineluctable significance of religion on human existence, in contrast to the modern tendency to oppose religious tradition and secular modernity. Part III analyzes the dynamics of intercultural communication, and argues for the political power of phenomenology as a critical enterprise that enables more just and emancipatory visions of collective human life and political transformation to come to the fore. (shrink)

There are challenges to the dominant research paradigm in breast cancer science. In the United States, science and social activism create paradigmatic shifts. Using interviews, ethnographic observations, and an extensive review of the literature, we create a three-dimensional model to situate changes in scientific controversy concerning environmental causes of breast cancer. We identify three paradigm challenges posed by activists and some scientists: to move debates about causation upstream to address causes; to shift emphasis from individual to modifiable societal-level factors beyond (...) an individual’s control; and to allow direct lay involvement in research, which may raise new questions and change how questions are approached, the methods used, and the standards of proof. We use our model to examine controversies about doing scientific research, interpreting scientific results, and acting on science. Ultimately, we aim to understand what impedes construction of new methodologies and knowledge about environmental factors in human disease. (shrink)

Through case studies that highlight the type of information that is seldom reported in the news, Faces of Environmental Racism exposes the type and magnitude of environmental racism, both domestic and international. The essays explore the justice of current environmental practices, asking such questions as whether cost-benefit analysis is an appropriate analytic technique and whether there are alternate routes to sustainable development in the South.

Music students at the University of Chichester Conservatoire completed questionnaires about their experience of the forced use of remote teaching and learning due to Lockdown, as imposed in the United Kingdom from March to June 2020, and how this impacted their self-beliefs, decision making processes, and methods of preparation for their performance assessments. Students had the choice to either have musical performance assessed in line with originally published deadlines via self-recorded video or defer the assessment until the following academic year. (...) Student’s choice to defer or submit the assessment during Lockdown was influenced by a range of forced factors, such as adaptions required by online teaching, limitations of rehearsal in their home environment, and the challenges in facilitating and recording their own assessments. Students completed online questionnaires about their self-efficacy, resilience, wellbeing, and provided free text responses explaining the reasoning for their decision to record their performance or to defer the assessment were coded to reveal patterns impacting their decision and preparation processes. Those choosing to submit their assessments demonstrated more strategies in their preparation and reported higher perceived self-efficacy scores. The specific conditions for this assessment, as a result of Lockdown, revealed correlations between resilience and both self-efficacy and wellbeing. The impact on teaching and the student experience is discussed and suggestions to support students in future settings of blended delivery are presented. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Tourism is capable of distributing wealth and participating substantially in the economic development of many countries. However, to ensure these benefits, the planning, management, and monitoring of a sustainable offer become crucial. Despite the increasingly widespread attention to sustainability in this sector, however, the concept of sustainable tourism still appears fragmented and fuzzy. The theoretical frameworks used in many studies often reduce sustainability to its environmental or social aspects and consider such pillars as separate issues. Furthermore, although most studies acknowledge (...) that a potentially wide number of stakeholders play a role in sustainable tourism production, they have so far focused on host communities, tourism producers, or tourists themselves independently. Fewer explorations have addressed simultaneously different stakeholders, their perceptions of sustainable tourism experience, and the various concerns and tensions that may arise. This study aims to investigate sustainability issues in tourism by considering the voices of two relevant stakeholders involved in “co-producing” the tourism experience: tourists and tour operators. Based on a qualitative study conducted in Italy, the article critically discusses how travelers and tour operators craft the sustainability idea, the implicit assumptions that rely on their different perspectives, and their practical implications. The results highlight four different narratives on sustainable tourism, which are related to different assumptions on sustainability and actions legitimated to generate sustainable value. Finally, the article offers insights into how to develop a more holistic and critical approach to sustainable tourism through education and communication. (shrink)

In this study, the author uses ethnographic and interview data from a women's floor in a university residence hall to examine how some heterosexual women's gender strategies contribute to their homophobia. The author describes a prevailing heterosexual erotic market on campus—the Greek party scene—and the status hierarchy linked to it. Within this hierarchy, heterosexual women assign lesbians low rank because of their assumed disinterest in the erotic market and perceived inability to acquire men's erotic attention. Active partiers invest more in (...) this social world and prefer higher levels of social distance from lesbians than do others. These women also engage in same-sex eroticism primarily designated for a male audience. They define their behaviors as heterosexual, reducing the spaces in which lesbians can be comfortable. Finally, the author concludes by discussing the unique nature of women's homophobia and the links between sexism and heterosexism. (shrink)

Surveys of almost 1,500 members of three professional societies that do risk analysis found that 3 in 10 respondents had observed a biased research design, 2 in 10 had observed plagiarism, and 1 in 10 observed data fabrication or falsification. Respondents with many years in risk analysis, business consultants, and industrial hygienists reported the greatest prevalence of misconduct. These respondents perceived poor science, economic implications of the research, and lack of training in ethics as causes of misconduct. They supported the (...) teaching of ethics but the vast majority did not support government auditing of their work. (shrink)

Environmental holism, with its demands for universality, appears to undermine the democratic rights of individuals, and of nation states within the international community. But these rights may better be viewed as means towards justice or other goods, rather than as ends in themselves. Where basic survival issues are involved, environmental 'triage' may be morally essential, and some checks on 'populist' democratic politics inevitable.

Background Non-technical skills are cognitive and interpersonal skills underpinning technical proficiency. Ethical values and respect for human dignity make operating room nurses responsible for nursing decisions that are clinically and technically sound and morally appropriate. Aim To learn what ethical issues operating room nurses perceive as important regarding non-technical skills. Research design Qualitative individual in-depth interviews were conducted. The interviews were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s six phases for thematic analysis. Participants and research context Eleven experienced perioperative/operating room nurses working (...) in an operating unit at a Norwegian university hospital. Ethical considerations Approval was given by The Norwegian Social Science Data Service in care of the hospital’s Data Protection Officer. Findings Three main themes were found: respect and care for the patient, making the patient feel safe, and respect within the perioperative team. These features or themes, which incorporate collaboration and communication, are closely connected to patient safety. Discussion Defending the patient’s dignity is part of caring for and respecting the patient. The manner in which the operating room team collaborates is important for the patient to feel safe and secure. Poor teamwork may have dire consequences. Reciprocal respect within the team includes respect for each other’s tasks and responsibilities and to talk to one another in a friendly manner. Conclusion Being respectful and contributing to a caring atmosphere are central ethical skills in the operating room. To patients, harmonious teamwork translates into a feeling of safety and being cared for. The nurses see respect and patient safety, and respect and reciprocal politeness among the members of the perioperative team as central ethical non-technical skills. Lack of respect influences the team negatively and is detrimental for patient safety. Good communication is an important safety measure during surgery and creates a feeling of good ‘flow’ within the operating room team. (shrink)

Comparative welfare state research is directed mainly toward the development of welfare states in advanced democracies, although the majority of people live outside the OECD and often face graver social risks arising from poverty and starvation. To secure a minimum standard of living, nearly all countries have introduced social programs to protect their citizens. Yet the timing of when governments take on the responsibility of providing social protection varies decisively across the world. Using data for 177 territories and independent states (...) over the period from 1820 to 2013, we illustrate how social security legislation has emerged throughout the world. Although we find that the patterns and pathways vary strongly between different regions, the evidence shows that the proliferation of social protection is a transnational event: regional diffusion and membership in the International Labour Organization matter irrespective of the regional and temporal context. (shrink)

In his best-seller The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han maintained that the immunological dispositive is not compatible with global capitalism. In this article, I argue, against Han, that the capitalism we inhabit produces countless immunological devices, and not just in times of pandemic. In particular, I emphasize the affective dimension of these mechanisms, the configuration of desire they generate. When carrying out this reflection, I highlight the complexity of immunity: since it can be considered a defense system that activates forms of (...) rejection towards the strange, identified as a risk for a body assumed in an identitarian way. However, immunity can also be understood in symbiotically terms, as a system of protection and care strategies, not tied to preserving the border between self and not-self, the proper and the improper, but dependent on a relational understanding of life. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the rapidly evolving concept of “harmful products” and its connection with marketing practices. It examines (a) products generally recognized as harmful, and (b) innocuous products that are sometimes (unintentionally) transformed into harmful ones by marketing activities. We indicate how the effects of these activities depend on individual perceptions as well as the norms of social and business ethics. We advocate the creation of marketing codes of ethics for particular product categories, as well as the dissemination of (...) product information that can link the ethical codes with individual values. We illustrate these concepts with a case study of the fragrance industry and olfactory marketing. (shrink)

How can citizens construct the political authority under which they will live? I argue that Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) answers this question concerning the constitutive power of political and normative agency by employing four dimensions of mimesis from the Greek and Roman traditions. And I argue that mimesis accounts for the know-how, or power/knowledge, the general ‘man’ draws upon in constructing the commonwealth. Hobbes revalues poetic mimesis through his stylistic decisions, including the invitation to the reader to read ‘himself’ in (...) the portrait of the general man depicted in the text. Hobbes aims for Leviathan to change the ethical dispositions of its readers, turning them from bad to good men as they witness the general man undergoing this ethical transformation in the transition from the state of nature to the civil state. He emphasizes the anthropological dimension of mimesis to explain political disorder since he argues that men assess the honor others attribute them by observing signs and gestures in others’ behavior. Hobbes employs the linguistic dimension of mimesis to describe how men acting as agents can build a normative consensus out of the state of nature. This article positions mimesis as a key term for understanding the intersection between aesthetics and politics before the term ‘aesthetics’ came into parlance. (shrink)

_Neonatal Bioethics: A Complicated Decisión_ _Bioética neonatal: uma decisão complicada_ _Carta al editor / Letter to the editor / Carta ao editor_ _Para citar esta carta / To reference this letter / Para citar esta carta _ Dussán-Rojas LV, Chacón-Pedraza SA. Bioética neonatal: una decisión complicada. Pers Bioet. 2019; 23: 140-141. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5294/pebi.2019.23.1.10.

This article aims at summing up the reflections of a small group of psychologists who work in the domain of palliative treatment. The theory and methodology supporting it are borrowed by a group analysis approach; the group's purpose is a research based on the workers' experience elaboration, which aims at finding out both the specificities of the work apparatus with the people accompanied to the conclusion of their lives, and the main thematic areas of the relationship between healthcare team, patients, (...) and families. The work we present aims at introducing the most meaningful themes that emerged during group meetings: first of all, some service criticalities examined in the area of terminal healthcare and the workers' possible saturation and psycho-social discomfort quotas, generating in some cases a common sense of professional precariousness. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse a literary response to antiquity’s most alluring work of art, the Cnidian Aphrodite. It argues that the ecphrasis of the statue in the Amores develops textual and verbal strategies to provoke in the recipients the desire to see the Cnidia, but eventually frustrates this desire. The ecphrasis thereby creates a discrepancy between the characters’ aesthetic experience of the statue and the visualisation and aesthetic experience of the recipients of the text. The erotic (...) mechanisms of the ecphrasis, simultaneously arousing and frustrating the recipients’ desire, mirror the effect of the statue on its viewers and disclose the erotic programmatics of the whole dialogue. The analysis shows that the Amores surpass the ongoing discourse on love from Plato’s Phaedrus to the ancient novel – and Achilles Tatius and Longus in particular. The Amores, like the nude statue of the Cnidia, threaten to cross all bounds of decency in sexuality. (shrink)

This paper considers Epicharmus’ fragments mainly from the point of view of dialogue history. We shall focus on the four following topics (each one of them will be examined in a specific paragraph): Concerning the history of dramatic dialogue, Epicharmus’ fragments furnish evidence of the otherwise unknown archaic and non-Attic dramatic dialogue. Moreover, they alone among the pre-classic dramatic fragments show changing voices and interlocution between the dramatis personae. Epicharmus is the first Greek author who brings together dialogic form and (...) philosophical content. For this reason, he is a starting point in my hypothesis that philosophical dialogue as a literary genre has its origins in a certain tendency of Old Comedy to make fun of philosophers and philosophic theories. This hypothesis is consistent with the ancient sources that locate the source of inspiration for Plato’s dialogues in the Sicilian tradition of mime and comedy. In dealing with philosophical topics, Epicharmus’ aim is neither to discard previous theories nor to teach new ones, but rather to parody them in order to entertain his public, even adapting them to the comic situations they occur in whenever necessary. As far as we can see from the scant extant texts, the habit of parodying philosophy is established by Epicharmus and remains well alive even in Attic comedy. Finally, Epicharmus’ fragments show some of the verifiably oldest allusions and references to other writings, so that we can attempt to reconstruct the „intertextual dialogue“ between his texts (especially frr. 147, 213, 214, 275, and 276KA) and the parodied ones. Intertextuality is used here as an artful comical device, and implies the author’s familiarity with the texts he refers to. This confirms that some Presocratic works were well known and read in Syracuse at least since the beginning of the 5 th century BC. (shrink)

Widespread expression of the transcription factor, nuclear factor (erythroid‐derived 2)‐like 2 (NRF2), which maintains redox homeostasis, has recently been identified in the hair follicle (HF). Small molecule activators of NRF2 may therefore be useful in the management of HF pathologies associated with redox imbalance, ranging from HF greying and HF ageing via androgenetic alopecia and alopecia areata to chemotherapy‐induced hair loss. Indeed, NRF2 activation has been shown to prevent peroxide‐induced hair growth inhibition. Multiple parameters can increase the levels of reactive (...) oxygen species in the HF, for example melanogenesis, depilation‐induced trauma, neurogenic and autoimmune inflammation, toxic drugs, environmental stressors such as UV irradiation, genetic defects and aging‐associated mitochondrial dysfunction. In this review, the potential mechanisms whereby NRF2 activation could prove beneficial in treatment of redox‐associated HF disorders are therefore discussed. (shrink)

This article puts forth Modern Socratic Dialogue as a pedagogical tool for cultivating an American Bildung. Beginning with Michael Hogue’s work on “resilient democracy,” an associational ethos that is vulnerable and based on our lived uncertainty. To further establish this American Bildung, I investigate what it means to be American. Drawing from the works of Michael Walzer and Gloria Anzaldúa, I establish that “American” means unfinished, pluralistic, and embraces ambiguity. The question of how to cultivate this pluralistic, ambiguous, and vulnerable (...) Bildung is framed by the freedom and social bonds of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s theory of Bildung. For an American Bildung to flourish, freedom and social bonds can be presented and practiced in the form of Modern Socratic Dialogue – “truths” are created by the community of interlocutors, and problems and solutions are based on the experiences of the participants. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Jennifer A. Herdt, Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition, 312 pages./ Jennifer A. Herdt’s book Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition traces the post-Kantian secularization of Bildung from its roots in Pietism through its development into the human autocracy of Herder and Goethe, to the reconciliation and expression of the concept in Hegel. In the journey through the history of Bildung, Herdt specifically focuses on the role of Christianity in human formation, the tension between human formation (...) and divine formation, and the failures of Kunstreligion to achieve the formation of humanity. Reforming Humanity is a meticulously researched foray into the history of a question that has haunted humans since it emerged as the Greek paideia: How do we form humanity? For any scholars of the German philosophical or theological tradition, or any scholars of the aesthetic purpose of education, Herdt’s book is a vital library addition. (shrink)

Review: NOË, Alva. Out of our heads: Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang, 2009. 214 páginas.

Este texto investiga las condiciones del lugar propio de la libertad según la propuesta kantiana. Esa libertad está vinculada al ámbito práctico, en el que las máximas de la acción parecen dirigirse a la consecución de la felicidad. Simultáneamente la razón se reconoce subordinada a ciertas leyes morales. ¿Dónde situar la libertad? ¿En las elecciones del mundo sensible o en el sometimiento a la legalidad moral? La posible solución, si admitimos la segunda propuesta, pasa por reconocer el origen de la (...) legalidad en la razón que se reconoce a ella sometida, por lo que esa razón adquiere un papel eminentemente activo. Based on the conditions of Kantian Theory of Knowledge, this paper investigates the proper place of freedom, considered from the practical point of view in which maxims try to achieve happiness. In the same way, reason recognize the necessary respect for the moral law. Where must freedom be placed? In the elections in the world of sense or in the submit to that law? Assumption of the second propos- al implies to set up the origin of morality in the reason that recognize itself subordinate to moral legislation and it that way becomes an active role in the establishment of morality. (shrink)