Background and purpose Educators’ ethical competence is of crucial importance for developing students’ ethical thinking. Previous studies describe educators’ ethical codes and principles. This article aims to widen the understanding of health- and social care educators’ ethical competence in relation to core values and ethos. Theoretical background and key concepts The study is based on the didactics of caring science and theoretically links the concepts ethos and competence. Methods Data material was collected from nine educational units for healthcare and social (...) service in Finland. In total 16 semi-structured focus group interviews with 48 participants were conducted. The interviews were analysed with a thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke. Ethical considerations The study is approved by the Declaration of Helsinki, the legislation regarding personal data and the General Data Protection Regulation. The study received ethical permission from the University of Jyväskylä. Informed consent was obtained from all the educational units and participants in the study. Findings The findings are presented based on three general patterns, an ethical basic motive, an ethical bearing and ethical actions. Subthemes are Humane view of students as unique individuals with individual learning, Bearing of tactfulness and firmness, Bearing of perceptiveness and accessibility, Bearing of satisfaction and joy over student learning, Valuing bearing towards each oneself and colleagues, Ability to interact and flexibility, Collegiality and a supportive work community and Educators as role models and inspirators. Conclusion Educators’ personal and professional ethos is crucial to student learning, personal growth and ethical reasoning. Therefore, it is important to further develop educators’ training regarding ethical competence. (shrink)

Background:Moral courage is defined as courage to act according to one’s own ethical values and principles even at the risk of negative consequences for the individual. In a complex nursing practice, ethical considerations are integral. Moral courage is needed throughout nurses’ career.Aim:To analyse graduating nursing students’ moral courage and the factors associated with it in six European countries.Research design:A cross-sectional design, using a structured questionnaire, as part of a larger international ProCompNurse study. In the questionnaire, moral courage was assessed with (...) a single question (visual analogue scale 0–100), the questionnaire also covered several background variables.Participants and research context:The sample comprised graduating nursing students (n = 1796) from all participating countries. To get a comprehensive view about graduating nursing students’ moral courage, the views of nurse managers (n = 538) and patients (n = 1327) from the same units in which the graduating nursing students practised were also explored, with parallel questionnaires.Ethical considerations:Ethical approvals and research permissions were obtained according to national standards in every country and all participants gave their informed consent.Results:The mean of graduating nursing students’ self-assessed moral courage was 77.8 (standard deviation 17.0; on a 0–100 scale), with statistically significant differences between countries. Higher moral courage was associated with many factors, especially the level of professional competence. The managers assessed the graduating nursing students’ moral courage lower (66.5; standard deviation 18.4) and the patients slightly higher (80.6; standard deviation 19.4) than the graduating nursing students themselves.Discussion and conclusions:In all countries, the graduating nursing students’ moral courage was assessed as rather high, with differences between countries and populations. These differences and associations between moral courage and ethics education require further research. (shrink)

Background: Older people in institutional care should be allowed to live a meaningful life in a home-like environment consistent with their own free will. Research on actualisation of older people’s own free will in nursing home context is scarce. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to describe older people’s experiences of free will, its actualisation, promoters and barriers in nursing homes to improve the ethical quality of care. Research design: Fifteen cognitively intact older people over 65 years in four (...) nursing homes in Southern Finland were interviewed. Giorgi’s phenomenological method expanded by Perttula was used to analyse the data. Ethical considerations: Chief administrators of each nursing home gave permission to conduct the study. Informants’ written informed consent was gained. Findings: Older people described free will as action consistent with their own mind, opportunity to determine own personal matters and holding on to their rights. Own free will was actualised in having control of bedtime, dressing, privacy and social life with relatives. Own free will was not actualised in receiving help when needed, having an impact on meals, hygiene, free movement, meaningful action and social life. Promoters included older people’s attitudes, behaviour, health, physical functioning as well as nurses’ ethical conduct. Barriers were nurses’ unethical attitudes, institution rules, distracting behaviour of other residents, older people’s attitudes, physical frailty and dependency. Discussion: Promoting factors of the actualisation of own free will need to be encouraged. Barriers can be influenced by educating nursing staff in client-orientated approach and influencing attitudes of both nurses and older people. Conclusion: Results may benefit ethical education and promote the ethical quality of older people’s care practice and management. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre claims in his 1945 lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ that there are two kinds of existentialism: that of Christians like Karl Jaspers, and atheistic like Martin Heidegger. Sartre's ‘spiritual master’ Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defining him as an atheist, but he had serious problems with Sartre's concept of humanism and existentialism. Heidegger claims that the essence of humanism lies in the essence of the human being. After the Enlightenment, the Western concept of man has been presented (...) in education in the form of Kantian humanistic essentialism. At least in the Finnish educational system, Kantian humanism is almost an official ideological background of all national curriculums. Is such a kind of essentialism and metaphysics plausible in our modern or postmodern times? We examine the Sartre-Heidegger controversy on humanism and the concept of man in education using Freire's humanism and Gelassenheit education as exemplars. (shrink)

We present a unified approach for investigating rational reasoning about basic argument forms involving indicative conditionals, counterfactuals, and basic quantified statements within coherence-based probability logic. After introducing the rationality framework, we present an interactive view on the relation between normative and empirical work. Then, we report a new experiment which shows that people interpret indicative conditionals and counterfactuals by coherent conditional probability assertions and negate conditionals by negating their consequents. The data support the conditional probability interpretation of conditionals and the (...) narrow-scope reading of the negation of conditionals. Finally, we argue that coherent conditional probabilities are important for probabilistic analyses of conditionals, nonmonotonic reasoning, quantified statements, and paradoxes. (shrink)

Concerns about the unsustainability of the conventional food system have promoted interest in alternative food networks, which are typically conceptualized through their differences from conventional food networks. Real-life AFNs, however, tend to show some similarities to the conventional food system. This hybridity has caused some criticism, but also, increasingly, calls for a more open examination of AFNs. Indeed, AFNs can be seen as relational to and shaped by the prevailing food system, for example the expectations the conventional system has promoted (...) among consumers. In this paper, through a multiple case study of nine alternative food retailers, we examine the negotiation of acceptable practice in AFNs and the challenges encountered in trying to do things alternatively. We employ convention theory, which encourages a view of action as socially negotiated and situational, and acknowledges plural legitimate notions of worth in guiding and justifying actions. Our findings show a plurality of ideals in the domain of AFNs and a complex navigation between the retailers’ own expressed ideals and considerations and perceived consumer expectations. The retailers’ justification of actions highlights several areas of tension in AFN practice, helping also to understand the challenges in adopting sustainable practices. While responding to consumer expectations sometimes involved adopting more conventional practices, the retailers also challenged consumers on certain issues. Our findings also show how even market-oriented AFNs may take radically alternative courses of action. The study supports the broader argument for examining all food networks in an open way, focusing on actual sustainability outcomes. (shrink)

To understand ethical consumer choice, it should be studied from a holistic, configurational perspective. We use fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) ( N = 715) with a randomized experiment in the context of animal welfare to examine (a) the interdependencies of factors aiding or impeding ethical choice, and (b) whether ethical choices occur differently in a loss frame than in a gain frame. We identify several alternative pathways to ethical choice and non-choice, and within these pathways, we reveal substitution effects, (...) complementarities, and contingencies, reflecting the complexities of consumer choice. Furthermore, we demonstrate how ethical choice results more easily in a loss frame, and non-choice more easily in a gain frame, but how framing can also be irrelevant in certain situations. We contribute theoretically to ethical consumer choice in general and to food choice in particular by showing how it is the interplay of several factors in complex configurations that determines whether the situation favors ethical choice or non-choice. We outline important management and policy implications of our findings. (shrink)

The aging process involves changes in immune regulation, i.e. adaptive immunity declines whereas innate immunity becomes activated. NF‐κB signaling is the master regulator of the both immune systems. Two recent articles highlight the role of the NF‐κB system in aging and immune responses. Adler et al1 showed that the NF‐κB binding domain is the genetic regulatory motif which is most strongly associated with the aging process. Kwon et al2 studying HIV‐1 infection and subsequent immune deficiency process demonstrated that HIV‐1 Tat (...) protein binds to SIRT1 protein, a well‐known longevity factor, and inhibits the SIRT1‐mediated deacetylation of the p65 component of the NF‐κB complex. As a consequence, the transactivation efficiency of the NF‐κB factor was greatly potentiated, leading to the activation of immune system and later to the decline of adaptive immunity. These observations support the scenario where immune responses and aging process can be enforced by the potentiation of NF‐κB transactivation efficiency. Longevity factors, such as SIRT1 and its activators, might regulate the efficiency of the NF‐κB signaling, the major outcome of which is inflamm‐aging via proinflammatory responses. BioEssays 30:939–942, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Biobanks and biospecimen collections are becoming a primary means of delivering personalized diagnostics and tailoring individualized therapeutics. This shift towards precision medicine requires interactions among a variety of stakeholders, including the public, patients, healthcare providers, government, and donors. Very few studies have investigated the role of healthcare students in biobanking and biospecimen donations. The main aims of this study were to evaluate the knowledge of senior healthcare students about biobanks and to assess the students’ willingness to donate biospecimens and the (...) factors influencing their attitudes. A cross-sectional study was conducted among senior healthcare students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained using a self-administered questionnaire in English. In addition to the respondents’ biographical data section, the questionnaire assessed the respondents’ general knowledge about biobanking, the factors influencing their willingness to donate biospecimens to biobanks and their general attitudes towards biomedical research. A total of 597 senior healthcare students were included in the study. The general knowledge score was 3.2 out of 7. Only approximately 44% and 27% of students were aware of the terms “Human Genome Project” and “biobank,” respectively. The majority of the students were willing to donate biospecimens to biobanks. Multiple factors were significantly associated with their willingness to donate, including their perceived general health, past experience with both tissue testing and tissue donation, biobanking knowledge score and biomedical research attitude score. The main reasons for students’ willingness to donate were advancement of medical research and societal benefits, whereas misuse of biospecimens and confidentiality breaches were the main reasons for a reluctance to donate. Despite their strong willingness to donate biospecimens, students exhibited a notable lack of knowledge about biobanking and the HGP. To expedite the transition towards PM, it is highly recommended to enhance healthcare curricula by including more educational and awareness programmes to familiarize students with OMICs technologies in addition to the scope of research and clinical applications. (shrink)

Background: Ethics stimulation in nursing education focuses on human, non-technical factors in a clinical reality. Simulation as a teaching method began in the 1930s with flight simulators. In the beginning of the 1990s, simulations developed further in tandem with other technological and digital inventions, including touchscreen and three-dimensional anatomical models. Medical science first used simulation as a pedagogical teaching tool. In nursing education, simulation has been used for approximately a hundred years. Teaching has mainly focused on medical-technical, patient-specific interventions and (...) their management. Objective: The objective of this study was, from a caring science didactic perspective, to deepen the understanding of ethics simulation in nursing education. Design: Qualitative design and explorative, descriptive and hermeneutic approach of an inductive character. Methods: Semi-structured face-to-face interviews in 2016–2017 with six Norwegian nursing students who were encouraged to narrate about their experiences of ethics simulation in nursing education. Ethical considerations: Informed consent was obtained from the participants. Anonymity and confidentiality regarding data material were guaranteed. Results: Interpretation of the nursing students’ narratives resulted in the following meaning units: ethical being and ethos, nursing students’ formation process, bridge-building between theory and clinical practice, and teacher and ethics simulation. Conclusion: Through ethics simulation, nursing students can obtain an increased knowledge and a sense of being able to handle difficult ethical situations. Nursing students’ values, moral actions and ethical value base offer a positive point of departure, for both theoretical and practical ethics teaching, and an awareness of the unique human being, the patient, in clinical reality. The implementation of ethics simulation needs more attention in nursing education. (shrink)

We applaud Notini and colleagues for highlighting the clinical and ethical complexities of a case in which a non-binary individual desires indefinite treatment with puberty blockers.1 While we agree discontinuing treatment may cause psychological distress, we believe there are potential physical and neurocognitive harms caused by prolonged treatment that have been underestimated given the limited research conducted to date. Specifically, the impact of permanent pubertal suppression on the brain and decision-making capacity should be considered. In this context, we outline the (...) potential risks of ongoing pubertal suppression on bone and cardiovascular health, sexual and reproductive function, and brain development—all noted in the article but perhaps in an overly simplistic manner.1 First, the authors’ note OPS will almost certainly result in reduced bone density.1 Although we agree the absolute fracture risk is low in studies among older adults, there is less clarity about implications during adolescence and young adulthood when peak bone accrual occurs.2 Further, the authors propose ongoing monitoring with bone density scans, but no clear guidelines for clinicians if bone density becomes critically low—so we ask, at what point would a potential fracture risk outweigh the proposed benefits …. (shrink)

Background: Midwifery students are confronted with several ethical dilemmas and challenging situations during clinical midwifery care practice. Since ethical competence of midwifery students is under development, it is important to support the students’ learning progress of ethical issues from diverse viewpoints. Objective: From the perspective of didactics of caring science and the context of midwifery students, to explore how midwifery students’ experience supports for ethical competence in midwifery education and investigate how ethically challenging situations have been carried out during clinical (...) midwifery care practice. Design: Qualitative, explorative and descriptive design with inductive nature. Methods: Focus group interviews with nine Swedish midwifery students. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics was applied to guide the interpretation. Ethical considerations: Ethical principles and scientific guidelines were followed. Informed consent was obtained from the participants. Confidentiality was respected and quotations anonymised. Results: Receiving support when ethically challenging situations occur in clinical midwifery practice is important and necessary. One main theme, such as support is a human and caring factor in the midwifery students’ Bildung process on ethical competence, and four subthemes, such as supporting through trust and responsibility; supporting through dignity and respect; supporting through truthfulness and justice; and supporting through dialogue and reflection, were created from the hermeneutical interpretation. Discussion: Teaching ethics should be carefully planned, consistent and continue throughout the midwifery education. There is dispersion in the pedagogy of ethical situations, the methods and perceptions associated with it, and in obtaining possible support for students. Developing well-experienced methods could benefit the support of midwifery students’ ethical competence when they experience ethically challenging situations in midwifery care practice. (shrink)

Indeed. Nothing. Not the slightest. I act in a void. Paul Celan in a letter to the editor of Tagesspiegel in October 1959 1 Without doubt Martin Heidegger was the most influential and controversial...

This article examines how one of the most striking differences between the central doctrines of the Catholic Church and the secular context of Swedish society, attitudes to abortion, is managed by the Swedish church hierarchy and commentators in the official newsletter of the Catholic Church of Sweden. Using Foucauldian concepts of power, the article concludes that in its marginal position, the Catholic Church in Sweden mixes the traditional pastoral and sovereign power of the church with the way pastoral power is (...) exerted in modern society, in its efforts to continue asserting its influence over the possible courses of action for pregnant women. While traditionally abortion has been a woman’s crime, in the Swedish Catholic context it becomes rather the crime of the secular society. This means also that the image of woman as being responsible for her decisions and in need of forgiveness gives way to an image of woman as a victim in need of understanding. (shrink)

Background Nursing students spend approximately half of their time in clinical practice. It is important that clinical supervisors understand nursing students’ path of learning and can support their growth and development during the different and multifaceted learning situations offered in the clinical-practice period. Objective Based on nursing students’ perspective and rooted in the didactics of caring science, to examine how a learning and constructive caring relationship between nursing students and supervisors in clinical practice can be formed. Design Qualitative and quantitative (...) concurrent triangulation design of mixed methods. Methods Focus group interviews with Finnish nursing students (n = 21) in the qualitative part of the study. In the quantitative part, a closed questionnaire with closed answers was analysed using descriptive statistics. The analysis process was conducted using inductive content analysis. Ethical considerations Ethical issues were considered throughout the research process according to ethical principles and scientific guidelines. Informed consent was obtained from the informants, confidentiality regarding the data material was guaranteed and quotations were anonymized. Results A caring relationship between nursing students and supervisors is based on mutual respect, the ethos of responsibility, motivation, willingness and professionalism. Dignity and a caring ethical approach, where nursing students feel they belong, are recognized, seen and heard enables learning and professional development. It is also significant that the supervisor’s actions and reflections are ethically defensible, equal and protect nursing students from suffering and various power relationships in clinical practice. Conclusion A good cooperative relationship and shared responsibility between the nurse education institution, which offers theory and prepares nursing students for the encounter with clinical practice and the healthcare organizations is crucial for enabling a caring relationship in clinical supervision. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, which were written by European and North American specialists, position intermediality as a praxis of interpretative analysis in order to show how intermediality challenges our notion of art. The writers examine the various intermedial relations between the arts, which may take the form of reference to another form of art, a combination of two or more forms of art or a generic transformation from one form of art to another. In such cases, an intermedial approach (...) helps us to grasp the changing relationship between the arts, which affects our reception of experience. Intermediality has profoundly changed our understanding of interdisciplinary relations, formerly examined in the field of interart studies. By introducing a medial aspect, intermediality has succeeded in making a "leap" from past practices of artistic interrelatedness to our contemporary medial age, in which literature along with other arts may be understood as a medium. This ambitious undertaking has contributed to the liberation of literature and other arts from an isolated position in the established scholarly landscape with its clear-cut borderlines between disciplines. The essays in this collection are a valuable contribution to this on-going discussion about the relationships between the arts. The variety of essays published in this collection makes it an excellent introduction to academics and university students in such disciplines as literature, music, theatre, art history and media studies. Due to its clarity - which does not sacrifice philosophical depth concerning the role of intermedial studies for several forms of art - this book will also be of interest to academics and students who are currently working at advanced level art schools. (shrink)

The nucleolus may represent a key stress response organelle in the nucleus following proteotoxic stress by serving as a platform for protein aggregates. Aggregation of proteins often results from insufficient protein degradation by the ubiquitin‐proteasome system (UPS), occurring in inclusion diseases, upon treatment by proteasome inhibitors (PIs) or due to various forms of stress. As the nucleolar inclusions resemble cytoplasmic aggresomes in gathering ubiquitin and numerous UPS components and targets, including cancer‐related transcription factors and cell cycle regulators (e.g. p53 and (...) cyclin D) and proteins involved in neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. ataxin‐1, Malin), these organelles are termed herein as nucleolar aggresomes. These nucleolar aggresomes contain polyadenylated RNA, and seem to be linked to defects in nuclear export. Nucleolar aggresomes have been identified in non‐neuronal cells, but prominent similarities with nuclear ubiquitin and/or ribonuclear foci detected in triplet and other repeat disease pathologies are revealed here, creating a common interest between research in cancer and neurodegeneration. (shrink)

The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct – because at yet nothing has happened.In his Meridian speech Paul Celan pays homage to a dissident tradition, speaking of himself as one “who grew up with Peter Kropotkin’s and Gustav Landauers’ writings” .1 In his biography John Felstiner briefly mentions Celan’s affiliation, noting that the poet soon relinquished his communist sympathies but (...) stood loyal to the ethoi of socialism and anarchism . This holds true as a point of departure, but a detailed analysis of Celan’s anarchistic impulse is lacking .. (shrink)

Name is a powerful sign, and name-giving is also calling one intolanguage. Name identifies, summons and subjects. Paul Celan wasfamiliar with all these uses of name and addresses them in his poeticsand poetry. This article will discuss how poetry like Celan’s, which is heavily influenced by so many philosophical readings, could form a critique of naming,on a poetical basis towards philosophical concepts that underline problematics of name-giving in poetic text in particular.

Little is known about when corporate social responsibility (CSR) leads to a sustainability case (i.e., to improvements in environmental and social performance). Building on various forms of decoupling, we develop a theoretical framework for examining pathways from institutional pressures through CSR management to sustainability performance. To empirically identify such pathways, we apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to an extensive dataset from 19 large companies. We discover that different pathways are associated with environmental and social performance (non)improvements, and that pathways (...) to success and failure are for the most part not symmetrical. We identify two pathways to improved environmental performance: an exogenous and an endogenous one. We find two pathways to improved social performance that both involve integrating social responsibility into the core business. Pathways to nonimprovements are multiple, suggesting that failure can occur in a number of ways, while there are only a few pathways to sustainability performance improvements. (shrink)

As we speak about time in the context of everyday life, we have no problem with what we mean by time. We take time as given. Different kinds of theories of development rely on the ordinary concept of time. Time is a sequence of instants, and we are moving along from the past to the future, from birth to death. Moving in time also means development. It does not take into account how a human being is in the time. It (...) flattens our view of human life and cannot describe our manifold being. According to theories of development, if a child does not behave in a certain instant as the theories expect, there must be a problem with that child or she has not developed as well as others. Heidegger uses terms like time-space, temporality and ecstases of time. The question of time is of the same kind as the question of Being. We are in the world and in time in the same way. We all have experience of time, how it sometimes goes quickly and sometimes very slowly. Time is not experienced as moments one after another. It is time-space. Time-space means that time has three dimensions and it consists of the ecstatical opening up of the future, the past and the present. In this article, I will open up the question how the traditional understanding of time and the ecstatic understanding of time understand children differently. What does it mean that little children live exclusively in the present? (shrink)

In order to study whether there exist a period of activity in the human early visual cortex that contributes exclusively to visual awareness, we applied transcranial magnetic stimulation over the early visual cortex and measured subjective visual awareness during visual forced-choice symbol or orientation discrimination tasks. TMS produced one dip in awareness 60–120 ms after stimulus onset, while forced-choice orientation discrimination was suppressed between 60 and 90 ms and symbol discrimination between 60 and 120 ms. Thus, a time window specific (...) to visual awareness was found only in the orientation condition at 120 ms. The results imply that both conscious and unconscious perception depend on activity in early visual areas. On the basis of previous estimates of neural processing speed, we suggest that the late part of the activity period most likely involve local extrastriate–striate interactions which provide the contents for visual awareness but are not themselves sufficient for awareness to arise. (shrink)

In this article, identity politics is understood as a form of politics stressing collective but malleable group identities as the basis of political action. This notion of identity politics also allows thinking of identity as intersectional. The focus of this article, and a problem related to identity politics, is that when discussed in the context of the neoliberal order, identity politics has a tendency to become harnessed by the ethos of vulnerability. Some implications of the ‘vulnerabilizisation’ are considered in the (...) field of education, which is a field currently thoroughly affected by neoliberalism. Therefore, it is also important to look closer at the relationship between identity politics and the ethos of vulnerability. In addition, we re-consider poststructuralist thinking as a theoretical and political approach to see what it can offer in terms of re-thinking identity politics and in analyzing the ethos of vulnerability. When categories of vulnerability keep expanding into various psycho-emotional vulnerabilities defining subjects that can be known and spoken about, it is crucial to ask whether we regard these changes as educationally and politically progressive. The article discusses some problematic policies in educational environments and the phenomenon of trigger warnings. (shrink)

Concerns about the unsustainability of the conventional food system have brought attention to so called alternative food networks, which are widely thought to be more sustainable. However, claims made about AFNs’ sustainability have been subject to a range of criticisms. Some of them present counterevidence, while others have pointed to problematic underlying features in the academic literature and popular discourse that may hamper our understanding of AFNs’ sustainability. Considering these criticisms, together with the fact that the literature often addresses a (...) specific type of AFN or a specific sustainability-related issue, it is hard to form a clear overall picture of the sustainability promise of AFNs. In this article, we seek to contribute to a clearer understanding of this promise through a structured review, focusing on links between AFN characteristics and sustainability. Through an analysis of AFN conceptualizations reflected in the literature, we identify and consolidate their key characteristics. We then synthesize claims of how these characteristics may translate into sustainability, finding a wide range of potential direct and indirect impacts. Examining these from different angles, we find that the sustainability promise of AFNs found in these claims is qualified by the presence of potentially unaddressed issues, by criticisms regarding for example the evidence base of the assumed impacts and their power in addressing sustainability, and by considerations of how these impacts might play out in actual, real-life food networks. Indirect impacts of learning and participation may be highly significant for sustainability. We conclude with recommendations for research and practice. (shrink)

Inequalities in expectations to receive care permeate social structures, reinforcing racialized and gendered hierarchies. Harming the people who are overburdened and disadvantaged as caregivers, these inequalities also shape the subjectivities and corporeal habits of the class of people who expect to receive care from others. With three examples, I illustrate a series of justificatory asymmetries across gender and racial lines that illustrate (a) asymmetries in deference and attendance to the needs of others as well as (b) assertions of the rightful (...) occupation of space. These justificatory asymmetries are cogent reasons to evaluate the justice of caregiving arrangements in a way that tracks data about who cares for whom, which can be understood by the concept of the arrow of care map. I suggest, therefore, that the arrow of care map is a necessary component of any critical care theory. In addition, employing a method called living counterfactually, I show that when women of color assert full claimant status, we are reversing arrows of care, which then elicits resistance and violence from varied actors in the real world. These considerations together contribute to further defense of the theory of liberal dependency care’s constructivism, which combines hypothetical acceptability with autonomy skills in the real world. Each level, in turn, relies on the transparency of care practices in the real world as enabled by the arrow of care map. (shrink)

It is clear that we have to do something in our time concerning global warming yet before we can actually change the world, we must first understand our world. According to Heidegger, technology itself is not good or bad, but the problem is, that technological thinking (calculative thinking) has become the only form of thinking. Heidegger saw that the essence of technology nowadays is enframing – Ge-stell, which means that everything in nature is ‘standing-reserve’ (Bestand). Enframing (as apparatus) is one (...) way of uncovering, which for Heidegger meant truth. Truth can appear in many ways and the danger is that this truth of representational-calculative thinking becomes the only truth. We claim that the calculative way of thinking must be changed and we posit that Gelassenheit (slow thinking, releasement, letting-go) is the remedy. It does not mean some kind of mysticism or irrationality. The notion of Gelassenheit includes the idea of to let learn. We as teachers and educators have to learn how to think outside of the technological ‘Ge-stell’ and start thinking and acting in radically new ways. Like Arne Naes and Michael Zimmerman we connect the overcoming of technological ‘Ge-stell’ with so called deep ecology. We have to ‘learn to think’ and act within the deep ecology. We call for an educational ecological imperative. Every teacher and educationalist has to think what they can do (not as private person but as professionals) in order to prevent the coming eco-catastrophe. (shrink)

Management of meaning inside organizations has been an enduring issue in organization studies. Issues relating to commitment and control through the meaning-making mechanisms have been studied by organization culture theorists for sometime now. However, rapidly changing dynamics of the business environment lend these issues a critical salience today. Two factors of this dynamic context are particularly noteworthy. Firstly, a redefinition of the long-standing employment relationship—loyalty no longer being traded for lifelong employment—has led management to look for alternative sources of gaining (...) commitment from their employees. Second, several factors—socio-cultural, organizational and individual—have led the employees today to explore issues relating to meaning and purpose in their workplaces. Labelled variously by different scholars, the most widely accepted term for this growing movement is ‘Spirituality at Work’ (SAW). In this article we link the two factors to present a framework wherein the emergence of an issue from the private individual domain to the organizational is seen as having the potential of answering concerns of eliciting commitment from employees in a turbulent environment. However, the SAW movement is accompanied by vigorous debates about the concept itself and on how it is to be studied. In the course of this article we present the central conceptual debates that have characterized the SAW discourse to emerge with three definitional themes to understand and study SAW, and then argue for utilizing the person–organization fit lens to study SAW. We end with a conceptual framework that would enable researchers to make a comprehensive study of the elusive phenomenon of SAW. (shrink)