This study is about the interaction of scientific expertise and local knowledge in the context of a contested issue: the quality and quantity of safe drinking water available to some residents in one Canadian community. The authors articulate the boundary work in which scientific and technological expertise and discourse are played out against local knowledge and water needs to prevent the construction of a water main extension that would provide a group of residents with the same water that others in (...) the community already access. The authors draw on an extensive database constructed during a three-year ethnographic study of one community; the data base includes the transcript of a public meeting, newspaper clippings, interviews, and communications between residents and town council. The authors show not only that scientists and residents differ in their assessment of water quality and quantity but also that there is a penchant for undercutting residents in their attempts to make themselves heard in the political process. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Pharmacogenetics is a rapidly expanding area of research exploring the relationship between inter‐individual genetic variation and drug response, with the goal of developing genetically optimised therapies. Slippery slope arguments claim that a particular action should be rejected (or supported) because it might be the first step onto a slippery slope leading to undesirable (or desirable) consequences. In this article, several slippery slope arguments relevant to the context of pharmacogenetics are evaluated under consideration of underlying reasons for their popularity. The (...) author concludes that although the examined arguments are unconvincing as slippery slope arguments, they do matter in this context. While positive slippery slope arguments serve as a driving force to fuel the development of pharmacogenetics, their negative counterparts play an important role to sensitise policy makers and the public to potential problems. (shrink)

Este artigo discute o projeto de desenvolvimento presente na constituição da política federalde educação profissional e tecnológica Brasileira inscrita na lei de criação dos InstitutosFederais de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia. A hipótese central era a de que odesenvolvimento regional se tornou a coluna vertebral daquela política pública, que destacoua importância dos arranjos produtivos, sociais e culturais locais no processo de expansão einteriorização da educação profissional. A partir de pesquisa documental sobre os processoslegislativos, o estudo mapeou a construção do projeto de (...) desenvolvimento durante o processode formulação, de tomada de decisão e de implementação da política pública. Com o uso detécnicas associadas à análise de conteúdo e o cruzamento de dados referentes à população dosmunicípios sede dos novos campi, confirmou a hipótese inicial ao reunir evidências sobre oenfoque comunitário e sustentável alinhado ao desenvolvimento regional endógeno inerenteao projeto que deu origem aos Institutos Federais. Concluiu que, por um lado, aintersetorialidade da política driblou a cultura bacharelesca e o desprestígio que a educaçãoprofissional ocupa no país. Também ampliou a capilaridade para os pequenos municípios,sendo que 58,8% dos 483 novos campi foram instalados em localidades com menos de 100mil habitantes. Por outro lado, a cultura organizacional pré-existente e a carência de espaçosinstitucionais de governança resultaram em baixa interação dos campi com o território,estabelecendo um frágil e descontínuo elo com o desenvolvimento regional. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider in what sense the modal-Hamiltonian interpretation of quantum mechanics satisfies the physical constraints imposed by the Galilean group. In particular, we show that the only apparent conflict, which follows from boost-transformations, can be overcome when the definition of quantum systems and subsystems is taken into account. On this basis, we apply the interpretation to different well-known models, in order to obtain concrete examples of the previous conceptual conclusions. Finally, we consider the role (...) played by the Casimir operators of the Galilean group in the interpretation. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the difference between event‐conditionals and premise‐conditionals. An event‐conditional contributes to event structure: it modifies the main clause event; a premise‐conditional structures the discourse: it makes manifest a proposition that is the privileged context for the processing of the associated clause. The two types of conditional clauses will be shown to differ both in terms of their ‘external syntax’ and in terms of their ‘internal syntax’. The peripheral structure of event conditionals will be shown to lack the (...) functional head Force, which encodes illocutionary force. Event conditionals are merged inside the IP of the matrix clause. Premise‐conditionals contain the head Force and they are merged outside the associated CP. (shrink)

The article re-examines the relationship between the works of Alfred Schütz and Harold Garfinkel, focusing on their respective approaches to temporality in interaction. Although there are good reasons to emphasize the differences between Schütz’s notion of individual projects of action and Garfinkel’s interest in communicative sequencing, there is also an interesting historical connection. In order to elucidate this connection, the article provides a close reading of the steps that lead Schütz from his premise of ‘egological’ time consciousness to his understanding (...) of the reflexive and interactive process of meaning establishment and interpretation developed in his first book, _The Phenomenology of the Social World_ (1967 [1932]). The article reflects further upon which aspects of Schütz’s considerations resonated with Garfinkel in his formative years and how Garfinkel related to them variously in his later development of ethnomethodology. Hence, it appears that Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology successively departs from many of Schütz’s premises while simultaneously incorporating and further developing some of his notions on the sequential organization and temporal flux of interactive processes. (shrink)

This paper discusses corporate entanglement, impactfulness and responsibility in the Anthropocene, amidst events and conditions that ‘uncontain’ time. It takes its direction of travel from artist Brian Jungen’s ‘Cetology’ (2002), a whalebone sculpture made out of cut-up plastic garden chairs, which conjoins the times of earth and world history, as it hangs in the air of the art gallery, ‘as if’ exhibited in the natural history museum. The paper relates ‘Cetology’s’ engagement with natural history, time, and commodification to matters of (...) corporate entanglement and responsibility within company law and governance. Problems with understanding the comparable imprint of large and multinational companies on matters, places, and communities are identified, after the domination of corporate legal frameworks over nature and the stability and perfection of economic incentives at law. The reading of this (critical-legal) situation is developed through theory and engagement with materialist and critical thinkers, who unite in their concern with distributed human–nature relations and the ‘concreteness’ that attends collisions in time, ruin and affect. Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno’s writings are central to this analysis, and strengthen the commentary on ‘natural history’ themes curated by Jungen. The paper contemplates how times’ uncontainment might invoke a change in expectation and method for the company law field, assigning contingency to the corporation and provoking a new mode of reflection about corporate entanglement and responsibility at law. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende mostrar e propor adaptações metodologias centradas na abordagem comunicativa, usando metodologias ativas e as ferramentas TIC para facilitar o ensino-aprendizagem de PLE a deficientes visuais espanhóis. Dada a natureza e índole de caráter introdutório, panorâmico, sistemático e claramente didático deste trabalho, o leitor poderá ter uma compreensão direta e científica do mundo educativo que rodeia o educando deficiente visual.A metodologia utilizada neste trabalho foi quantitativa e qualitativa, a abordagem foi respaldada em bibliografia pertinente e em dados empíricos (...) coletados pela pesquisadora por meio de entrevistas com diretores, coordenadores, docentes. Após as observações e entrevistas foram desenvolvidas e adaptadas algumas metodologias para após serem aplicadas aos alunos dos distintos centros de reabilitação e por último foi feita a análise dos resultados obtidos. Algumas atividades também foram utilizadas em grupos de PLE fora dos centros de reabilitação. (shrink)

Given his expertise in the classroom and in school, the cooperating teacher is essential to teacher training. Expectations towards him are coming from ministerial authorities (gouvernement du Québec, 2002, 2008), but also from student teachers (Caron, Portelance and Martineau, 2013). In order to meet these expectations, the cooperating teacher is strongly encouraged to enroll in a continuous training process leading to enhance his training practices. With the intention of supporting the development of the expected cooperating teacher’s competencies (Portelance, Gervais, Lessard, (...) Beaulieu et al., 2008), a research funded by the Quebec Ministry of Education [1] uses a collaborative approach with cooperating teachers gathered in a community of practice. The members are engaged in a reflection process and a co-construction of meaning (Bourassa, Philion and Chevalier, 2007). Discussions focus on their training practices. The analysis of their purposes emphasizes the manifestations of interactional dynamics that favor their professional co-development. (shrink)

There is a strong consensus among analytic philosophers that Husserl is an internalist and that his internalism must be understood in conjunction with his methodological solipsism. This paper focuses on Husserl's early work the, Logical Investigations , and explores whether such a reading is justified. It shows that Husserl is not a methodological solipsist: He neither believes that meaning can be reduced to the individual, nor does he assign an explanatory role for meaning to the subject. Explanatory priority is assigned (...) to objects which have an intrinsic property independently of any access or attitude we may have to them. Although not a methodological solipsist, there are nonetheless internalist elements to Husserl's thought: He believes that we can think of non-existent objects and his account of indexicals and demonstratives shows that there are two kinds of meaning: one is context independent and internally individuated, the other is partly determined by context and so externally individuated. The paper leaves it open whether this is sufficient to mark Husserl out as an internalist. However, even if he were considered as such, we can be sure of one thing, namely, that his internalism would not be a species of methodological solipsism. (shrink)

El Análisis del Discurso desempeña un papel importante en los estudios de Ciencias de la Información, no sólo como método de investigación, sino también como herramienta de reflexión que enriquece la práctica profesional. Proponemos mapear el uso del Análisis del Discurso en la investigación en Ciencias de la Información, ya que este mapeo permite identificar tendencias, lagunas y oportunidades de investigación, contribuyendo al avance del conocimiento en el campo. El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar estos enfoques del AD en (...) los artículos publicados en CI, y elaborar un análisis crítico del impacto que estos enfoques tienen en el campo de la Ciencia de la Información. Este estudio se clasifica como bibliográfico, con un enfoque cuantitativo-cualitativo, ya que se centra en la identificación de un objeto de estudio específico -artículos publicados- para reflexionar sobre el Análisis del Discurso en la Ciencia de la Información. La investigación muestra que las teorías del Análisis del Discurso aplicadas al campo de la Ciencia de la Información son significativas, ya que ofrecen numerosas posibilidades de investigación. (shrink)

I should like to begin this paper by thanking Anik Waldow for drawing my attention to a debate between Jean Jacques Rousseau and the philosophes about the proposal to build a theatre in Geneva, wit...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a much-discussed subject in the business world. The Internet has become one of the main tools for CSR information disclosure, allowing companies to publicise more information less expensively and faster than ever before. As a result, corporations are increasingly concerned with communicating ethically and responsibly to the diversity of stakeholders through the web. This paper addresses the main question as whether CSR information disclosure on corporate websites is influenced by country of origin and/or industry (...) sector. Analysing the websites of 127 corporations from emerging countries, such as Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa, it becomes evident that both country of origin and industry sector have a significant influence over CSR information disclosure on the web (CSRIDOW). Based on the data studied, country of origin has a stronger influence over CSRIDOW than industry sector. (shrink)

The ability to sequence individual genomes is leading to the identification of an increasing number of genetic risk factors for serious diseases. Knowledge of these risk factors can often provide significant medical and psychological benefit, but also raises complex ethical and social issues. This paper focuses on one area of rapid progress: the identification of mutations causing long QT syndrome and other cardiac channel disorders, which can explain some previously unexplained deaths in infants (SIDS) and children and adults (SUDS) and (...) prevent others from occurring. This genetic knowledge, discovered posthumously in many cases, has implications for clinical care for surviving family members who might carry the same mutations. The information obtained from genetic testing, in the context of personal and family history, can guide individually tailored interventions that reduce risk and save lives. At the same time, obtaining and disclosing genetic information raises difficult issues about confidentiality and decision making within families. We draw on the experience of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Cardiogenetics, which has played a leading role in the genetic diagnosis and clinical management of cardiac channel diseases, to explore some of the challenging ethical questions arising in affected families with adolescent children. We focus on the related issues of (1) family confidentiality, privacy and disclosure and (2) adolescent decision making about genetic risk, and argue for the value of interdisciplinary dialogue with affected families in resolving these issues. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility has become a much-discussed subject in the business world. The Internet has become one of the main tools for CSR information disclosure, allowing companies to publicise more information less expensively and faster than ever before. As a result, corporations are increasingly concerned with communicating ethically and responsibly to the diversity of stakeholders through the web. This paper addresses the main question as whether CSR information disclosure on corporate websites is influenced by country of origin and/or industry sector. (...) Analysing the websites of 127 corporations from emerging countries, such as Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa, it becomes evident that both country of origin and industry sector have a significant influence over CSR information disclosure on the web . Based on the data studied, country of origin has a stronger influence over CSRIDOW than industry sector. (shrink)

En Giving Reasons: A Linguistic-pragmatic-approach to Argumentation Theory (Springer, 2011), propongo un nuevo modelo para la evaluación semántica y pragmática de la argumentación. Este modelo se basa en una caracterización de la argumentación como un acto de habla compuesto de segundo orden. Explico las ventajas de este modelo respecto de otras propuestas dentro de la Teoría de la Argumentación, tales como la Pragma-dialéctica, la Lógica Informal, la Nueva Retórica o el Enfoque Epistémico.

The success of the mission of the school based largely on teachers, it is important to understand exactly how they see their role in the actualization of this mission. So this article initiates a reflection on how secondary school teachers in Quebec think their educational mission. More specifically, we analyze how the educational mission takes shape in their professional practice. La réussite de la mission de l’école reposant en grande partie sur les enseignants, il importe de cerner avec précision comment (...) ces derniers conçoivent leur rôle dans l’actualisation de cette mission. Ainsi cet article amorce une réflexion sur la manière dont les enseignants du secondaire au Québec, pensent leur mission éducative. Plus particulièrement, nous analysons ici comment cette mission éducative prend forme dans leur pratique professionnelle. (shrink)

Françoise Pasquier, qui vient de disparaître prématurément (Le Monde du 5 janvier 2001), était une figure marquante (bien que discrète) du mouvement féministe. Elle avait compris très vite qu’un mouvement politique qui ne peut pas faire connaître ses initiatives, ses analyses, ou son histoire, est condamné soit à la stérilité soit, à terme, à la disparition : elle engagea toute sa compétence, son talent, et une force de conviction peu commune dans la publication des textes issus du mouvement...

Despite Michel Serres’s caution with figures of the limit, border, and boundary which philosophy and social theory put into play, his work can fruitfully be read as a proposal to rethink limits for a social and natural contract. By following up on the intimate connection between limits and law in his work, this paper shines a light on Serres’s argument for a parallelism of limits and laws; and particularly highlights the partially underacknowledged role of entropy for this matter. First, attention (...) will be drawn to the role of topological boundaries for Serres’s structural consideration of a natural contract in a number of his works (e.g., The Natural Contract, Atlas, Hominescence), in order to demonstrate the indispensable connection between topological boundaries, a topologically conceived ethics, and a topological approach to law. This grounds the argument for a second step, which will focus on the role of entropy and entropic difference for his understanding of processes of social organization as well as a proposal of a “new natural contract.” Similarly, this will emphasize the linkages between entropic figures of the limit and respective conceptions of a contract. This “new natural contract,” as Serres calls it, not only goes a long way in connecting themes around thermodynamic and informational entropy of the early Hermès series to his later employments of entropy in social theory, but also integrates different criticisms of his earlier natural contract and critiques of a Western-centric form of naturalism. The aim of this paper is to show that Serres’s approach to entropy engenders a reconsideration of a natural contract that not only thoroughly integrates his own non-essentialist and non-dualistic understanding of nature, but that opens up a horizon of resonances with feminist and postcolonial critiques of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This article is a comparative study of five prostitutes' social movements. The emergence of these movements is one of the major developments in the politics of prostitution: for the first time, prostitutes are politically organizing and expressing their claims and grievances in the public debate about prostitution — a debate from which they are usually excluded. But, as is the case for most stigmatized populations, this pretension to enter into the public debate is faced with many difficulties. Some of these (...) are inherent to the world of prostitution, which is an informal, competitive and violent world, in which leaders face constant challenges to establish and maintain their authority and legitimacy. The article also emphasizes the crucial, but ambiguous, role played by alliances between prostitutes and people from other parts of society. Prostitutes' dependence on these supporters leads the author to consider their social movements to be heteronomous mobilizations. (shrink)

As a thinker whose work proposes the recovery in Darwin of an innovative anthropology, which no specialist scholar has consistently refuted or has exposed as amounting to a forced or willful interpretation, Patrick Tort can enable us to arrive at a valid assessment of Darwin’s discourse on man and on civilization. In this regard, he underlines the unquestionably dialectical character of the passage from “nature” to “culture” in the project. As a consequence of their ignorance of this innovation, Marx, and (...) those who came after him, equated Darwinism with a Malthusian ideology and a doctrine of social selection, a position which Darwin precisely did not adopt, in his explanation of the origin and transformation of civilization, without however having to break with his selective biology. In the history of Marxism, the consequence of this epistemological faux-pas has been the interminable reiteration of “monist” problems in pursuit of a dialectical conceptualization of the links and the distinctions to be teased out between nature and civilization, materialism and morality. With a view to reestablishing a fruitful theoretical dialogue between the heritage of Marx and that of Darwin, a detour by way of Kant and his categorical moral imperative is certainly not desirable. The path leading to an overcoming of the contradictions is rather to be located by way of Marxism’s acknowledgement of the notion of “reversive continuity”, thus enabling us to conceptualize, in a unitary mode and from the perspective of materialism, the paradox of the extinction of struggle, within the horizon of the struggle of which nature constitutes the field of experimentation. (shrink)

Un concepto que solía pertenecer al mundo de la informática (hacking) ahora se combina con las ciencias de la vida (bio). Sin gran dificultad, hemos empezado a ver la vida como un conjunto de datos, el ADN como un código, el cuerpo como una máquina y la mente como un software... todos susceptibles de ser leídos, manipulados y ahora incluso hackeados. ¿Pero manipulados por quiénes? Las comunidades de biohackers y DYIbio (do-it-yourself biology) quieren la biotecnología disponible para todos y la (...) información compartida abiertamente. En este trabajo, propongo una reflexión sobre qué está pasando y el posible por qué. En la primera parte, presento el biohacking como un fenómeno social, dando algunos ejemplos de biohackers y diferenciando tipos de biohackers. En la segunda parte, hago un acercamiento al Transhumanismo. La existencia de biohackers sólo es posible gracias a la creciente disponibilidad de información y biotecnología combinada con una cierta mentalidad. El principal objetivo es profundizar en la reflexión sobre la relación entre biohacking y Transhumanismo. Analizo el biohacking como una de las expresiones de este movimiento y uno de los fenómenos que contribuyen a él. Al final, ofrezco una reflexión sobre la cultura, deseos y miedos de nuestra sociedad, reconociendo también algunas de las preguntas que ellos provocan. (shrink)

The World Unclaimed argues that Heidegger's critique of modern epistemology in Being and Time is seriously flawed.

Abstract:This article theorizes the disruptive epistemic work performed by microcosms in recent eco-fiction. Contemporary fiction often explores large-scale ecological disruption through smaller organisms and environments, enabling readers to perceive the Earth through analogy, allegory and metaphor. Within and against this scale-free reading, I argue that the microcosm has become a fracturing trope that troubles relations between scales. Drawing on fiction by T. C. Boyle, A. S. Byatt, Amitav Ghosh, Ali Smith, and Karen Tei Yamashita, I read the microcosm as a (...) critical tool of Anthropocene awareness, because it foregrounds and questions scalar collapse–the epistemic projection of one scale onto another. (shrink)

This paper takes Zahavi’s view to task that every conscious experience involves a “minimal sense of self.” Zahavi bases his claim on the observation that experience, even on the pre-reflective level, is not only about the object, but also has a distinctive qualitative aspect which is indicative of the fact that it is for me. It has the quality of what he calls “for-meness” or “mineness.” Against this I argue that there are not two phenomena but only one. On the (...) pre-reflective level, experience is transparent. Conscious experience may well be reflexive but this does not imply that I additionally have a sense of what it is like for me to have that experience. I do not just happen to disagree with Zahavi’s account of pre-reflective experience but, more importantly, I am concerned that he imposes it onto his interpretation of Edmund Husserl. Zahavi claims that when Husserl argues that consciousness is necessarily a form of self-consciousness, he must be committed to the view that we necessarily have a sense of ownership. However, Husserl only claims that I am self-conscious but not that I am a self that owns its consciousness. Zahavi thus misses the novelty of Husserl’s position, namely that I do not need to have a sense of abiding ownership, to have experience. (shrink)

La présente contribution analyse dans quelle mesure une approche de précaution permettant de mettre en balance des intérêts de libéralisation commerciale et des préoccupations de diversité culturelle peut être caractérisée en droit international, sous quelles formes et par quels mécanismes. Elle examine l’application d’une telle approche en matière de commerce international en mettant en lumière le besoin de prudence dans l’articulation entre « commerce et culture », ainsi que la manière dont le droit international de la culture peut légitimer et (...) renforcer une telle approche. (shrink)