This article engages with current discussions on the politics of aesthetics to theorize the role of popular art in reproducing or contesting urban orders. Specifically, we engage with scholars who have taken up the work of Jacques Rancière to understand how power structures are normalized through ‘the distribution of the sensible’. Building on and critically engaging with debates on the ‘post-political city’, we suggest that all too often scholars fall back on a binary, state-centric approach that depicts non-state popular aesthetics (...) as either revolutionary and disruptive, or as indicative of an alternative form of oppression. Drawing on our work in Kingston, Jamaica, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we argue that sensorial-political, art-based urban struggles shape multiple urban orders that are distinct but not necessarily antagonistic. Applying Stuart Hall’s work on popular culture to contexts of criminal governance, we show how art is often simultaneously supportive and disruptive of urban orders. (shrink)

To reduce the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Granich et al. 1 ( 2009 ) have proposed a new strategy for universal voluntary HIV testing immediately followed by antiretroviral therapy. Although this proposal is likely to benefit the partners of those affected and thus promote public health, it is by no means clear that it benefits the infected people themselves and indeed it may be harmful. Since the proposal involves an intervention that is not clinically indicated, it falls (...) foul of the normal ethical standards of clinical medicine, which is to act in the best interests of patients. Neither is it a measure that would be imposed under the protection of public health law on people who are seen as representing such danger to others that significant restrictions in liberty are appropriate. Thus, the proposal represents a third category of public health measure. We argue that a coherent ethical framework including a robust process is appropriate to proposals of this kind and that medical research offers a useful model since some research, like this proposal, is motivated not by the interests of the individual participants but by the common good. We outline some possible elements of such an ethical framework. (shrink)

This study investigated students’ perceptions of ethical organizational climates, attitudes towards ethical issues, and the perceived relationship between ethical behavior and success in business organizations. Comparisons were made between the attitudes of these future managers with previously published studies of Russian managers’ attitudes. A survey of 100 business students in three Moscow universities showed that their attitudes toward ethical behavior were more negative than those of Russian managers. No significant differences were found in the perceptions or attitudes of students who (...) had attended an ethics course and those that did not. The implications for both managers and researchers were reported. (shrink)

Arendt uses the exemplary validity of Socrates to think and value the possibilities of joint philosophical and political orientations in our present juncture. In this way Arendt’s ‘Socrates’ is not a mythic, historic, or dramatic individual, but offers an example of the best of the human condition. Unfortunately, because Arendt held the social conditioning and constraining of Socrates’ possibilities at arm’s length, his status as an exemplar is problematic and he ends up referring to a historical rather than contemporary possibilities. (...) While Arendt had resources in her notion of the ‘world’ to better ground her simultaneously analytic and normative construction of ‘Socrates’, the lack of a social grounding makes ‘Socrates’ a significantly unmoored and shifting signifier. After showing the vacillations of ‘Socrates’ in Arendt, I supplement her normatively laden account with a Weberian grounding. With this firmer social grounding, ‘Socrates’ can refer to the possibilities of joint philosophical and political orientations in ancient Athens and thereby highlight how our world makes a contemporary version unlikely or impossible. Yet, this Weberian grounding comes at a cost. The normative dimension essential in Arendt’s ‘Socrates’ is lost due to Weberian value-neutrality. ‘Socrates’ can name a contemporary unlikelihood or impossibility, but if the enveloping social order does not value what it renders impossible, Weberian ideal-types on their own are incapable of offering normative resources for critique. I conclude by blending a Weberian social mooring with Arendt’s value-laden framework for social analysis and thereby recuperate the missing normative dimension. In short, by accepting the relational, necessarily plural, and dynamic root of human action we can, much like Arendt’s intended use of ‘Socrates’, value orientations that best express these norms, and criticize contemporary conditions that constrain their realization. (shrink)

This essay develops an account of the link between Kant's aesthetics and his ethics. It does so by articulating a Kantian account of moral psychology by way of aesthetic reflective judgements of sublimity. Since judgements of sublimity enrich the picture of a Kantian subject by forcefully revealing the unbounded power of the faculty of reason, I investigate the possibility that judgements of this kind could serve as a basis for moral motivation. The paper first shows how judgements of sublimity help (...) a subject recognize reason's unbounded nature, and proceeds to analyse the practical effects of a subject judging itself sublime. When judgements of sublimity have as their object the unbounded and unsythesizable power of reason, they may thereby serve as the basis for both the recognition of our moral vocation, and the grounds for determining the will to act from respect for it. Since a judgement of sublimity produces for Kant the experience of an enlivening emotion and an outflowing of vital forces, the paper then develops Kant's concept of “life” motivated by a recognition of its practical orientation. In this way sublimity rather than beauty can be interpreted as symbolic hypotyposis of morality. The paper then takes up less favourable interpretations of the practical effects of self-predicated judgements of sublimity, and constructs critical responses to such positions. I conclude, following Adorno, by stressing the historical and social dimension of the capacities for both making sublime judgements, and being morally enlivened by them. (shrink)

The diagnosis of HIV infection is the point of entry for treatment and prevention services, yet many infected persons in both developed and developing countries remain undiagnosed. To reduce the number of undiagnosed infections, a variety of expanded testing policies have been recommended, including opt-out testing. This testing model assumes that in populations of increased HIV prevalence, voluntary testing should be offered to all patients seen in healthcare settings and performed unless patients specifically decline. While this approach raises ethical issues (...) concerning “voluntariness”, access to care, and stigma, the potential benefits of opt-out testing far outweigh its potential adverse effects. (shrink)

It may be unethical to deny children with cystic fibrosis access to ethically approved clinical trials from which they might benefitDespite advances in nutritional management, aggressive antibiotic usage, and physiotherapy, cystic fibrosis remains a life limiting illness with high morbidity that imposes considerable burdens on children and families.1 Although survival to 40 years is predicted for children born in 1990s, the median age of death in 2003 was 24.2 years .The pathophysiological features of CF are produced by a defective gene (...) on chromosome 7, resulting in the defective production of a protein that regulates cellular ion transport. Defective ion transport is thought to lead to increased mucus viscosity , with poor airway clearance, recurrent bacterial infection, lung damage, and death.Gene therapy , the insertion of a normally functioning gene into deficient host cells using a suitable vector, is a potential treatment or cure for diseases produced by single gene defects—for example, CF. Gene therapy does, however, have potential or actual risks, leading many to suggest that evidence of efficacy in adults should be demonstrated before trials are conducted in children. Many serious diseases in adults such as CF have their onset in childhood. If early treatment provides greater hopes of benefit, children may be more appropriate targets for GT in CF than adults. It may be unethical to deny them access to properly constructed, ethically approved clinical trials from which they might benefit.Since research in children should be scientifically valid, in the child’s best interests, and the subject of valid consent, this article will consider these parameters in relation to trials of GT in children with CF. Because of the importance of consumer participation in the design of research we present the results of a questionnaire about GT trials delivered …. (shrink)

This article critically re-reads György Márkus’s seminal Marxism and Anthropology in light of its recent reissue with an introduction by Hans Joas and Axel Honneth. Joas and Honneth problematically identify the normative source of Márkus’s position as an a-historical and extra-natural account of the human. In fact, when the human essence is thought as natural while also historical, developing new powers and needs through changing strategies of socially organized work, Marx’s materialist conception of history can be used to generate a (...) critique of social organizations, relations, and structures that constrain rather than promote such development. Such constraint on developing powers can be read as ‘alienation’ from the human essence. Márkus’s work develops this reading of Marx in a textually sensitive way, but his analysis of alienation in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 focuses on the individual when such analysis could in fact be profitably extended to apply to groups and the species as whole. (shrink)

This article explores the role of the Deaf child as peer educator. In schools where sign languages were banned, Deaf children became the educators of their Deaf peers in a number of contexts worldwide. This paper analyses how this peer education of sign language worked in context by drawing on two examples from boarding schools for the deaf in Nicaragua and Thailand. The argument is advanced that these practices constituted a child-led oppositional pedagogy. A connection is drawn to Freire’s (1972) (...) theory of critical pedagogy. Deaf children’s actions as peer educators are framed as an act of resistance towards the oppression of their language and culture. A contrast is drawn between oralist pedagogy that is historically associated with punitive practices and didactic methods and the experiential and dialogic interaction that characterised peer learning of sign languages. The argument is made that the peer teaching and learning processes enabled the self-actualisation of the Deaf children whereas the oralist methods were based on a deficit model that focused on modifying deaf children according to the norms of hearing society. The implications of this for current policy and practice are inferred to be about access to sign languages and the importance of Deaf communities in deaf children’s education. The argument is made that space needs to be created for deaf children to engage in peer learning. (shrink)

Using computer simulations I studied the simultaneous effect of variable environments, mutation rates, ploidy, number of loci subject to evolution and random and assortative mating on various reproductive systems. The simulations showed that mutants for sex and recombination are evolutionarily stable, displacing alleles for monosexuality in diploid populations mating assortatively under variable selection pressure. Assortative mating reduced excessive allelic variance induced by recombination and sex, especially among diploids. Results suggest a novel adaptive value for sex and recombination. They show that (...) the adaptive value of diploidy and that of the segregation of sexes is different to that of sex and recombination. The results suggest that the emergence of sex had to be preceded by the emergence of diploid monosexual organisms and provide an explanation for the emergence and maintenance of sex among diploids and for the scarcity of sex among haploid organisms. (shrink)

Buffed up to a metallic shine; loose fitting, lopsided, or kludgy; getting in the way or getting lost; collapsing in an explosion of dust caught on the warehouse CCTV. Modern things are going their own ways, and this book attempts to follow them. A course of thought about their comings and goings and cascading side effects, _The Way Things Go_ offers a thesis demonstrated via a century-long countdown of stuff. Modernist critical theory and aesthetic method, it argues, are bound up (...) with the inhuman fate of things as novelty becoming waste. Things are seldom at rest. Far more often they are going their own ways, entering and exiting our zones of attention, interest, and affection. Aaron Jaffe is concerned less with a humanist story of such things—offering anthropomorphizing narratives about recouping the items we use—as he is with the seemingly inscrutable, inhuman capacities of things for coarticulation and coherence. He examines the tension between this inscrutability on the one hand, and the ways things seem ready-made for understanding on the other hand, by means of exposition, thing-and-word-play, conceptual art, essayism, autopoesis, and prop comedy. Among other novelties and detritus, T_he Way Things Go_ delves into books, can openers, roller skates, fat, felt, soap, joy buzzers, hobbyhorses, felt erasers, sleds, magic rabbits, and urinals. But it stands apart from the recent flood of thing-talk, rebuking the romantic tendencies caught up in the pathetic nature of debris defining the conversation. Jaffe demonstrates that literary criticism is the one mode of analysis that can unpack the many things that, at first glance, seem so nonliterary. (shrink)

Adorno’s ‘addendum’ names the experience by which socially constrained agents are jolted into resistance against their suffering. The impulse to action is simultaneously intra-mental and somatic, and thus forms the locus of a jointly conscious and bodily impetus to confronting the ideological and material forces that produce contemporary unfreedom. In this way the ‘addendum’ is a historically developing, indeterminate, yet inexhaustible glimmer of hope for both agents and theorists who make social suffering central to their critical analysis. This article explores (...) the structure of the addendum by unpacking its presentation first in Negative Dialectics and then by way of the one-sided and cautionary illustrations of Buridan’s ass and Hamlet in the History and Freedom lectures. While aesthetic, ideal, affect-centered and Freudian interpretations of the addendum have been developed, appreciating the somatic or bodily, the intra-mental or conscious, and the historicized accounts of nature and reason that Adorno weaves together to explain ever-present possibilities of resistance requires instead a non-reductive materialist and dialectical lens. (shrink)

Advances in multiagent simulation techniques make it possible to study more realistic dynamics of complex systems and allow evolutionary theories to be tested. Here I use simulations to assess the relative importance of reproductive systems (haplodiploidy vs. diploidy), mate selection (assortative mating vs. random mating) and social economics (pay-off matrices of evolutionary games) in the evolutionary dynamics leading to the emergence of social cooperation in the provision of parental care. The simulations confirm that haplo-diploid organisms and organisms mating assortatively have (...) a higher probability for fixing alleles and require less favorable conditions for their fixation, than diploids or organisms mating randomly. The simulations showed that social behavior was most likely to emerge a) when the cost for parental investment was much lower than the benefits to the offspring, b) when cooperation improved synergistically the fitness of offspring compared to the corresponding egoistic behavior and c) when alleles coding for altruistic or social behavior could be rapidly fixed in the population, thanks to mechanisms such as haplo-diploidy and/or assortative mating. Cooperative social behavior always appeared if sociality conferred much higher fitness gains compared to non cooperative alternatives suggesting that the most important factors for the emergence and maintenance of social behavior are those based on energetic or efficiency considerations. The simulations, in congruence with the scant experimental evidence available, suggest that economic considerations rather than genetic ones are critical in explaining the emergence and maintenance of sociality. (shrink)

In his commentary on the Light Verse (Q. 24:35), the Andalusian mystic and Qurʾān exegete Abū al-Ḥakam Ibn Barrajān (d. 1141) presents the blessed tree (al-shajara al-mubāraka) not simply as a terrestrial olive tree in Syria or even as a mystical allegory, but as the ultimate locus of divine disclosure and the highest metaphysical entity in the cosmos that subsumes the world of creation. This article assesses the originality of Ibn Barrajān’s contribution to the heavenly tree motif by examining his (...) unique mystical and exegetical theories informing his ontological reading of the blessed tree, including the concept of the ‘reality upon which creation is created’ and the ‘universal servant’. In addition to analysing the internal logic of Ibn Barrajān’s discourse, this article explores the larger interpretive themes recurrent across exoteric, Sufi, and philosophical interpretations of the Light Verse up to the twelfth century that the author may have had access to in al-Andalus, including the treatises of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-ṣafā) and Biblical sources. Finally, this article highlights how Ibn Barrajān weaves the Qurʾānic good tree (al-shajara al-ṭayyiba) and the lote tree of the furthest boundary (sidrat al-muntahā) into his overarching understanding of the blessed tree. It also considers how his reading may have contributed to later readings by Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240) and some of his intellectual heirs. (shrink)

(1997). Competing definitions of cultural boundaries in the ideology of language: The Corsican case. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 424-431.

Vier Essays bilden den Inhalt dieses Buches: - Einige Denkgrundlagen im Werk von C.G. Jung - C.G. Jung - ein Mystiker? - Die Faszination durch Aberglauben und Parapsychologie - Hermann Brochs «Der Tod des Vergil» - ein Beitrag zum Problem der Individuation In allen vier Beiträgen geht es um die erkenntnistheoretischen Grenzen, die unserem Bewußtsein gestellt sind und um die Erfahrung eines transzendenten Bereichs, den die Mystiker immer wieder zu fassen suchten.

This volume offers a collection of nine case studies from clinical social workers in K-12 schools, each from a phenomenological perspective, with the objective of educating Master of Social Work students and early career social work clinicians. Each chapter is framed with pre-reading prompts, reading comprehension questions, and writing assignments. This casebook provides a resource for understanding the range of practice in school social work as well as some of the challenges that school social workers face in today's complex world. (...) Using a phenomenological perspective the contributors stay close to the lived experience of students, teachers, parents, and social workers, revealing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the genesis and treatment of students' problems in school. (shrink)

When individuals cannot make up their mind, they sometimes use a random decision-making aid such as a coin to make a decision. This aid may also elicit affective reactions: A person flipping a coin may (dis)like the outcome, and thus decide according to this feeling. We refer to this process as catalysing decisions and to the aid as catalyst. We investigate whether using a catalyst may not only elicit affect but also result in more affect-based decision making. We used different (...) online studies that examine affect-driven decisions by investigating scope insensitivity (indirect behavioural measure) and self-reported weight given to feelings versus reasons in hypothetical donation decisions. Study 1a showed that a catalyst (a lottery wheel) lead to more scope insensitive (i.e. affect-driven) donations. Study 1b included several changes and did not replicate these results. Study 2 (preregistered) examined scope insensitivity but did not replicate previous results; Study 3 (preregistered) looked at the weight given to feelings versus reason. Although catalyst (compared to control) participants descriptively reported relying more on feelings, this difference did not reach significance. In contrast to lay beliefs, results do not indicate support for the hypothesis that using a catalyst results in more affect-based hypothetical donation decisions. (shrink)

This commentary addresses the complexities of representation in sociolinguistic transcripts, considering the meaning potentials of different representational choices at the level of both ideology and identity. It considers the kinds of authenticity and evidence that are indexed by simplified versus more detailed transcripts, suggesting that a simplified transcript may give more direct access to elements of the original speaker's voice. Second, it discusses the role of transcripts as scholarly texts, and questions their use as sociolinguistic records suitable for reinterpretation by (...) scholars who do not have access to the original recordings. Third, it emphasizes that the use of non-standard orthographies is an unreliable source of data on sociolinguistic variation, because few authors use non-standard forms in consistent and principled ways. Fourth, it proposes that translations may take different forms depending on whether they are efforts to be `faithful' to `authentic' speech in the target versus the source language. Finally, it reflects on the act of transcription as part of professional practice and identity among linguists. (shrink)

In History and Class Consciousness’ central essay ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’, Lukács resolved the antinomies of bourgeois philosophy in the revolutionary ‘standpoint of the proletariat’. Lukács’ strategy in deriving this proletarian standpoint, however, transposed the logical necessity appropriate to philosophical determinations into possibilities for revolutionary praxis imbedded in socio-historical contexts. Further, since the standpoint is determined as the necessary solution to bourgeois antinomies, it must be conceived singularly, rather than through its manifest diversity. As the key to (...) mediating the social totality beyond antinomies, the ‘standpoint of the proletariat’ is therefore merely reflectively posited and one-sidedly determined. While many have developed logical, social-analytic, and political problems associated with determining the proletariat by way of its imputed or party-determined rather than empirical consciousness, few point to the very concept ‘standpoint of the proletariat’ as the source for these problems due to the fact that it is an abstractly derived solution to a philosophically posed problem. Socio-historical determination working with the modality of possibility can resolve Lukács’ antinomic determination of the standpoint of the proletariat. (shrink)

This paper develops ‘primitive accumulation’ prior to and then in Karl Marx’s œuvre. By exploring the concept in Adam Smith and Sir James Steuart the paper highlights early influences on Marx’s evolving constructions. Marx’s construction in the Grundrisse begins with a logical determination much like Smith’s and moves, by drawing on Steuart, towards a socio-historical determination of a transitional violence. In Capital, ‘primitive accumulation’ still retains its transitional structure and delimited history, but it also points to the oppressive afterlife of (...) the processes of primitive accumulation. The political key to ‘primitive accumulation’ in Capital flows from determining primitive accumulation as temporally bounded, but having an afterlife in the oppressive social reproduction of capitalist societies. Against deriving political stakes through extended readings of ‘primitive accumulation’, this paper shows that an ‘originating’ view is textually accurate in a way that centres rather than sidelines the social reproduction of oppressions in capitalist societies. (shrink)

Perception is not an independent, in‐the‐moment event. Instead, perceiving involves integrating prior expectations with current observations. How does this ability develop from infancy through adulthood? We examined how prior visual experience shapes visual perception in infants, children, and adults. Using an identical task across age groups, we exposed participants to pairs of colorful stimuli and implicitly measured their ability to discriminate relative saturation levels. Results showed that adult participants were biased by previously experienced exemplars, and exhibited weakened in‐the‐moment discrimination between (...) different levels of saturation. In contrast, infants and children showed less influence of memory in their perception, and they actually outperformed adults in discriminating between current levels of saturation. Our findings suggest that as humans develop, their perception relies more on prior experience and less on current observation. (shrink)

The concept of altruism is used in very different forms by computer scientists,economists, philosophers, social scientists, psychologists and biologists. Yet, in order to be useful in social simulations, the concept altruism requires a more precise meaning. A quantitative formulation is proposed here, based on the cost/benefit analysis of the altruist and of society at large. This formulation is applied in the analysis of the social dynamic working of behaviors that have been called altruistic punishments, using the agent based computer model (...) Sociodynamica. The simulations suggest that altruistic punishment on its own cannot maintain altruistic behaviors. Altruistic behavior is sustainable in the long term only if these behaviors trigger synergetic forces in society that eventually make them produce benefits to most individuals. The simulations suggest however that altruistic punishment may work as a social investment , and is thus better called decentralized social punishment. This behavior is very efficient in enforcing social norms. The efficiency of decentralized social punishment in enforcing norms was dependent on the type of labor structured of the virtual society. I conclude that what is called altruistic punishment emerges as a type of social investment that can evolve either through individual and/or group selection, as a successful device for changing or enforcing norms in a society. Social simulations will help us in better understanding the underlying dynamic working of such devices. (shrink)