Social coexistence and with oneself, in recent years, is characterized by an absence of tenderness and the presence of objectification of oneself and the other, the same thing happens in university classrooms, a reflection of this is the non-desire to play, to meet the other from the imagination of play. This research aimed to understand how students define play and what could trigger free and joyful play. It was a qualitative study, with the phenological and hermeneutical method based on the (...) recovery of threads of life and the experience of playing with students. The results showed a devaluation of play because it is stripped of freedom and limits distance from ordinary life. Playful memory opens the door to free play, movement of the imagined body and world, triggering a humanizing game. (shrink)

Diseases of complex origin have a component of quantitative genetics that contributes to their susceptibility and phenotypic variability. However, after several studies, a major part of the genetic component of complex phenotypes has still not been found, a situation known as “missing heritability.” Although there have been many hypotheses put forward to explain the reasons for the missing heritability, its definitive causes remain unknown. Complex diseases are caused by multiple intermediate phenotypes involved in their pathogenesis and, very often, each one (...) of these intermediate phenotypes also has a component of quantitative inheritance. Here we propose that at least part of the missing heritability can be explained by the genetic component of intermediate phenotypes that is not detectable at the level of the main complex trait. At the same time, the identification of the genetic component of intermediate phenotypes provides an opportunity to identify part of the missing heritability of complex diseases. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:158 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra and Tania Pérez-Bustos Careful Speculations: Toward a Caring Science of Forensic Genetics in Colombia Feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) has recently opened up the question of care as a set of practices related to the sustainability of life.1 The field of feminist studies more broadly has extensively 1. This literature mostly comes from (...) Northern contexts and started to flourish with the seminal work of María Puig de la Bellacasa, “Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things,” Social Studies of Science 41, no. 1 (2010): 85–106. This essay gathers scattered feminist STS reflections on these issues and looks at them through the lens of care, including authors such as Susan Leigh Star, Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, Hilary Rose, and Annemarie Mol. The concept of care orienting this exercise of rereading these authors is proposed by Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring,” in Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, ed. Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 35–62. Before and after that essay came out, Puig de la Bellacasa published several other papers related to this issue, including “Touching Technologies, Touching Visions. The Reclaiming of Sensorial Experience and the Politics of Speculative Thinking,” Subjectivity 28, no. 1 (2009): 297–315; “‘Nothing Comes without Its World’: Thinking with Care,” The Sociological Review 60, no. 2 (2012): 197– 216; “Ethical Doings in Naturecultures,” Ethics, Place & Environment 13, no. 2 (2010): 151–69; “Making Time for Soil: Technoscientific Futurity and the Pace of Care,” Social Studies of Science 45, no. 5 (2015): 691–716; and Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). All these publications have been widely cited by other authors, particularly in a special issue of Social Studies of Science on the politics of care published in 2015 (volume 45, issue 5). Other examples María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra and Tania Pérez-Bustos 159 studied how care, and associated practices such as transnational care chains, are feminized and precarious—involving an ethos embodied by those who actively work to maintain or preserve another’s life. Feminists have focused on the politics of care embedded in invisible jobs related to aesthetics, domestic work, child and elder care, and sexual activities and see all these tasks as related to the reproduction of life and culture.2 Central to this conceptualization of care is the understanding that these jobs are typically women’s work. There is a common association between this care and notions of “motherhood” as it relates to values such as compassion, love, and respect, which have been constructed as universally feminine. However, the main goal of feminist studies of care has been to deconstruct this association, particularly because it is imbued with the white, wealthy, heteronormative ideal of femininity that underlies a gendered division of labor. The reality is that class, race, nation, and gender determine who cares for whom, whether or not labor is paid, and to what extent care is exploitative. One strand of recent research problematizes both valorizing and criticizing care practices on the grounds that they are based on a rather homogeneous understanding of the feminine. Instead, these scholars seek to resurrect valuable feminist work without relying on essentialism of authors contributing to this discussion on care as an ethos for science include Ruth Müller and Martha Kenney, “Agential Conversations: Interviewing Postdoctoral Life Scientists and the Politics of Mundane Research Practices,” Science as Culture 24, no. 4 (2014): 537–59; Charis Thompson, Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013); and Carrie Friese, “Realizing Potential in Translational Medicine: The Uncanny Emergence of Care as Science,” Current Anthropology 54 (S7): S129-S138. 2. From Latin America, see, for example, Luz Gabriela Arango Gaviria, Adira Amaya Urquijo, Tania Pérez-Bustos, and Javier Pineda Duque, eds., Género y cuidado: teorías, escenarios y políticas (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2018); Pascale Molinier and Luz Grabriela Arango Gaviria, eds., El trabajo y... (shrink)

While there has always been discourse seeking to discredit feminism and its proposals using false arguments, as the movement has gained ground, the effort to discredit it has increased. Based on cases reported by the media websites Maldita.es, in its section Maldito Feminism, Newtral.es and Efe Verifica, we point out the important presence of anti-feminist content in the disinformation present in social media. We analyse the underlying ideology and the reasons why this discourse is particularly damaging to the feminist movement (...) today and to society in general, as new technologies make disinformation even more dangerous. We conclude our research by drawing a parallel between this phenomenon and Susan Faludi's analysis of the anti-feminist reaction in the 1980s, looking at the new challenges facing feminism in this fight against post-truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Children’s Home Musical Experiences Across the World ed. by Beatriz Ilari, Susan YoungAmy Christine BeegleBeatriz Ilari and Susan Young, eds., Children’s Home Musical Experiences Across the World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016)Historically, most studies of children’s musical learning have been informed by stage theories of developmental psychology and focused on school music or private instrumental lesson contexts. Over the past few decades, scholars have conducted (...) research that increasingly explores children’s involvement with music in contexts outside of formal learning settings, utilizing methods and models from ethnomusicology, sociology, social psychology, and/or cultural psychology. Nine individually authored chapters in the volume, Children’s Home Musical Experiences Across the World, edited by Beatriz Ilari and Susan Young, convey results, applications, and extensions of one such project that reaches beyond the conventional ethnographic music education study.The bulk of this collection contains findings and interpretations from a collaborative project called MyPlace, MyMusic, followed by several additional chapters that provide descriptions and narratives from subsequent related projects. The original project included fourteen scholars from the International Society of Music Education-Early Childhood Commission, who conducted in-home observations and interviews with parents and children in order to examine the nature of, influences on, and meaning of musical activities that took place in the homes of middle-class seven-year-olds in diverse locations, including Brazil, Denmark, [End Page 105] Greece, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Taiwan, the U.K., and the United States.Importantly, the project’s designers attempted to avoid complications of transcultural developments by asking each researcher to select children whose families had not recently migrated to their country/locality. The seventeen participating children from twelve countries were also of the same ethnicity and lived in the same “locality” as each researcher in order to ease communication during in-home observations and interviews. Results shed light on issues of children’s family life, schooling, identity, gender, and social class.This project presents a unique contribution to the field of music education in a number of ways. First, most previous studies of music in the homes of children have centered around preschoolers, toddlers, and infants, whereas the present project focuses on seven-year-old children, whose age places them on the cusp of crossing from early to middle childhood. Second, most previous music education researchers have considered issues of social class, ethnicity, and race as independent variables, but the methodology for this project calls for observation and description of each child in his or her home first, followed by comparison of the “cases” to each other. Third, the researchers utilize a Wiki platform to share and collaboratively interpret data collected from home lives of children (photographs, video and audio recordings, texts, and pdf files) among researchers from different countries.The volume is organized into three major sections. Susan Young and Jèssica Pérez-Moreno set the scene in the first two chapters by describing the theoretical underpinnings and methodology for the MyPlace, MyMusic project. The second section of the book includes four chapters in which several individual researchers interpret the project’s data based upon the themes of children’s private musical worlds; belonging/identity/gendered meanings of children’s music making; perspectives and influences of parents; and the role of social class on children’s musical lives. The last three chapters of the book provide detailed descriptions of projects and extensions that developed after the MyPlace, MyMusic project.Following the introductory chapter, in which Ilari and Young explain the background, rationale, goals, and methods of the MyPlace, MyMusic project and provide a reader-friendly table that presents the cultural background and “sources of musical stimulation in the home” for each participating child,1 Susan Young outlines the theoretical and analytical frameworks for the project in the first chapter. Rather than viewing children’s learning as developing and socializing into adulthood, the project researchers were encouraged to look at children as being instead of becoming, as subjects, rather than objects of research, and as having opportunities for agency that are contextual. This theoretical framework stems from the field of Childhood Studies (as cultivated in Scandinavia [End Page 106] and... (shrink)

Crowdsourcing has attracted increasing attention as a means to enlist online participants in organisational activities. In this paper, we examine crowdsourcing from the perspective of its ethical use in the support of open innovation taking a broader system view of its use. Crowdsourcing has the potential to improve access to knowledge, skills, and creativity in a cost-effective manner but raises a number of ethical dilemmas. The paper discusses the ethical issues related to knowledge exchange, economics, and relational aspects of crowdsourcing. (...) A guiding framework drawn from the ethics literature is proposed to guide the ethical use of crowdsourcing. A major problem is that crowdsourcing is viewed in a piecemeal fashion and separate from other organisational processes. The trend for organisations to be more digitally collaborative is explored in relation to the need for greater awareness of crowdsourcing implications. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Creativity Belongs to the Person, not to DiseaseJuan J. López-Ibor Jr. (bio) and María-Inés López-Ibor (bio)Keywordscreativity, patho-biography, Saint Teresa, visionsIn the paper, “From the Visions of Saint Teresa of Jesus to the Voices of Schizophrenia,” Cangas, Sass, and Pérez-Álvarez (2008) take an original approach to patho-biography that is very welcome.The temptation to designate historical individuals or characters of fiction as suffering from mental disease has always produced disagreeable feelings (...) in me. This sort of abuse of psychiatry and of the people in question is parallel to the abuse by the media or lay citizens when they describe, say, an especially violent murderer as a schizophrenic—forgetting that the vast majority of people with schizophrenia are not in the least violent. Having read Santa Teresa’s writings during my adolescence, well before I even considered entering medicine, I reacted to comments about her alleged psychiatric illnesses with uneasiness, to put it mildly. The Santa Teresa of La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús (her autobiography), of the Camino de Perfección, and of the El Castillo Interior was surely not a mental patient, it seemed to me. The same would apply to San Juan de La Cruz, Jean D’Arc, Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, Edipus, and Clitemnestra, to mention a few. Even van Gogh’s paintings did not seem to me the productions of a patient with schizophrenia or epilepsy. Of course all of them may have suffered, at certain periods of life, symptoms attributable to a mental disorder, but their creativity rested elsewhere, and was often manifest during healthy periods of their lives. After years spent fighting the stigma of mental diseases, and after organizing several exhibitions of works of art of people with mental diseases, we came to the conclusion that creativity and singularity belong to the person, not to the illness. Some of the diseases of these individuals may have being accidents (van Gogh’s hallucinations and psychotic symptoms, for example, were most probably due to intoxications with absinthe, then rich in hallucinogenic alkaloids such as tujone), or, together with other life circumstances, may have had unspecific influences on the person’s condition. In contrast with many other psychiatric disorders that are represented in ancient Greek and Roman literature, there are no descriptions of individuals with schizophrenia in the Greek and Roman literature dating from the fifth century bc to the beginning of the second century Ad (Evans et al. 2003), and several authors have speculated that schizophrenia did not exist before the eighteenth century (Ellard 1987).Caution is important when dealing with mental health and religious issues in contrast with creativity. The creativity of people suffering from bipolar disorders is well recognized (Jamison 1993) and [End Page 277] the same applies to alcohol and drug intoxication. Tellenbach (1986) has also written on the creativity of depressed persons, although he refers more to the disposition of mood (Schwermut) than to clinical depression as such. The link between melancholia and genius put forward by Aristotle has often been misinterpreted. The philosopher was considering the melancholic temperament and not the melancholic illness as we would understand it today. Of the four temperaments, it is in his view only the melancholic that is gifted with creativity. The sanguine person seeks the immediate pleasures of life, the choleric one considers himself powerful and dedicates himself to manifesting this power, and the phlegmatic individual is disconnected from life and seeks to live without effort or pleasure. The melancholic temperament leads to creativity because of the predominance of doubt, reflection, and dissatisfaction with the miseries of life.Freud’s notion of religiosity as a collective obsessive neurosis is totally mistaken, in my view. The three main themes of obsessions are cleanliness, order, and guilt. In none of these cases is the theme the goal of the action; rather, it is a strategy to contain anxiety. As a consequence, patients with obsessions and compulsions about dirt and cleanliness tend to be dirty themselves, because the real purpose of their compulsions is not in fact to be clean but rather to satisfy a ritual. When order... (shrink)

Savulescu argues that it may be ethically acceptable for governments to require citizens be vaccinated against COVID-19. He also recommends that governments consider providing monetary or in-kind incentives to citizens to increase vaccination rates. In this response, we argue against mandatory vaccination and vaccine incentivisation, and instead suggest that targeted public health messaging and a greater responsiveness to the concerns of vaccine-hesitant individuals would be the best strategy to address low vaccination rates.

This essay surveys the present position of postmodernism with respect to the effect of its ideas upon historiography. For this purpose it looks at a number of writings by historians that have been a response to postmodernism including the recently published collection of articles, The Postmodern History Reader. The essay argues that, in contrast to scholars in the field of literary studies, the American historical profession has been much more resistant to postmodernist doctrines and that the latters' influence upon the (...) thinking and practice of historians is not only fading but increasingly destined to fade. The essay also presents a critical discussion of the current philosophy of postmodernism in its bearing upon historiography, directed chiefly against its claim that the world has undergone an epochal transition from the modern to a postmodern age; its theory of language and linguistic idealism; its opposition to historical realism and denial of the actuality of the past as a possible object of reference; and its theory of historical narrative as unconstrained fictional construction. This discussion includes a consideration of the work of postmodernist thinkers such as J.-F. Lyotard, of the recent books by David Roberts and Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. which espouse a postmodernist theory of history, and of the narrativist theory of Hayden White. The essay also notes some of the reasons for postmodernism's appeal; and while it does not deny that postmodernist philosophy may have served a useful purpose in provoking historians to be more self-critical and aware of their presuppositions and procedures, it maintains that its skeptical and politicized view of historical inquiry is deeply mistaken, out of accord with the way historians themselves think about their work, and incapable of providing an understanding of historiography as a form of thought engaged in the attainment of knowledge and understanding of the human past. (shrink)

While parents have traditionally provided proxy consent for minors to participate in research, this has proven inadequate for adolescents who are mentally and emotionally capable of making their own decisions. Research has proven that even young children, and certainly most adolescents, are developmentally prepared to make such decisions for themselves. The author challenges the assumption that both consent and assent are static concepts, and proposes that a sliding scale of competence be created to ascertain the adolescent's comprehension of the proposed (...) research by shifting the burden of proof to those who believe a particular adolescent is unable to provide informed consent. (shrink)

In a well-known text called ‘The Communist Hypothesis’, first published in 2007, the renowned philosopher Alain Badiou breathed fresh life into the idea of communism as an intellectual representation that provides a critical perspective on existing politics and offers a systemic alternative to capitalism. Now, in the course of this wide-ranging conversation with Peter Engelmann, Alain Badiou explains why he continues to value the idea of communism against the background of current social crises and despite negative historical experiences. From the (...) anticipation of a communism without a state to the problem of the concept of democracy and an analysis of capitalism as a system, the two thinkers discuss the key political issues of our time. Whilst explaining his political philosophy, Badiou also reflects on current socio-political developments such as the turmoil in the Middle East and the situation in China. This compelling dialogue is both a highly topical contribution to the question of how we might organize our societies differently and an accessible introduction to Badiou's philosophical thinking. (shrink)

The popular press has claimed that Secretary of the Interior James Watt bases his philosophy of environmental management on his religious views as a charismatic Christian. An examination of Watt’s published statements indicates: his philosophy of environmental management sterns largely from economic and political considerations; he has a relatively simple ecotheology based on concepts such as God providing creation as a blessing for mankind, and mankind having a stewardship responsibility to use resources to provide for people; his ecotheology does not (...) incorporate any characteristically charismatic ideas; and his ecotheology does not strongly parallel that of conservative Christian theologians who have written on environmental issues. This analysis suggests that for the new “Christianpolitic” as a whole, there is a danger of confusing the scriptural with the cultural and political in the area of environmental ethics. If a Christian ecotheology is going to be used for environmental decision making, it should be developed fully and represent scripture accurately and completely. (shrink)

The question of how actin filaments are attached to membranes is of central importance to an understanding of how actin gives rise to shape and movement in cells. A number of approaches to this question have been taken, but there have been few definitive answers. Some of the limitations of these approaches are discussed, as well as possible avenues for overcoming them.

This article examines the historical construction of depression over about a hundred years, employing the social life of methods as an explanatory framework. Specifically, it considers how emerging methodologies in the measurement of psychological constructs contributed to changes in epistemological approaches to mental illness and created the conditions of possibility for major shifts in the construction of depression. While depression was once seen as a feature of psychotic personality, measurement technologies made it possible for it to be reconstructed as changeable (...) and treatable. Different types of scaling techniques (Likert versus dichotomous scales) enabled the separation of depressive personality from reactive depression, paving the way for measuring the severity and intensity of emotions. Techniques to test sensitivity to change provided a means of demonstrating the efficacy of new psychoactive drug treatments. Later, more advanced techniques of precision scaling enabled the management of a new measurement problem, clinician unreliability, associated with the growing number of professionals involved in mental health care. Through statistical management of unreliability, the construct of depression has dramatically reduced over this period from hundreds of questionnaire items to potentially just two. Exploring the history of depression through this lens produces an alternative narrative to those that have emerged as a result of medicalisation and the actions of individuals and pressure groups. (shrink)

This study investigates the effectiveness of pedagogical practices used to teach business ethics. The business community has greatly increased its demands for better ethics education in business programs. Educators have generally agreed that the ethical principles of business people have declined. It is important, then, to examine how common methods of instruction used in business ethics could contribute to the development of higher levels of moral judgment competence for students. To determine the effectiveness of these methods, moral judgment competence levels (...) for undergraduate and graduate students from three institutions were measured and compared based upon the pedagogical method used in a business class. Significant differences were found for moral reasoning and moral competence scores depending on the method used for ethics instruction. Students in classes with more highly integrated ethics coverage scored higher in moral reasoning and moral competence. (shrink)

Health care reform proposals threaten to exacerbate tensions physicians already face in trying to balance traditional duties to individual patients against increasing pressure to serve broader societal and institutional goals. To cope with reform, medical ethics must clarify physicians' moral obligations, change existing ethical codes, and develop an ethics of institutions.

In 2013, there were an estimated 50,000 individuals involved in downloading and sharing indecent images of children in the United Kingdom. This poses challenges for limited police resources. We argue that police officers can make most effective use of limited resources by prioritizing those offenders who pose the greatest risk of contact offending, by nature of demonstrable pedophilia, hebephilia or dual offending status and thus, those at highest risk must be dealt with first. What is currently lacking is a clear (...) idea of the potential scale of the problem in socio-economic terms and why, therefore, it is so important that evidence-based approaches to offender detection and investigation continue to be a top priority for funders and policy makers. A systematic literature review was undertaken to address two related questions. First, what is the scale of the problem in the UK, in terms of the number of pedophilic and hebephilic individuals who pose a risk of contact offending against a child? Second, what is the potential socio-economic burden generated by the national IIOC suspect pool if left unattended to by targeted police action? Applying population estimates of pedophilia and hebephilia to the male population, we estimate there are between 2,365–5,991 males with paedophila and 12,218–30,952 males with hebephilia who are likely contact offenders. Applying average prevalence and incidence based costing methods to a conservative estimate of one victim per offender, the combined socio-economic burden from these persons could amount to £236-£597 million increasing to £2.9-£7.3 billion. Applying the same costs to CEOP estimate of 50,000 IIOC offenders we estimate that between 6,000 and 27,500 dual offenders could have already committed past contact offenses, contributing an economic burden of between £97–£445 million increasing to £1.2–£5.4 billion. Future contact offenses could contribute a further burden of £16–£18.6 million increasing to £198–£227 million. Drawing upon these findings, we argue for the benefits of a research-informed prioritization approach to target IIOC offenders. (shrink)

Creation mustn't be considerated as a production whose term is creature. Creature as such isn't a term but a beginning. Abandonment of mental limit is a necessary method to reach such a knowledge of creature.

This dissertation is the first step in a larger research project aimed at bridging the gap between Western philosophy and Indigenous thought. Here, I identify a useful methodological approach to the social contract by analyzing the tradition under an historical lens. I highlight that, along with the justificatory capacities of the social contract, comes a great deal of modelling involved in different versions of the social contract. This modelling comes in the form of four pre-contractual elements that different authors model (...) in different ways. I show how different authors choose different structural problems or injustices that such theories want to address, as well as normative commitments that their theories are committed to, a standard of considerability of interests that identifies whose interests matter for those deliberating the terms of the contract, and a contractual device. Once that has been established, I am able to provide some foundational elements for establishing a framework for the development of a theory of global justice. I focus on the first three pre-contractual elements. (shrink)

Much of the research on the delivery of advice by professionals such as physicians, health workers and counsellors, both on the telephone and in face-to-face interaction more generally, has focused on the theme of client resistance and the consequent need for professionals to adopt particular formats to assist in the uptake of the advice. In this article we consider one setting, Kid’s Helpline, the national Australian counselling service for children and young people, where there is an institutional mandate not to (...) give explicit advice in accordance with the values of self-direction and empowerment. The article examines one practice, the use of script proposals by counsellors, which appears to offer a way of providing support which is consistent with these values. Script proposals entail the counsellors packaging their advice as something that the caller might say — at some future time — to a third party such as a friend, teacher, parent or partner, and involve the counsellor adopting the speaking position of the caller in what appears as a rehearsal of a forthcoming strip of interaction. Although the core feature of a script proposal is the counsellor’s use of direct reported speech, they appear to be delivered not so much as exact words to be followed, but as the type of conversation that the client needs to have with the third party. Script proposals, in short, provide models of what to say as well as alluding to how these could be emulated by the client. In their design, script proposals invariably incorporate one or more of the most common rhetorical formats for maximizing the persuasive force of an utterance such as a three-part list or a contrastive pair. Script proposals, moreover, stand in a complex relation to the prior talk and one of their functions appears to be to summarize, respecify or expand upon the client’s own ideas or suggestions for problem solving that have emerged in these preceding sequences. (shrink)