This article considers the question of feminist futurity through Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). While dominant readings of this novel have focused on its relationship to the feminist Utopian genre and feminist theory from the 1970s, this essay aims to critically reframe the novel through contemporary feminist theorising on time and futurity. Drawing on recent feminist and queer theory that suggests that the future might most productively be figured through more nuanced and renewed engagements (...) with the past, I argue that readings of Piercy's novel that frame it only through its contemporary moment obscure the novel's critique of singular, linear models of time. The novel represents the future through the themes of loss, mourning and haunting, which I argue resist a model of time that moves linearly from past to future and instead bring the past and future into complex relation with each other. In this regard, Piercy's novel is read as representing a form of feminist futurity that engages with progress in time as necessarily uneven, discontinuous and fractured, speaking to contemporary demands for a feminist futurity that might require more nuanced accounts of the past. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

While ethical and moral issues have been widely considered in the general areas of marketing and sales, similar attention has not been given to the impact of strategic account management (SAM) approaches to handling the relationships between suppliers and very␣large customers. SAM approaches have been widely␣adopted by suppliers as a mechanism for managing␣relationships and partnerships with dominant customers␣– characterized by high levels of buyer–seller inter-dependence and forms of collaborative partnership. Observation suggests that the perceived moral intensity of␣these relationships is commonly (...) low, notwithstanding the underlying principles of benefiting the few (large, strategic customers) at the expense of the many (smaller customers and other stakeholders), and the magnitude of the consequences of concessions made to large customers, even though some such consequences may be unintended. Dilemmas exist also for executives implementing strategic account relationships regarding such issues as information sharing, trust, and hidden incentives for unethical behaviour. We propose the need for greater transparency and senior management questioning of the ethical and moral issues implicit in strategic account management. (shrink)

From four countries (Canada, England, New Zealand and the United States of America) and five disciplines (Counselling & Guidance, Adult Education, Early Years Education, Indigenous Education and Human Development), five feminists in academia come together to share how feminism affects their practice. Ranging in reflections on teaching, research, service and scholarship, this article describes a cooperative enquiry into feminism in action in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Introduction: Alcohol approach bias, the tendency to automatically move toward alcohol cues, has been observed in people who drink heavily. However, surprisingly, some alcohol-dependent patients demonstrate an alcohol avoidance bias. This inconsistency could be explained by the clinical or demographic profile of the population studied, yet this has not been examined in approach bias modification trials to date. We aimed to determine the proportion of patients with an approach or avoidance bias, assess whether they differ on demographic and drinking measures, (...) and to examine the clinical correlates of approach bias.Method: These research questions were addressed using baseline data from 268 alcohol-dependent patients undergoing inpatient withdrawal treatment who then went on to participate in a trial of ABM.Results: At trial entry, 155 had an alcohol approach bias and 113 had an avoidance bias. These two groups did not differ on any demographic or relevant drinking measures. Approach bias was significantly and moderately associated with total standard drinks consumed in the past 30 days but no other indices of alcohol consumption or problem severity.Conclusion: Whilst the majority of alcohol-dependent patients showed an alcohol approach bias, those with an avoidance bias did not differ in demographic or clinical characteristics, and the strength of approach bias related only to recent consumption. Further research is needed to develop more accurate and personally tailored measures of approach bias, as these findings likely reflect the poor reliability of standard approach bias measures. (shrink)

Cambre and Hawkes offer a framework for thinking about technology as it impacts teaching and learning today. We look at technology through a trifocal lense: technology as teaching aid, technology as threat, and technology as progress. We trace the evolution of school technology briefly, leading up to the computer as the point convergence. From the toys they play with to the tools they learn with, we see that students are bombarded with things technological. This mushrooming of technology and how it (...) is to be integrated into the classroom presents challenges that must be confronted so that, indeed, no child is left behind. (shrink)

This manuscript investigates the role of argumentative competence in interpersonal dyadic exchanges. Specifically, this study examined the two sub-dimensions of competence, argumentative effectiveness and appropriateness, and their connections with argumentative traits, situational features, and argument satisfaction. In addition, self-perceived versus observed argumentative competence were compared. Participants in the study completed measures before and after a face-to-face argumentative discussion with another person about one of two possible topics. Results revealed that argumentation traits had little effect on argumentative competence, but competence was (...) predicted by one’s knowledge about the topic. Argument satisfaction depended only on arguers’ own competence, not their partners’. Finally, a perceptual bias existed regarding argument effectiveness in that participants rated themselves higher than did observers. (shrink)

Negative gender-role stereotypes continue to pervade the careers of many women. The current study examines the careers of female National Health Service (NHS) nurses in the United Kingdom. The study identifies organizational mindsets which militate against women's career advancement. These mindsets form the basis of the "ethic of discrimination" which both maintains and perpetuates unequal outcomes for women in NHS nursing. We examine the implications for management in promoting non-discriminatory decision making, and the barriers that are faced in overcoming the (...) "ethic of discrimination". (shrink)

This manuscript investigates the role of argumentative competence in interpersonal dyadic exchanges. Specifically, this study examined the two sub-dimensions of competence, argumentative effectiveness and appropriateness, and their connections with argumentative traits, situational features, and argument satisfaction. In addition, self-perceived versus observed argumentative competence were compared. Participants in the study (N = 282, 141 dyads) completed measures before and after a face-to-face argumentative discussion with another person about one of two possible topics (student athlete pay and texting while driving). Results revealed (...) that argumentation traits had little effect on argumentative competence, but competence was predicted by one’s knowledge about the topic. Argument satisfaction depended only on arguers’ own competence, not their partners’. Finally, a perceptual bias existed regarding argument effectiveness (but not appropriateness) in that participants rated themselves higher than did observers. (shrink)

A significant international development agenda in the practice of nurses supporting families with young children focuses on establishing partnerships between professionals and service users. Qualitative data were generated through interviews and focus groups with 22 nurses from three child and family health service organisations, two in Australia and one in New Zealand. The aim was to explore what is needed in order to sustain partnership in practice, and to investigate how the concept of practice architectures can help understand attempts to (...) enhance partnerships between nurses and families. Implementation of the Family Partnership Model (FPM) is taken as a specific point of reference. Analysis highlights a number of tensions between the goals of FPM and practice architectures relating to opportunities for ongoing learning; the role of individual nurses in shaping the practice; relationships with peers and managers; organisational features; and extra‐organisational factors. The concept of practice architectures shows how changing practice requires more than developing individual knowledge and skills, and avoids treating individuals and context separately. The value of this framework for understanding change with reference to context rather than just individual’s knowledge and skills is demonstrated, particularly with respect to approaches to practice development focused on providing additional training to nurses. (shrink)

Esta investigación tiene como objetivo revisar la novela Mujer al borde del tiempo de Marge Piercy, originalmente escrita en 1976 y traducida recientemente al idioma español; con el apoyo de diversos planteamientos teóricos que se han hecho desde los feminismos y estudios sobre el género y la ciencia ficción, para dar cuenta cómo éste, al igual que otros textos de literatura del género, son y han sido una herramienta política significativa para imaginar otros posibles futuros. Las imágenes de (...) futuro que se han desarrollado en la narrativa de ciencia ficción, específicamente en la llamada ciencia ficción feminista, puede ser rastreados en propuestas plásticas y audiovisuales contemporáneas que abordan problemas sociales y medioambientales. (shrink)

We consider the moral and social ingredients in physicians' relationships with patients of diminished capacity by considering certain claims made about friendship and the physician's role. To assess these claims we look at the life context of two patients as elaborated examples provided in two novels: Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) by Marge Piercy, a radical feminist; and It's Hard to Leave While the Music's Playing (1977) by I. S. Cooper, a prominent physician-researcher. At issue is (...) how the doctor-patient relationship should be structured. In question is whether the physician's friendship and professional expertise, together with the diminished capacity of the patient, authorize medical paternalism. From our examination, we find compelling insights against appealing to friendship both in good doctor-patient relationships and in more typical, not-so-good ones. (shrink)

In patriarchy women are frequently perceived as “the other” and as such they are subject to discrimination and marginalization. The androcentric character of patriarchy inherently confines women to the fringes of society. Undeniably, this was the case in Western culture throughout most of the twentieth century, before the social transformation triggered by the feminist movement enabled women to access spheres previously unavailable to them. Feminist science fiction of the 1970s, like feminism, attempted to challenge the patriarchal status quo in which (...) gender-based discrimination against women was the norm. Thus, authors expressed, in a fictionalized form, the same issues that constituted the primary concerns of feminism in its second wave. As feminist science fiction is an imaginative genre, the critique of the abuses of the twentieth-century patriarchy is usually developed in defamiliarized, unreal settings. Consequently, current problems are recontextualized, a technique which is meant to give the reader a new perspective on certain aspects of life they might otherwise take for granted, such as the inadequacies of patriarchy and women’s marginality in society. Yet there are authors who consider the real world dystopian enough to be used as a setting for their novels. This is the case with Woman on theEdge of Time by Marge Piercy and The Female Man by Joanna Russ. Both texts split the narrative into a science fictional and a realistic strand so as to contrast the contemporary world with utopian and dystopian alternatives. Both texts are largely politicized as they expose and challenge the marginalized status of women in the American society of the 1970s. They explore the process of constructing marginalized identities, as well as the forms that marginalization takes in the society. Most importantly, they indicate the necessity of decisive steps being taken to improve the situation. (shrink)

Despite feminism's uneven movements, it has been predominantly understood through metaphors of generations or waves. Feminism's Queer Temporalities builds on critiques of the limitations of this linear model to explore alternative ways of imagining feminism's timing. It finds in feminism's literary and cultural archive narratives of temporality that might now be diagnosed as queer, where queer designates modes of being historical that exceed the linear and the generational. Few theorists have looked to popular feminist figures, literature, and culture to theorize (...) feminism's timing. Through methodologically creative readings, McBean explores non-generational, anti-linear, and asynchronous time in the figure of Antigone, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, the film Ladies and Gentlemen: The Fabulous Stains, Valerie Solanas and SCUM Manifesto, and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. The first to substantially bring together the ways in which time has come to matter in both feminist and queer disciplines, this book will appeal to students and scholars of feminist, queer and gender studies, cultural studies and literary studies. (shrink)

It would be difficult to overstate the impact of the work of Samuel R. Delany on the often-overlapping fields of science fiction (sf) studies and utopian studies. In his well-known 1982 essay, “Progress Versus Utopia, or, Can We Imagine the Future?” Fredric Jameson argues that Delany, along with Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy, and Joanna Russ, is among a socially engaged group of visionary authors who revivified the utopian imagination in sf during the 1960s and 1970s, and he (...) cites Delany’s Triton (1976), Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), and Russ’s The Female Man (1975) as “the most remarkable monuments” in this rebirth of utopia.1 Following Jameson and others, Tom Moylan .. (shrink)

"L’œuvre de Marc Richir, riche et polyphonique, nous lègue un ensemble complexe d’analyses, de propositions et de concepts qui puisent tant dans la tradition philosophique que dans les sciences exactes, l’anthropologie, l’esthétique et la pensée politique, créant entre ces discours autant d’intersections inédites opérées en régime phénoménologique. En chacun de ces croisements, l’œuvre de Richir appelle à être examinée, déchiffrée et éclairée à partir de perspectives inédites que lui-même a rendu possible. L’immensité du corpus richirien invite à travailler autant aux (...) marges de la phénoménologie husserlienne qu’aux marges de sa phénoménologie, à travers ses dialogues, ses obsessions et ses ambitions, afin de mieux ressaisir en elles la vivacité et l’originalité des phénomènes."--. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aux marges des dialogues de Platon: Essai d'histoire anthropologique de la philosophie ancienneAlessandra FussiMarie-Laurence Desclos. Aux marges des dialogues de Platon: Essai d'histoire anthropologique de la philosophie ancienne. Grenoble: Millon, 2003. Pp. 286. Paper, €27,00.The book takes its bearings from Plato's knowledge of Herodotus's and Thucydides' writings as it is witnessed in such dialogues as the Menexenus, the Timaeus, the Critias and the Laws. Plato not only indirectly (...) quotes from both authors, but also frequently plays with chronology and the relationship between historical events. What motivates Plato's interest in historical events? Is it possible to speak of a Platonic philosophy of history? Before addressing such questions, the author devotes several chapters to a very detailed and insightful study of the meaning(s) of "historiography" in Herodotus and Thucydides. The first chapter examines different contemporary views concerning Herodotus's and Thucydides' attitude towards their sources. Desclos sides with those who underlie the distance between modern theories of historical sources and ancient historical literature. The ancients had no theory of objective sources. Rather, they focused on the subjective means employed, such as the historian's own sense of sight, and his good judgment. As to the witnesses of the past, the accent was not as much on their reliability as it was on their plausibility vis-à-vis the opinions of the historian himself.Chapters II and III are devoted respectively to Thucydides' employment of the rhetorical instruments of the law courts, and to the stylistic and methodic proximity of Herodotus's Histories to the Corpus Hippocraticum. Both chapters oppose the view that the two ancient historians identify their task as "critical history," i.e., as an attempt to free the historical attitude towards facts and events from the subjective aspects of rhetoric, poetry, and religion, where persuasion and chance play a major role. Thucydides' language is rooted in the law courts. However, Desclos argues, the place he occupies in the Peloponnesian War is not that of the impartial judge—as N. Loraux and C. Darbo-Peshanski have suggested—but that of the defendant's attorney. He is much closer to Antiphon's antidikoi—whose ability he extols in VIII, 68, 1-2—than to the modern, impartial judge. The main stress of the methodological chapters in Book I of the Peloponnesian War, then, is not as much on the critical attitude that the historian must have towards his different kinds of sources, as it is on the attempt to persuade the readers that he is true to the facts, while his opponents and competitors are not. In this sense, Desclos agrees with Lloyd that we are in the presence of a "rhetoric of legitimation." According to this interpretation, then, Thucydides' text assigns his ideal reader a passive role. He is meant to be persuaded, conquered, and entirely a-critical (62).Chapter III argues that Herodotus's Histories give their ideal reader an entirely different role. Desclos focuses here on the analogy between medicine and writing, and on Herodotus's preference for Greek medicine, which uses "sweet" methods, over Persian medicine, characterized by harshness and violence. The Greek doctors' superiority ultimately resides in their ability to enroll the patients in the fight against illness. Analogously, the superiority of the Greek historian resides in his ability to accommodate his writings to the reader in such a way that the latter may become an active participant in the historical inquiry. Herodotus does not pretend to be above all opinions. He clearly states his opinions, but by treating them as such he allows the reader to take position, to be "interactive" with the written work (85). [End Page 203]This interesting analysis bears its fruits in the last chapters devoted to Plato. Desclos suggests that the anonymous and silent interlocutor in such dialogues as the Charmides, the Lysis and the Republic plays an important philosophical function, by circumscribing a dialogical empty space that the reader is invited to fill (220). This takes Herodotus's strategy a step forward, since the truly philosophical nature of the Platonic dialogue lies thereby in its openness to the reader. Unfortunately Desclos's chapters on Plato are not as... (shrink)

Diogène n'aimait pas Platon, et l'auteur de La République qui commença sa carrière par la lutte et le théâtre sans jamais vraiment y renoncer, le lui rendait bien. Entre ces deux-là, ce fut la haine leur vie durant. Normal, ils campent chacun aux deux extrémités idéologiques, métaphysiques, philosophiques. L'homme au Chien aime la vie, la joie, le réel, le rire, la liberté, l'indépendance, l'individu ; l'homme aux Idées chérit exactement l'inverse : la mort - voir la thanatophilie du Phédon! -, (...) l'ascétisme, les arrière-mondes, la servitude, la dilution des subjectivités dans la communauté. Au-delà des siècles, Diogène et Platon incarnent deux façons d'appréhender le pouvoir, de le considérer et d'en user. Deux anecdotes ramassent leurs conceptions. L'une, célèbre, participe de l'iconographie philosophique classique et met en présence un Diogène qui bronze au Cranéion, une colline de Corinthe couverte de cyprès, et Alexandre, le Prince aux pouvoirs absolus. Alexandre s'adresse à Diogène et lui demande un souhait afin de jouir de l'exaucer. Réponse célèbre de Diogène : " ôtes toi de mon soleil " - ce qui, dans une traduction moins faite pour le marbre de la postérité donne : " tires-toi, tu me fais de l'ombre "... (shrink)