Strengthening the abilities of smallholder farmers in developing countries, particularly women farmers, to produce for both home and the market is currently a development priority. In many contexts, ownership of assets is strongly gendered, reflecting existing gender norms and limiting women’s ability to invest in more profitable livelihood strategies such as market-oriented agriculture. Yet the intersection between women’s asset endowments and their ability to participate in and benefit from agricultural interventions receives minimal attention. This paper explores changes in gender relations (...) and women’s assets in four agricultural interventions that promoted high value agriculture with different degrees of market-orientation. Findings suggest that these dairy and horticulture projects can successfully involve women and increase production, income and the stock of household assets. In some cases, women were able to increase their control over production, income and assets; however in most cases men’s incomes increased more than women’s and the gender-asset gap did not decrease. Gender- and asset-based barriers to participation in projects as well as gender norms that limit women’s ability to accumulate and retain control over assets both contributed to the results. Comparing experiences across the four projects, especially where projects implemented adaptive measures to encourage gender-equitable outcomes, provides lessons for gender-responsive projects targeting existing and emerging value chains for high value products. Other targeted support to women farmers may also be needed to promote their acquisition of the physical assets required to expand production or enter other nodes of the value chain. (shrink)

"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri.

"Dr. Rubin has brought cognitive psychology into a wholly unprecedented dialogue with studies in oral tradition. The result is a truly new perspective on memory and the processes of oral tradition." --John Miles Foley, University of Missouri.

There is increasing interest in determining what impact having women in management positions may have on corporate social responsibility initiatives. Various authors suggest that gender equality practices should be factored into the broader framework of CSR. This paper examines how the presence of women on corporate boards, in top and middle management and as heads of CSR departments, influences gender equality practices in the field of CSR. Using information collected from companies that have signed up to Women's Empowerment Principles in (...) Spain, we show that the presence of women in the aforesaid posts has a positive impact on CSR activities with gender equality objectives. We thus supplement the justice, business and moral arguments with further arguments in support of the incorporation of women into not only corporate boards but all management positions. Finally, we provide a view of how gender equality can be included in the broader framework of CSR. (shrink)

In recent years, firms have greatly increased the amount of resources allocated to activities classified as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While an increase in CSR expenditure may be consistent with firm value maximization if it is a response to changes in stakeholders' preferences, we argue that a firm's insiders (managers and large blockholders) may seek to overinvest in CSR for their private benefit to the extent that doing so improves their reputations as good global citizens and has a "warm-glow" effect. (...) We test this hypothesis by investigating the relation between firms' CSR ratings and their ownership and capital structures. Employing a unique data set that categorizes the largest 3000 U. S. corporations as either socially responsible (SR) or socially irresponsible (SI), we find that on average, insiders' ownership and leverage are negatively related to the firm's social rating, while institutional ownership is uncorrelated with it. Assuming that higher CSR ratings is associated with higher CSR expenditure level, these results support our hypothesis that insiders induce firms to over-invest in CSR when they bear little of the cost of doing so. (shrink)

The Well-Ordered Universe argues that Cavendish's natural philosophy, social and political philosophy, and medical theory share an underlying concern with order. This reveals interesting connections among Cavendish's natural philosophy and her views on gender, animals and the environment, and human health, and explains her commitment to monarchy and social hierarchy.

A structure has a (finite-string) automatic presentation if the elements of its domain can be named by finite strings in such a way that the coded domain and the coded atomic operations are recognised by synchronous multitape automata. Consequently, every structure with an automatic presentation has a decidable first-order theory. The problems surveyed here include the classification of classes of structures with automatic presentations, the complexity of the isomorphism problem, and the relationship between definability and recognisability.

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

Decades before the environmental movement emerged in the 1960s, Adorno condemned our destructive and self-destructive relationship to the natural world, warning of the catastrophe that may result if we continue to treat nature as an object that exists exclusively for our own benefit. "Adorno on Nature" presents the first detailed examination of the pivotal role of the idea of natural history in Adorno's work. A comparison of Adorno's concerns with those of key ecological theorists - social ecologist Murray Bookchin, ecofeminist (...) Carolyn Merchant, and deep ecologist Arne Naess - reveals how Adorno speaks directly to many of today's most pressing environmental issues. Ending with a discussion of the philosophical conundrum of unity in diversity, "Adorno on Nature" also explores how social solidarity can be promoted as a necessary means of confronting environmental problems. (shrink)

The seventeenth century was a period of extraordinary invention, discovery and revolutions in scientific, social and political orders. It was a time of expansive automation, biological discovery, rapid advances in medical knowledge, of animal trials and a questioning of the boundaries between species, human and non-human, between social classes, and of the assumed naturalness of political inequality. This book gives a tour through those objects, ordinary and extraordinary, which captivated the philosophical imagination of the single most important French philosopher of (...) this period, Rene Descartes. Deborah J. Brown and Calvin G. Normore document Descartes' attempt to make sense of the complex, composite objects of human and divine invention, consistent with the fundamental tenets of his metaphysical system. Their central argument is that, far from reducing all the categories of ordinary experience to the two basic categories of substance, mind and body, Descartes' philosophy recognises irreducible composites that resist reduction, and require their own distinctive modes of explanation. (shrink)

Has the diversity of corporate boards of directors improved? Should it? What role does diversity play in reducing corporate wrongdoing? Will diversity result in a more focused board of directors or more board autonomy? Examining the state of Tennessee as a case study, the authors collected data on the board composition of publicly traded corporations and compared those data to an original study conducted in 1995. Data indicate only a modest improvement in board diversity. This article discusses reasons for the (...) scarcity of women on boards and concludes that, to enhance strategic decisions, board membership should reflect the corporation''s consumer population. Thus, women are a critical but overlooked resource. Areas for future research are also considered. (shrink)

Descartes is often accused of having fragmented the human being into two independent substances, mind and body, with no clear strategy for explaining the apparent unity of human experience. Deborah Brown argues that, contrary to this view, Descartes did in fact have a conception of a single, integrated human being, and that in his view this conception is crucial to the success of human beings as rational and moral agents and as practitioners of science. The passions are pivotal in (...) this, and in a rich and wide-ranging discussion she examines Descartes' place in the tradition of thought about the passions, the metaphysics of actions and passions, sensory representation, and Descartes' account of self-mastery and virtue. Her study is an important and original reading not only of Descartes' account of mind-body unity but also of his theory of mind. (shrink)

Numerous philosophical theories of joint agency and its intentional structure have been developed in the past few decades. These theories have offered accounts of joint agency that appeal to higher-level states that are?shared? in some way. These accounts have enhanced our understanding of joint agency, yet there are a number of lower-level cognitive phenomena involved in joint action that philosophers rarely acknowledge. In particular, empirical research in cognitive science has revealed that when individuals engage in a joint activity such as (...) conversation or joint problem solving, they become aligned at multiple levels. We argue that this phenomenon of alignment is crucial to understanding joint actions and should be integrated with philosophical approaches. In this paper, we sketch a possible integration, and draw out its implications for understanding of joint agency and collective intentionality. The result is a process-based, dynamic account of joint action that integrates both low-level and high-level states, and seeks to capture the separate processes of how a joint action is initiated and sustained. (shrink)

Autism is one of the most compelling, controversial, and heartbreaking cognitive disorders. It presents unique philosophical challenges as well, raising intriguing questions in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and philosophy of language that need to be explored if the autistic population is to be responsibly served. Starting from the "theory of mind" thesis that a fundamental deficit in autism is the inability to recognize that other persons have minds, Deborah R. Barnbaum considers its implications for the nature of consciousness, (...) our understanding of the consciousness of others, meaning theories in philosophy of language, and the modality of mind. This discussion lays the groundwork for consideration of the value of an autistic life, as well as the moral theories available to persons with autism. The book also explores questions about genetic decision making, research into the nature of autism, and the controversial quest for a cure. This is a timely and wide-ranging book on a disorder that commends itself to serious ethical examination. (shrink)

Argues that the central cognitive component of ethical virtue for Aristotle is awareness of the value of particulars.

Idiosyncrasies of Hobbes's composition process, together with a paucity of reliable autobiographical materials and the norms of seventeenth-century manuscript production, render interpretation of his political theory particularly difficult and contentious. These difficulties are surveyed here under three headings: the process of "serial" composition, which was common in the period; the relationship between Hobbes's three political-theory texts-- the "Elements of Law, De Cive ", and "Leviathan", which is basic to defining the textual embodiment of his theory, and controversial; and his method (...) of writing. I argue that Hobbes's composition process undercut his intention to produce a deductive, logical theory of politics and opened the door to inconsistency and muddle in his arguments. (shrink)

The process of seeking the consent of a patient to a medical procedure is, arguably, one of the most important skills a doctor, or indeed any clinician, should learn. In fact, the very idea that doctors may institute diagnostic or treatment processes of any sort without a patient's consent is utterly counter-intuitive to the modern practice of medicine. It was not always thus, and even now it can be reliably assumed that consent is still not sought and gained appropriately in (...) every clinical encounter. To say that it should be sought and gained in this manner elevates the value of consent to a high level. It can be instructive to ask oneself why such a value might be held to be the case. The answer to this question lies in the philosophical underpinning of clinical consent, which sits within a notion of personal autonomy, and respect for autonomous decision making. (shrink)

Community engagement to protect and empower participating individuals and communities is an ethical requirement in research. There is however limited evidence on effectiveness or relevance of some of the approaches used to improve ethical practice. We conducted a study to understand the rationale, relevance and benefits of community engagement in health research. This paper draws from this wider study and focuses on factors that shaped Community Advisory Group members’ selection processes and functions in Malawi. A qualitative research design was used; (...) two participatory workshops were conducted with CAG members to understand their roles in research. Workshop findings were triangulated with insights from ethnographic field notes, key informant interviews with stakeholders, focus group discussions with community members and document reviews. Data were coded manually and thematic content analysis was used to identify main issues. Results have shown that democratic selection of CAG members presented challenges in both urban and rural settings. We also noted that CAG members perceived their role as a form of employment which potentially led to ineffective representation of community interests. We conclude that democratic voting is not enough to ensure effective representation of community's interests of ethical relevance. CAG members’ abilities to understand research ethics, identify potential harms to community and communicate feedback to researchers is critical to optimise engagement of lay community and avoid tokenistic engagement. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how certain approaches in Values Based Practice duplicate key moves in liberal political theory.

Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas both champion the goal of a rational society. However, they differ significantly about what this society should look like and how best to achieve it. Exploring the premises shared by both critical theorists, along with their profound disagreements about social conditions today, this book defends Adorno against Habermas' influential criticisms of his account of Western society and prospects for achieving reasonable conditions of human life. The book begins with an overview of these critical theories (...) of Western society. Both Adorno and Habermas follow Georg Lukács when they argue that domination consists in the reifying extension of a calculating, rationalizing form of thought to all areas of human life. Their views about reification are discussed in the second chapter. In chapter three the author explores their conflicting accounts of the historical emergence and development of the type of rationality now prevalent in the West. Since Adorno and Habermas claim to have a critical purchase on reified social life, the critical leverage of their theories is assessed in chapter four. The final chapter deals with their opposing views about what a rational society would look like, as well as their claims about the prospects for establishing such a society. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of critical theory, political theory and the work of Adorno and Habermas. (shrink)

As out-of-hospital emergencies become more commonplace, so does the call for a “doctor in the house”. New York City paediatrician Mitchell Rubin has responded to numerous such crises over the past 25 years. He explores reactions on all sides of this peculiar physician–victim relationship, his growing concerns and fears, and possible reasons why many doctors hesitate to act. His thoughts and experiences instigate the discussion about the need for a universal system of Good Samaritan physician respondersWhile flying to Italy (...) last spring, the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “Is there a doctor on board”? How many times have I heard this request in the last 25 years? A passenger had fainted. As I began caring for her, the pilot asked me, “Should we take the plane down?”. Surprised to be given this responsibility, I took my best guess and answered “no”. After a stressful landing, while I gave oxygen to the prostrate woman, we were met by an ambulance on the tarmac. The woman was appreciative and gracious, the pilot scarcely offered thanks, and I began my vacation exhausted.Having been trained as a paediatrician, I have responded to nearly two dozen “Good Samaritan” scenarios, where a person was injured or became critically sick in a public setting. Perhaps I have had more than my fair share, but I wonder if this is an important and mounting phenomenon. With America growing older and more and more people with serious, chronic illnesses remaining active in the community, we should not be surprised to see increasing numbers of out-of-hospital emergencies. And, as this becomes more commonplace, I become less and less certain of the role I—and other physicians like me—should have.When I was young, cocky and fearless, the call to meet an emergency was exciting. Shortly after training, an …. (shrink)

Humans have become increasingly datafied with the use of digital technologies that generate information with and about their bodies and everyday lives. The onto-epistemological dimensions of human–data assemblages and their relationship to bodies and selves have yet to be thoroughly theorised. In this essay, I draw on key perspectives espoused in feminist materialism, vital materialism and the anthropology of material culture to examine the ways in which these assemblages operate as part of knowing, perceiving and sensing human bodies. I draw (...) particularly on scholarship that employs organic metaphors and concepts of vitality, growth, making, articulation, composition and decomposition. I show how these metaphors and concepts relate to and build on each other, and how they can be applied to think through humans’ encounters with their digital data. I argue that these theoretical perspectives work to highlight the material and embodied dimensions of human–data assemblages as they grow and are enacted, articulated and incorporated into everyday lives. (shrink)

Semantic Scholar extracted view of "Environmental Policy and Environmental Thought: Commoner and Ruckelshaus" by Charles T. Rubin.

The ArgumentThis paper sets out a framework for understanding how the scientific community constructs computer simulation as an epistemically and pragmatically useful methodology. The framework is based on comparisons between simulation and the loosely-defined categories of “theoretical work” and “experimental work.” Within that framework, the epistemological adequacy of simulation arises from its role as a mathematical manipulation of a complex, abstract theoretical model. To establish that adequacy demands a detailed “theoretical” grasp of the internal structure of the computer program. Simultaneously, (...) the pragmatic usefulness of simulation arises from its role as a “virtual laboratory.” That role is made possible by black-boxing the internal structure of the program, such that the scientist can interact with the computer in an intuitive, “experimental” manner. Thus simulation is rendered authoritative, opening up encoded theories to a novel, “experimental” type of manipulation. (shrink)

This guide leads readers systematically through the arguments of Mary Shepherd's two books. Chapters 1-4 cover the arguments in the Essay Upon the Relation of Cause and Effect (1824), where Shepherd argues that causal principles can be known by reason to be necessary truths and that causal inferences can be rationally justified. Shepherd's primary target in this work is Hume, but she also addresses the views of Thomas Brown and William Lawrence. Shepherd considered her second book, Essays on the Perception (...) of an External Universe, and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (1827), to be an extension of the earlier project on causation; here she appeals to the causal principles established in the first book to argue that we can know through reason that an external world of continually-existing objects must exist independently of us, as the causes of our sensations. Chapter 5 of this Guide addresses Shepherd's accounts of sensation and reasoning; Chapters 6-9 lead the reader through the arguments of the Essays, as well laying out Shepherd's views on skepticism and Berkeleyan idealism, her accounts of mind and body, her philosophy of religion, and the solutions she offers to two puzzles about vision. (shrink)

Economists and other social scientists in this century have often supported economic arguments by referring to positions taken by philosophers of science. This important new book looks at the reliability of this practice and, in the process, provides economists, social scientists, and historians with the necessary background to discuss methodological matters with authority. Redman first presents an accurate, critical, yet neutral survey of the modern philosophy of science from the Vienna Circle to the present, focusing particularly on logical positivism, sociological (...) explanations of science (Polanyi, Fleck, Kuhn), the Popper family, and the history of science. She then deals with economic methodology in the twentieth century, looking at a wide range of methodological positions, especially those supported by positions from the philosophy of science. She considers the myth of the feasibility of falsification in economics and, within the context of its significance for economics, discusses the interpretation of Kuhn's philosophy of science as consensus and the danger such a view represents to science. Appendices review the history of the is-ought dispute and list economists whose first works deal with methodological topics. Comprehensive, readable, and accessible to those with little background knowledge, Redman's book will appeal to a wide range of social scientists and philosophers of science. (shrink)

Australia has one of the harshest regimes for the processing of asylum seekers, people who have applied for refugee status but are still awaiting an answer. It has received sharp rebuke for its policies from international human rights bodies but continues to exercise its resolve to protect its borders from those seeking protection. One means of doing so is the detention of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. Health care providers who care for asylum seekers in these conditions (...) experience a conflict of “dual loyalty,” whereby their role in preserving and maintaining the health of patients can run counter to their employment in detention facilities. Many psychiatrists who have worked in the detention setting engage in forms of political activism in order to change the process of seeking refuge. (shrink)

This commentary is an attempt to begin to identify and think through some of the ways in which sociocultural theory may contribute to understandings of the relationship between humans and digital data. I develop an argument that rests largely on the work of two scholars in the field of science and technology studies: Donna Haraway and Annemarie Mol. Both authors emphasised materiality and multiple ontologies in their writing. I argue that these concepts have much to offer critical data studies. I (...) employ the tropes of companion species, drawn from Haraway, and eating data, from Mol, and demonstrate how these may be employed to theorise digital data–human assemblages. (shrink)