Augmentative and alternative communication brain-computer interface systems are intended to offer communication access to people with severe speech and physical impairment without requiring volitional movement. As the field moves toward clinical implementation of AAC-BCI systems, research involving participants with SSPI is essential. Research has demonstrated variability in AAC-BCI system performance across users, and mixed results for comparisons of performance for users with and without disabilities. The aims of this systematic review were to describe study, system, and participant characteristics reported in (...) BCI research, summarize the communication task performance of participants with disabilities using AAC-BCI systems, and explore any differences in performance for participants with and without disabilities. Electronic databases were searched in May, 2018, and March, 2021, identifying 6065 records, of which 73 met inclusion criteria. Non-experimental study designs were common and sample sizes were typically small, with approximately half of studies involving five or fewer participants with disabilities. There was considerable variability in participant characteristics, and in how those characteristics were reported. Over 60% of studies reported an average selection accuracy ≤70% for participants with disabilities in at least one tested condition. However, some studies excluded participants who did not reach a specific system performance criterion, and others did not state whether any participants were excluded based on performance. Twenty-nine studies included participants both with and without disabilities, but few reported statistical analyses comparing performance between the two groups. Results suggest that AAC-BCI systems show promise for supporting communication for people with SSPI, but they remain ineffective for some individuals. The lack of standards in reporting outcome measures makes it difficult to synthesize data across studies. Further research is needed to demonstrate efficacy of AAC-BCI systems for people who experience SSPI of varying etiologies and severity levels, and these individuals should be included in system design and testing. Consensus in terminology and consistent participant, protocol, and performance description will facilitate the exploration of user and system characteristics that positively or negatively affect AAC-BCI use, and support innovations that will make this technology more useful to a broader group of people.Clinical trial registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42018095345, PROSPERO: CRD42018095345. (shrink)

Selections seeks to provide an accurate and readable translation that will allow the reader to follow Aristotle's use of crucial technical terms and to grasp the details of his argument. Unlike anthologies that combine translations by many hands, this volume includes a fully integrated set of translations by a two-person team. The glossary--the most detailed in any edition--explains Aristotle's vocabulary and indicates the correspondences between Greek and English words. Brief notes supply alternative translations and elucidate difficult passages.

I distinguish between two senses in which feminists have argued that the knower is social: 1. situated or socially positioned and 2. interdependent. I argue that these two aspects of the knower work in cooperation with each other in a way that can produce willful hermeneutical ignorance, a type of epistemic injustice absent from Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice. Analyzing the limitations of Fricker's analysis of the trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with attention to the (...) way in which situatedness and interdependence work in tandem, I develop an understanding of willful hermeneutical ignorance, which occurs when dominantly situated knowers refuse to acknowledge epistemic tools developed from the experienced world of those situated marginally. Such refusals allow dominantly situated knowers to misunderstand, misinterpret, and/or ignore whole parts of the world. (shrink)

The literature on epistemic injustice has been helpful for highlighting some of the epistemic harms that have long troubled those working in area studies that concern oppressed populations. Nonetheless, a good deal of this literature is oriented toward those in a position to perpetrate injustices, rather than those who historically have been harmed by them. This orientation, I argue, is ill-suited to the work of epistemic decolonization. In this essay, I call and hold attention to the epistemic interests of those (...) who are epistemically marginalized on account of relations of dominance and oppression. To do so, I draw on Kristie Dotson’s work, which uses a systems approach focused on epistemic agency. I develop Dotson’s insights further to argue that epistemic inclusions may be just as pernicious as epistemic exclusions Specifically, I highlight some of the ways in which epistemic agents can be included in epistemic systems in a manner that is epistemically exploitative—extracting epistemic labor coercively or in ways that are distinctly non-reciprocal. I then turn to María Lugones’ distinction between horizontal and vertical practices to discuss avenues of resisting both exclusions and inclusions that thwart the epistemic agency of marginalized knowers. (shrink)

After Enlightenment: Hamann as Post-Secular Visionary is a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of eighteenth-century German philosopher, J. G. Hamann, the founding father of what has come to be known as Radical Orthodoxy. Provides a long-overdue, comprehensive introduction to Haman's fascinating life and controversial works, including his role as a friend and critic of Kant and some of the most renowned German intellectuals of the age Features substantial new translations of the most important passages from across Hamann's writings, (...) some of which have never been translated into English Examines Hamann's highly original views on a range of topics, including faith, reason, revelation, Christianity, biblical exegesis, Socrates, theological aesthetics, language, sexuality, religion, politics, and the relationship between Judaism and Christianity Presents Hamann as the 'founding father' of a distinctly post-modern, post-secular theology and, as such, as an alternative to the 'postmodern triumvirate' of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida Considers Hamann's work as a touchtone of modern Jewish-Christian dialogue, in view of debates with his friend Moses Mendelssohn Explores Hamann's role as the visionary founder of a 'metacritical' movement that radically calls into question the basic principles of modern secular reason, and thus reprises the debate between those defending Hamann's views and those labeling him the bête noir of the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Plato on Knowledge and Forms brings together a set of connected essays by Gail Fine, in her main area of research since the late 1970s: Plato's metaphysics and epistemology. She discusses central issues in Plato's metaphysics and epistemology, issues concerning the nature and extent of knowledge, and its relation to perception, sensibles, and forms; and issues concerning the nature of forms, such as whether they are universals or particulars, separate or immanent, and whether they are causes. A specially written (...) introduction draws together the themes of the volume, which will reward the attention of anyone interested in Plato or in ancient metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann is a comprehensive introduction to the life and works of 18th-century German philosopher, J. G. ...

Im Herbst des Jahres 20– breiten sich Gerüchte aus, dass am Genfer Kernforschungszentrum CERN, den gegenteiligen Versicherungen führender Teilchenphysiker zum Trotz, stabile schwarze Löcher erzeugt wurden. Daraufhin kommt es vielerorts zu Plünderungen. Auch vermelden zahlreiche Firmen und öffentliche Arbeitgeber, dass ein erheblicher Anteil der Belegschaft nicht am Arbeitsplatz erschienen ist. Rund um den Globus fragen sich Menschen ob der Hiobsbotschaften aus Genf: Steht nun der Weltuntergang tatsächlich kurz bevor? In der Sendung „Kontrovers“ im Deutschlandfunk diskutieren ein Teilchenphysiker, eine Juristin, ein (...) Wissenschaftsjournalist und ein Philosoph diese Ereignisse. Wir freuen uns, hier einen Mitschnitt der Sendung vorab veröffentlichen zu können. (shrink)

This article explores the development of a novel biomedical research organism, and its potential to remake the species and spaces of translational medicine. The humanized mouse is a complex experimental object in which mice, rendered immunodeficient through genetic alteration, are engrafted with human stem cells in the hope of reconstituting a human immune system for biomedical research and drug testing. These chimeric organisms have yet to garner the same commentary from social scientists as other human–animal hybrid forms. Yet, they are (...) rapidly being positioned as central to translational medicine in immunological research and pharmaceutical development. This article explores the complex relations between species and spaces they seek to enact. Humanizing mice simultaneously moves these animal forms towards the intimate geographies of corporeal equivalence with humans and the expansive geographies of translational research. These multiple trajectories are achieved by the way humanized mice function as both uncertain ‘epistemic things’ and as expansive ‘collaborative things’, articulating mouse genetics with other research, notably stem cell science. In the context of post-genomics, their indeterminacy is critical to their collaborative value; their expansive potential follows as much from their biological openness as from specific expectations. Yet, these new research organisms have both accumulative and disruptive capacities, for there are patterns of interference between these trajectories, remaking boundaries between experimental practices and clinical contexts. (shrink)

This paper is a counter to the view that names are always predicates with the same extension as a metalinguistic predicate with the form “is a thing called “N”” (the Predicate View). The Predicate View is in opposition to the Referential View of names. In this paper, I undermine one argument for the Predicate View. The Predicate View’s adherents take examples of uses of names that have the surface appearance of a predicate and generalise from these to treat uses of (...) names that do not have the surface appearance of a predicate. They show that the Predicate View can provide a unified account of these two uses and assume that the Referential account cannot. I propose an alternative view of names, the Polysemy View. This view allows one to resist the pressure to generalise from the cases with the surface appearance of predicates to all uses of names while nevertheless providing connections between the uses. On the Polysemy View names are not, in their core use, metalinguistic predicates. Names are predominantly referring expressions but they also freelance as metalinguistic predicates on occasion. They have a double life. This double life is possible because of the pragmatic and conventional connections between the two aspects of that life. My main aim in this paper is to show that the Predicate View is not the only view that can give a good account of apparently predicative uses of names. In addition, I offer some inconclusive reasons to prefer the Polysemy View over the Predicate View. My paper assumes a background framework that the Predicate and Referentialist Views share and I do not attempt to justify that framework. I ignore many other views of names (notably descriptivist views and relevance theoretic views) in order to focus on the debate between these two opponents. (shrink)

Antinomies of war -- The context of contemporary war -- War without chance : something better than war -- Overestimate yourself, underestimate your enemy, never know victory -- War without passion : something other than war -- Theatre of war -- Strategic narrative and strategic incoherence -- War without reason : something just short of war -- The new age of anxiety.

This paper is about “othering” in cyberspace. The roots of othering of non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia are seen in the perception of umma as special and superior, therefore automatically categorising “non-believers” as “other”. The in-group and out-group demarcation strategies and consequent marginalisation are considered from both perspectives as bilateral and mutually exclusive. The focus is placed on othering e-space, where marginalised voices can be heard via virtual communication. The effects of virtual reality on real life interaction and resulting involvement in (...) controversial and taboo topics are also discussed. Additionally, some cases of demarginalisation or “de-othering” are described in terms of cyber-verbal expression and exchange of opinions. (shrink)

The IMF, World Bank, and former colonial powers have put pressure on African countries to adopt multiparty democracy. Because of this pressure, many formerly one‐party states as well as some military dictatorships have embraced Western and Parliamentarian democratic forms. But does this mean that democracy has succeeded in Africa? Ernest Wamba‐dia‐Wamba of the University of Dar‐es‐Saalam and CODESRIA argues that embracing Western paradigms in an unthinking fashion will not bring real democracy, i.e. people's liberation. He advances criticisms of party politics (...) and statism, and suggests that African palaver and people's movements are a surer site of political action. In his criticisms of representative government he parallels the thoughts and criticism of Hannah Arendt. Arendt advocated a council system that shares many of the attributes of African palaver communities. By consulting the criticisms of Arendt and Wamba‐dia‐Wamba, we can see that an easy optimism about the multiparty system is unfounded. (shrink)

This paper uses the figure of the inbred laboratory mouse to reflect upon the management and mobilization of biological difference in the contemporary biosciences. Working through the concept of shifting experimental systems, the paper seeks to connect practices concerned with standardization and control in contemporary research with the emergent and stochastic qualities of biological life. Specifically, it reviews the importance of historical narratives of standardization in experimental systems based around model organisms, before identifying a tension in contemporary accounts of the (...) reproduction and differentiation of inbred mouse strains within them. Firstly, narratives of new strain development, foregrounding personal biography and chance discovery, attest to the contingency and situatedness of apparently universal biotechnological production. Secondly, discoveries of unexpected animal litters challenge efforts to standardize mouse phenotypes and control the reproduction of murine strains over space. The co-existence of these two narratives draws attention to the importance of and interplay between both chance and control, determination and emergence, and the making and moving of experimental life in biomedical research. The reception or denial of such biological excess reflects the distribution of agencies and the emerging spatialities of the global infrastructures of biotechnological development, with implications for future relations between animal lives and human becomings in experimental practices. (shrink)

The article examines the role of ethnic favoritism in maldistribution of national resources in Kenya and discusses two broad proposals for attacking such corruption. Evidence drawn from research in Kenya disproves the view of Chabal and Daloz, who argue that Africans prefer to distribute goods according to ethnic ties, and shows that frustration with the lack of alternatives to such a system, rather than enthusiasm for it, drives cooperation with corrupt maldistribution. One solution to the problem is to decentralize government (...) so that resources are retained locally. A second solution is to attack the culture of appropriation and push for a fair evaluation of needs and the equitable distribution of national resources to where they are needed most. Drawing on the ideas of Hannah Arendt, the article proposes a modified federalism where government is small enough to enlist the help and support of locals but powerful enough to provide funds to impoverished sectors of the country. (shrink)

This editorial critically engages with the understanding of openness by attending to how notions of presence and absence come bundled together as part of efforts to make open. This is particularly evident in contemporary discourse around data production, dissemination, and use. We highlight how the preoccupations with making data present can be usefully analyzed and understood by tracing the related concerns around what is missing, unavailable, or invisible, which unvaryingly but often implicitly accompany debates about data and openness.

This paper is intended to stimulate debate amongst stakeholders in the international research community on the topic of returning individual genetic research results to study participants. Pharmacogenetics and disease genetics studies are becoming increasingly prevalent, leading to a growing body of information on genetic associations for drug responsiveness and disease susceptibility with the potential to improve health care. Much of these data are presently characterized as exploratory (non‐validated or hypothesis‐generating). There is, however, a trend for research participants to be permitted (...) access to their personal data if they so choose. Researchers, sponsors, patient advocacy groups, ethics committees and regulatory authorities are consequently confronting the issue of whether, and how, study participants might receive their individual results. Noted international ethico‐legal guidelines and public policy positions in Europe and the United States are reviewed for background. The authors offer ‘Points‐to‐Consider’ regarding returning research results in the context of drug development trials based on their knowledge and experience. These considerations include: the clinical relevance of data, laboratory qualifications, informed consent procedures, confidentiality of medical information and the competency of persons providing results to participants. The discussion is framed as a benefit‐to‐risk assessment to balance the potential positive versus negative consequences to participants, while maintaining the integrity and feasibility of conducting genetic research studies. (shrink)

This book opens the door to the effects of intellectual, educational, and economic colonization of young children throughout the world. Using a postcolonial lens on current educational practices, the authors hope to lift those practices out of reproducing traditional power structures and push our thinking beyond the adult/child dichotomy into new possibilities for the lives that are created with children.

The ideal of value free science states that the justification of scientific findings should not be based on non-epistemic (e.g. moral or political) values. It has been criticized on the grounds that scientists have to employ moral judgements in managing inductive risks. The paper seeks to defuse this methodological critique. Allegedly value-laden decisions can be systematically avoided, it argues, by making uncertainties explicit and articulating findings carefully. Such careful uncertainty articulation, understood as a methodological strategy, is exemplified by the current (...) practice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (shrink)

Representing a new generation of theorists reaffirming the radical dimensions of art, Gail Day launches a bold critique of late twentieth-century art theory and its often reductive analysis of cultural objects. Exploring core debates in discourses on art, from the New Left to theories of "critical postmodernism" and beyond, Day counters the belief that recent tendencies in art fail to be adequately critical. She also challenges the political inertia that results from these conclusions. Day organizes her defense around critics (...) who have engaged substantively with emancipatory thought and social process: T. J. Clark, Manfredo Tafuri, Fredric Jameson, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, and Hal Foster, among others. She maps the tension between radical dialectics and left nihilism and assesses the interpretation and internalization of negation in art theory. Chapters confront the claim that exchange and equivalence have subsumed the use value of cultural objects—and with it critical distance— and interrogate the proposition of completed nihilism and the metropolis put forward in the politics of Italian operaismo. Day covers the debates on symbol and allegory waged within the context of 1980s art and their relation to the writings of Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man. She also examines common conceptions of mediation, totality, negation, and the politics of anticipation. A necessary unsettling of received wisdoms, _Dialectical Passions_ recasts emancipatory reflection in aesthetics, art, and architecture. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is intended to stimulate debate amongst stakeholders in the international research community on the topic of returning individual genetic research results to study participants. Pharmacogenetics and disease genetics studies are becoming increasingly prevalent, leading to a growing body of information on genetic associations for drug responsiveness and disease susceptibility with the potential to improve health care. Much of these data are presently characterized as exploratory (non‐validated or hypothesis‐generating). There is, however, a trend for research participants to be (...) permitted access to their personal data if they so choose. Researchers, sponsors, patient advocacy groups, ethics committees and regulatory authorities are consequently confronting the issue of whether, and how, study participants might receive their individual results. Noted international ethico‐legal guidelines and public policy positions in Europe and the United States are reviewed for background. The authors offer ‘Points‐to‐Consider’ regarding returning research results in the context of drug development trials based on their knowledge and experience. These considerations include: the clinical relevance of data, laboratory qualifications, informed consent procedures, confidentiality of medical information and the competency of persons providing results to participants. The discussion is framed as a benefit‐to‐risk assessment to balance the potential positive versus negative consequences to participants, while maintaining the integrity and feasibility of conducting genetic research studies. (shrink)

Existing metasemantic projects presuppose that word- (or sentence-) types are part of the non-semantic base. We propose a new strategy: an endogenous account of word types, that is, one where word types are fixed as part of the metasemantics. On this view, it is the conventions of truthfulness and trust that ground not only the meaning of the words (meaning by convention) but also what the word type is of each particular token utterance (words by convention). The same treatment extends (...) to identifying the populations through which the conventions prevail. We consider whether this proposal leads to new underdetermination challenges for metasemantics, and make a case that it does not. (shrink)

Although Hannah Arendt is not known as an advocate of nonviolence per se, her analysis of power dynamics within and between groups closely parallels Gandhi’s. The paper shows the extent to which her insights are compatible with Gandhi’s and also defends her against charges that her description of the world is overly normative and unrealistic. Both Arendt and Gandhi insist that nonviolence is the paradigm of power in situations where people freely consent to and engage in concerted action, and both (...) argue that power structures based on violence and coercion will ultimately fail, because the resort to violence implies an inability to gain free consent or cooperation. Any gains from violence are temporary, since agents will express themselves freely as soon as force is withdrawn. Arendt argues that dominating powers know this, and therefore rely on manipulation, propaganda, and outright lies to win people’s consent, an analysis which can be used to explain some current social dynamics. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium (RE) is often regarded as a powerful method in ethics, logic, and even philosophy in general. Despite this popularity, characterizations of the method have been fairly vague and unspecific so far. It thus may be doubted whether RE is more than a jumble of appealing but ultimately sketchy ideas that cannot be spelled out consistently. In this paper, we dispel such doubts by devising a formal model of RE. The model contains as components the agent’s commitments and a (...) theory that tries to systematize the commitments. It yields a precise picture of how the commitments and the theory are adjusted to each other. The model differentiates between equilibrium as a target state and the dynamic equilibration process. First solutions to the model, obtained by computer simulation, show that the method allows for consistent specification and that the model’s implications are plausible in view of expectations on RE. In particular, the mutual adjustment of commitments and theory can improve one’s commitments, as proponents of RE have suggested. We argue that our model is fruitful not only because it points to issues that need to be dealt with for a better understanding of RE, but also because it provides the means to address these issues. (shrink)

A co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, its newspaper, and hospitality houses, the writer Dorothy Day promoted public peace nationally and internationally as a journalist, an organizer of public protests, and a builder of associational communities. Drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s conceptions of the role of speech and action in creating the public realm, this paper focuses on several of Day’s most controversial public positions: her leadership of non-cooperation against Civil Defense drills intended to prepare New York City residents to survive (...) a nuclear war; her urging of Catholics to find common cause with the Cuban revolutionary government; and her support for interracial farming communities in the Southern United States. As Arendt asserts about Rahel Varnhagen’s salon in Berlin, by being public meeting spaces hosted in private houses, Catholic Worker communities fostered egalitarian rather than “agonal” politics. Like Gandhi’s newspapers and ashrams as well as “Occupy” communities such as Zuccotti Park, Day’s newspaper was a center for incubating and implementing social reform. The Catholic Worker provided a place where writers could question the official rhetoric of such conflicts as World War II and the Cold War, put forward different interpretations of unfolding events, and chart possible alternatives to establishment agendas. (shrink)

The field of bioethics has evolved over the past half-century, incorporating new domains of inquiry that signal developments in health research, clinical practice, public health in its broadest sense and more recently sensitivity to the interdependence of global health and the environment. These extensions of the reach of bioethics are a welcome response to the growth of global health as a field of vital interest and activity. This paper provides a critical interpretive review of how the term “global health ethics” (...) has been used and defined in the literature to date to identify ethical issues that arise and need to be addressed when deliberating on and working to improve the discourse on ethical issues in health globally. Selected publications were analyzed by year of publication and geographical distribution, journal and field, level of engagement, and ethical framework. Of the literature selected, 151 articles were written by authors in high-income countries, as defined by the World Bank country classifications, 8 articles were written by authors in low- or middle-income countries, and 13 articles were collaborations between authors in HIC and LMIC. All of the articles selected except one from 1977 were published after 1998. Literature on global health ethics spiked considerably from the early 2000s, with the highest number in 2011. One hundred twenty-seven articles identified were published in academic journals, 1 document was an official training document, and 44 were chapters in published books. The dominant journals were the American Journal of Bioethics, Developing World Bioethics, and Bioethics. We coded the articles by level of engagement within the ethical domain at different levels: interpersonal, institutional, international, and structural. The ethical frameworks at use corresponded to four functional categories: those examining practical or narrowly applied ethical questions; those concerned with normative ethics; those examining an issue through a single philosophical tradition; and those comparing and contrasting insights from multiple ethical frameworks. This critical interpretive review is intended to delineate the current contours and revitalize the conversation around the future charge of global health ethics scholarship. (shrink)

The field of bioethics has evolved over the past half-century, incorporating new domains of inquiry that signal developments in health research, clinical practice, public health in its broadest sense and more recently sensitivity to the interdependence of global health and the environment. These extensions of the reach of bioethics are a welcome response to the growth of global health as a field of vital interest and activity. This paper provides a critical interpretive review of how the term “global health ethics” (...) has been used and defined in the literature to date to identify ethical issues that arise and need to be addressed when deliberating on and working to improve the discourse on ethical issues in health globally. Selected publications were analyzed by year of publication and geographical distribution, journal and field, level of engagement, and ethical framework. Of the literature selected, 151 articles were written by authors in high-income countries, as defined by the World Bank country classifications, 8 articles were written by authors in low- or middle-income countries, and 13 articles were collaborations between authors in HIC and LMIC. All of the articles selected except one from 1977 were published after 1998. Literature on global health ethics spiked considerably from the early 2000s, with the highest number in 2011. One hundred twenty-seven articles identified were published in academic journals, 1 document was an official training document, and 44 were chapters in published books. The dominant journals were the American Journal of Bioethics, Developing World Bioethics, and Bioethics. We coded the articles by level of engagement within the ethical domain at different levels: interpersonal, institutional, international, and structural. The ethical frameworks at use corresponded to four functional categories: those examining practical or narrowly applied ethical questions; those concerned with normative ethics; those examining an issue through a single philosophical tradition; and those comparing and contrasting insights from multiple ethical frameworks. This critical interpretive review is intended to delineate the current contours and revitalize the conversation around the future charge of global health ethics scholarship. (shrink)

Disagreement is a hot topic right now in epistemology, where there is spirited debate between epistemologists who argue that we should be moved by the fact that we disagree and those who argue that we need not. Both sides to this debate often use what is commonly called “the method of cases,” designing hypothetical cases involving peer disagreement and using what we think about those cases as evidence that specific normative theories are true or false, and as reasons for believing (...) as such. With so much weight being given in the epistemology of disagreement to what people think about cases of peer disagreement, our goal in this paper is to examine what kinds of things might shape how people think about these kinds of cases. We will show that two different kinds of framing effect shape how people think about cases of peer disagreement, and examine both what this means for how the method of cases is used in the epistemology of disagreement and what this might tell us about the role that motivated cognition is playing in debates about which normative positions about peer disagreement are right and wrong. (shrink)

This paper explores possible connections between gender and the willingness to engage in unethical business behavior. Two approaches to gender and ethics are presented: the structural approach and the socialization approach. Data from a sample of 213 business school students reveal that men are more than two times as likely as women to engage in actions regarded as unethical but it is also important to note that relatively few would engage in any of these actions with the exception of buying (...) stock with inside information. Fifty percent of the males were willing to buy stock with insider information. Overall, the results support the gender socialization approach. (shrink)

Lecturer in social foundations of education and women's studies, Victoria College, Australia.

In Telling Flesh, Vicki Kirby addresses a major theoretical issue at the intersection of the social sciences and feminist theory -- the separation of nature from culture. Kirby focuses particularly on postmodern approaches to corporeality, and explores how these approaches confine the body within questions about meaning and interpretation. Kirby explores the implications of this containment in the work of Jane Gallop, Judith Butler, and Drucilla Cornell, as well as in recent cyber-criticism. By analysing the inadvertent repetition of the nature/culture (...) division in this work, Kirby offers a powerful reassessment of dualism itself. (shrink)

In this qualitative study, the elements and quality of musher-sled dog relationships were investigated. In-depth interviews with a narrative design were conducted with eight mushers from northern Minnesota and northwestern Ontario. The mushers were asked to contribute ideas by sharing stories and experiences of working with dogs, as well as art or photographs. While all the participants had their own ideas about musher-sled dog relationships, six themes emerged. The mushers stated the importance of getting to know the dogs, their respect (...) for their sled dogs’ abilities, the idea of a two-way communication that takes place, the importance of trust, the notion of partnership, and what can be learned through working with sled dogs. This study supports other research suggesting that humans and animals engage in interspecies relationships and that these can be quality relationships with multiple elements. The importance of researching and teaching about dogs as subjects is discussed, as well as the significance of humans having direct experience with other animals. (shrink)