Ethically challenging situations routinely arise in the course of illness and healthcare. However, very few studies have surveyed patients and family members about their experiences with ethically challenging situations. To address this gap in the literature, we surveyed patients and family members at three hospitals. We conducted a content analysis of their responses to open-ended questions about their most memorable experience with an ethical concern for them or their family member. Participants described 219 unique ethical experiences that spanned many of (...) the prevailing themes of bioethics, including the patient-physician relationship, end-of-life care, decision-making capacity, healthcare costs, and genetic testing. Participants focused on relational issues in the course of experiencing illness and receiving medical care and concerns regarding the patient-physician encounters. Many concerns arose outside of a healthcare setting. These data indicate areas for improvement for healthcare providers but some concerns may be better addressed outside of the traditional healthcare setting. (shrink)

In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at (...) various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together. (shrink)

This study proposes two identification cuing factors (i. e., CSR associations and CSR participation) to understand how corporate social responsibility (CSR) relates to employees' identification with their firm.The results reveal that a firm's CSR initiatives increase employee-company identification (E-C identification).E-C identification, in turn, influences employees' commitment to their company. However, CSR associations do not directly influence employees' identification with a firm, but rather influence their identification through perceived external prestige (PEP). Compared to CSR associations, CSR participation has a direct influence (...) on E-C identification. On the basis of these findings, it is argued that CSR performance can be an effective way for companies to maintain a positive relationship with their employees. (shrink)

This study proposes two identification cuing factors to understand how corporate social responsibility relates to employees’ identification with their firm. The results reveal that a firm’s CSR initiatives increase employee–company identification. E–C identification, in turn, influences employees’ commitment to their company. However, CSR associations do not directly influence employees’ identification with a firm, but rather influence their identification through perceived external prestige. Compared to CSR associations, CSR participation has a direct influence on E–C identification. On the basis of these findings, (...) it is argued that CSR performance can be an effective way for companies to maintain a positive relationship with their employees. (shrink)

Although some regulatory frameworks for the occupational health and safety of nanotechnology workers have been developed, worker safety and health issues in these laboratory environments have received less attention than many other areas of nanotechnology regulation. In addition, workers in nanotechnology labs are likely to face unknown risks and hazards because few of the guidelines and rules for worker safety are mandatory. In this article, we provide an overview of the current health and safety guidelines for nanotechnology laboratory workers by (...) exploring guidelines from different organizations, including the Department of Energy Nanoscale Science Research Centers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Texas A&M University, and University of Massachusetts-Lowell. After discussing these current guidelines, we apply an ethical framework to each set of guidelines to explore any gaps that might exist in them. By conducting this gap analysis, we are able to highlight some of the weaknesses that might be important for future policy development in this area. We conclude by outlining how future guidelines might address some of these gaps, specifically the issue of workers’ participation in the process of establishing safety measures and the development and enforcement of more unified guidelines. (shrink)

In his philosophy of nothingness, Kitarō Nishida illuminates the matrix of transformation of the world "from the Created to the Creating" (tsukuru mono kara tsukurareta mono e) through shintai, or the body. In this matrix, shintai enters into the stage of an action-sensation continuum and emerges as the immaculate iconic tool of nothingness to create new figures as extended self. This idea of shintai has resonance with the development of postwar art in Japan. The "Space of Transparency" put forth by (...) Ufan Lee, the leader of Monoha, is the principal example. This essay investigates Nishida's notion of shintai and its influence on Lee's theory of art. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 51, Issue 5, Page 18-29, September‐October 2021.

This article explores the gendered construction of South Korean citizenship through the lens of North Korean settlers' experiences in South Korea. Drawing on ethnographic research, the author delves into the citizen-making process, critically examining the impact of gendered modernizing projects on North Korean settlers' daily lives. North Korean settlers are expected to get rid of their ethnic markers and transform themselves into modern citizen-subjects of South Korea. The author demonstrates that the overall frame of perception of North Korean settlers is (...) deeply gendered, with modernity as a powerful ethnic marker. The notion of ethnicized citizenship in the context of two Koreas offers a concrete account of how ethnicities are created and employed in stratified structure of citizenship. (shrink)

In their proof-of-concept, Meier and colleagues describe the purpose and programming decisions underpinning Medical Ethics Advisor, an automated decision support system used t...

This study examines the challenges of humanism and education in the 21st century as addressed by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk in his Elmau Speech (1999). In this lecture, titled _Rules for the Human Zoo_, Sloterdijk argues that the traditional notion of humanism, specifically “humanism as a literary society,” has reached its conclusion, necessitating the development of a new humanism appropriate for the contemporary era. However, the new concept of humanism emerging from what Sloterdijk terms the “anthropotechnic turn” appears to (...) align with the discourses surrounding human enhancement that have emerged in the 21st century, thereby influencing the realm of education. The first half of this article reports on the significant concerns and criticisms expressed by the media at that time regarding this new humanism, which seems to be associated with eugenicist ideas. Taking a step further, this study critically examines the nature of the challenges around education implied by Sloterdijk, specifically the conflict between “friend of humans and friend of Übermensch”, and explores the potential roles and responsibilities of education in the latter part of the paper. (shrink)

Theories of citizenship have largely focused on the provision of rights by law and policy measures, as if rights are universally beneficial and cost-free and the invitations of rights will be accepted once offered. I challenge this assumption and highlight the need to empirically address how people negotiate with the benefit and cost of claiming rights. Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article delves into the everyday lives of migrant women in two feminized sectors of migration—cross-border marriage and (...) sexual commerce—to situate the act of claiming rights in relation to the gendered pursuit of moral respect. I show that feminist groups in South Korea relied on the discourse of victimization and trafficking in pressuring the South Korean state to account for the human rights of migrant wives and migrant hostesses, while reinforcing the moral hierarchy that renders problematic migrant women’s work and intimate relationships. I argue that the distinctive material and moral costs that accompanied human rights–based provisions compelled migrant wives and hostesses to pursue divergent paths in seeking alternate bases to citizenship that would support their inclusion as moral equals. (shrink)

Four Daoist texts illustrate the dynamic image of the Daoist immortal world on which a Daoist environmental ethics can be built. The first text is the Daodejing with two of the oldest commentaries. The second is Tao Hongjing’s Diagram of Rank and Functions of True Spirits. The third is the collection of poems by Immortal Changchun, titled Panxiji. The fourth is the Morning and Evening Liturgical Prayer Book of the Quanzhen Order, which represents Daoist ecological concerns for the natural world. (...) Daoism not only accords with the impetus and spirit of environmental ethics but can also make a concrete contribution to its implementation. (shrink)

A growing literature looks at how the design of the electoral system shapes the voting behavior of politicians in parliaments. Existing research tends to confirm that in mixed-member systems the politicians elected in the single-member districts are more likely to vote against their parties than the politicians elected on the party lists. However, we find that in South Korea, the members of the Korean National Assembly who were elected on PR lists are more likely to vote against their party leadership (...) than the members elected in single-member districts (SMDs). This counterintuitive behavior stems from the particular structure of candidate selection and politicians' career paths. This suggests that any theory of how electoral systems shape individual parliamentary behavior needs to look beyond the opportunities provided by the electoral rules for voters to reward or punish individual politicians (as opposed to parties), to the structure of candidate selection inside parties and the related career paths of politicians. (shrink)

Combining the conceptual approach of racial formation and racial projects with the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, Jeong-eun Rhee theorizes the “neoliberal racial project” (NRP) and examines contemporary meanings and operations of race and racism in relation to neoliberalism. She analyzes Amy Chua's popular parenting memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, as a specific case of the NRP, and demonstrates how in this text race is pressed to work in new — neoliberal — ways, re/generating different kinds of categories (...) and meanings, yet also continuously drawing upon old categories and meanings, to effect and rationalize social arrangements of power and exploitation, violence and expropriation. What is noteworthy is the way in which racial neoliberalism builds silently on the structural conditions of racism while disabling the very categories of their recognizability. Consequently, Rhee argues for new, historically bounded theories that can articulate how the meanings, categories, and concepts of races are constantly being reconfigured. (shrink)

In the Choui, the way of worldly change is presented with symbols of Yin and Yang, but the actual situations are discussed with the phase of Gue Hyo (卦爻). And, the operation to determine the phase of Gue Hyo is made by the number. So, the phase number of Gue Hyo and the way order always go along. When we call theoperation that reveals the future world with the specific phase of Gue Hyo as the Jeom (Prediction) of Choui, the (...) Jeom is operated with the number. At this time, the operation method of the number is called Seobeop. In this paper, by examining the Seobeop in the book of Hongbeomhwangeuk (洪範皇極) along with that in Choui, the numerological research will be carried out about the coincidence and difference between the Samjaeron (Three element theory) in theCheonbugeong and the Yin-Yang theory of Choui in the Seobeop. (shrink)

BackgroundResearchers worry that patients in early-phase research experience unrealistic optimism about benefits and risks of participation. The standard measure of unrealistic optimism is the Comparative Risk/Benefit Assessment questionnaire, which asks people to estimate their chances of an outcome relative to others in similar situations. Such a comparative framework may not be a natural way for research participants to think about their chances.ObjectiveTo examine how people interpret questions measuring unrealistic optimism and how their interpretations are associated with their responses.MethodsUsing an early-phase (...) cancer trial vignette, we administered the CRBA to 297 adults from the general public. They estimated their comparative chances of risk and benefit, then provided rationales for their estimates.ResultsFor both CRBA benefit and risk questions, about 50% of respondents chose 0, and 50% chose a non-0 response. Respondents’ rationales for their estimates showed that overall only about 40%–44% gave comparative rationales, indicating that they interpreted the CRBA as intended. 68.7% of respondents who gave the ‘correct’ 0 rating gave comparative rationales, whereas only 11.6% of respondents who gave non-0 ratings did so. A similar trend was seen for chances of risk.ConclusionResearch participants may not understand comparative benefit and risk questions as intended; attributions of unrealistic optimism may require additional evidence that the respondents’ estimates are intended to be comparative. (shrink)

This paper examines the adoption of ISO 14001, which is known as the most famous voluntary environmental program. The data of this paper pertain to Korean [Throughout this paper, Korea refers to the Republic of Korea ] firms in manufacturing industries from 1996 to 2011. Event-history modeling to examine firms’ adoption of ISO 14001 finds that both resource-based factors and institutional factors have influenced the diffusion of ISO 14001 in Korea. By exploring time-related effects, I also find that while resource-based (...) factors are important in the early periods of the diffusion, institutional factors become important in the later periods of the diffusion. This confirms the findings of previous studies that a firm’s motivation to adopt organizational policies varies according to different diffusion periods. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of what this study tells us about the institutional context of ISO 14001 in Korea and Asia more broadly. (shrink)

This study investigates the educational thought of Confucius with focus on the educational relationship in the Analects, which is a historical text that defines the foundations of Confucianism. The first part of the investigation examines Confucius’ concept of the educational relationship and how it is characterized with a dialogical spirit, which consists of worldly and secular human-orientedness, co-existentiality as a fundamental principle for educational practice, and dialogue to become an ideal ruler through self-discipline. The second stage of this study further (...) examines the spirit of dialogue in the Analects with consideration of its historical–cultural context. Through this process, the study unravels the historical and cultural limitations of original Confucian educational thought for modern society and proposes a possible way to reengage Confucius’ educational value in today’s modern educational context. (shrink)

Increasingly, national governments across the globe are prioritizing investments in neuroscience. Currently, seven active or in-development national-level brain research initiatives exist, spanning four continents. Engaging with the underlying values and ethical concerns that drive brain research across cultural and continental divides is critical to future research. Culture influences what kinds of science are supported and where science can be conducted through ethical frameworks and evaluations of risk. Neuroscientists and philosophers alike have found themselves together encountering perennial questions; these questions are (...) engaged by the field of neuroethics, related to the nature of understanding the self and identity, the existence and meaning of free will, defining the role of reason in human behavior, and more. With this Perspective article, we aim to prioritize and advance to the foreground a list of neuroethics questions for neuroscientists operating in the context of these international brain initiatives. (shrink)

This paper is an interpretation of the thought of the twentieth century Korean religious thinker, Yoo Yŏng-mo (柳永模, 1890-1981), a pioneer figure who sought to re-conceptualise a Christian understanding of the Ultimate Reality in the light of a positive openness to the plurality of Korean religions. Yoo Yŏng-mo considered that it was possible to present an overall picture of harmony and complementarity between the three traditions of Korea and Christianity, and this is endorsed by the present thesis. This essay is (...) aimed at providing a religious rationale for inter-faith dialogue. Using the principles of ‘Change’ (易, i) and ‘Yin-ying’ (陰陽)dominated in Chinese Classics and East Asian way of thinking, this paper lays out a methodology for envisaging harmony and mutual complementarity between traditions. The effect of some central concepts from within Confucian, Buddhist and Taioist tradition on the Christian thought of Yoo Yŏng-mo is then analysed and examined.In this respect, this paper argues that the Ultimate Reality based on the principle of harmony and mutual complementarity is not only both personal andimpersonal as well as both transcendent and imminent, but also neither personal nor impersonal as well as neither transcendent nor imminent. Essentially, therefore, this essay accepts that Yoo Yŏng-mo’s equating of the Christian idea of God with the ‘Great Ultimate’ (太極) in Confucianism, with ‘Nothingness’ (無) in Buddhism and with the ‘One’ or Tao (道) in the thought of Lao-Chuang (老莊思想) of Taoism is a legitimate equivalence to make and that this does indeed pave the way for a potentially fruitful dialogue between Korea’s main religions. The drawing together of the Great Ultimate, Absolute Nothingness, the One Absolute from the Tao and the traditional personal God of Christianity gives the discussion an entirely new direction which has become a challenge for traditional orthodoxChristian theology and also for a pluralistic religious society. (shrink)

This paper is an interpretation of the thought of the twentieth century Korean religious thinker, Yoo Yŏng-mo (柳永模, 1890-1981), a pioneer figure who sought to re-conceptualise a Christian understanding of the Ultimate Reality in the light of a positive openness to the plurality of Korean religions. Yoo Yŏng-mo considered that it was possible to present an overall picture of harmony and complementarity between the three traditions of Korea and Christianity, and this is endorsed by the present thesis. This essay is (...) aimed at providing a religious rationale for inter-faith dialogue. Using the principles of ‘Change’ (易, i) and ‘Yin-ying’ (陰陽)dominated in Chinese Classics and East Asian way of thinking, this paper lays out a methodology for envisaging harmony and mutual complementarity between traditions. The effect of some central concepts from within Confucian, Buddhist and Taioist tradition on the Christian thought of Yoo Yŏng-mo is then analysed and examined. In this respect, this paper argues that the Ultimate Reality based on the principle of harmony and mutual complementarity is not only both personal and impersonal as well as both transcendent and imminent, but also neither personal nor impersonal as well as neither transcendent nor imminent. Essentially, therefore, this essay accepts that Yoo Yŏng-mo’s equating of the Christian idea of God with the ‘Great Ultimate’ (太極) in Confucianism, with ‘Nothingness’ (無) in Buddhism and with the ‘One’ or Tao (道) in the thought of Lao-Chuang (老莊思想) of Taoism is a legitimate equivalence to make and that this does indeed pave the way for a potentially fruitful dialogue between Korea’s main religions. The drawing together of the Great Ultimate, Absolute Nothingness, the One Absolute from the Tao and the traditional personal God of Christianity gives the discussion an entirely new direction which has become a challenge for traditional orthodoxChristian theology and also for a pluralistic religious society. (shrink)

Tetsuro Watsuji's Notion of Fudo and Its Cultural Significance -- 'Self-less Openness' and Fudo: Renewed Sustainable Significance of Japanese Vernacular Architecture -- The Ecology of 'We' and Ambient Warmth: Richard Neutra's Ecological Architecture -- Dialectics between the Regional and the Trans-Regional.

This dissertation contextualizes the emergence of the Church of Light by Tadao Ando within the Japanese religio-philosophical tradition of nothingness. The idea of nothingness was revived during the first half of the twentieth-century by Kitaro Nishida with two cultural ramifications in the post-war period: a series of dialogues on the points of convergence and divergence between nothingness and the God of Christianity, and an architectural art movement called Monoha, or l'Ecole de Choses. Under the concept of "structuring emptiness," Monoha attempted (...) to restore perceptual depth where dichotomous semiotic representation is overcome through shintaisei, the co-originating corporeal fabric between the subject and object. This two-fold mapping, theological and architectural, not only illuminates the post-war cultural milieu from which Ando's church of spatial emptiness emerged, but also locates the church within the legacy of Nishida's nothingness. ;Nishida's philosophy of nothingness offers a perceptual theory of the "dialectic of self-negation" enacted by shintai, "the actively knowing body." Shintai is the agent of emptying selfhood by functioning as 'the sensational capacity to be filled by' the world. Shintai concretizes the perceptual matrix of co-emergence between the interiority of selfhood and the outside world. When its sensational capacity overflows, shintai enters into the realm of creative action to accommodate the surplus. The figure thus created is not a sign embodying subjective intentions, but constitutes the corporelly-inscribed, pre-reflective experiential datum of the world. Nishida called such a figure "the pure body of the artist," implying its apprehension not as the other in unknowable confrontation, but as the extended self. ;The dissertation examines how this notion of self-renunciatory perception through shintai opens a new hermeneutic horizon for the Church of Light. The church presents an unprecedented conjunction between emptiness, based on the reductive removal of signs, and the cross of light. This seemingly contradictory integration confronts the modern degradation of the cross into an atrophied sign of Christianity and seeks to retrieve its fully efficacious symbolic power. The emptiness contributes to the revival of a deeper communicative mode as shintai by negating the habituated perception pivoted upon the dichotomy between the deciphering subject and the semiotic elements. The perception of light, a natural thing rather than a sign, which infiltrates the cross, is a preliminary ritual to save the perception from the paradigm of the semiotic representation. Shintai, the self-emptying corporeality, resonates with and becomes penetrated by, rather than subjectivizes, the light. On this restored perceptual depth, the cross is perceived not as a sign, but as a part of the pre-reflective, ontological datum constructed and apprehended by shintai. This perceptual experience endorses the associational similarity between the pre-Christian datum predicated upon shintai as the agent of the self-renunciatory subjectivity and Christianity with its theology of the self-transcending love of kenosis. (shrink)

: In his philosophy of nothingness, Kitar Nishida illuminates the matrix of transformation of the world ‘‘from the Created to the Creating’’ (tsukuru mono kara tsukurareta mono e) through shintai, or the body. In this matrix, shintai enters into the stage of an action-sensation continuum and emerges as the immaculate iconic tool of nothingness to create new figures as extended self. This idea of shintai has resonance with the development of postwar art in Japan. The ‘‘Space of Transparency’’ put forth (...) by Ufan Lee, the leader of Monoha, is the principal example. This essay investigates Nishida’s notion of shintai and its influence on Lee’s theory of art. (shrink)

The positive reception of Buber’s philosophy does not fully match Buber’s intention in terms of overcoming the problem of the subject–object binary. In other words, a number of authors have remained within the traditional way of thinking by merely replacing the subject and object with Buber’s I and You, establishing a more dogmatic normative subjectivity, paradoxically going against Buber’s intent and even seemingly not noticing this problem. In this article, we will investigate the reasons for these paradoxical readings of Buber. (...) By focusing on the structure and significance of Buber’s ontology of between-humane, we will study the concept of I–You and I–It, suggesting that these are not intentionality-oriented concepts, but a radically relationship-centered one. The theoretical problem caused by Buber himself in the process of adaptation of his dialog-philosophy to his dialog-pedagogy, namely the impossibility of complete mutuality in the educational relationship will be critically examined, based on Buber’s own declaration in his “Afterword” (1957) in I and Thou (1923). With this, we will reflect on the problematic situation of post-Buberian literature in contemporary pedagogy to pave a way to modernize Buber’s dialog-pedagogy. (shrink)