This article proposes that cosmetic minimally-invasive procedures – Botox injections, soft-tissue fillers, microdermabrasion, chemical peels and laser treatments – are an under-researched area and provide a number of promising paths for skin studies research. I argue that cosmetic minimally-invasive procedures collapse the difference between the surfaces of the photograph and the skin – the primary surfaces of cosmetic surgery – more successfully than cosmetic surgical procedures. More precisely, I maintain that the difference between photograph and skin is collapsed in two (...) ways: first, through narrating the transformation of the skin’s surface in a way that more closely matches the photographic promises of the cosmetic surgery industry; and, second, by depicting the surgical penetration of the skin through advertising photography. The article concludes by suggesting that further investigation into cosmetic minimally-invasive procedures could offer a new way to think about relationships between ‘normative’ and ‘non-normative’ skin modification practices. (shrink)

Respect for autonomy is a central value in reproductive ethics, but it can be a challenge to fulfill and is sometimes an outright puzzle to understand. If a woman requests the transfer of two, three, or four embryos during fertility treatment, is that request truly autonomous, and do clinicians disrespect her if they question that decision or refuse to carry it out? Add a commitment to justice to the mix, and the challenge can become more complex still. Is it unfair (...) for insurance policies to exclude from coverage the costs of giving fertility to those who lack it or restoring fertility in those who have lost it? What does “just reproduction” look like in the face of multifarious understandings of both justice and autonomy and in light of increasingly complex and costly reproductive technologies? In today's dialogue about reproduction, medicine, and ethics in the United States, old ethical issues—such as whether women ought to be allowed to access pregnancy termination—are more contested than they have been in decades, while new technologies—like those used to edit the genes of human embryos—suggest that our species could face unprecedented questions about who should exist. As we considered the discussions accompanying these issues and contemplated a special report responding to them, we found ourselves consistently circling back to two ethical commitments: respect for autonomy and the pursuit of justice. As one of the nine essays in this collection asks, why should certain women receive help to establish a pregnancy while others are thrown in jail when they miscarry or their child is stillborn? Respect for autonomy is required where individuals have the ability to make fully informed and voluntary choices. Yet does respecting autonomy require acceding to all the choices of patients or consumers of medical care? We consider these and related questions in this special report from the Hastings Center Report. (shrink)

This article brings together the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and John McMurtry’s theory of value. In this perspective, the ICESCR is construed as a prime example of “civil commons,” while McMurtry’s theory of value is proposed as a tool of interpretation of the covenant. In particular, McMurtry’s theory of value is a hermeneutical device capable of highlighting: (a) what alternative conception of value systemically operates against the fulfilment of the rights enshrined in the (...) ICESCR; (b) the increased relevance of the ICESCR with regard to the current global economic crisis; (c) the parameters to determine the degree to which the rights at issue have been realized. Reflections on environmental implications of both the ICESCR and McMurtry’s axiology conclude the article. (shrink)

In a project The Hastings Center is now running on the future of prenatal testing, we are encountering clear examples, both in established law and in the practices of individual providers, of failures to respect women's reproductive autonomy: when testing is not offered to certain demographics of women, for instance, or when the choices of women to terminate or continue pregnancies are prohibited or otherwise not supported. But this project also raises puzzles for reproductive autonomy. We have learned that some (...) clinicians and patients do not discuss the fact that prenatal testing can lead to a decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy—they just don't talk about it. And while the decision whether to agree to prenatal screening and diagnostic testing is to be made with women's free and informed consent, many screening tests have been routinized in such a way that some women do not even recall agreeing to testing, while others feel that agreeing to testing is what their clinicians expect of them or that the testing is necessary to protect themselves and their families from the significant financial hardship of raising a child with a disability. In the face of these pressures, can one really say that women are freely choosing to undergo testing or are freely choosing to continue or terminate a pregnancy following receipt of test results? The reality of these pressures is requiring us to consider expanding the scope of our investigation beyond the clinical encounter to the broader context—to think harder about what reproductive autonomy means and how best to enhance it. (shrink)

Philosophers are often rude about each other, but their rudeness tends to be off the record, anonymous or sneaked in under the bloodless academic lexicon of ‘the worry’, ‘the concern’ and ‘the potential limitation’. But Lorna Finlayson’s rudeness comes with no softening frills: against her tailored prose, her insults pop. They make for quite a treat: desert landscapes may be all very well, but there is no need for philosophical writing to share their wearying climate. Introductory texts — and (...) this is an introductory text — must avoid being dry if they are to do any good at all, but this book does more than merely avoid dryness: it irrigates vast strips of feminist terrain that are often left untended, and shows the reader what might be done, with a little careful work. Finlayson is explicit that she conceives of her book as a corrective. Contemporary feminist political philosophy, like... (shrink)

Doing research with young children can be challenging for many reasons, but this book provides clear guidance on how to engage in appropriate methods. Focusing on researching through play, careful consideration is given to: · the founding principles of playful research · understanding young children's perspectives · prioritising the rights of the child and the voice of the child · examples of innovative research methods Real life examples and research projects are presented, to enable common challenges to be anticipated and (...) to showcase successful creative approaches, and to inspire new paths in research. (shrink)

The use of virtual humans holds the potential for interactive, automated interaction in domains such as remote communication, customer service, or public announcements. For signed language users, signing avatars could potentially provide accessible content by sharing information in the signer's preferred or native language. As the development of signing avatars has gained traction in recent years, researchers have come up with many different methods of creating signing avatars. The resulting avatars vary widely in their appearance, the naturalness of their movements, (...) and facial expressions—all of which may potentially impact users' acceptance of the avatars. We designed a study to test the effects of these intrinsic properties of different signing avatars while also examining the extent to which people's own language experiences change their responses to signing avatars. We created video stimuli showing individual signs produced by a live human signer, an avatar made using computer-synthesized animation, and an avatar made using high-fidelity motion capture. We surveyed 191 American Sign Language users, including Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, and Hearing groups. Participants rated the three signers on multiple dimensions, which were then combined to form ratings of Attitudes, Impressions, Comprehension, and Naturalness. Analyses demonstrated that the Mocap avatar was rated significantly more positively than the CS avatar on all primary variables. Correlations revealed that signers who acquire sign language later in life are more accepting of and likely to have positive impressions of signing avatars. Finally, those who learned ASL earlier were more likely to give lower, more negative ratings to the CS avatar, but we did not see this association for the Mocap avatar or the Human signer. Together, these findings suggest that movement quality and appearance significantly impact users' ratings of signing avatars and show that signed language users with earlier age of ASL acquisition are the most sensitive to movement quality issues seen in computer-generated avatars. We suggest that future efforts to develop signing avatars consider retaining the fluid movement qualities integral to signed languages. (shrink)

This paper attempts to get some critical distance on the increasingly fashionable issue of realism in political theory. Realism has an ambiguous status: it is sometimes presented as a radical challenge to the _status quo_; but it also often appears as a conservative force, aimed at clipping the wings of more ‘idealistic’ political theorists. I suggest that what we might call ‘actually existing realism’ is indeed a conservative presence in political philosophy, and that its ambiguous status plays a part in (...) making it so. But I also argue that there is no necessary connection between realism and conservatism. This paper describes the three contingent and suspiciously quick steps which lead from an initial commitment to being attentive to the real world, via a particular kind of pessimism about political possibilities, to an unnecessarily conservative destination. In the process, I try to show how the ubiquitous trinity of realism, pessimism and conservatism might be pulled apart, thus removing the artificial tension between ‘being realistic’ and the demand for far-reaching social change. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1 Introduction 1 -- 2 Central themes and critical issues 10 -- Introduction 10 -- Core themes 11 -- Differences which have surfaced in the move from -- margins to mainstream 15 -- The claims of restorative justice: a brief examination 21 -- Some limitations of restorative justice 25 -- Some dangers of restorative justice 29 -- Debunking restorative justice 32 -- 3 Reviving restorative justice traditions 36 -- The rebirth of an ancient practice 36 -- (...) Pre-modem criminal justice 37 -- The renaissance of native justice traditions 43 -- Navajo peacemaking 44 -- Can one characterise ancient and indigenous -- justice as restorative? 47 -- Can one revive restorative justice traditions? 49 -- Conclusion: did restorative justice ever die? 59 -- 4 Healing the victim 62 -- Introduction 62 -- The experiences and needs of victims 64 -- The inadequacy of punitive justice for the victim 67 -- Victim reforms 70 -- Restitution from the offender 74 -- Beyond restitution: restoring victims 76 -- Restorative justice or 'clubbing together'? 78 -- Using victims to rehabilitate offenders 81 -- Paternalism towards victims 83 -- Balancing the needs of the victim with those of society 84 -- 5 A restorative approach to offenders 87 -- Introduction 87 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to retributive justice 88 -- Restorative justice as an alternative to treatment 94 -- The goals and methods of restorative justice in relation -- to offenders 95 -- An alternative to punishment or an alternative form of -- punishment? 106 -- An alternative to treatment? 111 -- 6 Shame, apology and forgiveness 114 -- Introduction 114 -- Restorative cautioning 115 -- The psychological routes of restorative conferencing 116 -- The idea of reintegrative shaming 118 -- Some questions about shaming 123 -- Apology and forgiveness 132 -- 7 Mediation, participation and the role of community 136 -- Introduction: handling criminal conflicts 136 -- The rationale for the restorative justice process 140 -- Achieving restorative goals 141 -- Moral development and the strengthening of community 144 -- The role of community 151 -- 8 The future of restorative justice 161 -- Introduction 161 -- Implementing restorative justice: the paths less likely 163 -- The implementation of restorative techniques 166 -- Restorative justice and the pattern of penal control 169 -- The future of restorative justice research 170 -- Appendix to chapter 3: the theological roots of judicial -- punishment 172. (shrink)

Repetition dynamically shaped important modes of thought and action in early modern British and European cultures. The centrality and often problematic ambiguity of repetition as they converge in ritual, routine, and regime, however, are rarely assessed accurately because repetition is often dismissed as quaintly primitive or embarrassingly visceral. Ritual, Routine, and Regime is a collection of essays that reveals varied meanings given to and created by repetition from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The contributors reveal repetition at work in evolving (...) definitions of the self and of the emotions, in political rhetoric used to assert a nation's history, in values ascribed to musical styles, in religious verse grounded in practices of prayer, in the aesthetics created by the poetry of work and by rhyme in general, in the recreation of British classics through French translations, and in the repeated but significantly varied sculpture of the portrait bust. Edited by Lorna Clymer, Ritual, Routine, and Regime juxtaposes early modern practices with twentieth- and twenty-first century theoretical accounts of the institutions of repetition. Providing a stimulating, new perspective on early modern culture, the collection describes repetition's often peculiar demands, its surprising gratifications, and its contested interpretations. (shrink)

Scholars have critiqued mainstream economic approaches to environmental valuation for decades. These critiques have intensified with the increased prominence of environmental valuation in decision-making. This paper has three goals. First, we summarise prominent critiques of monetary valuation, drawing mostly on the work of Clive Spash, who worked extensively on cost–benefit analysis early in his career and then became one of monetary valuation's most thorough and ardent critics. Second, we, as a group of scholars who study relational values, describe how relational (...) values research engages with and addresses many of the critiques of monetary valuation. Third, we offer suggestions for relational values research that continues and deepens its ability to respond to critiques of monetary valuation and contributes to transformative change towards sustainability. (shrink)

Despite the increased prevalence of bioethics research that seeks to use empirical data to answer normative research questions, there is no consensus as to what an appropriate methodology for this would be. This review aims to search the literature, present and critically discuss published Empirical Bioethics methodologies.

Introduction: How newness enters the world -- Surrealism and the Caribbean: a curious line of resemblance -- Writing back to the colonial event: Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris -- Édouard Glissant's poetics of the chaosmos -- Postcolonial literature as health: Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson.

ABSTRACT As owner of the New Lanark cotton-mills from 1800, Robert Owen carried out a social experiment designed to transform the lives of his community of millworkers, through improved living and working conditions, free medical care and education. He intended to demonstrate how his ideas, if universally adopted, could transform society in general. Central to this experiment was his innovative and enlightened system of education in the Institute for the Formation of Character. This article looks in particular at the musical (...) life of New Lanark and explores Owen’s belief in the power of music to bind together people from different backgrounds, and to assist in the creation of a harmonious community. Lavishly funded musical activities played a major part in the curriculum, and in the life of the community as a whole. All this is well documented and fascinating insights into the lives of the New Lanark people are included in the travel journals and letters, some previously unpublished, of the many visitors who came to see Owen’s model community. (shrink)

Mindfulness and the Birth Sphere draws together and critically appraises a raft of emerging research around mindfulness in healthcare, looking especially at its relevance to pregnancy and childbirth. This is an essential read for all those interested in mindfulness in connection to pregnancy and childbirth, including midwives, doulas, doctors and birth activists, whether involved in practice, research or education.

Just how ordinary was everyday life during normalization in Czechoslovakia? In their discussions of the lives of “ordinary people,” historians have underplayed the fear and secrecy present in the daily experiences of Czechs and Slovaks in the late communist period. In linking writings by dissidents to Czech and Slovak oral histories in the collections of the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, I seek to problematize the dissident/ordinary person dichotomy used in recent historiography, and argue that the chasm between (...) these two apparently opposite groups has been exaggerated. Through an analysis of the themes of family, education and mobility, I will show that domestic life was not an escape from politics, but was in itself politicized. From audiovisual interviews, I will glean normalization-era memories of the need for what Václav Havel called “silence” and “mystification”-in the classroom, in the pub and in the home. (shrink)

Foucault’s critique of early modern political theory aimed at displacing sovereignty as the principle of intelligibility of power. In the genealogical literature since Foucault, sovereignty has become a residual category lacking analytic specificity, largely displaced by governance, in turn equated with politics. We argue that Foucault and the Foucauldians have not understood that the flourishing of governance has presupposed a symbolic regime with a division of knowledge-power-law characteristic of the democratic sovereign. The conflation of governance with politics, together with the (...) sliding of sovereignty under governance, has left Foucauldians unable to diagnose the dangers present in varying possible sovereignty-governance configurations. (shrink)

This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the concept of the 'model organism' in contemporary biology. Thinking about model organisms enables us to examine how living organisms have been brought into the laboratory and used to gain a better understanding of biology, and to explore the research practices, commitments, and norms underlying this understanding. We contend that model organisms are key components of a distinctive way of doing research. We focus on what makes model organisms an important type of model, (...) and how the use of these models has shaped biological knowledge, including how model organisms represent, how they are used as tools for intervention, and how the representational commitments linked to their use as models affect the research practices associated with them. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Alison Jaggar recommends a radical break with a dominant approach to the philosophy of immigration shared by both liberal cosmopolitans and liberal nationalists. This paper is intended as an exploration of Jaggar’s conclusions and as an attempt to carry them further. Building on her critique, I argue that the characteristic questions asked by both cosmopolitans and nationalists appear inappropriate when seen against the political reality of immigration. In the last part of the paper, I argue that liberal nationalist contributions in (...) particular have problematized immigration and immigrants in ways not fundamentally different from those seen on the racist right. (shrink)

Supermax prisons are often described as "high_tech." Observers seem to mean two things by this. The first is that these "prisons within prisons" are a technology in themselves: hard_edged and brightly lit, the fortress_like supermax clearly signals its specialized purpose of isolation and control. The second is that supermax prisons rely heavily on specialized, relatively new technologies: computerized systems produce new forms of intensive surveillance while special teams armed with electronic shields maintain control over prisoners.But as Leo Marx observed several (...) years ago in this journal, "technology is a hazardous concept" . We need to see the technology of the supermax prison in these terms if we are to understand its effects. My aim here is to consider three aspects of the technology of supermax. The first is the sense in which the supermax prison is itself a "machine" _ a specific invention with a purpose and meaning closely linked to its features as a technology. This aspect is important for understanding what makes the construction of these prisons so attractive to correctional professionals and so seemingly acceptable to the general public. The second aspect is the use of specialized tools of control inside the supermax prison. These internal solutions to problems of order _ I will discuss computerized surveillance, special response teams, and stun technology _ offer clues to how specific technologies intersect with intensive confinement to frame punishment as decisive "action" produced by prisoners' "choices" and analogous to "war." Finally, supermax technology imposes specific practices and ways of being on both prisoners and prison staff. These need to be understood not only for how they augment and intensify other negative aspects of these environments, but also for their potential to affect prisoners in quite different ways depending on individual vulnerabilities.A common theme running through my discussion of each of these aspects of supermax is that the appearance of specialized technology constitutes what Garland describes, for penal practices in general, as a "signifying practice" . Beyond its immediate effects during use, supermax technology offers the cultural gloss of a "high_tech solution" that helps to frame problems _ some of them caused by supermax confinement in the first place _ largely in terms of their susceptibility to technical intervention. In other contexts "technology" signifies a "clean," profitable, scientific, and masculine approach: direct action on manageable problems. The spillover of this imagery into prisons _ in association with other meanings of crime and punishment _ is one element serving to obscure the larger issues posed by mass incarceration. As Marx points out, the reification of technology has the effect of producing an aura of inevitability. I will return to this point at the end to consider briefly how a framing of supermax primarily in terms of technology can itself be seen as hazardous. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been interested in love and its general role in morality. This volume focuses on and explores the complex relation between love and justice as it appears within loving relationships, between lovers and their wider social context, and the broader political realm. Special attention is paid to the ensuing challenge of understanding and respecting the lovers’ personal autonomy in all three contexts. Accordingly, the essays in this volume are divided into three thematic sections. Section I aims at shedding (...) further light on conceptual and practical issues concerning the compatibility or incompatibility of love and justice within relationships of love. For example, are loving relations inherently unjust? Might love require justice? Or do love and justice belong to distinct moral domains? The essays in Section II consider the relation between the lovers on the one hand and their broader societal environment on the other. Specifically, how exactly are love and impartiality related? Are they compatible or not? Is it unjust to favor one’s beloved? Finally, Section III looks at the political dimensions of love and justice. How, for instance, do various accounts of love inform how we are to relate to our fellow citizens? If love is taken to play an important role in fostering or hindering the development of personal autonomy, what are the political implications that need to be addressed, and how? In addressing these questions, this book engenders a better understanding both of conceptual and practical issues regarding the relation between love, justice, and autonomy as well as their broader societal and political implications. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars working on the philosophy of love from ethical, political, and psychological angles. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito has extended the deconstructive theory of the gift into political philosophy, theorizing the gift as the transcendental form of political obligation. In Esposito's philosophy of communitas, the munus consists of the single obligation to give, a logic of donors without receivers, yet it simultaneously establishes relations of reciprocity, mutuality, debt and gratitude. I argue that that indebtedness and reciprocity are not logically possible in a gift system where donors are bound by the single obligation to give, as the (...) donor has no other and the gift no recipient. These inconsistencies may be addressed by distinguishing two forms of gift in communitas: the impersonal gift characterized solely by the obligation to give to the gods/communitas and the reciprocal gift characterized by the obligations to give, receive and return the gift. Esposito's philosophy of communitas would additionally be strengthened by conceptualizing symbolic practices, specifically collective representations, as intrinsic to the munus. As impersonal gift, the munus is a symbolic practice through which the members of communitas represent to themselves their being-in-common. The munus operates as a vertical relation of expenditure made possible by the collective representation of the political we. The reciprocal gift, in contrast, constitutes differentiated social ties and networks: the being-in-difference of communal life. The distinction between the impersonal and the reciprocal gift gives rise to a minimal division between the political and the communal within the transcendental structure of communitas. (shrink)

This book is a critical exposé of the ways in which mainstream political philosophy silences dissent.

In recent years, scholars have identified a political formation that mobilizes the emancipatory energies of feminism in the service of the expansion of the carceral state. ‘Carceral feminism,’ as it has come to be known, is often portrayed by these scholars as a product of feminist-conservative convergence. Here, I argue that the rise of the SlutWalk movement suggests a more complex genealogy for carceral feminism. By situating SlutWalk in the historico-theoretical context of feminism’s sex wars, I reveal the carceral–feminist impulses (...) roiling beneath its progressive ‘sex-positive’ surface. With its tendency to reduce sexual freedom to expressive freedom, valorize conventional forms of femininity and sexuality, and promote a fundamentally carceral paradigm of sexual freedom, the SlutWalk movement, I argue, is descended from anti-censorship/pro-sex feminism, a liberal-feminist hybrid that emerged out of the convergence of sex-radical feminism and liberalism during the sex wars. When viewed in this light, SlutWalk no longer appears as a sign that feminism’s ‘pleasure’ and ‘danger’ factions have negotiated a long-awaited ‘sex-détente.’ Rather, it stands as a testament to the extent to which feminism’s once radical aspirations in the domain of sexual politics have been supplanted by a tepid, heteronormative, and disquietingly carceral liberal project. (shrink)

Since its influential rendering by Rae Langton in her 1993 paper, “Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts,” the “silencing argument” against pornography has become the subject of a lively debate that continues to this day. My intention in this paper is not to join in the existing debate, but to give a critical overview of it. In its current form, I suggest, it is going nowhere . Yet the silencing argument, I believe, nevertheless contains an indispensable insight—and more radical potential than (...) is usually acknowledged either by its defenders or its opponents. I argue that in order to preserve this insight and unleash its potential, we should begin by adopting the following motto: MacKinnon, not Austin! (shrink)

The sex‐determining genes of fungi reside at one or two specialised regions of the chromosome known as the mating type (MAT) loci. The genes are sufficient to determine haploid cell identity, enable compatible mating partners to attract each other, and prepare cells for sexual reproduction after fertilisation. How conserved are these genes in different fungal groups? New work1 seeks an answer to this question by identifying the sex‐determining regions of an early diverged fungus. These regions bear remarkable similarity to those (...) described in other fungi, but the sex proteins they encode belong to only a single class of transcription factor, the high mobility group (HMG), indicating that these are likely to be ancestral to other proteins recruited for fungal sex. BioEssays 30:711–714, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Recent political developments have made the notion of 'post-truth' ubiquitous. Along with associated terms such as 'fake news' and 'alternative facts', it appears with regularity in coverage of and commentary on Donald Trump, the Brexit vote, and the role – relative to these phenomena – of a half-despised, half-feared creature known as 'the public'. It has become commonplace to assert that we now inhabit, or are entering, a post-truth world. In this paper, I issue a sceptical challenge against the distinctiveness (...) and utility of the notion of post-truth. I argue, first, that the term fails to capture anything that is both real and novel. Moreover, post-truth discourse often has a not-fully-explicit political force and function: to ‘irrationalise’ political disaffection and to signal loyalty to a ‘pre-post-truth’ political status quo. The central insight of the speech act theory of J. L. Austin and others – that saying is always also doing – is as indispensable for understanding the significance of much of what is labelled ‘post-truth’, I’ll argue, as it is for understanding the significance of that very act of labelling. Keywords: post-truth, speech acts, Trump, brexit, Austin. (shrink)