Focusing on narratives with supernatural components, Karen J. Renner argues that the recent proliferation of stories about evil children demonstrates not a declining faith in the innocence of childhood but a desire to preserve its purity. From novels to music videos, photography to video games, the evil child haunts a range of texts and comes in a variety of forms, including changelings, ferals, and monstrous newborns. In this book, Renner illustrates how each subtype offers a different explanation for the (...) problem of the “evil” child and adapts to changing historical circumstances and ideologies. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is the position that there are important connections-historical, symbolic, theoretical-between the domination of women and the domination of nonhuman nature. I argue that because the conceptual connections between the dual dominations of women and nature are located in an oppressive patriarchal conceptual framework characterized by a logic of domination, (1) the logic of traditional feminism requires the expansion of feminism to include ecological feminism and (2) ecological feminism provides a framework for developing a distinctively feminist environmental ethic. I (...) conclude that any feminist theory and any environmental ethic which fails to take seriously the interconnected dominations of women and nature is simply inadequate. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is the position that there are important connections-historical, symbolic, theoretical-between the domination of women and the domination of nonhuman nature. I argue that because the conceptual connections between the dual dominations of women and nature are located in an oppressive patriarchal conceptual framework characterized by a logic of domination, (1) the logic of traditional feminism requires the expansion of feminism to include ecological feminism and (2) ecological feminism provides a framework for developing a distinctively feminist environmental ethic. I (...) conclude that any feminist theory and any environmental ethic which fails to take seriously the interconnected dominations of women and nature is simply inadequate. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is the position that there are important connections-historical, symbolic, theoretical-between the domination of women and the domination of nonhuman nature. I argue that because the conceptual connections between the dual dominations of women and nature are located in an oppressive patriarchal conceptual framework characterized by a logic of domination, (1) the logic of traditional feminism requires the expansion of feminism to include ecological feminism and (2) ecological feminism provides a framework for developing a distinctively feminist environmental ethic. I (...) conclude that any feminist theory and any environmental ethic which fails to take seriously the interconnected dominations of women and nature is simply inadequate. (shrink)

The current feminist debate over ecology raises important and timely issues about the theoretical adequacy of the four leading versions of feminism-liberal feminism, traditional Marxist feminism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism. In this paper I present a minimal condition account of ecological feminism, or ecofeminism. I argue that if eco-feminism is true or at least plausible, then each of the four leading versions of feminism is inadequate, incomplete, or problematic as a theoretical grounding for eco-feminism. I conclude that, if eco-feminism (...) is to be taken seriously, then a transformative feminism is needed that will move us beyond the four familiar feminist frameworks and make an eco-feminist perspective central to feminist theory and practice. (shrink)

This anthology is the first such collection to focus on the exclusively philosophical aspects of ecological feminism. It addresses basic questions about the conceptual underpinnings of `women-nature' connections, and emphasises the importance of seeing sexism and the exploitation of the environment as parallel forms of domination. Ecological Feminism is enriched by the inclusion of essays which take differing views of the importance and nature of ecofeminism. It will be an invaluable resource for courses on women's studies, environmental studies and philosophy.

Are there sex differences in pain? For experimentally delivered somatic stimuli, females have lower thresholds, greater ability to discriminate, higher pain ratings, and less tolerance of noxious stimuli than males. These differences, however, are small, exist only for certain forms of stimulation and are affected by many situational variables such as presence of disease, experimental setting, and even nutritive status. For endogenous pains, women report more multiple pains in more body regions than men. With no obvious underlying rationale, some painful (...) diseases are more prevalent among females, others among males and, for many diseases, symptoms differ between females and males. Sex differences in attitudes exist that affect not only reporting, coping, and responses to treatment, but also measurement and treatment. So many variables are operative, however, that the most striking feature of sex differences in reported pain experience is the apparent overall lack of them. On the other hand, deduction from known biological sex differences suggests that these are powerful sex differences in the operation of pain mechanisms. First, the vaginal canal provides an additional route in women for internal trauma and invasion by pathological agents that puts them at greater risk for developing hyperalgesia in multiple body regions. Second, sex differences in temporal patterns are likely to give rise to sex differences in how pain is and stimuli are interpreted, a situation that could lead to a greater variability and wider range of pains without obvious peripheral pathology among females. Third, sex differences in the actions of sex hormones suggest pain-relevant differences in the operation of many neuroactive agents, opiate and nonopiate systems, nerve growth factor, and the sympathetic system. Thus, while inductive analysis of existing data demonstrate more similarities than differences in pain experience between females and males, deductive analysis suggests important operational sex differences in its production. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is a feminism which attempts to unite the demands of the women's movement with those of the ecological movement. Ecofeminists often appeal to "ecology" in support of their claims, particularly claims about the importance of feminism to environmentalism. What is missing from the literature is any sustained attempt to show respects in which ecological feminism and the science of ecology are engaged in complementary, mutually supportive projects. In this paper we attempt to do that by showing ten important (...) similarities which establish the need for and benefits of on-going dialogue between ecofeminists and ecosystem ecologists. (shrink)

Collecting and using tissue, blood, urine, and other human biospecimens for various types of research is not new. But for personalized medicine to realize its potential, researchers will need thousands more of these samples for genetic studies. And the particular nature of genetic research—the sensitivity of the information it reveals—has raised a host of ethical questions, some which are new to human subjects research. What counts as informed consent when a biospecimen may be stored for years and used for unforeseen (...) research? How freely can the biospecimens and the genetic information they contain be shared with other researchers? If research uncovers a genetic risk factor or some other important medical .. (shrink)

This Article explores the relationship between the legitimacy of international courts and expansive judicial lawmaking. We compare lawmaking by three regional integration courts - the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Andean Tribunal of Justice, and the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. These courts have similar jurisdictional grants and access rules, yet each has behaved in a strikingly different way when faced with opportunities to engage in expansive judicial lawmaking. The CJEU is the most activist, but its audacious (...) legal doctrines have been assimilated as part of the court’s legitimate authority. The ATJ and ECOWAS have been more cautious, but there is little to suggest that this caution has enhanced the legitimacy of either court. The ATJ has avoided serious challenges from governments, but its rulings have had little political impact. Conversely, the ECCJ’s circumspection has not shielded it from political opposition to its adjudication of clearly-established human rights. This pattern is at odds with the oft-voiced conventional wisdom that expansive judicial lawmaking undermines judicial legitimacy. Our modest goal in this Article is to problematize that claim and to posit an alternative hypothesis - that ICs spark legitimacy challenges due to the domestic political effects of their decisions, regardless of whether those decisions are expansionist. (shrink)

Bauer, Taub, and Parsi's review of an international sample of standards on informed consent, confidentiality, commercialization, and quality of research in tissue banking reveals that no clear national or international consensus exists for these issues. The authors' response to the lack of uniformity in the meaning, scope, and ethical significance of the policies they examined is to call for the creation of uniform ethical guidelines. This raises questions about whether harmonization should consist of voluntary international standards or international regulations that (...) include an official oversight mechanism and sanctions for noncompliance, and about who should participate in the harmonization process. Moreover, the normative assumptions and political dynamics that shape global policymaking need to be addressed. This commentary explores the policy implications and normative questions raised by the idea of international ethical guidelines for the use of biotechnologies and biotechnological resources such as stored samples of human tissue. (shrink)

This article investigates the work of mourning following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Combining discussions of mourning, kitsch and sentimentality, I examine the perverse transformation of grief into patriotic nationalism. Linking Freud’s description of mourning as work with Derrida’s articulation of grief as ‘a work working at its own unproductivity’, I explore how grief has been paired with icons of American nostalgia, such as Norman Rockwell, as well as kitschy souvenirs from Ground Zero (...) vendors, and, through this pairing, been transformed into a motive force for war. A central part of this operation, I argue, is the process of identification with the traumatic event. Identification, what Freud describes as a ‘binding force’, takes place across diverse fields - from White House speeches, to kitsch memorabilia made available immediately following the attacks. Identification with the event enables identification with the nation - an operation immediately reifying the official rhetoric of ‘Us against Them’ propounded by President Bush and his advisers. As grief over 9/11 is transformed into a perpetual rationale for war, that day becomes a new origin conveniently obliterating all that came before regarding the history of US nation-building and its own brand of terrorism. (shrink)

This study investigated the effect of gender stereotypes on evaluator judgments of unethical behavior. Subjects were working adults who completed a mailed survey in which they evaluated unethical behavior depicted in written scenarios. Sex of the transgressor in the scenarios was manipulated. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that there are no stable differences in evaluations of men and women across scenarios. These results suggest that evaluators do not hold different standards of ethical behavior for men and women, they do (...) not make different causal attributions for the behavior of men and women, nor do evaluators treat men and women differently when an ethical transgression has been committed. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is a feminism which attempts to unite the demands of the women's movement with those of the ecological movement. Ecofeminists often appeal to “ecology” in support of their claims, particularly claims about the importance of feminism to environmentalism. What is missing from the literature is any sustained attempt to show respects in which ecological feminism and the science of ecology are engaged in complementary, mutually supportive projects. In this paper we attempt to do that by showing ten important (...) similarities which establish the need for and benefits of on-going dialogue between ecofeminists and ecosystem ecologists. (shrink)

In the present research, two studies test the efficacy of an innovative procedure designed to reduce distortion and enhance communication of accurate childhood memories. One hundred two 7-year-olds participated in a staged activity and were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions . Two weeks later, half of the children participated in the innovative procedure designed to increase resistance to misleading questions by addressing sociolinguistic and socioemotional factors thought to promote acquiescence to misinformation. The other half of the children (...) participated in control sessions and were given motivating instructions to do their best. Then, memory for the staged activity was tested in an interview with an unfamiliar authority figure. The results of both studies suggest that the children who participated in the innovative procedure made significantly fewer errors in response to misleading questions than children in the control groups, hence diminishing acquiescence. This was accomplished without generating additional errors on the other question types. These findings are interpreted as a promising first step toward reducing the potential for distortion in the recall of childhood memories. Implications for adult recall of childhood trauma are discussed. (shrink)

I argue that the framing of environmental justice issues in terms of distribution is problematic. Using insights about the connections between institutions of human oppression and the domination of the natural environment, as well as insights into nondistributive justice, I argue for a nondistributive model to supplement, complement, and in some cases preempt the distributive model. I conclude with a discussion of eight features of such a nondistributive conception of justice.

Sex is one of biology's, that is, life's most potent experimental variables. So, are there sex differences in pain? And are these sex differences applicable clinically? The answer to both questions is decidedly yes, of course. But we still have a long way to go. We have much to learn from the study of females, making use of the lifelong changes in their reproductive conditions as experimental variables. We also have much to learn from animals, especially if we apply what (...) we know about their social lives. However, the challenge in all of these studies is not first to look for some mythical neurological entity called pain experience and then to learn how sex modulates it, but rather to seek to understand the rules by which sex influences all of biology's mutually modulatory factors that collectively create the motivating circumstances we designate as pain. It appears almost beyond doubt that on the one hand these factors interact to make women more vulnerable to these circumstances than men, but on the other hand that women have more varied mechanisms for balance. Happily, the details of these sex differences at all levels biological (social to genetic) are now emerging in a rapidly growing body of literature that promises new insights into and applications for the individual person, male or female, in persistent pain. (shrink)

In “Human‐Animal Chimeras: The Moral Insignificance of Uniquely Human Capacities,” Julian Koplin argues against the views that all uniquely human traits have moral significance or that all the traits humans have in common with other animals “are morally insignificant.” He recommends instead the adoption of “a better framework for thinking about the moral status of part‐human beings,” one that emphasizes the “phenomenal value (or disvalue)” chimeric animals are likely “to enjoy (or suffer).” If the moral status of these chimeric animals (...) is grounded in the phenomenal value of their interests—that is, their interests as nonhuman animals—current protections for animals used in research may be inadequate to protect those interests. (shrink)

Over the past year media outlets and scientific and bioethics journals have reported about several medical and scientific innovations touted as having the potential to fundamentally change not only how diseases and disorders are diagnosed and treated but even how to alter the genomes of future generations. The purported “miracle” blood-testing technology of Theranos and the potential use of the genome editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 to modify human and nonhuman organisms reflect dramatic advances in scientific understanding about the biological mechanisms of (...) humans and other living organisms. Yet evidence about whether these and other innovative biomedical technologies are safe and effective and lead to improved health outcomes for patients young and old is often in dispute. How to assess the safety and effectiveness of innovative biomedical technologies, who should be involved in that effort, and how to define risks and benefits of those technologies are questions at the intersection of values, interests, and politics. (shrink)

I argue that the framing of environmental justice issues in terms of distribution is problematic. Using insights about the connections between institutions of human oppression and the domination of the natural environment, as well as insights into nondistributive justice, I argue for a nondistributive model to supplement, complement, and in some cases preempt the distributive model. I conclude with a discussion of eight features of such a nondistributive conception of justice.

In this essay we make visible the contribution of women even and especially when women cannot be added to mainstream, non-feminist accounts of peace. We argue that if feminism is taken seriously, then most philosophical discussions of peace must be updated, expanded and reconceived in ways which centralize feminist insights into the interrelationships among women, nature, peace, and war. We do so by discussing six ways that feminist scholarship informs mainstream philosophical discussions of peace.

Maintaining intersubjectivity is crucial for accomplishing coordinated social action. Although conversational repair is a recognised defence of intersubjectivity and routinely used to address ostensible sources of trouble in social interaction, it is less clear how people address more equivocal trouble. This study uses conversation analysis to examine preschool classroom interaction, focusing on practices used to identify and address such trouble. Repair is found to be a recurrent frontline practice for addressing equivocal trouble, occasioning space for further information that might enable (...) identifying a specific trouble source. Where further information is forthcoming, a range of strategies are subsequently employed to address the trouble. Where this is not possible or does not succeed, a secondary option is to progress a broader activity-in-progress. This allows for the possibility of another opportunity to identify and address the trouble. Given that misunderstandings can jeopardise interactants’ ability to mutually accomplish courses of action, these practices defend intersubjectivity against the threat of equivocal trouble. (shrink)

We critique the metaphysical ecology developed by J. Baird Callicott in “The Metaphysical Implications of Ecology” in light of what we take to be the most viable attempt to provide an inclusive theoretical framework for the wide variety of extant ecosystem analyses—namely, hierarchy theory. We argue that Callicott’s metaphysical ecology is not consonant with hierarchy theory and is, therefore, an unsatisfactory foundation for the development of an environmental ethic.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.2 (2002) 39-59 [Access article in PDF] Response to My Critics Karen J. Warren Introduction In the Preface to my book, Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters, 1 I describe as both "exciting and taxing" the process of writing the book over more than one decade (Warren, x). It was exciting because I was contributing to the (...) still nascent field of ecofeminist philosophy; it was taxing because I often found it difficult to know what I wanted to say about ecofeminism as a philosophical position. The book that emerged is my attempt to say, in my own voice and in a language and style amenable to a reflective lay audience, what I understand ecofeminist philosophy to be and why I think it matters.Ecofeminist Philosophy is premised on the conviction that ecofeminist philosophy has liberating potential to generate insights and recommendations for any theory, practice, or policy that is feminist, ecofeminist, or environmental. The version of ecofeminist philosophy I defend focuses on a variety of contingent interconnections—historical, empirical, socioeconomic, conceptual, linguistic, symbolic and literary, spiritual and religious, epistemological, metaphysical, political, ethical, and theoretical—among the dominations of women, other subordinated humans, nonhuman animals, and nature. It locates the commonalities of mutually reinforcing "isms of domination" (e.g., sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, colonialism, [End Page 39] ethnocentrism, speciesism and "naturism," or the unjustified domination of nonhuman nature) in oppressive conceptual frameworks, institutions, and practices mediated and justified by a "logic of domination." Connecting these isms of domination to pressing contemporary feminist and environmental issues, I argue for a version of ecofeminist philosophy that provides both critical analyses of and creative solutions to the intersecting practices, policies, and structures of unjustified ("isms" of) domination.From my perspective, the book is bold and daring. It advocates positions (e.g., regarding spirituality) typically eschewed by feminist and ecofeminist philosophers. It takes positions (e.g., on moral vegetarianism) that are at odds with much mainstream ecofeminist literature on nonhuman animals (particularly ecofeminist animal rights literature). It defends unfamiliar or unpopular philosophical positions (e.g., on the moral considerability of nonhuman animals and nature, on the nature of social justice, on ethics as "care-sensitive," and on theory as theory-in-process). It provides an account of ecofeminist philosophy that is grounded in good science, though not in canonical ideals of objectivity and rationality. It uses cross-cultural empirical, historical, social, and cultural data to motivate and test the theoretical claims of ecofeminist philosophy. And it supports the need for and role of emotional intelligence (including the ability to care) in ethics, ethical-decision making, and the creation of life-affirming, nonviolent communities and social systems.Given the nature of the issues I address and the positions I advocate in Ecofeminist Philosophy, it is to be expected that critics will raise questions, offer criticisms, and encourage further reflection on my part about my conception and defense of ecofeminist philosophy. That is precisely what the three critics who have written commentaries on my book for this special Symposium of Ethics & the Environment—philosophers Chris Cuomo, Trish Glazebrook, and Jim Sterba—have done. It is a humbling and gratifying experience to have one's scholarship the focus of a special issue of a journal; it is even more so when the critics offer comments that are helpful and constructive. I am grateful for the time and philosophical energy all three critics have invested in writing their commentaries.In what follows, I comment on each essay separately. My hope is to provide each essay with the thoughtful attention it deserves, while offering clarifying remarks on what I attempted to do, and the version of ecofeminist philosophy I defend, in Ecofeminist Philosophy. [End Page 40] Trish Glazebrook's Essay It was a pleasure to read Professor Trish Glazebrook's essay. Glazebrook understands what I attempted to do in this book, while also providing useful, illuminating questions and suggestions for future work. I am grateful for her supportive sensitivity and scholarly attention to what I argued in Ecofeminist Philosophy and to ways I might improve my... (shrink)