When abolitionists Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano published their essays on slavery in the late eighteenth century, they became key participants in one of the most important human rights campaigns in history. British abolitionism sought to expose the realities of transatlantic slavery in addition to asking politicians to help dehumanized Africans in the New World, and this edition brings together two major essays of the 1780s that were influential in the spread of the early abolitionist movement: Clarkson’s _An Essay on (...) the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species_ and Cugoano’s _Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species_. A critical introduction and extensive historical appendices on British and American slavery and abolitionism, featuring contemporary arguments for and against slavery, are also included. (shrink)

Research into intuitive problem solving has shown that objective closeness of participants’ hypotheses were closer to the accurate solution than their subjective ratings of closeness. After separating conceptually intuitive problem solving from the solutions of rational incremental tasks and of sudden insight tasks, we replicated this finding by using more precise measures in a conceptual problem-solving task. In a second study, we distinguished performance level, processing style, implicit knowledge and subjective feeling of closeness to the solution within the problem-solving task (...) and examined the relationships of these different components with measures of intelligence and personality. Verbal intelligence correlated with performance level in problem solving, but not with processing style and implicit knowledge. Faith in intuition, openness to experience, and conscientiousness correlated with processing style, but not with implicit knowledge. These findings suggest that one needs to decompose processing style and intuitive components in problem solving to make predictions on effects of intelligence and personality measures. (shrink)

In her recent paper ‘The Epistemology of Propaganda’ Rachel McKinnon discusses what she refers to as ‘TERF propaganda’. We take issue with three points in her paper. The first is her rejection of the claim that ‘TERF’ is a misogynistic slur. The second is the examples she presents as commitments of so-called ‘TERFs’, in order to establish that radical (and gender critical) feminists rely on a flawed ideology. The third is her claim that standpoint epistemology can be used to establish (...) that such feminists are wrong to worry about a threat of male violence in relation to trans women. In Section 1 we argue that ‘TERF’ is not a merely descriptive term; that to the extent that McKinnon offers considerations in support of the claim that ‘TERF’ is not a slur, these considerations fail; and that ‘TERF’ is a slur according to several prominent accounts in the contemporary literature. In Section 2, we argue that McKinnon misrepresents the position of gender critical feminists, and in doing so fails to establish the claim that the ideology behind these positions is flawed. In Section 3 we argue that McKinnon’s criticism of Stanley fails, and one implication of this is that those she characterizes as ‘positively privileged’ cannot rely on the standpoint-relative knowledge of those she characterizes as ‘negatively privileged’. We also emphasize in this section McKinnon’s failure to understand and account for multiple axes of oppression, of which the cis/trans axis is only one. (shrink)

Numerous studies have documented the detrimental impact of age-based stereotype threat on older adults' cognitive performance and especially on veridical memory. However, far fewer studies have investigated the impact of ABST on older adults' memory distortion. Here, we review the subset of research examining memory distortion and provide evidence for the role of stereotype threat as a powerful socio-emotional factor that impacts age-related susceptibility to memory distortion. In this review we define memory distortion as errors in memory that are associated (...) with gist-based errors or source misattributions. Whereas, some of the reviewed experiments support the conclusion that ABST should be considered in the context of age-related differences in memory distortion, others reported little or no impact of stereotype threat. These discrepancies suggest that the role of ABST, and socio-emotional processes generally, in age-related changes in memory distortion are less clear. In this review, we argue that ABST does play an important role in age-related changes in memory distortion. We present evidence suggesting that discrepancies in the reviewed literature may be reconciled when evaluated in the context of the leading theories about stereotype threat: the Executive Resource Depletion hypothesis and the Regulatory Focus theory. We also discuss how differences in methodology and participant characteristics can account for a priori contradictory results in the literature. Finally, we propose some recommendations for researchers and practitioners when assessing memory in older adults. (shrink)

Although very young children have unprecedented access to touchscreen devices, there is limited research on how successfully they operate these devices for play and learning. For infants and toddlers, whose cognitive, fine motor, and executive functions are immature, several basic questions are significant: Can they operate a tablet purposefully to achieve a goal? Can they acquire operating skills and learn new information from commercially available apps? Do individual differences in executive functioning predict success in using and learning from the apps? (...) Accordingly, 31 2-year-olds were compared with 29 3-year-olds using two commercially available apps with different task and skill requirements: a shape matching app performed across 3 days, and a storybook app with performance compared to that on a matched paper storybook. Children also completed the Minnesota Executive Functioning Scale. An adult provided minimal scaffolding throughout. The results showed: toddlers could provide simple goal-directed touch gestures and the manual interactions needed to operate the tablet after controlling for prior experience with shape matching, toddlers’ increased success and efficiency, made fewer errors, decreased completion times, and required less scaffolding across trials, they recognized more story content from the e-book and were less distracted than from the paper book, executive functioning contributed unique variance to the outcome measures on both apps, and 3-year-olds outperformed 2-year-olds on all measures. The results are discussed in terms of the potential of interactive devices to support toddlers’ learning. (shrink)

_Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary_ is the first full-length overview of the important work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Anna Marie Smith clearly shows how Laclau and Mouffe's work has brought Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives to revitalize traditional political theory. With clarity and insight, she shows how they have constructed a highly effective theory of identity formation and power relations that carefully draws from the criticism of political theory from postmodern anti-foundationalist political theory.

Volume 25, Issue 3, September 2019, Page 203-206.

Il faut saluer la réédition aux Éditions Turquoise de la traduction de Die Waffen nieder!, l’ouvrage antimilitariste de la pacifiste autrichienne Bertha von Suttner, qui, dès sa parution en 1889, devint le best-seller incontesté de la fin du siècle, immédiatement traduit en une vingtaine de langues et en français en 1899. C’est du reste cette traduction, la seule existant à ce jour en langue française, qui est rééditée ici avec la préface d’époque signée par Gaston Moch, dreyfusard de la prem...

Recent buzzes around big data, data science and artificial intelligence portray a data-driven future for healthcare. As a response, Europe's key players have stimulated the use of big data technologies to make healthcare more efficient and effective. Critical Data Studies and Science and Technology Studies have developed many concepts to reflect on such overly positive narratives and conduct critical policy evaluations. In this study, we argue that there is also much to be learned from studying how professionals in the healthcare (...) field affectively engage with this strong European narrative in concrete big data projects. We followed twelve hospital-based big data pilots in eight European countries and interviewed 145 professionals between 2018 and 2020. In this study, we introduce the metaphor of dreams to describe how professionals link the big data promises to their own frustrations, ideas, values and experiences with healthcare. Our research answers the question: how do professionals in concrete data-driven initiatives affectively engage with European Union's data hopes in their ‘dreams’ – and with what consequences? We describe the dreams of being seen, of timeliness, of connectedness and of being in control. Each of these dreams emphasizes certain aspects of the grand narrative of big data in Europe, makes particular assumptions and has different consequences. We argue that including attention to these dreams in our work could help shine an additional critical light on the big data developments and stimulate the development of responsible data-driven healthcare. (shrink)

This article maps the components of telephone tutorial conferences used for distance learning in higher education. Using conversation analysis we identified four common sequences of TTCs as `calling in'; `agenda-setting'; `tutorial proper'; and `closing down'. Patterns of student participation look similar to those in face-to-face tutorials and the degree of interaction during `calling-in' and agenda setting does not foretell student participation in the `tutorial proper'. Student participation was related to differences in `communicative formats' adopted by tutors and students for different (...) purposes. These findings have helped us reflect on our communicative practices as university teachers and indicate that TTCs are functionally comparable with face-to-face tutorials in higher education settings. (shrink)

An overview of the feminist theory literature on welfare policy and politics is presented. This introductory essay places a particular emphasis on the works that fall within the political sociology and normative political philosophy genres. In a lengthy digression, the article offers a tribute to the work of Iris Marion Young. It examines the centrality of her thinking about distribution, cultural marginalization, the welfare state bureaucracy, transnational responsibility and solidarity, and the pitfalls of maternalist discourse for this field. In the (...) conclusion, the article makes brief remarks about each of the contributions to the special issue on Feminist Theory and Welfare. (shrink)

Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary is the first full-length overview of the important work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Anna Marie Smith clearly shows how Laclau and Mouffe's work has brought Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives to revitalize traditional political theory. With clarity and insight, she shows how they have constructed a highly effective theory of identity formation and power relations that carefully draws from the criticism of political theory from postmodern anti-foundationalist political theory.

This essay begins with the impossibility of thinking back, or at least of conscious memory, and the need to fix on a fragment, before unconscious memory may emerge as inscription. I then follow the intuition of a link, contained in the cover image of Malcolm Bowie's book Freud, Proust, Lacan: Theory as Fiction, between fictions which theorize and the apparition of the feminine as a haunting incompleteness. It is suggested that such apparitions may be read — like the image in (...) Plato's chora, as read by Pierre Fédida — as a surviving trace, hovering phantom-like between reminiscence and existence. As such, the image might be seen not only as the impensé of theory, producing in texts auratic moments which condense signifiers of present encounter and lost memory trace, but furthermore as the unthinkable feminine negative of masculine pursuit, returning us quite simply to a nodal point of silent gazing. (shrink)