This collection presents policy and research that addresses digital inequalities, access, and skills, from multiple international perspectives. With a special focus on the impact of the COVID-19, the collection is based on the 2021 Digital Inclusion, Policy and Research Conference, with chapters from both academia and civic organizations. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed citizens’ relationship with digital technologies for the foreseeable future. Many people’s main channels of communication were transferred to digital services, platforms, and apps. Everything ‘went online’: our families, (...) friends, partners, health, work, news, politics, culture, arts and protesting. Yet access to digital technologies remained highly unequal. This brought digital inclusion policy and research to the fore, highlighting to policymakers and the public the ‘hidden’ challenges and impacts of digital exclusion and inequalities. The cutting-edge volume offers research findings and policycase studies that explore digital inclusion from the provision of basic access to digital, via education and digital literacy, and on to issues of gender and technology. Case studies are drawn from varied sources including the UK, Australia, South America, and Eastern Europe, providing a valuable resource in the pursuit of social equity and justice. ​ This is an open access book. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 147 Eric Andrew James The Representational Necropolitics of Black Women in Zombie Dystopia Video Games Though Stuart Hall defends popular representation as an important terrain of political struggle, he also argues that images of difference are dominated by “racialized regimes of representation” manifest in stereotypes and invisibilities.1 These ensure that marginal identities are reduced, essentialized, and rendered other. (...) One of the most powerful tools for this form of silencing in the popular representation repertoire is the notion of an established genre. In US popular culture, creators and critics alike often position people who experience multiple layers of oppression as constitutively outside the expectations of existing genres. Their absence is attributable not simply to creator racism but also to that genre’s relationships to intersecting categories of difference and domination, such as race and gender. Beginning with the preponderance of representational violence in popular media, this article draws from existing work by feminists of color in order to model a critique of US representational precarity. To illustrate the political tensions in popular US culture, I stage my intervention into a medium whose industry has had particularly fraught struggles with representation: video gaming. There, I focus specifically on 1. Stuart Hall, “The Spectacle of the Other,” in Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader, ed. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor, and Simeon J. Yates. (London: Sage, 2001), 325–44. 148 Eric Andrew James recent attempts to represent Black women, whom the gaming industry has held up as emblematic of difference and diversity. 2 These attempts are marred by predictable disasters and pitfalls. In particular, I discuss how the representational politics of Black women in popular zombie dystopia games repeats a similar violence as the previous silencing of Black women in these spaces. The gaming industry’s struggles with representation in the wake of Gamergate are demonstrative of broader tensions in Black women’s representation in popular media. Thus, while I am focused on video games, I also intend this analysis to reflect on feminist studies of the relationship between genre and representation. I advance existing scholarship on video game representations of Blackness by theorizing violence enacted at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in game genres. Specifically, I position this intervention as a point of departure from TreaAndrea M. Russworm’s chapter in Gaming Representation: “Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in The Walking Dead and The Last of Us.”3 This chapter provides a compelling critique of the relationship between the dystopian game genre and Black representation, highlighting the lack of self-reflexivity in mass-market representations of Blackness. Expanding this project by taking another look at her objects of study—The Last of Us (2013– 2014) and Telltale’s The Walking Dead (2012)—I argue that taking Black women’s multiple jeopardy as foundational to the zombie dystopia genre offers a deeper look at the grammars of representational violence. My use of multiple jeopardy refers to Deborah K. King’s theorization of how multiple layers of oppression exponentially multiply individual disadvantages. As King describes, “The modifier ‘multiple’ refers not only to several, simultaneous oppressions but to the multiplicative 2. AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps, “Representation Matters: Positive Portrayals of Black Women in Video Games,” Medium, February 28, 2017, https:// medium.com/legendary-women/representation-matters-positive-portrayals -of-black-women-in-video-games-c96cf9f66fdf; Jef Rouner, “Would You Believe There Have Been Only 14 Playable Black Women in Gaming?” Houston Press, June 5, 2015, https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/would-you-believethere -have-been-only-14-playable-black-women-in-gaming-7484017. 3. TreaAndrea M. Russworm, “Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in The Walking Dead and The Last of Us,” Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, ed. Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M. Russworm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 109–28. Eric Andrew James 149 relationships among them as well.”4 These layers of oppression are often contradictory and may leave no avenues for action; the expectations placed on one for their race become impossible to fulfill because of the contradictory expectations placed on them for their gender or sexuality. This multiple jeopardy thus introduces... (shrink)

In recent essays, Jürgen Habermas endorses an account of political liberalism much like John Rawls'. Like Rawls, he argues that laws and public policies should be justified only in neutral terms, i.e. in terms of reasons that people holding conflicting world-views could accept. Habermas also, much like Rawls, distinguishes reasonable religious citizens, whose views should be included in public discourse, from unreasonable citizens in his expectation that religious citizens self-modernize. But in sharing these Rawlsian features, Habermas is vulnerable to some (...) of the same objections posed to Rawls. In this article I assess Habermas' ability to overcome two objections frequently posed to Rawls: (1) that religious citizens are unfairly expected to split their identities in public discourse, and (2) that the burdens of citizenship are asymmetrically distributed. I conclude that while he may be able to overcome the second, the first remains a problem for him. (shrink)

The research ethics committee is a key element of university administration and has gained increasing importance as a review mechanism for those institutions that wish to conduct responsible...

This article argues for the dogmatic rather than just ethical significance of the biotechnological enhancement of human beings. It begins by reflecting on the close theological connections between salvation, sanctification, and affective and bodily transformation in light of the fact that affects and desires are in principle manipulable through biotechnological enhancement. It then examines the implications of this observation for questions of moral responsibility, asking whether biotechnological enhancement can be viewed as a kind of means of grace. The conclusion argues (...) that theological reflection on the relationship between affects, soteriology and bioenhancement reveals limitations of the emphasis on embodiment in recent Christian theology. (shrink)

This article builds on contemporary debates about the doctrine of justification by faith alone to revisit the old question of the “nature of Protestantism”. Traditionally a core feature of Protestant theology, the doctrine of sola fide has been under assault for the past forty years, including within Protestant theology. This essay begins by showing that the major contemporary critique that sola fide bases salvation on a “legal fiction” misses the way that early Reformers like Luther and Melanchthon understood the doctrine (...) very substantially in terms of its pastoral power to “console” consciences. Attending to the theme of “consolation” reveals a psychological and affective realism close to the heart of the doctrine of justification by faith alone as it was originally understood. This article then shows that traditional Protestant critiques of the reliability of external mechanisms and instruments in the mediation of grace were shaped by the same orientation to psychological and affective factors that are evident in the doctrine of justification. Together, these observations suggest that “the nature of Protestantism” may be usefully understood in terms of a foundational prioritization of psychological and affective considerations over metaphysical considerations in theology. (shrink)

Dispositional essentialists argue that physical properties have their causal roles essentially. This is typically taken to mean that physical properties are identical to dispositions. I argue that this is untenable, and that we must instead say that properties bestow dispositions. I explore what it is for a property to have such a role essentially. Dispositional essentialists argue for their view by citing certain epistemological and metaphysical implications, and I appeal to these implications to place desiderata on the concept of essence (...) involved. I argue that the traditional modal theory of essence meets these desiderata, but that the resulting theory wrongly implies that certain dispositions essential to mass are essential to charge, thereby offering a new argument against modal theories of essence. I argue that dispositional essentialism requires a primitive notion of essence, and develop a primitivist theory based on Kit Fine's views. I show that the primitivist theory has all the virtues of the modal alternative, and none of the vices. I develop a novel way of thinking about the relationship between properties, laws and dispositions, and argue that it has distinct advantages over standard dispositional essentialist formulations. (shrink)

Debates about controversial comedy are rife in public discourse. However, despite a great interest in wider issues surrounding freedom of expression, political philosophers have had curiously little to say about comedy. This is a costly omission because in mainstream public debates, many of the worries about the potential harms of comedy are often confused or conflated, and both the defences of comedians to use controversial material and calls for censorship of such material are usually under-theorised. This paper takes a step (...) towards correcting this oversight by explaining the potential harms of comedy and identifying who should be held responsible for these harms. By transposing existing work on hate speech, three harms of comedy are diagnosed: that it can cause status harms, that it can silence speakers, and that it can motivate violence. Using linguistic theory and the philosophy of language, the paper argues that often, it is audience members and third parties who ought to be held morally responsible for these harms, and therefore, that comedians are not usually under moral duties to modify their comedic expression, even if it is harmful. (shrink)

The 'completeness of physics' is the key premise in the causal argument for physicalism. Standard formulations of it fail to rule out emergent downwards causation. I argue that it must do this if it is tare in a valid causal argument for physicalism. Drawing on the notion of conferring causal power, I formulate a suitable principle, 'strong completeness'. I investigate the metaphysical implications of distinguishing this principle from emergent downwards causation, and I argue that categoricalist accounts of properties are better (...) equipped to sustain the distinction than dispositional essentialist accounts. Finally, I argue that the additional evidence needed for strong completeness renders the causal argument otiose for any properties amenable to scientific reduction. (shrink)

The violent encounter between Africans and the forces of globalization raises the question of whether Africans should capitulate to these forces or seek to morally transform them, notwithstanding the uncertainty of achieving success. This essay argues that an exclusively existentialist interpretation of the African predicaments is inadequate because it erects a false dichotomy between African religious and moral sensibilities. It proposes instead an ethic of responsibility that affirms the interdependence of not only these two realms of life, but also of (...) communal well-being and individual's subjectivity. (shrink)

The study examines the phenomenon of masquerading in Igbo culture. It philosophically explores the cosmology and cultural anthropology of Igbo masquerading, drawing some important implications for which the authors believe they bear on the truth of human existence. It investigates the distortions in and around this Igbo cultural practice against the background of its immanent significance and, thus, attempts to reconstruct it. The paper demonstrates that the huge potential for development inherent in Igbo masquerading outweigh its pitfalls. Igbo masquerading today (...) tends to divide the present generation from the older generation of Igbo. The latter lament that the way masquerading is done nowadays no longer reflects the critical cultural ideals of the people. But, this situation has not been given deserved attention among scholars. The significance of this study, then, lies exactly on its attempt at a theoretical and normative reconstruction of masquerading among the Igbo. The aim of the paper is to critically engage Igbo masquerading with the goal of rescuing it from associated negativities. In the light of the critical Igbo ideals of truth and social justice, the paper proffers the way forward and makes some recommendations. As a philosophical inquiry, the study employs the methods of analysis, prescription and speculation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 1 Seiten: 326-332.

The revelation of widespread corruption in the Oil-for-Food Programme (the “Programme”) and the recent scandal involving the British arms manufacturer BAE Systems threatens to unravel the fragile global consensus on combating corruption. This paper outlines the emerging global consensus and legal framework on corruption and assesses the extent to which this consensus has been undermined by the above mentioned revelations of corruption. Both incidents provide an interesting context in which to analysesome of the difficult issues presented in the regulation of (...) transnational corruption. The regulation of transnational corruption provides a framework for analyzing the critical dimensions of the interaction between the norms in various domestic communities and the transnational context of these interactions. The paper argues that the current framework of multilateral efforts to curb transnational corruption is unable to tackle the problem effectively and concludes that the liability framework for engaging in transnational corruption has almost exclusively been the result of political expediency rather than that of empirical information. By examining the multilateral efforts by the international community to combat corruption, the paper generates questions about the status and future direction of thefight against corruption under international law. (shrink)

In 2019, Kathryn Frost looks for conjunction where mimetic theory and attachment theory can agree on the issue of human proximity. Her search starts from an apparent conflict between René Girard's cautionary stand against proximity and attachment theory that favors proximity-seeking as a formative experience in one's personal development. She comes with a plan for "a hybrid of mimetic theory that privileges attachment … and caregiving,"1 and designs a program "to break through the mimetic vortex of conflict cycles."2Both mimesis as (...) the "parsimonious principle" that undergirds Girard's theory and proximity-seeking in attachment theory are working at a prerepresentational level.3 This explains why her conflict... (shrink)

Given their physical realization, what causal work is left for functional properties to do? Humean solutions to the exclusion problem (e.g. overdetermination and difference-making) typically appeal to counterfactual and/or nomic relations between functional property-instances and behavioural effects, tacitly assuming that such relations suffice for causal work. Clarification of the notion of causal work, I argue, shows not only that such solutions don't work, but also reveals a novel solution to the exclusion problem based on the relations between dispositional properties at (...) different levels of mechanism, which involves three central claims: (i) the causal work of properties consists in grounding dispositions, (ii) functional properties are dispositions, and (iii) the dispositions of mechanisms are grounded in the dispositions of their components. Treating functional mental properties as dispositions of components in psychological mechanisms, I argue that such properties do the causal work of grounding agent-level dispositions. These dispositions, while ultimately grounded in the physical realizers of mental properties, are indirectly so grounded, through a hierarchy of grounding relations that extends upwards, of necessity, through the mental domain. (shrink)

Placing Bruno—both advanced philosopher and magician burned at the stake—in the Hermetic tradition, Yates's acclaimed study gives an overview not only of Renaissance humanism but of its interplay—and conflict—with magic and occult practices. "Among those who have explored the intellectual world of the sixteenth century no one in England can rival Miss Yates. Wherever she looks, she illuminates. Now she has looked on Bruno. This brilliant book takes time to digest, but it is an intellectual adventure to read (...) it. Historians of ideas, of religion, and of science will study it. Some of them, after reading it, will have to think again.... For Miss Yates has put Bruno, for the first time, in his tradition, and has shown what that tradition was."—Hugh Trevor-Roper, _New Statesman_ "A decisive contribution to the understanding of Giordano Bruno, this book will probably remove a great number of misrepresentations that still plague the tormented figure of the Nolan prophet."—Giorgio de Santillana, _American Historical Review_ "Yates's book is an important addition to our knowledge of Giordano Bruno. But it is even more important, I think, as a step toward understanding the unity of the sixteenth century."—J. Bronowski, _New York Review of Books_. (shrink)

The filial relationship between Christian ethics and Comparative Religious Ethics (CRE) need not be perniciously distortive and can be salutary for comparative work. I suggest that the suspicions about CRE as a disguised form of a “Christian ethical enterprise” are overstated and that we can appreciate the value of the legacy of Christian ethics for comparative work in the focal themes of emancipatory criticism and common morality. Both of these themes, even if influenced by Christian ethics, reflect more universal social‐moral (...) problems that can be discerned in cross‐cultural contexts. (shrink)

This note criticizes the political consequences Feyerabend draws from his ?epistemological anarchism?. Democratic relativism holds that since no traditions are ?true?, all must be given equal status in a free society. A basic protective structure is required, though, to keep the various institutions from overwhelming one another. I argue that Feyerabend provides no assurance that the protective structure would not be taken over by particular institutions; parallel problems exist for education. Hence Feyerabend's proposal is unworkable in principle. Furthermore it is (...) undesirable since members of traditions would not wish to have their beliefs regarded as ?one set among many?. The pluralism Feyerabend wants already exists naturally in nontotalitarian societies; hence the institutionalization of pluralism is unnecessary and would do more harm than good. (shrink)

Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of (...) Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters. (shrink)

This study explores the status quo regarding the interface between marketing, social and environmental issues, culture and consumers, and strategic management by integrating sustainability. A qualitative display network technique, based on the bibliometric methodology of co-citation analysis, was applied to examine research clusters. An integrative review was conducted to explain the connections within these clusters. To evaluate potential patterns among the studies through citations, different sets of relationships among applicable sustainability theories in marketing practice were paired in different sets and (...) analyzed. After mapping the scientific structure of journal publications and intellectual linkages, six cluster groups emerged, reflecting the important role of marketing in linking sustainability, society, environment, consumers, and corporate sustainable development. This study contributes to social and marketing research and corporate sustainability practice by categorizing the intellectual structural network within various streams and indicating the influence of social and cultural notions on consumer-focused sustainable marketing. (shrink)

Karen Warren claims that there is a “logic of domination” at work in the oppressive conceptual frameworks informing both sexism and naturism. Although her account of the principle of domination as a connection between oppressions has been an influential one in ecofeminist theory, it has been challenged by recent criticism. Both Karen Green and John Andrews maintain that the principle of domination,as Warren articulates it, is ambiguous. The principle, according to Green, admits of two possible readings, each of which she (...) finds flawed. Similarly, Andrews claims that the principle is fundamentally inadequate because it cannot distinguish cases of oppressive domination from cases of nonoppressive domination. In this paper, I elucidate Warren’s views and defend her against these and other criticisms put forward by Green and Andrews. I show that Warren’s account of “the logic of domination” successfully illuminates important conceptual features of oppression. (shrink)

Cet article, s’inscrit dans le cadre minimaliste de la syntaxe générative et étudie oui / non et wh-questions dans la langue Ǹjò̩-kóo, parlée dans l’état de Ondo au Nigeria. On observe que la particule interrogative pour des questions de type oui / non qui suit systématiquement le sujet DP se trouve également dans des clauses avec wh-questions. Cet article soutient que oui / non et wh-questions sont projetées par la même tête fonctionnelle Inter˚, et que wh-words ne participent pas à (...) la saisie de wh-propositions comme interrogative. L’article conclut que le mouvement de Wh-éléments vers la position initiale de la clause dans les langues à WH-mouvement n’a pas pour but l’interrogation mais plutôt pour la focalisation. (shrink)

This special issue of the _ Revue d’études benthamiennes _ aims to examine the transmission and reception of utilitarian thought among various socialist movements in the nineteenth century, to shed light on their emergence, uses and legacy. By focusing on the originality and variety of these socialist reinterpretations, it builds upon renewed approaches in intellectual and political history that have successfully challenged the classical distinction between “utopian” and “scientific” socialism. Consequently, this issue brings a corrective to the tendency, on the (...) part of established scholarship, to confine Bentham’s influence to classical liberalism. Though the contributions to this issue focus on three European countries (Britain, Ireland and France), it is hoped that they will provide a first step towards a more general, joint history of the relation between utilitarianism and socialism. (shrink)

First impressions -- Sheep -- Counting sheep in the belly of the wolf -- What was pastoral (again)? more versions (otium for sheep) -- Oranges -- Invisible Inc. (time for oranges) -- Gold you can eat (on theft) -- Yeast -- Bread and stones (on bubbles) -- Erasures.

The first comparative study of Heidegger and Schelling, recognizing Schelling's place in post-Kantian GermanIdealism and his contribution to Heidegger's later thought.

Low mean fundamental frequency (F 0) in men’s voices has been found to positively influence perceptions of dominance by men and attractiveness by women using standardized speech. Using natural speech obtained during an ecologically valid social interaction, we examined relationships between multiple vocal parameters and dominance and attractiveness judgments. Male voices from an unscripted dating game were judged by men for physical and social dominance and by women in fertile and non-fertile menstrual cycle phases for desirability in short-term and long-term (...) relationships. Five vocal parameters were analyzed: mean F 0 (an acoustic correlate of vocal fold size), F 0 variation, intensity (loudness), utterance duration, and formant dispersion (D f , an acoustic correlate of vocal tract length). Parallel but separate ratings of speech transcripts served as controls for content. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the independent contributions of each of the predictors. Physical dominance was predicted by low F 0 variation and physically dominant word content. Social dominance was predicted only by socially dominant word content. Ratings of attractiveness by women were predicted by low mean F 0, low D f , high intensity, and attractive word content across cycle phase and mating context. Low D f was perceived as attractive by fertile-phase women only. We hypothesize that competitors and potential mates may attend more strongly to different components of men’s voices because of the different types of information these vocal parameters provide. (shrink)

Globalization is being celebrated in many circles as a distinctive achievement of our age, drawing peoples and societies more closely together and creating far greater wealth than any previous generations ever knew. While the first of these assertions is correct in the sense that societies and cultures are colliding, hitherto relatively closed horizons are opening up, and spaces and time are compressing, the second deserves critical interrogations. Using Africa's experience with globalization as a case study, this article argues that globalization (...) be understood as an emerging preference for certain institutional and policy practices that are creating and coercively imposing pervasive but avoidable conditions of material deprivations on many societies. The article defends a motivational rationale anchored in the normative vision of socio-economic and development rights as a way to mitigate the deleterious effects of unguarded globalization. (shrink)

Contemporary discourse on human rights in Africa constitutes an important and controversial aspect of the general discourse on African society and culture. I begin by examining the idea of human rights as a moral category and discuss its pertinence to African cultural and political life. I then analyze and discuss the two dominant positions in the current debate, namely, the communitarian and the individualist theses. I argue that both positions are inadequate because they dissociate dimensions of life that need to (...) be interpreted in their interplay. Drawing upon samples of traditional African religious and ethical traditions, I propose a personalist theory of human rights that affirms the intrinsic individuality and sociality of the human status. (shrink)

Human dignity, even when analyzed through the lens of human rights, has received surprisingly little attention in the Journal of Religious Ethics, in contrast to a resurgent global interest in it. This article examines some possible reasons for this diminutive interest and makes a case for dignity's integration into the mainstream of religious ethics scholarship. A social conception of human dignity understands it as a conferment that entitles its holder to certain respectful treatments unavailable to those without it. As a (...) naturalistic conception, human dignity assumes certain features to be inherent in human nature. An emancipatory theory of dignity offers a fuller accounting of the concept as it is informed by a grassroots human rights praxis and social movements across a spectrum of historical periods and cultural and political contexts. (shrink)

The paper covers a range of topics of recent interest in relation to response-depdendence: its characterisation in terms of 'basic equations', its application to areas such as ethics, colour theory and philosophy of mind, and the 'missing explanation' argument.

C. Fred Alford contends that the manner in which I objected to Feyerabend's democratic relativism is vulnerable to Feyerabend's rhetorical strategy, and that a better strategy would be to show that Feyerabend fails to demonstrate that democratic relativism is desirable. I reply in defense of the ?plausibility? issue on the grounds that Feyerabend's theory lends itself to uses (and abuses) beyond Utopian critique (in Alford's sense). I argue that it is the fact that critics ? myself included ? have assumed (...) the burden of demonstrating the impossibility of Feyerabend's political theory that has led to the stalemate Alford describes, and that we may retain the ?plausibility? question while avoiding the stalemate by placing the burden of argument on Feyerabend to show that his theory is plausible. (shrink)

Globalization is being celebrated in many circles as a distinctive achievement of our age, drawing peoples and societies more closely together and creating far greater wealth than any previous generations ever knew. While the first of these assertions is correct in the sense that societies and cultures are colliding, hitherto relatively closed horizons are opening up, and spaces and time are compressing, the second deserves critical interrogations. Using Africa's experience with globalization as a case study, this article argues that globalization (...) be understood as an emerging preference for certain institutional and policy practices that are creating and coercively imposing pervasive but avoidable conditions of material deprivations on many societies. The article defends a motivational rationale anchored in the normative vision of socio‐economic and development rights as a way to mitigate the deleterious effects of unguarded globalization. (shrink)