This article is concerned with ethical issues that have to be considered when under taking qualitative research. Some of the issues - such as informed consent, the dignity and privacy of the research subjects, voluntary participation and protection from harm - are the same as in other types of research and have their basis in moral and ethical principles. Qualitative research, however, generates specific ethical problems because of the close relationship that researchers form with participants. Qualitative research with patients is (...) especially difficult because of their vulnerability and lack of power in the clinical situation. Therefore the potential conflict between the dual role of the nurse - the professional and the research roles - has to be solved. Researchers also learn how to cope with the tension of subjective and objective elements of the research. Nurses who attempt qualitative research have to consider a variety of complex ethical issues, which are addressed in this paper. (shrink)

This chapter would have liked to invite its readers on an exciting but breath-taking journey through the historical landscapes of international law, since ‘time immemorial’ a male-centred and, until the 1990s, almost exclusively male intellectual tradition and professional practice – at least in the eyes of the currently dominating historiography. Helas, the ambition had to be downscaled into a few rapid zooms, touristic snapshots in an impressionistic mode, on seven contexts in time and space in a hasty timeline from the (...) eighteenth century to 2021. They reflect, merely as examples, women’s status in international law in diverse political, social and legal transformations or crisis. Some are representing moments of codification or the break-through of certain interpretations of women’s rights. Others are selected for their role in enabling women’s participation in decision-making or entry to international legal positions, or because they provide an example of women’s international activism for women’s rights. All of them might have preceded, followed, or in fact themselves constituted ‘Grotian Moments’ for ‘women’s rights’ – did they, and if not, why? Should they have? If yes, which ones and how, to what effect for ‘women’? (shrink)

This article focuses on emergency medical care in black urban populations, suggesting that the classification of a "community" within clinical trial language is problematic. The article references a cultural history of black Americans with pre-hospital emergency medical treatment as relevant to contemporary emergency medicine paradigms. Part I explores a relationship between "autonomy" and "community." The idea of community emerges as a displacement for the ethical principle of autonomy precisely at the moment that institutionalized medicine focuses on diversity. Part II examines (...) a clinical trial for the blood substitute PolyHeme® (Northfield Laboratories, Inc., Evanston, IL). It illustrates the ways in which bias in research paradigms and Institutional Review Board decisions attach to the notion and utility of the language of "community." The conclusion's contemporary anecdote makes apparent the vitality of the issues of prehospital emergency medical care and the ways in which decisions and practices fall too easily into a narrative of culturally biased treatment. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 49-57, March‐April 2022.

What is God doing about a world marked by conflict and division? What about a world in which our technologies promise great good but also threaten our existence? What is God doing in a world where the demands for accumulation and acquisition create division and despair? Can Christians hope to be of positive influence in a world that does not always support, reflect, or even understand Christian commitments? Christian ethics often raises such questions as these, and the possible answers vary (...) widely. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians is a tremendous resource for exploring a faithful response to perhaps the toughest question of all: what is God doing about evil? The role of Christian ethics is to take seriously the challenge that, whatever God is doing, God calls us to participate in a distinctive task that embraces our own commitments and labors within the divine purpose. Ephesians says that God has taken the initiative to pursue that purpose and, remarkably, offers that we ourselves are part of the answer to the question, what is God doing about evil? (shrink)

There are two different ways of understanding alienation: as a condition and as a struggle. On this distinction turns the whole theory and practice of Marxism.

Capitalist civilisation is based on abstract labour. Mainstream Marxism has developed within a movement based on the defence of abstract labour and this has shaped its understanding. Savage Marxism starts from the first, not the second, sentence of Capital and moves against abstract labour through an underworld of categories usually neglected. Hope lies latent in this underworld.

In this essay, I argue that contemporary democratic theory gives insufficient attention to the important contributions dissenting citizens make to democratic life. Guided by the dissident practices of activist women, I develop a more expansive conception of citizenship that recognizes dissent and an ethic of political courage as vital elements of democratic participation. I illustrate how this perspective on citizenship recasts and reclaims women's courageous dissidence by reconsidering the well-known story of Rosa Parks.

In 300 BCE, the tutor of the heir-apparent to the Chu throne was laid to rest in a tomb at Jingmen, Hubei province in central China. A corpus of bamboo-strip texts that recorded the philosophical teachings of an era was buried with him. The tomb was sealed, and China quickly became the theater of the Qin conquest, an event that proved to be one of the most significant in ancient history. For over two millennia, the texts were forgotten. But in (...) October 1993, they were unearthed. The discovery of the Guodian texts, together with other recently discovered Warring States manuscripts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese intellectual history. Kenneth Holloway argues that the Guodian corpus puts forth a political philosophy based on the harmonious interconnection of individuals engaged in moral self-cultivation. This unique worldview, says Holloway, cannot meaningfully be categorized as "Confucian" or "Daoist," because it shares important concepts and vocabulary with a number of different textual traditions that have anachronistically been characterized as competing or incompatible "schools" of thought. He finds that within the Guodian corpus familiar philosophical concepts and texts are applied in distinctive ways, presenting a worldview that is quite different from the received textual traditions. In the corpus, the most important function of government is to assist in the harmonization of state and family relations. It sees the relationship between these two entities - the family and the collection of families that ultimately constitute the state - as being inherently conflicting social groupings. The texts posit an interesting solution: State and family disharmony can be overcome by developing a hybrid government that employs both meritocratic and aristocratic methods. Without knowledge of the emphasis on hybridization found in the Guodian texts, however, scholars were unable to understand the interrelationships between these two methods of government. This new understanding illuminates central issues of government, religion, and philosophy in early China that were overlooked in received texts. As part of the contribution to our understanding of this particular body of texts, Holloway proposes a methodology for assessing a corpus of texts without relying on assumptions and definitions that derive from two thousand years of scholarship. The Guodian corpus, and Holloway's analysis of it, are now absolutely indispensable to any student or scholar of ancient Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

This paper describes neoliberalism and summarizes new works on democracy in Continental philosophy. Unlike laissez-faire or liberal economic theory—a “leave us alone” strategy in which the state does not interfere with private enterprise—neoliberal governments use the resources of the state to assist the market directly and employ the market to direct or oversee the resources of the state. Alongside neoliberal government, and in its wake, is a society in which the guiding axioms for each human being are self-entrepreneurship and competition. (...) Over the last decade, however, a new body of philosophical work has been dissociating democracy from neoliberal government, critiquing a failed system of political representation, and considering to what extent democracy must take place beyond or outside of the current state. Of equal concern to these philosophers is how to take flight from a way of life that is characterized by self-entrepreneurship and competition. For some, the start of a political future beyond neoliberalism hinges upon a recent distinction between constituent and destituent forms of power. Whereas constituent power attempts to reform one’s government through demonstrations in public space, destituent power abandons the project of reforming one’s government momentarily or even completely in order to experience another form of life entirely. (shrink)

Data do exist to support the fact that the corpus callosum is relatively larger in women than in men. The corpus callosum is an integral part of the brain, and contrary to Fitch & Denenberg's examples of “pseudostatistics,” is not an extrinsic structure when determining its relative size.

The first and preliminary part of this discussion examines Todorov's remark, in his article "Structural Analysis of Narrative" , on certain tales in the Decameron. These are advanced as dealing with a "concrete problem" which "illustrates" what Todorov "conceive[s] to be the structural approach to literature." The second part offers an alternative analysis of the Decameron tales. The third part comprises some observations, from a similar point of view, on Crime and Punishment. The anterior purpose of the whole discussion is (...) to identify at least some points where insights about "structure," in a fairly strict sense, seem to bear genuinely upon the insights of the literary critic. John Holloway, Professor of Modern English at the University of Cambridge, is the author of, among others, The Victorian Sage, The Charted Mirror, The Story of the Night, Blake: The Lyric Poetry, The Proud Knowledge, Planet of Winds, and five volumes of verse. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Narrative Structure and Text Structure," appeared in the March 1975 issue. (shrink)

In recent decades, academic science has increasingly been directed toward commercializable ends by neoliberal governments. In this article, I outline a concern that academic scientists have not been consulted about the transformation of science, but nevertheless, in some ways accept commercialization as the way things are done. I focus on the ways in which academic scientists attempt to exercise agency, albeit within the parameters of the neoliberal knowledge economy. In this economy, scientific inquiry has transformed to be focused more on (...) producing marketable products. In order to explore the parameters of scientists’ agency in the context of that transformation, I first elaborate on the idea of agency’s “parameters” and argue that the literature on commercialization lacks attention to how researchers’ agency is encouraged and discouraged in the context of academic research in the United States and Canada; second, I make a case for using the concept of hegemony to understand the ideas and practices of contemporary science; third, I propose a methodological direction that can attend to researchers’ agency in the contemporary context of the neoliberal knowledge economy. (shrink)

When I first starting hearing and reading about Jacques Rancière a number of years ago, I was deeply skeptical. Wasn’t this yet another European man becoming the new political theory “It Girl”? Wasn’t the claim that Rancière had a singular, fresh approach to dissent and protest overblown, when other people—especially critical race scholars, postcolonial theorists, feminists, queer theorists, and so on—had already addressed these topics thoroughly but were rarely acknowledged in mainstream scholarship? Did we really need to deify and create (...) a cottage industry around yet one more white male Western theorist, especially one who so rarely deigns to cite his influences or the work of others? It took... (shrink)

“Buddhisms” captures the challenge inherent in the diverse practices and beliefs of this religion. In this book, grounding the analysis in the bodies of practitioners provides a new opportunity for coherence that reaches across vast expanses of time and space.

This article focuses on emergency medical care in black urban populations, suggesting that the classification of a “community” within clinical trial language is problematic. The article references a cultural history of black Americans with pre-hospital emergency medical treatment as relevant to contemporary emergency medicine paradigms. Part I explores a relationship between “autonomy” and “community.” The idea of community emerges as a displacement for the ethical principle of autonomy precisely at the moment that institutionalized medicine focuses on diversity. Part II examines (...) a clinical trial for the blood substitute PolyHeme® (Northfield Laboratories, Inc., Evanston, IL). It illustrates the ways in which bias in research paradigms and Institutional Review Board decisions attach to the notion and utility of the language of “community.” The conclusion's contemporary anecdote makes apparent the vitality of the issues of prehospital emergency medical care and the ways in which decisions and practices fall too easily into a narrative of culturally biased treatment. (shrink)

While the dominant approaches to the current study of political philosophy are various, with some friendlier to religious belief than others, almost all place constraints on the philosophic and political role of revelation. Mainstream secular political theorists do not entirely disregard religion. But to the extent that they pay attention, their treatment of religious belief is seen more as a political or philosophic problem to be addressed rather than as a positive body of thought from which we might derive important (...) insights about the nature of politics and the truth of the human condition. In a one-of-a-kind collection, DeHart and Holloway bring together leading scholars from various fields, including political science, philosophy, and theology, to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy and to demonstrate the role that religion can and does play in political life. Contributing authors include such important thinkers as Peter Augustine Lawler, Robert C. Koons, J. Budziszewski, Francis J. Beckwith, and James Stoner. (shrink)

Despite the ontogenetic allometric size effects that explain much of phyletic variation in brain components, the residuals of some structures indicates that mosaic brain evolution was an important factor in hominid evolution, and that reorganization of the hominid brain may have occurred as early as 3+ MY. Finlay et al.'s allometric technique masks residual variation around allometric trends, and the patterns of residuals relevant to species-specific departures from strict allometric trends.

This study questions the belief that little or no social studies is being taught in regular elementary education classrooms. That belief is based on time studies and a body of research that looks at curriculum and teacher interviews and concludes that the social studies time block has been decreased in elementary classrooms, therefore little or no social studies is being taught. In light of the previous research, we decided to conduct a study that asked is social studies being taught, and (...) if so, how is it being taught? A list of key social studies concepts for grades 1-5 were used to survey approximately 100 elementary school teachers in a southwestern school district. Teachers used a Likert Scale to rate how often they taught each concept. From the initial survey, 10 teachers were interviewed regarding how they approach teaching social studies concepts and were asked to share sample lesson plans with the researchers. Analysis revealed that elementary teachers (grades 1- 5) were teaching most social studies concepts in traditional time blocks incorporating content integration from a variety of curriculum areas, such as reading, art, mathematics, and science. Sample lesson plans obtained from the teachers showed the use of content integration and the focus on social studies concepts. The researchers reveal how one group of teachers attempted to cope with reduced teaching time for social studies do to state testing. (shrink)

Robotic or automatic milking systems are novel technologies that take over the labor of dairy farming and reduce the need for human–animal interactions. Because robotic milking involves the replacement of ‘conventional’ twice-a-day milking managed by people with a system that supposedly allows cows the freedom to be milked automatically whenever they choose, some claim robotic milking has health and welfare benefits for cows, increases productivity, and has lifestyle advantages for dairy farmers. This paper examines how established ethical relations on dairy (...) farms are unsettled by the intervention of a radically different technology such as AMS. The renegotiation of ethical relationships is thus an important dimension of how the actors involved are re-assembled around a new technology. The paper draws on in-depth research on UK dairy farms comparing those using conventional milking technologies with those using AMS. We explore the situated ethical relations that are negotiated in practice, focusing on the contingent and complex nature of human–animal–technology interactions. We show that ethical relations are situated and emergent, and that as the identities, roles, and subjectivities of humans and animals are unsettled through the intervention of a new technology, the ethical relations also shift. (shrink)

During the set-up phase of an international study of genetic influences on outcomes from sepsis, we aimed to characterise potential differences in ethics approval processes and outcomes in participating European countries. Between 2005 and 2007 of the FP6-funded international Genetics Of Sepsis and Septic Shock project, we asked national coordinators to complete a structured survey of research ethic committee approval structures and processes in their countries, and linked these data to outcomes. Survey findings were reconfirmed or modified in 2017. Eighteen (...) countries participated in the study, recruiting 2257 patients from 160 ICUs. National practices differed widely in terms of composition of RECs, procedures and duration of the ethics approval process. Eight countries used a single centralised process for approval, seven required approval by an ethics committee in each participating hospital, and three required both. Outcomes of the application process differed widely between countries because of differences in national legislation, and differed within countries because of interpretation of the ethics of conducting research in patients lacking capacity. The RECs in four countries had no lay representation. The median time from submission to final decision was 1.5 months; in nine approval was received within 1 month; six took over 6 months, and in one 24 months; had all countries been able to match the most efficient approvals processes, an additional 74 months of country or institution-level recruitment would have been available. In three countries, rejection of the application by some local RECs resulted in loss of centres; and one country rejected the application outright. The potential benefits of the single application portal offered by the European Clinical Trials Regulation will not be realised without harmonisation of research ethics committee practices as well as national legislation. (shrink)

In this challenging 1993 book John Holloway explores one of the most significant aspects of contemporary culture, arguing that over the last hundred years or so there has been a radical change in the very nature of individual consciousness. He traces a crucial shift from an 'Apollonian' ideal of human involvement in the widest range of experience to a narrower and less integrated engagement with the world. He plots this shift through a number of quite different fields: there are (...) chapters on the visual arts, on colloquial language and slang, on cartoons, on political rhetoric, and on 'personality' studies by psychologists. He goes on to examine the work of certain literary figures who seem to have recognized, and registered in imaginative terms, the pervasive but generally unrecorded changes in consciousness for which the book is arguing. (shrink)

We are accustomed to the idea that emotions need to be controlled, but the Chinese text "Xing zi mingchu" (300 B.C.E) argues that setting them free allows us to develop our qing. Although the development is completed with the help of the classics, the result is a personal connection to the Dao.