The convergence of increasingly efficient high throughput sequencing technology and ubiquitous Internet use by the public has fueled the proliferation of companies that provide personal genetic information (PGI) direct-to-consumers. Companies such as 23andme (Mountain View, CA) and Navigenics (Foster City, CA) are emblematic of a growing market for PGI that some argue represents a paradigm shift in how the public values this information and incorporates it into how they behave and plan for their futures. This new class of social networking (...) business ventures that market the science of the personal genome illustrates the new trend in collaborative science. In addition to fostering a consumer empowerment movement, it promotes the trend of democratizing information?openly sharing of data with all interested parties, not just the biomedical researcher?for the purposes of pooling data (increasing statistical power) and escalating the innovation process. This target article discusses the need for new approaches to studying DTC genomics using social network analysis to identify the impact of obtaining, sharing, and using PGI. As a locus of biosociality, DTC personal genomics forges social relationships based on beliefs of common genetic susceptibility that links risk, disease, and group identity. Ethical issues related to the reframing of DTC personal genomic consumers as advocates and research subjects and the creation of new social formations around health research may be identified through social network analysis. (shrink)

The convergence of increasingly efficient high throughput sequencing technology and ubiquitous Internet use by the public has fueled the proliferation of companies that provide personal genetic information direct-to-consumers. Companies such as 23andme and Navigenics are emblematic of a growing market for PGI that some argue represents a paradigm shift in how the public values this information and incorporates it into how they behave and plan for their futures. This new class of social networking business ventures that market the science of (...) the personal genome illustrates the new trend in collaborative science. In addition to fostering a consumer empowerment movement, it promotes the trend of democratizing information—openly sharing of data with all interested parties, not just the biomedical researcher—for the purposes of pooling data and escalating the innovation process. This target article discusses the need for new approaches to studying DTC genomics using social network analysis to identify the impact of obtaining, sharing, and using PGI. As a locus of biosociality, DTC personal genomics forges social relationships based on beliefs of common genetic susceptibility that links risk, disease, and group identity. Ethical issues related to the reframing of DTC personal genomic consumers as advocates and research subjects and the creation of new social formations around health research may be identified through social network analysis. (shrink)

Many endorse the Bad-Difference View of disability which says that disability makes one likely to be worse off even in the absence of discrimination against the disabled. Others defend the Mere-Difference View of disability which says that, discounting discrimination, disability does not make one likely to be worse off. A common motivation for the BDV is the Options Argument which identifies reduction in valuable options as a harm of disability. Some reject this argument, arguing that disabled people's prospects aren't hindered (...) by having fewer options. In this article, I defend the Options Argument by arguing that, in disability cases, possessing a greater number of valuable options seems to overall improve well-being prospects. As such, the Options Argument appears to be sound and – although it doesn't establish the BDV – it lends plausibility to the BDV by identifying a potentially significant cost of disability. (shrink)

Mining companies in Australia are increasingly required to interact with Indigenous groups as stakeholders following Native Title legislation in the early 1990s. A study of five mining companies in Australia reveals that they now undertake a range of programs involving Indigenous communities, to assist with access to land, and to enhance their public profile. However, most of these initiatives emanate from carefully quarantined sections of mining companies. Drawing upon cross-cultural and diversity research in particular, this paper contends that only initiatives (...) that strive towards power sharing with Indigenous groups and strategies for broadening the organizational interface with Indigenous groups, will contribute to more ethical practices in mining and other companies. (shrink)

Many authors argue that middle-class lesbians present themselves as butch or fem less than working-class lesbians and that butch and fem were discouraged by 1970s feminist stigma but are reemerging in postfeminist decades. By analyzing “women seeking women” personal ads, this study provides a longitudinal, quantitative analysis of the validity of these assumptions. The results suggest that middle-class lesbians were less likely to present themselves as butch or fem than working-class lesbians but no less likely to be seeking a butch (...) or fem partner. Also, butch and fem were found to be much more prevalent in the 1990s than in the 1970s or 1980s. Generational cohorts of lesbians based on feminist political ideologies about butch and fem were not found. Prevailing cultural norms within lesbian communities appear to affect all lesbians in an era. (shrink)

This paper discusses Crawley completions of residuated lattices. While MacNeille completions have been studied recently in relation to logic, Crawley completions (i.e. complete ideal completions), which are another kind of regular completions, have not been discussed much in this relation while many important algebraic works on Crawley completions had been done until the end of the 70’s. In this paper, basic algebraic properties of ideal completions and Crawley completions of residuated lattices are studied first in their (...) conncetion with the join infinite distributivity and Heyting implication. Then some results on algebraic completeness and conservativity of Heyting implication in substructural predicate logics are obtained as their consequences. (shrink)

Through her own words, Mary Hamilton demonstrates the rich resources available for the study of an elite womans life during the latter part of the eighteenth-century and allows us to resurrect more fully the life of a member of an elite circle of women during this period. Her diaries reveal the many opportunities that she had to meet with a number of the significant figures of her day, and shed light on how her academic efforts were perceived by those around (...) her. This article shows how her writings offer researchers an insight into eighteenth-century society as viewed and lived by a woman who was close not only to the centre of high society but also to the intellectual elite of the day. It considers how valuable a resource the diaries and papers are as a potential research tool not only for the study of women‘s history but as a rich resource for the period. (shrink)

This paper explores spectatorial encounters with criminal trials. Particularly focusing on the 2018 work of Australian contemporary visual artist Julie Fragar that followed her watching murder trials in the Supreme Court of Queensland, it is argued that the artist as a legal outsider grapples with the inhumanity of the trial. This grappling can go in two directions. For some there is a need to bring the human back, to see the person beneath the mask of the role that they are (...) performing, to connect the gothic horror of the trial back to a redeeming humanism. For others, and this is evident in Fragar, the horror of the inhumanity is visceral and overpowering, and the grotesque masque of judgment needs to be witnessed. Both perform a corrective and critique to the business as usual of processing, judging and stamping onto human lives that is legal insider’s performance in the criminal trial. (shrink)

This article investigates the critical potential of a contemporary dystopia, The Handmaid’s Tale, a U.S. television series adapted from a popular novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. The text is widely understood as a feminist intervention that speaks to ongoing struggles against gender oppression, but in this article I consider the invitations that the show offers its viewers in treating race the way that it does, and consider what it means to refuse these invitations in pursuit of a critical feminist (...) understanding of authority, legal subjectivity, and violence. Drawing on the recent turn to genre, my reading focuses on how whiteness is reproduced through this cinematic text and its inculcation of particular ways of seeing, modes of identification and attachment. The Handmaid’s Tale’s post-racial aesthetic means that its thematic engagement with gender, sexuality and resistance actively disavows national and international histories of racist state violence and white supremacy. Its problematic feminism is thus uniquely instructive for understanding how whiteness is reproduced in contemporary liberal configurations of legal subjectivity and state authority. (shrink)

: Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read textbooks whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiologies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read text-books whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiologies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read textbooks whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiohgies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

Hundreds of thousands of students in introductory human sexuality classes read textbooks whose covert ideology reinforces dominant heteronormative narratives of sexual dimorphism, male hegemony, and heteronormativity. As such, the process of scientific discovery that proposes to provide description of existing sexual practices, identities, and physiohgies instead succeeds in cultural prescription. This essay provides a feminist, queer content analysis of such textbooks to illuminate their implicit narratives and provide suggestions for writing more feminist, queer-friendly texts.

Evaluating the current locus equation under ideal conditions identifies important and unexpected parameter dependencies. Locus equation (LE) utility, either as a valid laboratory tool or possible invariant cue, depends on stringent specification of critical parameters and rigorous empirical testing.

Critical legal scholarship has recently turned to consider the form, mode and role of law in neoliberal governance. A central theme guiding much of this literature is the importance of understanding neoliberalism as not only a political or economic phenomenon, but also an inherently juridical one. This article builds on these conceptualisations of neoliberalism in turning to explore the wider historical, cultural and sociological contexts which inform the production of neoliberal authority. The papers in this collection were first presented at (...) the symposium ‘Forms of authority beyond the neoliberal state’, held at the Griffith Law School in December 2017. They consider the role of the corporation, the site of the university, the politics of debt, the genre of prestige television, and the archic sources of state violence, in order to imagine forms of authority which lie beyond neoliberalism as an ideology and a set of practices, and the ensemble of institutions which constitute the neoliberal state. The contributions draw on social theory, philosophy, cultural studies, legal geography and political theology in exploring new possibilities for cultivating judgement through and beyond the sovereign, political and aesthetic terrains of neoliberal governance. (shrink)

Resource extraction companies worldwide are involved with Indigenous peoples. Historically these interactions have been antagonistic, yet there is a growing public expectation for improved ethical performance of resource industries to engage with Indigenous peoples. (Crawley and Sinclair, Journal of Business Ethics 45, 361–373 (2003)) proposed an ethical model for human resource practices with Indigenous peoples in Australian mining companies. This paper expands on this work by re-framing the discussion within the context of sustainable development, extending it to Canada, and (...) generalizing to other resource industries. We argue that it is unethical to sacrifice the viability of Indigenous cultures for industrial resource extraction; it is ethical to engage with indigenous peoples in a manner consistent with their wishes and needs as they perceive them. We apply these ideas to a case study in the coastal temperate rainforest of Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. In this case a scientific panel comprised of Nuu-Chah-Nulth elders, forest scientists and management professionals, achieved full consensus on developing sustainable forest practice standards by drawing equally on Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and Western science in the context of one of the most heated and protracted environmental conflicts in Canadian history. The resulting sustainable forest practice standards were later adopted by leading forestry firms operating on the coast. Our analysis of this scientific panels success provides the basis for advancing an ethical approach to sustainable development with Indigenous peoples. This ethical approach is applicable to companies working in natural resource industries where the territories of Indigenous peoples are involved. (shrink)

Counting on the weather Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9503-3 Authors Ruth Morgan, History Discipline, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

It is commonly thought that disability is a harm or “bad difference” because having a disability restricts valuable options in life. In his recent essay “Disability, Options and Well-Being,” Thomas Crawley offers a novel defense of this style of reasoning and argues that we and like-minded critics of this brand of argument are guilty of an inconsistency. Our aim in this article is to explain why our view avoids inconsistency, to challenge Crawley's positive defense of the Options Argument, (...) and to suggest that this general line of reasoning employs a double standard. (shrink)