This article takes a fresh look at the place of transcendence in feminist theology. The author argues that it is this concept that allows us to imagine the impossible and therefore has a central part to play. The article engages with process thought and so argues that God, which is part of the process is nevertheless more than the sum of the parts. Deity, it is argued, is the web in which all things take place.

In contrast to popular presumptions and prior research on women ofthe “postfeminist” generation, this study found anappreciation for recent historicalchanges in women’s opportunities, and an awareness of persisting inequalities and discrimination. The findings reveal support for feminist goals, coupled with ambiguity about the concept offeminism. Although some of the women could be categorized alonga continuum of feminist identification, half were “fence-sitters” or were unable to articulate a position. There were variations in perspectives amongthose with different life experiences, as well as (...) by racial and class background. (shrink)

Growing up in the shadow of the women's movement dramatically influences how young women think about their life course transitions. Although prior research has examined the objective markers of adulthood, we know little about how young women themselves perceive these markers. This article examines the subjective meanings of the transition to adulthood among 42 young women who were part of the Youth Development Study. While interviewees saw becoming a parent and becoming financially independent as reflecting an adult (...) orientation, completing schooling was tied to class-differentiated views of growing up. In addition, respondents did not see beginning full-time work and getting married as associated with growing up. Three key themes emerged as young women discussed their lives: independence/self-reliance, self-development, and uncertainty. These themes suggest that young women are partially “living feminism” as they make the transition to adulthood. (shrink)

Neither legalistic gender-neutral categories nor prior feminist theories adequately capture all of the gender dynamics of child sexual abuse. Surveys of 923 young adults, 88 of whom reported sexual contact with adults before they were 16, complemented by intensive follow-up interviews with 18 reporting contact, reveal that gendered constructions of sexuality and dominance make the experience of abuse significantly different for boys and girls. Girls nearly always had contact with men and tended to experience it as harmful abuse. Boys (...) were more likely to have contact with women than with men; they generally interpreted contact with women as consensual, but their contact with men as abusive. Extensions of feminist gender analysis are required to explain these patterns. (shrink)

This book explores images of schoolteachers in America from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, using a wide range of approaches to scholarship and writing. It is intended for both experienced and aspiring teachers to use as a springboard for discussion and reflection about the teaching profession and for contemplating these questions: _ What does it mean to be a teacher? What has influenced and sustained our beliefs about teachers? New in the second edition_ * The focus (...) is shifted to the teaching profession as the 21st century unfolds. * The volume continues to explore teacher images through various genres--oral history, narrative, literature, and popular culture. In the second edition, the authors place more emphasis on the social-political context that has shaped teachers' daily experiences and the teaching profession itself. In the study of teacher images and schooling, the essays draw from feminist research methods and the critical tradition in educational inquiry to probe issues of power and authority, race, social class, and gender. * The emphasis is on the multidimensionality of teacher images rather than normative characterizations. * Six totally new chapters have been written for this new edition: an "invented interview" spanning 100 years of school teaching; portraits of progressive activist teachers; an exploration of teachers in fiction for young adults; a retrospective of the satirical cartoon show, _The Simpsons_; a study of crusading and caring teachers in films; and an overview of progressive classroom practices in "the new millennium." Seven chapters have been thoroughly revised to reflect current scholarship and the authors' evolving knowledge and interests. (shrink)

Michèle Le Doeuff's "Primal Scene": Prohibition and Confidence in the Education of a Woman My essay begins with Michèle Le Doeuff's singular account of the "primal scene" in her own education as a woman, illustrating a universally significant point about the way in which education can differ for men and women: gender difference both shapes and is shaped by the imaginary of a culture as manifest in how texts matter for Le Doeuff. Her primal scene is the first moment she (...) remembers when, while aspiring to think for herself, a prohibition is placed in her reading of literature. Her philosophyteacher—at a boys' school—told the young Michèle that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was "too difficult" for her to read. In recalling this scene, the older Michèle—now, a woman philosopher—directs her readers to this text by Kant, in order to demonstrate how knowledge has been constrained by the narrative and imagery in the text of a philosopher; similarly, in the texts of others. She finds the central imagery of Kant's text for setting the limits to human knowledge in his account of "the island of understanding," or "land of truth," surrounded by "a stormy sea" of uncertainty; the latter image also retains a seductive appeal, threatening to destroy the confidence of any knower who ventures out beyond the well-marked out island. Moreover, women have often been associated with the dangers at sea beyond the safety of the island, where falsehood and worse reign. I propose that "text matters" here not only for gender issues, but for the postcolonial theory which Le Doeuff's reading of island imagery enhances in western literature and culture. The suggestion is that women in the history of ideas have been more susceptible than men to prohibitions : women's negative education is against going beyond certain boundaries which have been fixed by a generally colonialist culture on the grounds of gender-hierarchies. I stress the significance of confidence in the production of knowledge. A lack or an inhibition of confidence in one's own ability to think critically risks the damaging exclusions of, for example, colonialism and sexism. My aim is to unearth the political biases evident in textual imagery, while also pointing to new epistemic locations, with island-and-sea imagery that transgresses patriarchal prohibition, liberating subjects for confident reading and writing of texts today. (shrink)

HARDIN PK. Nursing Inquiry 2003; 10: 209–217 Shape-shifting discourses of anorexia nervosa: reconstituting psychopathologyThis article explores how the circuitous relationship between individuals, the media, and discursive systems replicate and reinforce the act of self-starvation in young women. Using a feminist poststructuralist methodology, the focus of this article is on how discourses and institutional practices operate to position young women who take up the subject position of wanting to be diagnosed as anorexic. Utilizing data from online accounts and individual (...) interviews, I attend to the ways in which young women are institutionally positioned as ‘anorexics’ and the effects that those positions have on their behaviors, in addition to reinforcing institutional practices that construct anorexia nervosa. Questions addressed through this inquiry are: How do institutional practices create and continue to constitute ‘anorexia nervosa’? How do discourses operate to position young women such that they are either included and/or excluded into the category of ‘anorexia nervosa’? What are the effects and consequences that emanate from these positionings? (shrink)

The Weather Prediction Task was originally designed to assess probabilistic classification learning. Participants were believed to gradually acquire implicit knowledge about cue–outcome association probabilities and solve the task using a multicue strategy based on the combination of all cue–outcome probabilities. However, the cognitive processes engaged in the resolution of this task have not been firmly established, and despite conflicting results, the WPT is still commonly used to assess striatal or procedural learning capacities in various populations. Here, we tested young (...) adults on a modified version of the WPT and performed novel analyses to decipher the learning strategies and cognitive processes that may support above chance performance. The majority of participants used a hierarchical strategy by assigning different weights to the different cues according to their level of predictability. They primarily based their responses on the presence or absence of highly predictive cues and considered less predictive cues secondarily. However, the influence of the less predictive cues was inconsistent with the use of a multicue strategy, since they did not affect choices when both highly predictive cues associated with opposite outcomes were present simultaneously. Our findings indicate that overall performance is inadequate to draw conclusions about the cognitive processes assessed by the WPT. Instead, detailed analyses of performance for the different patterns of cue–outcome associations are essential to determine the learning strategies used by participants to solve the task. (shrink)

Multisensory integration allows us to link sensory cues from multiple sources and plays a crucial role in speech development. However, it is not clear whether humans have an innate ability or whether repeated sensory input while the brain is maturing leads to efficient integration of sensory information in speech. We investigated the integration of auditory and somatosensory information in speech processing in a bimodal perceptual task in 15 young adults (age 19 to 30) and 14 children (age 5 to (...) 6). The participants were asked to identify if the perceived target was the sound /e/ or /ø/. Half of the stimuli were presented under a unimodal condition with only auditory input. The other stimuli were presented under a bimodal condition with both auditory input and somatosensory input consisting of facial skin stretches provided by a robotic device, which mimics the articulation of the vowel /e/. The results indicate that the effect of somatosensory information on sound categorization was larger in adults than in children. This suggests that integration of auditory and somatosensory information evolves throughout the course of development. (shrink)

Este artículo reflexiona acerca de las especificidades de la constitución de los monumentos conmemorativos en vínculo con la historia reciente. Para ello, la mirada se centrará en la noción de contramonumentos, entendiendo a estos últimos como aquellas producciones que, inicialmente de la mano de un grupo de artistas alemanes, desafían las premisas del monumento tradicional. En base a esto, se expone, en primera instancia el desarrollo histórico del monumento, destacando determinados sucesos que se consideran significativos dentro de la extensa cronología (...) en la que éste se inscribe; en un segundo momento, se recuperan una serie de reflexiones y debates que problematizan y cuestionan la efectividad de estos objetos culturales en relación a la evocación del pasado; y finalmente, se presentan y analizan un conjunto de producciones artísticas que se enmarcan dentro de lo que se reconoce como contramonumentos. En este sentido, se considera que la revisión de los aspectos formales, conceptuales y funcionales a partir de las cuales James E. Young definió en la década de los noventa a los contramonumentos, ilumina y habilita nuevas reflexiones sobre las diversas intervenciones, acciones de resistencia y producciones artísticas que se llevan a cabo en la actualidad, muchas de las cuales pueden ser pensadas como contramonumentos. (shrink)

In Western countries, a social trend toward delaying childbearing has been observed in women of reproductive age for the last two decades. This delay is due to different factors related to lifestyle, such as the development of a professional career or the absence of the right partner. As a consequence, women who defer childbearing may find themselves affected by age-related infertility when they decide to conceive. Fertility preservation techniques are, therefore, proposed as a solution for these women. Among all possible (...) solutions, social freezing is an alternative strongly discussed from a scientific, social and ethical point of view.A survey among 930 female students at the University of Padova (Italy) investigated their knowledge and attitudes on social egg freezing and their potential intentions regarding this procedure. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the level of awareness of age-related infertility in Italian young women and their attitudes regarding acceptable indications for elective oocyte freezing, their potential personal use, the circumstances in which they would then decide to use cryopreserved eggs, and their attitudes towards cost coverage and oocyte donation.Data collected in this study revealed some important points about young women and their knowledge about social oocyte freezing in Italy as compared to other European countries and the United States.Overall, 34.3% of the students reported having heard about the possibility of oocyte cryopreservation for non-medical reasons and being aware of the meaning of this procedure; only 19.5% were in favour of social egg freezing and 48.4% thought that the cost for this procedure should be borne entirely by the woman herself. Regarding egg donation, the majority of students (64.9%) would not accept donating their eggs to a known woman or couple and 42.5% would instead accept donating to a biobank.Our study shows that young Italian women are significantly less aware of age-related decline in fertility and the possibility of using social egg freezing compared to their similarly situated counterparts in other Western countries. (shrink)

Down syndrome (DS), the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability, results from the partial or complete triplication of chromosome 21. Individuals with DS are impaired at using a high-resolution, allocentric spatial representation to learn and remember discrete locations in a controlled environment. Here, we assessed the capacity of individuals with DS to perform low-resolution spatial learning, depending on two competing memory systems: (1) the place learning system, which depends on the hippocampus and creates flexible relational representations of the environment; (...) and (2) the response learning system, which depends on the striatum and creates fixed stimulus-response representations of behavioral actions. Individuals with DS exhibited a preservation of the low-resolution spatial learning capacities subserved by these two systems. In place learning, although the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of typically-developing (TD) mental age-matched children and TD young adults, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD children. In response learning, the average performance of individuals with DS was lower than that of TD adults, but it did not differ from that of TD children. Moreover, the number of individuals with DS performing above chance level did not differ from TD adults, and was higher than that of TD children. In sum, whereas low-resolution place learning appears relatively preserved in individuals with DS, response learning appears facilitated. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the neural pathways supporting low-resolution place learning and response learning are relatively preserved in DS. (shrink)

As a young philosopher, a third-generation atheist and already a feminist, Michèle Le Doeuff read the Bible on her own, without anybody’s guidance and on the basis of an assumed intellectual equality between the texts and herself. Later on, her friendship with Pamela Sue Anderson also developed thanks to their firm belief that a member of a given faith and an atheist can tolerate and indeed respect each other to the full through a common involvement in feminist philosophy. (...) All this defines a standpoint from which a host of questions can be raised and many topics transformed. (shrink)

All markets are embedded in ethical relations and moral discourses. This is often forgotten or ignored in alternative agrofood studies, where there has been a frequent assumption that ‘ethics’ can be inserted into markets (Trentmann, 2007), or are only acknowledged in products certified as ‘ethical’ and suchlike (Barnett, Cloke, Clarke, & Malpass, 2005). This paper takes a different approach, choosing to explore how a mainstream commodity, widely associated with the development of capitalist agriculture (Mintz, 1985), is unavoidably embedded in both (...) a set of moral discourses and a web of ethical relations (Goodman, Maye, & Holloway, 2010). Specifically, I offer a critical reading of the moral discourses that circulated between the Caribbean Sugar Protocol signatories and the European Union in the context of the 2006–2009 European Union Sugar Reform. The paper looks at how both Caribbean and European actors negotiated ‘fairness’ and in doing so, reconfigured their historical relationship. I discuss how a relational—or ethical—approach to fairness was evoked in certain instances, disrupting the European Union's (EU) neoliberal rhetoric. Contributing to the literature around ‘moral geographies’ (Jackson & Ward, 2008; Proctor et al., 1999; Smith, 1999) and also to agrofood studies, I conclude by affirming the significance of a relational approach to how the ‘fairness’ of the EU Sugar Reform might be comprehended and to how the ethics of neoliberal market reform can be more generally understood and critiqued. (shrink)

Concerns regarding corporate ethics have grown steadily throughout the past decade. In order to remain competitive, many organizational leaders are faced with the challenge of creating an ethical environment within their organization. A model is presented showing the process and elements necessary for the institutionalization of organizational ethics. The transformational leadership style lends itself well to the creation of an ethical environment and is suggested as a means to facilitate the institutionalization of corporate ethics. Finally, the benefits of using transformational (...) leadership are demonstrated through the components of a psychological contract, organizational commitment, and ethical culture to institutionalize organizational ethics. (shrink)

Advocacy is an important concept in nursing practice; it is frequently used to describe th nurse-client relationship. The term advocacy, however, is subject to ambiguity of interpretation. Such ambiguity was evidenced recently in criticisms levelled at the nursing profession by hospital ethicist Ellen Bernal. She reproached nursing for using 'patient rights advocate' as a viable role for nurses. We maintain that, for nursing, patient advocacy may encompass, but is not limited to, patient rights advocacy. Patient advocacy is not merely the (...) defence of infringements of patient rights. Advocacy for nursing stems from a philosophy of nursing in which nursing practice is the support of an individual to promote his or her own well-being, as understood by that individual. It is an ethic of practice. La défense des malades joue un grand rôle dans la pratique des infirmiers/ères. Le terme est souvent utilisé pour définir les rapports entre malades et soignants. Le mot 'defénse' pourtant, peut être mal compris. Une ambiguïté était évidente récemment dans la critique de la profession infirmière faite par la philosophe éthique Ellen Bernal. Elle reproche à la profession d'utiliser le terme 'avocat des droits des malades' pour désigner le rôle primordial des infirmiers/ères. Nous croyons que pour les soignants, la défense des malades peut comprendre le rôle 'd'avocat des droits des malades' mais elle ne s'y borne pas. La défense n'est pas limitée à la défense des infractions des droits des malades. La défense dans la profession infirmière est basée sur une philosophie où la pratique infirmière est le soutien des malades dans leur quête de promouvoir leur propre bien-être. Die Fürsprache spielt eine wichtige Rolle in der Krankenpflege. Sie wird oft als kennzeichnend für die Beziehung zwischen Patient und Pflegepersonal beschrieben. Der Ausdruck 'Fürsprache' kann aber auch mehrdeutig interpretiert werden. Das wurde letzthin in der Kritik der Ethikerin Ellen Bernal an der Krankenpflege sichtbar. Sie machte den Pflegenden den Vorwurf, dass sie sich die Rolle des 'Rechts-Advokat des Patienten' aneignen. Wir sind der Meinung, dass es die Aufgabe des Pflegepersonals ist, auch die Rechte der Patienten zu vertreten, aber dass das nur ein Teil der Fürsprache ist. Sie ist nicht nur Verteidignung von verletzten Patientenrechten. Die Fürsprache in der Krankenpflege stammt von einer Philosophie, deren Ausübung die Unterstützung der Patienten für ihr Wohlergehen zum Ziel hat, so wie die Patienten selbst ihr Wohlergehen verstehen. Sie ist eine Ethik der Tat. (shrink)

James O. Young seeks to explain why we value music so highly. He draws on the latest psychological research to argue that music is expressive of emotion by resembling human expressive behaviour. The representation of emotion in music gives it the capacity to provide psychological insight--and it is this which explains a good deal of its value.

The French feminist philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff has taught us something about “the collectivity,” which she discovers in women’s struggle for access to the philosophical, but also about “the unknown” and “the unthought.” It is the unthought which will matter most to what I intend to say today about a fundamental ignorance on which speaker vulnerability is built. On International Women’s Day, it seems appropriate to speak about – or, at least, to evoke – the silencing which has been imposed (...) on women by an oppressive form of ignorance. My question is: how do our resounding voices as women – on 8 March 2016 – avoid what feminist philosophers have distinguished as wilful forms of silencing? Silencing exploits vulnerability; and speaker vulnerability is an exposure either to violence or affection, in its dependence on an audience. My response seeks to undo the silencing of women by transforming an ignorance of vulnerability into a distinctively ethical avowal. To see the significance of this undoing, we will consider how our contemporary global world reduces vulnerability to an openness to violence, ignoring what has been unthought: an openness to affection. A wilful ignorance of vulnerability develops not as a lack of knowledge but its disavowal – on which various forms of oppression are built. An active disavowal of thinking (the unthought) is the other side of a striving for invulnerability; and this striving is encouraged by a social world which remains ignorant of its own wounding, as well as its own potential for ethical relations in vulnerability. Like la mauvaise foi of the French existentialist, invulnerability is a form of self-deception; and those who claim it embrace ignorance of their own and others’ vulnerability too. (shrink)

This chapter highlights the significance of Yi I 李珥 and his contribution to the development of Korean Neo-Confucianism. Yulgok was a “synthesizer” in his approach to the some fundamental issues and controversies that dominated the sixteenth century Joseon Neo-Confucianism. Some of most controversial issues that Yulgok dealt with were the relationship between “principle” or i/li 理 and “vital force” or gi/qi 氣, the famous “four-seven” debates, the problem of relating the “human mind” and the “dao-mind”, and the idea of understanding (...) the human in relation to the cosmos. Yulgok dealt each of these vital issues with his unique non-dualistic approach which synthesized the conceptual polarity that caused serious debates in the Korean Neo-Confucian circle. The concepts such as i/li and gi/qi, eum/yin and yang, the “human mind” and the “dao-mind,” for example, were understood by some leading Confucian scholars including Yi Hwang 李滉 structured dualistically. Yulgok thought that although these ideas appeared to be conceptually dualistic, they were, in fact, related to each other with an intrinsic ontological unity based on the same reality. However, Yulgok made a clear distinction between different manifestations of the same ontological substance. For example, Yulgok discussed about the mysterious relationship of i and gi: “The mystery of i and gi is difficult to see or to talk. The origin of i is one, the origin of gi is also one…. gi does not part from i, and i does not part from gi. This being the case, i and gi are one.” It is essential to understand Yulgok’s non-dualistic view of reality. For Yulgok, reality was profoundly relational. For him relation was not simply a connection or an external binding but it was fundamentally an intrinsic unity of beings or entities by stating that one cannot exist without the other. In this respect, Yulgok was a non-dualistic thinker who understood reality not in the framework of dichotomy but in the intrinsic unity of i and gi and the “four beginnigs” and the “seven feelings”, etc. Yulgok’s anthropology, ontology, and cosmology were based on his synthetic and comprehensive approach to the critical issues of Korean Neo-Confucianism. This chapter is a brief summary of Yulgok’s life and thoughts in relationship to each other to observe his intellectual development in light of his personal growth. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. Honoring his work, this anthology addresses questions and concerns that defined Ricoeur’s.

The tissue biobanking of specific biological residual materials, which constitutes a useful resource for medical/scientific research, has raised some ethical issues, such as the need to define which kind of consent is applicable for biological residual materials biobanks.

The purpose of this article is to explore the law related to identity theft, to review corresponding rights, and responsibilities of stakeholders involved in identity theft and to formulate a system of best practices businesses could engage in to prevent or reduce identity theft threats. Utilizing two ethical frameworks based on deontological approaches, the authors conclude that there should be a well-defined management scheme to prevent identity theft, which is easy to comprehend and comply with for all stakeholders. Our proposed (...) management scheme incorporates both legal and ethical elements such that identity theft will be more difficult. Further, our proposal would also address business entities’ practices that are so careless that identity theft is made possible at all or made easier: ethical business practice can do much to reduce or eliminate identity theft. (shrink)

Euclid discusses the ex aequali relationship twice in the Elements. The first is in Book V, during his discussion of arithmetical relations between mathematical magnitudes in general. The second is in Books VIIIX, he was not much troubled by the differences between his treatment of ex aequali ratios in these two contexts. Later generations of mathematicians, however, found these differences less acceptable and tried to minimize them in various ways. This paper summarizes Euclid's use of the ex aequali relation in (...) developing his mathematics. The paper then outlines the fate of the post-Theonine Greek attempts to the Euclidean discussion when the Elements entered the Arabic/Islamic intellectual tradition. The study concludes with the attempts by Ibn al-Hayam and Ibn al-Sarī to improve the parallelism between the discussions of ex aequali ratios in Book V and Book VII. (shrink)

The contemporary debate over man’s relation to his natural environment raises many complex issues which have thrown our familiar liberal and conservative political alignments into disarray. Although ecology is now generally regarded as a liberal cause with conservatives supporting commercial and industrial expansion, until very recently liberals almost unanimously championed industrialization andtechnological advance. Resistance to “progress” was the folly of only the most eccentric conservatives. Today, both liberal proponents of environmental protection and conservative defenders of business and industry argue on (...) merely prudential grounds: each side maintains that only the adoption of its own program can save human civilization from collapse, or even the race from extinction. Extremely radical environmentalists have based their arguments on nloral principle: humanity is just one species among many, and men are, therefore, morally obligated to respect the rights of other organisms and of the ecosystem as a whole. This position, however, is ultimately reducible to a self-contradictory utilitarianism. It is the reverent attitude of traditional conservatism - that man is superior to other creatures as the steward of creation, holding it not as absolute possessor but only in trust from his Creator - that promises both the most moral and the most sensible approach to environmental affairs. (shrink)