Using historical documents and evidence gathered in the field, Rubie Watson provides a social history of the 600-year-old Chinese lineage village of Ha Tsuen in the New Territories of Hong Kong, and demonstrates the crucial role that the lineage played in the evolution of the community from a few scattered households in the fourteenth century into a regional power from the 1700s onwards. Despite a patrilineal ideology that extols the virtues of brotherhood and equality, Dr Watson shows that the lineage (...) has in fact played a central role in the formation, development and maintenance of an élite class of landlords and merchants, who, even though their economic importance has now declined, continue to exert political control. Dr Watson examines the dynamics of interclass relations within a single lineage and shows how these relations have been transformed as a consequence of the growth of wage labour. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 193-222, Spring 2022.

This book attempts to bridge the gulf that still exists between 'literary' and 'philosophical' interpreters of Plato by looking at his use of characterization. Characterization is intrinsic to dramatic form and a concern with human character in an ethical sense pervades the dialogues on the discursive level. Form and content are further reciprocally related through Plato's discursive preoccupation with literary characterization. Two opening chapters examine the methodological issues involved in reading Plato 'as drama' and a set of questions surrounding Greek (...) 'character' words, including ancient Greek views about the influence of dramatic character on an audience. The figure of Sokrates qua Platonic 'hero' also receives preliminary discussion. The remaining chapters offer close readings of select dialogues, chosen to show the wide range of ways in which Plato uses his characters, with special emphasis on the kaleidoscopic figure of Sokrates and on Plato's own relationship to his 'dramatic' hero. (shrink)

The #1bestseller that presents a funny, honest, and engaging look at the craziness of modern life, explaining why we're all just a little bit out of our minds. In Sane New World, Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health advocate - shows us just how our minds can send us mad as our internal critics play on a permanent loop tape. 'Don't do that.. why you... you didn't... should have... but you didn't...'. Ruby knows those voices well. (...) She has been on a tough but ultimately enlightening journey that has taken her from battling depression to achieving a Masters Degree from Oxford University in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy. In Sane New World, Ruby helps us all understand why we sabotage our sanity, how our brains work and how we can rewire our thinking - often through simple mindfulness techniques - to find calm in a frenetic world. (shrink)

Human uterus transplantation is currently under investigation as a treatment for uterine infertility. Without a uterus transplant, the options available to women with uterine infertility are adoption or surrogacy; only the latter has the potential for a genetically related child. UTx will offer recipients the chance of having their own pregnancy. This procedure occurs at the intersection of two ethically contentious areas: assisted reproductive technologies and organ transplantation. In relation to organ transplantation, UTx lies with composite tissue transplants such as (...) face and limb grafts, and shares some of the ethical concerns raised by these non-life saving procedures. In relation to ART, UTx represents one more avenue by which a woman may seek to meet her reproductive goals, and as with other ART procedures, raises questions about the limits of reproductive autonomy. This paper explores the ethical issues raised by UTx with a focus on the potential gap between women's desires and aspirations about pregnancy and the likely functional outcomes of successful UTx. (shrink)

The AI world was rocked with controversy when Blake Lemoine, an AI researcher at Google claimed that their new LaMDA model was sentient. This Curmudgeon’s Corner article explores his claims critically by contrasting them to the original LaMDA paper released by the team of researchers at Google. The piece explores the human tendency for anthropomorphization via historical chatbots such as Eliza and potential reasons why we developed this propensity. It addresses the potential causes for the model’s choice of words. Subsequently, (...) using the scoring criteria of the language model, I provide an explanation for the model’s behavior in the conversation with Lemoine. Finally, I explore some of Lemoine’s assertions and break down the logical gaps they hold. I conclude on a potential reorientation of the debate in view of our unfortunate tendency. (shrink)

Scholars are beginning to use the concept medicalization of poverty to theorize how the United States spends large amounts of money on illnesses related to poverty but invests much less in preventing these illnesses and the conditions that create them. This study examines the connection between poverty, disease burden and health-related costs through the in-depth interviews of 86 Black mothers living in neighborhoods with high levels of violence on the South Side of Chicago. The rippling costs of poverty and violence (...) include 56 percent of the mothers reporting post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and 48 percent reporting mild to severe depressive symptoms. Mothers also report poor housing quality such as “toxic mold.” The physical costs include reports of back pains, stomach aches, hair falling out, panic attacks, hands shaking, insomnia, fainting from exhaustion and lack of sexual desire, and children with asthma and osteomyelitis reportedly from the exposure to mold. Transformative solutions are explored that build upon the cultural resources of Black mothers and engage policy levers. (shrink)

From a traditional moral point of view, business practitioners often seem overly concerned about the behavior of their peers in deciding how they ought to act. We propose to account for this concern by introducing a mutual trust perspective, where moral obligations are grounded in a sense of trust that others will abide by the same rules. when grounds for trust are absent, the obligation is weakened. We illustrate this perspective by examining the widespread ambivalence with regard to deception about (...) one's settlement preferences in negotiation. On an abstract level, such deception generally seems undesirable, though in many individual cases it is condoned, even admired as shrewd bargaining. Because of the difficulty in verifying someone's settlement preferences, it is hard to establish a basis for trusting the revelations of the other party, especially in competitive negotiations with relative strangers. (shrink)

Social poetics as research and practice: living in and learning from the process of research This paper is both a report of research work carried out by one author of the paper with the other involved in a supervisory role, and a reflection on methodology that was an emergent property of the research process. The research question arose when professional preunderstandings about schizophrenia as a biological disturbance were bracketed as a Husserlian form of phenomenology was adopted. The initial study focused (...) on the meanings three individuals attached to being diagnosed with a mental illness and being involved in psychiatric treatment systems. The exploration of meanings led to the researcher being guided by one study participant in relation to a suitable framework for making sense of her lived experience of being entangled in psychiatric systems. This involved an appreciation of the poetics of interpersonal interaction that was simultaneously fuelled by the researcher’s reading of social poetics in psychology. Thus, the research became a hermeneutic inquiry, focused upon the text of one participant (Beth)1 and the psychiatric system that she and colleagues encountered. Beth’s psychiatric predicament was described by a loss of ‘self’, psychiatric interrogation, and positive and negative features of immersion in the system. A byproduct of taking a poetic approach was that the participant found the research process therapeutic. Thus, social poetics encouraged a beneficial blurring of the boundaries between research and practice. In both arenas, social poetics can lead to a different level of understanding. This is contradictory to mainstream approaches to research that value objectivity with a strict division between the researcher and the subjects, with the aim of producing scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The world flipped its sign from open to closed. I'm 6,714 miles from home in a place that tastes familiar. At night, I dream about my mother. It goes like this: I, blindfolded, frantic. My mother, always out of reach.When the sun rises, I bake bread and find I have fallen in...

Early Christian writers defined idolatry around the monotheistic distinction between proper worship of the creator and vain worship of the creature, which they had inherited from Hellenistic Judaism. Despite the remarkable consensus about the validity of this theological analysis, the medieval synthesis was under severe strain throughout the early modern period, mainly because of the concept's extended range of application in the new contexts of religious controversy. In all these cases, deciding what practices constituted idolatry was open to debate. By (...) the eighteenth century, libertine writers could retain the concept of superstition at the expense of that of idolatry, which Voltaire (himself an anti-Christian deist) denounced as meaningless. (shrink)

As the number of consumer transgressions continues to increase, so do their financial repercussions for companies. Though academic and managerial interest in addressing this issue is growing, research on how to dissuade consumers from committing transgressions remains scarce. Drawing on the mental imagery literature and normative moral theory, the present research examines a novel way of reducing consumers’ appraisals of their own transgressions. Whereas an actor-imagery perspective fosters a teleological, egoistic view of morality and, in turn, induces moral leniency, having (...) consumers adopt an observer-imagery perspective fosters a deontological view of morality and, in turn, induces moral stringency. The effects are robust across various types of consumer transgressions, including the purchase of counterfeit products and return fraud in the form of wardrobing. Study 2 also rules out vividness as an alternative explanation for these effects. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

In contemporary political theory, democracy embodies the ideals of the Aristotelian state, the one that is most able to realize the ideal life of the political community. Nevertheless, fledgling democracies are confronted with economic and political problems which Paul Ricœur thinks are due to the essential dissymmetry between the governing authority and the governed, culminating in the violence of the powerful agent. The enjoyment of the good life in a democracy presupposes what Ricœur calls an ethics of politics, which consists (...) in nothing other than the creation of spaces of freedom which confer on the governed a structure that enables its members to pursue the aim of enduring indefinitely in the future. When the governing authority buries into oblivion the desire of the historical community to live well with and for others in just institutions, the governed are expected to act in concert in order to ascertain their enjoyment of the good life because they feel particularly responsible for the horizontal bond that is constitutive of their will to live together. Thus, Paul Ricœur explains that the balancing of power in common and domination is an endless task of democracy that seeks to place domination under the control of power-in-common. (shrink)

An evaluation of a health condition-specific hope scale adapted from the more general dispositional Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1991) is provided. Participants (N = 202) with a rare, debilitating, and potentially stigmatising health condition were recruited from readers of the Anal Fissure Self Help Page. Data were gathered anonymously using an online survey linked to the website. Consistent with hope theory, this new measure yielded a pathways factor (perceived capacity to find ways to achieve desired goals) and an agency (...) factor (perceived motivation to pursue goals energetically). Respondents with stronger pathways thoughts reported greater benefits from website information for understanding and generating strategies for managing anal fissures. Stronger agency beliefs were related to more frequent website visits, more rereading of first-hand patient accounts, and shorter duration of fissure symptoms. Results offer preliminary support for validity of this scale and for using web-based methodologies to study conditions, such as anal fissure. (shrink)

An evaluation of a health condition-specific hope scale adapted from the more general dispositional Hope Scale (Snyder et al., 1991) is provided. Participants (N = 202) with a rare, debilitating, and potentially stigmatising health condition were recruited from readers of the Anal Fissure Self Help Page. Data were gathered anonymously using an online survey linked to the website. Consistent with hope theory, this new measure yielded a pathways factor (perceived capacity to find ways to achieve desired goals) and an agency (...) factor (perceived motivation to pursue goals energetically). Respondents with stronger pathways thoughts reported greater benefits from website information for understanding and generating strategies for managing anal fissures. Stronger agency beliefs were related to more frequent website visits, more rereading of first-hand patient accounts, and shorter duration of fissure symptoms. Results offer preliminary support for validity of this scale and for using web-based methodologies to study conditions, such as anal fissure. (shrink)

What does it take for a property to be a social property? This question is different from questions about what it takes for a property to be socially constructed. That is: it is one thing to be social, it is another to be socially constructed. Compared to questions about social construction, this question about sociality has received relatively little attention in social metaphysics. Here, I work from a very specific set of observations which arise from the social metaphysics literature to (...) uncover a sufficient condition on sociality for properties, a condition which I argue all non-social properties fail to satisfy. (shrink)

This book is the first detailed study of the plays of Sophocles through examination of a single ethical principle--the traditional Greek popular moral code of "helping friends and harming enemies." Five of the extant plays are discussed in detail from both a dramatic and an ethical standpoint, and the author concludes that ethical themes are not only integral to each drama, but are subjected to an implicit critique through the tragic consequences to which they give rise. Greek scholars and students (...) of Greek drama and Greek thought will welcome this book, which is presented in such a way as to be accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. No knowledge of Greek is required. (shrink)

This book presents an innovative analysis of the role of imagination as a central concept in both literary and art criticism. Dee Reynolds brings this approach to bear on works by Rimbaud, Mallarme;, Kandinsky, and Mondrian. It allows her to redefine the relationship between Symbolism and abstract art, and to contribute new methodological perspectives to comparative studies of poetry and painting. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a crucial period in the emergence of new modes of representation, and (...) is currently at the forefront of critical enquiry. This is the first book to examine Symbolism and abstraction in this way, and the first to treat these poets and painters together. It is an original contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship in art history, literary history, and comparative aesthetics. (shrink)

Ruby Meager; The Dangers of Aestheticism in Schooling, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–30, https://doi.org/10.1111.

Ruby Meager; The Dangers of Aestheticism in Schooling, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 23–30, https://doi.org/10.1111.

1. Understanding.--2. Purpose.--3. Conciliation.--4. Justice.--5. Justice, science and religion as contributions to civilization.--6. Uniformitarian process under supreme law.

La violencia contra las mujeres alcanza su expresión más siniestra en el flagelo de nuestro tiempo: el feminicidio. No obstante, la respuesta social e institucional ha sido insólita. Grandes sectores sociales permanecen impasibles ante el aumento de asesinatos cruentos de mujeres y niñas. Inadmisible desde una concepción de humanidad crítica y consciente de sus posibilidades de realización más alta, la misoginia que sostiene el orden social resulta alarmante. El objetivo del trabajo es comprender la estructura simbólica que alienta la violencia, (...) mediante una reflexión crítica sobre sus posibilidades de transformación. La conclusión a la que llega es que, aunque la estructura simbólica de la dominación sexual opera imperceptiblemente para justificar lo que debería ser condenado de forma generalizada, el desarrollo de la sensibilidad actual ofrece una posibilidad de identificar agravios que antes no se reconocían. Palabras clave: Orden simbólico, Violencia, Feminicidio, Hermenéutica, Misoginia. (shrink)

Members of marginalized communities experience a lack of representation of their unique life experience in popular fictional media – and if they do see themselves represented, it is often as a stereotype, caricature, or minor character. Black Panther broke this mold by offering abundant, nuanced, and non‐stereotypical representation of Black experience. Black Panther offers a way of interpreting the real world through its fictional representations of Black people and Black society. Fictional works such as Black Panther offer viewers a unique (...) type of what Gaile Pohlhaus calls an epistemic resource : a resource that individuals draw upon in order to know. The hypothetical nation of Wakanda gives audience members of other racial groups a different or new perspective on Black identity, which can aid their interpretations of the real world. Quite the contrary, Black Panther is a film that can elucidate a multitude of Black peoples' experiences and perspectives. (shrink)