Worries about scientific objectivity seem never-ending. Social critics and philosophers of science have argued that invocations of objectivity are often little more than attempts to boost the status of a claim, while calls for value neutrality may be used to suppress otherwise valid dissenting positions. Objectivity is used sometimes to advance democratic agendas, at other times to block them; sometimes for increasing the growth of knowledge, at others to resist it. Sandra Harding is not ready to throw out objectivity (...) quite yet. For all of its problems, she contends that objectivity is too powerful a concept simply to abandon. In Objectivity and Diversity, Harding calls for a science that is both more epistemically adequate and socially just, a science that would ask: How are the lives of the most economically and politically vulnerable groups affected by a particular piece of research? Do they have a say in whether and how the research is done? Should empirically reliable systems of indigenous knowledge count as "real science"? Ultimately, Harding argues for a shift from the ideal of a neutral, disinterested science to one that prizes fairness and responsibility. (shrink)

Given his view that the modern world is ‘radically evil’, Adorno is an unlikely contributor to business ethics. Despite this, we argue that his work has a number of provocative implications for the field that warrant wider attention. Adorno regards our social world as damaged, unfree, and false and we draw on this critique to outline why the achievement of good work is so rare in contemporary society, focusing in particular on the ethical demands of roles and the ideological nature (...) of management’s self-understanding. Nevertheless, we show that Adorno’s comments on activities such as art and philosophy mean that it is possible to draw on his work in a way that contributes constructively to the conversation about good and meaningful work within business ethics. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Adorno’s thought for business ethicists working in the critical tradition by showing how his critique of modern social life anticipated, and offers continuing illumination of, recent technological transformations of capitalism. It develops and extrapolates Adorno’s thought regarding three central spheres of modern society, which have seen radical changes in light of recent technological developments: work, in which employee monitoring has become ever more sophisticated and intrusive; leisure consumption, in which the algorithmic (...) developments of the culture industry have paved the way for entertainment products to dominate us; and political discourse, in which social media has exacerbated the anti-democratic tendencies Adorno warned of in the mid-twentieth century. We conclude by presenting, as a rejoinder to these developments, the contours of an Adornian ethics of resistance to the reification and dehumanisation of such developments. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how Adorno’s thought can illuminate our reflections on the future of work. It does so by situating Adorno’s conception of genuine activity in relation to his negativist critical epistemology and his subtle account of the distinction between true and false needs. What emerges is an understanding of work that can guide our aspirations for the future of work, and one we illustrate via discussions of creative work and care work. These are types of work which (...) cater to persistent human needs, albeit ones that are distorted under present social conditions. Adorno’s thought helps us to understand why this is the case. (shrink)

In _Sciences from Below_, the esteemed feminist science studies scholar Sandra Harding synthesizes modernity studies with progressive tendencies in science and technology studies to suggest how scientific and technological pursuits might be more productively linked to social justice projects around the world. Harding illuminates the idea of multiple modernities as well as the major contributions of post-Kuhnian Western, feminist, and postcolonial science studies. She explains how these schools of thought can help those seeking to implement progressive social projects refine (...) their thinking to overcome limiting ideas about what modernity and modernization are, the objectivity of scientific knowledge, patriarchy, and Eurocentricity. She also reveals how ideas about gender and colonialism frame the conventional contrast between modernity and tradition. As she has done before, Harding points the way forward in _Sciences from Below_. Describing the work of the post-Kuhnian science studies scholars Bruno Latour, Ulrich Beck, and the team of Michael Gibbons, Helga Nowtony, and Peter Scott, Harding reveals how, from different perspectives, they provide useful resources for rethinking the modernity versus tradition binary and its effects on the production of scientific knowledge. Yet, for the most part, they do not take feminist or postcolonial critiques into account. As Harding demonstrates, feminist science studies and postcolonial science studies have vital contributions to make; they bring to light not only the male supremacist investments in the Western conception of modernity and the historical and epistemological bases of Western science but also the empirical knowledge traditions of the global South. _Sciences from Below_ is a clear and compelling argument that modernity studies and post-Kuhnian, feminist, and postcolonial sciences studies each have something important, and necessary, to offer to those formulating socially progressive scientific research and policy. (shrink)

By the start of the twenty-first century, the notion of ‘the sublime’ had come to seem incoherent. In the last ten years or so considerable light has been shed by empirical psychologists on a related notion of ‘awe’, and a fruitful dialogue between aestheticians and empirical psychologists has ensued. It is the aim of this paper to synthesize these advances and to offer what I call a ‘two-tiered’ theory of the sublime that shows it to be a coherent aesthetic category. (...) On this theory, sublime experiences begin in an ‘awe response’ (the ‘thin sublime’) and might, with the additional element of temporally-extended reflection, turn into a ‘thick sublime’ response. Building on accounts of the sublime as a species of ‘aesthetic awe’ (Clewis, 2019a and 2019b; Arcangeli, et al., 2020) I aim to show that this two-tiered theory helps to explain why sublime experiences seem to have a basic, primordial core, but also seem to be historically and culturally quite variable (as Nicolson, 1963 [1959]; Battersby, 2007; and McMahon, 2017 have stressed). On this model, the cultural and historical variability comes in largely at the point of the temporally-extended reflection characteristic of the thick sublime, due to the cognitive stock that the subject brings to the encounter. Thus, sublime experiences really lend themselves to being interpreted quite variously by the subject (as well as by the theorist) of these experiences, as, for example, affording insight into the Divine, our moral vocation, or our metaphysical unity with the entire universe, among other lofty thoughts. (shrink)

Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example-driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive-multiplayer online games are played within (...) dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on. Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first-person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on-screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA-oriented research on video game play. (shrink)

Appearing in the feminist social science literature from its beginnings are a series of questions about methodology. In this collection, Sandra Harding interrogates some of the classic essays from the last fifteen years in order to explore the basic and troubling questions about science and social experience, gender, and politics.

This chapter seeks to articulate the ethically developmental potential of work, both in terms of the intrinsic satisfactions of the very best activities, and because of the recognition structures work can provide. We do so by exploring the goods of work in the context of the discussion concerning technological unemployment. One response to the possibility of technological unemployment is provided by the anti-work perspective, the plausibility of which rests in large part on its capacity to do justice to the impoverished (...) nature of much contemporary work. Drawing on MacIntyre’s concept of practices we argue, however, that the concept of good work is better equipped to sustain the recognition structures that facilitate the achievement of excellence in those practices. Thus, good work can be viewed, somewhat ironically, as being powerfully conducive to our efforts to prepare ourselves for a world in which leisure is more socially central. (shrink)

Is there a duty to prosecute grave international crimes? Many have thought so, even if they recognize the obligation to be defeasible. However, the theoretical literature frequently leaves the grounds for such a duty inadequately specified, or unsystematically amalgamated, leaving it unclear which considerations should drive and shape processes of criminal accountability. Further, the circumstance leaves calls to end impunity vulnerable to skeptical worries concerning the risks and costs of punishing perpetrators. I argue that a qualified duty to prosecute can (...) be substantiated on the basis of a single class of reasons, though also that standard justifications of international criminal law (as currently conceived) are not up to the task. The account exploits the expressive dimension of punishment, but locates the central good of criminal accountability in its capacity to appropriately enable an agential stance on the part of subjects in transitional circumstances. It can legitimate, in a way to be specified, hope. The approach also displays the cynicism of an anti‐impunity ethos in the absence of a robust commitment to securing basic human rights in transitional circumstances. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno was one of the twentieth century’s most potent and influential European thinkers, whose impact is felt across the humanities and social sciences. However, Adorno’s thought has been almost entirely absent from the business ethics conversation. This chapter explores the relevance of Adorno’s thought for business ethics that has emerged in recent scholarship. It does so through an engagement with topics such as positivistic management, consumer culture, social media and political discourse, and the possibility of good work, and (...) by expounding Adorno’s critical theory, the critique of the business ethics tradition implied by his work, and the debate regarding whether Adorno can be read as a ‘negative Aristotelian’. (shrink)

Naive observers viewed a sequence of colored Mondrian patterns, simulated on a color monitor. Each pattern was presented twice in succession, first under one daylight illuminant with a correlated color temperature of either 16,000 or 4,000 K and then under the other, to test for color constancy. The observers compared the central square of the pattern across illuminants, either rating it for sameness of material appearance or sameness of hue and saturation or judging an objective property—that is, whether its change (...) of color originated from a change in material or only from a change in illumination. Average color constancy indices were high for material appearance ratings and binary judgments of origin and low for hue–saturation ratings. Individuals’ performance varied, but judgments of material and of hue and saturation remained demarcated. Observers seem able to separate phenomenal percepts from their ontological projections of mental appearance onto physical phenomena; thus, even when a chromatic change alters perceived hue and saturation, observers can reliably infer the cause, the constancy of the underlying surface spectral reflectance. (shrink)

"The classic and recent essays gathered here will challenge scholars in the natural sciences, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and women’s studies to examine the role of racism in the construction and application of the sciences. Harding... has also created a useful text for diverse classroom settings." —Library Journal "A rich lode of readily accessible thought on the nature and practice of science in society. Highly recommended." —Choice "This is an excellent collection of essays that should prove useful in a wide range (...) of STS courses." —Science, Technology, and Society "... important and provocative... "—The Women’s Review of Books "The timeliness and utility of this large interdisciplinary reader on the relation of Western science to other cultures and to world history can hardly be overemphasized. It provides a tremendous resource for teaching and for research... "—Ethics "Excellent." —The Reader’s Review "Sandra Harding is an intellectually fearless scholar. She has assembled a bold, impressive collection of essays to make a volume of illuminating power. This brilliantly edited book is essential reading for all who seek understanding of the multicultural debates of our age. Never has a book been more timely." —Darlene Clark Hine These authors dispute science’s legitimation of culturally approved definitions of race difference—including craniology and the measurement of IQ, the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the dependence of Third World research on First World agendas. (shrink)

This paper explores cultural understandings of virtual sexual ageplay in the online world of Second Life. Online sexual ageplay is the virtual simulation of child abuse by consensual adults operating in-world with child computer characters. Second Life is primarily governed by Community Standards which rely on residents to recognise sexual ageplay and report it, which requires an appreciation of how residents view, understand and construct sexual ageplay. The research presented drew on 12 months of resident blog posts referring to sexual (...) ageplay: 263 total, with 91 residents. The analysis of this talk explores the cultural understandings of this banned behaviour and beliefs about the nature of Second Life which underpin residents’ likelihood to report sexual ageplay and so comply with the Community Standards. In considering these issues the paper is able to highlight issues regarding the unique cultural position of abuse against children and key concerns which underpin the reporting behaviour of residents. Key considerations relate to defining online sexual activity and child avatars; the moral status of ‘reporters’, and sexual ageplay as a form of edgeplay; belief in the harmfulness of sexual ageplay and its relationship to real world behaviours. (shrink)

But that which remains the poets have founded.In contemporary rhetorical theory, the relationship between rhetoric and art tends to be articulated in terms of aesthetics. This increasingly popular discourse on “aesthetic rhetoric,” however, is characterized by a remarkable diversity. The rhetoric of fiction, poetry, and other literary genres, for example, has been explored in these terms (e.g., Booth 1983), as has the rhetoric of film (Haskins 2003), photography (Hariman and Lucaites 2007), and even natural landscapes (Clark 2004). From a different (...) perspective, aesthetics has been distilled to a range of “features” or “elements” that a given text is said to possess. Nathan Crick and Jeremy Engels, for example .. (shrink)

Jaakko Nevasto has offered a number of thoughtful criticisms of our attempt to show that Adorno’s work can fruitfully be brought to bear on topics in business ethics. After welcoming his constructive clarifications, we attempt to defuse Nevasto’s main objections and defend our application of Adorno, focusing in particular on the topics of moral epistemology, needs, and the possibility of genuine activity – and thus good work – within capitalist society.

In this paper, we explore the experiences of EU migrants working in UK restaurants in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. We do so through a care ethics lens, which we bring together with the integrative approach to organisational silence to consider the ethical consequences of the organisational policies of political silence adopted by the restaurant chains in our qualitative empirical study. We develop the concept of political organisational silence and probe its ethical dimensions, showing how at the organisational level (...) it falls short of constituting a practice of caring for migrant workers in politically divisive and hostile times. We argue that organisational policies of political silence emphasise the exploitative nature of the business of (im)migration, which prioritises concern for profits over care for the needs of others. Organisations refuse caring responsibility for migrant workers, leaving care to the migrants themselves and their co-workers and managers. Whilst peer-care practices partially fill this politically silent care-vacuum, this leaves individuals to negotiate difficult tensions without institutional support at a time of increased uncertainty, complexity, hostility, violence, and vulnerability. Drawing lessons from our study and its aftermath, we call for a care manifesto to inform the business of (im)migration, which would need to include caring political responsibility towards migrant workers exercised through caring political organisational voice as well as silence. (shrink)

We show that true colors as defined by Chevreul (1839) produce unsuspected simultaneous brightness induction effects on their immediate grey backgrounds when these are placed on a darker (black) general background surrounding two spatially separated configurations. Assimilation and apparent contrast may occur in one and the same stimulus display. We examined the possible link between these effects and the perceived depth of the color patterns which induce them as a function of their luminance contrast. Patterns of square-shaped inducers of a (...) single color (red, green, blue, yellow, or grey) were placed on background fields of a lighter and a darker grey, presented on a darker screen. Inducers were always darker on one side of the display and brighter on the other in a given trial. The intensity of the grey backgrounds varied between trials only. This permitted generating four inducer luminance contrasts, presented in random order, for each color. Background fields were either spatially separated or consisted of a single grey field on the black screen. Experiments were run under three environmental conditions: dark-adaptation, daylight, and rod-saturation after exposure to bright light. In a first task, we measured probabilities of contrast, assimilation, and no effect in a three-alternative forced-choice procedure (background appears brighter on the ‘left’, on the ‘right’ or the ‘same’). Visual adaptation and inducer contrast had no significant influence on the induction effects produced by colored inducers. Achromatic inducers produced significantly stronger contrast effects after dark-adaptation, and significantly stronger assimilation in daylight conditions. Grouping two backgrounds into a single one was found to significantly decrease probabilities of apparent contrast. Under the same conditions, we measured probabilities of the inducers to be perceived as nearer to the observer inducers. These, as predicted by Chevreul’s law of contrast, were determined by the luminance contrast of the inducers only, with significantly higher probabilities of brighter inducers to be seen as nearer, and a marked asymmetry between effects produced by inducers of opposite sign. Implications of these findings for theories which attempt to link simultaneous induction effects to the relative depth of object surfaces in the visual field are discussed. (shrink)

The knowledge base of how student engagement affects educational outcomes and career attainment has grown immeasurably in the last decade. This title presents methods to connect and re-engage marginalised, uninterested students.

The paper addresses the question of what standard of conduct is supplied by human rights morality. Since the protection of dignity-interests operates on a continuum, we require a sense, if human rights are to be practically meaningful, of where on that continuum we can say that human rights have been sufficiently seen to by prevailing institutions. I argue that human rights require relevant institutions to secure a social context where it is not rationally permissible for subjects to despair. This is (...) a matter of providing security against risks to basic interests adequate to objectively warrant an agential stance. Aside from providing a principled threshold of protection, the proffered understanding supports a distinction between human rights and justice, helps illuminate the substance of certain human rights concerned with securing the conditions for rational judgment, and enables an account of the trumping or preemptive force of human rights. (shrink)

Poorly saturated colors are closer to a pure grey than strongly saturated ones and, therefore, appear less “colorful”. Color saturation is effectively manipulated in the visual arts for balancing conflicting sensations and moods and for inducing the perception of relative distance in the pictorial plane. While perceptual science has proven quite clearly that the luminance contrast of any hue acts as a self-sufficient cue to relative depth in visual images, the role of color saturation in such figure-ground organization has remained (...) unclear. We presented configurations of colored inducers on grey ‘test’ backgrounds to human observers. Luminance and saturation of the inducers was uniform on each trial, but varied across trials. We ran two separate experimental tasks. In the relative background brightness task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the apparent brightness of the grey test background contrasted with, assimilated to, or appeared equal (no effect) to that of a comparison background with the same luminance contrast. Contrast polarity and its interaction with color saturation affected response proportions for contrast, assimilation and no effect. In the figure-ground task, perceptual judgments indicated whether the inducers appeared to lie in front of, behind, or in the same depth with the background. Strongly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of foreground effects indicating that these inducers stand out as figure against the background. Weakly saturated inducers produced significantly larger proportions of background effects, indicating that these inducers are perceived as lying behind the backgrounds. We infer that color saturation modulates figure-ground organization, both directly by determining relative inducer depth, and indirectly, and in interaction with contrast polarity, by affecting apparent background brightness. The results point towards a hitherto undocumented functional role of color saturation in the genesis of form, and in particular figure-ground percepts in the absence of chromatostereopsis. (shrink)

The paper considers the proper method for theorizing about criminal jurisdiction. It challenges a received understanding of how to substantiate the right to punish, and articulates an alternative account of how that theoretical task is properly conducted. The received view says that a special relationship is the ground of a tribunal’s authority to prosecute and, hence, that a normative theory of that authority is faced with identifying a distinctive relation. The alternative account locates prosecutorial standing on an institution’s capacity to (...) address the basic reasons generating criminal liability. This reframes the normative issues at stake, and has the result that various, perhaps quite heterogeneous, considerations can substantiate penal authority. It also eliminates the existence of a special relation as a necessary condition for legitimate criminal accountability. The argument proceeds by offering an analysis and account of universal jurisdiction. Not only does the alternative elegantly perform where the received view struggles, it can accommodate much of what motivates the pursuit of relational ties in existing efforts to vindicate jurisdictional conclusions. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. In this book, Sandra B. Rosenthal explores Lewis’s philosophical vision, and links his thought to the traditions of classical American pragmatism. Tracing Lewis’s influences, she explains the central concepts informing his thinking and how he developed a unique and practical vision of the human experience. She shows how Lewis contributed to the enrichment and expansion of pragmatism, opening new paths of constructive dialogue with other traditions. This (...) book will become a standard reference for readers who want to know more about one of American philosophy’s most distinguished minds. (shrink)

The paper addresses the nature of duties grounded in human rights. Rather than being protections against harm, per se, I contend that human rights largely shield against risk impositions to protected interests. “Risk imposition” is a normative idea requiring explication, but understanding dutiful action in its terms enables human rights to provide prospective policy guidance, hold institutions accountable, operate in non-ideal circumstances, embody impartiality among persons, and define the moral status of agencies in international relations. Slightly differently, I indicate a (...) general understanding of dutiful action that permits human rights to see to the tasks of an institutional morality. (shrink)

Phenomenology has proved to be a popular methodology for nursing research. I argue, however, that phenomenological nursing research could be strengthened by greater attention to its philosophical underpinnings. Many research reports devote more page space to procedure than to the philosophy that purportedly guided it. The philosophy of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty is an excellent fit for nursing, although his work has received less attention than that of Husserl and Heidegger. In this paper, I examine the life and thought of Merleau‐Ponty, with (...) emphasis on concepts, such as perception, intentionality and embodiment, which have particular relevance to the discipline of nursing. (shrink)

This article gives a brief history of chance in the Christian tradition, from casting lots in the Hebrew Bible to the discovery of laws of chance in the modern period. I first discuss the deep-seated skepticism towards chance in Christian thought, as shown in the work of Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin. The article then describes the revolution in our understanding of chance—when contemporary concepts such as probability and risk emerged—that occurred a century after Calvin. The modern ability to quantify chance (...) has transformed ideas about the universe and human nature, separating Christians today from their predecessors, but has received little attention by Christian historians and theologians. (shrink)

Demonstrating that a developing norm is not yet well established in international law is frequently thought to show that states are not bound by the norm as law. More precisely, showing that a purported international legal norm has only limited support from well-established international legal sources is normally seen as sufficient to rebut an obligation on the part of subjects to comply with the norm in virtue of its legal status. I contend that this view is mistaken. Nascent norms of (...) international law (e.g., crystallizing norms of customary law) can be binding in much the same way as better-established doctrine. This point becomes perspicuous, I argue, once we get a clear sense of the plausible options for grounding the moral authority of international law generally. -/- This result is interesting in its own right, but it also reveals two other features of the character of state responsibility under international law. First, the distinction between legislation and compliance is less pronounced compared to domestic law. Consequently, the virtues of good governance will frequently be pertinent to determining the content of states’ obligations under international law. Second, normally more powerful and influential agents will be more strongly bound by international law than other subjects. This is an attractive result, addressing a concern that motivates many international lawyers to view international law as absolutely binding. An absolutist view international legal authority is unnecessary for showing that the most powerful and dangerous states are strongly bound by the terms of much existing law. (shrink)

Entry on Work in M. N. S. Sellars & S. Kirste (Eds.), The Springer Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer.

The laws which predict how the perceptual quality of figure-ground can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestaltists, and form an essential part of their movement (see especially Metzger, 1930, and Wertheimer, 1923 translated and re-edited by Lothar Spillmann, 2009 and 2012, respectively). Distinguishing figure from ground is a prerequisite for perception of both form and space (the relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects in the visual field. The human brain has an astonishing (...) capacity for selecting and combining a few critical visual signals to accurately represent both form and space. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2006 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesWashington, DC, November 17–18, 2006Frances S. Adeney, SecretaryThe theme of this year's meeting was "Religious Self-Fashioning and the Role of Community in Contemporary Buddhist and Christian Practice." The first session presented participants with three papers. The first compared Christian and Buddhist groups that fostered community and long-term commitment. A second paper developed the theme of community affiliation with a description of (...) the Buddhist practice of Hoza. And a third paper demonstrated how a dual practitioner could minister pastorally to both Buddhists and Christians. In the second session practical and philosophical foci met in the discussion of papers on individualized vs. Sangha Buddhism in the United States and co-origination and universal intersubjectivity in Buddhist and Christian philosophies. It was a rich feast indeed.Dr. Sandra Costen Kunz presented her paper "Christian and Buddhist Confession, Affiliation, and Countercultural Action" to start off the first session. In a study of Christian and Buddhist groups, she found interesting methodological parallels in the process that groups undertook to build commitment and community among followers of each tradition. Focused on specific congregations, her paper served to illustrate a trend toward community building that has broad implications for both Buddhist and Christian institutions in their work of fostering commitment and nurturing faith in participants.Dr. Gene Reeves continued along the same theme with a description of the Buddhist practice of Hoza in his particular Buddhist community in Japan. A weekly practice of meeting together to help one another demonstrates a deeper philosophical belief that all can become bodhisattvas for others. Within the hierarchical Buddhist institutional structure, the meetings around Hoza display an egalitarianism that empowers ordinary people to see the Buddha nature in others and to realize it in themselves. In addition to empowering individuals, that process of mutual aid also solidifies the group.According to both papers, individual practice of religion, be it Buddhist or [End Page 133] Christian, and a group process of social solidification work together to deepen faith and community.The third paper in this first session showed the results of that individual/ social dialectic in the life of Dr. Duane Bidwell, who presented his paper "Practicing the Religious Self: Buddhist-Christian Identity as Social Artifact." The main emphasis of this paper was that religion, as a socially constructed reality, depends on community even in its most individualistic forms. As Buddhism and Christianity develop their traditions, those socially constructed worlds can be penetrated by one who traverses between the two worlds. Two stories of pastoral care demonstrated his point. First, in a Buddhist setting, Bidwell, although perceived as a Christian, drew on his Buddhist practices to comfort the dying. In the second example, the situation was reversed. In a setting in which Christianity was the expected form, Bidwell drew on those resources to worship around the deathbed of a young man.In her response to those three papers, Dr. Sallie King brought a critical dimension into the discourse as she asked questions concerning authority and decision making in each context. "How is consensus decision making balanced with hierarchical power in the groups studied?" she asked Dr. Kunz. "Given the equalizing power of Hoza, why is Reeves's organization so hierarchical?" was her question to Dr. Reeves. "And how," she asked, "did choice enter into Bidwell's religious identity?" Responses to those queries led to an interesting discussion that provided food for thought for participants in this meeting.The second session opened with Dr. Kenneth Tanaka's study "The Individual in Relation to the Sangha in American Buddhism: An Examination of 'Individualized Religion.' " Dr. Tanaka spoke to both communal and individualized dimensions of American Buddhism by analyzing a sangha in Alameda County, California, and contrasted it with the Buddhist practices of converts who did not participate in a sangha. He showed that identity for sangha members in Alameda was primarily related to selective joining of group activities by members. In the case of converts, his research showed that their Buddhist identity was most strongly related to meditative practices. A high level of commitment to those practices, with a goal of spiritual development, marked the converts who were... (shrink)

Contemporary art is brimming with images of a future shaped by environmental destruction, technological innovation, and new forms of sociality. This article looks beyond the content of such images in order to examine the infrastructures that underpin them. Paying attention to two key infrastructures in particular—the Cold War faith in prediction and the extraordinary explosion of scenario planning in the years that followed—the article explores the ways in which speculation was transformed into a tightly defined field of expertise straddling military, (...) policy, and corporate worlds. No longer the preserve of prophets or mystics, the speculative infrastructures incubated within organizations such as the RAND corporation were underwritten by cybernetics, game theory, and systems analysis, all of which helped give prediction a veneer of scientific credibility. And yet, as the planning tools of the postwar era lost their predictive edge, new techniques came to exert influence in a world dominated by the uncertainties of looming environmental catastrophe. The future was no longer thought to emerge from the present in a linear fashion but unfold along a series of branch points that allowed decision makers to navigate through a landscape of uncertainty. Tracing the genealogy of forms of prediction and scenario planning from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, this article places futurological tools in the context of an expanded field of speculative practices that include works of art. Projects by the likes of Stephen Willats, Experiments in Art and Technology, the Harrisons, and others not only generate alternative images of the future but also rework the infrastructures by which such images are conceptualized and produced. (shrink)

This article examines gender discrimination in earnings and promotions in a sample of 451 computer professionals employed by 14 organizations in a western Canadian city. The data suggest that women computer professionals do less well than their male counterparts in terms of income and job status; the differences are largely attributable to differences in work experience. Strength apparently does not lie in numbers, however. Organizations that hire relatively more women computer professionals seem to choose those who are less well educated (...) and less experienced than their male employees; they reward them correspondingly less well. The authors argue that the different proportions of women are the result of predictable strategies of recruitment aimed at limiting women's access to positions of authority. (shrink)