The article aims to demonstrate to what extent the work Art as Experience by the American philosopher and pedagogist John Dewey, a proponent of pedagogical activism, may have contributed to Loris Malaguzzi’s thought and the Reggio Emilia Approach. Starting from the idea of an aesthetic experience as a privileged means of knowledge, the comparison between the two authors continues through reflections on the relationship between art-community and art-ethics. The dialogue between these important educational approaches is proposed in order to highlight (...) their relevance and the role they could play in today’s schools thanks to the concept of knowledge based on the senses and on doing, contributing to the sensitisation of educational action towards the social aspect of art, both as an opening towards the community, and as a reflection on the values of the human being. The dialogue between these two important educational approaches is proposed in order to highlight their relevance and the role they could play in today's schools thanks to the concept of knowledge based on the senses and on doing, contributing to the sensitisation of educational action towards the social aspect of art, both as an opening towards the community, and as a reflection on the values of the human being. (shrink)

In this article we explore the contribution from social anthropology to the medical ethical debates about the use of informed consent in research, based on blood samples and other forms of tissue. The article springs from a project exploring donors’ motivation for providing blood and healthcare data for genetic research to be executed by a Swedish start-up genomics company. This article is not confined to empirical findings, however, as we suggest that anthropology provides reason to reassess the theoretical understanding of (...) autonomy as generally defined by Beauchamp and Childress. Careful consideration of the trust expressed by donors through the act of donation, furthermore, suggests that there is reason to redirect the ethical scrutiny from informed consent to issues concerning institutional arrangements and social responsibility. In particular, we suggest that an anthropological approach could facilitate a reconsideration of the political implications of using informed consent as a regulatory practice in tissue-based research. (shrink)

This paper addresses questions of ethics in the professional practice of architecture. It begins by discussing possible relationships between ethics and aesthetics. It then theorises ethics within concepts of 'practice', and argues for the importance of the context in architecture where narrative can be used to learn and to integrate past and present experience. Narrative reflection also takes in the future, and in the case of architecture there is a positive but not yet well accepted move (particularly within the 'academy') (...) to realise the imperative nature of architecture's responsibility with respect of global sustainability. Architects, more perhaps than other professions, use the faculty of imagination in their work, and this paper therefore maintains that architects as artists are uniquely qualified to exercise 'moral imagination' when it comes to situations where moral deliberation is needed. Pragmatism has given a new impetus to the importance of imagination in moral reflection, and I focus on John Dewey's categories of 'empathy' and 'dramatic rehearsal' as descriptors of moral imagination as applied in situations. I argue in conclusion firstly that empathy between end-users and architects is an essential but not always realised part of morality in architecture, and secondly that 'dramatic rehearsal', when extended more widely that a given situation, may lead architects to question the social, political and ecological contexts of their work and thus motivate them to prioritise the 'ethical' in all the choices they make. (shrink)