Recently, feminists like Jane Roland-Martin, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, and others have advocated a conversational metaphor for thinking and rationality, and our image of the rational person. Elizabeth Young-Bruehl refers to thinking as a “constant interconnecting of representations of experiences and an extension of how we hear ourselves and others. There are numerous disadvantages to thinking about thinking as a conversation.We think there are difficulties in accepting the current formulation of the conversational metaphor without question. First, there is danger that we will (...) lose important dialectical connections like that between the self and society. Second, the conversational metaphor alone cannot fully express the way conversations are constructed. We will want to take up the notion of narrative as a metaphor for thinking advocated by Susan Bordo, Alasdair MacIntyre, Jerome Bruner, and others, including Mary Belenky and her colleagues.Eventually, we want to champion narrative and the dramatic narrative of culture as a metaphor for thinking that involves such expressions as sights, insights, silences, as well as sounds, moments of mood and poetic moments. The dramatic narrative provides the structural possibilities needed to criticize certain kinds of conversations, in order to talk about the relations of public and private, self and society and most importantly, about the drama of our lives within and without.The dramatic narrative for thinking helps dispel the dangerous dualisms of mind and body that not even conversation or narration alone can banish, and allows us to frame questions about education that do not require us to separate mind from body. The dramatic narrative metaphor for thinking lets us show who we are, act out what we think, and reconstruct rationality to reflect what many women, and some men, do. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is on normative ethical theories and endangered species. To be exact, I examine two theories: the theory of obligation and care ethics, and ask which is better-suited in the case of endangered species. I argue that the aretic, feminist-inspired ethics of care is well-suited in the case of companion animals, but ill-suited in the case of endangered species, especially in the case of “unlovable” species. My argument presupposes that we now live an era where human (...) disturbances to planetary ecosystems are triggering a sixth mass species extinction, and widespread interventions will be needed to save many species from extinction. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of parenting and adolescent fearfulness on adolescents’ pro‐social values and pro‐social and antisocial behaviour. A total of 134 adolescents (M age = 16.22, 72 girls, 62 boys) responded to questions regarding their own fearfulness, pro‐social values and pro‐social and antisocial behaviour, as well as their perceptions of maternal attachment and maternal appropriateness. Results revealed few main‐effect findings, most notably a negative relation between attachment and antisocial behaviour. However, findings pointed to (...) several multiplicative relations as a function of parenting, adolescent fearfulness, and child gender, including: (1) maternal appropriateness was more important for boys than for girls, (2) maternal attachment was related to greater importance of pro‐social values and higher pro‐social behaviour for boys low on fear and (3) maternal appropriateness was related to lower antisocial behaviour for boys low on fear. The discussion focuses on the importance of examining the multiplicative relations between parenting and adolescent temperament and the implications of this for both educators and parents. (shrink)

The perspectives of the dominant Western ethical theories, have dominated the concepts of autonomy and informed consent for many years. Recently this dominant understanding has been challenged by ethics of care which, although, also emanates from the West presents a more nuanced concept: relational autonomy, which is more faithful to our human experience. By paying particular attention to relational autonomy, particularity and Process approach to ethical deliberations in ethics of care, this paper seeks to construct a concept of informed consent (...) from the perspective of ethics of care which is here called relational autonomy-in-informed consent. Thus, providing a broader theoretical basis for informed consent beyond the usual theoretical perspectives that are particularly Western. Care ethics provides such a broader basis because it appeals to a global perspective that encompasses lessons from other cultures, and this will help to enrich the current ideas of bioethics principles of autonomy and informed consent. This objective will be achieved by exploring the ethics of care emphasis on relationships based on a universal experience of caring; and by contrasting its concept of autonomy as relational with the understanding of autonomy in the approaches of the dominant moral theories that reflect rational, individualistic, and rights-oriented autonomy of the American liberalism. (shrink)

This paper problematizes current thinking about education by arguing that the question of educational purpose is not simply a socio-political question concerned with what the ends should be and why...

This paper argues that Carol Gilligan’s Ethic of Care has strong affinities with the Buddhist concept of karuna (compassion) which, Jay Garfield has argued, is the necessary foundation of rights theory. Its central argument is that both moral compassion and thus rights theory are grounded in the natural compassionate care a mother exercises in order to promote the flourishing of her child without which children, and consequently adult society, would not survive in any form. Wittgenstein’s concept of language-games is brought (...) to bear on Buddhist philosophy to foreground the rootedness of human experience in connection and empathy. This further supports the naturalness of compassionate care, the Ethic of Care and karuna. Finally, mindfulness meditation is proposed as a practice appropriate for the educational context for the development of karuna as a moral resource for personal, civil and professional life. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of recent, empirically supported categorization schemes that have been proposed to distinguish different kinds of norms. Amongst these are the moral–conventional distinction and divisions within moral norms such as those proposed by moral foundations theory. I identify several dimensions along which norms have been and could usefully be categorized. I discuss some of the most prominent norm categorization proposals and the aims of these existing categorization schemes. I propose that we take a pluralistic approach toward (...) categorizing norms: Depending on our goals, it may be useful to focus on different features of norms, and as a result, it will be useful to categorize norms in multiple ways. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the reciprocal relations between the caregiving imparted by immigration centre managers and the role of the researcher in responding to the care that is given by managerial caregivers. To enable this, we draw on a feminist theory of care ethics that considers individuals as relationally interdependent. Design/methodology/approach The analysis draws on a semi-structured interview study involving 20 Finnish immigration reception centre managers. Findings Insight is generated by reflecting on moments (...) of care that arise between research participants and the researcher in a study of immigration centre management. We emphasise the importance of mature care, receptivity and engrossment in building caring relationships with research participants by acknowledging the care they give to others. Our findings draw attention to the moral and epistemological responsibility to practice care in organizational research. Originality/value The paper highlights the relationality between practicing care in immigration centre management and doing qualitative organizational research, both of which rely on mature care, receptivity and engrossment in order to meet the other morally. We draw attention to the moral responsibility to care which characterises researcher–researched relationships and emphasise the importance of challenging methodological discourses that problematise or dismiss care in qualitative organizational research. (shrink)

The title of this congress begins with the word “identity”. It also includes the word “reciprocity,” which indicates a form of relationship and finally, “gift of self”. This would lead us to conclude that the identity of the human person has something to do with reciprocity and that reciprocity involves giving of oneself to others. This talk will attempt to shed light on how the concept of gender might in some way be incorporated into these three concepts. Defining what constitutes (...) the identity of the human person has been explored, and attempts to define it have been made by every major theorist in the field of psychology. At a previous Psychology and Communion congress one of the talks spoke of loving and being loved in return as the basic foundation of human identity. In that presentation we find the following observation: “The identity of the human person can be compared to the identity of a book: we know where and when it was printed; but the author is certainly not the publishing house, nor is the typesetter who prepared the text…The same is true for us human beings: we know the time and date of birth. But who is author?”. We ask ourselves, therefore: what lies at the core of the identity of this being who is born at a certain time on a certain date? Before proceeding, I think it is important to note that the basic idea regarding the identity of the human person, as we have defined and understood it from the inception of psychology and communion and explored in previous encounters, remains unchanged. I will use a quote of Chiara Lubich here that perhaps many of you know but which can serve the purpose of laying the foundation for what follows: Human beings are “ all equal but distinct. To each person [God] gave his own beauty so that they would be desirable and lovable by others; and so that in love they would be recomposed into the One who had created them with his Light, which is Himself.” Now we ask ourselves: What exactly is this “beauty” that Chiara is speaking of? What are the components, if you will, of our identity that makes us “… desirable and lovable by others…”? (shrink)

The observation that agents and structures are co-constituted is now commonplace, yet scholars continue to struggle to incorporate this insight. Rationalists tend to overemphasize actors’ agency in the constitution of social order while constructivists tend to overstate the degree to which structures determine action. This article uses The Gift to rethink the agent–structure debate, arguing that the model of social relations Mauss outlines in this work sheds new light on basic concepts in international relations theory such as reciprocity, hierarchy, and (...) obligation. Mauss’ social theory locates the generative structure of social order in diffuse exchange relations, what he terms gift exchange, and assumes that actors are both socially positioned within hierarchical relations of exchange and reflexive agents who are able to understand and strive to change those relations. In so doing, he avoids reducing social order to either deeply internalized social norms or instrumental interests, navigating between ag... (shrink)

This paper aims at addressing some questions considering the conflicting normative claims of partiality, i.e. to provide for the caring needs of the particular patient, and impartial claims of treating all patients with a relevant need equally. This ethical conflict between different conceptions of moral responsibilities within professional ethics relates to debates between an ethics of care and an ethics of justice. An ethics of care is a particularistic position that endorses some form of partiality, i.e. favouring persons to whom (...) one stands in particular relationships. This paper argues that also a professional ethics must endorse some kind of partiality at the clinical level of health care. In fact, consideration of care for particular patients is a prerequisite for giving proper and attentive care towards the individual patient. This paper will discuss how partial concerns might be balanced against claims of distributive justice within the frame of the formal principle of justice. It is concluded that there is an urgent need for the recognition of the consequences of macro-level decisions for the possibility of the discharge of moral responsibility on a clinical level of health care. This would mean that health care institutions should adapt for the possibility of a basic standard of proper care and attention for the individual patient. (shrink)

The study examines the question of how personal self-esteem, collective self-esteem and readiness for self-improvement are linked to satisfaction with life in women from countries differing with regard to level of collectivism. Our study participants were Polish and Indian female students. The obtained results indicate that personal self-esteem plays a very important role in satisfaction with life of women from the two countries. However, collective self-esteem is not directly related to satisfaction with life among women from the two cultures analyzed. (...) Structural Equation Modeling showed that: a) in the Indian group readiness for self-improvement is more important for satisfaction with life than in the Polish group and it is significantly related to satisfaction with life through collectivistic self-esteem, b) the direct influence of both personal and collective self-esteem on satisfaction with life is more significant in the Polish group than in the Indian group. (shrink)

To the question “What normative ethical theory does early Confucianism best represent?” researchers in the history of early Confucian philosophy respond with more than half a dozen different answers. They include sentimentalism, amoralism, pragmatism, Kantianism, Aristotelian virtue theory, care ethics, and role ethics. The lack of consensus is concerning, as three considerations make clear. First, fully trained, often leading, scholars advocate each of the theories. Second, nearly all participants in the debate believe that the central feature of early Confucianism is (...) its moral thought. However, these normative ethical theories are logically inconsistent with one another, the third point. The entailment is unavoidable: the majority of scholars of early Confucian normative ethics must be incorrect about their attributions of a normative theory to early Confucianism. It would appear, then, that we need a new dao 道 or pathway for the study of early Confucian moral thought. One alternative is to adopt an immersively interdisciplinary research methodology that pivots on the recognition that early Confucianism is a social-functional system the governing purpose of which is to influence cultural leaders. (shrink)

In a climate of increasing interest and activity within the field of business ethics, as yet there exists no coherent conceptual framework for organizational theory and research. From a review of current thinking and previous writings a framework of concepts is suggested to help set an agenda for empirical research. The elements of this are, first, a taxonomy of ethical domains: the foci of organizations'' and their agents'' ethical concerns and conduct. Second, it is considered how ethical functioning might be (...) analysed in terms of causal relationships between expressive forms, voluntary action and instituted forms. Third is discussed ethical process, the means by which ethical awareness is aroused. Fourth and last, the paper examines how normative evaluations might apply to the ethical condition of organizations and their agents, meaning change or stability in reputation and integrity. At each stage of the argument possible objectives for research are developed. (shrink)

Much of the literature supports the moral development theory as a justification for teachers to care, where teachers should care for their students because it contributes to their moral education as caring persons. If no causal relationship can be established, the question remains whether we would want teachers to care, preferably one that does not merely import its external normative significance into teaching. I argue that an understanding of teaching, and moreover, of good teaching already has embedded within it conceptions (...) of care. Understanding that teaching involves care would then challenge virtue/character-based conceptions of the good teacher. While these clarifications are modest in scope, taking caring seriously in teaching has implications on how we conceptualize the good teacher, which in turn affects how both teacher education and professional ethics might be understood. (shrink)

Despite a growing body of research by management scholars to understand and explain failures in ethical decision making (EDM), misconduct prevails. Scholars have identified character, founded in virtue ethics, as an important perspective that can help to address the gap in organizational misconduct. While character has been offered as a valid perspective in EDM, current theorizing on how it applies to EDM has not been well developed. We thus integrate character, founded in virtue ethics, into Rest’s (1986) EDM model to (...) reveal how shifting attention to the nature of the moral agent provides critical insights into decision making more broadly and EDM specifically. Virtue ethics provides a perspective on EDM that acknowledges and anticipates uncertainties, considers its contextual constraints, and contemplates the development of the moral agent. We thus answer the call by many scholars to integrate character in EDM in order to advance the understanding of the field and suggest propositions for how to move forward. We conclude with implications of a character-infused approach to EDM for future research. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.

Engineering is a practice that must function in an environment of incomplete and uncertain knowledge. This environment has become even more difficult in an increasingly complex world. Engineering ethics has to be framed and taught in a way that addresses these realities. This paper proposes a combination of the philosophy of pragmatism and the ethic of care as a possible framework for the practice of engineering ethics that can provide flexibility and openness to address engineering ethics problems more realistically within (...) the ethos and culture of engineering. Embedding values into practice, pragmatism and care provide a broad, reflective, and corrective framework for engineering ethics that can accommodate the realities in which engineering operates. It is shown that these two approaches are more consonant with design methodologies and have a natural fit with design thinking, so they mesh well with what engineers do and with the complexities of their work today. As humans more and more try to alter the socio-techno-natural world, e.g., the earth’s climate, the combination of pragmatism and care will allow enhanced ethical behavior. Alterations to complex adaptive systems will produce highly uncertain results that require engineers to have a mindset that allows them to act with humility in the face of significant uncertainty and potential catastrophic failures. (shrink)

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical (...) recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world. (shrink)

In this article I examine the consequences of the dominance of intuitive thinking in moral judging and deciding for the role of moral reasoning in moral education. I argue that evidence for the reliability of moral intuitions is lacking. We cannot determine when we can trust our intuitive moral judgements. Deliberate and critical reasoning is needed, but it cannot replace intuitive thinking. Following Robin Hogarth, I argue that intuitive judgements can be improved. The expertise model for moral development, proposed by (...) Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, not only teaches us how we acquire intuitive moral judgements, it also shows the interconnectedness of intuitive thinking and deliberate reasoning. Analysing the expertise model in more detail, I show that it cannot do justice to the importance of reasoning skills. Reasoning skills are needed because we expect people to be able to argue for their standpoints. I conclude that moral education should not only aim at improving intuitive moral judgements, but also at acquiring reasoning skills. (shrink)

This article examines the applicability of character and virtue ethics to international marketing. The historical background of this field, dimensions of virtue ethics and its relationship to other ethical theories are explained. Five core virtues – integrity, fairness, trust, respect and empathy – are suggested as especially relevant for marketing in a multicultural and multinational context. Implications are drawn for marketing scholars, practitioners and educators.

El texto propone una confrontación entre la fenomenología de la vita activa de Hannah Arendt y la ética del cuidado. Se trata, por una parte, de aplicar las distinciones arendtianas entre esferas pública y privada, y entre labor, trabajo y acción , a la actividad de cuidar, para reafirmar su relevancia; por otra parte, tomando el concepto de «mundo» como clave de la definición de cuidado, se ensaya una reinterpretación crítica de los conceptos de Arendt a partir de algunos análisis (...) feministas y de una fenomenología responsiva y del cuerpo, a fin de plantear una reivindicación matizada de las implicaciones públicas del cuidar, en línea con las propuestas de paso de una ética a una «política del cuidado». (shrink)

Using the results of a survey of animal rights activists, advocates, and supporters, the paper reveals much more convergence than divergence of attitudes and actions by male and female animal protectionists. Analysis of the divergence suggests that the differences between men and women in the movement are contingent upon such things as early socialization, gendered work and leisure patterns, affinity with companion animals, ambivalence about science, and a history of opposition to nonhuman animal abuse by generations of female activists and (...) animal advocates. Aside from the feminist and women's movements and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it is rare to find a social movement in which the standing of women eclipses those of their male colleagues. The paper suggests that animal protection remains a bastion of female activism and advocacy because women care about blood, flesh, and pain and, unlike earlier generations of animal activists, no longer are seen as a liability to the success of the movement. (shrink)

Throughout the 1980s, there was considerable public discussion in Britain about the legitimacy of scientific research upon human embryos and about the advisability of seeking to develop new science-based techniques that would further extend medical control over human reproduction. In 1990, legislation was passed permitting such research, but at the same time restricting its scope and specifying how the technologies of assisted reproduction were to be implemented. The present study examines how women contributed to, and were represented in, the final (...) phase of parliamentary debate over the proposed legislation. (shrink)

The discursive production of the ‘self in the context of mental health care has potential implications for how the subjects of intervention come to understand and experience themselves. Eating disorders provide an illustrative example of the ways in which conceptualizations of the self that structure mental health practices can be gendered, because they are mainly diagnosed in women and dominant explanations of their origins are feminized. This discourse analytic study examines the gendered nature of mental health workers’ constructions of the (...) eating-disordered self through the psychological construct of ‘identity’, examining the dominant discourses implicated in the feminization of deficient identity, and addressing the implications of this construction for mental health practice. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to augment the ethical discussion among nurses with the findings from empirical research on autonomy of older adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus. There are many factors influencing autonomy. These include: health conditions, treatment, knowledge, experience and skills, personal approach as well as familial patterns, type of relationship, life history and social context. Fifteen older adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus were interviewed in a nurse-led diabetes clinic. These participants perceive three processes which support (...) autonomy in responsive relationships: preserving patterns of concern and interaction, nurturing collaborative responsibilities and being closely engaged in trustful and helpful family relations. People with diabetes realize autonomy in various responsive relationships in their unique life context. Next, we performed a literature review of care ethics and caring in nursing with regard to relational autonomy. We classified the literature in five strands of care: attitude-oriented, dialogue-oriented, activity-oriented, relationship-oriented and life-oriented. According to our respondents, autonomy in responsive relationships is fostered when patient, nurses, professionals of the health team and family members carry out care activities supported by a relational attitude of care. They can best realize autonomy in relationships with others when several essential aspects of care and caring are present in their lives. Therefore, we advocate a comprehensive approach to care and caring. (shrink)

This paper adopts the lens of environmental ethics to explore whether there is a disparity between the ethical approaches of a company in comparison to those expressed by stakeholders in relation to environmental issues, specifically those communicated through the corporate environmental report. Discourse analysis is adopted to explore the environmental section of the sustainability reports of the case study company as compared to the responses of a sample of the company’s stakeholders, using the lens of three branches of environmental ethics: (...) utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. Results indicate that the ethical approaches expressed in the case study company’s environmental reports were grounded in utilitarianism and deontology, in contrast to a virtue ethics approach expressed by external stakeholders. The disparity widened as the relationship between the company and the stakeholder became less direct. This disparity signals a failure to meet one of the primary purposes for preparing sustainability reports: to engage with stakeholders. As such this research contributes to the literature by identifying a disparity in the how this information is communicated compared with how it is perceived by stakeholders. This has important implications for the success of current stakeholder engagement practices. (shrink)

Luce Irigaray classically challenges what she takes to be the masculine foundations of knowledge in Western liberal culture. The present article contends not only that this epistemological challenge implicates a radical feminist politics, but that it is also more helpful in formulating a multicultural feminist theory than is often acknowledged by her readers. This is because her account responds to the false neutrality of liberal feminist approaches to multiculturalism. It does so by supporting, at the socio-political level, transformative genealogical practices (...) that are aimed at fostering women's agency in culturally sensitive ways. However, Irigaray's recent work on multiculturalism does not sustain the necessary continuity between her core epistemological critique and her political claims. In particular, the continuity between her criticism of the West's sexual indifference and the cultural multiplicity of female identity becomes problematic in her recent work. The author finally contends that Irigaray's writings pose difficulties for a multicultural feminism, because they fail to specify the different forms of policy necessary to promote diverse women's equality in the postcolonial contexts on which she recently focuses. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that ‘good care’ in residential nursing homes is enacted through different care practices that are either inspired by a ‘professional logic of care’ that aims for justice and non-maleficence in the professional treatment of residents, or by a ‘relational logic of care’, which attends to the relational quality and the meaning of interpersonal connectedness in people’s lives. Rather than favoring one care logic over the other, this paper indicates how important aspects of care are constantly (...) negotiated between different care practices. Based on the intricate everyday negotiations observed during an ethnographic field study at an elderly nursing home in Germany, the paper puts forth the argument that care is always a matter of tinkering with different, sometimes competing ‘goods’. This tinkering process, which unfolds through ‘intuitive deliberation’, ‘situated assessment’ and ‘affective juggling’ is then theorized along the conceptualization of a ‘practical ethics of care’: an ethics which makes no a priori judgments of what may be considered as good or bad care, but instead calls for momentary judgments that are pliable across changing situations. (shrink)

Food has become a prominent object of everyday moral discussions. This study examines how gender, political orientation, and country of origin are connected to moral foundation endorsement in food-related moral thinking. Respondents were university students (N = 371) from Finland, Denmark, and Italy who completed a word association task, in that given stimulus words were “ethical food” and “unethical food.” Results showed a presence of five moral foundations in the data, and indicated high prevalence of the Purity/Sanctity foundation in food-related (...) moral thinking. As expected, gender differences emerged in the endorsement of the Fairness/Reciprocity and the Purity/Sanctity foundations. Also, between-country differences emerged in four of the five moral foundations, indicating that even within Europe countries may differ from each other in their endorsement of foundations. The results also verified the previously found effect of political orientation in three of the five moral foundations, although the study used a completely new and different type of method compared with previous studies. The study concludes by proposing more cross-national comparative studies where the focus is on the specific objects of moral thinking. (shrink)

Harry Frankfurt's conception of care and love has largely been considered a seductive theory of personality, but an untenable and irresponsible theory of moral normativity. Contrary to that interpretation, this article aims at showing that it is possible to remain faithful to Frankfurt's metaphysical premises while not falling into some moral relativism. First, by comparing Frankfurt's and Heidegger's conceptions of care, I show that Frankfurt's subordination of ethics to carology apparently commits him to a neutral foundationalism. In the next step, (...) I argue that his calling into question of the relation between rationality and morality does indeed subject moral normativity to some subjective and contingent limits. And finally, I show that the objections raised against such a conclusion can be answered by shifting Frankfurt's frontier between contingency and necessity and by exploiting his concept of wholeheartedness. (shrink)

The capacity to collect and analyse data is growing exponentially. Referred to as ‘Big Data’, this scientific, social and technological trend has helped create destabilising amounts of information, which can challenge accepted social and ethical norms. Big Data remains a fuzzy idea, emerging across social, scientific, and business contexts sometimes seemingly related only by the gigantic size of the datasets being considered. As is often the case with the cutting edge of scientific and technological progress, understanding of the ethical implications (...) of Big Data lags behind. In order to bridge such a gap, this article systematically and comprehensively analyses academic literature concerning the ethical implications of Big Data, providing a watershed for future ethical investigations and regulations. Particular attention is paid to biomedical Big Data due to the inherent sensitivity of medical information. By means of a meta-analysis of the literature, a thematic narrative is provided to guide ethicists, data scientists, regulators and other stakeholders through what is already known or hypothesised about the ethical risks of this emerging and innovative phenomenon. Five key areas of concern are identified: informed consent, privacy, ownership, epistemology and objectivity, and ‘Big Data Divides’ created between those who have or lack the necessary resources to analyse increasingly large datasets. Critical gaps in the treatment of these themes are identified with suggestions for future research. Six additional areas of concern are then suggested which, although related have not yet attracted extensive debate in the existing literature. It is argued that they will require much closer scrutiny in the immediate future: the dangers of ignoring group-level ethical harms; the importance of epistemology in assessing the ethics of Big Data; the changing nature of fiduciary relationships that become increasingly data saturated; the need to distinguish between ‘academic’ and ‘commercial’ Big Data practices in terms of potential harm to data subjects; future problems with ownership of intellectual property generated from analysis of aggregated datasets; and the difficulty of providing meaningful access rights to individual data subjects that lack necessary resources. Considered together, these eleven themes provide a thorough critical framework to guide ethical assessment and governance of emerging Big Data practices. (shrink)

BackgroundDuring a commercial surrogacy arrangement, the event of embryo transfer can be seen as the formal starting point of the arrangement. However, it is common for surrogates to undergo a failed attempt at pregnancy conception or missed conception after an embryo transfer. This paper attempts to argue that such failed attempts can be understood as a loss. It aims to reconstruct the experiences of loss and grief of the surrogates and the intended parents as a consequence of their collective failure (...) to conceive a surrogate pregnancy.MethodsDrawing on a qualitative study conducted over a period of eight months between 2014 and 2015 at two fertility clinics in Delhi and two in Kolkata, India, this paper examines the experiences of the surrogates and the intended parents when faced with missed conceptions or failed conceptions during a surrogacy arrangement.ResultsWe argue that while the surrogate grieves the non-arrival of a ‘good news’ as an uncertain loss, the intended parents experience yet another, failure in addition to the losses they might have incurred during their previous fertility treatments. The body of the surrogate becomes a site of ‘a lost opportunity’. The surrogate embodies a loss in her quest to achieve social mobility and the intended parents experience a disembodied pregnancy loss. This very emotional experience stands in stark contrast to the conceptualisation of such failed attempts as non-events within the discourse of the surrogacy industry. The experience of loss of the intended parents is recognised but their grief is given no space. We argue that such ambiguity around the nature of losses resulting out of a missed or failed conception during surrogacy is an outcome of lack of interpersonal relationship between the surrogate and the intended parents.ConclusionsSince commercial surrogacy is a relational process, the only way in which the experiences of losses and failures of the actors at the preconception stage can be better addressed is through developing close sharing and understanding between each other through an ethics of care. Therefore, to nurture caring relationships, surrogacy needs to be understood as a moral commitment by –the surrogates and intended parents. To enable such a commitment, there is a need to reconsider the pre-defined and legally regulated professional duty of the doctors, agents and agencies. It cannot be a one-sided commitment, but has to have elements of mutuality. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the social consequences of biotechnological control of population for values and ethics of care within the family household in rural north India. Based on long-term ethnographic research, it illustrates the manner in which social practices intermingle with reproductive choices and new reproductive technologies, leading to a systematic elimination of female foetuses, and thus, imbalanced sex ratios. This technological fashioning of populations, the paper argues, has far-reaching consequences for the institutions of family, marriage and kinship in north (...) India particularly in relation to care circulation within the family-household leading to a shifting local ethics of care. (shrink)

O artigo tem como objetivo inicial apresentar, a partir de um panorama geral, alguns elementos centrais da concepção de moral no pensamento de Simone de Beauvoir, bem como suas articulações com outros conceitos pertinentes. A partir disso, pretende-se considerar determinadas apropriações e críticas de teóricas feministas recentes, buscando avaliar as possíveis contribuições do pensamento de Beauvoir à filosofia moral de viés feminista.

This paper examines the discursive construction of collective identity in several feminist organizations, as a way of shedding new light on the debate over essentializing or totalizing terms in contemporary feminist/postmodernist theory. We argue that while this debate is about language, it has remained largely untouched by the insights of a discursive approach. The latter as we take it up here treats language as irremediably strategic or interested. In contrast, the feminist argument over essentializing terms appears to hold to a (...) correspondence version of language, a position which limits the debate in fatal ways. Part 1 reviews the argument that terms such as women, feminist and feminist identity are essentializing discourses which dominate by silencing difference. Part 2 then considers the way one such concept – feminist identity – is actually constructed and used in the routine talk of members of feminist organizations. In Part 3 we draw out the implications of a discursive approach to such terms for the feminist/postmodernist debate. (shrink)

In her essay ‘The Curious Coincidence of Feminine and African Moralities’ (1987), Sandra Harding was perhaps the first to note parallels between a typical Western feminist ethic and a characteristically African, i.e., indigenous sub-Saharan, approach to morality. Beyond Harding’s analysis, one now frequently encounters the suggestion, in a variety of discourses in both the Anglo-American and sub-Saharan traditions, that an ethic of care and an African ethic are more or less the same or share many commonalities. While the two ethical (...) perspectives are indeed sisters, in this article I argue, first, that they are not identical twins, and, more strongly, that the family resemblance between the two is significantly less than has been recognized. I highlight key differences between representative forms of an ethic of care and a sub-Saharan communitarian morality, after which I argue, second, that the latter better captures some central feminist concerns and moral considerations generally. That is, I maintain that an African ideal of community, when understood in a philosophically refined way, provides an important, relational corrective to the ethic of care. (shrink)

Men's studies' scholars have begun to critically examine and deconstruct the meaning of masculinity, but thus far, most of their studies have focused exclusively on the lives of white, middle-class men, ignoring the implications of racial and social class differences and inequalities among men. Sport sociologists, on the other hand, have examined the causes and consequences of class and recial inequalities in the sports world, but they rarely integrate gender into their analysis—except when discussing women and sports. This study, based (...) upon in-depth interviews with male former athletes from different race and class backgrounds, examines how these men construct and define meaning and make choices within a socially structured context. Through a comparison of the lives of white, black, and chicano former athletes in the United States, I argue that given the psychological imperatives of a developing sense of masculine identity within a structured socioeconomic context, the choice to pursue, or not to pursue, an athletic career is explicable as an individual's rational assessment of the available means to construct a public masculine identity. Organized sports is thus an institution that serves to construct gender, class, and race inequities. (shrink)

An organizational culture can be defined as "Organizational Humanizing Culture" if it presents the following features: (1) recognition of the person in his or her dignity, rights, uniqueness, sociability and capacity for personal growth, (2) respect for persons and their human rights, (3) care and service for persons around one, and (4) management towards the common good versus particular interests. Current findings and generalized experience suggest that an organizational culture with these features tends to bring about trust and associability, which (...) are basic elements for social capital (a sort of asset embedded in the relationships of individuals, communities, networks or societies). (shrink)

We often think of normal childhood as a progressive development towards a fixed—and often tacitly individualistic and masculine—model of what it is to be an adult. By contrast, phenomenologists, psychoanalysts, sociology of childhood, and feminist thinkers have set out to offer richer accounts both of childhood development and of mature existence. This paper draws on accounts of childhood development from phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and object relations theorist D. W. Winnicott in order to argue that childhood development takes place in “transitional (...) spaces”; explores typical gendered patterns in the formation of selfhood that “split” relationality and separateness into the “feminine” and the “masculine”; and offers a phenomenology of perception, love, and objectivity in order to show the manner in which, contra individualistic and masculine visions of adulthood, maturity requires an embrace rather than eschewal of ambiguity, and the capacity to continue to dwell in the transitional space between relatedness and separateness. (shrink)

In recent years the literature on bioethics has begun to pose the sociological challenge of how to explore organisational processes that facilitate a systemic response to ethical concerns. The present discussion seeks to make a contribution to this important new direction in ethical research by presenting findings from an Australian pilot study. The research was initiated by the Clinical Ethics Committee of Redland Hospital at Bayside Health Service District in Queensland, Australia, and explores health professionals’ understanding of the nature of (...) ethics and their experience with ethical decision-making within an acute medical ward. This study focuses on the actual experience, understanding and attitudes of clinical professionals in a general medical ward. In particular, the discussion explores the specific findings from the study concerned with how a multi-disciplinary team of health professionals define and operationalise the notion of ethics in an acute ward hospital setting. The key issue reported is that health professionals are not only able to clearly articulate notions of ethics, but that the notions expressed by a multi-disciplinary diversity of participants share a common definitional concept of ethics as patient-centred care. The central finding is that all professional groups indicated that there is a guiding principle to address their ethical sense of the ‘good’ or the ‘ought’ and that is to act in a way that furthered the interests of patients and their families. The findings affirm the importance of a sociological perspective as a productive new direction in bioethical research. (shrink)

Using extra familial child sexual abuse as an example of family trauma, the author interviewed 60 parents of sexually abused boys on multiple occasions to analyze the organization of gender, race, and class in parental coping processes. Despite access to alternative interpretations of CSA that challenge conventional notions of gender, parents in this study typically rely on traditional themes to make meaning of the CSA experience. The author organized the data analytically around gender strategies and found that parents used race- (...) and class-specific gender strategies in the aftermath of trauma. Most important, mother-blame is theorized as a form of gender reaffirmation. The author uses the term gender reaffirmation to illustrate the way social actors recuperate after a situation has been interpreted as detrimental, challenging, or stressful to heteronormative gender relations. Mother-blaming accounts encouraged race and class enactments of gender that had negative consequences for women and helped maintain men’s cultural power. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that science textbooks do not present an accurate account of how scientific inquiry has been conducted and is conducted now. The chemistry textbooks that are used in middle school and high school use a “Great Man” theory in which all scientific discovery is attributed to a single man. However, scientific inquiry is a cooperative, collaborative effort, and it has been that sort of activity for at least the last 150 years. If girls, in general, tend (...) toward greater cooperation, as many social scientists suggest, a more accurate account of how science is done would bring more girls into the study of science. These authors suggest that science textbooks used during the times at which girls are formulating their opinions of science (the middle and high school years) should be modified to correctly reflect the fact that science and scientists are cooperative. (shrink)

Exploratory research was undertaken in four locations in the Asia Pacific Rim to investigate the cognitive frameworks used by managers when considering ethical business dilemmas. In addition to culture, gender and organisational dimensions were also studied. Aggregate analysis revealed no significant differences in the cognitive frameworks used by business managers in Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Canada. Of the eight frameworks used in the study four cognitive frameworks appeared to feature predominantly. Utilising the results of regression analysis the most (...) salient cognitive frameworks utilised by managers were identified as; Self Interest, Neutralisation, Justice and Categorial Imperative, with Neutralisation and Self Interest being the most significant among all managers. Religious Conviction and the Light of Day framework (which relates to fear of being exposed) did not feature prominently in the analysis. A few significant differences in the ethical frameworks used by males and females were identified. For males in all four locations Self Interest, Neutralisation and Justice appeared to be dominant frameworks, while considerable variability was seen in the frameworks used by females. Marginally significant differences were observed in the cognitive frameworks used by managers with differing functional responsibilities. Across all locations respondents with general management responsibilities relied predominately on Self Interest, while those with marketing responsibilities utilised Neutralisation. Respondents with an accounting orientation also relied predominately on Neutralisation and Categorial Imperative frameworks. (shrink)