Central conceptual terms, such as ‘culture’, ‘environment’, ‘nature’ and‘landscape’, are far from being neutral scientific objects. They are academic constructions which need to be understood in their emergence across their historic contexts. -/- Moral it is a cultural expression determined by social dominance and historical context, who gives them a sectary character. We need a moral theory that can be universal, trans-temporal and available to light human individual conduct and the human science and their political ideologies, but not considering the (...) man in the zenith of the Life. The Life, with their biodiversity it is in the pinnacle of the complex cosmos evolution but we don’t know if our specie, born in the Earth, is the end of cosmos evolution. For demanding that answer, was born a new ethical perspective, theory built with the meta-ethics principles and applicable to all human activities. -/- Environmental ethics supported by the two principles_ the critical against anthropocentrism and the critical against ethnocentrism, gives a universal answer to the macro moral problems of our era_ environmental, social, economical and political crises, war and mass destructive weapons…and contributes to rebuilt the human activities in all domains of individual and social life; that’s is the cultural landscape, for instance. (shrink)

In recent years, online “involuntary celibate” or “incel” communities have been linked to various deadly attacks targeting women. Why do these men react to romantic rejection with not just disappointment, but murderous rage? Feminists have claimed this is because incels desire women as objects or, alternatively, because they feel entitled to women’s attention. I argue that both of these explanatory models are insufficient. They fail to account for incels’ distinctive ambivalence toward women—for their oscillation between obsessive desire and violent hatred. (...) I propose instead that what incels want is a Beauvoirian “Other.” For Beauvoir, when men conceive of women as Others, they represent them as simultaneously human subjects and embodiments of the natural world. Women function then as sui generis entities through which men can experience themselves as praiseworthy heroes, regardless of the quality of their actions. I go on to give an illustrative analysis of Elliot Rodger’s autobiographical manifesto, “My Twisted World.” I show how this Beauvoirian model sheds light on Rodger’s racist and classist attitudes and gives us a better understanding of his ambivalence toward women. It therefore constitutes a powerful and overlooked theoretical alternative to accounts centered on objectification and entitlement. (shrink)

The idea that women qua women can be dehumanized has been dismissed by feminist philosophers, like Kate Manne, and by philosophers of dehumanization, like David Livingstone Smith. Against these skeptics, I argue that we can and should use dehumanization to explain an important strand of misogyny. When they are dehumanized, women are represented simultaneously as human and as inhuman embodiments of the natural world. They therefore appear as magical, contaminating, sexualized threats towards whom violence is acceptable or even necessary. Misogynistic (...) dehumanization is important to understanding atrocities like the early modern European witch-hunts, but also contemporary phenomena like incel violence. (shrink)

At the end of 2017, Kristen Roupenian’s short story, Cat Person, went viral. Published at the height of the #MeToo movement, it depicted a ‘toxic date’ and a disturbing sexual encounter between Margot, a college student, and Robert, an older man she meets at work. The story was widely viewed as a relatable denunciation of women’s powerlessness and routine victimization. In this paper, I push against this common reading. I propose an alternative feminist interpretation through the lens of Simone de (...) Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism: a form of alienation that consists in making oneself both the subject and the ultimate project of one’s life. Framing Margot as a narcissist casts her as engaging, not in subtly coerced, undesired sex, but rather in sex that is desired in a tragically alienated way. I argue that Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism is an important tool for feminists today – well beyond the interpretation of Cat Person. It presses us to see systematic subordination not just as something done to women, but also as something women do to themselves. This in turn highlights the neglected role of self-transformation as a key aspect of feminist political resistance. (shrink)

One of the key insights of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is the idea that gender-based subordination is not just something done to women, but also something women do to themselves. This raises a question about ethical responsibility: if women are complicit, or actively implicated in their own oppression, are they at fault? Recent Beauvoir scholarship remains divided on this point. Here, I argue that Beauvoir did, in fact, ethically criticize many women for their complicity, as a sign of (...) what she called “bad faith”. I challenge recent accounts by Nancy Bauer and Manon Garcia, who both read Beauvoir as exonerating complicit women. According to this reading, women emerge as human “freedoms” within a social world where a “destiny” of inferiority is already prepared for them. Their self-subordination is then an inevitable product of acting in a patriarchal world. I argue, however, that this interpretation generates a crucial tension, leading Bauer and Garcia to call on women to stop being complicit, while also claiming they cannot avoid complicity. I propose instead a different interpretation, on which feminine complicity is often fueled by criticizable ethical attitudes that are far from inevitable. By revisiting Beauvoir’s notion of “bad faith”, I show that this account is compatible with recognizing the limitations imposed on women’s agency and I show that this feminist ethical criticism is itself an important part of a collective project of social transformation. (shrink)

Feminists have always been concerned with how the clothes women wear can reinforce and reproduce gender hierarchy. However, they have strongly disagreed about what to do in response: some have suggested that the key to feminist liberation is to stop caring about how one dresses; others have replied that the solution is to give women increased choices. In this paper, we argue that neither of these dominant approaches is satisfactory and that, ultimately, they have led to an impasse that pervades (...) the contemporary feminist debate. The problem is that both sides of the debate understand women’s complicity in patriarchal subordination as a matter of what women wear and do. Instead, we propose a phenomenological analysis that understands complicity as based in our relations to our clothes. Starting from this phenomenological perspective, we sketch a new relational feminist ethics of dressing. This alternative ethical paradigm cannot yield a simple recipe for how to dress or tell us what garments are off-limits. But it can offer a way to make critical feminist judgements about clothes without veering into a stifling new prescriptivism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a revision of international versions of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale and to describe the psychometric properties of a Portuguese version of the UWES-9 developed simultaneously for Brazil and Portugal, the validity evidence related with the internal structure, namely, Dimensionality, measurement invariance between Brazil and Portugal, and Reliability of the scores. This is the first UWES version developed simultaneously for both countries, and it is an important instrument for understanding employees' work engagement (...) in the organizations, allowing human resources departments to better use workforces, especially when they are migrants. A total of 524 Brazilian workers and 522 Portuguese workers participated in the study. Confirmatory Factor Analysis, group comparisons, and Reliability estimates were used. The use of workers who were primarily professionals or administrative support, according to ISCO-08, reinforced the need to collect data on other professional occupations. Confirmatory factor analysis showed acceptable fit for the UWES-9 original three-factor solution, and a second-order factor structure has been proposed that presented an acceptable fit. Full-scale invariance was obtained between the Portuguese and Brazilian samples, both for the original three-factor first-order and second-order models. Data revealed that Portuguese and Brazilian workers didn't show statistically significant differences in the work engagement dimensions. This version allows for direct comparisons of means and, consequently, for performance of comparative and cross-cultural studies between these two countries. (shrink)

During the last few years, burnout has gained more and more attention for its strong connection with job performance, absenteeism, and presenteeism. It is a psychological phenomenon that depends on occupation, also presenting differences between sexes. However, to properly compare the burnout levels of different groups, a psychometric instrument with adequate validity evidence should be selected (i.e., with measurement invariance). This paper aims to describe the psychometric properties of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) version adapted for workers from Brazil and (...) Portugal, and to compare burnout across countries and sexes. OLBI's validity evidence based on the internal structure (dimensionality, reliability, and measurement invariance), and validity evidence based on relationships with other variables (work engagement) are described. Additionally, it aims presents a revision of different OLBI's versions—since this is the first version of the instrument developed simultaneously for both countries—it is an important instrument for understanding burnout between sexes in organizations. Data were used from 1,172 employees across two independent samples, one from Portugal and the other from Brazil, 65 percent being female. Regarding the OLBI internal structure, a reduced version (15 items) was obtained. The high correlation between disengagement and exhaustion, suggested the existence of a second-order latent factor, burnout, which presented measurement invariance for country and sex. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Portuguese OLBI version presented good goodness-of-fit indices and good internal consistency values. No statistically significant differences were found in burnout between sexes or countries. OLBI also showed psychometric properties that make it a promising and freely available instrument to measure and compare burnout levels of Portuguese and Brazilian employees. (shrink)

Rescue workers have a stressful and risky occupation where being engaged is crucial to face physical and emotional risks in order to help other persons. This study aims to estimate work engagement levels of rescue workers (namely comparing nurses, firefighters, and police officers) and to assess the validity evidence related to the internal structure of the Portuguese versions of the UWES-17 and UWES-9, namely, dimensionality, measurement invariance between occupational groups, and reliability of the scores. To evaluate the dimensionality, we compared (...) the fit of the three-factor model with the fit of a second-order model. A Portuguese version of the instrument was applied to a convenience sample of 3,887 rescue workers (50% nurses, 39% firefighters, and 11% police officers). Work engagement levels were moderate to high, with firefighters being the highest and nurses being the lowest engaged. Psychometric properties were evaluated in the three-factor original structure revealing acceptable fit to the data in the UWES-17, although the UWES-9 had better psychometric properties. Given the observed statistically significant correlations between the three original factors, we proposed a 2nd hierarchal structure that we named work engagement. The UWES-9 first-order model obtained full uniqueness measurement invariance, and the second-order model obtained partial (metric) second-order invariance. (shrink)

A number of experiences have demonstrated how digital solutions are effective in improving quality of life (QoL) and health outcomes for older adults. Smart Health Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE) is a new concept introduced in Europe since 2017 that combines the concept of Age-Friendly Environments with Information Technologies, supported by health and community care to improve the health and disease management of older adults and during the life-course. This chapter aims to provide an initial overview of the experiences available not only (...) in Europe, based on the research work of the participants of the International Interdisciplinary Network on Health and Well-being in an Age-Friendly Digital World (NET4Age-Friendly), which could be of interest to preventive, health and social authorities. The chapter reports good practices, pain points, and bottlenecks that may require a collaborative, interdisciplinary research approach to facilitate the transformations towards smart, sustainable, health and age-friendly cities and communities. (shrink)