bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
ECOLOGICAL NATURALISM
Authors: Code Lorraine
Published: September 2006

Starting with a critical reading of the promise of Quinean naturalized epistemology for feminist and other post-colonial theories of knowledge, this chapter instead proposes an ecological naturalism centred on a conception of the natural and of natural knowledge-making derived from the science of ecology. For Quinean naturalism, laboratory-based cognitive science is the place to study how human beings “naturally” know; yet its promise is vitiated by the artificiality of its regulative conception of “the natural”. Its reliance on a residual positivist-empiricism blocks its capacity to relinquish the epistemological imaginary of mastery and control, to engage with specific, diverse human knowings, and to address the politics of knowledge. Although ecological science counts as a “weak” science by orthodox positivist standards (following Kristin Schrader-Frechette and Sharon Kingsland), this so-called weakness becomes a strength in the enhanced capacity it offers to know interpretively, non-reductively, and responsibly.
PATTERNS OF AUTONOMY ACKNOWLEDGMENT, AND ADVOCACY
Authors: Code Lorraine
Published: September 2006

This chapter addresses the covert capacity of autonomy — the goal of moral-political life in liberal-democratic societies — to oppress women and others who fail to fulfill its requirements. Taking the collapse of the welfare state as a locus of analysis, it shows how ecological citizenship and collective responsibility work toward reconfiguring the inequalities and injustices enacted under the aegis of a too-rigorous veneration of autonomy. One of the projects of the chapter is to reevaluate practices of advocacy in knowledge: a point that arises in chapter three with reference to medicine and is further developed here, both in connection with medicine and across a wider range of examples. Contrary to entrenched conceptions of epistemic self-reliance, the contention is that advocacy often makes knowledge possible: indeed, more radically, that without advocacy certain knowings are not possible. Trust is important to good advocacy, and testimony again plays a central part.
Introduction
Authors: Young Iris Marion
Published: September 2006

The introduction presents an overview of the essays included in this volume, which are presented as a set of overlapping inquiries about social meanings of female embodiment. The distinction between “female” and “feminine” experience is explained and the tradition of existential phenomenlogy is described. The essays are shown to take a feminist perspective, both as expressing sex and gender-specific female subjectivity, and as claiming that women are not as free as they ought to be.
Throwing Like a Girl:
Authors: Young Iris Marion
Published: September 2006

This essay describes experience and oppressions of feminine styles of comportment, tracing in a provisional way some of the basic modalities of feminine body comportment, manner of moving, and relation in space. It highlights the certain observable and rather ordinary ways in which women in society typically comport themselves and move differently from the ways that men do. The account developed here combines the insights of the theory of the lived body as expressed by Merleau-Ponty and the theory of the situation of women as developed by Beauvoir. It limits itself to the experience of women in contemporary advanced industrial, urban, and commercial society, offering specific observations, phenomenlogical interpretation, and implications for an understanding of the oppression of women.
House and Home:
Authors: Young Iris Marion
Published: September 2006

This essay explores the ambivalence of the values of house and home. It agrees with feminist critics such as Luce Irigaray and Simone de Beauvoir that the comforts and supports of house and home historically come at women’s expense. Women serve, nurture, and maintain so that the bodies and souls of men and children gain confidence and expansive subjectivity to make their mark on the world. However, this homey role also deprives women of support for their own identity and projects. The essay challenges a group of feminist texts whose writers all reject the idea of the home as inappropriately totalizing and imperialist, questioning the wholesale rejection of an ideal of the home for feminism.
Border Disputes
Authors: Mitchem Stephanie Y.
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores the ideas of honoring ancestors and self in the classroom, along the borders. To begin this exploration, it focuses on some aspects of the borders of black lives in the United States. The borders of education is the focus in the next section of the book. The idea of honoring ancestors is related to the course, “Womanist Spiritual Autobiography”; and honoring self is discussed in relation to the course “Womanist Theology and Literature”.
Teaching from the Crossroads
Authors: Barnes Linda L.
Published: September 2006

This chapter proposes two ways to study religion and healing. The first outlines a program that involves an urban ethnographic study of culturally/religiously based approaches to healing in the African Diaspora communities of Boston, Massachusetts. The second relates to ways in which findings from the first kind of course can be incorporated into different levels of medical education, thereby introducing a highly-focused aspect of religious studies into the training of biomedical clinicians.
Watching for Religion and Race at the Movies
Authors: Trost Theodore Louis
Published: September 2006

The main purpose of religious studies as an academic discipline is to make “the strange familiar and the familiar strange”. This is what the course “Introduction to Religion in America: Religion Observed in Popular Film” attempts, with particular emphasis on making the familiar strange. The class has three foci: religion, movies, and America. In this chapter, after a review of the issues at stake in the “Introduction to Religious Studies” course and a description of the operative method, race as a crucial concern in the interpretation of three movies: Being There, The Color Purple, and Daughters of the Dust, is discussed.
Transforming the Twentieth Century: Volume 2: Technical Innovations and Their Consequences
Authors: Smil Vaclav
Published: September 2006

This book is a systematic interdisciplinary account of two epochal trends: the history of the 20th century’s technical transformation based on the unprecedented surge of innovation that took place in Europe and North America during the three pre-WWI generation (1867-1914); and the history of new fundamental inventions during the period 1914-2000. Mass consumption of fossil fuels provided the energetic foundation of this progress. New ways of making steel — the leading metal of our civilization — and new materials including plastics and silicon, opened entirely new technical possibilities. Rationalized production, be it in agriculture or manufacturing, benefited from advancing mechanization, automation, and robotization. New epochal inventions included the discovery of nuclear fission, followed by the rapid development of nuclear weapons and commercial generation of nuclear electricity; the discovery of gas turbines (and their use in jet airplanes as well as in stationary applications); and the invention of solid-state electronics based on semiconductors used to make transistors, integrated circuits, and microprocessors, the key components of modern computing. The new economy based on unprecedented levels of energy consumption brought not only mass consumption and higher quality of life, but also some worrisome social problems and environmental changes; its prospects remain uncertain.
Materials
Authors: Smil Vaclav
Published: September 2006

Steel — made from iron in basic oxygen furnaces and electric arc furnaces, and turned into semifinished products by continuous casting — remained the dominant material of the 20th century. Completely new large-scale industries were developed to supply industrial gases (oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen) and to synthesize a multitude of plastics. The most far reaching technical advances of the century’s second half were based on silicon, the key building block of solid state electronics.
Rationalized Production
Authors: Smil Vaclav
Published: September 2006

Mechanization — a key trend of pre-WWI technical advances — intensified in all industrial sectors and reached new levels with automation and robotization after WWII. Major advances made in coal mining, oil and gas extraction, and in key manufacturing sectors such as car making benefited not only from ingenious robotization, but also from new methods of organization and flexible production. Agriculture also became much less labor intensive thanks to new high energy subsidies for machines and agrochemicals (fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides).
Transportation, Communication, Information
Authors: Smil Vaclav
Published: September 2006

Private transportation was transformed by mass ownership of automobiles while long-distance public transport benefited from new high-speed trains and from affordable flying. Freight transportation was transformed by containers moved by ships, trains, and trucks. Communication and the processing and dissemination of information were revolutionized first by transistors, then by integrated circuits and microprocessors, the key components of mainframe and personal computers, televisions, and a multitude of electronic devices, many of them now taking advantage of the Internet.
An Egalitarian Overview
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

After critiquing principle-based and case-based approaches to bioethics, this chapter develops and defends a conception of gender justice, as central to analyses of issues in women’s health care. Autonomy, rights, and justice are among the key concepts that it considers. Classical pragmatists and feminist standpoint theorists are enlisted in support of epistemological and ethical reasons for attributing “privileged status” to women’s decisions about their health.
Different Starting Points, Standpoints, End Points
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

Terms crucial to bioethical debate are examined: these include life, death, human, person, moral status, and moral agency. The moral relevance of the gestational tie between a woman and her fetus as well as other relationships is discussed. In light of their relevance to ethical decisions after birth as well as prior to birth, different positions on moral status or personhood are considered. These range from the view that full moral status occurs through union of human egg and sperm to the view that it requires the ability to make moral decisions, a capacity lacking in infants and adults who are comatose.
Preconception and Prenatal Decisions
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

Cases illustrating variables relevant to women’s decisions about preconception counseling, preimplantation diagnosis, prenatal testing, misattributed paternity, and sex selection are presented. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors are discussed from an “egalitarian perspective” that imputes privileged status to the standpoint of those who are “nondominant”, i.e., those whose input tends to be neglected. Implications of different positions about moral status of fetuses are also considered.
Medically Assisted Reproduction
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

Cases illustrating variables relevant to the following topics are presented: criteria for patient selection, egg “donation” and “surrogacy”, multiple gestations, and disposition of in vitro embryos after infertility treatment. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors relevant to the cases are discussed from an “egalitarian perspective” that imputes privileged status to the standpoint of those who are “nondominant”. Implications of different positions about the moral status of gametes and embryos are also considered.
Noncompliance during Pregnancy
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

Cases illustrating variables relevant to pregnant women’s noncompliance with medical recommendations intended to benefit the fetus or potential child are presented. These involve refusal of hospitalization, refusal to comply with dietary recommendations, and refusal of cesarean section delivery. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors relevant to the cases are discussed from an “egalitarian perspective” that imputes privileged status to the standpoint of those who are “nondominant”. Implications of different positions about the moral status of the fetus are also considered.
Treatment of Minors
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

Cases illustrating variables relevant to decisions involving teenage pregnancy and motherhood, confidentiality, female genital surgery, and eating disorders are presented. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors relevant to the cases are discussed from an egalitarian perspective that addresses the nondominance of minors as well as their capacity for moral agency. A conception of parentalism as an antidote to paternalism and maternalism is proposed.
Research Issues
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

Cases illustrating the exclusion of women in biomedical research, experimental treatment and maternal fetal surgery, human reproductive cloning, and embryonic stem cell research are presented. For each topic, empirical and theoretical factors are discussed from an “egalitarian perspective” that imputes privileged status to the standpoint of those who are “nondominant”. Implications of different positions about moral status of embryos and fetuses, and about people born with disabilities are also considered.
Virtue and Gender Justice in Health Care
Authors: Mahowald Mary Briody
Published: September 2006

After recapitulating the egalitarian perspective of the book, this chapter explains how this is necessarily directed toward an ideal of justice. The ideal is best approximated through an ethic of virtue rather than an ethic of obligation. An egalitarian ethic of virtue promotes the flourishing of all individuals throughout the life span by attending to their different needs, preferences, and capabilities, and by minimizing the inequities that are often associated with these differences. An ethic of obligation requires minimal efforts to reduce these inequities, whereas an ethic of virtue calls for maximal efforts to reduce them. In the context of women’s health care, gender justice demands attention to gender differences as both obligatory and virtuous.
A Marriage Made in America: Trent and the Baroque
Authors: Stevens-Arroyo Anthony M.
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores the impact of Trent in Latin America, post-Tridentine thinking about American Catholicism, and the Catholic baroque. Trent's decrees assumed a new function as the blueprints for Christianity in the Americas, linking Church order in Spain's colonies with the institutionalization of the faith for millions of believers. Trent became a constituent element of Latin America's sociohistorical identity.
The Council of Trent at the Second Vatican Council
Authors: Komonchak Joseph A.
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores what the Council of Trent meant at Vatican II. It studies both the explicit references to Trent made in the text and footnotes of Vatican II and certain points in debates at which what Trent had done or said entered into the deliberations and decisions of the fathers of Vatican II. It is shown that on the level of Church practice, Vatican II reversed some decisions of Trent, most notably permitting the vernacular to be used in the liturgy, broadening occasions for receiving the Eucharist under both kinds, dethroning the Vulgate as the normative biblical text, and encouraging a wide reading. One of the main differences between Vatican II and Trent was that while Trent sought to identify and clarify the respects the doctrines of the Reformers departed from those of the Catholic Church, Vatican II sought to identify and to express those elements of faith that Catholics and non-Catholics had in common.
Robert Bellarmine and Post-Tridentine Eucharistic Theology
Authors: Daly Robert J.
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores the discrepancy between sound eucharistic theology and the eucharistic theology of several official documents of the Roman Catholic magisterium. Historical research suggests that Robert Bellarmine is one of the “messengers”, if indeed not one of the “villains”, of this story. It is argued that the embarrassing dichotomy between the teaching of the contemporary official Roman magisterium and that of most contemporary liturgical theologians is due to the magisterium's continued acceptance of some of the shortcomings of post-Tridentine Catholic eucharistic theology. If there is to be progress towards a more broadly shared Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, the Roman magisterium must become less attached to explanations of the Mystery of Faith that are less than satisfactory.
Priestly Formation
Authors: Osborne Kenan B.
Published: September 2006

This chapter focuses on a single theme central to both the Trent and Vatican II councils — the formation of priestly leadership. The goal of the chapter is twofold: on the one hand, to indicate the clear differences between the two councils, and, on the other hand, to emphasize the undeniable similarities regarding the respective positions of the two councils on the issue of formation of priestly leadership. The chapter begins with an overview of the basic official statements regarding the Tridentine reform of priestly formation. Second, it gives a historical background, listing the major factors that occasioned such a reform in priestly formation in the 16th century. Third, it presents a review of the major developments of the seminary system in the 17th century, immediately following Trent. Next it gives an overview of the basic official material on priestly formation as developed by Vatican II and its postconciliar reception an finally, some concluding remarks are offered.
Singing a New Song unto the Lord: Catholic Church Music
Authors: Boyce James J.
Published: September 2006

The Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council made pronouncements concerning music in response to calls for change in the years preceding, and their decisions have had a significant impact on liturgy ever since. This chapter discusses the legislation of these two councils regarding liturgical music, the conditions affecting their decisions, and the effects of such legislation upon the spiritual life of the faithful.
The Virgin Mary
Authors: Cunningham Lawrence S.
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation and two conspicuous events which characterized the Marian character of Catholicism in the 19th century: the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and the rise of Marian apparitions and subsequent pilgrimage locations, most conspicuously at Lourdes in France.
Religious Life for Women: From Enclosure to Immersion
Authors: Gottemoeller Doris
Published: September 2006

The Council of Trent's mandate to women's religious lives consisted of an insistence on the rules of enclosure. The Second Vatican Council mandated religious worship to examine every aspect of women's lives in order to discard outmoded customs and practices in light of the needs of their times. This chapter explores the complexities and results of these two movements for renewal, focusing on the situations prior to the councils, the conciliar mandates, their implementation, and their short- and long-term effects.
From Confession to Reconciliation and Back: Sacramental Penance
Authors: Myers W. David
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores changes in sacramental penance. It is shown that the form of confession prevalent today is a product of the High Middle Ages and the religious reforms of the Council of Trent. Modern devotion to the sacrament signaled by frequent reception is a relatively recent phenomenon that has varied greatly since the Council of Trent.
Trent and Vatican II: Two Styles of Church
Authors: O'Malley John W.
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores the points of continuity and discontinuity between the Council of Trent and Vatican II. It is argued that Trent and Vatican II are emblematic of two fundamental, interrelated, but notably different traditions of the Western Church. Those traditions are the juridical or legislative-judicial and the poetic-rhetorical. They both have their origins in the Greco-Roman world of antiquity and antedate the advent of Christianity. They worked their way into the Christian fabric, and have continued to color it in the present. The Tridentine style, the Vatican II, and the dramatic shift in style at Vatican II are discussed.
Introduction
Authors: Chung Young‐Iob
Published: September 2006

This introductory chapter discusses the purpose of the book and its scope of analysis relative to the extent, pattern, and character of capital formation and its contribution to Korea's three stages of economic development and transformation. It identifies the reasons why the study of capital formation and economic transformation in Korea during the 70-year period is essential to understanding the path of the country's economic transformation. The chapter emphasizes the three major groups of players in Korea, namely, the Koreans, the Japanese, and foreigners (those other than Japanese and Korean nationals) whose role or lack of role was significant. The approach followed in this study is more behavioral and analytical than historical; the nature of the sources of data used in this book is also noted.
The Traditional Economy
Authors: Chung Young‐Iob
Published: September 2006

This chapter examines the economic conditions and forces that affected capital formation and economic development in Korea prior to its opening to the outside world in the mid-1870s. It examines the underdeveloped and essentially static Korean economy of the traditional period in terms of per capita income, aggregate GDP, and economic structure. The chapter also investigates the reasons for the underdevelopment of Korea's in terms of capital endowment; the propensities to work, produce, invest, save, and consume; entrepreneurship; and the role of the Korean government.
Summary and Conclusions
Authors: Chung Young‐Iob
Published: September 2006

This concluding chapter summarizes the records of capital formation and economic transformation during the 70-year period, and examines the net gains and losses of Korea's path between 1876 and 1945 for Koreans. It considers certain scenarios that may have occurred if history took a different turn from what actually took place. For instance, what would have been the prospects for capital formation, economic development, and structural change for Korea had Japan not colonized it? Was it worthwhile for Koreans to have substantial capital formation and speedier economic development and transformation under Japanese colonial rule? The findings in this study go beyond Koreans and their economy under Japanese rule; Japanese imperialism and colonial rule of Korea obviously had major economic and political implications on Japan and Japanese.
Waiting for Antichrist
Authors: Thompson Damian
Published: September 2006

This book explores how members of one religious group with a strong apocalyptic tradition — Kensington Temple, a large Pentecostal church in London — reconciled doctrines of the end of the world with the demands of their everyday lives. It is shown that they subjected these doctrines to a process of scrutiny, moderating and marginalizing them in response to a so-called the “Problem of the End”, the tendency of apocalyptic discourse to predict things that do not happen. In doing so, they employed the same subjective rationality that they applied to all manner of risky religious claims, such as those relating to miraculous healing. In effect, they were testing hypotheses not in a scientific fashion, but according to the dictates of common sense. These findings are difficult to reconcile with the notion that there is a single psychological or material cause of millenarianism.
The Problem of the End
Authors: Thompson Damian
Published: September 2006

This chapter begins with an introduction of the sociological concepts underlying this study. It suggests that people make rational choices about religion, weighing costs and benefits: they seek to avoid conflicts between belief and reality; they work on ideas until they make sense; and they are influenced by the degree of social support available for a particular belief. The second half of the chapter applies these ideas to millenarianism. Finally, it examines the association of apocalyptic belief with a broader corpus of deviant ideas, the “cultic milieu”.
Pentecostalism and the End Times
Authors: Thompson Damian
Published: September 2006

This chapter examines how Pentecostal churches are pulled toward and away from accommodation with society as they seek to exercise ministries of miraculous healing and non-eschatological prophecy. It describes the millenarian traditions that Pentecostalism inherited from fundamentalism. Pentecostal attitudes to the End Times, which range from enthusiastic participation in the prophecy subculture to a complete lack of interest in it are discussed, including a more recent, optimistic belief in the coming restoration of God’s kingdom.
The Year 2000
Authors: Thompson Damian
Published: September 2006

This chapter examines the significance of the year 2000 for Western society, evangelical Christianity, and Kensington Temple. It argues that in all three arenas, the millennium raised hopes that had already been disappointed by the time it dawned. At Kensington Temple, a scheme to create a network of 2,000 churches by 2000, heavy with apocalyptic resonances, had to be abandoned in 1999; the theological maneuvering that followed illustrates what can happen when a charismatic strategy fails.
Who Legitimately Speaks for Religion in Public Bioethics?
Authors: Evans John H.
Published: September 2006

This chapter discusses the various meanings of the two critical ideas in this book and compares them. These critical ideas are “religion” and “public bioethics”. The chapter focuses most of all not on the different religious roles, but on what we think “public bioethics” is or should be.
And Power Corrupts … : Religion and the Disciplinary Matrix of Bioethics
Authors: Lysaught M. Therese
Published: September 2006

This chapter argues that bioethics should properly be understood as a disciplinary matrix that serves the modern Leviathan of state and market. The purpose of doing so, of course, is to narrate a rather different vision of “public bioethics”. For without a more accurate accounting of the nature and function of public bioethics, it will not be possible to begin to posit how “religion” might even begin to position itself in relationship to it.
Public Discourse and Reasonable Pluralism
Authors: Engelhardt Jr. H. Tristram
Published: September 2006

This chapter explores the view that religious claims have no legitimate place in the public forum. This exploration involves a critical re-examination of the public versus private distinction that would place religious commitments and grounds for action in a sphere isolated from that of public discourse and public choice. In the process, this chapter brings into question John Rawls's defense of a public discourse that seeks to marginalize religious commitments.
Philosophy, Theology, and the Claims of Justice
Authors: Lebacqz Karen
Published: September 2006

Thirty years ago, both the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and the collaborative team of Tom L. Beauchamp and James Childress placed justice on a short list of principles that should undergird medical treatment and research. It is difficult to sort out contributions of religious or theological ethics to justice theory in bioethics. Nonetheless, some claims can be made both for the influence of religious ethics on the public discussion of bioethics and for the distinctive voice of religious or theological ethics in matters of justice. Taking a biblically based view of justice, it is argued at that a religious view (1) extends the scope of justice; (2) makes oppression and liberation primary categories for understanding justice; and (3) makes justice the first principle rather than the second or third.
“No Harm, No Harassment”
Authors: Sachedina Abdulaziz
Published: September 2006

This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral judgments in bioethics? Is the sacred law, the Shari'a, which is regarded as an integral part of Islamic ethics, the only recognized source of ethical judgments in Islam? What is the role of human experience/intuitive reasoning in moral justification? This chapter explores these questions and their answers.
Catholic Health Care in the Public Square
Authors: Cochran Clarke E.
Published: September 2006

There is a tendency to see the current challenges to Catholic health care ministry as unprecedented, and the particular shape they take certainly is. But there has always been pressure. The reason is simple: whatever the dominant political, economic, or medical system of a given time and place, Catholic identity must always be at an ethical angle. Catholics faithful to Jesus' words and deeds are “resident aliens” in every society.
“True to His Feelings”
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: September 2006

Camus’ novel, The Stranger, can be read as a philosophically profound phenomenological study of personal experience, more or less devoid of reflection. The novel also presents the development of reflective consciousness through the increasing awareness of the significance of other people. Camus himself has interpreted the hero of the book as a hero for the truth, but the point is made here that Meursault (the supposed hero) is not sufficiently reflective to either be concerned with the truth or to tell a lie.
Sartre on Emotions
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: September 2006

Sartre’s early essay, “The Emotions”, was a frontal attack on the two most prominent theories of emotion in the early 20th century, those of William James and Sigmund Freud. This chapter examines Sartre’s arguments against James and Freud and discusses and criticizes Sartre’s own analysis of emotions as “magical transformations of the world”.
Facing Death Together
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: September 2006

Camus’ novel, The Plague, breaks from the focus on individual experience to talk about solidarity and the experience of being with other people. The titular plague has been interpreted as a metaphor for the Nazi occupation, but it is interpreted here much more generally and more philosophically as the nature of human mortality and “the Absurd”. The novel also gives us Camus’ clearest statement about the significance of what Sartre calls “Being-for-Others”.
Pathologies of Pride
Authors: Solomon Robert C.
Published: September 2006

Camus’s last novel, The Fall, returns to the Absurd and individual experience and the conflict between experience and reflection. Clamence is a brilliant but burnt out Parisian lawyer languishing away in gloomy Amsterdam. Having escaped from what he describes as his perverse role in the French judicial system, he is living the rest of his days as what he calls a “judge-penitent”, wallowing in his own guilt and doing whatever it takes to escape judgment. But this chapter analyzes the story by focusing on Clamence’s overweening pride.
Introduction
Authors: Sher George
Published: September 2006

This chapter sets the stage for a discussion of blame by asking how a world that did not contain it would differ from our world. The chapter poses the problems that the remainder of the book attempts to resolve and outlines the arguments of the chapters to come.
When Good People Do Bad Things
Authors: Sher George
Published: September 2006

This chapter examines the Humean thesis that agents can only be blamed for their bad acts insofar as those acts are manifestations of defects in their characters. Several versions of this thesis are distinguished and criticized. The criticisms include both the familiar charge that the Humean can’t explain how someone can deserve blame for an act whose badness is “out of character” and the less familiar charge that on the Humean account, the badness of the act itself drops out as irrelevant. It is argued, however, that although Hume was wrong to say that every blameworthy act reflects a flaw in the agent’s character, it may be right to say that every blameworthy act is rooted in the agent’s character.
What Blame Is
Authors: Sher George
Published: September 2006

This chapter develops a new account of what blame adds to the belief that someone has acted badly. According to the proposed account, the additional element consists of a set of dispositions (to become angry, express one’s disapproval, and the like) which are explained by the combination of the belief that the agent has acted badly and a desire that he not have done so. Unlike most desires, this one is oriented to the past rather than the future. Nevertheless, it remains a source of motivation that is capable of accounting for the blame-constituting dispositions.
Interlude: Postmodern Goods
Authors: Mann Bonnie
Published: September 2006

This chapter focuses on feminist notions of pornography. It argues that feminist celebrations of pornography make no effort to dismantle the Euro-masculinist projects of mastery, nor to dismantle the master narratives that support the subordination of women to men. The melting away of the social world that occasions entrance into the discursive universe of pornography becomes both its justification and purpose, fulfilling as it does the imperative to be anti-essentialist at all cost. Just as Lyotard's “philosophical politics” failed to become a politics at all by eliminating the possibility of political solidarity with victims of historical wrongs, pro-pornography feminism fails to be feminist when it offers women no place to stand outside the pornographic text from which to bear witness to the harm pornography does to women.
The Liberatory Sublime
Authors: Mann Bonnie
Published: September 2006

This chapter describes one type of sublime experience that often tears open the sealed worlds that tend to mark our contemporary life, called “the liberatory sublime.” The liberatory sublime is the aesthetic experience of the opening of worlds onto a space between, in which the claims of one woman on another, of one person on another, can be heard and lived. It is the aesthetic experience of the other's presence as a person that interrupts the comfort of a world organized to reduce other persons (women in relation to men, women in relation to one another) to mere functions. Sublime experience is orienting for feminism because it breaks open a space for feminist practice across all kinds of differences. And if that space is a ground of fierce contestation, then it is also a common ground, a ground on which we are called to give an account of how we live, think, and work in relation to one another.
Introduction
Authors: Mann Bonnie
Published: September 2006

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the alliance between feminism and postmodernism in the US American academy. It discusses the emphatic anti-essentialism in the alliance between feminism and postmodernism. It then considers how both anti-essentialist feminists and their critics have addressed the problem of essentialism primarily as a problem of the one and the many.
Introduction
Authors: Snodgrass Jeffrey G.
Published: September 2006

In this chapter, Bhat caste history and identity are presented, with particular attention paid to these bards’ claims to be “traditional” puppeteers. It is shown that such a claim, like many others made by members of this caste of professional story-tellers, is a tactical lie used to reap profits in the Rajasthani tourist industry. The chapter takes readers on the same bewildering journey experienced by the author during his initial months of anthropological fieldwork in India, a period during which he was repeatedly and creatively lied to by his informants. In turning the chapter’s attention to these deceptions, as well as to Bhat tales that comment on the power of such deception, the book provides a colorful introduction to these bards’ caste identity, and especially to the manner that such an identity revolves around the ability to cunningly manipulate both stories and people. This introductory chapter, which is written in a manner reminiscent of a mystery novel and which delves deeply into Bhat oral histories and folklore, also provides an entertaining self-reflexive account of anthropological research and writing about other cultures.
Cast of Characters
Authors: Snodgrass Jeffrey G.
Published: September 2006

This chapter further describes the context of the author’s participant-observation fieldwork situation in the towns of Udaipur and Jaipur in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It also presents the scholarly understandings of South Asian society that ground the book’s arguments. It is demonstrated how changes in caste relations in the modern colonial and postcolonial periods, and especially the decline in importance of elite bardic communities, provided the author’s Bhat informants with opportunities to remake their caste identity in the particular manner explored in the pages of this book. This chapter takes pains to demonstrate continuities of experience between the formerly untouchable Bhats and other low status Dalit (“oppressed”) communities. The remainder of the book, however, points to the distinctive manner than Bhats, as low status bards participating in a declining village exchange economy referred to as jajmani, take advantage of changing historical contexts to rework themselves and the institution of caste in ways unique to this community of performers.
Venture Funambulists
Authors: Snodgrass Jeffrey G.
Published: September 2006

This chapter presents Bhat ballads featuring linguistically talented bards who dominate and control their lords and benefactors. Bhat praise of kings and patrons in their practice as well as in their myths and epics is less an acknowledgment of Rajput (former feudal landlords of Rajasthan) or Kshatriya (Warrior) supremacy — be it based on generous patronage, martial sacrifice, or some other virtue — and more a Bhat tactic for establishing their own importance as cunning bards who themselves defend and protect their patron-lords. In shifting the focus from patrons to the insights of the author’s bardic informants and the power of linguistic representation, this chapter hopes to draw more explicit attention to the imaginative dimensions of caste hierarchies and the arbitrariness of social centers and peripheries, It also argues that Bhat poetics parallel many of the insights of contemporary postmodern and poststructuralist theories. This chapter ends by exploring the manner Bhats use stories and puppet dramas placing themselves in close relationship to kings and nobles to help them appropriate the roles and statuses associated with royal bards, which in turn enables them to better exploit the modern tourist industry.
Conclusion
Authors: Snodgrass Jeffrey G.
Published: September 2006

This concluding chapter returns to theories of caste and to the manner in which Bhat culture and society may speak to such theories, by reflecting on the manner Bhats can be said to make their own history as opposed to simply inheriting a so-called traditional identity and profession. It points to continuities and differences between Bhats and other Indian Dalit (formerly Untouchable) communities. It engages the scholarship on Indian marginal and oppressed communities — loosely termed “Subaltern studies” — in order to ultimately argue for the Bhat-performers’ unique form of “poetic” consciousness and resistance.
From Morality to Mental Health
Authors: Martin Mike W.
Published: September 2006

Morality and mental health are now inseparably linked in our view of character. Alcoholics are sick, yet they are punished for drunk driving. Drug addicts are criminals, but their punishment can be court ordered therapy. The line between character flaws and personality disorders has become fuzzy, with even the seven deadly sins seen as mental disorders. In addition to pathologizing wrong-doing, we also psychologize virtue; self-respect becomes self-esteem, integrity becomes psychological integration, and responsibility becomes maturity. Moral advice is now sought primarily from psychologists and therapists rather than philosophers or theologians. This book asks: are we replacing morality with therapy, in potentially confused and dangerous ways, or are we creatively integrating morality and mental health? According to the book, it's a little bit of both. It surveys the ways in which morality and mental health are related, touching on practical concerns like love and work, self-respect and self-fulfillment, guilt and depression, crime and violence, and addictions. Terming this integrative development “the therapeutic trend in ethics,” the book uses examples from popular culture, various moral controversies, and draws on line of thought that includes Plato, the Stoics, Freud, Nietzsche, and contemporary psychotherapeutic theories. The book develops some interesting conclusions, among them that sound morality is indeed healthy, and that moral values are inevitably embedded in our conceptions of mental health. In the end, the book shows how both morality and mental health are inextricably intertwined in our pursuit of a meaningful life.
Pathological Gambling
Authors: Martin Mike W.
Published: September 2006

This chapter presents an integrated, moral-therapeutic perspective on pathological gambling. Such a perspective emphasizes helping individuals to accept responsibility, where responsibility refers to obligations rather than to blame. It understands therapy as a special moral context rather than as replacing morality. The perspective highlights how habits shape identity and conduct, how loss of self-control is both an impairment and morally objectionable, and how moral values partly define problem gambling. It makes sense of how addictions, whether or not they involve ingested substances, can be both wrongdoing and sickness.
Crime and Punishment
Authors: Martin Mike W.
Published: September 2006

This chapter presents an integrated, moral-therapeutic perspective on crime and punishment. It begins by noting how the morality-therapy dichotomy constricted classical debates about punishment. Using as examples kleptomania (compare compulsive gambling) and drug abuse (compare alcoholism), it is shown how serious crime can be both a wrongdoing and a sickness. These examples are familiar in debates about therapeutic approaches to crime, and they provide continuity with the preceding discussions of addictions. The chapter then discusses the possibility of extending a moral-therapeutic approach to other serious crime, and concludes with comments on legal insanity.
Violence and Evil
Authors: Martin Mike W.
Published: September 2006

This chapter presents an integrated, moral-therapeutic perspective on violence. It explores how violence — in the sense of cruel and unjustified physical injury — can be both pathological and evil. It begins by rejecting James Gilligan's attempt to replace morality with therapy. It then turns sociopaths as paradigms of simultaneous moral and mental disorder, then discusses collective violence. The chapter concludes with comments on attempts to abandon blame toward violent individuals.
Depression and Identity
Authors: Martin Mike W.
Published: September 2006

Meaningful lives embody defensible values (objective meaning) and are enlivened by a sense of worthwhileness (subjective meaning). The therapeutic trend has led psychotherapists to explore all aspects of meaningful lives, including everyday moral issues concerning love, work, community service, happiness, and authenticity. This chapter discusses depression, the most ubiquitous concern about meaning brought to psychotherapists. Topics covered include therapists' morality-therapy dichotomy, ethicists' morality-therapy dichotomy, impaired autonomy, and the health-illness continuum. It is argued that depression has become our “presiding discontent,” given our preoccupations with identity and self-worth amid rapid social change, eroding community, and increasingly many ways in which our lives are subject to forces over which we have little control. Therapeutic perspectives should complement and merge with moral perspectives, rather than replacing or diluting morality.
Self‐Deception and Hope
Authors: Martin Mike W.
Published: September 2006

Ethicists have linked meaningful life and honesty with oneself. Similarly, therapists regard honesty with oneself as integral to healing, and they regard contact with reality as a criterion for positive mental health. However, some psychologists have recently suggested that self-deception and unrealistic optimism might be good for us. This chapter argues that self-deception sometimes contributes to hope and love, and thereby to meaningful life and healthy functioning. It does so in a limited way, however, and not to the extent that justifies abandoning contact with reality as a criterion for mental health.
Philosophical Counseling
Authors: Martin Mike W.
Published: September 2006

This chapter applies the moral-therapeutic perspective to philosophical counseling. Philosophical counseling applies ethical perspectives, critical thinking, and other philosophical resources to help individuals pursue meaningful lives and cope with personal problems. Philosophical counselors embraced a morality-therapy dichotomy in order to distinguish their moral-oriented endeavors from the health-oriented work of psychotherapists. Philosophical counseling becomes more coherent by embracing an integrated, moral-therapeutic perspective centered on the themes of healthy morality, responsibility for health, and moral-laden mental health.
Measuring Poverty
Authors: Deaton Angus
Published: September 2006

This essay addresses a number of question regarding poverty: How do we know who is poor and who is not? Is poverty the same as hunger? What is the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction? How will we know whether the first Millennium Development Goal has been met, or whether world poverty is falling at all? It considers the issue of poverty as a lack of income or consumption, and the broader view of poverty as the absence of one or more of the basic capabilities needed to achieve minimal functioning in society, such as food, clothing, education, and political participation. The measurement of poverty in the world is also discussed.
Fertility and Income
Authors: Schultz T. Paul
Published: September 2006

This essay explores the hypothesis that some sources of family income encourage, while other sources discourage fertility because different sources of family income modify the economic opportunities parents must sacrifice to have another child, or the price of children in terms of parental time and market goods. It measures the household connections between fertility and income in Kenya. It argues that to account for the impact of fertility on society, it is useful to distinguish between genetically determined variation in the supply of births that is more or less random, and behavioral variation in the demand for births that is coordinated with many other choices parents make over their lifetimes.
Fertility in Developing Countries
Authors: Eswaran Mukesh
Published: September 2006

This essay discusses why fertility is high in many developing countries; why it declines with economic development; why the institution of child labor facilitates high fertility; and why high fertility is intimately tied to the extent of female autonomy in decision making. It then discusses the reasons for the biased sex ratio at birth alluded to above. It concludes with suggestions for policy measures that will address the problems identified.