This paper is a twenty-five year retrospective on the development of environmental consciousness in the US The Clean Air Act is taken as proxy for companion measures in water and other areas of the environment, and the emphasis on "efficiency" and "market compatibility" is noted with a mixture of caution and hope. The work of an eminent pragmatic ethicist, Ado Leopard, is re-visited. From the pages of A Sand County Almanac, his notion that right and wrong, good and bad, (...) be assessed in terms of the tendency to produce or preserve "the integrity, beauty, and stability of the biotic community" is explicitly adopted. Leopold''s ethical consciousness raises a question: what reasons do we have to believe that an efficient, booming economy can be made compatible with a finite natural system? Are there boundaries that the economy must respect, or can we "out run" those limits with our technology and expertise? (shrink)

The Clean Air Act of 1990 sets forth a system of tradable permits in pollution allowances. In this article, I examine the moral implications of such marketable allowances as a means to achieving a clean air environment. First, I examine the “ends sought” in environmental policy by discussing foundational ethical perspectives. Second, I set forth a framework for judging the moral suitability of various means. I conclude with reflections on interest group power, public policy, and the legitimacy of (...) “second best” solutions. (shrink)

The Clean Air Act of 1990 sets forth a system of tradable permits in pollution allowances. In this article, I examine the moral implications of such marketable allowances as a means to achieving a clean air environment. First, I examine the “ends sought” in environmental policy by discussing foundational ethical perspectives. Second, I set forth a framework for judging the moral suitability of various means. I conclude with reflections on interest group power, public policy, and the legitimacy of (...) “second best” solutions. (shrink)

Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additional protections for susceptible subpopulations who face greater environmental health risks. The main ethical rationale for providing these protections is to ensure that environmental health risks are distributed fairly. In this article, we (1) consider how several influential theories of justice deal with issues related to the distribution of environmental health risks; (2) show that these theories often fail to provide specific guidance concerning (...) policy choices; and (3) argue that an approach to public decision making known as accountability for reasonableness can complement theories of justice in establishing acceptable environmental health risks for the general population and susceptible subpopulations. Since accountability for reasonableness focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process, not the outcome, it does not guarantee that susceptible subpopulations will receive a maximum level of protection, regardless of costs or other morally relevant considerations. (shrink)

In two studies we investigated the association between physical cleansing and moral and immoral behavior in real-life situations. In Study 1, after a workout at the gym, participants cheated more after taking a shower than before taking one. In the second study, participants donated more money to charity before rather than after they bathed for religious purification. The results extend previous findings about moral cleansing and moral licensing and are discussed within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory.

In “The Search for Environmental Rights,” Joseph Sax argues that each individual should have, as a right, freedom from environmental hazards and access to environmental benefits, but he makes clear that environmental rights do not exist and their recognition would truly be a novel step. Sax states that environmental rights are different from existing human rights and argues that the closest analogy is welfare interests. In arguing for environmental rights, I follow Sax’s direction and draw from the work of those (...) who are the most relevant in establishing environmental rights. I consider Joel Feinberg’s notion of welfare interests, Henry Shue’s notion of basic rights, and James Nickel’s right to a safe environment. I draw from Mill’s harm principle, the superfund legislation, and the Clean Air Act to illustrate the existing ethical and legal bases for establishing environmental rights. Finally, I discuss positive and negative duties that such rights might carry. (shrink)

The article describes how emissions from the nation’s coal-fired power plants create far-reaching problems for people and wildlife, including acid rain; ozone pollution; the deposition of mercury and nitrogen in lakes, streams, and coastal waters; and global climate change. These environmental problems cut across all regions and endanger the entire range of wildlife, from the tiniest invertebrates to top predator mammals, in addition to threatening our health and economy. Moreover, current efforts to address these problems are not sufficient. In this (...) article, the National Wildlife Federation makes a series of recommendations for reducing the toll from coal, including: closing the loophole in the Clean Air Act that allows older power plants to emit significantly more pollution than newer, more efficient ones; toughening restrictions on sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and creating meaningful mercury and carbon dioxide emissions caps; and promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. (shrink)

Contrary to much of what has been said about the decision of the United States Supreme Court last term in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, it hardly put an end to the discretion of American judges to make awards of punitive damages in cases within admiralty jurisdiction. Rather, it confirmed judicial authority to make such awards in the absence of legislative direction, rejected the view that the Clean Air Act signals any intent of Congress to foreclose them in cases (...) in which that statute is implicated, and sets for them a cap, but only for an uncommon category of cases. (shrink)

In “The Search for Environmental Rights,” Joseph Sax argues that each individual should have, as a right, freedom from environmental hazards and access to environmental benefits, but he makes clear that environmental rights do not exist and their recognition would truly be a novel step. Sax states that environmental rights are different from existing human rights and argues that the closest analogy is welfare interests. In arguing for environmental rights, I follow Sax’s direction and draw from the work of those (...) who are the most relevant in establishing environmental rights. I consider Joel Feinberg’s notion of welfare interests, Henry Shue’s notion of basic rights, and James Nickel’s right to a safe environment. I draw from Mill’s harm principle, the superfund legislation, and the Clean Air Act to illustrate the existing ethical and legal bases for establishing environmental rights. Finally, I discuss positive and negative duties that such rights might carry. (shrink)

Doing Environmental Ethics offers a way to face our ecological crisis that draws on environmental science, economic theory, international law, and religious teachings, as well as philosophical arguments. It engages readers in constructing ethical presumptions based on our duty, our character, our relationships, and our rights. Then it tests these moral presumptions by predicting the likely consequences of acting on them. Readers apply what they have learned to specific policy issues discussed in the final part of the book: sustainable consumption, (...) environmental policy, clean air and water, agriculture, managing public lands, urban ecology, and climate change. Questions after each chapter and a worksheet aid readers in deciding how to live more responsibly as consumers and as citizens. “What you do matters,” Robert Traer writes, “and the person you are also matters. In ethics we look for reasons to explain why this is so.”. (shrink)

is a new campaign devoted to reducing the environmental harmsgenerated by the healthcare industry. One of the leading local proponents of this effort is Michael Lerner, founder of Commonweal, a Bolinas, Californiagenius grant”).

Preemption is a powerful strategy used by special interest groups to undermine strong, local public health standards. Currently, 20 states in the U.S. have preemption ordinances in place related to clean indoor air initiatives. These preemption laws are the direct result of an ongoing and aggressive campaign of tobacco companies to thwart clean indoor air initiatives, which ultimately, according to tobacco industry internal documents, cause significant reductions in their annual revenues. Clean indoor air policies have arisen from (...) a greater understanding of the documented health risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke and action by local government to protect the public from these hazards. The efforts of the tobacco industry undermine local authority and seek to shift policy action to the state and federal levels, where the industry has greater political influence. (shrink)

Preemption is a powerful strategy used by special interest groups to undermine strong, local public health standards. Currently, 20 states in the U.S. have preemption ordinances in place related to clean indoor air initiatives. These preemption laws are the direct result of an ongoing and aggressive campaign of tobacco companies to thwart clean indoor air initiatives, which ultimately, according to tobacco industry internal documents, cause significant reductions in their annual revenues. Clean indoor air policies have arisen from (...) a greater understanding of the documented health risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke and action by local government to protect the public from these hazards. The efforts of the tobacco industry undermine local authority and seek to shift policy action to the state and federal levels, where the industry has greater political influence. (shrink)

People with Scrupulosity have rigorous, obsessive moral beliefs that lead to extreme and compulsive moral acts. These fascinating outliers raise profound questions about human nature, mental illness, moral belief, responsibility, and psychiatric treatment. Clean Hands? Uses a range of case studies to examine this condition and its philosophical implications.

The individual motorist often defends his unwillingness to change his driving habits in the face of air pollution by pointing out that a change in his actions would be insignificant. The environmentalist responds by asking what would happen if everyone did change. In this paper I defend the environmentalist’s response. I argue that we can appeal to the following principle to defend both group and individual obligations to clean up air: if the consequences of everyone doing aare undesirable, then (...) each and every one ought to do was he can to prevent the undesirable consequences. (shrink)

The individual motorist often defends his unwillingness to change his driving habits in the face of air pollution by pointing out that a change in his actions would be insignificant. The environmentalist responds by asking what would happen if everyone did change. In this paper I defend the environmentalist’s response. I argue that we can appeal to the following principle to defend both group and individual obligations to clean up air: if the consequences of everyone doing aare undesirable, then (...) each and every one ought to do was he can to prevent the undesirable consequences. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine alternative feminist activism and social movements in Egypt by analyzing BuSSy. BuSSy is a performance art group that hosts storytelling workshops and monologues of taboo and “shameful” personal stories that challenge societal and state-sanctioned normative discourses on femininity/womanhood and masculinity/manhood. Drawing on transnational feminist scholarship and queer theory and using collective memory as a lens, I argue that BuSSy’s storytelling is an act of airing Egypt’s dirty laundry, queering normative discourses to enable feminist counter-memorializing. Based (...) on content analysis of secondary data including BuSSy’s published interviews, YouTube videos, website and Facebook images, and testimonies from 2006 to 2020, my analysis reveals BuSSy as curating an “archive of feelings” centralizing gendered narratives of shame. I examine how BuSSy’s affectively contagious storytelling leads to feminist social change by empowering storytellers and listeners. BuSSy’s works create cathartic experiences to shed stigma and shame. Finally, I reconceptualize feminist activism and collective memories outside of the 2011 Egyptian revolution and contribute to the literature on shame by analyzing how BuSSy identifies and counters shame’s silencing power. (shrink)

Prior to this intervention the site used to be a degraded fiscal property, that functioned as a bus yard, a police legal deposit, and a restaurant parking lot. Underneath it runs the Maldonado stream culvert, covered by a concrete slab at a depth of only -20cm. Next to the site is a 5m high railroad embankment. The plot is strategically located at the end of Juan B. Justo avenue and works as a gateway to the Tres de Febrero park (also (...) known as Bosques de Palermo, the Buenos Aires’s biggest green space designed by Charles Thays in 1875). It is situated in the neighborhood of Palermo, an area that underwent a vertiginous residential and commercial expansion since the late 90´s. -/- The design approach is influenced by the adjacent urban fragments: the grounds of the Sociedad Rural Argentina, the surrounding Avenues Santa Fe-Sarmiento; the opening of Darregueyra street expected for the near future, the implementation of historic preservation guidelines for the Tres de Febrero Park, and the proposal for the development of nearby railroad yards. -/- Specifically, the project seeks to minimize the impact of the fast traffic that runs along Bullrich avenue, improving pedestrian and cycle access to the park. At the same time it defines new landscape features, utilizing the earth made available by the tunneling works of a new subway line. -/- The project comprises the structuring of an existing 800 meter long embankment and the transformation of the sidewalk into a public promenade. This is achieved through a wider sidewalk of 12m on average, which is part of a series of longitudinal stripes ranging from high speed to quiet spaces. The first band of grass and aged tipas (tipuana tipu) buffer pedestrian and cyclist from automotive traffic. Cycle traffic is organized on its own lane. The sidewalk itself contains several bays that act as urban lounges. Next, a continuous concrete bench delimits the beginning of the slope, backed by a stripe of grass that works as a soft extension. Finally, plants for contemplation are arranged as undulating traces. Rhythmic use of retaining gabions defines longitudinal segments of varying slope, unifying the spacial criterion. This series is punctuated by an amphitheater and framed by triangular plazas at the corners. -/- Material choices for hard surfaces are constrained by concerns of durability, low cost, and consistency with other ongoing public works. -/- Hard materials, as well as the plant selection needed to be low-maintenance. The palette was kept to reinforced concrete, granitic slabs, and granite stone in large size –forming retaining gabions- and as loose finishing for pavements. Likewise, the lack of a protective enclosure and of continuous surveillance dictated that urban furniture and fixtures be anti-vandalic. The stealing of these components –from inspection lids, to benches, to plants- is a common problem in urban spaces in many Latin American cities. To prevent this, fixtures must be designed according to precise specifications regarding their weight, fixing and anchoring systems, and mechanical parts. -/- Sidewalks are organized through a 6 meter grid made of granitic white slab, infilled with textured combed nonslip concrete modules. Extended bays and corner squares are finished with white and black slabs respectively. These materials are similar to another used in public spaces under construction, in the believe that it creates a collective identification of themselves along the city. -/- The continuous reinforced concrete bench is 1.10 m wide, in order to allow people to use it in non-conventional ways. Further up on the slope, undulating paths separate plant species and provide access for gardening, but are also open to use by the public. They are paved with 2 meter-long precast concrete slabs (smaller and lighter pieces were avoided to deter robbery). As they reach the gabions they connect with sloping paths covered with loose granitic stones. The gabions themselves allow the creation of varying slopes while contributing to retaining the soil, which is reinforced with geosynthetic fabric in the perimeter to avoid landslides originated by strong rains typical of the region. -/- Urban furniture is featured on the wider bays of the sidewalk and at corner plazas. It includes seats, water fountains, bicycle racks, wastepaper baskets. As a counterpoint to the linear concrete bench, groups of concrete seats are arranged informally. These seats are a reinterpretation of the dynamic BKF chair (also known as Butterfly chair), the classic Argentinean design of the 1930’ by Antonio Bonet, Juan Kurchan, and Jorge Ferrari-Hardoy. A few low concrete tables complete these spaces as authentic urban lounges. Lighting design accompanies the general features of the project and creates a new scenography emphasizing night-time usage. -/- Landscape gardening criteria is set up by a selection of various species of high-resistant pasture (grass). The higher the slope, the higher the grass, increasing the final volumetric result. Based on considering the original tipas line (tipuana tipu, a species from the north of Argentina, yellow flowering) as a vertical wall that frames the view, the horizontal stripes contain a single species each, differing in size, shade and flowering periods –adding, in the middle band, a changing color on the big green plane slope in the same chromatic range. The final configuration of the stripe sequence from bottom to top: bermuda grass, bulbine frutescens, euryops pectinatus. The upper band existing native species is reinforced with new samples: paspalum exaltatum + cortadera selloana and ipomea + thumbergia climbing the railway fence. Each sector between gabions has an automated system of drip irrigation. Near the corner plazas, several palms are planted to provide shade and identity to the street-crossing. -/- The intervention proposes an ambivalent effect on the landscape, trascending the merely ornamental by accompanying the motorist in speed, while conforting the pedestrian with spaces for contemplation and urban relax. (shrink)

ACCORDING to one of the weirder interpretations of quantum theory, electrons and the other subatomic particles that make up creation don't really come into existence -- taking on definite positions in time and space -- until they are beheld by a conscious observer. Extending this notion to a cosmic scale, the most radical proponents of what has come to be called the anthropic cosmological principle argue for a dizzying symbiosis in which the universe gives rise to conscious beings who in (...) turn give rise to the universe through the act of observation. (shrink)

The theory of speech acts is partly taxonomic and partly explanatory. It must systematically classify types of speech acts and the ways in which they can succeed or fail. It must reckon with the fact that the relationship between the words being used and the force of their utterance is often oblique. For example, the sentence 'This is a pig sty' might be used nonliterally to state that a certain room is messy and filthy and, further, to demand indirectly that (...) it be straightened out and cleaned up. Even when this sentence is used literally and directly, say to describe a certain area of a barnyard, the content of its utterance is not fully determined by its linguistic meaning--in particular, the meaning of the word 'this' does not determine which area is being referred to. A major task for the theory of speech acts is to account for how speakers can succeed in what they do despite the various ways in which linguistic meaning underdetermines use. (shrink)

Until recently, the history of environmentalism was primarily a history of attention to place. In the United States, environmentalists have gotten rather good at protecting and managing particular places such as mountains, forests, and watersheds and specific resources such as trees, soil, wildlife, air, and water. Environmentalism has become an enormously popular social movement, with, by some measures, more than 80 percent of Americans considering themselves environmentalists. Thousands of organizations, ranging from local volunteer groups to national nonprofits, address issues as (...) diverse as open space, air and water pollution, biological diversity, environmental justice, and environmental effects on human health. The successes of this movement have been striking. Our National Parks, National Forests, and wilderness areas are touted as models for the world and are well complemented by state, municipal, and private protected areas. The Endangered Species Act successfully resolves many conflicts between rare creatures and development. Rivers have been cleaned up, and once-spurned urban waterfronts now draw real estate and tourism development. Americans drink cleaner water and breathe cleaner air than much of the rest of the world, and attempts to weaken regulatory frameworks are consistently met with public disapproval. (shrink)

What is the clean hands defense (CHD) normatively about? Courts designate court integrity as the CHD's primary norm. Yet, while the CHD may at times further court integrity, it is not fully aligned with court integrity. In addition to occasionally instrumentally furthering certain goods (e.g., court legitimacy, judge integrity, deterrence), the CHD embodies two judicially undetected norms: retribution and tu quoque (“you too!”). Tu quoque captures the moral intuition that wrongdoers are in no position to blame, condemn, or make (...) claims on others who are guilty of similar or related wrongdoing. The CHD shares the structure of the tu quoque: both are doctrines of standing that deflate the illocutionary force (and not the truth-value) of normative speech acts directed against wrongdoers by those guilty of similar or connected wrongdoing. The CHD also exhibits retributive logic: it sanctions plaintiffs by reason of their wrongdoing and manifests the retributive principle that “punishment must fit the crime.” -/- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011. Also available at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=LEG. (shrink)

In the 1980s, Luce Irigaray accused Western philosophy of “forgetting” about the role that the materiality of air and the act of breathing played in pre-Socratic metaphysics. This essay explores how Jacques Derrida maintained a complicated but insightful relationship to the air throughout his career through the mediating influence of pneuma, a word with long and complicated connections to the air. I highlight two relevant sites of engagement. The first was found in Of Grammatology (1968), where he connected the breathy (...) logocentrism of “natural writing” to a concept of pneumatology (a “science of spirit” with some interesting connections to Leibniz) that served as grammatology’s Janus face. The second stemmed from Of Spirit (1991), in which Derrida emphasized the combustible, fiery face of pneuma to lambast Heidegger’s use of translation to mediate away the historical presence of the word pneuma for ideological purposes. This body of work, en toto, presents a subtle and oblique critique of Irigaray’s position. For Derrida, the air cannot function as the medium for an alternative metaphysics of presence because, historically, its space has already been infused with a pneumatic specter that cannot be ignored. (shrink)

RESUMEN Se postula la posibilidad de una cierta performance del espacio en la teoría de las esferas de Sloterdijk. Dicha performance sería un acto de convertibilidad onto-tecnológica, que remplaza la noción ortodoxa de un espacio de naturaleza euclidiana por la de una espacialidad gobernada por la promesa de la disciplina del diseño o Air design.. De este modo, el ser-en-esferas de Sloterdijk se comprendería mejor como ser-en-el-aire, sobre todo si se considera que la ascesis del Homo sapiens actual sugiere una (...) climatización centrada en el confort del termotopo y en una gestión tecnológica del aire. Por lo mismo, y recurriendo a uno de los argumentos mitológicos del filósofo germano, el concepto de atmoterrorismo (o guerra enfocada en la toxicidad del ambiente) podría entenderse perfectamente como una suerte de venganza titanotécnica fruto del robo del fuego epistémico sagrado. ABSTRACT The possibility of a certain performance of space in Sloterdijk's theory of spheres is postulated. Such a performance would be an act of onto-technological convertibility, which replaces the orthodox notion of a space of Euclidean nature with that of a spatiality governed by the promise of the discipline of design or Air design.. In this way, Sloterdijk's being-in-spheres would be better understood as being-in-air, especially if one considers that the asceticism of today's Homo sapiens suggests an air conditioning centered on the comfort of the thermotope and technological management of air. For the same reason, and resorting to one of the mythological arguments of the Germanic philosopher, the concept of atmoterrorism (or war focused on the toxicity of the environment) could be perfectly understood as a sort of titanotechnical revenge fruit of the theft of the sacred epistemic fire. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:If “Reality is the Best Metaphor,” It Must Be VirtualMarguerite R. Waller (bio)What is the search for the next great compelling application but a search for the human identity?—Doug Coupland, Microserfs... we can look forward to a richly textured and complex cyberspace, where we are at all times human, and can become bits of pixel dust flying through a virtual landscape.—3-D, multiuser, interactive, on-line virtual reality producer“Avatars are Next,” (...) the June 1996 issue of Wired announces on its cover, above a glossy foldout of Bill Gates in bathing trunks floating on a lemon yellow air mattress in a sensuous Hockney-blue swimming pool. “Mr. Bill goes Hollywood! Special Gatesfold Issue,” reads the caption underneath the (photomontaged) naked torso. The United States Congress’s attempt in February 1996 to conceptualize the Internet as an incitement to indecent sexual conduct (in Section 507 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the so-called Computer Decency Act) is clearly the lampooned subtext of this juxtaposition of sexualized body with the concept of the avatar. The antithesis of sensuous, avatars are bandwidth-conserving, virtual figures that take the place of users’ physical bodies in the three-dimensional, interactive, multiuser virtual environments that software developers in 1996 insist will be the telos of the development of the World Wide Web. The Wired cover implies that the nerd community finds Congress’s association of digital media with sex ridiculous (however flattering they may find it to be constructed as sexually dangerous). Not unusually, sexuality is being invoked by the state as a justification for extending its own reach (and the corporate interests it represents).But the sex/gender politics of Net free speech advocates are not necessarily more progressive. As feminist commentator Laura Miller argues in “Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier,” the metaphor of a frontier beyond the jurisdiction of Congress, deployed by opponents of federal regulation, draws upon a conventional construction of gender that threatens to reinscribe women as victims, reinforcing “the power imbalance between the sexes, with its roots in the concept of women as property, constantly under siege and requiring the vigilant protection of their male owners” [53]. The unintended consequence of this conceptualization, she worries, is that “the threat of regulation is built into the very mythos used to conceptualize the Net by its defenders” [50].My worry, therefore, embraces both sides of the debate over free speech on the Net. The skirmish between Big Brother and the software pioneers seems to be shaping up rhetorically as a classic fraternal competition “between men” (Sedgwick). We may read it as a contest between fundamentally congruent “male” subject positions, both of which incline to disempower “female” subject positions and both of which stand to increase their [End Page 90] own political and economic capital by the appearance of a conflict. The power-producing relationality at play in this turf war, however, simultaneously threatens to subvert the claims of each position to its own, independent ontology. Both parties, therefore, can be expected compulsively to deny their relational status. John Perry Barlowe insists, in his “Declaration of Independence in Cyberspace”: “Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter. There is no matter here.”It is this more subtle metaphysical issue, the occlusion of relation, implicated in but not reducible to, the constructions of sexuality and gender deployed by both Netizens and Congresspeople, that I find the most pressing issue in designs, uses, and discussions of cyberspace. I will argue that, in fact, the current wave of Internet development (both practically and discursively) is in some sense driven by a desire to make cyberspace safe for essentialist subjectivities of whatever ideological/political persuasion. I will unfold this argument in terms of a certain notion of addiction. My interest is not “cyberaddiction” per se, in the sense of individuals who spend what they or their associates consider too much time on-line, but rather the construction of cyberspace—both rhetorically and electronically—as a clean, clear realm in which we can transcend positionality while remaining (or becoming more fully) “ourselves.” I am not, that... (shrink)

A clean energy future is both plausible and in the best interests of the country. The Upper Midwest, acting in concert with appropriate policy changes at the national level, could play a pivotal role in helping the nation move in that direction. As the past century’s embrace of centralized power is beginning to weaken, a variety of policy drivers, including concerns about energy system capacity and reliability, the improvement of public health by reducing pollution, the enhancement of national security (...) by decreased reliance on nuclear power, and the need to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, are beginning to make clear the outlines of this energy transition. The proposals offered by the Environmental Lawand Policy Center and Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy rely on proven, economical, and environmentally sustainable technology options. An aggressive development plan featuring efficiency, wind, and other renewable resources will be a significant first step in solving the climate change problem. (shrink)

Durante los años 80 en Buenos Aires comenzaron a multiplicarse los casos de una enfermedad mortal que afectaba especialmente a jóvenes. Silenciosa y desconocida, generó pánico y estigmatización hacia quienes la contraían ya que no se conocía las verdaderas formas de contagio y la muerte de los infectados resultaba inminente. En esos años, el sida fue catalogado como “peste rosa” o “un justo castigo divino” por sectores vinculados a la iglesia que acusaban a los enfermos de prácticas promiscuas y vergonzosas. (...) El presente trabajo se propone describir el impacto del HIV/sida en la comunidad del underground porteño y en particular analizar el caso del actor Batato Barea, para pensar algunas cuestiones diferenciales tanto de la enfermedad como de la manera que encontró la comunidad artística y LGTB de lidiar colectivamente con ella, mientras ni el Estado ni la comunidad científica internacional articulaban planes de acción efectivos para su cura. En consonancia con este planteo, indagaremos puntualmente en la ceremonia fúnebre de Batato Barea y su vínculo con los velorios festivos, en torno al HIV/sida, que se efectuaron en la comunidad artística en esos años. Analizaremos su impronta característica en relación a otros modos colectivos de enfrentar la muerte y reclamar por una cura, en los funerales del grupo activista ACT UP, realizados en Estados Unidos y Europa. En suma, postulamos que este tipo de funerales festivos, como el de Batato Barea, buscaban preservar la integridad anímica, sobre todo, de quienes estando infectados luchaban contra la enfermedad. (shrink)

A number of recent authors have argued for the problem of ‘democratic dirty hands’. At least within a democracy, public officers can be rightly said to act in the name of the public; and thus, as agents to principals, the dirty hands of public officers are, ultimately attributable to that public. Even more troubling, so the argument goes, since dirty hands are necessary for public officers in any stable political order, then such democratic dirty hands are necessary for any stable (...) democracy. Our dirt is the unavoidable cost of democratic survival.In this paper, I offer an argument against this disconcerting conclusion. My central claim is that proponents of ‘democratic dirty hands’ have missed the import of another feature of contemporary governance: public institutions. Public institutions, as organisational agents, intermediate the relationship between public officer and public; and in so doing, the dirt necessary for stability may be ‘laundered’: the public may still gain the benefit of a public officer’s hands, but remain clean of the dirt. I illustrate this case by an extended discussion of the case of La Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (‘CICIG’). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2 (2002) 189-191 [Access article in PDF] Listening, Acting, and the Quest for AlternativesA Response to Charland and Bracken Erica Lilleleht The challenge is not to replace one certitude... with another but to cultivate an attention to the conditions under which things become 'evident,'... ceasing to be objects of our attention and therefore seeming fixed, necessary, and unchangeable. (Rabinow on Foucault 1997, p. XIX) I (...) do not know whether it must be said today that the critical task still entails faith in Enlightenment; I continue to think that this task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving form to our impatience for liberty. (Foucault 1997, p. 319) IN RESPONDING TO MY PAPER, Bracken and Charland raise a number of interesting points. Through discussing Tuke's York Retreat (Charland) and Foucault's "regimes of truth" (Bracken), the character of moral treatment, the value of a Foucauldian analysis, the importance of listening (as well as its limits), and the necessity of taking action are all raised as important issues when considering the history and current status of psychiatry. In my response, I shall focus on the latter two issues, namely, the possibility of listening and the necessity of action. I will make the argument that although action can, and often should, follow listening, having action as its necessary (and immediate) goal brings with it a set of pressures and practices that can render both experiences difficult, if not impossible.First, let me share my understanding of Bracken and Charland's main theses and arguments. For Patrick Bracken, the main purpose of any critique, but particularly a critique of current psychiatric practice, is to present readers with a new way of listening and understanding. It should, to paraphrase Bracken, open things up for deeper analysis. The Foucault he is listening to, then, is a man in whose "hands history becomes philosophy". This transformation is important because as it occurs new "discursive spaces" open up, thereby presenting readers of his work with new voices (e.g., patients, less-than-famous psychiatrists, priests). This incursion of the new does not necessarily, however, invalidate the old. Bracken substantiates this by making the important point that Foucault did not simply reject Enlightenment reason (an old and highly persistent voice), but rather "challenged the idea that we have to choose to be for or against" it. Bracken further points out that listening to these voices, [End Page 189] old or new, is never a completely "clean" practice. In Bracken's words, "there is no neutral, asocial or apolitical vantage point from [which] we can judge the validity of one position over the other." This means that in listening to the "other" (as patient, friend, argument, or psychiatric practice) we must maintain a kind of double consciousness, one in which we attend to this other voice while at the same time being aware that neither of us are speaking from within a neutral, clean space (devoid of political, social, and/or cultural pressures or implications). Maintaining this kind of awareness is difficult for obvious reasons. In mental health practice and for Bracken, however, this difficulty can be worthwhile if it results in formerly silent participants having "their voice heard in debates about service development and the nature of progress."Although I doubt Louis Charland would disagree with the idea that listening is important, he does take the function of critique one step further. Specifically for Charland, critiques of psychiatric practice, past and particularly present, should result in the identification of alternative solutions. Failing to do so can indicate that the critique "borders on a lack of depth." If one extends this assertion about my analysis to Foucault's own work, we find that Charland is not alone. For example, Hoy, in his introduction to his edited Foucault: A Critical Reader (1992), states that "Foucault's continued refusal to specify either a prescription or a prognosis for social illnesses he diagnoses suggests to some readers that genealogy is as unserious and irresponsible as archeology" (p. 7). This point emerges... (shrink)

Conflicts between labor unions and nongovernmental organizations often impede private labor regulatory attempts to protect worker rights at supplier factories. Based on a study of a failed private regulatory attempt for Swedish garment retailers, we contribute to existing research into union–NGO relations by demonstrating how conflict arises because unions and NGOs act upon different institutional logics. We also contribute to the institutional logics perspective by challenging the current emphasis on either coexistence or conflict among multiple logics, and showing the heterogeneity (...) in how multiple logics manifest on a local level, how this could shift over time, and suggesting an empirically derived typology of manifestations of multiple logics. (shrink)

Act Three of Gabriel Marcel’s play, The Emissary, is presented here in English for the first time. The introductory essay introduces Marcel and several of his best known themes, especially the distinctions between problem and mystery, and primary and secondary reflection. Focusing on the relationship between experience and conceptual knowledge, it discusses Marcel’s attempt to argue philosophically for a return to ordinary experience. The role of drama and art in the recovery of the realm of mystery is also highlighted. The (...) play illustrates these themes at the concrete level as it raises many of the challenging situations and moral dilemmas that emerged from the occupation of France by a brutal enemy during World War II. The realities of deceit, betrayal and blackmail are all in the air, as are real worries about reprisals, violence, and irreparable loss. In a moving, gripping drama, Marcel portrays the occupation as an occasion for deep soul-searching among the characters, in the midst of great suffering and loss, and, rather than passing easy judgment, he suggests a journey toward healing, one inspired by compassion, honesty, courage, and faith. (shrink)

Out-of-network air ambulance bills are a pernicious and financially devastating type of surprise medical bill. Courts have broadly interpreted the Airline Deregulation Act to preempt most state attempts to regulate air ambulance billing abuses, so a federal solution is ultimately needed. However, in the absence of a federal fix, states have experimented with a variety of approaches that may survive preemption and provide some protections for their citizens.

Durante los años 80 en Buenos Aires comenzaron a multiplicarse los casos de una enfermedad mortal que afectaba especialmente a jóvenes. Silenciosa y desconocida, generó pánico y estigmatización hacia quienes la contraían ya que no se conocía las verdaderas formas de contagio y la muerte de los infectados resultaba inminente. En esos años, el sida fue catalogado como “peste rosa” o “un justo castigo divino” por sectores vinculados a la iglesia que acusaban a los enfermos de prácticas promiscuas y vergonzosas. (...) El presente trabajo se propone describir el impacto del HIV/sida en la comunidad del underground porteño y en particular analizar el caso del actor Batato Barea, para pensar algunas cuestiones diferenciales tanto de la enfermedad como de la manera que encontró la comunidad artística y LGTB de lidiar colectivamente con ella, mientras ni el Estado ni la comunidad científica internacional articulaban planes de acción efectivos para su cura. En consonancia con este planteo, indagaremos puntualmente en la ceremonia fúnebre de Batato Barea y su vínculo con los velorios festivos, en torno al HIV/sida, que se efectuaron en la comunidad artística en esos años. Analizaremos su impronta característica en relación a otros modos colectivos de enfrentar la muerte y reclamar por una cura, en los funerales del grupo activista ACT UP, realizados en Estados Unidos y Europa. En suma, postulamos que este tipo de funerales festivos, como el de Batato Barea, buscaban preservar la integridad anímica, sobre todo, de quienes estando infectados luchaban contra la enfermedad. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to stage some questions concerning methodology and education, inspired by Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet and by Jacques Derrida's poetic philosophical oeuvres. What are at stake are the long traditions of preferences of sanity over madness, friend over enemy, male over female and of clean, unambiguous univocal language over the poetic. I will argue that educators will have an extra responsibility towards challenging the ancient tradition of phallogocentrism, both in our teaching and in our research.

Social theory has paid little attention to air, despite its centrality to bodily existence and air pollution being named the world’s biggest public health crisis. Where attention to air is found, the body is largely absent. On the other hand, conceptualizing the body without life-sustaining breath fails to highlight breathing as the ongoing metabolic bodily act in which the materiality of human and more-than-human intermingle and transmute one another. Political ecology studies how unequal power structures and knowledge production reproduce human–environment (...) relations, including a nascent focus on the body and air – but as separate issues. This article argues that a political ecology of air would productively fuse with a political ecology of the body to bring the visceral realm into intersectional analysis of air’s contemporary materialities. A feminist political ecology situates explicitly air-and-breathing-bodies, their intimately posthuman, relational, elemental and corpomaterial intra-action, at the heart of such analysis. (shrink)

After the completion of RecA protein‐mediated recombinational repair of daughter‐strand gaps in E. coli, participating chromosomes are held together by Holliday junctions. Until recently, it was not known how the cell disengages the connected chromosomes. Accumulating genetic data suggested that the product of the ruv locus participates in recombinational repair and acts after the formation of Holliday junctions. Molecular characterization of the locus revealed that there are three genes – ruvA, ruvB and ruvC; mutations in any one of the genes (...) confer the same phenotype. Recently, the RuvC protein was found to be a Holliday junction resolvase. At first glance, the resolving activity of RuvC alone would appear to be sufficient for the separation of recombining chromosomes. However, in vitro studies show that the filament of RecA protein is unable to dissociate from the products of the recombination reaction. Thus, in vivo, even if the Holliday junctions are resolved by RuvC, RecA filament must be holding two DNA duplexes together. New findings about enzymatic activities of RuvA and RuvB proteins foster the hope that the machinery for removing the RecA filament from DNA has been found. (shrink)

This paper describes the construction of the visual space of surveillance by the global anti-doping apparatus, it is a space inhabited daily by professional cyclists. Two principal mechanisms of this apparatus will be discussed—the Whereabouts System and the Biological Passport; in order to illustrate how this space is constructed and how it visualises the invisible act of doping. These mechanisms act to supervise and govern the professional cyclist and work to classify them as either clean or dirty in terms (...) of the use of prohibited doping substances or methods. Contrary to the analysis of liberal anti-doping scholars such as Hanstad, Loland and Møller this paper argues that Foucault’s Panopticon paradigm is a useful tool for the analysis of this apparatus. The Whereabouts System and Biological Passport are the instruments by which the anti-doping apparatus intensifies the construction of the space of surveillance in professional sport. This space of surveillance not only locates and makes visible the physical location of each individual cyclist, but it also makes visible their internal bodily functions, in this case the composition and the fluctuations of the composition of their blood. In making the cyclist visible the instruments do not allow the cause of doping, or the event of doping to be known or observed. Rather what they do is cast the body in terms of abnormalities of time, place or blood. In the case of an abnormality of the cyclist’s blood, the cause itself cannot be identified with any certainty, all that is made visible is a suggestion, or a probability, that doping may have occurred. The ultimate effects are twofold—an internalisation and continual monitoring of one’s self as well as by the authorities, and a radical change in the nature and the definition of the offence of doping. No longer is it positive evidence of doping that is punishable, but what becomes punishable is an abnormality, in the cyclist’s location, or their body, which suggests a probability that the invisible act of doping may have occurred. In the course of this process accepted manners of proving an offence by the use of scientific evidence and expert commentary are transformed. The Whereabouts System and the Biological Passport open up a new manner in which the invisible can be visualised. Through the discourse and the attendant commentary of the expert a new alliance between doping and the law is constructed. The result is a redistribution of the way in which the law visualises and treats the symptoms (the signifier) and the signified act of doping. The Whereabouts System and Biological Passport are the instruments by which the anti-doping apparatus intensifies the construction of the space of surveillance in professional sport. This space of surveillance not only locates and makes visible the physical location of each individual cyclist, but it also makes visible their internal bodily functions, in this case the composition and the fluctuations of the composition of their blood. In making the cyclist visible the instruments do not allow the cause of doping, or the event of doping to be known or observed. Rather what they do is cast the body in terms of abnormalities of time, place or blood. In the case of an abnormality of the cyclists’s blood, the cause itself cannot be identified with any certainty, all that is made visible is a suggestion, or a probability, that doping may have occurred. The ultimate effects are twofold—an internalisation and continual monitoring of one’s self as well as by the authorities, and a radical change in the nature and the definition of the offence of doping. No longer is it positive evidence of doping that is punishable, but what becomes punishable is an abnormality, in the cyclist’s location, or their body, which suggests a probability that the invisible act of doping may have occurred. In the course of this process accepted manners of proving an offence by the use of scientific evidence and expert commentary are transformed. The Whereabouts System and the Biological Passport open up a new manner in which the invisible can be visualised. Through the discourse and the attendant commentary of the expert a new alliance between doping and the law is constructed. The result is a redistribution of the way in which the law visualises and treats the symptoms (the signifier) and the signified act of doping. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Juggling ActSamantha René MerriwetherDepressed. Anxious. Insomniac. Learning Disabled. Physically impaired. Sufferer of Post–Traumatic Stress Disorder. Would you choose any of these labels? How about taking two or three? Sound manageable? Probably not. But why? All across our society are plastered expectations of perfection, normalcy and “acceptable” images.I am 27–years–old and, despite the years of education I have received, the communication skills I have gained in English and American (...) Sign Language (ASL), the countless hours spent with doctors consulting about how to “get better,” I have lost my sense of identity. And, the more I think about it, the more I realize that my “authentic voice” has not yet been born. This is the reality for me and, I suspect, for anyone else who has been labeled disabled.When I sat down to write this, I did not struggle coming up with a story to share nor the words to intrigue readers. Instead, I grappled over using my real name and not using a “pen name.” Despite my long and varied history with disability, it took me a long time to advocate my issues enough to receive services. Because labels are embarrassing. Because disability is embarrassing. And, so, now I have labels... many labels. However, it is still accepting them that I am left with. Unfortunately, I am just one of millions who are also fighting to find some sense of balance between honesty with myself and the societal labels that are at the forefront of our communities.It has been a year since I took Disability Studies, a cultural pluralism course requirement for my Liberal Studies Degree at California State University. On the surface choosing this sub topic could have been perceived as an easy A, given that I am disabled. Yes, having a disability enabled the language used to be less of a shock in my overall comprehension. In reality, however, the struggle to achieve success academically is continuously challenged by my own disabilities. However, despite succeeding in the course, “easy” is not an adjective that appropriately represents my experience. The knowledge I grasped in the classroom helps me to understand what happens when I walk outside on any given day; but therein lies the glitch... the class is over, but my disabilities never will be.Did I enjoy the topic of Disability Studies? Yes, immensely. Because it was something I could relate to. Did enjoying the subject matter take the struggle for comprehension away? No. Did my dyslexia absolve into thin air? No. Being disabled does not admit me, nor anyone else for that matter, into the disabled world with a “free pass from suffering” as if we are all in a club. Having a diagnosis helps to identify why I may not be able to do things in the way others may perceive as “normal.” But, it is the label of being “normal” that is detrimental to achieving success. It represents why our society has a stilted perspective towards those who wear glasses, use walking aides, or need assistance to get [End Page 205] something from a grocery store shelf. Additionally, implying that any one way of completing a task is “normal” is wrong and further accents those differences, which are just that... differences.One component of this course was a Panel Discussion with those living in the TAB (temporarily–able bodied) community. Approaching this event, I was possibly more nervous to ask questions than for the four members having to answer questions. The paradox of wanting to gain more understanding from those most qualified individuals who live with these struggles everyday and intellectually knowing that respect needed to come first was immense. Oddly, once the panel opened up, asking questions was not hard. Within the first ten minutes my fears subsided; the entire experience was like speaking to old friends, only I had just met them. These individuals were, yes, dealing with impairments, but were just as relatable to me as I was to them. And, to my surprise, they were inquisitive and curious towards each other as well. This reinforced that fact that when information is lacking our society we still rely on stereotypes about topics we are... (shrink)