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Governance failures and organisational ethics: perspectives from the Neary and Halappanavar cases

Heike Felzmann

in Ethical and Legal Debates In Irish Healthcare: Confronting complexities

This chapter considers two high profile Irish inquiries: the Lourdes Hospital Inquiry on the Neary case and the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) Report on University Hospital Galway ... More

This chapter considers two high profile Irish inquiries: the Lourdes Hospital Inquiry on the Neary case and the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) Report on University Hospital Galway and the care of Savita Halappanavar from an organisational ethics perspective. The chapter outlines the significance of systemic factors in both cases and draws on literature from organisational clinical ethics and business ethics to provide a framework for thinking about the wider ethical responsibilities of healthcare organisations. It outlines how organisational structures are directly implicated in the facilitation of ethical actions by members of the organisation.Less

The Ethical Responsibilities of Luxury Companies and Consumers

Haochen Sun

in The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property: Critical Reflections

This chapter uses the stark contrast between the rich and the poor, as illustrated in the luxury goods industry, as a lens through which to see the existence of an ethical crisis in society. To ... More

This chapter uses the stark contrast between the rich and the poor, as illustrated in the luxury goods industry, as a lens through which to see the existence of an ethical crisis in society. To tackle this crisis, the chapter argues for the creation of an “ethical responsibility initiative” and this requires luxury companies to take on an ethical responsibility to actively disseminate information on the plight of human life under absolute poverty. The chapter further examines how trademark law should be reformed to foster and promote the ethical responsibilities of luxury companies and consumers. Based on this proposal, the chapter shows how trademark law can play a better social role from the ethical responsibility perspective.Less

Ethical Experience: Mauvaise Conscience and Necessary Sadness

Donna Jowett

in Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy

This chapter examines the so-called mauvaise conscience and necessary sadness in relation to ethical experience. It explores what Emmanuel Levinas called mauvaise ... More

This chapter examines the so-called mauvaise conscience and necessary sadness in relation to ethical experience. It explores what Emmanuel Levinas called mauvaise conscience experience, which was also emphasized in Jacques Derrida's Aporias and The Gift of Death. Both philosophers have suggested that ethical responsibility opens people to a certain sorrow that is not only endured but also affirmed. This chapter explains the processes involved in the affirmation of the necessary sadness.Less

Scientists’ Public Responsibilities

Strachan Donnelley

Ceara Donnelley and Bruce Jennings (eds)

in Frog Pond Philosophy: Essays on the Relationship Between Humans and Nature

Developing the theme of the preceding chapter on the need for greater ecological literacy in American society, this chapter discusses the difficulty that scientists and other technical experts have ... More

Developing the theme of the preceding chapter on the need for greater ecological literacy in American society, this chapter discusses the difficulty that scientists and other technical experts have in fulfilling their ethical responsibilities as civic educators in a democratic society. Ecological issues are truly complex, but actual scientific uncertainty and disagreement are grossly distorted and magnified for commercial or ideological ends. The result is a mistaken public perception. Only scientists themselves can correct this serious distortion.Less

Violence, Affect and Ethics

Birgit Schippers

in Butler and Ethics

This chapter considers Butler’s treatment of affect and its import for understanding ethical responses to violence and war. Building on Butler’s affective conception of ethics, the chapter argues ... More

This chapter considers Butler’s treatment of affect and its import for understanding ethical responses to violence and war. Building on Butler’s affective conception of ethics, the chapter argues that her emphasis on the visceral dimensions of social and political life makes an important contribution to a still neglected topic in the fields of global ethics and political philosophy that contributes notably towards an understanding of the differentiated visceral responses to the suffering of others, specifically in the context of war. However, despite the explanatory force and normative ambition of Butler’s rendering of the relationship between affect and ethics, her account lacks normative plausibility. While she tells us why we should respond ethically towards others, she cannot tell us why we should feel ethically disposed towards others. This connection between ethical obligation and ethical feeling, or affect, is not finally resolved in her work.Less

Positive motivation to harm

Anthony Lloyd

in The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy

This chapter offers evidence to suggest that harm is not something done to precarious workers by social forces and structural deficit but also something inflicted upon each other. The culture of ... More

This chapter offers evidence to suggest that harm is not something done to precarious workers by social forces and structural deficit but also something inflicted upon each other. The culture of targets and competitive individualism creates the conditions for conflict between managers, co-workers and customers, all of whom seek some degree of status, recognition or security from the infliction of harm on others. Evidence shows managers targeting employees, the emergence of cliques, often management led, which inflict harm on those outside the group, customers willing to belittle, infantilise and abuse employees, and co-workers seeking competitive advantage at the expense of others. This positive motivation to harm reflects the absence of an ethical responsibility for the other and, in some cases, represents the emergence of a subjectivity imbued with the ‘special liberty’ to act as one pleases in order to maximise market share and opportunities within a culture of competition and individual advantage.Less

Life after Political Death: The Fate of Leaders after Leaving High Office

John Keane

in Dispersed Democratic Leadership: Origins, Dynamics, and Implications

Understood as forms of government and ways of life in which no body rules because power is subject to periodic elections as well as publicly monitored and contested from a multiplicity of sites, ... More

Understood as forms of government and ways of life in which no body rules because power is subject to periodic elections as well as publicly monitored and contested from a multiplicity of sites, contemporary democracies are remarkable in the way they dispense with the fetish of leaders. Democracies certainly need leaders, they multiply their numbers, respect them, follow them, learn from them — but they do not worship them as leaders blessed with metaphysical powers. Democracies specialize in bringing leaders down to earth. They manage to do this by using a variety of formal methods and informal customs that require leaders to leave office peacefully, without staging ruthless comebacks, so enabling other leaders to take their place without kidnappings or gunfire, bomb blasts, or street upheavals.Less

Responsibility Unveiled: Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul

Dean J. Franco

in Race, Rights, and Recognition: Jewish American Literature since 1969

This chapter explains how Tony Kushner's play Homebody/Kabul is a dramatic exploration of the ethics of cross-cultural recognition and responsibility. The play notably broaches an ethics about ... More

This chapter explains how Tony Kushner's play Homebody/Kabul is a dramatic exploration of the ethics of cross-cultural recognition and responsibility. The play notably broaches an ethics about Western responsibility for globalization's reach and the difficulty of recognition across cultural and religious barriers. In addition, the chapter analyzes Homebody/Kabul, a play about an upper-class London housewife who disappears into Kabul, in conjunction with National Geographic's discovery and unveiling of their famous Afghan girl, Sharbat Gula. Kushner's play is thus mapped across the very same terrain as the celebrated National Geographic feature, but the chapter reveals how the play is also a complication of National Geographic's teleology of loss and recovery, not to mention liberal feminism. The chapter argues that though the play is laced with points of cultural incommensurability and misapprehension, it nonetheless models a vision of ethical responsibility for the other particularly suggestive for a post-9/11 comprehension of the world.Less

On the Philosophical Ambition of National Affirmation

in Exemplarity and Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of Philosophy

This chapter examines the themes pursued by Jacques Derrida in the first seminar cycle on philosophical nationality in 1984–85. These include the conceptions of language involved in and implied by ... More

This chapter examines the themes pursued by Jacques Derrida in the first seminar cycle on philosophical nationality in 1984–85. These include the conceptions of language involved in and implied by discourses of national affirmation and the idea that while national entities are paradoxical in their simultaneous aspiration to particularity and universality, these paradoxes yield an ethical responsibility for such entities to transform themselves and open themselves up to what they are not. The chapter also argues that Derrida can be considered as mobilizing a Levinasian understanding of ethical responsibility as election to capture the ethical injunction which follows from exemplarism.Less

Introduction: The “Fields” of Anthropology, Human Rights, and Contemporary Zapatismo

Lynn Stephen

in Zapata Lives!: Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico

This introductory chapter discusses relevant background information on Zapatismo and locates the text in relation to the international political economy. It studies the ethical and moral ... More

This introductory chapter discusses relevant background information on Zapatismo and locates the text in relation to the international political economy. It studies the ethical and moral responsibilities anthropologists have and argues that a flexible understanding of anthropology can incorporate the functions of witness and observer, especially in relation to human rights work and the human experience of social suffering. This chapter also takes a look at the longer anthropological tradition of ethnography conducted during times of conflict and violence, while suggesting responsible ways to conduct such research.Less

The Turn to Ethics: Levinas and Deleuze

Gary Gutting

in Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960

This chapter discusses how the new generation of French philosophers rejected humanism because it is an anthropocentric ethics in essence, which prevents man from going beyond the scope of the nature ... More

This chapter discusses how the new generation of French philosophers rejected humanism because it is an anthropocentric ethics in essence, which prevents man from going beyond the scope of the nature of human beings. It is stated that modern mentality is progressing towards the path of making man the essence of the world, and that the knowledge of man is often associated with ethics or politics. The chapter also presents Emmanuel Levinas' ethics and the notion of ethical responsibility, as written in his book Totality and Infinity. Levinas' work seems to oppose Deleuze's and the two are viewed as reflections of the transcendence-immanence dichotomy of French philosophy.Less

Ghostly Testimonies: Re-enactment and Ethical Responsibility in Contemporary Israeli Documentary Cinema

Raz Yosef and Yaara Ozery

in Artistic Citizenship: Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis

The chapter examines the civic ethical role played by contemporary Israeli documentary film artists in representing testimonies related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It discusses the special ... More

The chapter examines the civic ethical role played by contemporary Israeli documentary film artists in representing testimonies related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It discusses the special use of documentary re-enactment in depicting those testimonies, focusing on the film Testimony. The performative re-enactment in this film has a spectral power to retrieve the voices and bodies of the original testimonies and witnesses to which no listener had been found and, at the same time, to give them a new form, unveiling the ghostly presence of hidden and silenced historical pasts of Palestinians and Israelis, Arab and Jews, as well as of Arab-Jews, haunting both the film and the viewers. The artistic civic role that the filmmaker has taken upon himself is to encourage spectators to bear witness and take ethical responsibility for the lost stories we did not wish to see and which we wanted to forget.Less

French Bioethics: The Rhetoric of Universality and the Ethics of Medical Responsibility

Kristina Orfali

in Bioethics Around the Globe

This chapter focuses on French bioethics, which is considered to have a strong rhetoric of nationalization, self-appointed mission, and explicit opposition to the outside forces of US and Anglo-Saxon ... More

This chapter focuses on French bioethics, which is considered to have a strong rhetoric of nationalization, self-appointed mission, and explicit opposition to the outside forces of US and Anglo-Saxon bioethics values and models. It describes French bioethics as a centralized state and trusted in the Jacobin tradition as the appropriate defender of the public good that implements human dignity and solidarity. French bioethics has a strongly paternalistic medical profession, which is highly trusted by society to take ethical responsibility for decisions.Less

Ethical Standards

Karen Burnham

in Greg Egan

This chapter examines Greg Egan's view of ethics, which can be seen from his earliest breakout story, “The Cutie” (1989). It looks at several facets of ethical concerns, including medical ethics as ... More

This chapter examines Greg Egan's view of ethics, which can be seen from his earliest breakout story, “The Cutie” (1989). It looks at several facets of ethical concerns, including medical ethics as seen in “Blood Sisters” (1991) and “Cocoon” (1994). It also covers the uneven distribution of technological benefits, best illustrated by “Yeyuka” (1997) and the genetic engineering piracy shown in Distress (1995). Finally, it focuses on our ethical responsibilities to life that we create and to alien life that we may find out in the universe.Less

The Just Teach One: Early African American Print Project

Nicole N. Aljoe, Eric Gardner, and Molly O’Hagan Hardy

in Teaching with Digital Humanities: Tools and Methods for Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Nicole J. Aljoe, Eric Gardner, and Molly O’Hagan Hardy describe the development of Just Teach One Early African American Print and its focus on texts excluded from critical and historical narratives ... More

Nicole J. Aljoe, Eric Gardner, and Molly O’Hagan Hardy describe the development of Just Teach One Early African American Print and its focus on texts excluded from critical and historical narratives of black literature. The chapter describes JTO: EAAP’s plans to link its work with other DH projects like the Early Caribbean Digital Archive and the Colored Conventions Project, and to build bridges to lesser-known collections, including historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and church collections, in order to aid text sharing, identification, preservation, and technological engagement. Recognizing its responsibility to preserve black cultural heritage, the essay describes JTO: EAAP’s decision to use TEI standards to encode texts on the site and provides an extended example from Aljoe’s classroom project on “Theresa: A Haytien Tale.”Less

The Covert Researcher: The Ethics of a School Ethnography

Nicole Nguyen

in A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in U.S. Public Schools

The second chapter outlines the author’s methodological approach to the Milton ethnographic project and the ensuing experience. In doing so, the chapter renews debates about overt and covert research ... More

The second chapter outlines the author’s methodological approach to the Milton ethnographic project and the ensuing experience. In doing so, the chapter renews debates about overt and covert research by examining the covert methods used by qualitative researchers in the field.Less

Making Digital Humanities Tools More Culturally Specific and More Culturally Sensitive

Celeste Tường Vy Sharpe and Timothy B. Powell

in Teaching with Digital Humanities: Tools and Methods for Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Celeste Tường Vy Sharpe and Timothy B. Powell describe how they use the design of digital platforms as teachable problems to engage students in a digital humanities course about the stories of ... More

Celeste Tường Vy Sharpe and Timothy B. Powell describe how they use the design of digital platforms as teachable problems to engage students in a digital humanities course about the stories of Indigenous peoples and the Eurocentric “control over time.” Sharpe and Powell task students with creating a digital project that explores a more culturally specific and nuanced model of Iroquois or Haudenosaunee temporality. In the process, students and teachers alike imagine solutions that may enable digital humanities tools to more accurately represent how Indigenous peoples tell their histories.Less