Religion in an Age of Technology

Technology raises important religious issues and not only moral ones. Given that technology is about transforming reality, these issues are different from the issues that arise in dialogues on religion and science that are primarily after understanding reality (e.g., cosmology, physics, and evolutionary biology). Technology is a multifaceted reality—not just hardware but also skills and organization, attitudes and culture. Technology has been appreciated as well as considered a threat but is best understood contextually and constructively.     

Eroticism for the masses: Japanese manga comiss and their assimilation into the U.S.

In this article, we describe translated Japanese comics or “manga” with sexual content. Because in the West comics have been treated as junk culture, they lack canons for critical analysis. We have developed methods for analyzing manga that focus on objective assessment of content, on reader subjectivity, and on how the emotional tenor of the artwork is created. We briefly review some history of Japanese art and culture, in which sexuality has always been a legitimate subject for art and which forms the cultural underpinnings of manga. We summarize the erotic themes and visions of manga with sexual content, including heterosexual courtship and consummation, female and male homosexuality, sadomasochism, transvestitism, incest, and bestiality. Critics of manga argue that it glorifies rape, a view we could not confirm. We identified 87 stories with rape or sexual assault; 80 (92.0%) show the woman or others taking violent, often murderous, revenge on sexual attackers. We also analyze visual modalities for depicting men and women. In common with older Japanese aesthetic traditions, the manga we have seen depict women as beautiful, powerful, and erotic. Finally, we suggest that manga functions as an art form by mobilizing the reader’s involvement with the characters, especially female characters, in a complex narrative framework in which sexuality is a positive virtue for men and, especially, for women. We conclude that manage contains some of the finest erotic art being produced in the world today for sheer power, elegance, and drama. Some of this material was presented at the Western Regional Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, San Diego, CA, April 6–9, 2000.     

临床共情与护理技术结合:人性化的护理

临床共情是一种能体验患者内心世界的能力,通过患者的言语和非言语表达,觉察和认识患者情感和情绪需求,并对其做出恰当的回应.临床共情具有科学的理论和实践基础,具有缓解患者心理上的痛苦,改善护患关系,促进患者康复等作用.在当今复杂的医疗环境下,务必要重视共情培养,适时运用临床共情.然而,我们强调临床共情的重要作用,并不能忽视护理技术的根本作用,根除躯体上的病变仍有赖于护理技术的有效性.在临床护理实践中,坚持共情与护理技术的有机结合,推进人性化的护理构建.     

重视内镜诊治新技术应用中的人文关怀

内镜诊治新技术在临床消化道疾病的广泛应用中,医务人员往往重视“检查”不重视“临床思维”,重视“疾病”不重视“患者”,迷信“高新技术”忽视“医患交流”,过分重视“效益”导致过度诊治等现象带来了人文价值的漠视,故而在内镜诊治新技术中重视与“生物—心理—社会”医学模式相符合的人文关怀,在当前我国卫生系统“看病难,看病贵”的大环境下,具有重大社会意义。     

Research Ethics in Japanese Higher Education: Faculty Attitudes and Cultural Mediation

Principles of research ethics, derived largely from Western philosophical thought, are spreading across the world of higher education. Since 2006 the Japanese Ministry of Education has required universities in Japan to establish codes of ethical conduct and ensure that procedures are in place to punish research misconduct. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 13 academics in a research-intensive university in Japan, this paper considers how research ethics is interpreted in relation to their own practice. Interviewees articulated a range of ethical issues connected with data gathering and interpretation, applying for and using research funds, relationships with peers and research subjects, and the dissemination of results. The paper also explores the effect of personal values and cultural norms on the Japanese interpretation of research ethics identifying the impact in terms of the treatment of graduate research students and decision-making processes.     

Ungraceful God: Masculinity and Images of God in Brazilian Popular Culture

Abstract

The article investigates how God is represented in popular culture, especially in music, in Brazil. It gives a general background about Brazilian culture showing how religion is part of the identity constructions of Brazilian people and how it is marked by multiplicity, syncretism and hybridization. It then analyses two popular songs that make explicit statements about "who God is" and how those statements are related to traditional masculine gender constructions. Finally, the article discusses how issues of masculinity and religion have been approached in recent scholarship and points to the need for other ways of imagining God that are related to people's experience.     

Formal reasoning in Japanese older adults: The role of metacognitive strategy,task content,and social factors

This study investigated the availability of deductive reasoning competence in late adulthood. Forty-six Japanese older (mean age =71 years) and 58 Japanese young adults (mean age =19.6 years) were assessed for formal or deductive reasoning using Overton's (1990) revision of the four-card selection task. For older adults, metacognitive strategy—operating as a procedure designed to access reasoning competence—resulted in enhanced performance levels. When the semantic content of the reasoning task involved emotional issues, however, the metacognitive strategy failed to facilitate reasoning performance. This suggests that reasoning competence is available in late adulthood but that performance is susceptible to contextual variables. Social factors were not significantly related to older adults' reasoning performance. Thus, assessment of these factors may have been based on too broad a definition to describe adequately the status of the older adults. For the young, only semantic task content was related to reasoning performance.     

Tantalizing Times: An Examination of Discontent and Disconnects in Contemporary American Society

Using the myth of Tantalus as a point of departure and of reference, this paper examines various facets of contemporary anxieties and discontinuities. Tantalus was a mythical earthly king and a son of Zeus, king of the gods. His wishes for forbidden objects, omnipotence and immortality were the prelude for his having to endure excitements which could not be satisfied. Various changes have taken place in modern times which fill contemporary American life with the conflicts of Tantalus. The tantalizations are reflected in economics, culture & technology as well as various intellectual developments. The historical roots of this are traced. The paper attempts to weave a psychoanalytic interpretation of the myth with various anomalies of modern living to illustrate in many concrete ways how we live in Tantalizing Times.     

Theorizing Gerontology: The Case of Old Age, Professional Power, and Social Policy in the United Kingdom

This article examines the interrelationship between old age, professional power, and social policy. In particular, dominant theoretical models in social gerontology are reviewed and an alternative framework for understanding social gerontological issues—Foucauldian gerontology—is advanced. Foucauldian narratives are employed to delineate the historical relationship between professional social work and recent social policy for older people in the United Kingdom. In addition, a Foucauldian framework employed to examine identity formation, professional practices, and policy narratives enriches and widens the disciplinary subject matter of theorizing aging studies. The structure of this article is in three parts: review of theories of aging with an introduction of Foucault's potential contribution to gerontological analysis, the historical overview of the instigation of professional intervention in modernity and the changing roles and responsibilities in relation to older people utilizing Foucault's (1977) genealogical method, and the exploration and application of Foucault's key notion of governmentality (1977; Rose & Miller, 1992) in the analysis of social policy for older people.     

The bioethics of care: widows, monastics, and a Christian presence in health care.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with vocations to the Christian religious orders of the West in marked decline, an authentic Christian presence in health care is threatened. There are no longer large numbers of women willing to offer their life labors bound in vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, so as to provide a real preferential option for the poor through supporting an authentic Christian mission in health care. At the same time, the frequent earlier death of men leaves a large number of widows, some in need of care and some able to provide care. Drawing on the role of widows sketched in 1 Timothy 2, one can envision Christian widows entering a life of prayer and service in health care settings. As female monastics, such widows could reintroduce a salient Christian presence in health care. How one ties this response to the message of 1 Timothy 2 will depend on one's understanding of the status of Scripture, the significance of tradition, the nature of theological epistemology, the meaning of theology, the nature of the Church, and the ontology of gender. The position taken on these issues will define the character of a Christian bioethics of care.     

Technology in Medicine: Ontology,Epistemology, Ethics and Social Philosophy at the Crossroads

In reference to the different approaches in philosophy(of medicine) of the nature of (medical) technology,this article introduces the topic of this specialissue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, that is,the way the different forms of medical technologyfunction in everyday medical practice. The authorselaborate on the active role technology plays inshaping our views on disease, illness, and the body,whence in shaping our world.     

Sexual Subjectivity: A Semiotic Analysis of Girlhood, Sex, and Sexuality in the Film Juno

Historical approaches to girlhood provide a basis for understanding changing cultural ideologies of sex, sexuality, and youth. While situating sexual desire, biological possibilities, and social responses to girls’ engagement in sexual intercourse at the center of its plot, the film Juno depicts the transgressive sexual agency of a young girl without substantially disrupting longstanding discourses of femininity. Through an analysis of the semiotics of girlhood within the film, I argue that the girl figure in this representation signifies an amalgam of two traditionally dichotomized conceptions of “femininity.” Juno serves as a particularly intriguing example of the ways in which adolescent female sexuality is conceptualized within popular western culture during the early part of the 21st century.

The Use of Communication Technology in Private Practice: Ethical Implications and Boundary Dilemmas in Therapy

This study investigates the use of communication technology (CT) by therapists in private practice. CT has exploded in the last decade and therapists have begun to implement this technology in their work. It is important to understand better the types of technology therapists are using and how they decide which devices are most useful for clinical practice. Additionally, the availability of the therapist has long been debated and CT provides media to make therapists readily available. Results show that therapists have boundary concerns and ethical dilemmas regarding CT and often feel unprepared to handle inappropriate out-of-session contacts when they occur.     

药品临床试验的伦理规范与医学科技进步--对非洲等地开展HIV药品临床试验的思考

目前,在非洲等地进行的HIV药品临床试验已成为国际上最有争议的话题之一.药品临床试验促进了医学科技的进步和发展,但同时带来了一些突出而复杂的伦理问题.面对这一难题,我们应正确看待医学科技进步与伦理之间的关系,以"尊重、公正、不伤害、受益"这一伦理基本原则指导HIV药品临床试验,促进医学和伦理道德的共同进步、协调发展.     

Religion and Science in America: Populism versus Elitism

Historian James Gilbert argues that the dialogue between science and religion is an important dynamic in the creation of contemporary American culture. He traces the dialogue not only in the confines of the academic world but also in popular culture. The science-religion dialogue reveals a basic tension between the material and the spiritual that helps define the core of the American psyche: fascination with material progress yet commitment to traditional religious beliefs. Gilbert's cultural narrative traces the dialogue in a unique way because of the attention given to popular renditions of science and religion in evangelical films used by the military, in televised science programs, in science-fiction literature, and at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962. Gilbert suggests that the discussion between science and religion is significant because it is part of the process of creating new cultural structures necessitated by social, scientific, and technological developments. The tensions between religiously informed commonsense science and professional science work to create new cultural forms in a democratic society. Religion and science in dialogue are part of the process of cultural creation. Dogmatism on the part of either scientists or religionists is countered by the democratic process itself.