Does the Public Intellectual Have Intellectual Integrity?

This article is concerned with the devaluation of the work of public intellectuals within the academic community. The principal reason given for this devaluation is that the work of the public intellectual does not have intellectual integrity as independent thought and original scholarship. I develop three models of public intellectual work: the permanent–critic model, the popularizer model, and the public–theorist model. I then consider each model in relation to the concern with intellectual integrity and conclude that both independent thought and original scholarship are possible within work that is engaged with nonacademic publics.     

Treatment of Missing Data: Beyond Ends and Means

The ethical decision making process behind the treatment of missing data has yet to be examined in the research literature in any discipline. The purpose of the current paper is to begin to discuss this decision-making process in view of a Foucauldian framework. The paper suggests how the ethical treatment of missing data should be considered from the adoption of this theoretical framework.     

Testosterone and cortisol responses to competitive fighting in human males: A pilot study

Serum testosterone and cortisol levels were measured by radioimmunoassay in 14 young male judo competitors, in samples taken 10 minutes before and 45 minutes after two different procedures. The first involved physical exercise and the second competitive fighting. Both procedures were of 5 minutes duration and sessions took place at the same time (between 10:00 A.M. and 12:00 P.M. local time) but on different days. Comparing the two situations over all subjects revealed that testosterone increased after exercise and decreased slightly after Competition. Between subject comparisons suggested that contrary to previous claims, winning or losing did not significantly change the testosterone and cortisol levels. Comparisons of subjects who were members of the Regional Team with individuals who were not part of that group confirmed that members increased their testosterone levels after competition, whereas the nonmembers showed a significant decrease. Moreover, success of the individuals, in their sporting record, correlated positively and significantly with the changes of testosterone observed during the competition. These preliminary results suggest that previous personal experience of success can influence the pattern of the psychoendocrine response to a contest situation.     

Moral realism and program explanation

Alexander Miller has recently considered an ingenious extension of Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit's account of ‘program explanation’ as a way of defending non-reductive naturalist versions of moral realism against Harman's explanatory criticism. Despite the ingenuity of this extension, Miller concludes that program explanation cannot help such moral realists in their attempt to defend moral properties. Specifically, he argues that such moral program explanations are dispensable from an epistemically unlimited point of view. I show that Miller's argument for this negative claim is inadequate, and that he has, in spite of himself, identified a promising defence of moral realism.     

Drugs,Sport, Anxiety and Foucauldian Governmentality

This paper1 1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Australian Sociological Association at the University of Tasmania from 5 to 8 December 2005. uses concepts of anxiety and Foucauldian governmentality to investigate the ways that the discourses supporting the ban on performance-enhancing drugs in sport have been manipulated and broadened to treat this issue as a public policy and health issue rather than an example of rule violation in sport. Some effects of this expansion include the broadening of drug testing to include testing for recreational drugs, the intrusion of both central governments and scientific experts into the issue and the curtailment of civil liberties for athletes. A further effect has been the perpetration of injustices against athletes under the guise of such injustices being necessary to maintain the integrity of sport.     

福柯对医学“祛主体性”的形上之思

福柯运用考古学的研究方法,绘制了医学“祛主体性”谱系,从古典医学的构型中人是不存在的,再到现代临床医学知识型将主体客体化,证实人的有限性,深度剖析主体是由各种关系所建构,揭示了近代西方哲学中将人作为知识源头的先验主体,价值承载的自由主体是不存在的。当想象福柯是否会像拉康那样将主体性理论釜底抽薪的时候,他却吊诡地杀了个回马枪,重新回到古希腊罗马伦理学,开启了拯救主体的行动,完成了从主体解构再到主体重构的华丽转身。同时也为“祛主体性”的医学如何为人类提供“终极关怀”开辟了新的思考路径。

     

Critique,Ethics, and the Apparatus of Experience: A Foucauldian Framework

The paper explores examples of contemporary experience in order to demonstrate the moralisation of new areas of behaviour (especially in relation to environmental issues).It sketches a Foucauldian framework for understanding the historical transformation of experience,in terms of the "apparatus of experience." On that basis,it presents a novel account of critique,in which critique is seen as the potentially transformational,experiential practice of re-experiencing the contemporary apparatuses of experience.In other words,critique is "experience squared." It is this re-experiencing of our everyday experience that permits us,to a certain extent,to "get over ourselves" and thus to reflect critically on the processes of moralisation and de-moralisation in which we participate.     

福柯哲学应用:医患关系中的微观权力分析

福柯对医学有着较高的关注度,著作中有大量对医学伦理的深入思考和分析。他的“微观权力”理论非常适合解释现今医患关系的本质,对理解医患关系的起源和实质,以及如何解决医患关系中的种种问题,给出了极为有价值的解答。这种解答是融合了现代科学技术、医学社会学、政治经济、历史以及哲学之发展的综合观点,并从中引申出人类的现代性困境。它的解决策略不同于商谈伦理、契约论、允许原则、生命伦理学规范、德性论,甚至叙事医学。     

What It Means to Be a Man: Aging and Anxiety in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and That Time

One of the great writers of Twentieth-century doubt, Samuel Beckett is perhaps best known for endowing his protagonists with some of the more classic symptoms of anxiety and depression. The result is an extraordinary corpus that unfolds how the intricacies and excesses of anxiety affect the behavior of men and women involved in intimate relationships, and how that behavior is exhibited in their aging years. While this discussion of Krapp's Last Tape (1960) and That Time (1976) will explore anxiety from a specifically male point of view, the works themselves compel various responses from readers of both sexes. Both pieces also may be of interest to those concerned with the rethinking of sexual roles in intimate relationships in light of an individual's response to the physical and emotional aspects of aging.     

Aggression and testosterone: Testing a bio-social model

Based upon reports of a positive correlation between circulating testosterone levels and aggression, we draw upon evolutionary psychology to place the action of testosterone in a broader perspective. We propose that testosterone affects competitive status-seeking and that under certain circumstances (including youth) this is expressed as aggression. Involvement in aggression in turn is associated with adherence to an instrumental social representation of aggression which justifies aggression as a means of imposing control over others and increasing self-esteem. Measures of salivary testosterone, masculinity, preferred social representation of aggression, and multiple aggression scales were collected from an undergraduate sample of 119 men. An Aggression factor was derived from principle components analysis of the aggression measures. The strongest correlates of Aggression were holding an instrumental social representation of aggression and youth. Testosterone showed no significant relationship to the single or aggregate measures of aggression or to any of the other psychometric measures. We suggest ways in which previous work may have over-estimated the strength of the association between circulating testosterone and aggression and discuss the possible relationships between age, social representation, and aggression. Aggr. Behav. 23:239–238, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Contemporary Myths, Sexuality Misconceptions, Information Sources, and Risk Perceptions of Bodabodamen in Southwest Uganda

This article reports findings from a study conducted among 212 private motorbike–taxi riders, locally called bodabodamen, from two study sites—a slum area and the urban center of Masaka town. Qualitative and quantitative methods were triangulated; a questionnaire, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, case studies, and interactive workshops were all used. There were high levels of awareness of HIV, much more than sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), because many participants had closely experienced HIV/AIDS. Knowledge about sexual health contained several misconceptions, misinformation, and myths rooted in both the historical and contemporary social cultural context. Due to high illiteracy levels, bodabodamen cannot access many standard health education materials issued by government and private health organizations through the print and electronic media, as well as those published in languages other than the local vernacular. These (and possibly other) disadvantaged groups remain at risk of HIV and STDs. Especial efforts need to be made to provide appropriate health education.     

Aversive potency of urine from dominant and subordinate male laboratory mice (Mus musculus): Resolution of a conflict

The present study assessed the aversive potency of urine collected from male albino mice that had been clearly identified as dominants/winners or subordinates/losers of paired aggression tests and then housed either individually or in a quasi-paired situation in which only a wire-mesh divider separated the two mice. This divider permitted constant visual, olfactory, auditory, and some tactile contact. The responses of individually tested, group-housed males were recorded when half of the substrate in a test box was treated with either water or one of the four urine types; the other half remained untreated. Significant preferences for the untreated half were found when the urine of winners or losers housed in individual metabolism cages or that of pair-housed dominants was used as the test stimulus. On the other hand, neither water nor the urine of cohabiting subordinate males was avoided. The present findings confirmed our earlier reports that the urine of dominant male mice was aversive, whereas that of their cohabiting subordinate partners was not. They also identified Sawyer's [1978] procedure of housing winners and losers in individual cages, with the consequent interruption of social contact as the likely reason for his failure to replicate our reports that subordinate male urine lacked aversive properties. The territorial implications of the aversive factor and other urinary signals are discussed.     

‘It is safe to use if you are healthy’: A discursive analysis of men’s online accounts of ephedrine use

Ephedrine use in sport is a common practice among men. Less well understood is men’s use of ephedrine as a slimming aid. Arguably fuelled by the ‘war on obesity’ and the drive for muscularity, the Internet has become awash with claims presenting ephedrine as safe. The use of this psychoactive substance can have acute health implications such as tachycardia, arrhythmias and cardiovascular disease. Given the tension between health risk and ephedrine-induced weight loss, how men justify their use of ephedrine becomes an important question. In particular, we wished to analyse how male users talked to others about ephedrine in discussions linked to an online version of a popular men’s magazine. Because we were particularly interested in how men accounted for their ephedrine use, we used discourse analysis to examine their posts. In analysing the data, we noted that a ‘community of practice’ was constructed online categorising legitimate (and barred) users, emphasising the benefits of ephedrine and downplaying health-defeating side effects. Our analysis has clear implications for engaging men who use ephedrine in health promotion interventions.