In the Halfway House of Ill Repute: Gender Verification under a Different Name,Still No Contribution to Fair Play

The aftermath of Caster Semenya’s resounding victory in the women’s 800?m at the 2009 Athletics World Championships in Berlin highlighted the ethical and scientific flaws of gender verification in women’s athletics. It has led the governing international body of professional athletics, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), to adopt new rules regarding athletes with differences of sexual developments (DSDs) in women’s competitions in 2011 (Regulations on Hyperandrogenism). The International Olympic Committee followed suit and adopted a similar set of rules in 2012. Locating the practice of gender verification in a history of sexist stereotyping of women athletes (in Section 1), I argue (in Section 2), following other critics, that the IAAF’s new rules suffer from the same ethical flaws as their predecessors; and specifically that they still invite and rely on qualitative measuring of an athlete’s femininity and masculinity. In the central section of this paper (Section 3), I relate the practice of gender verification to the vexing question of what constitutes an unfair advantage in sports. I suggest, first, that athletes with a DSD should be at liberty to exploit competitive advantages their conditions might confer on them, just as most athletes in most sports are at liberty to exploit their congenital traits (the only irrelevant difference being that DSDs are construed as gendered advantages). In a second step, I argue that gender segregation in sports and gender verification practices cannot both be defended by an appeal to fairness. If we want to preserve gender segregation, then we ought to give up gender verification; and if we are not prepared to give up regulation of gendered congenital advantages, then we ought to give up gender segregation in favor of a classification system that tracks genetic predisposition rather than gender.     

Meaning-creation,selfhood, and religion: From religious metanarratives to spiritual self-narratives

Abstract

This paper attempts to support the idea that the psychology of religion might be developed as an applied branch of cultural psychology. The scope of the argument is both theoretical and empirical. On the one hand, it is argued that religion functions as the most powerful semiotic system which provides subjects with metaphors, narrative frameworks, rituals and other cultural resources for personalised meaning-construction and life-designing. On the other hand, it is illustrated with an exploratory qualitative study how a specific type of community, a Catholic Seminary, produces a particular set of religious symbols and how their members write their narrative identities in multiple and unstable ways through dialectical tensions and creative self-invention. Thus, the psychology of religion becomes a fruitful laboratory to further investigate the mutually generative interplay between culture and self in order to better understand the plastic process of continuous self-identity formation and transformation.     

Schizophrenic troubles of personal identity: A cognitive model

A cognitive approach to the psychiatric clinic raises the problem of conceptual articulation between the pathological phenomena observed in clinic and models derived from cognitive sciences.

The theoretical approach of H. von Foerster linking communication, language and personal identity in a common formalism seems to constitute a pertinent framework for such articulation.     

A Review of: Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom

This article takes a critical look at identity politics and conflict in Jos, a setting once regarded as “the home of peace and tourism in Nigeria.” The study situates the conflict within the relationship between the “indigene-settler” syndrome and the state, with its ugly hydra-headed manifestations. It argues that the conflict with a coloration of ethnic/religious garb was orchestrated under the façade of politics. It is suggested that the commitment of good governance remains the surest means of nipping in the bud the crises in Jos. The findings have important implications for aggregate research on ethnic/religious conflicts in Nigeria.     

Trust and Goodwill as Attractors: Reflecting on a Complexity-Informed Inquiry

This article discusses a complexity-informed review and evaluation project. Complexity-informed methods and techniques are used to fashion understanding of the relationships and processes implicated between the service agencies constituting the Youth Accommodation Interagency—Nepean (YAIN) and their Resource Worker, the influence of these relationships and processes on the achievement of desired and required goals, and the potential for replication of these relationships and processes elsewhere. The article concludes with critical reflection regarding what was learnt from utilizing complexity in this qualitative inquiry.     

Resolving "Other" Status:

The current paper describes the phenomenological experience of marginal socio-ethnic status for biracial individuals. A metamodel for identity resolution for individuals who struggle with other status is proposed. Subsequently, multiple strategies in the resolution of ethnic identity development are proposed among which the individual may move and maintain a positive, stable self-image.     

Establishing the First Stages of Early Reciprocal Interactions Between Mothers and Their Autistic Children

No abstract available for this article.     

Women and Their Physicians

No abstract available for this article.