Alterity,Intimacy, and the Cultural Turn in Religious Ethics

This essay responds to four critics of Friends and Other Strangers: Studies in Religion, Ethics and Culture: Diana Fritz Cates, Eric Gregory, Ross Moret, and Atalia Omer. Focusing on the book’s organizing concepts of intimacy and alterity, engagement with empirical sources, discussion of Augustine’s thought, and attention to moral psychology and political morality, these interlocutors take up various strands in the book’s argument and extend them into metaethical, normative, and metadisciplinary domains. The author organizes his response under three rubrics: Metaethics and Personal Relationships; Political Morality; and Multidisciplinary Horizons.     

应用发展科学 ——一门研究人与社会发展的新兴学科

20世纪以来,社会、经济和地缘政治的变化使得科学与服务以及知识的研发与应用之间的矛盾进一步加剧。顺应社会发展的要求,发展心理学融合诸多相关学科而逐渐形成了一门新兴学科——应用发展科学（Applied Developmental Science）。与传统发展心理学相比,应用发展科学更强调生态化研究、发展性研究、积极干预和发展知识的普及。它力图实现多学科间知识的融合增效以及深入社会的知识研发和应用,从而更好地以问题为中心来解决影响个体发展的社会问题。应用发展科学能够为有关人类发展的科学研究和实践应用提供新的知识经验,同时,它又通过直接参与和影响社会政策的制定与实施来促进社会的积极发展     

谈疫情防控的社会防控学科化建设

公共性是疫情的本质特征,社会防控和医学干预是疫情防控的两条基本路径。现代社会因高度分工而相互依赖,疫情的公共性本质特征更加突出。改革开放前我国的疫情防控遵循社会防控和医学干预并重原则,改革开放后逐渐演变为过度倚重医学干预。通过比较这两个时期的疫情防控措施及效果,证明只有依靠社会防控和医学干预的共同作用,才能有效地应对疫情。因此,建议推进公共卫生社会防控的学科化建设,保证其能够进行长期深入的研究,以便有效服务于疫情防控工作。     

艾滋病非刑罪化视阈下我国防控策略的伦理思考

审视我国现有法规对艾滋病防控的影响,剖析其在维护个体权益与促进公共卫生平衡中的挑战,以实证案例和艾滋病悖论为切入点,分析艾滋病刑事定罪涉及的伦理问题,提出科学、伦理和法律方面的应对策略。强调将艾滋病病毒传播作为一个公共卫生问题加以解决是最为有效的手段。在法规制定和司法实践中,应纳入科学事实和医学证据,避免过于宽泛的刑事定罪。在决策过程中,应全面考量生命伦理学原则,最大限度避免可能的交叉歧视、多重污名以及暴力伤害。此外,还应重视公共卫生视角下的补充或替代方案,确保干预措施积极有效。

     

关于我国流动人口公共卫生管理的思考

大量的流动人口从农村流入城市,在推动城市社会、经济发展的同时,也带来了诸如流动人口治安管理、子女教育和卫生保健等问题。通过对流动人口公共卫生管理中存在主要问题分析,提出了改善流动人口公共卫生管理构建和谐社会的5项建议。     

公共卫生与全民的健康意识

SARS事件使公共卫生和全民的健康意识问题成为全社会的焦点问题,现在人们更加关注的是后SARS时代我国公共卫生建设和全民健康意识喜忧参半的现状,也许更有意义的是探讨公共卫生与全民健康意识的关系,明确健康意识的内涵,认清民众的健康误区,重视全民的健康教育。     

Positional Goods and the Social Rank Hypothesis: Income Inequality Affects Online Chatter about High‐ and Low‐Status Brands on Twitter

According to a social rank hypothesis, consumers who live in regions with higher income inequality will show greater interest in, and attention toward, positional goods and high‐status brands that serve a social signaling role. We analyze millions of posts on the microblogging platform Twitter for mentions of high‐ and low‐status brands. We find that luxury brands such as “Louis Vuitton” and “Rolex” are more frequently mentioned in tweets originating from US states, counties, and major metropolitan areas with higher levels of income inequality. In contrast, mentions of everyday brands such as “Walmart” or “Kmart” are more frequent in regions with a more equal distribution of income. Using sentiment analysis, we find higher valence (positivity) and arousal (excitement) for tweets that both mention high‐status brands and originate from regions with high levels of income inequality. These results corroborate the social rank hypothesis, showing that more psychological resources are allocated to positional consumption when the income gap between the rich and the poor is larger.     

Public discourse and the myth of religious speech

Critics of public religious speech have proposed various strategies for limiting the presence of religion in the public square, while proponents of public religious speech argue that such limitations constitute an infringement of the freedom of speech. For theoretical, practical, and ethical reasons, I argue for dismissing the category of ‘religious speech’, which rests on the erroneous assumption of a clear distinction between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. ‘Religious speech’ should be regarded no differently from any other kind of speech; it therefore ought not to be subject to either special limitations or protections. Regarding religious speech as nothing other than free speech ensures the right of religious citizens publicly to express their views, while simultaneously preserving the right of other citizens to provide a critique to arguments that are framed in religious terms.     

Perceiving high social mindfulness during interpersonal interaction promotes cooperative behaviours

Social mindfulness refers to individual's respect and protection of others’ options in interpersonal interaction. The object‐choosing task is a traditional paradigm to assess social mindfulness. Individuals with high social mindfulness would choose the nonunique object so that others would have more options; on the contrary, individuals with low social mindfulness would choose the unique object, which limits others’ choices. No prior study has examined whether perceiving people with different levels of social mindfulness affects one's cooperation. Based on this background, two experiments were conducted to address this question. In both experiments, a confederate participant's (Player A's) social mindfulness was manipulated by setting the frequency that Player A chose the unique and the nonunique objects. Then, participants were asked to interact with Player A in the public goods game (Experiment 1) or in the centipede game (Experiment 2). Convergent results showed that compared to those interacting with a socially unmindful person, participants interacting with a person perceived as socially mindful contributed more resources in the public goods game and chose to pass on more rounds in the centipede game. These findings suggest that perception of others’ high social mindfulness enhances one's own cooperative behaviour.     

Countering illegibility: Religion,ethnicity and sexuality in public debates and lived experience in Belgium

In this article, I set out to explore various intersectional social constructions of ethnicity, religion and sexuality. First, I conduct an analysis of recent public controversies in Flanders (Belgium) about women’s and (homo)sexual equality as set against religious authorities and religious-ethnic minorities. It reveals how dominant understandings of ethnicity, sexuality and religion are constructed, reinforced and, if needed, defended. Second, I foreground a critical counter-voice negotiating these what I call ‘ethno-sexular’ boundary constructions. I analyse the lived experiences of Hajar, a volunteer of an antiracist LGBTQI organisation located in Brussels, and argue that because of a dominant ethno-sexular discourse, Hajar’s hybrid identifications and critical voice is made illegible in much of her social environment.