CREATED CO-CREATOR AND THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE

Abstract There is a crisis of interpretation experienced by those making critical‐care decisions and creating health‐care policies and by the patients and families who make life‐and‐death decisions. For example, at both the beginning and end of life, new technologies are changing the way we define life and death. We can prolong life or hasten death in ways that we could not earlier have imagined. This crisis of interpretation demands new ways of thinking and doing. My task is to explicate how the created co‐creator can be used as a springboard to help link theological concepts with feminist concerns about two issues: interpreting the culture and practice of medicine in a new way, and explicating the ambiguity of decision making when considering issues of life and death.     

Concluding Dialogue: Challenging the Past, Grasping the Future

Abstract. A dialogue between the outgoing and incoming directors of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science took place as part of the inaugural symposium. In their conversation they speak of the past and present challenges and goals of the Center, outline what is foremost in their minds, and offer glimpses into what they see as the Center's priorities for future work.     

The Gift Economy of Direct Transnational Civic Action: How Reciprocity and Inequality Are Managed in Religious “Partnerships”

How does religion help facilitate civic action in transnational contexts characterized by material inequality and spatial separation? Short‐term mission (STM) travel, a popular activity among U.S. religious groups, exemplifies a recently emerged form of transnational civic action characterized by face‐to‐face, decentralized, pragmatic activity. Our research analyzes how participants in STM‐based relationships manage inequality while pursuing an ideal of partnership across distance. We match data from a mixed methods study of Arizona congregations that produce STM travel with interview data from foreign religious organizations that host STM travelers in El Salvador. We engage gift exchange theory (GET) to show how a discursive repertoire combines with organized gift exchange practices to manage inequality and produce partnership in STM‐based relationships. Our data provide evidence of a unique cultural process, the spiritualization of reception, which emerges during gift reciprocation. This process converts unequal material gifts from foreign hosts into spiritual understanding among STM travelers, stabilizing status indebtedness that could threaten a partnership. This research increases knowledge of STM travel, shows how gift exchange structures can facilitate transnational religious partnerships, and suggests ways to use GET to understand transnational civic action in general.     

Those Were the Best of Times,and Then…

ABSTRACT

Rachel T. Hare-Mustin describes a career of feminist activism in academic life, the professions, and clinical practice in the 1970s and 1980s. She has been an advocate for changes in professional ethics and improving conditions for women. Her primary areas of influence have involved applying feminist theory to the study of gender and pointing out that the sex role model of gender differences has an inherent bias that overlooks the gender hierarchy. Women’s voices are silenced, not only in the process of therapy, but in the wider society as well.     

Feminism Across Borders: A Hungarian Adaptation of Western Feminism

A grounded theory model of feminist-activist identity development was constructed from semistructured interviews with volunteers of the first Women’s Rights Association (NANE) in Hungary. This article focuses on NANE volunteers’ feminist identity development, which emerged through interpersonal solidarity with Western women; the development of self-confidence and an assertive “voice” in their relationships; and an increased awareness of the violence and oppression against women. A grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used to analyze the interviews. The core category, “Internalizing Western Feminist-Activism: Importing an External Culture to Revolutionize One’s Own,” describes volunteers’ conceptualization that their feminist-activist beliefs emerged from imported ideologies gained through exposure to Western ideas and the international women’s movement, which were then adapted to make changes in Hungary.     

Peirce on Education: Discussion of Peirce’s Definition of a University

I write this short essay in response to Peirce, as a feminist, pragmatist, and cultural studies scholar, in the hope that it will help to bring feminism and pragmatism together. I suggest that Peirce offers marginalized and colonized people a way to argue for the importance of their input, with his theory of fallibilism, even if he still claims a position of privilege. He also offers assistance through his concept of “a community of inquirers.” It is curious that Peirce’s definition of a university argues for a split between theory and practice that his earlier work sought to heal. Peirce opened a door to help diverse scholars be able to enter the university, and find a way to address issues of power, with his youthful connecting of theory to practice, that his more senior position draws our attention away from and seeks to hold off. Fortunately, it is too late. Peirce’s youthful pragmatism has been developed in important ways by other scholars and now serves as an example of a way to do philosophy that does connect theory to practice and does seek to address real problems in diverse peoples lives, and help to find solutions that effect change.     

女性主义视野下的艾滋病与技术乐观论——科技发展不能代替社会责任

自从1981年发现世界第一个艾滋病人以来,艾滋病对人类的危害越来越严重。产生这种情况的原因除了一般的社会因素之外,还有一个重要的因素就是人类所持的技术乐观主义的观点,使得人们认为艾滋病在很短的时期内就可以得到有效的解决。这种对于技术的过于乐观对有效控制艾滋病产生的影响并不好,人类需要重新审视自己应对艾滋病的态度。女性主义视野的介入给我们提供了一种新的认识艾滋病的角度,更有利于在解决问题中的正确定位。     

A Wake-Up Call? Issues With Plagiarism in Transnational Higher Education

The views on plagiarism of 574 students at four Australian universities operating in Singapore were investigated through a survey and interviews. Analysis of students’ responses to different plagiarism scenarios revealed misconceptions and uncertainties about many aspects of plagiarism. Self-plagiarism and reuse of a friend’s work were acceptable to more than one quarter of the students, and nearly half considered collusion to be a legitimate form of collaboration. One quarter of the students also indicated that they would knowingly plagiarize. This should serve as a wake-up call regarding plagiarism in transnational higher education. Seven measures are recommended to curb plagiarism and foster academic integrity.     

美国对受试者研究中特殊挑战的观点:遗传研究中的伦理问题

虽然基因研究比其他任何时候更有望了解人类疾病及其在世界各类人群中的表现形式,并且对预防和治疗疾病产生了深远影响,但是它的应用也会极大地改变我们对个体及群体特征。从个体属性及群体意识的角度来看,特别是关于知情同意这个议题,我们会非常清楚地看到遗传研究所面临的挑战。阐述了在美国遗传研究所面临的挑战,讨论了遗传研究进行过程中出现的一系列伦理问题,如：如何正确执行知情同意;研究中可能对受试者产生的标签和歧视行为;遗传流行病研究中出现的伦理问题以及需要关注的社区和民族的伦理问题;对人类组织样本的储存和使用中所出现的伦理问题。强调了知情同意和社区参与遗传研究及在研究中社区代表性的重要性;强烈主张在遗传研究中建立多民族的合作是确保研究的顺利进行的基础。     

Theorizing Gender for Experimental Game Theory: Experiments with “Sex Status” and “Merit Status” in an Asymmetric Game

In experimental game-theoretic research, to the extent that sex has been considered at all, the approach has been to focus on the individual level of analysis. This paper reports the results of experiments designed to focus on sex/gender and to expand the level of analysis to include the institutional level. An asymmetric game was designed such that players in the male and female institutional locations had 3 and 2 alternatives, respectively. Players earned the institutional locations based on a test, so that top and bottom scorers respectively merited the 3- and 2-alternatives locations. Game-theoretic understandings of sex-of-player were compared to the expectations states theory concept of sex status; that is, men expect and are expected to perform more competently than women. Results indicated that top-scorer men and women behave similarly; bottom-scorer men resist their low merit status (behaving the most rationally of all player groups); bottom-scorer women accept their low merit status (behaving the most irrationally of all player groups). Whereas game theory cannot provide a coherent understanding of these findings, the concept of sex status helps to interpret the behavior of all four player groups and shows how judgments about rationality and irrationality depend critically on the interpretive framework used.