Gender Tutorials: Causes and Cures May 31, 2008

 I was reminded yesterday of Virginia Valian’s Gender Tutorials at a Hunter College web site.  All of them are worth going through; the second and third are especially imporant for understanding gender schemas and their effects, even effects on how one judges oneself. 

The 4th tutorial is about what you – students – can do.  I don’t think it is all right.  For one thing, she starts out by telling you that you’ll encounter a receptive environment if you suggest changes.  Well, maybe  in the sciences (tho’Mr JJ says “no”), but philosophy is thousands of years old, and I can tell you, a lot of people do not like new ideas.  BUT there are  some useful ideas about trying to improve the environment.  For example, TAs can ask the professor to introduce them to students in a way that increases confidence  all around.  Just the presence of more women helps, so you can ask that women be invited to give talks.  (She doesn’t say this, but I’d have some names in mind, and maybe even a list with some accomplishments mentioned.)

There are more ideas.  So see what you think!

Girls innately bad at math? Nope. May 31, 2008

A new study suggests that lower girls’ math scores result from lower status in society more generally. The cross-cultural study reveals that:

Globally, boys tend to outperform girls in maths (on average girls score 10.5 points lower than boys) but in more “gender equal societies” such as Iceland, Sweden and Norway, girls scored as well as boys or better.

For example, the maths gender gap almost disappeared in Sweden, while in Turkey girls scored 23 points below boys in maths.

Average girls’ scores improved as equality improved and the number of girls reaching the highest levels of performance also increased, the researchers found.

Girls outperformed boys in reading everywhere, but even more so in places with greater gender equality:

On average, girls have reading scores that are 32.7 points higher than those of boys (6.6% higher than the mean average score for boys). In Turkey, this amounts to 25.1 points higher, and in Iceland, girls score 61.0 points higher.

Researchers conclude:

Sapienza said: “Our research indicates that in more gender equal societies, girls will gain an absolute advantage relative to boys.”

I must say I’m just as sceptical about claims of girls’ innate superiority as I am regarding claims of their innate inferiority. And just as disturbed. Still, this is fascinating stuff, and clearly bears more investigation.

One thing I wonder about is how ‘gender equality’ of an overall society is measured, and the exact details of how it’s realised in different societies– as well as details of their educational systems. Sadly, I don’t have time to go read the article right now! So if you do, please tell us about it.

“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”** May 30, 2008

 

And here it is:  The AAUP’s the “2007-08 Report on the Economic Status of the Profession“. For those who don’t want to pore thru the whole thing, here are the “highlights”. Enjoy! ***

 

Have you been wondering whether you’re fairly paid compared  to the guys?  Whether women are fairly represented?  What happened to all those who don’t identify happily as one or the other?  Have you really, really, wondered?  After all, you should have been able to predict these answers:  No.  No.  Everyone is male or female.

 

But have a look.  Warning:  the details are depressing. !

**Thanks to Percy Bysshe Shelley

***hat tip to the PJMB

The Analytic/Continental Divide, II May 30, 2008

This morning I was fairly happily going through a big book of essays by analytic philosophers writing on THE philosophy of perception.  It turns out, editors Gendler and Hawthorne tell us,  that “much contemporary discussion of perceptual experience can be traced to two observations.  The first is that perception seems to put us in direct contact with the world around us: …The second is that perceptual experience may fail to provide such knowledge.”

Then I got the table of contents from The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology.  And I thought perhaps we should revisit Jender’s interesting remarks about analytic and continental.

So here are the essays, followed by reviews.  Calcagno’s topic might, I think, been related to the analytic books’ discussion on intentionality, so I looked up “Michel Henry.”  And something in David Woods entry make me think I might find that close to analytic, do I went to look at what he had to say.  I’ve put the two pages below the lists.  I want to suggest, though, that the analytic is far away from, and the continental looks like  might get closer to what we might think of as second-stage cognitive neuroscience.  So far my favorite short statement comes from Read Montague and Stephen Quarts:

… [E]arly investigators thought that the really important problem was to find the functions or computations being implemented by the brain independent of the specifics of their implementation using biological components. This view is now seen as impoverished because as structures constructed by evolution, most creatures are tightly woven into particular environmental and social niches, and are the ’answers’ to manifold questions posed by their environs.  (My stress.)

Roughly, cognitive neuroscience is looking at well-functioning vision where this means vision that is aiding flourishing within one’s niche.  Analytic philosophy has a much more static and individualistic interest in the truth-makers of perceptual statements.  A hypothesis that might capture the difference is that continental philosophy is likewise more interested at least in the process of life as lived.  At least sometimes.

CALCAGNO
Michel Henry’s Non-Intentionality Thesis and Husserl’s Phenomenology

FABIO PRESUTTI
Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze and the ‘Idea of Language’ in the Synthesis
of ‘Being’ 

BETH LORD
The Virtual and the Ether: Transcendental Empiricism in Kant’s Opus Postumum

JAMES N. McGUIRK
Aletheia and Heidegger’s Transitional Readings of Plato’s Cave Allegory

TRACY COLONY
The Wholly Other: Being and the Last God in Heidegger’s Contributions to
Philosophy

FARHANG ERFANI
Fixing Marx with Machiavelli: Claude Lefort’s Democratic Turn

ND BOOK REVIEWS:

 

Lars Iyer: Blanchot’s Vigilance: Literature, Phenomenologyand the Ethical,
by Thomas Carl Wall

Jacques Derrida: Sovereignities in Question. The Poetics of Paul Celan, by
Gabrielle Hiltmann
 
Alan D. Schrift: Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and
Thinkers, by John Mullarkey 

José Medina and David Wood: Truth: Engagements Across Philosophical
Traditions, by Paul Grosch

Dennis J. Schmidt: Lyrical and Ethical Subjects: Essays on the Periphery of
the Word, Freedom, and History, by Lars Iyer
———————————–

From:

Summary

Ruud Welten © 2001

Phenomenology and the Prohibition of Images

in Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion

 

 

.          ………

In the first section of this part, the antagonism between the idol and the icon, as elaborated in Marion’s God without Being, is examined. The idol fixes the gaze, whereas the icon is experienced without subjective fixation. The idol is analysed, in Husserlian language, as a type of intentional fulfillment. Before exploring the notion of the icon as a ‘perfect inversion’ of the intentionality of the idol, the question of visibility and invisibility in relation to art and visual culture is studied. This is studied in relation to a phenomenological interpretation of the ‘norm’ for the icon as given in Colossians 1:15 wherein Christ is described as ‘the image of the invisible God’. The philosophy of Michel Henry offers a framework for considering invisibility phenomenologically. The quest for religious art is elaborated through a comparison of Marion and Henry. Marion’s thinking on invisibility, which is based on the formula given in Colossians, has consequences for his view of the world and its visibility. This view is compared to Heidegger’s thoughts on ‘worldview’ (Weltbild).

 

Comments by David Wood Interview by William McClure, Sydney, November 2001

WM Would you say that you are obsessed by “time”?

DW Yes, I am. And it is, I suspect, characteristic of everyone’s obsession that it seems to them wholly reasonable to be so obsessed. It is, famously, possible not to think much about time at all. Or, if one does, to be neurotically obsessed, for example, with being ‘on time’, or with the efficient use of time etc. I am not obsessed in that way at all. There are those who are morbidly concerned with their own mortality. Not me. My ‘obsession’ is best described as a reflective fascination with the way time is woven into everything we do and care about. Sometimes this has to do with the way things take time to develop, how things unfurl in time – such a relationship, or the way a child grows up. But time also operates as a constant dimension of virtual existence. The significance of our lives is tied to the ways in which we brood on, or build on the past, and the way we imagine, fear, or plan for the future. And the ways in which, as we say, we ‘live for the present’. To be, like me – obsessively curious about time, and fascinated with time – is to constantly notice the strange shapes of time, its twists and turns, and the poignancy of memory and hope. It is not typically a cause of troubled anxiety, but of repeated delight. You could compare me to a musician who hears sounds everywhere – in the street, in the insects in the trees, creaks in the floorboards – and who enjoys acknowledging and noticing these little sound creatures. And just as it is not hard for a musician to alert his friends to this world of sound, so too the chronophile quickly has people catching on. Captivation with time is infectious.

What do you think? An open thread May 29, 2008

This is an open forum. Let us know what is on your mind.

Some possible topics to pick up:

In the first open thread, we had a request from moralagent.  We’ve provided a lot of dismal observations about women in philosophy. How about some strategies for coping?

In the same thread Brandon suggested we have guestbloggers.  And Shelley mentioned having a guest with a point of view shaped by different cultural experiences.  Any nominations?

How about recent studies on diversity issues?

I’d love to hear about what participants here are reading, whether or not it is academic.

Please don’t feel restricted to those topic!

 

The “Gentle Lady” Demonstrates Journalistic Integrity May 28, 2008

Katie Couric has had a huge amount of criticism as a lightweight since becoming anchor. Well, she’s the only anchor who demonstrated any journalistic integrity this morning, in a discussion with Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams of whether (!) TV news did its job properly in the run-up to the Iraq war:

While Katie Couric impressively argued that the media did fail to do its job — pointing out that the White House threatened networks which were perceived to be too critical with cutting off access to the war and that anyone who questioned the war was deemed unpatriotic and all of that “affected the level of aggressiveness that was exercised by the media”

And how did Gibson respond?

I think the questions were asked. I respectfully disagree with the gentle lady from the Columbia Broadcasting System [group giggles]. I think the questions were asked. . . .

I genuinely don’t know where to begin with that response to Couric’s excellent points.

Perhaps this is all a nice demonstration of standpoint theorists’ claims that outsiders are more likely to facilitate knowledge-seeking, since they have less of a stake in the status quo. (And yes, I’d say Couric’s treatment has demonstrated that she is in an important sense an outsider.)

“It’s despicable” May 27, 2008

This was posted a few hours ago with the associated press:

Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday that it has uncovered evidence of widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of peacekeepers and international aid workers in war zones and disaster areas.
The report said more than half the children interviewed knew of cases of coerced sex and improper sexual touching, and that in many instances children knew of 10 or more such incidents carried out by aid workers or peacekeepers.

In some cases, children as young as 6 years old were abused, the report said.

The study is based on research, confidential interviews and focus groups conducted last year in three places with a substantial international aid presence: southern Sudan, Haiti, and Ivory Coast. The group said it did not produce comprehensive statistics about the scale of abuse but did gather enough information to prove that the problem is severe.

“The report shows sexual abuse has been widely underreported because children are afraid to come forward,” Jasmine Whitbread, chief executive of Save the Children UK, told Associated Press Television News. “A tiny proportion of peacekeepers and aid workers are abusing the children they were sent to protect. It ranges from sex for food to coerced sex. It’s despicable.”

…

The threat of retaliation and the stigma attached to sex abuse were powerful deterrents to coming forward, the report said.

Ann Buchanan, an Oxford University expert in statistical attempts to quantify rates of child abuse, said the report does not produce comprehensive, statistical data about sexual abuse.

She said the topic is so taboo that it is virtually impossible to come up with reliable numbers, but she said the new report provides a useful starting point.

“Sexual abuse is a hugely difficult, sensitive area and it’s not something that you can usually do surveys about because kids feel terrible shame and are afraid to say what’s happened to them,” she said. “Given what we know about underreporting of sex abuse, I would say this report is probably true. They’ve gone about it as sensitively as you can.”

…

U.N. officials in New York said the study shows the effort to combat sexual abuse is falling short.

…

Tom Cargill, Africa program manager at London’s Chatham House, said there is no “magic bullet” that can solve the problem quickly.

He said the United Nations is beset by a number of bureaucratic and legal problems when it comes to investigating abuses committed by peacekeepers.

“The governance of U.N. missions has always been a problem because soldiers from individual states are only beholden to those states,” he said…

The felt shame is such a common reaction to abuse, and it is something seemingly nearly incomprehensible to too many people making decisions in legal and  related contexts.

Unexpected Photoshopping May 27, 2008

Usually we get stories on photoshopping to make women appear thinner (as well as wrinkle-free, etc). Interesting, then, to see this one about Cameron Diaz being made to look less skinny.
Does this mean that we’ve turned a corner, and that the pressure is no longer on to be thin? Sadly, one suspects not: just that Diaz took the pressure to lose weight a bit too far, which is actually nothing new at all. Indeed, this just demonstrates the difficulty of attaining the “right” body size: “Thinner, thinner, thinner! Nope, too thin!!”

CFP: Representations of Women in Film and Digital Media May 27, 2008

Call for Papers

Pics and Politics: Representations of Women in Film and Digital Media

Wagadu. Journal of Transnational Women`s and Gender Studies
(http://wagadu.org) is looking for submissions that address the visual work of women who
are concerned with gender and change. We welcome discussions of film and
media from a variety of perspectives incl. but not limited to film and media
studies, ethnology, critical theory, area studies, and art history. We envision
an issue located on the interstices of academic, artistic and activist discourse
communities.

Submissions should be marked by an interest in feminism, a fascination
for visionary works, and attentiveness to generative theoretical paradigms.
In line with the journal’s focus, we especially welcome submissions critical of
globalization and its ongoing shocks upon the subjects of culture.

Your submission may address one of the following topics:

- film and video artists (mainstream, experimental) who represent
vantage points in the history of feminism and / or discussions of sexuality, e.g.
Tracey Emin, Sadie Benning, Yoko Ono

- film and video artists who foreground (issues related to) race and cultural identity,
e.g. Yong Soon Min, Fanta Regina Nacro, Portia Rankoane

- video performance / installation artists, e.g. Kirsten Johannsen, Ingrid Mwangi

- contemporary multimedia and net artists, e.g. Shilpa Gupta

- contemporary media culture dubbed “post-feminist”, e.g. reality-tv
“Country XY`s Next Top Model”, “The Real Housewives of Orange County”;
representations of career women in film; or portrayals of girls and teenagers
in film TV and new media

- computer-based designers such as Brenda Laurel

Formats: Academic articles and analyses; reviews; art; book reviews;
festival reports, e.g. Zanzibar, Carthago; etc. (APA style format). Nota bene:
The authors take responsibility for contingent copyright issues of visuals and clips.

Deadline for submissions of abstracts (ca. 250-300 words): July 15,
2008.

Deadline for submissions of finished products: December 15, 2008

Please mail your inquiry and abstract to:

Editor: Dr. Nina Zimnik, Zuercher University for Applied Sciences,
Switzerland
nina.zimnik@phz.ch

Other inquiries:
Mecke Nagel, State University of New York at Cortland (Editor-in-Chief
of Wagadu)

nagelm@cortland.edu

Mechthild Nagel
Professor, Philosophy and Editor-in-Chief, Wagadu
Philosophy Department
SUNY Cortland
POB 2000
Cortland, NY 13045
607-753-2013
607-753-4114 (fax)
http://web.cortland.edu/nagelm/
http://wagadu.org/
nagelm@cortland.edu

Gay Scientists Isolate the Christian Gene May 25, 2008

Thank you, thank you to Human Rights America:

 

 

US Senate Passes Measure to Restore Affordable Birth Control May 25, 2008

See the call for action at the end!

From Ms:

The US Senate passed a supplemental war spending bill on Thursday, which included a provision to restore government subsidies for birth control pills sold at university and low-income health centers. … For almost 20 years, pharmaceutical companies provided college health centers and clinics servicing low income women with birth control at deeply discounted prices. But the Deficit Reduction Act of 2006, which went into effect in January 2007, has eliminated these discounts for campus and low-income health centers.

The President, OF COURSE, is not happy about it, but he is not threatening a veto.

And another bit of good news from Ms: a key administration anti-contraception advocate has resigned:

Susan Orr, President Bush’s controversial appointee to head the Office of Population Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), resigned this week after less than a year in the position. Orr’s appointment was criticized from the beginning by lawmakers and women’s rights groups because of Orr’s long history as an opponent of contraceptives.

Her position oversees the administration of title X.

You can use this opportunity to make sure Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt knows how you feel about preserving Title X funding for low-income women and men by sending him a letter here.  Remember, Title X helps keep students able to stay in school.

And thanks to Reality Check for the link.

 

Sunday cat family follow-up May 25, 2008

A follow-up on an earlier post:

From CNN:  They are in Santa Barbara and the cat is the boss.

 

 

 

 

Trying to cross the analytic/continental divide May 25, 2008

Many of us were at the SWIP UK Conference on Embodiment and Identity over the weekend in Hull. I’ll be blogging more about it later, and perhaps some of the rest of us will too! But here I just want to talk methodologies. Feminist philosophers often criticise more mainstream philosophers as not sufficiently open to new methodologies. But I think it’s important to talk a bit about how genuinely difficult it is to engage with methodologies that are not one’s own. I’m a very analytic philosopher, and the SWIP conference gave me quite an immersion in continental philosophy. It was really exciting– lots of great people, lots of fascinating stuff that was very new to me, lots of wonderful energy. But I also spent a lot of time feeling like I was in a different world, with a language I don’t know and a culture that is unfamiliar. Sometimes I couldn’t understand anything at all that was going on. Sometimes, usually when detailed examples were used, I got a lot out of it. But sometimes it was something in between– I kind of got what was going on, or thought I did. Then someone started talking about water having ‘agency’, and everyone in the room was nodding sagely. It was already several replies into a question, and the queue was long, so I decided not to query further. But it gave me a real sense of the difficulty of simply asking people to be more inclusive with regard to methodologies. It’s just HARD to engage with things when you really don’t understand what’s going on– and doubly so when some of the words are ones that you yourself use differently. (If it hadn’t been for that example, I might well not have realised that clearly something different was being meant by the familiar word ‘agency’.) Do others have thoughts, experiences, advice on the topic of crossing this divide?

What’s not to like about analytic philosophy? May 22, 2008

I’m detaching the author’s name from a piece that’s been around on email a bit. I think the view is worth discussing and I hope you do too.

Haslanger’s article mentions the view that there’s something very masculine about the abstract, formal nature of philosophy that a lot of women don’t like. I think this view may be being misdescribed; that is, when people say that’s something they don’t like about philosophy, I think it may actually be something related but different. Studies in other disciplines – such as the study of the poor lot of women in computer science at Carnegie Mellon (which was subsequently vastly improved) – suggest that a lot of women are not particularly interested in highly narrowly focused problems. In fact, a number of women, other work suggests, are strongly attracted to interdisciplinary work. Much of philosophy is large and grand, but journals and conferences in philosophy do contain a lot of work that is, e.g., F’s criticism of A’s rejection of B’s third formulation of the problem for C’s revision of the D’s attempted refutation of E’s theory.

Haslanger also notes that men in philosophy are very often poorly socialized … and that philosophy departments are socially very difficult. I expect everyone … is aware of hypothesized connections between being very narrowly focused, being socially pretty disconnected and being male (as Baron-Cohen has made much of). So it’s possible that this is more what is behind a supposed dislike of the abstract and formalized.

I don’t want to endorse Baron-Cohen’s work, which we’ve criticized here and elsewhere, but perhaps part of the idea above is that analytic philosophy can too often turn grand questions into trivial disputes.

On thinking about this, I’m wondering whether the following is relevant: a lot of philosophy of perception is concernedwith the truth-maker for “S sees that P.” More and more, cognitive computational neuroscience is looking at questions about vision such as: how does vision work to enable a creature to move successful through its environment? I’m not sure the first pursuit tells us that much about vision. It’s philosophy of perception, but it is really about something more like the logic of perceptual statements and the ontology of vision (e.g., physicalism, reductionism, etc). But the points are essentially general and scarcely at all about vision itself.

NEH Summer grants for 2009: correction May 22, 2008

This may seem early, but usually institutions require that grant application for this sort of award  be submitted to the research office a month in advance of the date due.  Note that staff and – in  fairly limited circumstances  – graduate students may apply. 

I can’t find any  mention of independent scholars.  If any one knows about their eligibility, I’d appreciate your letting us know.  It may be that they’re just omitted from this notice, which is for colleges  and universities. Thanks to Emeritus for pointing out that independent scholars are covered by “c” below.

      NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES    DIVISION OF RESEARCH PROGRAMS    1100 Pennsylvania AveNUE, NW Washington, DC 20506 sTIPENDS@NEH.GOV 202-606-8200   
   
2009 SUMMER STIPENDS AWARDS: $6,000  April, 2008   DEADLINE: October 1, 2008

 
SUBJECT:                   NEH Summer Stipends Program
 
           The National Endowment for the Humanities is again preparing for its Summer Stipends competition. The deadline is October 1, 2008. Over the past four years, NEH has awarded almost 350 Summer Stipends to allow faculty members to pursue their scholarship during the summer months. While the program remains consistent with previous years, I would like to call your attention to two important changes:

–An increased stipend. Last year NEH increased the amount of a Summer Stipends award to $6,000.

–A new method of applying. Beginning last year, just as with NEH Fellowships, Summer Stipends will be accepting applications online only through Grants.gov
 
 
Because of these changes, potential applicants and grants administrators are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves early with the new application instructions and guidelines posted on the NEH website at http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/stipends.html 
 

…………………….

The act that established the NEH in 1965 says: “The term `humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, theory and criticism of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.”
                              

NOTE: This long post has now been edited (May 27). Please follow the web link for more details.

The Best of the Booker May 22, 2008

The Booker is an extremely prestigious prize. I’ve no idea why voting for the best of the booker is open to the public, but it is. You vote on this page, where the information below can also be found. A third of the candidates are women, which beats just about anything in philosophy.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Booker Prize, six authors are in the running to win a one-off award and be titled The Best of the Booker.
…
The six authors with the opportunity to be called Best of the Booker are Pat Barker, Peter Carey, JM Coetzee, JG Farrell, Nadine Gordimer and Salman Rushdie.
…
Closing date for the Best of the Booker Prize vote is 12 noon 8 July 2008.
Voting is open to residents worldwide and there is only one vote per person. Please feel free to read the website privacy policy before voting or supplying your email address.

“Where the Girls Are” May 21, 2008

The American Association  of University Women released its report on Tues that tells us more about where boys and girls are in education.  The report seeks to  ‘debunk the myth of a boys’ crisis…’   According to the NY Times, the report maintains that the idea that there is a boys’ crisis is really a distractor that disguises the more fundamental sources of inequity, race and economic class. 

There is a very informative executive summary; if you are involved in the issues, either on belalf of a student or as an educator or advocate, there is a lot to be learned.  Here’s one statement that definitely goes against a lot of the claims we hear, and indeed that we’ve seen in comments here:

High school and college graduation rates present a similar story.

Women are attending and graduating from high school and college at

a higher rate than are their male peers, but these gains have not come

at men’s expense. Indeed, the proportion of young men graduating

from high school and earning college degrees today is at an all-time

high. Women have made more rapid gains in earning college degrees,

especially among older students, where women outnumber men by a

ratio of almost 2-to-1. The gender gap in college attendance is almost

absent among those entering college directly after graduating from

high school, however, and both women and men are more likely to

graduate from college today than ever before.

Reproductive Justice Victories in the UK May 21, 2008

Good news all round today, as the BBC tells us that the 24-week limit on abortion has been upheld (despite moves to lower it to 22 or or even 12 weeks); and that fertility clinics are no longer being required to consider the need for “a mother and father” when deciding whether to offer treatment. Instead, they will be required to consider the need for “a loving family”.

US readers may experience a bit of culture shock when they learn that the Tory leading the charge against the latter move said the following about lesbian parents: “I hope, like everybody else, we would want any such relationship to prosper and the child would benefit.” There certainly is homophobia over here, plenty of it– but totally blatant expressions of it are far less socially acceptable than in the US.

Femmostroppo Awards May 20, 2008

From Cara, I’ve learned of the Femmostroppo Awards, for best 40 feminist blog posts of the year. So far, I’ve only read one, from La Lubu, and I’m still haunted by her description of giving birth to a premature baby; losing her job for taking time off from work to be at the hospital; and losing her health insurance. And by the fact that all the other parents of very ill children that she met had also lost at least one job due to their child’s illness. And by the lifetime caps on coverage which are apparently standard for health insurance in the US. It really brings home to me how fortunate those of us in countries with national health insurance are. And how desperately bad it is to be in a country without that.

CFP: Transformations May 20, 2008

The School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast is seeking paper proposals for a two-day conference [28th-29th November 2008] on the subject of

Transformation and the Dynamics of (Radical) Change
Insights from Political Theory and Philosophy

Transformation is a seemingly ubiquitous concept within the field of political theory and philosophy. Whilst some idealize transformation as a source for progress and the improvement of the human condition, others frame it as a disruptive and unsettling process which can damage the social, political and natural elements of our world.

Paper  proposals should include a tentative title, an abstract (200-300 words) and details of the author’s institutional affiliation and contact information. Proposals should address any of the following issues/topics:
•       Factors and actors in transformation: Pluralism, nationalism, individualism, collectivism, recognition, complexity.
•       Forces of transformation: Globalization, economic change, social change, processes, transformation of conflict.
•       Objects and subjects of transformation: ideas; norms; values; ideology; the concept of transformation itself; state and sovereignty; government; governance; social structures and  processes; environment and nature; human beings, including the self.
•       Evaluations of transformation: theories, approaches, critiques and the possibility of a broader discourse on transformation.
All papers should make an explicit contribution to the establishment of a broader discourse on transformation and the dynamics of (radical) change.
The organizing committee welcomes papers from scholars in all fields and also encourages submission from early-stage academics, as well as from postgraduate students.
The deadline for submissions is JUNE 15th 2008.
Please send your submission to: transformations(at)qub.ac.uk
For further information, please visit: www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/Events/Transformations/#d.en.94863

Fabian Schuppert
On behalf of the Conference Organizing Committee
‘Transformation and the Dynamics of (Radical) Change: Insights from Political Theory and Philosophy’
Hosted by the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast
http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/Events/Transformations/#d.en.94863