109 research outputs found

    JUST SOUTHERN FOOD: FOOD JUSTICE FOR THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA

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    The primary objective of this research is to promote food justice for the Mississippi Delta by investigating facts about the intersections of extreme poverty, food insecurity, and chronic illness in the Mississippi Delta. By exploring relevant literature and highlighting current initiatives, this work looks at the semantics of food justice and related terms, discusses challenges unique to the Mississippi Delta, and broadly characterizes public health models with the greatest potential for food justice advancement in this region. Pivotal to interpreting food justice not only for the Mississippi Delta or the Global South, but for any community, is a clear understanding of what these concepts are, not just as talking points in theoretical conversations, but as applied, real solutions and initiatives. The premise for this research is that understanding of food justice goals paired with the Mississippi Delta condition facilitates turning well intentioned concepts into actionable steps

    Becoming What We Are: Virtue and Practical Wisdom as Natural Ends

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    This dissertation is about ethical naturalism. Philippa Foot and John McDowell both defend contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics but each represents a rival expression of the same. They are united in the affirmation that virtue is ‘natural goodness’ for human beings. Nevertheless, they are divided in their rival conceptions of ‘nature.’ McDowell distinguishes second nature or the space of reasons from first nature or the “realm of law.” Foot rejects this division. On Foot\u27s naturalism, natural goodness is just as much a feature of first nature as health is, even though human practical reasoning is unique in the biological world. I defend Foot’s view by appealing to “generic propositions,” a little-utilized feature of linguistic theory. Life forms and functions described in generic statements are intrinsically normative and yet just as scientifically respectable as other naturalistic concepts. Hence, the generic proposition that humans are practical, rational primates has both descriptive and normative content. It follows that the ethical and rational norms defining a good human life are a subset of natural norms which can be known as such from an “external” scientific point of view as well as from an “internal” ethical point of view. Going beyond Foot’s views, I present a new interlocking neo-Aristotelian account of virtue and practical reason. Virtues are excellences of practical reasoning and rational practice. Virtues enable and partly constitute a good life for human beings. Practical reasoning is the ability to pursue perceived goods and avoid perceived evils in every action. Practical wisdom, which is excellence in practical reasoning, is the master virtue that enables one to succeed in becoming truly human, despite varying abilities and life circumstances. In short, all of us ought to pursue virtue and practical wisdom because of who and what we are; virtue and practical wisdom are natural ends. I aim to secure the naturalistic credentials of my view by examining three influential conceptions of ‘nature,’ criticizing McDowell\u27s conception and showing how my view is consistent with the remaining two. The resulting view is called \u27recursive naturalism\u27 because nature recurs within nature when natural beings reason about nature, about themselves, and about their own reasoning

    Developing A Chronic Pain Vocabulary: Communication Preferences Among Individuals With Chronic Pain

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    In order to be acknowledged, chronic pain must be voiced yet disclosing of chronic pain is fraught with social and professional repercussions. Moreover, there is a perceived disinterest in hearing about, and a stigma associated with the experience of chronic pain. This research explores the therapeutic value of communicating about pain. Nineteen individuals with chronic pain participated in a six-week online writing workshop to describe the way chronic pain impacts daily activities. These qualitative responses were analyzed using discourse analysis and four interpretive repertoires emerged which convey the multi-faceted impacts of living with chronic pain. These findings informed the creation of a quantitative survey tool which was widely disseminated using social media to chronic pain dedicated forums and websites. Findings indicate that audience and gender have a large sway on communication preferences. Individuals with chronic pain desire to receive cure-centered information from health care providers and care-centered information, including empathy, from family and friends when they communicate about their pain. Women in particular aspire to receive emotional support for their well-being and empathy upon communicating about their pain. These results help to fill in the void of patient communication preference within the framework of delivering patient centered care. Understanding patients’ communication preferences has high clinical value as providers can tailor their communication practices to increase rapport, improve patient satisfaction and promote treatment adherence. They place a heightened role on family and friends in the treatment plan as they can offer needed emotional support. Implications include educating family and friends to be aware of pain behavior so they can recognize early indicators and provide empathetic responses. Additionally, using computer mediated communication is a recommended platform to engage individuals with chronic pain due to its convenience, low-cost, and anonymity as well as its potential to connect disparate individuals and build community among marginalized group

    Civil Disturbances: Battles for Justice in New York City

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    This Collection contains a number of essays that are a part of Civil Disturbances, a collaborative project between artists and lawyers that commemorates various public interest law suits and social justice efforts in New York City. The project itself consists of twenty signs, each representing one specific case, that were designed to be both provoking and informative. This specific Collection contains printings of eight of the signs, as well as separate writings on issues and cases including: disabled people\u27s accessibility to the Empire State Building, child welfare, children\u27s rights, women and the FDNY, rights of the homeless, and welfare benefits. Each essay presents a unique look at a specific social justice problem in New York, the case it was associated with, and sometimes a look at the accompanying sign as part of the project

    Continental Philosophy of Technoscience

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    The key objective of this volume is to allow philosophy students and early-stage researchers to become practicing philosophers in technoscientific settings. Zwart focuses on the methodological issue of how to practice continental philosophy of technoscience today. This text draws upon continental authors such as Hegel, Engels, Heidegger, Bachelard and Lacan (and their fields of dialectics, phenomenology and psychoanalysis) in developing a coherent message around the technicity of science or rather, “technoscience”. Within technoscience, the focus will be on recent developments in life sciences research, such as genomics, post-genomics, synthetic biology and global ecology. This book uniquely presents continental perspectives that tend to be underrepresented in mainstream philosophy of science, yet entail crucial insights for coming to terms with technoscience as it is evolving on a global scale today. This is an open access book

    #BlackGirlMagic: The Influence of Identity Expression on STEM Identity and Retention for Black Females in Undergraduate Research Experiences

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    Research and reports promote targeted interventions such as the undergraduate research experience to address issues with Black student retention and matriculation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). The effectiveness of these interventions are purported to be their ability to foster strong associations between Black students and STEM because of the resources and opportunities they provide (Hurtado et al., 2009; Palmer et al., 2011; Pender et al., 2010; Merolla & Serpe, 2013). These interventions tend to situate participants as being deficient and the targeted intervention must provide what they lack. What is not fully investigated or understood are individual contributions, shaping student persistence, that aid in STEM identity development and retention for these students. Using Phenomenological Variant Ecological Systems Theory (Spencer, 2006), a framework that considers individuals’ strengths and the surrounding contexts, this study reveals the influence of race, gender, and religious identity expression on STEM identity development and retention for Black females participating in STEM undergraduate research experiences. This study’s findings offer useful insights for enhancing undergraduate research experiences, addressing aspects such as STEM culture and student engagements with research mentors, peers, professors, and projects.Doctor of Philosoph

    Accounting for Culture

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    Many scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers in the cultural sector argue that Canadian cultural policy is at a crossroads: that the environment for cultural policy-making has evolved substantially and that traditional rationales for state intervention no longer apply. The concept of cultural citizenship is a relative newcomer to the cultural policy landscape, and offers a potentially compelling alternative rationale for government intervention in the cultural sector. Likewise, the articulation and use of cultural indicators and of governance concepts are also new arrivals, emerging as potentially powerful tools for policy and program development. Accounting for Culture is a unique collection of essays from leading Canadian and international scholars that critically examines cultural citizenship, cultural indicators, and governance in the context of evolving cultural practices and cultural policy-making. It will be of great interest to scholars of cultural policy, communications, cultural studies, and public administration alike. </i

    City knowledge : an emergent information infrastructure for sustainable urban maintenance, management and planning

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    Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-256).(cont.) updates. It produces plan-ready information, by exploiting the self-serving and opportunistic pursuit of instant return-on-investment by frontline offices. Thanks to its emergent qualities, City Knowledge engenders unexpected plan-demanding situations, where the ability to conduct second-order analyses leads to deeper knowledge of our cities. In the end, this dissertation proposes a paradigmatic shift by recommending that information be considered as a bonafide infrastructure and be consequently treated with the same attention that cities reserve to other infrastructures such as utilities and roads. It proposes that communicative planners become catalysts of this transformation away from the "hunting-and- gathering" of urban data and toward the "farming" of municipal information.Recent advances in geo-spatial technologies, together with a steady decline in their cost, have inspired many spontaneous bottom-up municipal GIS initiatives aimed at improving many aspects of urban maintenance, management or planning. Some communities have institutionalized top-down citywide urban information systems with limited results, due to many organizational and institutional factors. Despite some encouraging progress, comprehensive urban information systems are still not commonplace and planners and decision makers still struggle to acquire the rich information that they need to conduct in-depth analyses and to make important decisions. This dissertation suggests a plausible strategy and several practical tactical solutions to set municipalities on a trajectory leading to City Knowledge. The concept of City Knowledge is introduced by first presenting numerous case studies ranging from the maintenance of the canals in Venice, Italy, to tree management in Cambridge to planning for Worcester, Massachusetts. Each of the cases reveals some lessons about City Knowledge, contributing to the identification of fourteen desirable qualities and consequently to the distillation of the six foundations of City Knowledge: (1) the "middle-out" approach; (2) informational jurisdictions; (3) fine-grained, distributed data management; (4) sustainable updates; (5) information sharing and (6) interagency coordination. The middle-out approach combines the virtues of top-down rigor and reliability with the bottom-up qualities of energy and creativity. Being an emergent system, City Knowledge leverages the dominant plan-demanded mode of data acquisition to gradually and inexpensively accumulate high-return data and to ensure sustainable, low-costby Fabio Carrera.Ph.D
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