External validity and assignment of experimental vs. control treatment providers within small work groups: a research note

Funder: University of CambridgeAbstract Objectives When offenders or victims are randomly assigned to receive experimental vs. current treatments, the external validity of results may depend on whether different treatments are delivered by similar kinds of treatment providers. When treatment providers volunteer to deliver innovative practices in an experiment, it is unclear whether outcomes depend on the content of the treatment, enthusiasm of the providers for the new practice, or both. In such situations, the potential for what we describe as differential predisposition of volunteers for a new treatment raises a question of external validity. Methods We describe the process by which 14 out of 29 mediators across seven Danish police districts came to deliver a new, restorative conferencing method of conducting face-to-face meetings between offenders and their victims, in comparison to longstanding mediation methods. Results We negotiated with all seven District mediation leaders and all 29 of their mediators to use partial random assignment of 14 of the mediators to deliver the new, restorative model. The 14 trained providers of the new method were substantially similar in several measureable characteristics to the 15 other mediators who continued to use the preexisting model, but we cannot measure directly the extent or balance of their predispositions for delivering each model. Conclusions While small work teams pose obstacles to simple random assignment of treatment providers to deliver experimental practices, the random assignment of victims and offenders to two different models of service might be made more externally valid by use of partial random assignment of service providers. </jats:sec

In a broken world:towards an ethics of repair in the Anthropocene

With the power to break earth systems comes responsibility to care for them, and arguably to repair them. Climate geoengineering is one possible approach. But repair is under-researched and underspecified in this context. In a first attempt to establish basic principles for the obligations of repair in the Anthropocene, five disciplines of repair are briefly reviewed: reconstruction of historic buildings, remediation of human bodies, restoration of ecosystems; reconfiguration of cultural materials and artifacts; and reconciliation of broken relationships. In each case ethical practices and debates are described to help identify key themes and challenges in understanding repair. Three interlinked pragmatic ethics or virtues of repair in the Anthropocene are suggested: care, integrity, and legibility. Implications of for climate geoengineering, climate politics, and the possibilities of climate justice are explored. Climate repair is defended against objections that it would exacerbate a moral hazard effect, or frame climate responses as politically conservative

The Historical Development of the Written Discourses on Ubuntu1

In this article, I demonstrate that the term ‘ubuntu’ has frequently appeared in writing since at least 1846. I also analyse changes in how ubuntu has been defined in written sources in the period 1846 to 2011. The analysis shows that in written sources published prior to 1950, it appears that ubuntu is always defined as a human quality. At different stages during the second half of the 1900s, some authors began to define ubuntu more broadly: definitions included ubuntu as African humanism, a philosophy, an ethic, and as a worldview. Furthermore, my findings indicate that it was during the period from 1993 to 1995 that the Nguni proverb ‘umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ (often translated as ‘a person is a person through other persons’) was used for the first time to describe what ubuntu is. Most authors today refer to the proverb when describing ubuntu, irrespective of whether they consider ubuntu to be a human quality, African humanism, a philosophy, an ethic, or a worldview

Restorative Justice and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Process

It has frequently been argued that the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was committed to restorative justice(RJ), and that RJ has deep historical roots in African indigenous cultures by virtue of its congruence both with ubuntu and with African indigenous justice systems (AIJS). In this article, I look into the question of what RJ is. I also present the finding that the term ‘restorative justice’ appears only in transcripts of three public TRC hearings, and the hypothesis that the TRC first really began to take notice of the term ‘restorative justice’ after April 1997, when the South African Law Commission published an Issue Paper dealing with RJ. Furthermore, I show that neither the connection between RJ and ubuntu nor the connection between RJ and AIJS is as straightforward andunproblematic as often assumed

What is Ubuntu? Different Interpretations among South Africans of African Descent

In this article, I describe and systematize the different answers to thequestion &#8216;What is ubuntu?&#8217; that I have been able to identify amongSouth Africans of African descent (SAADs). I show that it is possibleto distinguish between two clusters of answers. The answers of thefirst cluster all define ubuntu as a moral quality of a person, while theanswers of the second cluster all define ubuntu as a phenomenon (forinstance a philosophy, an ethic, African humanism, or, a worldview)according to which persons are interconnected. The concept of aperson is of central importance to all the answers of both clusters,which means that to understand these answers, it is decisive to raisethe question of who counts as a person according to SAADs. I showthat some SAADs define all Homo sapiens as persons, whereas othershold the view that only some Homo sapiens count as persons:only those who are black, only those who have been incorporated intopersonhood, or only those who behave in a morally acceptablemanner