Betty : A Dancing Song

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Consciousness Raising and Reality Construction Within Oppressed Groups: Bridging the Gap Between Feminist Theory and Critical Race Theory

Human beings’ understanding of the world around them, and how they interpret events that occur within that world, are expressions of their culture, their worldview (of reality). Many authors have written about reality as a social construction, some times through contracts (in a state, for example, the Racial Contract). I propose that reality can be (and often is) constructed through culture (within a group). The deconstruction of the officially (state sanctioned) accepted reality, by members of oppressed groups, is the first step in gathering the tools to empower themselves. This is a process of consciously recognizing the unconscious behavior of the privileged group/class. The reconstruction of a more accurate account of reality and the ability of individuals to identify themselves as a group is essential to affirming the reality of their experience as truth. Some cultures (for example indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere) have existed before the state that was constructed. In such cases, rather than reconstructing and creating, the task at hand is often remembering and affirming the validity of the (indigenous pre-conquest) culture. The psychological research into the social construction of stereotypes, and prejudice, confirms that much of these thoughts originate on an unconscious (and as a result unexamined) level of thinking. The consciousness raising techniques can begin to bring to the conscious level many of the quick (snap) decisions that rest beneath and behind prejudice and stereotypical thinking. Drawing on the work of MacKinnon, Mills, Foucault, and Banaji to bridge the gap between feminist theory and critical race theory by recognizing overlapping layers of oppression. In particular the oppression within oppressed groups, by those with limited degrees of ‘micro-power’ oppressing others within oppressed groups with no power at all. As a Native/Chicano/Irish person growing up in various different rural and urban areas throughout America, I integrate my personal experience into the philosophical theories

Unions, Politics and Law in Canada

Les syndicats canadiens affrontent un ensemble de circonstances sociales, économiques, juridiques et politiques susceptibles d'avoir une forte influence sur leur avenir. Le mouvement syndical est engage dans un processus de réévaluation de son rôle au sein de la société canadienne, et l'une des avenues que les syndicats doivent envisager, c'est la mesure dans laquelle il leur faut participer aux affaires politiques. Cet article passe en revue quelques unes des options qu'ils ont choisies dans le passe et examine certains des types d'activité politique vers lesquels ils peuvent aujourd'hui s'orienter. L'accent est mis sur les contraintes juridiques pouvant entraver l'action politique des syndicats.L'auteur étudie tout particulièrement les obstacles au droit de grève, à l'utilisation des cotisations syndicales à des fins politiques et au droit des syndicats de participer à des campagnes électorales. Ces contraintes se retrouvent dans les lois générales qui régissent la négociation collective, dans l'interprétation judiciaire, administrative et arbitrale de ces lois et des conventions collectives, dans les restrictions constitutionnelles en matière de libertés individuelles, dans les lois electorales et dans le droit de propriété et les prérogatives directoriales des employeurs. La thèse mise de l'avant veut que les limitations imposées à l'activité politique des syndicats traduisent la conception à la fois individuelle et libérale de la législation canadienne qui considère avec méfiance le concept des droits collectifs. De plus, les restrictions favorisent la croyance liberale de l'existence d'une dichotomie entre les sphères d'action politique et les domaines de nature économique ou sociale. On a tendance, par exemple, à ne voir dans les grèves politiques, comme trait caractéristique, que leurs seules conséquences économiques, tendance qui laisse une plus grande latitude aux syndicats dans la négociation collective que dans la recherche d'objectifs politiques.Finalement, l'article souligne le peu de succès des syndicats canadiens dans l'établissement de bases solides en ce qui a trait à l'exercice du pouvoir politique. On ne peut qu'attribuer en partie seulement cette situation aux contraintes juridiques et il est souhaitable que les syndicats ne s'en tiennent pas uniquement à améliorer la protection légale de leur participation à l'action politique, mais aussi qu'ils incitent leurs membres à des formes variées d'échanges capables de développer leur engagement politique. C'est la condition essentielle pour que leur action soit efficace.This paper reviews some of the options that unions have followed in the past, and details some of the types of political activities in which unions can presently engage. The focus is on various legal constraints that may hinder union political activity

A systematic review of the prediction of hospital length of stay:Towards a unified framework

Hospital length of stay of patients is a crucial factor for the effective planning and management of hospital resources. There is considerable interest in predicting the LoS of patients in order to improve patient care, control hospital costs and increase service efficiency. This paper presents an extensive review of the literature, examining the approaches employed for the prediction of LoS in terms of their merits and shortcomings. In order to address some of these problems, a unified framework is proposed to better generalise the approaches that are being used to predict length of stay. This includes the investigation of the types of routinely collected data used in the problem as well as recommendations to ensure robust and meaningful knowledge modelling. This unified common framework enables the direct comparison of results between length of stay prediction approaches and will ensure that such approaches can be used across several hospital environments. A literature search was conducted in PubMed, Google Scholar and Web of Science from 1970 until 2019 to identify LoS surveys which review the literature. 32 Surveys were identified, from these 32 surveys, 220 papers were manually identified to be relevant to LoS prediction. After removing duplicates, and exploring the reference list of studies included for review, 93 studies remained. Despite the continuing efforts to predict and reduce the LoS of patients, current research in this domain remains ad-hoc; as such, the model tuning and data preprocessing steps are too specific and result in a large proportion of the current prediction mechanisms being restricted to the hospital that they were employed in. Adopting a unified framework for the prediction of LoS could yield a more reliable estimate of the LoS as a unified framework enables the direct comparison of length of stay methods. Additional research is also required to explore novel methods such as fuzzy systems which could build upon the success of current models as well as further exploration of black-box approaches and model interpretability

The Epitheliome: agent-based modelling of the social behaviour of cells

We have developed a new computational modelling paradigm for predicting the emergent behaviour resulting from the interaction of cells in epithelial tissue. As proof-of-concept, an agent-based model, in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between biological cells and software agents, has been coupled to a simple physical model. Behaviour of the computational model is compared with the growth characteristics of epithelial cells in monolayer culture, using growth media with low and physiological calcium concentrations. Results show a qualitative fit between the growth characteristics produced by the simulation and the in vitro cell models

Humanitarian Action and Conflict in the Southern Caucasus : The Cases of Abkhazia (Georgia) and Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaïdjan)

This article examines the connection between humanitarian action and conflict in two southern Caucasian cases ­ those of Abkhazia (Georgia) and Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan). It attempts to answer three questions: to what extent has humanitarian programming impeded a settlement of the conflicts; how effective has the humanitarian community been in designing programming in such a way as to foster conflict resolution; and to what extent has the promotion of conflict resolution impeded proportional humanitarian assistance and protection