Study Day

Postcard from Mai Doan, during the Linfield College Semester Abroad Program in Aix-en-Provence, Franc

Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Redlining

The practice of Emergency Management in Michigan raises anew the question of whose knowledge matters to whom and for what reasons, against the background of what projects, challenges, and systemic imperatives. In this paper, I offer a historical overview of state intervention laws across the United States, focusing specifically on Michigan’s Emergency Manager laws. I draw on recent analyses of these laws to develop an account of a phenomenon that I call epistemic redlining, which, I suggest, is a form of group-based credibility discounting not readily countenanced by existing, ‘culprit-based’ accounts of epistemic injustice. I argue that epistemic redlining plays a crucial role in ongoing projects of racialized subordination and dispossession in Michigan, and that such discounting tends to have structural causes that can be difficult to identify and uproot. Contrary to the general thrust of recent work on the topic, I argue that epistemic redlining ought to be understood as a form of epistemic injustice

Manipulation of carbohydrate diet and ensuing changes in weight and glycogen storage in bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) queens

Bumble bees serve as important pollinators for human crops, but many of their populations have declined over the past 60 years. Bumble bee population decline is very important for humans because it reduces pollination services, which can lead to lower crop yields and devastating effects on our nutrition. In bumble bees, we hypothesized that when queens do not have enough sugar in their diet, they are unable to store glycogen, which is a storage form of carbohydrates in insects. From other studies, we know that glycogen is an important storage nutrient for queen bumble bees during the winter when they do not forage for food. Based on this, we predicted that queens fed less sugar during the period prior to overwintering would not gain weight. Additionally, we hypothesized that following the feeding period, queens that ate less sugar would have reduced glycogen levels. Our research on queen bumble bees supported our hypothesis, as queen bees fed little or no sugar weighed less and had lower glycogen levels at the end of the treatment period, whereas queens fed a sugar rich diet had higher glycogen levels and weighed more. These data suggest that sugar is essential for the storage of glycogen in bumble bee queens. This information is relevant to bumble bee conservation efforts, as it implies that sugar is an essential food source that can be increased in the wild to improve bumble bee queen survival likelihood during the winter.BiochemistryIntegrative Biolog

For an Impure, Antiauthoritarian Ethics

My commentary deals with the fourth chapter of Against Purity, entitled “Consuming Suffering,” where Shotwell invites us to imagine what an alternative to ethical individualism might look like in practice. I am particularly interested in the analogy she develops to help pull us into the frame of what she calls a “distributed” or “social” approach to ethics. I will argue that grappling with this analogy can help illuminate three challenges confronting those of us seeking a genuine alternative to ethical individualism: first, that of recognizing that and how certain organizational forms work to entrench an individualistic orientation to the world; second, that of acknowledging the inadequacy of alternatives to individualism that are merely formal in character; and third, that of avoiding the creation of organizational forms that foster purism at the collective level

Labour Market Returns to Higher Education in Vietnam

This paper employs the Ordinary Least Squares, Instrumental Variables and Treatment Effect models to a new dataset from the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) to estimate return to the four-year university education in 2008. Our estimates reveal that the return to university education is about 17% (annualized) and robust to the various estimators. The return to higher education has significantly increased since the economic reform in late 1980s.economic transition; returns to higher education; IV model; Vietnam