As Justin Biddle and I have argued, climate skepticism can be epistemically problematic when it displays a systematic intolerance of producer risks at the expense of public risks : 261–278, 2015). In this paper, I will provide currently available empirical evidence that supports our account, and I discuss the normative consequences of climate skepticism by drawing upon Philip Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of inquiry.” Finally, I argue that even though concerns regarding inappropriate disqualification of dissent are reasonable, a (...) form of “targeting” dissent—namely revealing manufactured dissent—is required in order to identify epistemically detrimental dissent and, thus, to protect scientific and public discourse. (shrink)

Empirical evidence indicates that women philosophers tend to submit their work to journals substantially less often than their male colleagues. This paper points out that this difference in submission behavior comes with other specific aspects of women philosophers’ behavior, such as a tendency to be reluctant to participate in discussions, to be willing to do work low in prestige, and to specialize in certain research topics, and it argues that these differences can be understood as indirect effects of social biases: (...) namely, effects on the working behavior of members of targeted social groups. Recent findings from philosophy journals’ book review sections and from other academic disciplines known to suffer from gender problems, especially from STEM disciplines, lend additional weight to this hypothesis. (shrink)

The paper addresses the evaluation of climate models and gives an overview of epistemic uncertainties in climate modeling; the uncertainties concern the data situation as well as the causal behavior of the climate system. In order to achieve reasonable results nonetheless, multimodel ensemble studies are employed in which diverse models simulate the future climate under different emission scenarios. The models jointly deliver a robust range of climate prognoses due to a broad plurality of theories, techniques, and methods in climate research; (...) the range reliably indicates the future development of the global climate. Nevertheless, the uncertainties are widely used by skeptics to challenge the IPCC’s prognoses. Such skeptical allegations can well be distinguished from points of fruitful epistemological criticism: in spite of the enduring range of prognoses, the epistemic uncertainties should not play a role in finding agreements on climate change mitigation. (shrink)

This article compares the transformation of two distinct strands of twentieth century philosophy under two politically repressive regimes. It begins by presenting the suppression of the Lvov-Warsaw School by the Soviet regime. Then, it turns to the persecution of logical empiricists in the US during the McCarthy era. While Stalinist repression forced the philosophers into ideological conformity, McCarthyite pressures contributed to the depoliticisation of philosophy of science. In both cases, political repression distorted scientific priorities. It is argued that cases like (...) these represent extreme forms of the central case of ‘epistemic intimidation’. (shrink)

Criticism plays an essential role in the growth of scientific knowledge. In some cases, however, criticism can have detrimental effects; for example, it can be used to ‘manufacture doubt’ for the purpose of impeding public policy making on issues such as tobacco consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Oreskes & Conway 2010). In this paper, we build on previous work by Biddle and Leuschner (2015) who argue that criticism that meets certain conditions can be epistemically detrimental. We extend and (...) refine their account by arguing that such criticism can be epistemically corrupting—it can create social conditions that are conducive to the development of epistemic vice by agents operating within them. (shrink)

The paper addresses an interesting discussion that has arisen in the history of philosophy of science in the last years. It deals with the political development of philosophy of science in the 20th century. It has been argued, in particular by George Reisch, that philosophy of science, once a highly political enterprise, was strongly depoliticized during the cold war in the USA. Over the following decades, the idea of value neutrality as the only guarantor of scientific objectivity was broadly held (...) in this traditionally analytical field of philosophical research. Yet since the late 1980s and during the 1990s, social-epistemological and feminist philosophers of science have begun to tackle this idea by new political and social arguments. Accordingly, I argue that after a long nonpolitical period there has been a development in philosophy of science towards involving g political considerations and methods again. The increasing acceptance of pluralistic concepts in theories of philosophy of science indicate how philosophy of science has gradually been repoliticized. Moreover, it seems possible to draw some interesting conclusions regarding the split between continental and analytical philosophy from this new perspective. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag geht es vor dem Hintergrund verschiedener Neokapitaltheorien um Bestimmungsmöglichkeiten eines spirituellen bzw. religiösen Kapitals und die solchen Kapitalformen zugrunde liegenden Begriffe von Religion und Spiritualität. Ein eigener Ansatz wird in die Diskussion gebracht, der eine Ausdifferenzierung in spiritualisierendes und spirituelles, exoterisches religiöses und esoterisches religiöses Kapital vorschlägt. Die vorgeschlagenen Begriffe werden anhand aktueller Entwicklungen in der afrobrasilianischen Candomblé-Religion erörtert.

The current situation of women in philosophy is not rosy at all. There are a raising number of complaints from female philosophers about their working situation, about getting harassed, discouraged, isolated, or simply ignored. Numerous anecdotes are posted in online forums and weblogs, such as beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com/or feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/. Apart from that, one can simply observe that much more men than women are employed in philosophical departments, give talks at philosophical conferences, and have articles published in philosophical journals. Katrina Hutchison and Fiona (...) Jenkins have reacted to these problems and published a representative selection of essays on possible causes and remedies. Mainly, the book seeks to answer two questions: How does the exclusion of women in philosophy work? And what are we to do in order to improve the situation?Before I start the discussion, three preliminary remarks must be made. First, it is mentioned more than once i .. (shrink)

Der Autor erklärt einen Teil der Anziehungskraft und der suggestiven Wirkungen von Film- und Fernsehbildern aus mechanisch bzw. elektronisch provozierter Psychologie. Die Präsentationsdauer der einzelnen Film- und Fernsehbilder entspricht der Darbietungszeit jener ultrakurz präsentierten Diabilder, die bei der Pötzl-Tachistoskopie experimentell genutzt werden, um in Träumen und freien Assoziationen vorbewußt psychische Nachbilder zu erzeugen. Zwar läßt beim Film die rasche Aufeinanderfolge der Einzelbilder die Inhalte und den Bewegungsablauf fotografierter Objekte bewußt werden und wie natürlich erscheinen, die Unterbrechung ist vorbewußt jedoch folgenreich: (...) die stroboskopische Darbietungsweise erregt ansatzweise -- wie bei der experimentellen Traumstimulation -- innere Nachbild-Affekt-Komplexe, setzt davon allerdings nur den Anteil der Affekte frei. Vergleichbar der Verknüpfung von Tagesrest und Traumwunsch, verbinden sich die so dissoziierten Triebabkömmlinge mit den Filmbildinhalten, die nun zum Ersatz der abgekoppelten inneren Vorstellungsbilder werden, zu einer neuen Erlebniseinheit. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating between epistemically beneficial and epistemically detrimental dissent. By “dissent,” we refer to the act of objecting to a particular conclusion, especially one that is widely held. While dissent in science can clearly be beneficial, there might be some instances of dissent that not only fail to contribute to scientific progress, but actually impede it. Potential examples of this include the tobacco industry’s funding of studies that (...) questioned the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the attempt by the petroleum industry and other groups to cast doubt upon the conclusion that human consumption of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. The problem of distinguishing between good and bad dissent is important because of the growing tendency of some stakeholders to attempt to delay political action by ’manufacturing doubt’. Our discussion in this paper focuses on climate science. This field, in our view, is rife with instances of bad dissent. On the basis of our discussion of climate science, we articulate a set of sufficient conditions for epistemically problematic dissent in general, which we call “the inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent.”. (shrink)

Epistemic trust is crucial for science. This article aims to identify the kinds of assumptions that are involved in epistemic trust as it is required for the successful operation of science as a collective epistemic enterprise. The relevant kind of reliance should involve working from the assumption that the epistemic endeavors of others are appropriately geared towards the truth, but the exact content of this assumption is more difficult to analyze than it might appear. The root of the problem is (...) that methodological decisions in science typically involve a complex trade-off between the reliability of positive results, the reliability of negative results, and the investigation's power. Which balance between these is the ‘correct’ one can only be determined in light of an evaluation of the consequences of all the different possible outcomes of the inquiry. What it means for the investigation to be ‘appropriately geared towards the truth’ thus depends on certain value judgments. I conclude that in the optimal case, trusting someone in her capacity as an information provider also involves a reliance on her having the right attitude towards the possible consequences of her epistemic work. 1 Introduction2 Epistemic Reliance within the Sciences3 Methodological Conventionalism4 Trust in Science5 Conclusions. (shrink)

When interests and preferences of researchers or their sponsors cause bias in experimental design, data interpretation or dissemination of research results, we normally think of it as an epistemic shortcoming. But as a result of the debate on science and values, the idea that all extra-scientific influences on research could be singled out and separated from pure science is now widely believed to be an illusion. I argue that nonetheless, there are cases in which research is rightfully regarded as epistemologically (...) deficient due to the influence of preferences on its outcomes. I present examples from biomedical research and offer an analysis in terms of social epistemology. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that when we trust the results of scientific research, that trust is inevitably directed at least in part at collective bodies rather than at single researchers, and that accordingly, reasonable assessments of epistemic trustworthiness in science must attend to these collective bodies. In order to support this claim, I start by invoking the collaborative nature of most of today’s scientific research. I argue that the trustworthiness of a collaborative research group does not supervene (...) on the trustworthiness of its individual members and point out some specific problems for the assessment of epistemic trustworthiness that arise from the specific nature of today’s collaborative research. Next, I argue that the social diffusion of trustworthiness goes even further; we always also need an assessment of the trustworthiness of the respective research community as a whole. Communities, I claim, play an essential role in the epistemic quality management of science. To see why this role is indispensible, we have to appreciate the full complexity of determining what is desirable in a method of inquiry. The relevant features of a method include three different dimensions: the reliability of positive results, the reliability of negative results, and the method’s power. Every methodological choice involves a trade-off between these three dimensions. The right balance between them (the “distribution of inductive risks”, or DIR) depends on value judgments about the costs of false results and the benefits of correct ones. Conventional methodological standards of research communities impose constraints on admissible DIR and thereby harmonize the implicit value judgments. Trusting that the research community has set the limitations on DIR in a suitable way is thus always part of placing our trust in a scientific result. (shrink)

Gender bias is a recalcitrant problem in academia and society. However, dissent has been created on this issue. We focus on dissenting studies by Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, arguing that they reach conclusions that are unwarranted on the basis of the available evidence and that they ignore fundamental objections to their methodological decisions. Drawing on discussions from other contexts, particularly on manufactured dissent concerning anthropogenic climate change, we conclude that dissent on gender bias substantially contributes to the (...) exacerbation of biases in society and an increasing number of attacks on researchers, making it both epistemically and socially problematic. (shrink)

In order to select an area of ignorance and make it the target of inquiry, one first has to be aware of one’s own lack of knowledge in this particular area. In this paper, I explore this connection between ignorance and the aims of research. I emphasize the importance of distinguishing between all the things we don’t know—our total ignorance—and the totality of what we know we don’t know—our conscious ignorance. I argue that while our total ignorance may be conceptualized (...) as a set of true propositions that are unknown to us, our conscious ignorance is best understood as a set of questions. This enables us to identify the preconditions that have to be satisfied in order for a question to be an element of our conscious ignorance. The analysis reveals that conscious ignorance is a complex ability that can often require quite an amount of knowledge and competence. Items of conscious ignorance can, of course, differ in many important respects. To stress one of these differences, I introduce the notion of deep ignorance to signify cases in which we not only fail to know the correct answer to a given question, but cannot even name any plausible candidate answers. I argue that items of deep ignorance should be expected to possess particular attractiveness as targets of research (provided they are not entirely intractable). Finally, I suggest that in light of my analysis, some of the strategies of ignorance-mongers that have engaged agnotologists’ interests over the past years can be understood as attempts to undermine not only knowledge, but also conscious ignorance at the same time—or, in cases where that is not possible, to at least counteract the impression that the ignorance in question is deep. (shrink)

The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s (2015) “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and (...) to a social atmosphere that is hostile to science as scholars working on issues of racism come under attack. We emphasize this final point via recourse to Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of research.”. (shrink)

This paper advocates for making epistemic interests a central object of philosophical analysis in epistemology and philosophy of science. It is argued that the importance of epistemic interests derives from their fundamental importance for the notion of objectivity. Epistemic interests are defined as individuated by a set of objectives, each of which represents a dimension of the search for truth. Among these dimensions, specificity, sensitivity, and productivity are discussed in detail. It is argued that the relevance of productivity is often (...) overlooked in debates about the ends and means of science. A definition of the objectivity of inquiry is proposed that takes the notion of epistemic interest as its starting point. (shrink)

A common complaint against the increasing privatization of research is that research that is conducted with the immediate purpose of producing applicable knowledge will not yield knowledge as valuable as that generated in more curiosity‐driven, academic settings. In this paper, I make this concern precise and reconstruct the rationale behind it. Subsequently, I examine the case of industry research on the giant magnetoresistance effect in the 1990s as a characteristic example of research undertaken under considerable pressure to produce applicable results. (...) The example permits one to arrive at a more optimistic assessment of the epistemic merits of private, application‐driven research. I attempt to specify the conditions that, in this case, advanced the production of interesting and reliable knowledge. (shrink)

This paper discusses how to deal with research that threatens to cause harm to society—in particular, whether and in what cases bans and moratoria are appropriate. First, it asks what normative resources philosophy of science may draw on to answer such questions. In an effort to presuppose only resources acknowledgeable across different comprehensive worldviews, it is claimed that the aim of credibility provides a good basis for normative reflection. A close analysis reveals an inner tension inherent in the pursuit of (...) credibility, referred to as the paradox of credibility: Although the aim of credibility involves the goal of being trusted, the immediate pursuit of the goal of being trusted as much as possible can run counter to and undermine the pursuit of credibility. From this inner tension, considerations are derived on what it means to uncompromisingly strive for trustworthiness. When applied to the problem of harmful research, it becomes apparent that it is important to distinguish between different types of cases. Some cases allow science to prevent harm while relinquishing credibility in the associated research area. In contrast, other cases demand preserving subject-specific scientific credibility in order to manage potential harm. (shrink)

The United States National Preparedness System has evolved significantly in the recent past. These changes have affected the system structures and goals for disaster response. At the same time, actors such as private businesses have become increasingly involved in disaster efforts. In this paper, we begin to fill the gap in the cross-sector literature regarding interactions that have systemic impacts by investigating how the simultaneous processes of systemic change and intensifying cross-sector interaction worked and interacted in the context of the (...) preparedness system. We examine these inter-linkages through a qualitative study in the setting of Hurricane Sandy. Drawing from systems theory, we develop a grounded model that provides an explanation for the system change and highlights how cross-sector interaction relates to the changes observed in the system. (shrink)

Self-determination is a central concept for political philosophers. For example, many have appealed to this concept to defend a right of states to restrict immigration. Because it is deeply embedded in our political structures, the principle possesses a kind of default authority and does not usually call for an elaborate defense. In this paper, I will argue that genealogical studies by Adom Getachew, Radhika Mongia, Nandita Sharma, and others help to challenge this default authority. Their counter-histories show that the principle (...) was used to justify, strengthen, and adapt imperial rule in the twentieth century. In particular, the idea that controlling a population's composition through regulating immigration is an essential aspect of self-determination emerged as a response to White anxieties about the migration of negatively racialized groups. Genealogies have not been adequately appreciated as a critical tool within the mainstream of political philosophy. I show that these genealogies have a critical role to play because they unsettle our uncritical attachment to the structures of the nation-state system and raise serious questions about the meaning and emancipatory force of the principle of self-determination. (shrink)

Scientific research that requires space flight has always been subject to comparatively strong external control. Its agenda has often had to be adapted to vacillating political target specifications. Can space scientists appeal to one or the other form of the widely acknowledged principle of freedom of research in order to claim more autonomy? In this paper, the difficult question of autonomy within planned research is approached by examining three arguments that support the principle of freedom of research in differing ways. (...) Each argument has its particular strengths and limitations. Together they serve to demonstrate particular advantages of scientific autonomy, but in the case of space science, their force ultimately remains limited. However, as the arguments highlight the interrelations between scientific autonomy, the democratic process and the collective interest in scientific knowledge, they suggest that a coherent and sustained space science agenda might best be ensured by increasing the transparency of science policy decisions and involving the democratic public. (shrink)

This book is a festschrift for Torsten Hagerstrand. "Through your work on migration, innovation diffusion, and time-geography you have helped demonstrate that geography's most profound insights are to be gained from the study of process rather than form.".

In various debates about science, appeal is made to the freedom of scientific research. A rationale in favor of this freedom is rarely offered. In this paper, two major arguments are reconstructed that promise to lend support to a principle of scientific freedom. According to the epistemological argument, freedom of research is required in order to organize the collective cognitive effort we call science efficiently. According to the political argument, scientific knowledge needs to be generated in ways that are independent (...) of the major political powers because of the important role it plays for the citizens and their capacity to form well-informed political preferences. Both arguments are examined critically in order to identify their strengths and limitations. I argue that the scientific freedom established by both rests on a number of critical preconditions, and that the arguments’ force must be weighed against competing societal interests and values in each case of their application. Appeal to a principle of scientific freedom should therefore never mark the end, but rather the beginning of a public debate about the ends and means of science. (shrink)

Although fundamental arguments have been presented to support the value-laden nature of all scientific research, they appear to be difficult to apply to basic research in physics. To explain this, I argue that basic research in physics is, in a very specific respect, often value-laden to a lesser degree. To spell this out, I refer to the different signal-to-noise ratios that can be achieved in different fields of research. I also argue that having a very low degree of value-ladenness in (...) the very specific respect that I identify does not mean that the research is not value-laden at all. (shrink)

The issue of political violence is mostly absent from current debates about power. Many conceptions of power treat violence as wholly distinct from or even antithetical to power, or see it as a mere instrument whose effects are obvious and not in need of political analysis. In this paper, I explore what kind of ontology of power is necessary to properly take account of the various roles that violence can play in creating and maintaining power structures. I pursue this question (...) by contrasting the views of Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. For Arendt, power is generated and maintained by communicative practices. She argues that power and violence are ‘opposites’ because violence can only destroy but not create these practices. In contrast, Foucault’s conception explicitly allows violence to play a constitutive role in generating power. I argue that while Arendt is right to insist that power and violence are not identical, it does not follow that violence cannot play any role in constituting power. Guided by Foucault’s approach, I formulate a non-dualist account of the relationship between power and violence that takes seriously the role that bodies, material things, and built infrastructures play in making social relations ‘more durable’ and constituting power. (shrink)

Power is often taken to be a central concept in social and political thought that can contribute to the explanation of many different social phenomena. This article argues that in order to play this role, a general theory of power is required to identify a stable causal capacity, one that does not depend on idiosyncratic social conditions and can thus exert its characteristic influence in a wide range of cases. It considers three promising strategies for such a theory, which ground (...) power in (1) the ability to use force, (2) access to resources, or (3) collective acceptance. It shows that these strategies fail to identify a stable causal capacity. The lack of an adequate general theory of power suggests that the concept lacks the necessary unity to play the broad explanatory role it is often accorded. (shrink)

To study how religiosity affects family business goals, we merge literatures on goal setting, temporal orientation, and family business to argue that family business goals can be distinguished into short-term and long-term orientations and propose that religiosity affects both orientations, but to varying degrees. Drawing on a sample of private U.S. family businesses and applying partial least squares structural equations modeling, we find tentative support that religiosity has a stronger positive effect on long-term goal orientation than on short-term goal orientation. (...) We discuss implications for theory development and future research involving religiosity and family business goals. (shrink)

The current study analyzes trans-cultural universalities and specificities in the recognition of status roles, dominance perception and social evaluation based on nonverbal cues. Using a novel methodology, which allowed to mask clues to ethnicity and cultural background of the agents, we compared impression of Germans, Americans and Arabs observing computer-animated interactions from the three countries. Only in the German stimulus sample the status roles could be recognized above chance level. However we found significant correlations in dominance perception across all countries. (...) Significant correlations were only found for evaluation between German observers and observers from the other two countries. Perceived dominance uniformly predicted the assignment of status-roles in all cultures. Microanalysis of movement behavior further revealed predictive value of specific nonverbal cues for dominance ratings. Results support the hypothesis of universalities in the processing of dominance cues and point to cultural specificities in evaluative responses to nonverbal behavior. (shrink)

Political philosophy has long treated the nation-state as the starting point for normative inquiry, while paying little attention to the ongoing legacies of colonialism and imperialism. But given how most modern states emerged, normative discussions about migration, for example, need to engage with the colonial and imperial history of state immigration controls, citizenship practices, and the nation-state more generally. This article critically reviews three historical studies by Adom Getachew, Radhika Mongia, and Nandita Sharma that engage in depth with this history. (...) The studies historicize concepts that are central to discussions in political philosophy: the categories of citizen and migrant, the concept of ‘nationality,’ and the principle of self-determination. I argue that this historicized form of conceptual analysis helps us challenge the default authority of concepts that are deeply embedded in the political structures that we inhabit. (shrink)

Appeals to occupancy rights are central to a number of prominent defenses of territorial sovereignty. Occupancy rights are grounded in the importance of people’s located life plans. However, these accounts usually do not consider the global economic practices on which many of our life plans now rely. Most of the stuff in our daily lives is produced within global supply chains. In this paper, I argue that if occupancy interests are grounded in life-plan-based interests, then we have occupancy interests in (...) places far outside our places of residency. I further defend this argument by considering the implications of large-scale foreign land acquisitions. Through our participation in global economic practices, we effectively occupy, albeit not exclusively, land acquired for the use of global supply chains. By construing occupancy as bounded, occupancy-based defenses of territorial sovereignty obscure the highly hierarchical and unequal global structures that emerged from the world-building project of European colonialism. In the contemporary world, we cannot assess territorial sovereignty without assessing these structures. (shrink)

The object language of Kripke’s 1975 semantic theory of truth, based on the Strong Kleene valuation scheme, cannot contain a predicate that expresses the notion "ungroundedness" that Kripke provides an analysis of. This is unfortunate; it means that, in the object language of Kripke’s theory, there is no obvious way to express Kripke’s diagnostic insight about what causes semantic pathology. This paper shows how to introduce a “groundedness” predicate, G, to a Kripkean theory of truth that can fill this expressive (...) gap. In the fixed-point construction that gives an interpretation for G, G’s anti-extension tracks networks of sentences that, due to predications of truth, result in non-terminating graphs of semantic dependence. In the fixed-point models that provide a class of intended interpretations for G: (i) every sentence with a classical semantic value is in the extension of G, (ii) every sentence in the anti-extension of G receives the value $$\frac{1}{2}$$, and (iii) the anti-extension of G includes all the sentences that receive $$\frac{1}{2}$$ in the corresponding model of Kripke’s original theory. A language augmented with predicates for truth and groundedness possesses sufficient expressive resources to articulate Kripke’s diagnostic insight as it applies to itself. (shrink)

What is the normative import of telling a genealogy of our present reason-giving practices? In this paper, I will focus on Michel Foucault’s materialist genealogies in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, which attend to the social and material settings in which we act and give and ask for reasons. A number of influential critics have interpreted them as a critical evaluation of our reason-giving practices. But understood in this way, Foucault’s genealogical project faces significant philosophical (...) problems. I will sketch a different account, arguing that telling a genealogy can have an uncanny effect: It can disrupt our familiarity with the everyday world by revealing to us the embodied norms that structure our everyday activities. Once we recognize that our situation is structured by normative demands, we cannot simply let ourselves be carried along by found norms. Genealogies call on us to take responsibility for these norms and to practically transform the space in which we act. (shrink)

There is now a general consensus amongst philosophers in the values in science literature that values necessarily play a role in core areas of scientific inquiry. We argue that attention should now be turned from debating the value-free ideal to delineating legitimate from illegitimate influences of values in science, a project we dub “The New Demarcation Problem.” First, we review past attempts to demarcate the uses of values and propose a categorization of the strategies by where they seek to draw (...) legitimacy from. Next, we propose a set of desiderata for what we take to be a satisfactory solution and present a case study where conflicting sets of values clearly impinge on science, but where the legitimacy of their influence is ambiguous. We use these desiderata and the case study to illustrate what we take to be the strengths and weaknesses of current strategies. To be clear, our goal is not to answer the question we pose, but to articulate a framework within which a solution can be judged. (shrink)

_English summary:_ Modern societies, which are based on labor contracts and employment, are undergoing a period of change. As a result of this, concepts of work and its significance are being redefined. This holds true for Protestantism as well, which since the days of Max Weber has been notorious for its alleged affinity to work ethics. Torsten Meireis studies the processes of change in a work-oriented society and the historical and contemporary theological, philosophical and social debates on vocation and (...) work, and in doing so tries to find a Christian concept of meaningful action._ German description:_ Die Arbeitsgesellschaft befindet sich im Umbruch: Damit verflussigen sich auch im Protestantismus eingeschliffene Vorstellungen und Konzepte. Torsten Meireis untersucht den Umbruch der Arbeitsgesellschaft und seine Konsequenzen aus evangelischer Sicht. Im ersten Teil der Studie erlautert er diesen Umbruch. Dabei treten Probleme des Arbeitsbegriffs in den Blick, die bis in die zeitgenossischen theologischen und sozialphilosophischen Debatten hinein spurbar sind. In Reaktion darauf wird vorgeschlagen, 'Arbeit' als Deutungsmuster zu verstehen, das Fragen der gesellschaftlichen Anerkennung, der Verteilung, der Teilhabe, des Naturumgangs und des Lebenssinns impliziert. Anschliessend macht Torsten Meireis die evangelische Tradition zum Thema, die an international einflussreichen Konzepten exemplarisch aufgesucht wird. Als Voraussetzung der modernen Debatten kommt Luthers Pragung des Berufsbegriffs in den Blick. Fur die entstehende Arbeitsgesellschaft untersucht er Albrecht Ritschls Rezeption des Berufsbegriffs, fur den theologischen Arbeitsdiskurs zwischen den Weltkriegen Karl Barths Verlagerung des Akzents vom Berufs- auf den Arbeitsbegriff und fur den wirtschaftsethischen Zugang, der sich in den modernen Industriegesellschaften durchsetzt, Arthur Richs Konzept. Im dritten Teil der Studie bezieht der Autor die Ergebnisse der historischen Untersuchung auf die Komponenten des Deutungsmusters Arbeit, um so zu klaren, welche Bedeutung der Tatigkeit in christlicher Perspektive fur die Fragen des gesellschaftlichen Naturumgangs, der Anerkennung, Verteilung, Teilnahme und die Vorstellung des Lebenssinns zukommt. (shrink)

As nation-states make greater efforts to regulate the flow of people on the move—refugees, economic migrants, and international travelers alike—advocates of DNA profiling technologies claim DNA testing provides a reliable and objective way of revealing a person’s true identity for immigration procedures. This article examines the use of DNA testing for family reunification in immigration cases in Finland, Germany, and the United States—the first transatlantic analysis of such cases—to explore the relationship between technology, the meaning of family, and immigration. Drawing (...) on our analyses of archival records, government documents, and interviews with immigration stakeholders, we argue that DNA testing is not conclusive about the meaning of family. While the technology may facilitate decision making for both would-be immigrants and state officials, our study shows hesitancy among the latter to let DNA testing make the final determination. We introduce the concept of social validity—whether the interpretation of test results matches social or political meanings in a given local context—in order to make sense of the complexities and challenges of DNA testing in practice. We show that DNA testing is not just a technology of belonging or a way to claim citizenship rights. It may also enable exclusion and denial of rights. (shrink)