Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social world
2012, Routledge.
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Added by: Benny Goldberg
Publisher's Note: Sex/Gender presents a relatively new way to think about how biological difference can be produced over time in response to different environmental and social experiences. This book gives a clearly written explanation of the biological and cultural underpinnings of gender. Anne Fausto-Sterling provides an introduction to the biochemistry, neurobiology, and social construction of gender with expertise and humor in a style accessible to a wide variety of readers. In addition to the basics, Sex/Gender ponders the moral, ethical, social and political side to this inescapable subject.Comment : This is a good text for courses in philosophy of science dealing with biology, feminist philosophy (and feminist philosophy of science), as well as courses dealing with issues of sex and gender. While it uses a lot of scientific detail, it is suitable for advanced undergraduates regardless of major.2015, Journal of economic perspectives 29.1, 89-114-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Anna Alexandrova
Abstract: In this essay, we investigate the dominant position of economics within the network of the social sciences in the United States. We begin by documenting the relative insularity of economics, using bibliometric data. Next, we analyze the tight management of the field from the top down, which gives economics its characteristic hierarchical structure. Economists also distinguish themselves from other social scientists through their much better material situation (many teach in business schools, have external consulting activities), their more individualist worldviews, and in the confidence, they have in their discipline’s ability to fix the world’s problems. Taken together, these traits constitute what we call the superiority of economists, where economists’ objective supremacy is intimately linked with their subjective sense of authority and entitlement. While this superiority has certainly fueled economists’ practical involvement and their considerable influence over the economy, it has also exposed them more to conflicts of interests, political critique, even derision.Comment : Good overview of the sociology of contemporary economics, how much prestige and hierarchy matter to them, and how poorly they view other social scientists.Freter, Yvette. Difference in African Educational Contexts2020, In: Imafidon, E. (ed.) Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference. Cham: Springer, 217-237-
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, Contributed by: Björn Freter
Abstract: Educational institutions pull together students of different genders, abilities, races, classes, and religions and are the microcosm of their communities. In African contexts, schools have been the location of “cultural parochialism” and “colonial epistemicide and the consolidation of colonization” (Lebakeng et al. 72, 2006). Thus an additional dimension of difference drawn along the fallacious line of the superior dominant Eurowestern colonizer versus the inferior indigenous African population has been institutionalized within the educational system. I engage in a philosophical examination of the African context of difference in the sphere of education. I consider the hopeful gaze philosophy offers in the light of difference, by considering the concept of pluralism, and argue for a view of difference that is both inclusive and appreciative of diversity and suggests ways educators can critically assess their own differences by considering their positionality. I conclude by applying the philosophical outlook that embraces pluralism to our classroom spaces and suggests multicultural theory that embraces difference by including both dominant and marginalized educators to impact education in an efficacious way.Gastelum, Melina. Intercultural education based on situated cognition practices2024, Una educación intercultural basada en prácticas cognitivas situadas. Andamios 21(54), pp. 83-109-
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
In this article we want to enrich a view of intercultural education that can use the conceptualizations of 4E cognition (enactive, embedded, embodied and extended). We follow the idea that education can be understood as a community of situated practices. We argue that the perspective of practices acquires a sense from the 4E cognition that will help to promote an educational epistemology that does not only hover over gnoseological processes but brings into play other categories of the sociocultural environment that help other types of reflections that lead towards a critical, political and ethical interculturality.Comment : available in this BlueprintGilbert, Margaret. Walking Together: A Paradigmatic Social Phenomenon1990, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 15(1): 1-14.-
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Added by: Lukas Schwengerer
Abstract: The everyday concept of a social group is approached by examining the concept of going for a walk together, an example of doing something together, or 'shared action'. Two analyses requiring shared personal goals are rejected, since they fail to explain how people walking together have obligations and rights to appropriate behaviour, and corresponding rights of rebuke. An alternative account is proposed: those who walk together must constitute the 'plural subject' of a goal (roughly, their walking alongside each other). The nature of plural subjecthood, the thesis that social groups are plural subjects, and the relation of these ideas to Rousseau's and Hobbes's, are briefly explored.Comment : The article uses a clear example to explore shared agency. It is both an accessible and fundamental paper for the discourse on collective intentionality, and as such it is ideal as an introduction to those topics. It is also a good addition for courses on social ontology.Greene, Amanda. Making a Living: The Human Right to Livelihood2019, In Jahel Queralt and Bas van der Vossen (eds.), Economic Liberties and Human Rights. Routledge.-
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
In this chapter I argue that we have a human right to livelihood. Although some economic rights have been defended under a human rights framework, such as freedom of occupation and the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to livelihood requires a separate defense. We have a livelihood when we are able to exercise some control over how we generate income and accumulate wealth. I argue that this control is good in itself, and that it leads to two further goods, social contribution esteem and a sense of self-provision. Beyond its being a right per se, having a livelihood also fulfills Joseph Raz’s conditions for being a constitutional right, insofar as it is a right that can be fairly and effectively protected through legal mechanisms, and for being a human right, insofar as it a right that can be suitably enforced through a system of international law.Comment (from this Blueprint): Greene's perspective, although not the same as Penner's, does share some important features, and as a result, she presents an argument for a right to livelihood which can help push students into another set of questions related to this weeks topic. These ask whether having agency over one's material resources and the manner of their acquisition is so important as to be essential, and consequently, whether that can be considered a right. One could also use this text to challenge the dominant rights narrative - perhaps a having a livelihood is essential, but not the sort of good that can be protected by rights. In that case, one could use the text to explore what other ways this important human capability might be protected, and by whom.Gutmann, Amy. Democratic Education1999, Princeton University Press.-
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Added by: Carl Fox
Publisher's Note: Who should have the authority to shape the education of citizens in a democracy? This is the central question posed by Amy Gutmann in the first book-length study of the democratic theory of education. The author tackles a wide range of issues, from the democratic case against book banning to the role of teachers' unions in education, as well as the vexed questions of public support for private schools and affirmative action in college admissions.Comment : Comprehensive and insightful treatment of the subject of education in a democracy. Could provide a main text for a specialised lecture or seminar, or solid further reading on a more general module for anyone particularly interested in civic education.Gutmann, Amy. Civic Education and Social Diversity1995, Ethics 105 (3):557-579-
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
How can civic education in a liberal democracy give social diversity its due? Two complementary concerns have informed a lot of liberal thinking on this subject. Liberals like John Stuart Mill worry that "the plea of liberty" by parents not block "the fulfillment by the State of its duties" to children. They also worry that civic education not be conceived or conducted in such a way as to stifle "diversity in opinions and modes of conduct."' Some prominent contemporary theorists add a new and interesting twist to these common--concerns. They criticize liberals like Mill and Kant for contributing to one of the central problems, the stifling of social diversity, that they are trying to resolve. The comprehensive liberal aim of educating children not only for citizenship but also for individuality or autonomy, these political liberals argue, does not leave enough room for social diversity. Would a civic educational program consistent with political liberalism accommodate significantly more social diversity than one guided by comprehensive liberalism?
Political liberals claim that it would, and some recommend political liberalism to us largely on this basis. This article shows that political liberalism need not, and often does not, accommodate more social diversity through its civic educational program than comprehensive liberalism.Comment : This article examines the relationship between political and comprehensive liberalism with an eye towards evaluating whether the former encourages a greater degree of social diversity when it comes to models of civic education. Utimately, Gutmann argues that the difference between political and comprehensive liberalism is exaggerated: what matters more, in determining which approaches to civic education facilitate greater degrees of social and individual diversity, is 'a substantive understanding of what good citizenship entails' and what the aims of civic education are. In it's method, this paper is located at the intersection of political philosophy and political theory. For this reason, it might be useful in an intermediate undergraduate or master's level political philosophy course with significant crossover in the political theory / political science discipline. Gutmann focuses heavily on the work of historic and contemporary liberals, including Mill, Rawls, Raz, Galston, and Macedo, so the article may be useful as further reading in courses which examine these authors approaches to civic education, or contemporary approaches to civic education in general.Hartman, Saidiya. Venus in Two Acts2008, Small Axe, 12 (2): 1–14-
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerAbstract:
This essay examines the ubiquitous presence of Venus in the archive of Atlantic slavery and wrestles with the impossibility of discovering anything about her that hasn't already been stated. As an emblematic figure of the enslaved woman in the Atlantic world, Venus makes plain the convergence of terror and pleasure in the libidinal economy of slavery and, as well, the intimacy of history with the scandal and excess of literature. In writing at the limit of the unspeakable and the unknown, the essay mimes the violence of the archive and attempts to redress it by describing as fully as possible the conditions that determine the appearance of Venus and that dictate her silence.Comment (from this Blueprint): Content warning: very explicit details of cruelties of slavery, sexual assault. In this seminal black feminist theory text, the Foucauldian scholar Saidiya Hartman considers the “archive” which is what she terms the collection of historical evidence that one writes about the past with. She reckons with the difficulty and ethics of writing about past figures and people who were subject to immense violence, degradation and oppression, since often the only records left of their existence are those written or approved by their oppressors or people who were complict in their oppression, and those records are often at best only caricatures of the person they pretend to represent.Ivanova, Milena. Pierre Duhem’s Good Sense as a Guide to Theory Choice2010, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science part A 41(1): 58-64.-
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Added by: Laura Jimenez, Contributed by: Ivanova, Milena
Abstract: This paper examines Duhem's concept of good sense as an attempt to support a non rule-governed account of rationality in theory choice. Faced with the underdetermination of theory by evidence thesis and the continuity thesis, Duhem tried to account for the ability of scientists to choose theories that continuously grow to a natural classification. The author examines the concept of good sense and the problems that stem from it. The paper presents a recent attempt by David Stump to link good sense to virtue epistemology. It is argued that even though this approach can be useful for the better comprehension of the concept of good sense, there are some substantial differences between virtue epistemologists and Duhem. The athor proposes a possible way to interpret the concept of good sense, which overcomes the noted problems and fits better with Duhem's views on scientific method and motivation in developing the concept of good sense.Comment : Interesting article that could serve as further reading in both epistemology courses and philosophy of science classes. Really good as an in-depth study of Duhem's views on scientific method. Recommendable for postgraduates or senior undergraduates.Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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