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Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022): consequences one year on
Get PDFIn 2018, the State of Mississippi passed a law prohibiting most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Planned Parenthood v Casey meant that laws which had ‘the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus’ were an ‘undue burden’, and a violation of the constitutional right to access abortion,1 first recognized in Roe v Wade.2 The constitutionality of the Mississippi law was challenged by the Jackson Women’s Health Organization (JWHO) on the basis that a prohibition on most abortions prior to 15 weeks of pregnancy is not merely a substantial obstacle or undue burden, but rather an insurmountable obstacle or burden.3 Mississippi argued that Roe and Casey should be overruled and that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) lacked any constitutional basis for creating a constitutional right to an abortion.4 On 24 June 2022, the SCOTUS upheld the Mississippi law as constitutional in a 6–3 decision, and a majority of 5–4 held that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion (overruling Roe and Casey).5 We examine Dobbs with the benefit of a year having elapsed and offer commentary on the emerging and under-considered consequences of the judgment
Present-oriented reconciliation and reparative futures in the making: the case of Rodeemos el Dialogo in Colombia
No full textToday, policymakers and practitioners are encouraged to see reconciliation as a future- oriented process. While liberal peace paradigms conceive of reconciliation as something that lies ahead of us, achievable and measurable in linear processes, I contest teleological notions of reconciliation by drawing on evolutionary theory and neuroscience. I contend that reconciliation is a present- oriented process that cannot be produced through long-term planning and measured in log- frames, but instead requires unleashing the human brain’s capacity for wonder and awe. Over the last ten years, Anglo-Colombian peacebuilding organisation Rodeemos el Diálogo has organised peace breakfasts, non-workshops, and memory initiatives, I argue that this is a form of present-oriented reconciliation, which keeps the imagination focused on reparative futures, and is nurtured by efforts that reframe the past. New identities emerge through imperfect collective processes committed to ending the recycling of violence and mending relations in the present. Present-oriented reconciliation cannot be measured or controlled; it can only be lived and experienced by being fully present in the unfolding of the universe, as the Tao Te Ching suggested almost three thousand years ago
Teaching Sports Geography
No full textThis short essay introduces the symposium “Teaching sports geography”. The six papers that make up this symposium represent the first substantive interventions into the pedagogies of sports geography. Sports geography has a rich research literature that is briefly reviewed, before the paper goes on to consider enduring concerns that sports geographers have pursued over several decades. The paper also notes some of the many opportunities and challenges associated with the teaching of sports geography, before going on the provide an overview of the six papers in the symposium. The paper ends by briefly outlining prospects for the teaching of sports geography. It also acknowledges the recent death of John Bale who was the preeminent pioneer and scholar of sports geography, to whom this collection of papers is dedicate
The Soviet roots of the 2020 protests: the unlikely history of Belarusian civic nationalism
No full textThis chapter takes a long view at the 2020 protests and argues that while they marked a watershed in Belarusian history, important features of the protest movement, such as its civic nature, commitment to non-violence, and a sense of shared identity, have roots in the developments of the late Soviet decades, and particularly, the Masherau years of 1965-1980. Using discrete examples of commemorative tourism, heritage building, and the project of compiling the Belarusian Soviet Encyclopaedia, the chapter recasts the long 1970s as a time when Belarusians were repeatedly reminded that they were a nation. This message was reinforced by the successes of post-war economic and social modernisation that brought with it relative prosperity and stability after decades of turmoil and violence. The outcome of these developments was a national identity that combined civic and ethnic elements, valuing modernity but not discarding ethnicity, and it created the foundations for the contemporary national identity that the 2020 protests brought to the fore
Dynamic capabilities of the SMEs for sustainable innovation performance: role of environmental turbulence
Get PDFPurpose: This study aims to investigate how dynamic capabilities, i.e. sensing, learning, integrating and coordinating trigger sustainable innovation performance. It also examines the direct and moderating role of environmental turbulence towards the sustainable innovation performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected through a cross-sectional survey of 169 SMEs in Oman and analysed through structural equation modelling using SmartPLS software. Findings: Findings of this study reveal that the sustainable innovation performance of SMEs is greatly influenced by the synergy of learning, integrating and coordinating capabilities. Notably, among these capabilities, coordinating capability emerges as the most important capability for SMEs with a primary emphasis on fostering both human and organizational well-being. However, this research reveals that building dynamic capabilities alone might not be sufficient to address social, ecological and economic sustainability criteria, and SMEs may need to extend their view beyond internal processes and integrate various environmental contingencies into their approaches while focusing on sustainable innovation performance. Practical implications: This research is useful for business managers while allocating resources in their business efficiently and effectively to achieve sustainable innovation performance. It also highlights that SMEs need to integrate various environmental contingencies into their approaches while focusing on sustainable innovation performance. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to contribute to SME scholarship by mainly investigating the effect of specific four types of dynamic capabilities on sustainable innovation performance in a turbulent environment. This study is likely to contribute to the SMEs addressing sustainability innovation performance and develop capabilities to be sustainable in a turbulent environment.</p
First impressions: A preliminary study of domestic dog puppies’ responses to verbal cues issued by an artificial agent
No full textDomestic pet dog puppies (hereafter puppies) typically co-exist and develop within a technology-rich environment, spending a large amount of time in the home. An audio/ food dispensing automated device (an artificial agent, hereafter agent) was evaluated for enrichment potential. The agent issued pre-recorded owner-spoken verbal cues to puppies and food rewards for their correct behavioural responses. Puppies’ latencies to look up at the agent after it spoke their name, the word ‘hi’, and dispensed food rewards, and their abilities to respond correctly to its cues were measured. Welfare during interaction was examined using quantitative continuous behaviour sampling. In the first of two conditions, puppies (n = 8) were observed responding to verbal cues issued by the agent, with researcher and owner present (A+RO). The agent was remotely triggered to call each puppy by name and issue the cues ‘sit’ and ‘down’ in a repeated, randomised order totalling eight cues per puppy. In a baseline condition for comparison (owner, with researcher and agent present) (O+RA) the owner replaced the agent’s role. Attentional focus (looking up at the agent with direct eye contact) was achieved following the agent speaking the puppies’ names, the word ‘hi’ and dispensing food rewards (M = 33 sec). In the subsequent two test conditions, no significant difference in puppies’ correct first choice behavioural responses to cues issued by the agent versus owner was found (p = 0.609). Significantly longer response latencies to cues in the agent versus owner condition were revealed (p = 0.001). No significant differences were found in state behaviours ‘looking up’ (p = 0.069), ‘cued response behaviour’ (p = 0.12), ‘eating food rewards’ (p = 0.263) and ‘close proximity post-test’ (p = 0.612) between conditions. A significant difference was found between the two conditions for ‘tail wag bout’, greatest in O+RA (p = 0.028). Puppies responded correctly to the agent’s cues during their first exposure to this novel paradigm and indicators of motivation to interact were identified throughout testing
Providence and Neuroethics
No full textThis chapter introduces the relatively new field of neuroethics, which is concerned with theoretical and practical ethical questions raised by neuroscience and neurotechnology. The chapter discusses a selection of topics in the “neuroscience of ethics” (questions for our understanding of ethics raised by neuroscientific research) and the “ethics of neuroscience” (ethical questions about the practice of neuroscience). The former include questions about free will, agency, and moral judgment; the latter include the ethics of neuroscientific mind-reading and the treatment of patients with diagnoses of permanent vegetative state. Some likely areas of future development are surveyed, including calls for neuroethics to broaden its scope, paying more attention to global perspectives and questions of social justice. Although Christian engagement with neuroethics has hitherto been limited, the chapter is an attempt to show that neuroethical issues are of great interest and concern to Christian ethics, and theological ethicists have much to offer by way of analysis, critique, and reframing of neuroethical debates
Nice but not necessary? Reflections on the role of the arts in Kitcher's <i>The Main Enterprise of the World</i>
No full textThe manifesto presented in Philip Kitcher’s exhaustive appraisal of contemporary American education—and the case for its potential reform—is so wide-ranging that it is not possible to do justice to its every component. Instead, I will speak to one of its parts in an attempt to recognise what I take to be the value of the whole. My aim is to address the section on the role of the arts in formal education, and the nature of aesthetic experience within that, to test whether we can take the arts from their current state of being subject to Adam Smith’s model of market utility, to being appreciated for their necessary and organic vitality. Kitcher provides strong arguments for exposure to the arts as leading to invaluable aesthetic experiences for young people. By extension—and at times by contrast—I will explore the possibility that the ‘aesthetic’ in aesthetic education doesn’t just come into force with the student’s encounter with art works or creative activity in the classroom, but should be integral also to the development of a particular sensibility amongst educators (i.e. the aesthetic education of the educators) for the shape and form of a ‘good’ education, according to its context and circumstance. It is through this sensibility that we might rediscover the necessity of the arts in schools at a time when their importance has been significantly devalued