Was Salman Rushdie right to have written The Satanic Verses ? Were the protestors right to have done so? What about the Danish cartoons? This book examines the moral questions raised by cultural controversies, and how intercultural dialogue might be generated within multicultural societies.

First full-length study of attitudes to abortion in the early medieval west. When a Spanish monk struggled to find the right words to convey his unjust expulsion from a monastery in a desperate petition to a sixth-century king, he likened himself to an aborted fetus. Centuries later, a ninth-century queenfound herself accused of abortion in an altogether more fleshly sense. Abortion haunts the written record across the early middle ages. Yet, the centuries after the fall of Rome remain very much the "dark ages" in the broader history of abortion. This book, the first to treat the subject in this period, tells the story of how individuals and communities, ecclesiastical and secular authorities, construed abortion as a social and moral problem across anumber of post-Roman societies, including Visigothic Spain, Merovingian Gaul, early Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian empire. It argues early medieval authors and readers actively deliberated on abortion and a cluster of related questions, and that church tradition on abortion was an evolving practice. It sheds light on the neglected variety of responses to abortion generated by different social and intellectual practices, including church discipline, dispute settlement and strategies of political legitimation, and brings the history of abortion into conversation with key questions about gender, sexuality, Christianization, penance and law. Ranging across abortion miracles in hagiography, polemical letters in which churchmen likened rivals to fetuses flung from the womb of the church and uncomfortable imaginings of resurrected fetuses in theological speculation, this volume also illuminates the complex cultural significance of abortion in early medieval societies. Zubin Mistry is Lecturer in Early Medieval European History, University of Edinburgh.

Human enhancement has become a major concern in debates about the future of contemporary societies. This interdisciplinary book is devoted to clarifying the underlying ambiguities of these debates, and to proposing novel ways of exploring what human enhancement means and understanding what practices, goals and justifications it entails.

Like all other forms of modern media, video games impact society and human behavior in often surprising ways. Understanding the growing effect of digital entertainment on twenty-first century culture is critical to anticipating the future of social interactions. Cases on the Societal Effects of Persuasive Games investigates the connection between multimedia technologies and game-based learning for an improved understanding of the impact and effectiveness of serious games in modern societies. With examples from the fields of education, business, healthcare, and more, this book serves as a crucial reference source for researchers, educators, developers, and students in higher and continuing education.

What are the implications of caring about the things we research? How does that affect how we research, who we research with and what we do with our results? Proposing what Joan C. Tronto has called a 'paradigm shift' in research thinking, this book invites researchers across disciplines and fields of study to do research that thinks and acts with care. The authors draw on their own and others' experiences of researching, the troubles they encounter and the opportunities generated when research is approached as a caring practice. Care ethics provides a guide, from starting out, designing and conducting projects to thinking about research legacies. It offers a way in which research can help repair harms and promote justice.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to society in ways that can't be fixed. Instead of helping to address our current crises, AI causes divisions that limit people's life chances, and even suggests fascistic solutions to social problems. This book provides an analysis of AI's deep learning technology and its political effects and traces the ways that it resonates with contemporary political and social currents, from global austerity to the rise of the far right. Dan McQuillan calls for us to resist AI as we know it and restructure it by prioritising the common good over algorithmic optimisation. He sets out an anti-fascist approach to AI that replaces exclusions with caring, proposes people's councils as a way to restructure AI through mutual aid and outlines new mechanisms that would adapt to changing times by supporting collective freedom. Academically rigorous, yet accessible to a socially engaged readership, this unique book will be of interest to all who wish to challenge the social logic of AI by reasserting the importance of the common good.

Modernist literature is inextricable from the history of obscenity. The trials of figures like James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Radclyffe Hall loom large in accounts twentieth century literature. Filthy Material: Modernism and The Media of Obscenity reveals the ways that debates about obscenity and literature were shaped by changes in the history of media. Judgments about obscenity, which hinged on understanding how texts were circulated and read, were often proxies for the changing place of literature in an age of new technological media. The emergence of film, photography, and new printing technologies shaped how "literary value" was understood, altering how obscenity was defined and which texts were considered obscene. Filthy Material rereads the history of obscenity in order to discover a history of technological media behind debates about moral corruption and sexual explicitness. The shift from the intense censorship of the early twentieth century to the effective "end of obscenity" for literature at the middle of the century, it argues, is not simply a product of cultural liberalization but of a changing media ecology. Filthy Material brings together media theory and archival research to offer a fresh account of modernist obscenity and novel readings of works of modernist literature. It sheds new light on figures at the center of modernism's obscenity trials (such as Joyce and Lawrence), demonstrates the relevance of the discourse obscenity to understanding figures not typically associated with obscenity debates (like T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis), and introduces new figures to our account of modernism (like Norah James and Jack Kahane). It reveals how modernist obscenity reflected a contest over the literary in the face of new media technologies.

This book offers a vision of politics that govern the womb; from antiquity ('be fertile and replenish the earth'), through the ages (hysterectomy, to extirpate women's 'hysteria'), up to the present time (abortion wars; assisted reproduction), and into the future (reprogenetics; the artificial womb). It explores how the womb has served humanity, either tacitly or explicitly, through the ages and examines how women have accepted and still perceive the rules created by men as natural - including the new anti-abortion laws in the USA - because 'that is the way things are.' The book also explores how the emerging of assisted reproduction technologies and novel genetic tools (reprogenetics) will pose additional challenges to womb bearers, as all women will be made to reproduce with IVF. What is more, the advent of the artificial womb is in sight; the gender and social implications of this development would be enormous. Certainly not just another organ, the womb has been and remains a powerful tool that cannot be left to the decisions of half of the population. This book engages a wide audience, including women and men, professionals and laypersons who are interested in gender, politics, legislation, women's health, and ethics.

This is the hardback version. Golden Goddesses vibrantly casts light upon twenty-five significant women involved in the erotic film industry during its Golden Era, between the years 1968-1985 when participation in adult productions was illegal. Profiling performers, directors, scriptwriters and costumers, Golden Goddesses is a palate of insights, intimacy, vulnerability and strength, as it immerses readers into the lives of these celebrated and audacious females. Featuring the author's own interviews with Marilyn Chambers, Seka, Kay Parker, Rhonda Jo Petty, Serena, Georgina Spelvin, Juliet Anderson, Candida Royalle, Sharon Mitchell, Gloria Leonard, Annie Sprinkle, Ann Perry, Jody Maxwell, Barbara Mills, Veronica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Ginger Lynn, Kitten Natividad, Amber Lynn, Laurie Holmes, Christy Canyon, Julia St. Vincent, Roberta Findlay, Nina Hartley and Raven Touchstone, Golden Goddesses also includes film highlights and more than 300 photos. These fascinating women of classic adult film are presented with depth, sensitivity, and historical scope while capturing the quintessence of a rebellious spirit from days gone by.

Quakerism began in England in the 1650s. George Fox, credited as leading the movement, had an experience of 1647 in which he felt he could hear Christ directly and inwardly without the mediation of text or minister. Convinced of the authenticity of this experience and its universal application, Fox preached a spirituality in which potentially all were ministers, all part of a priesthood of believers, a church levelled before the leadership of God. Quakers are a fascinating religious group both in their original 'peculiarity' and in the variety of reinterpretations of the faith since. The way they have interacted with wider society is a basic but often unknown part of British and American history. This handbook charts their history and the history of their expression as a religious community. This volume provides an indispensable reference work for the study of Quakerism. It is global in its perspectives and interdisciplinary in its approach whilst offering the reader a clear narrative through the academic debates. In addition to an in-depth survey of historical readings of Quakerism, the handbook provides a treatment of the group's key theological premises and its links with wider Christian thinking. Quakerism's distinctive ecclesiastical forms and practices are analysed, and its social, economic, political, and ethical outcomes examined. Each of the 37 chapters considers broader religious, social, and cultural contexts and provides suggestions for further reading and the volume concludes with an extensive bibliography to aid further research.

This innovative book comprises nine essays from leading scholars which investigate the relationship between fiction, censorship and the legal construction of obscenity in Britain between 1850 and the present day. Each of the chapters focuses on a distinct historical period and each has something new to say about the literary works it spotlights. Overall, the volume fundamentally refreshes our understanding of the way texts had to negotiate the moral and legal minefields of public reception. The book is original in the historical period it covers, starting in 1850 and bringing debates about fiction, obscenity and censorship up to the present day. The history that is uncovered reveals the different ways in which censorship functioned and continues to function, with considerations of Statutory definitions of Obscenity alongside the activities of non-government organisations such as the anti-vice societies, circulating libraries, publishers, printers and commentators. The essays in this book argue that the vigour with which novels were hunted down by the prowling prudes of the book's title encouraged some writers to explore sexual, excremental and moral obscenities with even more determination. Bringing such debates up to date, the book considers the ongoing impact of censorship on fiction and the current state of critical thinking about the status and freedom of literature. Given contemporary debates about the limits on freedom of speech in liberal, secular societies, the interrogation of these questions is both timely and necessary.

During the period 1900-1940 novels and poems in the UK and US were subject to strict forms of censorship and control because of their representation of sex and sexuality. At the same time, however, writers were more interested than ever before in writing about sex and excrement, incorporating obscene slang words into literary texts, and exploring previously uncharted elements of the modern psyche. This book explores the far-reaching literary, legal and philosophical consequences of this historical conflict between law and literature. Alongside the famous prosecutions of D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow and James Joyce's Ulysses huge numbers of novels and poems were altered by publishers and printers because of concerns about prosecution. Far from curtailing the writing of obscenity, however, censorship seemed to stimulate writers to explore it further. During the period covered by this book novels and poems became more experimentally obscene, and writers were intensely interested in discussing the author's rights to free speech, the nature of obscenity and the proper parameters of literature. Literature, seen as a dangerous form of corruption by some, was identified with sexual liberation by others. While legislators tried to protect UK and US borders from obscene literature, modernist publishers and writers gravitated abroad, a development that prompted writers to defend the international rights of banned authors and books. While the period 1900-1940 was one of the most heavily policed in the history of literature, it was also the time when the parameters of literature opened up and writers seriously questioned the rights of nation states to control the production and dissemination of literature.

This book focuses on human trafficking in Europe for labour and sexual exploitation. It includes empirical work on trafficking throughout Europe, identifying underlying causes in globalisation, migration policies and gender inequality. It questions whether European responses-from policy makers or civil society are adequate to meet the challenge.

Following Oscar Wilde's 1895 trials for committing "acts of gross indecency with men," he lost his freedom, his family, his reputation, his will to create, and even his will to live. This book sets out to examine what it was about late-Victorian society that allowed this to happen, indeed needed it to happen, and what the trials tell us about the taste and morals of late-Victorian England. Michael S. Foldy argues that the prosecution of Wilde was directly linked to many larger social, cultural, and political issues that transcended the legal and moral concerns about his homosexuality. Analyzing the trial testimony and the coverage in the press, Foldy considers the various images and metaphors used to describe the threat that Wilde posed to English society, and he investigates the social and cultural contexts that dictated how those images were perceived. Foldy shows how the public construction of Wilde's identity as "deviant" was both informed and limited by existing heterosexist structures of repression and mechanisms of restraint and by the emergence of a new variant of homophobia. He suggests that Lord Rosebery, the prime minister of the time, may himself have been a homosexual, and that the successful prosecution of Wilde was necessary to prevent a larger and infinitely more damaging revelation. Ultimately, Foldy locates the meaning of the trials within the rhetorical context of the contemporary public debate over the "health" of England-a debate whose terms had been defined largely by moral conservatives-and demonstrates that in a nation that had many reasons to be concerned about its future, Wilde was perceived to represent a constellation of potent threats to the health of British society.

In Identity, Nationalism, and Cultural Heritage under Siege, Fatme Myuhtar-May makes a case for the recognition of Pomak heritage by presenting five stories from the past and present of the Rhodope Muslims in Bulgaria as examples of a distinct Pomak culture. The stories range from the Christianisation during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the forced communist renaming of the Pomaks in the 1970s, to their fascinating wedding rituals and historic figures. Each of the five narratives contains its own storyline and serves as a prominent example of Pomak heritage, from the author's perspective. The stories take place in the context of fervent nationalism and the ongoing censorship of Pomakness based on the claim that it is an "ethnic Bulgarian," not "Pomak" heritage.

The complex relationship between technology and social outcomes is well known and has recently seen significant attention due to the deepening of technology use in many domains. This includes issues such as the reproduction of inequality due to the digital divide, threats to democracy due to misinformation propagated through social networking platforms, algorithmic biases that can perpetuate structural injustices, hardships caused to citizens due to misplaced assumptions about the gains expected from the use of information technology in government processes, and simplistic beliefs that technology can easily lead to social development. This timely work draws attention to the varying factors by which technology often leads to disempowerment effects. Featuring a Foreword by Tim Unwin, UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Seth makes a call to technologists to burst the technology optimism bubble, build an ethos for taking greater responsibility in their work, collectivize to similarly shape the internal governance of their organizations, and engage with the rest of society to strengthen democracy and build an acceptance that the primary goal of technology projects should be to bring equality by overturning unjust societal structures.

Most arguments for or against abortion focus on one question: is the fetus a person? In this provocative and important book, David Boonin defends the claim that even if the fetus is a person with the same right to life you and I have, abortion should still be legal, and most current restrictions on abortion should be abolished. Beyond Roe points to a key legal precedent: McFall v. Shimp. In 1978, an ailing Robert McFall sued his cousin, David Shimp, asking the court to order Shimp to provide McFall with the bone marrow he needed. The court ruled in Shimp's favor and McFall soon died. Boonin extracts a compelling lesson from the case of McFall v. Shimp-that having a right to life does not give a person the right to use another person's body even if they need to use that person's body to go on living-and he uses this principle to support his claim that abortion should be legal and far less restricted than it currently is, regardless of whether the fetus is a person. By taking the analysis of the right to life that Judith Jarvis Thomson pioneered in a moral context and applying it in a legal context in this novel way, Boonin offers a fresh perspective that is grounded in assumptions that should be accepted by both sides of the abortion debate. Written in a lively, conversational style, and offering a case study of the value of reason in analyzing complex social issues, Beyond Roe will be of interest to students and scholars in a variety of fields, and to anyone interested in the debate over whether government should restrict or prohibit abortion.

The word 'data' has entered everyday conversation, but do we really understand what it means? How can we begin to grasp the scope and scale of our new data-rich world, and can we truly comprehend what is at stake? In Data Lives, renowned social scientist Rob Kitchin explores the intricacies of data creation and charts how data-driven technologies have become essential to how society, government and the economy work. Creatively blending scholarly analysis, biography and fiction, he demonstrates how data are shaped by social and political forces, and the extent to which they influence our daily lives. He reveals our data world to be one of potential danger, but also of hope.

Sex, Love, and Gender is the first volume to present a comprehensive philosophical theory that brings together all of Kant's practical philosophy - found across his works on ethics, justice, anthropology, history, and religion - and provide a critique of emotionally healthy and morally permissible sexual, loving, gendered being. By rethinking Kant's work on human nature and making space for sex, love, and gender within his moral accounts of freedom, the book shows how, despite his austere and even anti-sex, cisist, sexist, and heterosexist reputation, Kant's writings on happiness and virtue (Part I) and right (Part II) in fact yield fertile philosophical ground on which we can explore specific contemporary issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, sexual or gendered identity, marriage, trade in sexual services, and sex- or gender-based oppression. Indeed, Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves. Structured on a thematic basis, with introductions to assist those new to Kant's philosophy, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone who cares about these issues and wants to make sense of them.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. The EU-funded PRO-RES Project aimed to produce a guidance framework that helps to deliver Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). PRO-RES is a Horizon 2020 project coordinated by the European Science Foundation (ESF), involving 14 different partners across Europe. As one of a series of open access products of the Project, Ethical Issues in Covert, Security and Surveillance Research will be placed in the hands of policymakers and their advisors to offer practical and efficient ways to respond to the issues addressed. Understanding that the problem of covert research and surveillance research for security purposes have proven highly challenging for all research ethics appraisal services, the chapters here are valuable resources for expert reviewers, helping further the discussion of these complex ethical issues, and raising the standards applied to the process. Delivering an applied approach, and influencing where it counts, this volume showcases that it is only when the integrity of research is carefully pursued can users of the evidence produced be assured of its value and its ethical credentials.

Mexico is at the center of the global battle over abortion. In 2007, a watershed reform legalized the procedure in the national capital, making it one of just three places across Latin America where it was permitted at the time. Abortion care is now available on demand and free of cost through a pioneering program of the Mexico City Ministry of Health, which has served hundreds of thousands of women. At the same time, abortion laws have grown harsher in several states outside the capital as part of a coordinated national backlash. In this book, Elyse Ona Singer argues that while pregnant women in Mexico today have options that were unavailable just over a decade ago, they are also subject to the expanded reach of the Mexican state and the Catholic Church over their bodies and reproductive lives. By analyzing the moral politics of clinical encounters in Mexico City's public abortion program, Lawful Sins offers a critical account of the relationship among reproductive rights, gendered citizenship, and public healthcare. With timely insights on global struggles for reproductive justice, Singer reorients prevailing perspectives that approach abortion rights as a hallmark of women's citizenship in liberal societies.

Factors such as inequality, gender, globalization, corruption, and instability clearly matter in human trafficking. But does corruption work the same way in Cambodia as it does in Bolivia? Does instability need to be present alongside inequality to lead to human trafficking? How do issues of migration connect? Using migration, feminist, and criminological theory, this book asks how global economic policies contribute to the conditions which both drive migration and allow human trafficking to flourish, with specific focus on Cambodia, Bolivia, and The Gambia. Challenging existing thinking, the book concludes with an anti-trafficking framework which addresses the root causes of human trafficking.

An Irish Times and The i Book of 2022 'Tense and intimate . . . an education' - Geoff Dyer 'Enriching, sobering and at times heartrending. A wonder' - Sir Lenny Henry 'Authentic, fascinating and deeply moving' - Terry Waite __________ Can someone in prison be more free than someone outside? Would we ever be good if we never felt shame? What makes a person worthy of forgiveness? Andy West teaches philosophy in prisons. Every day he has conversations with people inside about their lives, discusses their ideas and feelings, and listens as they explore new ways to think about their situation. When Andy steps into a prison, he also confronts his inherited shame: his father, uncle and brother all spent time behind bars. While Andy has built a different life for himself, he still fears that their fate will also be his. As he discusses pressing questions of truth, identity and hope with his students, he searches for his own form of freedom too. Moving, sympathetic, wise and frequently funny, The Life Inside is an elegantly written and unforgettable memoir. Through a blend of storytelling and gentle philosophical questioning, it offers a new insight into our stretched justice system, our failing prisons and the complex lives being lived inside. __________ 'Inspiring' - The Observer 'Strives with humour and compassion to understand the phenomenon of prison' - Sydney Review of Books 'Expands both heart and mind' - Ciaran Thapar 'A fascinating and enlightening journey . . . A legitimate page-turner' - 3AM

Anti-porn feminism is back. Countering the ongoing 'pornification' of Western culture and society, with lads' mags on the middle shelf and lap-dancing clubs in residential areas, anti-porn movements are re-emerging among a new generation of feminist activists worldwide. This essential new guide to the problems with porn starts with a history of modern pro and anti political stances before examining the ways in which the new arguments and campaigns around pornography are articulated, deployed and received. Drawing on original ethnographic research, it provides an in-depth analysis of the groups campaigning against the pornography industry today, as well as some eye-opening facts about the damage porn can do to women and society as a whole. This unique and inspiring book explains the powerful comeback of anti-porn feminism, and it controversially challenges liberal perspectives and the mainstreaming of a porn culture that threatens to change the very nature of our intimate relationships.