Disagreement is, for better or worse, pervasive in our society. Not only do we form beliefs that differ from those around us, but increasingly we have platforms and opportunities to voice those disagreements and make them public. In light of the public nature of many of our most important disagreements, a key question emerges: How does public disagreement affect what we know? This volume collects original essays from a number of prominent scholars-including Catherine Elgin, Sanford Goldberg, Jennifer Lackey, Michael Patrick Lynch, and Duncan Pritchard, among others-to address this question in its diverse forms. The book is organized by thematic sections, in which individual chapters address the epistemic, ethical, and political dimensions of dissent. The individual contributions address important issues such as the value of disagreement, the nature of conversational disagreement, when dissent is epistemically rational, when one is obligated to voice disagreement or to object, the relation of silence and resistance to dissent, and when political dissent is justified. Voicing Dissent offers a new approach to the study of disagreement that will appeal to social epistemologists and ethicists interested in this growing area of epistemology.

This book argues that policy-making is values-driven rather than, as is traditionally argued, the result of interest-driven politics or the consequences of path-dependent/institutionalist perspectives. Stewart devotes chapters to major values which drive public policy across developed nations such as fairness, efficiency and economic growth.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a two-ton truck bomb that felled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. On June 11, 2001, an unprecedented 242 witnesses watched him die by lethal injection. In the aftermath of the bombings, American public commentary almost immediately turned to "closure" rhetoric. Reporters and audiences alike speculated about whether victim's family members and survivors could get closure from memorial services, funerals, legislation, monuments, trials, and executions. But what does "closure" really mean for those who survive-or lose loved ones in-traumatic acts? In the wake of such terrifying events, is closure a realistic or appropriate expectation? In Killing McVeigh, Jody Lynee Madeira uses the Oklahoma City bombing as a case study to explore how family members and other survivors come to terms with mass murder. The book demonstrates the importance of understanding what closure really is before naively asserting it can or has been reached.

Women who came of age in the late twentieth century were raised in the era of choice; they grew up believing that reproductive decision-making is a political right, a responsibility of women living the successes of second wave feminism, and under their control. Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choice: Explorations into Discourses of Reproduction explores contemporary maternity both within and in light of these late-twentieth century understandings. Employing a variety of feminist communication approaches, the volume's contributors discuss how discourses of choice shape and are shaped by women's identities and experiences as (non)mothers and how those same discourses affect and reflect private practices and public policies related to reproduction and motherhood. Through this process, the contributors illustrate a variety of ways of conducting feminist thinking, research, and practices within the communication discipline. Major sub-disciplines within communication studies are represented here including feminist organizational, interpersonal, rhetorical, critical/cultural, and social movement studies. Whereas many of the previous scholarly investigations into maternity highlight only one aspect or phase of motherhood, Contemplating Maternity in an Era of Choice is unique because it investigates discourses of choice across the arc of maternity and as enacted through various (non)maternal subject positions.

All humans laugh. However, there is little agreement about what is appropriate to laugh at. While laughter can unite people by showing how they share values and perspectives, it is also has the power to separate and divide. Humor that "crosses the line" can make people feel excluded and humiliated. This collection of new essays addresses possible ways that moral and ethical lines can be drawn around humor and laughter. What would a Kantian approach to humor look like? Do games create a safe space for profanity and offense? Contributors to this volume work to establish and explain guidelines for thinking about the moral questions that arise when humor and laughter intersect with medicine, gender, race, and politics. Drawing from the work of stand-up comedians, television shows, and ethicists, this volume asserts that we are never just joking.

Comparative Capital Punishment offers a set of in-depth, critical and comparative contributions addressing death practices around the world. Despite the dramatic decline of the death penalty in the last half of the twentieth century, capital punishment remains in force in a substantial number of countries around the globe. This research handbook explores both the forces behind the stunning recent rejection of the death penalty, as well as the changing shape of capital practices where it is retained. The expert contributors address the social, political, economic, and cultural influences on both retention and abolition of the death penalty and consider the distinctive possibilities and pathways to worldwide abolition. Scholars in the fields of law, sociology, political science and history, as well as human rights lawyers, abolitionists, law makers and judges who wish to remain up-to-date on changing death penalty practices will need Comparative Capital Punishment on their reading list. Contributors include: S.L. Babcock, S. Bae, R.C. Dieter, B.L. Garrett, E. Girling, C. Hoyle, P. Jabbar, S. Lehrfreund, D. Lourtau, B. Malkani, M. Miao, A. Nazir, A. Novak, K. Pant, D. Pascoe, A. Sarat, M. Sato, W. Schabas, C.S. Steiker, J.M. Steiker, J. Yorke

In Colors of Veracity, Vera Schwarcz condenses four decades of teaching and scholarship about China to raise fundamental questions about the nature of truth and history. In clear and vivid prose, she addresses contemporary moral dilemmas with a highly personal sense of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing on classical sources in Hebrew and Chinese (as well as several Greek and Japanese texts), Schwarcz brings deep and varied cultural references to bear on the question of truth and falsehood in human consciousness. An attentiveness to connotations and nuance is apparent throughout her work, which redefines both the Jewish understanding of emet (a notion of truth that encompasses authenticity) and the Chinese commitment to zhen (a vision of the real that comprises the innermost sincerity of the seeker's heart-mind). Works of art, from contemporary calligraphy and installations to fake Chinese characters and a Jewish menorah from Roman times, shed light light on the historian's task of giving voice to the dread-filled past. Following in the footsteps of literary scholar Geoffrey Hartman, Schwarcz expands on the "Philomela Project, which calls on historians to find new ways of conveying truth, especially when political authorities are bent on enforcing amnesia of past traumatic events. Truth matters, even if it cannot be mapped in its totality. Veracity is shown again and again to be neither black nor white. Schwarcz' accomplishment is a subtle depiction of "fractured luminosity," which inspires and sustains the moral conviction of those who pursue truth against all odds.

Captivated at a young age by Russia, Marianna Tax Choldin immersed herself as a student at the University of Chicago in that country's language and culture. In her book she describes the tension between her strong commitment to freedom of expression and her growing understanding of Russian and Soviet censorship. Fluent in Russian, she travels widely in post-Soviet Russia, speaking with hundreds of Russians about their own censorship history. She writes of the close friendships she formed in Russia, and reflects on her Jewish roots in the country her family had left behind 100 years earlier.

Rather than providing a global solution to the problem of abortion -to abort or not to abort-this volume sheds light on different but equally critical dimensions of abortion in global debate and practice. The aim is to elaborate on different value systems and policies in order to empower individuals to make well-informed decisions about abortion guided by moral reflection. The twenty one chapters of this volume are written by distinguished scholars in each of the religious and non-religious schools of thought, offering an exhaustive survey of the differing religious and legal views on abortion within the international community. The contributors present authoritative discussions in favor of or against abortion based on their perspectives and practices. As a result, the content of this book provides a foundational platform for better understanding, meaningful dialogue, and tolerance on a social issue which has divided individuals, philosophers, theologians, policy makers, and legislators within and across societies for centuries.

Human trafficking has become a global concern over the last twenty years, but its violence has terrorized and traumatized its victims and survivors for millennia. This study examines the deep history of human trafficking from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It traces the evolution of trafficking patterns: the growth and decline of trafficking routes, the everchanging relationships between traffickers and authorities, and it examines the underlying causes that lead to vulnerability and thus to exploitation. As the reader will discover, the conditions that lead to human trafficking in the modern world, such as poverty, attitudes of entitlement, corruption, and violence, have a long and storied past. When we understand that past, we can better anticipate human trafficking's future, and then we are better able to fight it.

In the nineteenth century, state policy towards prostitution was primarily shaped by an assessment of its role in spreading venereal diseases. In this book, the author traces normative and organisational efforts of the authorities of the Kingdom of Poland, which sought to maintain control over prostitution and the health of women who offered paid sexual services. The author uses data collected by the police and medical authorities supervising legal and illegal prostitution to provide a demographic and sociological picture of the big-city and small-town market of sexual commerce. It was only in the early twentieth century when prostitution became an important subject of the Polish public debate, a process which is described in the book against the backdrop of the major issues and fears of the epoch.

Strategies or decisions aimed at affecting, in a manner considered to be positive, the genetic heritage of a child in the context of human reproduction are increasingly being accepted in contemporary society. As a result, unnerving similarities between earlier selection ideology so central to the discredited eugenic regimes of the 20th century and those now on offer suggest that a new era of eugenics has dawned. The time is ripe, therefore, for considering and evaluating from an ethical perspective both current and future selection practices. This inter-disciplinary volume blends research from embryology, genetics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history. In so doing, it constructs a thorough picture of the procedures emerging from today's reproductive developments, including a rigorous ethical argumentation concerning the possible advantages and risks related to the new eugenics.

The problem of prostitution, sex work or sex for sale can often be misunderstood, if we do not take into consideration its spatial, temporal and political context. Understanding Sex for Sale aims to understand how prostitution, sex work or sex for sale are delineated, contested and understood in different spaces, places and times; with a particular focus on identifying how the relation between sex and money is interpreted and enacted. Divided into three parts, this interdisciplinary volume offers contributions that discuss ongoing theoretical issues and analytical challenges. Some chapters focus on how prostitution, sex work, or sex for sale have been regulated by the authorities and on the understandings that regulations are built upon. Other chapters investigate the experiences of sex workers and sex buyers, examining how these actors adjust to or resist the categorisation processes, control and stigma they are subjected to. Finally, a third group of chapters discuss contemporary definitional issues produced by various actors tasked with controlling prostitution or offering social services to its participants. Advancing and placing analytical tools at the forefront of the discussion, Understanding Sex for Sale appeals to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers interested in fields such as, sociology, anthropology, criminology, history, human geography and gender studies.

This book examines the intersection and interplay between Progressive-Era rhetoric regarding commercialized vice and the realities of prostitution in early-twentieth-century Philadelphia. Arguing that any study of commercial sexual vice in a historical context is difficult given the paucity of evidence, this work instead focuses on reformers' construction of a cultural view of prostitution, which Adams argues was based more upon their perceptions of the trade than on reality itself. Looking at the urban core of the city, Progressive reformers saw vice, immorality, and decay-but as they frequently had little face-to-face interaction with prostitutes plying their trade, they were forced to construct culturally fueled archetypes to explain what they believed they saw. Ultimately, reformers in Philadelphia were battling against a rhetorical creation of their own design, and any study of anti-vice reform in the early twentieth century tells us more about the relationship between activists and the government than it does about vice itself.

This book explores issues raised by past and present practices of animal enhancement in terms of their means and their goals, clarifies conceptual issues and identifies lessons that can be learned about enhancement practices, as they concern both animals and humans.

"Can I choose to die?" As the number of requests for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide continues to rise, human rights law faces a new conflict: the right to die vs. the right to life... The right to die or, in other words, 'the right to choose the time and manner of one's own death' is a question of personal autonomy and its limits. This book provides a comprehensive understanding of the right to die and sheds light on its possible future under the European Convention on Human Rights. After setting a clear framework by defining the key terminology, the book takes a two-part approach to achieving its aim. The first part focuses on the right to die in practice by examining selected jurisdictions. Switzerland, which is famous for its assisted suicide organizations, and the Netherlands, which was the first country to legalize euthanasia, are examined in detail. Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, and -as an exception to the Convention perspective - Canada are also included. While this examination offers a better understanding of what the right to die looks like in practice, it also provides insights on the slippery slope argument, which serves as a counterweight to personal autonomy, without making a definitive statement on its validity. This part also illustrates the different paths that led or did not lead to the right to die in practice. The second part is an analysis of the European Court of Human Rights case law on the right to die. The Court has made important statements in only very cases, while its caution when approaching such a delicate and controversial topic among its 47 members is understandably emphasized. This analysis of the Court's approach to the balancing of personal autonomy against other interests allows us to take a look back at the practice in more permissive jurisdictions through the lens of the Convention. Taken together, the book's two parts provide valuable lessons for countries that decide to practice assisted dying, which are outlined in the conclusion. In addition, given that a purely legal approach can only offer a partial picture, the book argues that an interdisciplinary approach would be much more favorable in terms of providing the necessary basis for the right to die debate.

Large-scale, interoperable biobanks are an increasingly important asset in today's life science research and, as a result, multiple types of biobanks are being established around the globe with very different financial, organizational and legal set-ups. With interdisciplinary chapters written by lawyers, sociologists, doctors and biobank practitioners, Global Genes, Local Concerns identifies and discusses the most pressing issues in contemporary biobanking. This timely book addresses pressing questions such as: how do national biobanks best contribute to translational research?; What are the opportunities and challenges that current regulations present for translational use of biobanks?; How does inter-biobank coordination and collaboration occur on various levels?; and how could academic and industrial exploitation, ownership and IPR issues be addressed and facilitated? Identifying that biobanks foundational and operational set-ups should be legally and ethically sound, while at the same time reflecting the hopes and concerns of all the involved stakeholders, this book contributes to the continued development of international biobanking by highlighting and analysing the complexities in this important area of research. Academics in the fields of law and ethics, health law and biomedical law, as well as biobank managers and policymakers will find this insightful book a stimulating and engaging read. Contributors include: T. Bossow, T.A. Caulfield, B.J. Clark, A. Hellstadius, J.R. Herrmann, K. Hoyer, M. Jordan, J. Kaye, N.C.H. Kongsholm, K. Liddell, J. Liddicoat, M.J. Madison, T. Minssen, B. Murdoch, W. Nicholson Price II, E. Ortega-Paino, M. Prictor, M.B. Rasmussen, K. Sargsyan, J. Schovsbo, A.M. Tupasela, E. van Zimmeren, F. Vogl, H. Yu, P.K. Yu

Explores the politics and practice of programs that foster moral thinking and civic responsibility?highlighting the acclaimed and controversial Facing History and Ourselves (FHAO) curriculum, which uses study of the Holocaust to help students reflect on issues of racism, violence, intolerance, and prejudice.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 'A gripping, unputdownable masterpiece' Hallie Rubenhold, author of the Baillie Gifford prize-winning The Five 'Ingenious history writing' Mail on Sunday 'Extraordinary' Guardian 'A masterwork' Australian Book Review 'Imaginative and compelling, impassioned and powerful, and deeply, deeply moving' Matt Houlbrook, author of Prince of Tricksters Lydia Harvey was meant to disappear. She was young and working class; she'd walked the streets, worked in brothels, and had no money of her own. In 1910, politicians, pimps, policemen and moral reformers saw her as just one of many 'girls who disappeared'. But when she took the stand to give testimony at the trial of her traffickers, she ensured she'd never be forgotten. Historian Julia Laite traces Lydia's extraordinary life from her home in New Zealand to the streets of Buenos Aires and safe houses of London. She also reveals the lives of international traffickers Antonio Carvelli and his mysterious wife Marie, the policemen who tracked them down, the journalists who stoked the scandal, and Eilidh MacDougall, who made it her life's mission to help women who'd been abused and disbelieved. Together, they tell an immersive story of crime, travel and sexual exploitation, of lives long overlooked and forgotten by history, and of a world transforming into the 20th century.

Contemporary developments in the biosciences associated with new biological possibilities have generated considerable interest among the social sciences, primarily because they challenge our understanding of the relationship between the body, nature, and identity. Regenerative medicine is such a field, and has attracted major commercial, clinical, political and popular interest. It has, however, been subject to very limited social science analysis. This book explores the hype and promise associated with the field, the uneven and often failed commercial exploitation we have seen, and the political, legal and bioethical challenges that developments in the regenerative medicine field produce. It does this at a global level, including analysis of what we are seeing in the US, Europe, China and Australia. The book establishes the meaning, boundaries and likely future development we will see, and asks whether regenerative medicine heralds a new paradigm for medicine itself.

This book explores the idea of the prison boundary, identifying where it is located, which processes and performances help construct and animate it, and who takes part in them. Although the relationship between prison and non-prison has garnered academic interest from various disciplines in the last decade, the cultural performance of the boundary has been largely ignored. This book adds to the field by exploring the complexity of the material and symbolic connections that exist between society and carceral space. Drawing on a range of cultural examples including governmental legislation, penal tourism, prisoner work programmes and art by offenders, Jennifer Turner attends to the everyday, practised manifestations and negotiations of the prison boundary. The book reveals how prisoners actively engage with life outside of prison and how members of the public may cross the boundary to the inside. In doing so, it shows the prison boundary to be a complex patchwork of processes, people and parts. The book will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of criminology, carceral geography and cultural studies.

"Better Left Unsaid" is in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's knife--the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film--this book reveals the varied ways in which censorship, for all its blustery self-righteousness, can actually be good for sex, politics, feminism, and art.
As much as Victorianism is equated with such cultural impulses as repression and prudery, few scholars have explored the Victorian novel as a "censored" commodity--thanks, in large part, to the indirectness and intangibility of England's literary censorship process. This indirection stands in sharp contrast to the explicit, detailed formality of Hollywood's infamous Production Code of 1930. In comparing these two versions of censorship, Nora Gilbert explores the paradoxical effects of prohibitive practices. Rather than being ruined by censorship, Victorian novels and Hays Code films were stirred and stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.

In this study, Stephanie Budin demonstrates that sacred prostitution, the sale of a person s body for sex in which some or all of the money earned was devoted to a deity or a temple, did not exist in the ancient world. Reconsidering the evidence from the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman texts, and the Early Christian authors, Budin shows that the majority of sources that have traditionally been understood as pertaining to sacred prostitution actually have nothing to do with this institution. The few texts that are usually invoked on this subject are, moreover, terribly misunderstood. Furthermore, contrary to many current hypotheses, the creation of the myth of sacred prostitution has nothing to do with notions of accusation or the construction of a decadent, Oriental Other. Instead, the myth has come into being as a result of more than 2,000 years of misinterpretations, false assumptions, and faulty methodology. The study of sacred prostitution is, effectively, a historiographical reckoning."

Biotechnologies already on the horizon will enable us to be smarter, have better memories, be stronger and quicker, have more stamina, live longer, be more resistant to diseases, and enjoy richer emotional lives. To some of us, these prospects are heartening; to others, they are dreadful. In Beyond Humanity a leading philosopher offers a powerful and controversial exploration of urgent ethical issues concerning human enhancement. These raise enduring questions about what it is to be human, about individuality, about our relationship to nature, and about what sort of society we should strive to have. Allen E. Buchanan urges that the debate about enhancement needs to be informed by a proper understanding of evolutionary biology, which has discredited the simplistic conceptions of human nature used by many opponents of enhancement. He argues that there are powerful reasons for us to embark on the enhancement enterprise, and no objections to enhancement that are sufficient to outweigh them.

Based on interviews and participatory research, this book explores Thai women's experiences of the global sex trade. Kaoru Aoyama questions the long-standing feminist debate concerning how these women identify themselves: as sex workers, or sex slaves, while also considering the issues of gender, deviance, and migration.