Reconciling Autonomy and Beneficence in Treatment Decision-Making for Companion Animal Patients

This article explores how the concept of consent to medical treatment applies in the veterinary context, and aims to evaluate normative justifications for owner consent to treatment of animal patients. We trace the evolution of the test for valid consent in human health decision-making, against a backdrop of increased recognition of the importance of patient rights and a gradual judicial espousal of a doctrine of informed consent grounded in a particular understanding of autonomy. We argue that, notwithstanding the adoption of a similar discourse of informed consent in professional veterinary codes, notions of autonomy and informed consent are not easily transferrable to the veterinary medicine context, given inter alia the tripartite relationship between veterinary professional, owner and animal patient. We suggest that a more appropriate, albeit inexact, analogy may be drawn with paediatric practice which is premised on a similarly tripartite relationship and where decisions must be reached in the best interests of the child. However, acknowledging the legal status of animals as property and how consent to veterinary treatment is predicated on the animal owner’s willingness and ability to pay, we propose that the appropriate response is for veterinary professionals generally to accept the client’s choice, provided this is informed. Yet such client autonomy must be limited where animal welfare concerns exist, so that beneficence continues to play an important role in the veterinary context. We suggest that this ‘middle road’ should be reflected in professional veterinary guidance.     

Does a commodity economy enrich the few while ruining the masses? Differentiation among petty commodity producers in guatemala

In this paper I discuss the way in which rural artisans in one municipio of Guatemala organize production and how this organization impedes the differentiation of the artisanal population into owners and workers. I show that categories of owners and workers exist in the municipio, but that these categories do not reproduce themselves as classes; instead, they reproduce each other through the life cycle. In order to explain this phenomenon, I look at internal relations of production, the external environment of large‐scale capital, and the role of migration and the stale in the creation of a permanent Guatemalan proletariat and in the creation of an undifferentiated artisanal economy.     

Gender constructions and gender relations in cotton and chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain

Abstract

While scholars have emphasised the positioning of women as wives and mothers in working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England, their position in the workforce remained significant, even in such disparate industries as cotton and chain-making. In the former, while excluded from spinning, women's employment in powerloom weaving brought them into the heart of the production process, encouraging their participation in workplace struggles and ultimately influencing a transformation in the working-class family in terms of fertility control. In chain-making, while some male workers attempted to position women in the domestic sphere, others were dependent on their labour. Cultural constructions of gender were thus undermined, as the struggle for the minimum wage superseded attempts to remove women from the workforce. In neither industry was equality between men and women realised, while antagonism on the basis of gender persisted. Yet women's identification with their work remained evident while mutuality across gender lines was also apparent, as women themselves played an active role in the shaping of gender relations. Conceptions of gender, as they intersected with particular labour market structures, thus came under duress. Consequently, a more complex picture of gender in working-class life emerges than an analysis which privileges cultural constructions would allow.     

Tasks of the Communist Party of the Philippines in the new situation

Abstract

The setting up of the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship through the declaration of an “unlimited form of martial law” and under the fascist principle that “all power can be given to the military” has brought about a new situation. Through the crude employment of armed coercion, dictator Marcos as commander-in-chief has arrogated unto himself and concentrated in his hands all executive, legislative and judicial powers. All of these powers are used not only against the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army but also against the broad masses of the people and all opposition to the perpetuation of a fascist dictatorship. Upon the setting up of this fascist dictatorship, the objective conditions for a civil war of a national scale have arisen. The entire Filipino people vehemently condemn the U.S.-Marcos dictatorship as anti-national, anti-republican, anti-democratic and decadent and are more determined than ever before to struggle for national democracy and, therefore, for a genuine republic that belongs to them.     

Standard setting with incomplete enforcement revisited

Many regulatory agencies enforcing quality standards across diverse populations of firms lack sufficient resources to promote full compliance. Based on a model with lump-sum noncompliance penalties, W. Kip Viscusi and Richard J. Zeckhauser have advocated that, in most circumstances, an agency with insufficient enforcement resources should choose a less stringent standard than it would choose if it could induce full compliance. I show that the recommendation for regulatory restraint depends upon the shape of the penalty function. A review of inspection and penalty policies suggests that U.S. administrative law encompasses a diversity of variable expected penalty policies. The inspection and penalty policies employed in recent environmental statutes suggest, however, that agencies should compensate for insufficient resources by increasing the stringency of standards.