Material Feminism and Epigenetics: A ‘Critical Window’ for Engagement?

ABSTRACT

While there is increasing interest in gender and sex issues in the medical field, most research in medicine can still be defined as operating with a binary of sex/gender. Epigenetics presents a marked challenge to such binaries as it operates across many tightly held boundaries, blurring the lines between the biological and social. Feminist scholars are paying attention to this new field and reconsidering relationships between the politics of matter, biologies and the social in new ways. The aim of this article is to investigate how theoretical insights from material feminism might enhance epigenetic research. Rather than repeat important critical arguments that point to the dangers of reductionism and biological essentialism, we make a case for examining the ways that material feminism can engage with epigenetic research by broadening ideas of reproduction (beyond in-utero effects) to relational and political views of gender and sex within a materialist framework. In conclusion, we suggest that a focus on material-discursive co-formations has the potential to contribute to an established body of feminist theory and science work; increasing awareness of the intra-action of gender and sex in relation to exposures, and increasing political leverage in supporting health-enhancing environments.     

Raymond Williams,Romanticism and Nature

This article discusses the important British social, literary and cultural critic, Raymond Williams, in his relation to Romanticism, seen as a broad movement of protest expressed in many cultural fields against the conditions of life in capitalist modernity. After exploring the Romantic dimension of Williams’s major works, including Culture and Society [Williams, Raymond. 1958. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Harper & Row], The Country and the City [Williams, Raymond. 1973. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press] and several works of the 1980s, the article focuses on his trajectory from the ecological point of view, in terms of his attempts to deal with cultural attitudes towards Nature on the one hand and threats to the environment on the other.     

Credible commitment without independent regulatory agent: Evidence from the Security Council's United Nations Compensation Commission

Credible commitment problems arise whenever decisions made according to short‐term incentives undermine long‐term policy goals. While political actors can credibly commit themselves to their long‐term policy goals by delegating decisions to independent regulatory agencies, the member states of international institutions rarely sacrifice control over regulatory decisions. Against the backdrop of the United Nations Compensation Commission established by the Security Council to settle claims on damage from the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, we present an institutional arrangement that promises to credibly commit member states to their previously defined interests without excluding them from the decision process. It separates the stages of rulemaking and rule application, and is reinforced by conditional agenda‐setting of an advisory body. We probe the theoretical claim with evidence from a unique data set that shows that the Commission settled compensation claims in a remarkably consistent way. The arrangement provides a blueprint for comparable regulatory tasks in many areas of international, European, or domestic politics, in which independent regulation is not feasible.     

Outsourcing,bureaucratic personnel quality and citizen satisfaction with public services

This article investigates the relationships between outsourcing, bureaucratic personnel quality (BPQ) and citizen satisfaction with public services. Our baseline expectation is of a negative association between outsourcing and service quality; however, we argue that this tendency can be counteracted when the government buyer has a more competent and motivated personnel, not only in managerial positions, but across the board. Better‐educated and paid public employees are likely to have an important moderating effect on service quality through their input into quality specifications, their ability to recognize the provider's consummate or perfunctory behaviour, and their willingness to act on the observed performance. Using data from a cross‐section of Sweden's municipalities, our analysis reveals a robust association between higher levels of outsourcing and lower levels of citizen satisfaction, but the data do not provide unambiguous support for the hypothesis that the strength of this association diminishes when BPQ is higher.     

Empathy in a Citizen Deliberation Experiment

Despite increased scholarly attention, there is still limited knowledge on how empathy works in democratic deliberation. This article examines the role of empathy in citizen deliberation with the help of a deliberative experiment on immigration. First, a random sample of citizens was surveyed regarding their opinions on immigration. Based on their opinions, they were then divided into a permissive or a non‐permissive enclave, and randomly assigned into like‐minded or mixed‐opinion groups for deliberation. After deliberation, they were surveyed anew. The study analyzes: (a) empathy differences between permissive and non‐permissive participants; (b) changes in outgroup empathy toward immigrants as a result of deliberation; and (c) differences in prosocial behavior (i.e., donating to charity). The results show that the permissive respondents had more empathy, especially toward immigrants, than the non‐permissive respondents. Among participants, outgroup empathy increased during deliberation. Regarding prosocial behavior, the permissive participants donated more often to charity at the end of the experiment.     

The Plurality of Peter Berger's “Two Pluralisms” in Germany

The aim of this paper is to unfold Peter L. Berger’s new paradigm of the “Two Pluralisms” for the German context, concretizing and localizing the management of religious plurality with regard to central societal fields. It is argued that, besides the bird’s-eye view of the global and national developments, more differentiated analyses of smaller-scale units (like federal states, municipalities, and cities) are needed which zoom into the concrete local negotiation processes, opening them up with regard to their topics, actor constellations, dynamics, and effects. While Berger builds up his new paradigm in the connection of the social macro-level and the individual micro-level, this paper deals primarily with the meso-level and the consequences of the “Two Pluralisms” in the institutional contexts of politics/law, education, symbolic representation, and communication that are currently undergoing a significant change through secularization and religious pluralization while, however, have so far hardly been examined with regard to their dynamics and the intended integrative effects.     

Was National Socialism Anti-Sex? On Left-Wing Fantasies and Sex as the Dark Matter of Politics

Drawing on an extensive amount of work by other researchers, as well as some literary sources from the time, Göran Adamson discusses the widespread view that Nazism was anti-sex. Indeed, during Nazi rule homosexuality and street prostitution were persecuted, and Jews and “degenerates” were prevented from having sex (not merely by law, but by elimination). However, reported circumstances such as cheap access to condoms, a high number of pregnancies during party rallies, and quasi-religious cultivation of “the Germanic sexual instinct” would suggest that matters may have been much less restrictive for the majority of Germans. The idea of an overall Nazi anti-sex attitude may well have been constructed by intellectuals from the Freudian Left/Frankfurt School, especially their theories of an intimate connection between sexual repression and authoritarianism. Such views gained widespread popularity with the 68′ generation, and they were an essential reason why sexuality came to be considered the cure for all social evils. This overestimation of the significance of sexual liberation, and recent conservative reactions to it, constitute an important part of today’s political landscape.     

Age estimation in small children: reference values based on counts of deciduous teeth in Finns

The eruption of teeth in the mouth is suitable for age estimations during the period when teeth are actively emerging, in the deciduous dentition phase approximately from the age of 6 months to 2.5 years. Estimations of age can be performed simply by counting the number of teeth in the mouth. Reliability of the estimates depends on the reference data available and each population group should preferably have its own standards. In the present study timing of eruption of successive deciduous teeth was studied longitudinally in 129 Finns. The dates of clinical eruption of deciduous teeth were recorded by mothers and checked by dentists. In 40 of the 129 children emergence ages of at the most the four last teeth were based only on semiannual registrations performed by dentists. The main purpose was to provide normal timetables of tooth eruption in small children in forms that are practical in estimations of dental age. No sexual dimorphism existed in the timing of clinical eruption of successive deciduous teeth. The mean age corresponding to the presence of one tooth in the mouth was 7.1 months (S.D.=1.78) and that corresponding to tooth count 19 was 27.8 months (S.D.=3.99). If the chronological age is known, the presented distributions and means with variations make it possible to estimate the degree of advancement or delay in a child’s dental development. If the age of the child is not known, the mean and median ages can be used for estimations of chronological age. However, estimations of age should not be based only on tooth counts because of marked variation also within this homogeneous group.     

The EU's Role in the Fight Against Racism and Xenophobia: Evaluation and Prospects After Amsterdam and Tampere

The Treaty of Amsterdam has strengthened thepossibility of the European Union (EU) adoptingmeasures in the fight against racism and xenophobia.These can be based both on the extendednon-discrimination clause of Article 13 TEC and newArticle 29 TEU relating to common action in thecontext of the area of freedom security and justice.So far EU action has concentrated on public awarenessmeasures, increasing the exchange and the analysis ofinformation on racism and xenophobia, and improvingjudicial cooperation and cross-border training in thisarea. The scope of EU action continues to be limited,however, because of the absence of a `mainstreamingclause', very limited funding and structural deficitsin the decision-making system. Both the new AmsterdamTreaty provisions and the renewed emphasis placed onthe fight against racism and xenophobia by the TampereEuropean Council of October 1999 should be used forextending the EU's role in this area which is ofcrucial importance to its credibility as a politicalcommunity.