Five Words for Assisted Dying

Motivated by Lord Joffe’s Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, but with one eye on any possible future legislation, I consider the justifications that might be offered for limiting assistance in dying to those who are suffering unbearably from terminal illness. I argue that the terminal illness criterion and the unbearable suffering criterion are not morally defensible separately: that a person need be neither terminally ill (or ill at all), nor suffering unbearably (or suffering at all) to have a right to assisted dying. Indeed: I shall suggest that the unbearable suffering criterion undermines the Bill (or any proposal like it) wholesale. On the other hand, the criteria taken together are defensible, and this defence would be built on a concern for the protection of the vulnerable. However, I also claim that this implies that the law might justifiably—and maybe even properly—aim to prevent a person from gaining access to that to which they have a serious moral right. This seems paradoxical, and, towards the end of the paper, I seek to tease apart the paradox.     

Nation-Building Narratives in Viet Nam: A Memoir on B-52s and Their Aftermath

In late 1972 (December 18-30), the Christmas Bombing of Hanoi in the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam by the U.S. Air Force took place. Three weeks later, the American author arrived and witnessed the destruction and how the Vietnamese had already fitted this 'Battle of the B-52s' into their centuries old narrative of resistance to foreign invasion. This article recounts the people and situations that he met on this visit and the ways Vietnamese of all kinds viewed the battle as a great victory for their land, one reinforcing their sense of past, present, and future.     

Plasticity and Post-Colonial Recognition: ‘Owning,Knowing and Being’*

In this article the author traces the limits of the philosophy and politics of recognition as manifest in colonial settler contexts. Forms of property ownership and ways of being, sutured by the racial body, are contained by a restricted economy of owning, knowing and being. Bringing the concept of plasticity to bear on the relationship between the body, property and the colonial, the author illuminates the ways in which practices of ownership that exceed the restricted economy of recognition exhibit a temporal and spatial plasticity in the context of the Palestinian struggles over land in the West Bank.     

“We really don’t want to move,but...”: identity and strategy in the internationalisation of industrial R&;D

In Norway, as in many other high-cost OECD countries in a geographical and cultural periphery, policy-makers seem to have given up attempts at attracting large numbers of foreign R&D investments. Instead, a major focus of innovation policies is to help companies internationalise yet with an aim to maintain or even increase their level of R&D and other innovation activities nationally. Based on case studies of eight Norwegian companies and their motives for and experiences with internationalisation of R&D, this article questions this policy. From the perspective of the companies, many factors explain how, why and where they carry out their R&D activities.      

Putting Gender into the Definition of Rape or Taking it Out?

The main issue in the Masiya judgment was whether the current South African definition of rape—namely non-consensual penetration of a vagina by a penis—should be extended to include anal penetration of both female and male victims. The majority of the Constitutional Court held that anal penetration of female victims should constitute rape, but declined to offer similar protection to male victims. This note argues that this judgment reverts to and reinforces patriarchal stereotypes and dichotomies and that it misunderstands, in a profound way, central concepts such as sex and gender and the gendered nature of rape. It further suggests that, instead of being an aberration, the judgment actually fits into a pattern of conservative judgments about gender and sexuality by the South African Constitutional Court.