On Not Making Ourselves the Prey of Others: Jean Hampton's Feminist Contractarianism

This article assesses Jean Hampton’s feminist contractarianism by considering the way in which she draws together the contradictory positions of Hobbes and Kant to produce a test for exploitation in personal relationships. The ways in which this work fits with her other analysis of retribution, gratitude and self-worth are examined. Hampton’s work is evaluated in the context of Carole Pateman’s argument that moral theories distract from the political analysis of who has a voice in relationships. Hampton’s work presumes the social and economic structures that Pateman has done so much to understand. It is useful as a claim for justice in personal relationships, to be considered as part of consciousness-raising or public debate.     

The Contribution of Emotion Regulation to Body Dissatisfaction and Disordered Eating in Early Adolescent Girls

To understand whether difficulties in emotional functioning distinguish between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating, a set of emotion regulation (i.e., negative emotion, emotional awareness, coping), demographic (i.e., age), and physical (i.e., BMI (Body Mass Index)) factors were assessed in 234 early adolescent girls, grades six to eight. Compared to younger girls, older girls had higher BMI and reported increased body dissatisfaction. Age, BMI, and negative affect predicted body dissatisfaction, whereas BMI, body dissatisfaction, and lack of emotional awareness predicted disordered eating. Further, girls who reported high levels of disordered eating reported experiencing increased levels of negative affect, greater difficulties with emotional awareness, and more difficulty coping constructively with negative emotion than girls who reported low levels of disordered eating. Results support the contention that body dissatisfaction, combined with difficulties in emotional awareness are related to disordered eating.Leslie Sim is an assistant professor at the Mayo Medical School, a Senior Associate at the Mayo Clinic, and Clinical Director of the Mayo Inpatient Eating Disorders Program. She received her Ph.D. from University of Maine in Developmental and Clinical Psychology. Her research interests include eating disorders, self-injurious behavior, and emotion regulation skills in children and adolescents.Janice Zeman is an associate professor at the College of William and Mary. She received her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Developmental and Clinical Psychology. Her research interests include children's and adolescents' emotion regulation skills particularly as they relate to maladaptive functioning with other research interests in parental and peer socialization of emotion.     

A Review Of: “Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity”, “The Money Shot: Trash,Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows” and “Talking Trash: The Cultural Politics of Daytime TV Talk Shows”

We predict that the Internet will have little effect on political interest, efficacy, and knowledge. We use American National Election Survey monthly panel survey data from 2008 to 2010 to test the role of the Internet. We exploit the fact that the firm who conducted the survey—Knowledge Networks—gives out Internet access for free to those who have never had the Internet before in staggered waves, allowing us to create a novel control-waitlist research design. This allows us to analyze the quasi-random assignment of the Internet to new users for a period of nine months compared to a group that has not yet been given free Internet access. We find that nine months of Internet usage does not increase political interest, political efficacy, or political knowledge. An additional wave done after two and a half years of access also shows little change. Our findings thereby raise serious doubts about the previous observational findings of the benefits of Internet usage for political interest, efficacy, and knowledge.     

Parentage of Hydatidiform Moles

We were presented with the STR (short tandem repeat) profiles from two separate paternity trios. Each trio consisted of a mother, an alleged father, and products of conception (POC) that contained a hydatidiform mole but no visible fetus. In both cases , antecedent pregnancies had followed alleged sexual assaults. Mole classification and pathogenesis are described in order to explain the analyses and statistical reasoning used in each case. One mole exhibited several loci with two different paternal alleles, indicating it was a dispermic (heterozygous) mole. Maternal decidua contaminated the POC, preventing the identification of paternal obligate alleles (POAs) at some loci. The other mole exhibited only one paternal allele/locus at all loci and no maternal alleles, indicating it was a diandric and diploid (homozygous) mole. In each case, traditional calculations were used to determine paternity indices (PIs) at loci that exhibited one paternal allele/locus. PIs at mole loci with two different paternal alleles/locus were calculated from formulas first used for child chimeras that are always dispermic. Combined paternity indices in both mole cases strongly supported the paternity of each suspect.     

An Ethic of Care: A Valuable Political Tool?

Since Gilligan first interpreted women's moral position as an ethic of care, feminists have wondered what this means for political action. While some view it as a way of introducing forms of understanding and appreciation which are missing in the public sphere, others have worried about the universalisation and romanticization of women's abilities which it appears to contain. This paper argues that interpretations of an ethic of care which are situated in resistance and which conceptualise its abilities as the skills of subordinated groups can hold out visions of group solidarity of benefit to politics.     

Elizabethan ‘Spinning’ and Penelope’s Weaving: The Political, the Common Law and Stately Bodies

This paper examines the public, private and political in the work of Adriana Cavarero by drawing upon the situations of two women whose lives feature in her work: Elizabeth I and Penelope. It includes an analysis of the way in which Cavarero is rethinking Hannah Arendt’s view of ‘the political.’ Cavarero’s exposition of the metaphor of the King’s two bodies in the common law is explored, along with her critique of hylomorphism. Finally, it extends her work in Stately Bodies by considering different images of the power of the body in later political discourses regarding the worker’s body and the effect of the advance of techno-science. This paper was presented at ‘The State He’s In – Political Philosophy and the Figural: A Conference with Adriana Cavarero on her book Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy and the Question of Gender’ at Warwick University, Department of Philosophy in May 2004. I would like to thank Adriana and all the conference participants for their comments. Thanks also to the referees of this paper. I have kept the informal style of presentation from the conference, along with the emphasis upon theoretical, rather than historical, analysis.