Beyond Picturing Culture: A Critique of a Critique

Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. Jay Ruby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 339 pp.     

The Cure and Feeding of Windigos: A Critique

This paper suggests that, contrary to a view recently expressed, the usual treatment of windigo psychosis is not nutritional in nature. When ingestion is involved (which is rare), its sequel (vomiting to expell the windigo heart of ice) is given more curative importance, challenging the view that the northern Algonquians somehow "grasped" the idea of a nutritive cure for windigos. Nor is evidence, at this point, clear on nutritional causes of windigo.     

The Bioethics of Diagnosis: A Biocultural Critique of Certainty

This article argues that traditional models of diagnosis are incomplete in their reliance on a models of certainty that are no longer tenable in a postmodern world. Further, it argues that the current form of diagnosis, as applied to psychiatric and affective disorders, reduces patient agency and reinscribes the effects of biopower.     

The Substance View: A Critique (Part 2)

In my initial critique of the substance view, I raised reductio‐style objections to the substance view's conclusion that the standard human fetus has the same intrinsic value and moral standing as the standard adult human being, among others. In this follow‐up critique, I raise objections to some of the premises invoked in support of this conclusion. I begin by briefly presenting the substance view as well as its defense. (For a more thorough presentation, see the first part of my critique.) I then raise objections to three claims involved in the substance view's defense: the claim that the standard human fetus's intrinsic value and moral standing is a function of its potentiality; the claim that the standard human fetus's intrinsic value and moral standing is a function of its essential properties; and the claim that it is the possession of the basic potential for rational moral agency that best accounts for the wrongness of killing the standard human fetus, among others.     

The Ethical Limits of Domestication: A Critique of Henry Heffner's Arguments

ABSTRACT

Henry E. Heffner argues that “animals bred for research are properly viewed as animals who have successfully invaded the laboratory niche, relying heavily on kin selection to perpetuate their genes.” (1999, p. 134). This view of human–animal interactions is the corner-stone of his defense of animal experimentation in two widely-distributed papers (Heffner 1999, 2001). We argue that Heffner's defense lacks adequate attention to ethical distinctions and principles.     

A Psychology of Ghosts: The Regime of the Self and the Reinvention of Spirits in Indonesia and Beyond

The afterlife is currently being psychologised on a global scale. Based on a comparison of recent transformations in the reality of ghosts in eastern Indonesia and in contemporary Hollywood ghost series, this paper explores the links between spirits and changing conceptions of self in a global world. In Indonesia, ghosts are becoming traumatised, while in the West spirits increasingly struggle with emotional problems. In different ways, the paper suggests, spirits are becoming implicated in the globalisation of an interiorised and psychologised understanding of what it means to be human. As humans are encouraged to think of themselves as psychological beings, human spirits and ghosts are reinvented in a variety of ways—East and West. I argue that, ironically, it is the very hegemony of the powerful discourses and institutions that drive the globalisation of a psychological understanding of the self into ever more contexts and locations that is leading to these new forms of re-enchantment. The new kinds of ghosts that are currently emerging in the folds of global governmentality do so, it would seem, not in spite of the power of governmental reason, but by virtue of it.     

The Harm of Bioethics: A Critique of Singer and Callahan on Obesity

Debate concerning the social impact of obesity has been ongoing since at least the 1980s. Bioethicists, however, have been relatively silent. If obesity is addressed it tends to be in the context of resource allocation or clinical procedures such as bariatric surgery. However, prominent bioethicists Peter Singer and Dan Callahan have recently entered the obesity debate to argue that obesity is not simply a clinical or personal issue but an ethical issue with social and political consequences. This article critically examines two problematic aspects of Singer and Callahan's respective approaches. First, there is an uncritical assumption that individuals are autonomous agents responsible for health‐related effects associated with food choices. In their view, individuals are obese because they choose certain foods or refrain from physical activity. However, this view alone does not justify intervention. Both Singer and Callahan recognize that individuals are free to make foolish choices so long as they do not harm others. It is at this point that the second problematic aspect arises. To interfere legitimately in the liberty of individuals, they invoke the harm principle. I contend, however, that in making this move both Singer and Callahan rely on superficial readings of public health research to amplify the harm caused by obese individuals and ignore pertinent epidemiological research on the social determinants of obesity. I argue that the mobilization of the harm principle and corresponding focus on individual behaviours without careful consideration of the empirical research is itself a form of harm that needs to be taken seriously.     

The Old Kinship Studies Confronts Gay Kinship: A Critique of Kath Weston

Kath Weston's highly-acclaimed analysis of gay kinship is examined in the light of the old kinship studies, especially the notion of focality. The verdict is quite contrary to Weston's, viz. that gay kinship and the idea of gay families are structural derivatives of heterosexual kinship and heterosexual families. Weston's work is shown to be part of a larger collectivist project in kinship theory in which key concerns in semantic theory are ignored.