The acquisition of conscience and Developmental Systems Theory

Summary Proponents of Developmental Systems Theory (DST) argue that it offers an alternative to current research programs in biology that are built on the historic disjunction between evolutionary and developmental biology. In this paper I illustrate how DST can be used to account for the acquisition of an important component of moral agency, conscience. Susan Oyama, a major proponent of DST, has set moral issues outside the compass of DST. Thus, I examine her reasons for restricting DST to non-moral matters, and argue that they are not decisive. On the positive side, I argue that DST not only is compatible with attempts to describe and explain moral agency but also aids us in understanding it. In particular, I show how DST can provide a fruitful perspective for viewing some significant current findings and theories in moral developmental psychology about the acquisition of conscience. The familiar dichotomies resisted by DST, those between genes and environment, inherited and acquired, innate and learned, and biological and cultural, have also plagued human developmental psychology, including moral development. By bringing a DST perspective to the study of moral development, I illustrate how a DST perspective might offer a promising way to reconceive that phenomenon, and provide some insights into how further work in understanding the development of moral agency might proceed. Thus, I hope to contribute to the current efforts of proponents of DST to integrate developmental and evolutionary considerations.     

Changing household financial strategies: Canadian couples today

In Canada, there has been a marked increase in the relative frequency of dual earner families, and especially of dual career families, compared to breadwinner/homemaker families. Effects of this change on the handling of incomes inside the household are examined here. In this paper, quantitative survey data and qualitative data on strategies of financial management are described and analyzed for co-resident couples in Winnipeg. Findings are presented on control over income, financial possession, and access to household money. These findings are interpreted as evidence of a shift in the form of companionate marriage toward greater equality of economic agency. It is suggested that the most common household financial strategy among Canadian couples today is that of flexible shares.     

Drinking Money and Pulling Women: Mobile Phone Talk,Gender, and Agency in Vanuatu

This paper examines aspects of gendered discourse around mobile phones in Vanuatu, focusing especially on the talk of high-ranking men from the northern Raga-speaking region of Pentecost Island. Rather than being restricted to the technologies or their direct capacities alone, it is argued that the local reception of new technologies such as mobile phones should be contextualised in terms of broader dialogues of change, and should also take into account the visual and discursive expressions of culture that accompanies them, including in the form of marketing. Examination of the ‘impact’ of such new technologies should also include taking account of broader local meanings and messages that become associated with them. As the ethnography presented here suggests, while mobile phones themselves certainly provide a useful tool for furthering positive social change, such as in the empowerment of women, the meanings and narratives that surround them may by marked contrast entail more negative entrenchments of unequal relations of power.     

Preparedness as a counter-memory. School desegregation,social chances and life chances

ABSTRACT

How should we understand the conundrum of love for the segregated school – a system built to keep you in your place? In Gone Home. Race and Roots through Appalachia, Karida L. Brown looks at African American teacher’s work in segregated schools and shows how desegregation could be felt in both gains and losses in the black community. Those teachers prepared their students for a world of integration without freedom. This essay proposes a counter-memory of segregation, a relational agency of teachers past that remains to this day. Former students’ commemoration of teachers, principals, and schools dating from the time of institutionalized racial exclusion works as a symbolic reminder in a still-racist world, representing not only the need to be prepared, but also to stay prepared.     

The sense of agency is action–effect causality perception based on cross-modal grouping

Sense of agency, the experience of controlling external events through one''s actions, stems from contiguity between action- and effect-related signals. Here we show that human observers link their action- and effect-related signals using a computational principle common to cross-modal sensory grouping. We first report that the detection of a delay between tactile and visual stimuli is enhanced when both stimuli are synchronized with separate auditory stimuli (experiment 1). This occurs because the synchronized auditory stimuli hinder the potential grouping between tactile and visual stimuli. We subsequently demonstrate an analogous effect on observers'' key press as an action and a sensory event. This change is associated with a modulation in sense of agency; namely, sense of agency, as evaluated by apparent compressions of action–effect intervals (intentional binding) or subjective causality ratings, is impaired when both participant''s action and its putative visual effect events are synchronized with auditory tones (experiments 2 and 3). Moreover, a similar role of action–effect grouping in determining sense of agency is demonstrated when the additional signal is presented in the modality identical to an effect event (experiment 4). These results are consistent with the view that sense of agency is the result of general processes of causal perception and that cross-modal grouping plays a central role in these processes.     

关于我国医疗质量监管体系的探讨

通过文献研究和典型现场调查,对国内外医疗质量监管体系进行比较研究,进而提出我国医疗质量监管体系的框架：以政府为主导,政府授权的专业监管机构、医疗保险机构和社会监督力量共同参与的多元化的监管体系。     

地市级妇幼保健机构部制改革问题与对策探讨

妇幼机构四大保健部设置,是国家卫生计生委在新妇幼机构规范化建设标准中提出,其目的是解决妇幼保健管理、认识和定位的误区,各妇幼保健机构在落实四大部设置中存在的困难。文章以秦皇岛市妇幼保健院部制改革为例,寻求探索解决地市妇幼保健机构实施四大保健部设置的方法。     

Negotiated Bonds: The Practice of Childfree Pet Parenting

The American Pet Products Association reports a decade-long increase of pet spending, estimated to reach over $69 billion in 2017. In some cases, these owners apply traditional parenting practices while nurturing their pets. Relatedly, a growing number of pet owners identify themselves as “pet parents.” This study is the first known work to investigate how identity plays a role in the growing population of pet parents. While previous research into the pet parenting phenomenon has sought to quantify the demographics, spending, and frequency of this population, less work seeks to understand what pet parenting looks like in practice. Sampling a population of childfree pet parents, the current study utilized semi-structured interviews and identified two common themes in their daily practice of the identity: 1) Despite the use of parent–child terms and strategies, childfree pet parents are acutely aware of the differences between raising children and raising pets, and 2) pet parents ascribe agency to their pet, identifying individual pet wants and needs to fulfill. This may further inform future research on human–animal relationships by establishing a human identity that connects directly to pet practices in the United States, asking us to consider the lived experiences of this growing population and their pets including spending, lifestyle, and attachment concerns.     

Narrating the First Dogs: Canine Agency in the First Contacts with Indigenous Peoples in the Brazilian Amazon

Narratives addressing the presence of European domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) in the encounters between Indians and non-Indians in the conquest of the Central and South American lowlands often portray those animals as terrible and bloodthirsty weapons. From the settlers’ perspective, dogs were formidable instruments in the subjugation of the native peoples they came across at various times over more than 500 years of American colonialization. But the indigenous narratives of these first contacts with dogs may exhibit distinct perspectives that view dogs not only as weapons, instruments, or tools of conquest but rather as agents or actors smoothing contact and establishing peaceful relations between Indians and non-Indians. This article explores the narratives of the first dogs encountered by two native populations in southwestern Brazilian Amazonia—the Puruborá and the Karitiana in the state of Rondônia—to demonstrate the canine agency behind the interethnic meetings in this region, where dogs were largely absent until the arrival of the Europeans and their descendants beginning in the sixteenth century. First contacts between Indians and non-Indians are complex inter-specific events, and may extend beyond only two participants (a group of non-Indians and a native people) to include at least three parties, since the actions and dispositions of dogs play a crucial role in the development of human interactions. Recollections of the first dogs encountered by the Puruborá and Karitiana point precisely toward recognizing the importance of the animal's presence as an actor, far beyond a mere instrument.     

Bedamini Male Initiation and Marriage as Transformation Sequences

ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on how certain social relations among the Bedamini in Papua New Guinea are given their form through ritual at selected moments of the life cycle when relational transformations occur. Ritualised moments in Bedamini male initiation and symbolic bride capture are described as a dynamic agency that changes the existential conditions of persons in non-ritual reality. At those important ritual moments, the direct presence of the agents is required, while relations between them are mediated by acts, objects and moods. The effect intended is the formation, or reformation, of a relational field. Male initiation and marriage are consecutive parts of a sequence of transformations beyond its constituent moments, as initiation functions as a prerequisite to marriage.