This chapter argues that AI ethics needs to engage with structures of power and inequalities. It draws lessons learned from critiques AI ethics has received of ineffectiveness and highlights that a key issue is the way mainstream ethics tends to systematically neglect power relations and structures of inequalities. The chapter then argues for a situated ethics. It points to the need to implemen…
Humans have been exposed to a plethora of pathogens (bacteria, viruses) ever since. Infectious diseases are among the leading causes of death worldwide. For example, in 2011, 1.34 million people died of tuberculosis, which is caused by an infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Even more died of an infection by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV; 1.78 million) or lower respiratory tract i…
The decline in birth rates in advanced economies is not a new phenomenon. Between 1880 and 1900 birth rates dropped from 5.5 children per woman to 2.5 children per woman. A further decline from 2.5 to 1.5 or even 1.3 children took much longer - about 80 years. One of the most apparent causes is, however, widely ignored. Beatrice Scheubel tries to fill this gap. According to the so-called Social…
How can narrative theory account for the changing roles of storytelling and storysharing in the public sphere? This essay proposes a new concept of narrative dynamics, one that generates well-constrained descriptions of specific elements, features, or qualities of narratives, as well as programmatic claims concerning their potential uses and effects. Narrative dynamics research is equally inter…
Flight during times of persecution has a long and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century, bishops who fled were cowards or, worse yet, heretics. On the face of it, it meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of the faith and its community. But, by the fourth century, the terms of persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the Roman Empire. Prominent Chri…
Scrutinizing Chinese literary field from the perspective of new censorship theories (Burt, 1994; Holquist, 1994; Post, 1998; Butler, 1998), this chapter describes mechanisms and provides deeper insights into ideological objectives of contemporary Chinese censorship, which can be summed up by notions of maintaining stability (维稳) and social harmony (社会和谐). Within the frame of Hockx…
Our aim in this afterword is to take the position of an informed reader in the social sciences who seeks as we did to discover points of entry into critical failure studies as developed within the Routledge International Handbook of Failure. Because the book ranges across disciplines and subject matter, we find that the introduction provides an ample overview of the chapters and the goals of th…
Education – that is, the development of knowledge, skills, and values – is an important means by which to empower individuals in a society. As both a means towards and an outcome of gaining the capabilities necessary to participate in and contribute to society, education is an essential enabler in many social aspects, such as economic growth, poverty reduction, public health, and sustainabl…
An authoritative account of the life and achievements of George Morley, who was for years a teacher at Christ Church, Oxford, before becoming Dean of the College, and then ultimately the Bishop of Worcester and then Winchester. He was as such an important C17th figure, even beyond the University of Oxford and Dioceses of Worcester and Winchester, and fundamentally entwined nationally in the hei…