Categories Of Human Beings Research Articles

Honorary whiteness: The psychology of racial cognitive illusion

Experiences whether personal or collective, sometimes evoke a psychological satisfaction of being superior to others. This could be due to inappropriate perception or some prejudice. When misperception takes a systematic and permanent form, it becomes an illusion. Several scientific works imply possible racial cognitive illusions. In this work, I treat honorary whiteness as a diminutive way of referring to some categories of human beings. Honorary whiteness is an ideology based on the belief of being superior to others on the basis of colour. It is the practice of acting white or like European in order to gain some benefits or for some interests. This attitude pervades the political, economic, legal and social life of human beings. Hence, this research initiates the urgency to revisit the discourse on racial superiority and how it informs some cognitive misrepresentations of human biological givens. I examine the above theme with the aim of explaining honorary whiteness, racial cognitive illusion and finally, explore the psychological perspectives in view of proffering innovative solutions on racial cognitive illusion.

Servitude for a time: From the permanent slavery of the unfree to the slavery pro tempore of the free

I consider the forms of control, which went “untreated” by 1970s “revisionist” penality literature (in other words, I wonder whether the categories of human beings who are (mostly) not found in prisons have something in common). I take as starting point that the “temporary slavery” which is the punishment of imprisonment, emerged historically as related to the “free” condition of those punished. Forms of control instead for the “unfree” are not to be included in “(penal) imprisonment” and could be understood as “domestic” forms of control expressed, originally, in the idea of “Pater Familias.” This form of control is not punishment but is a permanent condition deemed appropriate for given categories of human beings, such as “children,” “women,” “slaves,” and what I call “the mad and other non-persons.” I first examine how imprisonment (as punishment) emerged, after the end of servitude in Europe, as a sort of “memory of slavery,” to enforce a principle of subordination dedicated to “the free.” Then, I look at the mechanisms of social control for those who are not socially perceived as “free.” Finally, I attempt at sketching the process of expansion of mechanisms of subordination—for the free and the unfree—beyond European borders.

Patterns of Peaceful Cooperation in Medieval Muslim Medina and Its Relevance to the Present

The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) managed to reconcile multi-tribal, multi-religious society of Medina by treating people with dignity and honour. He created a society without racism and racial superiority; it brought various faiths and flavors together and helped to remove barriers of tribal biases. The Prophet used nonviolent methods to resist those who persecuted him and considered peacemaking to be more effective than aggression and violence. Despite some clashes that took place between Muslims and Jews during domestic security arrangements in Medina, the Prophet (PBUH) welcomed the increasing racial and ethnic diversity and engaged in linguistic and cultural interactions. People of all colors felt safer under Muslim rule because there was no racism against blacks and no concept of white and Arab supremacy, Islamic philosophy has only two categories of human beings (believers and unbelievers). Dialogue begins when people meet each other and depends upon mutual understanding that is why the Prophet (PBUH) had frequent social interactions with people of different backgrounds and to improve the quality of relationships within local community, the Prophet (PBUH) explored different tools. This paper discusses the Prophet's (PBUH) attitude towards other communities and the nature of religious accommodation and coexistence.

Re-envisioning personhood from the perspective of Japanese philosophy: Watsuji Tetsuro's Aidagara-based ethics

This paper re-envisions the personhood of severely disabled children, who are often excluded from the category of human beings in the academic literature due to their perceived lack of mental faculties, based on Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro’s concept of human beings (ningen). It begins with Carl Elliott’s claim that personhood should be used as a thick ethical concept. This concept has two features. First, it represents a fusion of fact (describing someone as a person) and value (taking an ethical attitude toward a person). Second, it is embedded in our rich and culturally specific forms of life. This paper suggests that Watsuji’s concept of ningen also has these features. Watsuji criticizes how Western ethicists take individual consciousness or will as their starting point for determining personhood. Instead, he argues that neither a subject nor a community exists as an entity in itself, but that the relationality between them (aidagara) is essential to their identity and that our communication is embedded within rich and social contexts. Through his etymological study of Japanese word ari, Watsuji points out that in making statements, one both discloses the world and becomes aware of the attitude one should take toward other beings. Some commentators, such as Sakabe Megumi, have suggested that such self-awareness entails the transformation of our sense of relationality. This paper leverages Watsuji’s concept of ningen to re-envision the relationship between caregivers and severely disabled children as relationality-based and therefore open to complex and rich communication.

LIFE IMPRISONMENT AND HUMAN DIGNITY

Recognition of human dignity and respect for fundamental human rights cannot be restricted to a single category of human beings. The idea that anyone could be considered non-persona, to whom an “Enemy criminal law” may be applied, is incompatible with an ultima ratio liberal notion of penal law. The humanisation of criminal law is manifested in the growing number of contemporary societies that have abolished or limited the death penalty. Nevertheless, life or long-term imprisonment sentences still prevail, and are on the rise, despite lacking theoretical or philosophical justification in the laws that prescribe them. In this article we will attempt to answer various questions regarding a possible justification for life imprisonment. Different theories will be examined regarding the goals of sentencing in order to determine, on discussing each theory, whether it is possible to justify life imprisonment or other long-term incarceration. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21017/Rev.Repub.2021.v30.a103

Beyond a Living Apart Together Relationship: A Children’s Rights Perspective on Child Well-being

At first sight, child well-being and international children’s rights law have much in common. Specifically, they both focus on a category of human beings defined by age (children), and both are concerned about ‘child flourishing’. Surprisingly perhaps, the word well-being is rarely used in children’s rights work, and it is not very prominent in the leading human rights instrument on children’s rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In this paper, I pursue two objectives. First, I want to find out how the notion of child well-being has been constructed in international children’s rights and which proxies in the latter can help to imbue the concept with meaning. Second, I explore whether and how the fields of children’s rights law and child well-being may engage in a fruitful dialogue. I challenge the view that children’s rights are unable to offer more than a minimalistic checklist for child well-being, identify learning points for children’s rights, and propose speaking points for a sustained dialogue between the two fields.

Giovani a bassa generatività: la transizione alla vita adulta tra crisi, paura e progettualità

The author investigates the universe of the young people in the Italian context, starting from the political impediments which affect the job placement and, consequently, delay the acquisition of economic independence and housing autonomy, and considering the cultural conditions of a society that "holds" children in their maternal houses and inhibits their transition to adult life and the formation of their own family. The portrait of a community with a low birth rate emerges as an unequivocal sign of a personal and social crisis. But still in young people survives and persists a hidden desire for family which is a yearning for planning as an ontological category of human beings. Therefore, the hope and commitment at the same time are the definition of adult education pathways, focused on parenting, birth and care education.

Flooding disaster: The effect on the adolescents at Angoda Rahula College, Sri Lanka

Abstract Different categories of human beings have been affected due to a range of disasters in Sri Lanka. The effects of such disasters vary according to these categories, in particular, the effect on adolescents’ reports as vital. However, there is a dearth of research with regard to this in Sri Lanka. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the flood disaster at Rahula College in May 2016 on adolescents in terms of physical, educational, economical and interpersonal relations and mental aspects. The randomly selected sample considered of flood disaster affected students of grade 10-11; 25 males and 25 females. The quantitative data was collected using a survey questionnaire. The survey data was triangulated with semi- structured interviews with teachers (10) and students (6) and analyzed using SPSS. Fact findings revealed that the effect in terms of physical, mental, educational, economical and interpersonal relations on both girls and boys was at considerable amount. The majority have been affected by post trauma stress disorder (PTSD), whilst the effect of social problems was high among females than males. The support received from friends, school teachers, social workers and Media recorded as powerful in resolving most of the problems encountered by adolescents due to flood disaster. This study is offered insights of professional counselors, about how to design counseling programs on coping skills for disaster affected adolescents.

L’ordre libertaire: la vie philosophique d’Albert Camus by Michel Onfray

Rêveries, a confusion that yields a more modern conception of the soul. In the sixth chapter, O’Neal addresses the socio-cultural implications of Rousseau’s use of confusion . In the Lettre à d’Alembert, Rousseau objects to establishing a theater in Geneva because he fears the dangerous confusion it would engender, yet he rescues theatricality in his proposed public festivals. Here O’Neal notes a salubrious intermingling of the sexes, social classes, and actors/spectators. Chapter seven explores gender confusion in three different but related contexts. First, O’Neal examines such blurring in Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloïse, manifest in Saint-Preux’s transgendered behavior (for example, Saint-Preux’s ability to enter spaces typically reserved for women and to partake of a diet normally associated with women). O’Neal subsequently turns to Diderot’s deconstruction (and ultimate fusion) of traditional gender categories in L’éloge de Richardson, Le rêve de d’Alembert, and Le neveu de Rameau. Finally, O’Neal considers what the cases of Mlle Rosette (Pierre-Aymond Dumoret) and the chevalier d’Éon reveal about changing attitudes toward sexuality and gender in the eighteenth century. In chapter eight, O’Neal examines how Philippe Pinel replaces a rigid typology of mental illness with one that clouds distinctions between sanity and insanity. O’Neal integrates this blurring into a general confusion of“all categories of human beings into the one allembracing category of humanity” (187). The final chapter is devoted to Sade’s Justine, the most difficult piece of the puzzle. Yet O’Neal fits Sade into the arc of the study by showing how his disruption of traditional categories (moral, gender, etc.) reinforces a view of existence not unlike Diderot’s,a view based on contingency and mutability rather than certitude and fixity. In closing with Sade, O’Neal shows how even the most vexing of Enlightenment figures contributes to a progressive poetics of confusion. University of Oklahoma Michael Winston Onfray, Michel. L’ordre libertaire: la vie philosophique d’Albert Camus. Paris: Flammarion, 2012. ISBN 978-2-0812-6441-0. Pp. 599. 22,50 a. The rise and fall of an artistic or intellectual reputation probably has more to do with the cultural climate at the time of the evaluation than with the merits of an author’s writings. Thus Sartre’s intransigent pro-Soviet, anti-American stance was a perfect fit for the Cold War era where simplistic dualities were the order of the day. In such a climate the more nuanced positions of an Albert Camus were readily dismissed as indecisiveness, and Camus’s choice during the Algerian War of his mother over the truth derided as a puerile utterance of a would-be philosopher. These days, however, opinions have shifted. Camus’s stock is on the rise while Sartre’s has apparently been entrusted to Lehman Brothers. L’ordre libertaire presents itself as a philosophical biography of Camus and to a great extent it is just that, but what is most striking is the impassioned defense of Camus as an individual and a philosopher, and the disparagement of Sartre as a man and a thinker. Thus one aspect of this study provides 234 FRENCH REVIEW 87.1 Reviews 235 a fine contribution to the rehabilitation of Camus’s reputation, and the other slides into an extended series of dichotomies worthy of the Cold War mentality that Onfray so decries. Toward the end of this study Onfray quotes Camus’s desire: “être lu avec attention” (521), and one explanation for the excellent aspects of L’ordre libertaire is that Onfray has done just that. He contends, with considerable justification, that Camus’s writings were largely ignored by his critics. Onfray has seemly read everything Camus ever wrote or at least published, and this leads to fresh approaches to the man’s thinking. Perhaps Onfray’s greatest contributions are his pages on L’homme révolté, a work much derided in French intellectual circles when it first appeared. Ofray reads this text as an extensive meditation on the postwar situation, and on the proclivity to allow ideological purity to override clear thinking and even common sense. He is equally strong on La peste...

Terrorism and violence: another violence is possible?

This article sets out to explore whether the category of ‘terrorism’ improves or impedes our intellectual understanding of violence. By addressing key concepts at the heart of common definitions of terrorism, the article asks these questions: What does the category of ‘terrorism’ mean for that violence that is, by definition, left beyond the scope of terrorism studies? What assumptions about violence per se are exposed by definitions of terrorism? It is argued, first, that definitions of terrorism that place the targeting of civilians as the central defining feature of the term rest on the assumption of distinct ethical categories of human beings, categories that this article argues do not reflect the human condition in war. Second, it is argued that definitions of terrorism that have ‘intent’ as the central defining feature restate and reinforce the principle of the doctrine of double effect. Third, those definitions that label terrorism as a communicative form of violence – violence intended to send a message – expose and perpetuate a lack of understanding of what violence is and does. Finally, the treatment of terrorism as a distinctly ‘bad’ form of violence suggests that another category of violence exists – one that does not function as terrorism does: ‘good’ violence. The category of terrorism sustains the notion that political violence is controllable and can be made fit for purpose. In conclusion, the article argues that the concept of terrorism serves to sustain the taken-for-granted notion that violence works – that another violence, one that does not function as terrorism does – is possible.

Challenging some myths about the right to life at the end of life. 2: Reinstating the ethically excluded

This article continues the rejection of certain myths about the right to life at the end of life commenced in an article in the previous issue of the journal Clinical Ethics. It focuses upon ethical arguments that seek to exclude two categories of human beings from the usual protection of human life: those described as ‘non-persons’ and those ‘designated for death’. The article argues that, while the protection offered to life by means of the right to life is far from absolute, the right remains applicable to all human beings, irrespective of their life expectancy or mental capacity.

Research with vulnerable human beings

Some categories of human beings are particularly vulnerable vis-à-vis medical research. Vulnerability could be considered as the liability to be harmed, exploited, deceived, cheated, wronged, or otherwise unfairly treated, in roughly that descending order of importance. Vulnerable human beings obviously include the incompetent (minors and mentally handicapped adults), the desperately poor, ill or ignorant, prisoners, refugees, pregnant women, subordinates in highly authoritarian systems, etc. Vulnerability in itself does not imply that no research whatsoever should be carried out with such categories of humans but only that it should be carried out only under very special conditions. In this paper I treat of vulnerability in research of particularly developing world populations; of the types of research which exploit such vulnerability, and of why and how research subjects should be protected. The aim in this paper is to stimulate practical reflection on the possible vulnerabilities of potential research subjects that researchers or investigators need to avoid exploiting rather than on an adequate theoretical treatment of the issue.

Religion, Human Rights and International Law: A Critical Examination of Islamic State Practices (review)

Reviewed by: Religion, Human Rights and International Law: A Critical Examination of Islamic State Practices Ann Elizabeth Mayer (bio) Religion, Human Rights and International Law: A Critical Examination of Islamic State Practices (Javaid Rehman & Susan C. Breau eds., Martinus Nijhoff 2007) 569 pages, ISBN 9789004158269. Contained in this multi-authored collection are many valuable case studies; curiously, they are largely unrelated to the “Islamic State Practices” mentioned in the subtitle. Among other topics, the chapters touch on various dimensions of the predicaments of Muslim minorities in Western countries, controversies over requirements of freedom of religion, human rights problems in Pakistan, asylum policy, and India’s caste system. Often religion recedes into the background as sociological and political issues come to the fore. Not only do the subjects vary widely, but the quality also varies; the many chapters offering illuminating scholarship by experts are set off against some weaker chapters. The case studies on Muslim minorities in the West are generally excellent. A trenchant critique of Western systems of protecting religious freedom is offered by Alice Diver and John Thompson. They show how these systems accommodate subtle forms of discrimination, such as restrictions on locations and delays in permits for constructing places of worship for Muslims and others outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. They characterize these practices as indirect forms of persecution, ones that may be facially neutral but mask Western prejudices. Such restrictions tend to evade scrutiny because they are not covered in international human rights instruments, which do not unconditionally protect the right to worship in public. Showing empathy for the grievances of Muslim minorities, the chapter concludes that denial of sacred space to minorities amounts to a counterproductive denial of identity rights and equal citizenship. Victoria Montgomery’s chapter has the witty title “Are You a Protestant or a Catholic Muslim? The Path of Muslim Integration into Northern Ireland.” This reflects a sharply bifurcated community where one is expected to belong either to the Protestant majority or to the large Catholic minority, with only 1 percent of the population belonging to the “other” category. In a region that is dominated by tensions between Protestants and Catholics, Muslims are little more than a footnote. Local attitudes in this relatively remote region have been shaped by processes of global interconnectedness. Non-Muslims embrace negative stereotypes about Muslims being linked to terrorism while, at the same time, Muslims are concerned about the sufferings that Western military interventions have inflicted on their coreligionists in countries like Iraq. Montgomery presents a careful assessment of potential ways of dealing with minority issues, thoughtfully exploring the pros and cons offered by models of assimilationism, liberal integration, and multiculturalism, none of which guarantee ideal results. Meanwhile, she posits that the absence of an inclusive Northern Ireland identity will lead to perpetuating the perception that local Muslims are foreigners. Alexandra Xanthaki probes how the United Kingdom deals with its Muslim [End Page 521] minority, which feels stigmatized by Islamophobia. Her background concern is arriving at policies that minimize the alienation that feeds extremist currents in Muslim communities. Xanthaki carefully explores the hotly contested dimensions of pluralism and multiculturalism, proposing “a dialog process that includes different elements of the society, a process where groups are conceived as equal partners rather than mere negotiators or imitators of the dominant groups.”1 According to her, in the interests of progress, minorities must endorse dialogue and acknowledge that their own culture will evolve along with the national culture. Ben Chigara dissects issues that are raised as Western states seek to maximize their discretion in dealing with individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism. As Chigara sees it, in this context, Muslims have been effectively relegated to the status of sub-humans who are now precluded from claiming full human rights. Chigara argues passionately against the proposition that any category of human beings may be denied the full protections of international human rights law in the interests of protecting national security. According to Chigara, one of the ominous aspects of the “war on terror” is that it has categorized human rights as the terrorist’s refuge. He warns of dangerous constitutional and cultural trends in the West that could lead to states becoming...

Social types and personas: Typologies of persons on the web and designing for predictable behaviors

AbstractWhether we call them “users,” “participants,” or just “actors,” a focus of information science research and practice is invariably human beings. While user studies have grown in scope and volume since the early ARIST chapters in the 1960s, few researchers have approached study populaces from the perspective of social types. A concept with a long and somewhat sordid history in the social sciences, particularly sociology, as Almog (1998) explains referencing the works of Parker, Simmel, Goffman, Klapp, Becker, and other luminaries, social types in essence refer to:A sociological summary of the typical characteristics of a particular group or of a category of human beings usually recognized and typed by the public and often granted a nickname. This group or category may be a secondary group, a community, a profession, a subculture, a status group, a class or a generation unit that is characterized by its look (physical, fashionable or both), life style and philosophy, pattern of interaction (particularly linguistic), attitudes and certain psychological traits.

Philosophy and Racial Identity

In the 1993 film, Map of the Human Heart, an Inuit man asks a white engineer who has come to northern Canada to map the region, Why are you making maps? Without hesitating, the white man responds They will be very accurate. Map-making and race-making have a strong historical as well as conceptual relationship. The ordering and labeling of terrain, the classifying of types, and the typologies of natural races emerged simultaneously in what Foucault called the Classical episteme. Arguing via Foucault, both Cornell West and David Theo Goldberg have attempted genealogies of modern racism-meaning here not contemporary racism so much as the racism of modernism genealogies that link the Western fetishistic practices of classification, the forming of tables, and the consequent primacy of the visible with the creation of metaphysical and moral hierarchies between racialized categories of human beings.1 Given this genesis, the concept of race and of racial difference emerges as that which is visible, classifiable, and morally salient. West argues that the application of history techniques to the study of the human species yields a comparative analysis based on visible, especially physical, characteristics. . . [which] permit one to discern identity and difference, equality and inequality, beauty and ugliness among animals and human bodies.2 Goldberg argues that the universal sameness that was so important for the Liberal self required a careful containment and taxonomy of difference. Where rights require sameness, difference must be either trivialized or contained in the Other across a firm and clearly visible border. The result of these classification practices juxtaposed with liberal ideology is a paradox wherein Race is irrelevant, but all is race.3 Visible difference is the route to classification and therefore knowledge, and yet visible difference threatens the security of claims to know by challenging universal applicability and invoking the spectre of relativism. Classification systems can contain this threat and impede relativism by enclosing the entirety of difference within a taxonomy organized by a single logic. In this way the continuing hegemony of liberal discourse is ensured. But the resultant juxtaposition between universalist legitimation narratives that deny or trivialize difference and careful delineations of supposedly morally relevant phenotypic human difference is one of the greatest antinomies of modern discourse. We have finally come to recognize and acknowledge this paradox, but we have not yet solved or moved beyond it. Today the naturalistic classification systems that would reify human variability into moral categories, the Eurocentric teleologies that would excuse if not justify colonialism, and the phallogocentric binaries that would obscure relations of domination by presenting them as separate spheres, have been largely exposed as specious. And the realm of the visible, or what is taken as self-evidently visible (which is how the ideology of racism naturalizes racial designation), is recognized as the product of a specific form of perceptual practice, rather than the result of human sight. Thus Foucault claims that: the object [of discourse] does not await in limbo the order that will free it and enable it to become embodied in a visible and prolix objectivity; it does not preexist itself, held back by some obstacle at the first edges of light. It exists under the positive conditions of a complex group of relations.4 His central thesis in The Birth of the Clinic is that the gaze, though hailed as pure and preconceptual, can only function successfully when connected to a system of understanding which dictates its use and interprets its results. What defines the act of medical knowledge in its concrete form is not . . . the encounter between doctor and patient, nor is it the confrontation between a body of knowledge and a perception; it is the systematic intersection of two series of information. …

The Cockfight in Andalusia, Spain: Images of the Truly Male

The analysis of events such as sports, hunting for pleasure, games, circuses and celebrations which involve competition between animals, between humans and animals or petformances with animals reveals much about how people view relations between the natural and cultural worlds, between wild and tame or domesticated, the similarities and differences between humans and animals and between different categories of human beings (for example gender differences). The cockfight, a popularpast-time in Andalusia (Spain), is one such event. It is a totally male-orientated event and is examined here in terms ofthe images derived from it and imposed on it of the qualities expected of the truly male in this culture.

The Servant Class in a Developing Country: Ecuador

Emphasis today is on the political and economic factors in social change in undeveloped countries. This approach, combined with the wholehearted acceptance of the role of the middle class as a psychological leavening agent in such countries, tends to obscure the presence of other factors. Especially are there other categories of human beings who are responding to the forces put into play by world changes and by the increasing pressures exerted upon the social systems of which they are a part. Recently, some of these groups have been given more notice, such as students, intellectuals, labor union members, etc. Another such important category is the servant class which for the most part has been ignored and yet which appears significant, even though not as a political group, in terms of both the effects it has on changes being attempted in social organizations and on the personality development of nationals in such countries.