Moral Attacks Research Articles

Posthumanist education: the limits of the freirean approach and the rise of object-oriented pedagogy

This essay aims to explore the impact of Object-Oriented Ontology (O.O.O) within the realm of pedagogy, critically examining its departure from humanistic and traditional paradigms. Simultaneously, it presents an alternative perspective on education that decenters the human as an inevitable ground. In a contrasting move, attention is directed towards Bruno Latour and Graham Harman, elucidating key facets of their ideas. This shift also signifies a departure from the conventional realm of “critical pedagogy”, as championed by Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire. However, it is crucial to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions and significance of Freire’s work. This essay adopts a left-wing stance, with no intention of launching moral attacks on Paulo Freire, as is sometimes witnessed when reactionaries and conservatives enter the academic arena. Criticisms within these pages focus on the content of Freire’s writings, tracing the trajectory from his seminal work, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, published in 1968, to his final piece, “Pedagogy of Autonomy” written in 1996. The aim is not to exhaust all arguments put forth by Freire but to engage with select ideas, since his oeuvre is extremely complex and full of different layers. It is essential to clarify that the critique presented here does not target the character of Paulo Freire but rather delves into some of the theoretical references behind the scenes, particularly the anthropocentrism associated with his ideas. Consequently, this essay emerges as an interdisciplinary endeavor, a conjunction between philosophy and social theory. What doors will this discussion open? What new field of possibilities awaits us? I invite you to dive into this debate, exploring the potential for an Object-Oriented Pedagogy (O.O.P) on the horizon.

Moral Shock and Trans ‘Worlds’ of Sense

Abstract This paper has two aims: to explore the affective dimensions of moral shock and the way it relates to normative marginalization of those furthest from dominant society and also, more specifically, to articulate the trans experience of constantly being under moral attack because the dominant ‘world’ normatively defines trans individuals out of existence. Toward these ends, I build on Katie Stockdale's recent work on moral shock, arguing that moral shock needs to be contextualized to ‘worlds’ of sense to understand how marginalized people affectively experience shocking events. My focus is the trans experience of moral shock due to the way trans people are positioned outside of dominant society, which creates the conditions to experience cyclical, chronic shock. These affective conditions point to a collective responsibility to ease the affective stress that the most marginalized experience.

Developing an Ad Hominem typology for classifying climate misinformation

ABSTRACT Misinformation produced by various interest groups is a significant contributing factor to public confusion about climate policy. Character assassination against climate scientists and policymakers is the most common type of misinformation strategy used by contrarians in climate debates (Coan, T. G., Boussalis, C., Cook, J., & Nanko, M. O. (2021). Computer-assisted classification of contrarian claims about climate change. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 22320). Despite its widespread use, however, character assassination remains understudied by social scientists, especially in the context of climate change. This study adapts Douglas Walton’s (1998. Ad hominem arguments. University of Alabama Press) typology of ‘ad hominem’ attacks – personal attacks targeting an individual’s character, competence, or motives – to misinformation campaigns against the climate community. We developed an original codebook for classifying ad hominem arguments made by climate contrarians. Drawing on a 553-paragraph sample from a corpus from 55 contrarian blogs and 15 conservative think-tank websites published in English between 2008 and 2020, we then determined the relative prominence of each type of attack using a consensus-coding approach. Bias attacks, which entail accusing climate scientists of political partisanship or having an ideological agenda, were the most common form of contrarian ad hominem attack. The dominance of bias attacks can be explained by their strong relevance for scientific credibility. The study found that ad hominem attacks, often with bias and moral attacks clustered together, are the most common combination. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for climate policy and future research. Key Policy Insights Climate misinformation politicizes climate science, further amplifying ideological conflict and fostering ideological polarization; Climate misinformation campaigns feature a range of different types of ad hominem attacks designed to undermine the credibility of climate scientists; The most common type of ad hominem attack on climate scientists in our sample was bias attacks, which entail accusing climate scientists of political partisanship or of having an ideological agenda; Attacks on the moral character of climate scientists were the only type of ad hominem that increased during the period under study (2008–2020); Different types of ad hominems often appeared together, with the most common combination being bias and moral attacks; Ad hominem attacks on climate scientists are part of misinformation campaigns designed to stall discussion on climate change and delay the implementation of climate policies.

Weak, Politicized, Absent: The Anti-Mercenary Norm in Italy and the United Kingdom, 1805–2017

Abstract Addressing the anti-mercenary norm, this article offers an original empirical contribution and a new theoretical framework, where taboo talks, hide-or-justify strategies, and inconsistent behavior define the robustness of a norm. I code and analyze all references to mercenaries and private military companies in the Italian and British parliamentary debates from 1805 to 2017, and I demonstrate that the norm evolves through three critical moments. Between 1805 and 1945, an anti-mercenary moral norm is present to a relevant extent in politicians’ debates, though it does not consistently constrain states’ behavior. The norm is weak. Between 1945 and 1991, anti-mercenary sentiments start to decline, and all discussions about their operations are clearly distorted by Cold War dynamics. The norm is very weak and highly politicized. After 1991, the norm targets security contractors for a brief period, as negative references and moral attacks significantly decrease. The norm disappears.

The Crusade against Same-Sex Marriage in Colombia

In 2011 the Colombian Constitutional Court laid the groundwork for gay marriage, ruling it unconstitutional to exclude same-sex couples from the benefits of legal marriage. Instead of extending marriage to same-sex couples, however, the Court’s decision left it to Congress to pass a law regulating such unions. Sharply divided on the issue, Congress failed to act. The then-Inspector General, a conservative Catholic, launched a wide-ranging legal and moral attack on marriage rights for same-sex couples, an attack which lasted until the Constitutional Court in 2016 expressly authorized these weddings. The attack included not only briefs and legal actions but also disciplinary action against public officials that celebrated same-sex weddings. This article seeks to unpack both the subtle and overt ways in which religious homophobia reflects and is reflected in popular culture and argues for a complex understanding of the relationship between homophobia in popular culture, religious definition of homosexuality as sinful, and the recourse to Constitutional Law by advocates for and against same-sex marriage.

Wartime Women Rape: A Means of Moral Attack and Emasculation in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined

Women rape at warfare was considered a consequence of war in the social, literary and political world for a long period of time. Some criminals of rape escaped justice and others were persecuted on the basis that they were involved in mass rape because it was a natural consequence of war. But, women are targeted with rape in time of war because they are the symbolic representation of a culture, ethnicity, and the unifying fabric of their people and nation. The objective of this paper is to show that war rape is not a result of war; instead it is a means of human destruction through moral attack and emasculation. It aims to show that women rape in warfare is neither a misogynist act nor a sexual violence but it is a pre-planned weapon used strategically and systematically to fulfill certain political and military agenda. The study focuses on the sexual abuse of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo in time of war in Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize play, Ruined (2007). The study applies Jonathan Gottschall’s Strategic Rape theory, which highlights war rape as a pre-planned military strategy. The enemy emasculates men and attacks them morally by raping their women. Consequently, men’s failure to protect their women causes them to give up resistance, leave their lands and families because of shame and humiliation. The study concludes that women rape in time of war is a tactic followed by conquerors intentionally to facilitate and guarantee the achievement of certain pre-planned goals as was the case of mass rape in the DRC.

‘Nauseous Tides of Seductive Debauchery’: Irish Story Papers and the Anti-Vice Campaigns of the Early Twentieth Century

This essay explores the relationship between anti-vice campaigns and the popular publishing industry of early-twentieth century Ireland. Specifically, it argues that there existed an informal but strongly symbiotic relationship between the two. The Irish anti-vice campaigns emphasised their objections to imported ‘pernicious literature’ in the form of British newspapers and story papers, thus allying themselves with both religious and nationalist movements of the time in Ireland. The Irish popular press, especially the story papers in direct and unequal competition with their large-scale British equivalents such as the Boys Own Paper, were able to use these moral attacks upon their competitors to position themselves as alternative leisure reading which was both wholesome and patriotic. This essay examines the ways in which Irish story papers such as the Emerald and Ireland's Own were able to use social purity rhetoric as a marketing technique against their British competitors. This occurred even though, as the essay outlines, in many cases the content of their stories was equally sensationalist and also had a strong emphasis upon violence, lurid plotlines and sometimes even sexually-suggestive advertising. Despite this, the anti-vice campaigns reserved their condemnations almost entirely for British publications, thus maintaining a co-operation with Irish publications which benefitted both parties.

Lope Defending Poetry vs. Lope Writing Poetry: The Conflicts of "donde habla amor puro"

Lope's defense of poetry, Cuesti?n del honor debido a la poes?a, has attracted little attention from scholars, due in no small part to the difficulty of reading a text that appears overburdened with excessive catalogs and recondite allusions, but also to its deceptive patina of counter-reformation moralism resolutely displayed in the form of a rhetorical exercise. It is my reading that Lope, rather than merely adopting panegyric convention aligned with moral conservatism, entertained more pragmatic motives stemming from a need to jus? tify Spanish amorous poetry under insistent moral attack, and more significantly to claim validity for his own love poetry (donde habla amor puro Epistolario III: 330). Lope's Platonism both in defending and writing poetry was compromised, however, when it came into conflict with his literary embraces of eros and the imposition of a Scholastic-Aristotelian psychology. In effect Lope's discurso can be considered a conventional yet ambivalent early reflection on poetics, rhetoric and literary theory.1

Secrets, Sex, and Spectacle: The Rule of Scandal in Japan and the United States. By Mark D. West. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. viii+368. $45.00 cloth.

Secrets, Sex, and Spectacle: The Rule of Scandal in Japan and the United States. By Mark D. West. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. viii+368. $45.00 cloth. West offers a colorful as well as penetrating account of the making of Japanese scandals. Using the United States as a baseline for comparison and analyzing cases from all realms of public life (business, entertainment, politics, sports, religion, and education), he argues compellingly that law, social organization, and culture combine to determine the logic of scandal in Japan. The book does an excellent job of showing how Japanese law affects the social and legal dynamics of high-profile cases. Significant factors at work here are the organization of Japanese prosecutors, lack of whistle-blowing protection, lax white-collar crime enforcement, underdeveloped (by Western standards) sexual harassment laws, and ambiguities in sex norms. Strict defamation laws are particularly important. Truth does not constitute a defense in Japan, and there is no requirement of malice or economic harm. Damage to honor suffices. As a result, public officials are fairly protected against moral attacks. But since damages awarded by courts are low, the press does not always mince its words; thus many scandals are played out in the form of defamation cases. The bifurcated structure of the Japanese media also has a bearing on scandal activity. Elite media constitute a closed world operating through exclusive press clubs, whose members tend to shy away from scandal both because of high-mindedness and because of their dependence on the elite of the nation. The weeklies and the television wide-shows, in contrast, revel in raunchy and irreverent coverage. For instance, the sex story about the adulterous relationship between Japanese Prime Minister Uno and a geisha was rebuffed by the elite press in 1989, but it was made public by a weekly. A particularly perspicuous chapter compares the pragmatics of public apology in Japan and United States. Among other things, West finds that individual apologies in Japan are often made for the benefit of groups and that they rarely adopt the trope of religious redemption, as is often the case in America. What is more, the apologizers are often chosen by the organization or group that the scandal implicates. The book takes on a good deal of common wisdom about Japan. We find, for instance, that the Japanese are fairly litigious. Japanese politicians and celebrities routinely have recourse to law to defend their honor. West reports that 741 defamation complaints were filed in Japan during 2004. …

Chimeras in the crosshairs

Just as human-animal chimeras are beginning to provide tantalizing insights into fundamental scientific questions about human disease and consciousness, conservative US legislators and President Bush are launching a blistering moral attack. Christopher Thomas Scott investigates.

Transoceanic Mortality: The Slave Trade in Comparative Perspective

EATH in the Middle Passage has long been at the center of the moral attack on slavery, and during the past two centuries estimates of the death rate and explanations of its magnitude have been repeatedly discussed and debated. For comparative purposes we draw on studies of mortality in other aspects of the movement of slaves from Africa to the Americas, as well as the experiences of passengers on other long-distance oceanic voyages.1 These comparisons will provide new interpretations as well as raise significant problems for the study of African, European, and American history. The transatlantic slave trade represented a major international movement of persons, and, although only one part of the movement of slaves from the point of enslavement in Africa to their place of forced labor in the Americas, shipboard mortality was its most conspicuous and frequently discussed aspect. Of the more than 27,000 voyages included in the Du Bois Institute dataset, more than 5,000 have information on shipboard mortality. Information is provided on African ports of embarkation; American ports of disembarkation; nationality of carrying vessels; numbers of slaves leaving Africa, arriving in the Americas, and dying in transit; ship size; numbers of crew and their mortality; and length of time at sea. The dataset also permits, with subsequent collecting, the linking of this information to government

Vulnerability And Leadership In Outdoor Education

Introduction "Vulnerable: Susceptible to being wounded .... Not protected against emotional hurt .... Not immune to moral attacks, as of criticism ... or of temptations, influences etc.... weak in respect of defence". (Macquarie Essential Dictionary, 1999; p 905) Throughout history, various individuals have shone out as being great leaders. A considerable amount of literature exists which explores the characteristics of these great leaders. To a certain extent, there is always an attempt to create the definitive set of leadership characteristics, identifiable in every great leader, which therefore define the ideal leader in any context (Stogdill; and Kirkpatrick & Locke; both in Wren (ed), 1995). In Outdoor Education too, the ideal leader is described by certain characteristics. If an aspiring leader is to take these lists of ideal characteristics seriously a huge pressure is created to perform to these standards. Does the characteristic of vulnerability play a part in being a good leader? Assuming that a leader in outdoor education is human, they will have "weaknesses and faults typical of ordinary people" (Macquarie Essential Dictionary, 1999; p 385). Does the leader need to make a decision as to whether to share their vulnerability with their followers? Could the selective sharing of this vufnerability work in a positive way toward the goals of an educational experience in the outdoors? The predominant view of leadership, despite evidence to the contrary, expects that a leader has authority, be invulnerable, in control. Tom (Jentz & Wofford, 1979), is a school principal divided between his perception of what a leader should be and how he measured up to that: "When I respond to the problem of not knowing what to do by faking an expertise I do not feel or believe, I risk feeling like a fraud. When I admit I do not know, I risk looking like a fool. Feeling like a fraud opens same questions about my fitness for leadership. Looking like a fool raises the same questions by publicly exposing my private incapacities and confirming in the public eye ... that I am unfit for leadership ..." (Jentz & Wofford, 1979; p 4) Tom makes an assumption that a quality of a leader is to always have the answer. When he doesn't have the answer, he is afraid, then feels guilty for feeling fear another inappropriate thing, according to Tom, for a leader to feel. His own assumptions about leadership and what he feels his followers believe a leader should be are the cause of his insecurities here. Could the vulnerability of a leader in outdoor education, or indeed in any leadership position, be a resource rather'than a liability? The Questionnaire examines the opinion of several individuals currently involved in the Outdoor Education field. They are asked what the characteristics of an outdoor education leader should be, and whether they think vulnerability can be a weakness or a strength to an outdoor education leader. Literature Review Characteristics of a Leader "The average person who occupies a position of leadership exceeds the average member of his group in the following respects: 1) intelligence 2) Scholarship 3) Dependability in exercising responsibilities 4) Activity'and social participation 5) Socio-economic status, (p 128) as well as in "1) Sociability 2) Initiative 3) Persistence 4) Knowing how to get things done 5) Self confidence 6) Alertness to and insight into, situations 7) Cooperanveness 8) Popularity 9) Adaptability 10) Verbal facility" (Stogdili; in Wren (ed), 1995; p J28) Many notable men and women of history have had something to say about leadership. Carlyle condoned a powerful leader to whom all subordinate themselves (Wren, 1995); Lao-tzu's selfless and non-directive leadership - " the leader works in any setting without complaint,. …

Violence, Social Differentiation and the Self

ABSTRACTThe article considers aspects of violence in everyday life among the Tiwi of Melville and Bathurst Islands. It briefly compares the role of violence in bureaucratically and juridically mediated forms with self‐help and social regulation in Aboriginal societies, focussing on the expressive or performative aspects of violence in everyday interaction. Myers' discussion of violence among the Pintubi posits a dialectical polarity of relatedness and differentiation, corresponding with the affective poles of compassion and anger. This is compared with Sansom's account of semi‐ritualized forms of violence in Aboriginal fringe‐camp life, where a point of commonality in Myers' and Sansom's approaches is found: this consists of the attunement of action, of violence, self‐violence and destructiveness to the witnessing public. In Tiwi life too, conflict is dynamically shaped by actors' attempts to impinge upon, to seek to arouse and in some cases to manipulate, compassion or concern in the witnessing group as defence or as a form of moral attack. Open, dramatic ‘appealing’ violence, often in the form of a more or less controlled loss of self‐control, seeks to parry indirect interpersonal tension and antagonism, to reassert or restore social distance and protect or privilege important relationships from intrusive demands. However, these violent appeals in rhetorical threat, in self‐violence, destructiveness or sometimes in dramatic suicidal gestures also invariably indicate extreme personal difficulty displaced into open forms of confrontation. The article proposes that the generative moment of violence for social differentiation be sought in an examination of dynamic interrelationships between individual life‐history, inner group processes and their articulation with external social forms.

Defensive Social Work

SUMMARY Social workers with child clients face the possibility that some mistake or oversight of theirs could lead to a child abuse tragedy, for which they may suffer opprobrium and blighted careers. How can they guard against such risks? This paper shows how social workers might use different types of 'defensive' measure to protect themselves. These parallel the types of measure used by some doctors, particularly in the United States, faced with risks of litigation on grounds of malpractice. Because defensive practices have undesirable consequences, it is important to find ways to eliminate their use by protecting social workers by other means. Whenever individuals or corporate bodies feel threatened they are likely to take measures to protect themselves. This is as true in the professions as in other walks of life. In any profession, members of it are thought to have a duty to practice it in a competent manner, and any lapses in this respect may be seen as justifying legal or moral attacks on those responsible for them. The best documented examples of such attacks are those on the medical profession in the United States. There, malpractice suits against doctors mushroomed in the 1970s, and led to the widespread practice of what has become known as 'defensive' medicine. Medical practices have been described as 'defensive' if they are carried out in ways that aim at limiting the doctor's risk of being sued, rather than being in the best interests of the patients (Tancredi and Barondess, 1978; Devlin, 1982). In Britain, the profession of social work has suffered attacks because of what have been considered to be cases of malpractice in the area of child abuse (Parton, 1983). These attacks have not been conducted through litigation in the civil courts, but have taken place in the 'court of public opinion', where some sections of the media have done much to coordinate the 'case for the prosecution'. Even though the attacks have not been