Robots and cyborgs: to be or to have a body?

Starting with service robotics and industrial robotics, this paper aims to suggest philosophical reflections about the relationship between body and machine, between man and technology in our contemporary world. From the massive use of the cell phone to the robots which apparently "feel" and show emotions like humans do. From the wearable exoskeleton to the prototype reproducing the artificial sense of touch, technological progress explodes to the extent of embodying itself in our nakedness. Robotics, indeed, is inspired by biology in order to develop a new kind of technology affecting human life. This is a bio-robotic approach, which is fulfilled in the figure of the cyborg and consequently in the loss of human nature. Today, humans have reached the possibility to modify and create their own body following their personal desires. But what is the limit of this achievement? For this reason, we all must question ourselves whether we have or whether we are a body.     

Education: the First Step to Equality

IN the 1950s, 16 million Chinese women who hadn't even been able to read their own names learned to read 2,000 Chinese characters and to write simple letters. By attending literacy class they learned enough to be able to read popular literature. They were no longer illiterate.     

Overcoming Poverty:from Commitment to Reality

ON March 3, 1999, six cadres of the All-China Women's Federation boarded a train bound for Gansu in northwest China from Beijing. They would work in Zhangxian County in the povertystricken mountainous area for one year to help the locals rise out of their wretched state. They were the first batch sent by the ACWF according to the State     

Civilization: a pathway to peace?

The concept of ‘civilization’ has been employed in contradictory ways—as an ideological tool, as an analytical category and in reference to a long historical journey. In light of its ideological abuses, is ‘civilization’ as an analytical category capable of salvation? This paper takes a fresh look at an old problem. If ‘civilization’ is still a useful category of analysis, are such partitions as the East and the West valid in the context of an emerging global civilization? If not, how can we reconceptualize the common journey toward a more civilized world order? The paper argues that human civilization is an imaginary fuelled by changing technologies, mythologies and communication carriers. The transitions from nomadic to agrarian, commercial, industrial and informatic civilizations may be considered as higher orders of differentiation, complexity and integration. If so viewed, the journey appears as a single but uneven and self-contradictory movement. In our own epoch, the global reach of informatic technologies necessitates an integrating myth such as the Gaia Hypothesis, viewing the Planet Earth as a single living organism transcending all boundaries. That myth would teach us to value human unity in diversity. However, the current pathologies of commodity and identity fetishism, expressed in state and opposition terrorism, are obstructing peaceful globalization.

‘We are the finest race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race’ Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902), quoted by Bentley and Ziegler (2003, p. 933)

‘Today backward and deprived, we face an economic and military giant with the moral and spiritual scruples of a flea. It is not a pleasant encounter.’ Sadeq al-Mahdi, Prime Minister of Sudan (1966–1967)

‘Civilization as we know it, is a movement not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor’. Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975), 1948     

Recovery: experiences of resistance to disablism?

This article explores whether it is fruitful to use a service user/survivor approach to recovery, by seeing recovery as survival of social invalidation. That is survival of the psychosocial forces that were the source of the experience of mental distress, and as survival of social oppression by the psychiatric services and/or wider society. It could be argued that the participants in this study in the United Kingdom and Sweden recovered, and reclaimed and (re)constructed positive identities. They actively resisted experiences of disablism and rebuilt their lives. By approaching recovery from a service user/survivor perspective, one is focusing on the social, structural and political aspects of the recovery process, and one is resisting biomedical, deviant and reductionist notions of recovery.     

“A heart with skill to listen”: Consultation to a child-minding project

Abstract

This paper describes a consultation to a child-minding project. It has implications for the development of day care for children, and discusses the importance of support to workers in relationship work, particularly in the management of feelings.     

“It's Really Not Easy to Get Help”: Services to Drought-Affected Families

Abstract

The present paper details the results of research conducted with drought-affected farm families in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The study reveals the significant health and welfare stresses experienced by families and the lack of access to services and support. The research was conducted in three sites in rural and remote areas of NSW in 2003. Farm family members, service providers, and other community key informants were interviewed. The paper outlines ways that the social work profession can respond to significant natural disasters.     

Holding a looking-glass to the ‘Movement’: A response to Worth and Abbott

This article explores the presence of US institutions of higher education in Eastern Europe as one facet of the neoliberal global environment. It draws on policy documents, institutional statistics, materials produced by interest groups and NGOs, official mission statements, press releases and media coverage, and personal narratives. The American University in Bulgaria is examined as a case of this wider phenomenon. Exclusively structuralist, critical analyses of such institutions can easily lead to conclusions of homogenization and dominance through the hegemony of ‘exporter’ education institutions and programs. Post-structural analysis—attuned to multiplicities of meanings, nuances of context, and complex interplays of power and knowledge claims—allow for more attention to the local dynamics, while human interpretation and agency may point the way to more hopeful roles for US institutions of higher education abroad. In turn, these roles may challenge the one-way deterministic flow of influence suggested by structuralist analyses.

Este artículo indaga la presencia de las instituciones de E.E.U.U. de educación superior en Europa oriental, como una faceta del medioambiente neoliberal global. Se sirve de documentos de política, estadística institucional, materiales producidos bajo grupos de interés y ONGs, declaraciones de emisiones oficiales sobre los objetivos, comunicados de prensa y cobertura de los medios y testimonios personales. Se ha examinado a la Universidad Americana en Bulgaria como un caso de este amplio fenómeno. Los análisis críticos de tales instituciones exclusivamente estructuralistas, pueden conducir fácilmente a unas conclusiones de homogenización y dominio a través de la hegemonía de instituciones de educación y programas ‘exportados’. Un análisis estructural a posteriori—adaptado a una multiplicidad de significados y matices de contexto, y las interacciones complejas de afirmaciones de poder y conocimiento—permite mayor atención a la dinámica local, mientras que la interpretación y la actividad humana pueden señalar el camino para que las instituciones de educación superior de los E.E.U.U., logren papeles más esperanzadores en el extranjero. A su vez, estos papeles pueden desafiar la corriente determinista de influencia de una sola vía, como lo sugiere el análisis estructural.

本文探讨了美国高等教育机构作为全球新自由主义环境的一个侧面在东欧的存在。本文根据政策文件、机构统计数据、利益团体和非政府组织提供的资料、正式使命声明、新闻稿和媒体报道,以及个人记述写成,以位于保加利亚的美利坚大学作为这一更广泛现象的个案进行了考察。作为一种完全的结构主义,对这些机构的批判性分析很容易得出通过“出口”教育机构和各种项目的霸权实现同质化、获取支配力的结论。后结构主义分析——切合多重意义,语境的微妙变化,以及权力与知识的宣称之间复杂的相互作用——使人们更多地关注当地的动力学,而人的解释及动因可能为海外美国高等教育机构发挥更加充满希望的作用指明方向。反过来,这些角色可能挑战结构主义分析所提出的影响流的单向决定性。     

From silence to condemnation: Institutional responses to “travel ban” Executive Order 13769

On January 27, 2017, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order that attempted to bar citizens and refugees from seven countries from entering the U.S. for a certain time period. One of the contexts most directly affected by this order was higher education. This study examined college and university communicative responses to the order from a public relations perspective. We qualitatively determined a range of responses from U.S. universities then quantitatively determined variables of particular colleges and universities that had a correlation to the nature of the responses. Responses were then assessed using public relations best practices. The data suggest variables with relationships to type of institutional response were number of international students and political stance of the state where the institution is located. While there was no single “correct” type of response, best practices suggest two options for appropriate responses to the order.     

Special Gift for the FWCW:Beijing's Women Invited to Sign Banner to Greet Conference

On August 12 more than 20 representatives of women model workers of Beijing, the "March 8 Red Banner Pacesetters," comprised of women scientists, women authorities and women entrepreneurs, along with women workers from the Beijing Textile Industry Corporation, sewed a banner on which they meant to collect 10,000 signatures. This event marked the     

Lacan’s Ambiguous Relation to the Perversions: A Response to Kareen Ror Malone

When it comes to the perversions, Lacan’s attitude is ambiguous and this ambiguity is linked to the influence of the French psychiatric heritage and more particularly the influence of Ernest Dupré. This thematic cannot be properly understood without taking the problematic relation between the psychiatric traditions and psychoanalysis into account.     

Future mortality: a bumpy road to Shangri-La?

Americans are getting fatter, and it is known that increased obesity may increase the risk of death. Olshansky et al. have argued that this increase in obesity will likely slow, or even reverse, increases in life expectancy in the United States and perhaps save U.S. Social Security as a result. We discuss historical changes in the mortality rate and the reasons why other analyses argue that life expectancies will continue to increase. We also discuss the limitations of using single risk factors such as obesity as predictors of mortality risk. Finally, we explore the relation between risk factors and the long-term historical increase in human life expectancy.