Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Meta-Method Analysis On Therapists’ Experiences: An Inquiry Into Qualitative Psychotherapy Research Methodology, Javier L. Rizo

Graduate Masters Theses

I conducted a meta-method study to explore the methodological and reporting characteristics of qualitative studies on therapists’ experiences conducting psychotherapy. Articles were identified through a PsycINFO search, and through a review of article text their methodological and reporting features were coded and quantitatively analyzed. Consideration was given to standards of qualitative research in psychology, especially methodological integrity. Results showed increases in the number of these qualitative studies from the 2000s onwards. This rise seems to be above that in psychology, but comparable to other psychotherapy literature. Publication characteristics of this body of literature, namely journal discipline and impact score, showed …

A Framework For Understanding How People Can Draw Different Conclusions Based On The Same Information, Evan Schapiro

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

At least partially fueled by misinformation, political polarization is growing in the United States, leading to a breakdown of confidence in our traditional academic and political institutions. A popular belief is that a solution is to train people to think more rationally by eliminating the cognitive biases embedded in their subconscious thought patterns. This paper identifies the influences on my thinking and the framework used to look at these issues from a different perspective through methodological believing and the application of models of learning and conversation. The paper also points out that the methods of scientific inquiry often assume that …

Nourishment For Life: A Study In Nutrition From A Philosophical & Scientific Perspective, Erin C. Black

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This paper attempts to demonstrate that the conventionally scientific approach to food is insufficient and provide an alternative pathway to approach the subject of nutrition with an additional layer of philosophical thought for an improved result. This paper attempts to lay the early groundwork for an expanded model, which necessarily includes a philosophical angle from which to work. This proposal is a model that will enable considerations about nutrition more broadly, in ways that are critical in thinking and creative in process towards exploring options for arriving at ultimately best practices with best outcomes in mind. The examination of practices, …

Conflict, Complexity, And Cooperation, John, Lord Alderdice

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the thesis that we are at a time of historical inflection and suggests what next steps might look like. The change in the seat of authority from the sixteenth century on with the replacement of political and religious hierarchies by participatory democracy and Enlightenment philosophies based on rationalism has seen a remarkable period of progress in science, technology, education, medicine, governance, trade, economics, and the rule of law. The twenty-first century, however, has ushered in a series of reversals for liberal democracy, the fraying of the international rules-based order that emerged after the two world wars and …

Damnatio Memoriae: On Deleting The East From Western History, Koert Debeuf

New England Journal of Public Policy

The story we read in books about the Renaissance tells us that Petrarch and Poggio rediscovered the books of antiquity that had been copied for centuries in medieval abbeys. The re-introduction of Greek science and philosophy, however, began in the twelfth century but occurred mainly in the thirteenth century. These works were first translated into Syriac and Arabic in the eighth and ninth centuries and stored in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. There they were read, used, and commented on by Arab philosophers, of whom the most famous was Averroes (1126–1198), who lived in Cordoba. The translation of his …

Using Lenses To Understand Policy Failures: The Case Of The 2012 Census In Chile, M. Angélica Pavez

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Policy failures are controversial, costly, and above all, messy. More often than we wish, what begins as a well-intentioned policy becomes a failure. In all countries and policy areas, some initiatives end up failing miserably, wasting resources, creating endless political struggles, and even affecting countries' governance. However, the perceptions and understanding of failure are dissimilar. Different actors, including researchers, have diverse and indeed conflicting viewpoints of what constitutes failure, its characteristics and avenues of resolution. The growing policy failure literature offers concepts and models to approach this elusive phenomenon, emphasizing the critical role of social perceptions, characteristics of failure episodes, …

Argo Navis: A Drifting Circumambulation, Kyle D. Lemstrom

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This work is a tongue-in-cheek narrative journey through the creative process, using travel and mythology as vehicles for reflection, metacognition, and critical thinking around philosophy, literature, and contemporary art. As a process-oriented piece, it makes use of intentional constraints to force a kind of unfolding, to mimic the act of intellectual discovery, navigating dissonance and doubt. As a creative product, it is something akin to an afterimage, to persist as a vestige of accumulated learning. The piece wrestles with questions of personal agency, authority, knowledge and meaning, yet does not arrive at definitive answers.

What To Do If We Think That Researchers Have Overlooked A Significant Conceptual Issue?, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

Participants in debates about developments in science and technology point to issues overlooked or downplayed by scientists—or, if the debate is among scientists themselves, by other scientists. Sometimes included among participants in debates are interpreters of science—sociologists, historians, philosophers, and scholars from other fields of Science and Technology Studies. Taking these scholars as the audience, this article asks what should we do if we identify a significant issue not yet subject to debate? In particular, what should we do when the overlooked issue is conceptual—a matter of how inquiry is framed—more than it is a matter of analyzing …

Money And Morality: Pathways Toward A Civic Stewardship Ethic (2012), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Based on a plenary presentation made at the Ninth Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance, held at Harvard Law School in 2010, less than two years after the 2008 financial crisis, this article argues for the restoration of ethical values and civic commitments in capitalism and economic enterprise, drawing on traditional religious, theological, and philosophical principles regarding the civic moral obligations associated with building and managing wealth. The article is divided into three main parts. It begins with an overview of reform measures emanating from the financial debacle, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and an …

Corporate Civic Responsibility And The Ownership Agenda: Investing In The Public Good (1994), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article seeks to provoke broader public discussion about ways in which human and ecologic dignity, prosperity, and the civic ideal can be advanced through a revitalized and principled ownership agenda that features greater levels of corporate accountability and civic virtue. It draws from portions of what then was called an “Occasional Paper,” part of a series emanating from the early days of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. Written in 1994, it introduces a new paradigm for corporate governance called the “corporate covenant,” which casts ownership within the framework of citizenship. These …

Against Totalitarianism: Agamben, Foucault, And The Politics Of Critique, C. Heike Schotten

Political Science Faculty Publication Series

Despite appearances, Agamben’s engagement with Foucault in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life is not an extension of Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics but ra-ther a disciplining of Foucault for failing to take Nazism seriously. This moralizing rebuke is the result of methodological divergences between the two thinkers that, I argue, have fun-damental political consequences. Re-reading Foucault’s most explicitly political work of the mid-1970s, I show that Foucault’s commitment to genealogy is aligned with his commitment to “insurrection”—not simply archival or historical, but practical and political insurrection—even as his non-moralizing understanding of critique makes space for the resistances he hopes …

What Difference Does It Make? An Essay Review Of Beyond Versus: The Struggle To Understand The Interaction Of Nature And Nurture; James Tabery; Mit Press: Cambridge, Ma, 2014, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

Beyond versus makes its contribution to the thriving industry of books that clarify or recast nature-nurture issues through seven conceptual moves. The first is to posit a divide between sociological and philosophical inquiry. As Tabery depicts them, commentators on the science invoked in nature-nurture debates often focus on the racist or other political views of disputants or on their flawed understanding of scientific concepts. Tabery, in contrast, as a philosopher of science, explains past and present disagreements as stemming from “a disagreement concerning how explanation works in science.” (The other moves include explanatory and terminological divides, connecting associations to mechanisms, …

'Listen To What You Say': Rwanda’S Postgenocide Language Policies, Lynne Tirrell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Freedom of expression is considered a basic human right, and yet most countries have restrictions on speech they deem harmful. Following the genocide of the Tutsi, Rwanda passed a constitution (2003) and laws against hate speech and other forms of divisionist language (2008, 2013). Understanding how language shaped “recognition harms” that both constitute and fuel genocide also helps account for political decisions to limit “divisionist” discourse. When we speak, we make expressive commitments, which are commitments to the viability and value of ways of speaking. This article explores reasons a society would decide to say, “We don’t talk that way …

Harmful Beneficence, Lisa Rivera

Philosophy Faculty Publication Series

Beneficence can be significant to moral action but criteria for good beneficence is rarely discussed. Much work has focused on how extensive the demands are on agents to be beneficent and on agents’ motivations for beneficence.

There has been little direct attention to the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. The argument here is that serious deficiencies exist in the view that benefactors should focus primarily on satisfying another’s self-chosen ends. A narrow focus on the attempt to help someone satisfy her ends misses the harmful effects that benefactors can have on a dependent beneficiary's ability to choose freely from her …

Virtue Ethics In School Counseling: A Framework For Decision-Making, Felicia Wilczenski, Amy Cook

Counseling and School Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Virtue ethics focus on the motives that guide ethical decision making and action, and as such, are critical to the competent application of the counseling profession’s ethical codes. Knowledge of virtue ethics deepens understanding of moral responsibilities and ethical reasoning in professional practice. This paper is an overview of virtue ethics and discusses its relevance for school counselors and counselor educators.

Worthy Lives, Lisa Rivera

Philosophy Faculty Publication Series

Susan Wolf's paper "Meaning and Morality" draws our attention to the fact that Williams's objection to Kantian morality is primarily a concern about a possible conflict between morality and that which gives our lives meaning. I argue that the force of Williams's objection requires a more precise understanding of meaning as dependent on our intention to make our lives themselves worthwhile. It is not meaning simpliciter that makes Williams's objective persuasive but rather meaning as arising out of our positive evaluation of the value of our lives as a whole. This type of meaning has a normative element: it involves …

Asca Code Of Ethics And The Relevance Of Eastern Ethical Theories, Amy Cook, Rick Houser

Counseling and School Psychology Faculty Publication Series

As schools become increasingly diverse through immigration and growth of minority groups, it is important that school counselors incorporate culturally sensitive ethical decision-making in their practice. The use of Western ethical theories in the application of professional codes of ethics provides a specific perspective in ethical decision- making, but may not provide school counselors with a broad cultural perspective. We discuss the use of Eastern theories of ethics (Taoism and Hinduism) and their relevance to the ASCA Ethical Standards for School Counselors to inform school counselors’ work with Asian immigrant students.

A Response To Bruni And Sugden, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

An article by Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden published in this journal argues that market relations contain elements of what they call ‘fraternity’. This Response demonstrates that my own views on interpersonal relations and markets – which originated in the feminist analysis of caring labour – are far closer to Bruni and Sugden's than they acknowledge in their article, and goes on to discuss additional important dimensions of sociality that they neglect.

Nietzsche/Pentheus: The Last Disciple Of Dionysus And Queer Fear Of The Feminine, C. Heike Schotten

Political Science Faculty Publication Series

This article examines the scholarly preoccupation with the hypothesis that Nietzsche was gay by offering a reading of Nietzsche's texts as autobiographical that puts them in conversation with Euripides's drama The Bacchae. Drawing a number of parallels between Nietzsche, self-avowed disciple of Dionysus, and Pentheus, the main character of The Bacchae and demonstrated antidisciple of Dionysus, I argue that both men experience their sexual attraction to women as somehow intolerable, and they negotiate this discomfort—which is simultaneously an unjustified paranoia and fear of the feminine—through the appropriation of feminine capacities and qualities for themselves. This appropriation ultimately expresses these men's …

Foucault, Marxism And The Cuban Revolution: Historical And Contemporary Reflections, Sam Binkley, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

Sociology Faculty Publication Series

This article relates central themes of Marxist and Foucauldian thought to the intellectual and political legacy of the Cuban Revolution. Against the backdrop of a reading of Foucault’s relationship to the revolutionary left, it is argued that Marxist theoretical discourse on guerrilla struggle (as articulated by Mao, Guevara and others) provide an intriguing case for bio-political struggle. In the case of the Cuban revolution, an ethics of self-transformation appears in which new ways of living and practicing life are cultivated in opposition to sedimentations of state power. Moreover, in addition to this historical case, a discussion is offered of the …

Can We Talk? Feminist Economists In Dialogue With Social Theorists, Julie A. Nelson

Economics Faculty Publication Series

The article focuses on the issues regarding the social and political theory of feminism. It has been mentioned that political action will be dynamized rather than compromised by a more alive observation of economic organizations and activities. The author has suggested that feminist social theorists across the disciplines must join the several feminist economists who are dropping the negative one-size-fits-all prescription of protection from markets. It is essential to have more positive results in the complex contemporary economies.

The Responsibility To Protect, Romeo Dallaire

New England Journal of Public Policy

From the EPIIC Symposium, Sovereignty & Intervention, at Tufts University in February 2003: Focuses on the responsibility to protect humanity. Experiences during the Rwandan catastrophe; Resolvability of humanitarian catastrophes with security problems; Several ways on how to intervene in the problem.

Unruly Complexity: Ecology, Interpretation, Engagement, Peter Taylor

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publication Series

Ambitiously identifying fresh issues in the study of complex systems, Peter J. Taylor, in a model of interdisciplinary exploration, makes these concerns accessible to scholars in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and science studies. Unruly Complexity explores concepts used to deal with complexity in three realms: ecology and socio-environmental change; the collective constitution of knowledge; and the interpretations of science as they influence subsequent research.

For each realm Taylor shows that unruly complexity-situations that lack definite boundaries, where what goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change-should not be suppressed …

Unruly Complexity: Ecology, Interpretation, Engagement, Peter Taylor

Peter Taylor

Ambitiously identifying fresh issues in the study of complex systems, Peter J. Taylor, in a model of interdisciplinary exploration, makes these concerns accessible to scholars in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and science studies. Unruly Complexity explores concepts used to deal with complexity in three realms: ecology and socio-environmental change; the collective constitution of knowledge; and the interpretations of science as they influence subsequent research. For each realm Taylor shows that unruly complexity-situations that lack definite boundaries, where what goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change-should not be suppressed …

Living Legitimacy: A New Approach To Good Government In Africa, Ajume H. Wingo

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article argues for the reorientation of African governments from a model that privileges the central or garrison states to one rooted in the living experiences of citizens, such as their economic conditions, fellowship associations, local governments, and community self-reliance. It begins by describing and analyzing in depth an example of a set of moral, political, and social institutions that still work well to make collective decisions that the members of the community consider legitimate and follow without coercion. It demonstrates that a legitimate government is not and should not be a matter of instituting finished, polished, or ready-made solutions …

Rubella Vaccine And Medical Policymaking: Fetal Rights And Women's Health, Jacob Heller

New England Journal of Public Policy

U.S. vaccine policies, to all appearances, are based on assumptions about cost effectiveness, safety, and public health needs. Analysis of the peer review health professions’ discourse about rubella vaccine between 1941 and 1999 challenges this view. There were four justifications for the development of the vaccine: (1) cost-benefit projections about vaccine use versus anticipated birth defects; (2) the desire to prevent “fetal wastage” by vaccinating women; (3) a professional imperative to ensure healthy babies; and (4) a bias among vocal vaccine advocates against “unnecessary” abortion. The role of a fifth consideration, the “cultural provenance” of vaccines for American medicine, though …

How Do We Know There Is A Population-Environment Problem?, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

Five fictional friends of the author have agreed to meet and talk, hoping that he was right when he claimed that discussion crossing the usual boundaries of their fields would enrich their different inquiries and concerns. Ecolo, a natural and human ecologist, breaks the ice. He wants to marshall scientific knowledge to persuade others of the seriousness of the population problem. He is questioned by Philoso, whose philosophical bent leads her to observe the models that people use and to ask how they support the claims they make. In turn, the other three join in: Activo, an activist who is …

Reconstructing Rawls And Exposing The Implicit Social Embeddedness Of Theories Of Justice, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers in Critical, Creative and Reflective Practice

This essay prods moral philosophy towards more explicit attention to the political constructions of injustice. I do not appeal to practical or political relevance, but advance a particular kind of constructivist interpretation of moral argumentation (constructivism+) in which our interpretive horizons are extended to include the implicit views of social action, broadly construed—from the macro- to the micro-social, and from the past to the present and the possible—built into philosophical arguments. I challenge the idea that, in order to oppose injustice, we must first articulate and justify a coherent conception of justice and then theorize the social, constitutional, …

The Relationship Between Mathematical Expression And Biological Insight: Some Issues In Community Ecology Modeling, Exemplified By The Logistic Equation, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

The relationship between mathematical expression and biological insight is a central problem for modelers in community ecology. In this paper I distinguish three interpretations of this relationship: models as redescriptions as observations; models as capturing fundamental or generative biological relations; and models as an aid in exploring how to formulate the inquiries we put to nature. I aim to show that we can reduce ambiguities and confusion and ecological theory if we hold the different interpretations clearly in mind. I conclude by advancing an overall strategy of model building—de/composition—in which each of the interpretations plays a role. The logistic equation, …

Apparent Interactions In Community Models: A Challenge For Theoretical Ecology, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers on Science in a Changing World

The primary aim of this working paper is to challenge theoretical ecologists to clarify the intended status of any simple model that they use. If we restrict our attention to a subcommunity and treat it as if it were the full community, we need to invoke apparent interactions that incorporate the effects of unspecified or hidden variables as well as direct interactions. This position resembles that of previous discussions of apparent competition (Holt 1977), indirect effects (Lawlor 1979), and ecological abstraction (Schaffer 1981), but my definition of apparent interactions differs from those stated or implied by these authors. I advance …