Bioethics and the Body Politic

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-301
Author(s):  
Joseph C. d'Oronzio
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Policy Watch

Has the private body of biethics become a microcosm of the body politic? Politics is ethics writ large. Ethics is politics writ small. However we turn it, the practice of bioethics is increasingly attuned to developments in public policy. The establishment of a “Health Policy Watch” in these pages is an invitation for research and reflection on these issues.

Health Policy Watch: Ethical Obligations in the Body Politic: The Case of Normalization Policy for Marginal Populations

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 480-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph C. d'Oronzio
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Traffic Light ◽  
Marginal Populations ◽  
Dollar Bill ◽  
Street People ◽  
The City ◽  
Policy Watch

A common tale of moral cacophony and euphemism on the city streets:Each day, an owner of a small business decides, “once and for all,” how to respond to the “homeless person” panhandling for “spare change” as she makes her way to work in the morning. Today, she looks the other way and holds more tightly to her purse. Nearby, a building contractor waits impatiently for the traffic light to change as his van is approached by a small and shabby band of “street people” demanding to clean his windshield. He turns his wipers on to signal them away. Sometimes this works. At the next light, a woman carrying an infant swaddled to her torso offers a tube of three roses for a dollar. The driver smiles pleasantly, but does not stop. The businesswoman, now close to work, buys two tubes of roses and does not wait for the change from the five-dollar bill she earnestly presses into the mother's hand.

Health Policy Watch: Rappelling on the Slippery Slope: Negotiating Public Policy for Physician-Assisted Death

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph C. d'Oronzio
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Slippery Slope ◽  
Assisted Death ◽  
Common Process ◽  
The Law ◽  
Policy Watch ◽  
Hard Place

The rock climber and the law share in a common etymological allusion when each reaches a steep, high, and hard place. The climber “appeals” to the mountain by inching down on a rope and the law's “rappel” is similarly a route to more comfortable footing. Each step in this common process is germane to the eventual resolution, for it is to be found in the rappel process itself and in the meaning of each appeal.

NSA Management Directive #424: Secrecy and Privacy in the Aftermath of Edward Snowden

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
George R. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
National Security ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Surveillance Program ◽  
National Security Agency ◽  
Public Input ◽  
Public Oversight

Whatever else one might say concerning the legality, morality, and prudence of his actions, Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, is right about the notion of publicity and informed consent, which together constitute the hallmark of democratic public policy. In order to be morally justifiable, any strategy or policy involving the body politic must be one to which it would voluntarily assent when fully informed about it. This, in essence, was Snowden's argument for leaking, in June 2013, the documents that revealed the massive NSA surveillance program:So long as there's broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there's a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision. . . . However, programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that's a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of “governing in the dark,” where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input.

Jacques Maritain's Personalistic Society and Pluralism

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Geoff Wells ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Public Dialogue ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Good Living

Jacques Maritain's concept of ttte personalistic society describes a democratic unity of the body politc that mitigates the tension between the material and spiritual aspects of human existence. This unity, grounded in the principles of natural law, makes possible in our terrestrial existence a communion of good living and a rectitude of life--what Maritain calls the bonum honestum. The good he envisions both facilitates and reacts the ideals of an integral Christian humanism, but it necessarily requires for its realization the infusion of Christian ideals into the body politic. It is crucial to Maritain that the process by which this infusion occurs allow for a wide participation of diverse actors, bothh religions and non-religious. But it is also crucial that they are able to converge from their different perspectives into an agreement on "Christianly inspired" practical principles that will subsequently guide public policy. This essay argues that the collective character of the moral personally represented by Maritain in this unity describes a problematic corrtext tor public dialogue that risks undermining the social and political pluralism it presupposes.

‘Good enough for a spot of lippy anyway’: Rape and the Body Politic in My Brother Tom

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-373
Author(s):  
Louise Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Violation ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Rape Narratives

The representation of rape continues to be one of the most highly charged issues in contemporary cinema, and whilst many discussions of this topic focus on Hollywood movies, sexual violation is also a pervasive topic in British cinema. This article examines the portrayal of a female's rape in the British feature My Brother Tom (2001), a powerful and often troubling text in which the sexual violation of the teenage female protagonist functions as a catalyst for the events that comprise the plot, as is often the case in rape narratives. The article provides an overview of some of the key feminist academic discussions and debates that cinematic depictions of rape have prompted, before closely analysing My Brother Tom's rape scene in relation to such discourses. The article argues that the rape scene is neither explicit nor sensationalised, and that by having the camera focus on Jessica's bewildered reactions, it positions the audience with her, and powerfully but discreetly portrays the grave nature of sexual abuse. The article then moves on to examine the portrayal of sexual violation in My Brother Tom as a whole, considering the cultural inscriptions etched on the female body within its account of rape, before concluding with a discussion of the film's depiction of Jessica's ensuing methods of bodily self-inscription as she attempts to disassociate her body from its sexual violation.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

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