What Privacy Is

Privacy issues are everywhere in our society, but we struggle with them in part because we lack a clear definition of privacy on which we can agree. Scholars have struggled to define privacy, but lots of concepts in our law, like “free speech” and “equality,” have been protected without clear agreement on a specific definition. Thus, we need not let our hang-ups about privacy’s definitional problem stop us from talking about it and protecting it. The chapter offers a working definition of privacy for the book as “the extent to which human information is neither known nor used. This definition focuses on (1) information privacy rather than other kinds of privacy; (2) information about humans; (3) the use of information rather than its mere collection; and (4) the importance of thinking about information use as a matter of degree rather than a binary on/off state.

Introduction to Fraud and Abuse Law

This chapter focuses on healthcare fraud and the range of legal solutions provided to address fraud in the United States and Europe on a federal level. It provides key examples of the range of approaches to healthcare fraud that are adopted within Europe. It also analyzes the manner in which healthcare systems in the United States and Europe are funded and organized, considering that fraud is dynamic and dependent on the mechanisms for funding in the relevant system. This chapter reviews the issue of what qualifies as healthcare fraud, and it considers both the definitional problem and the interplay between the moral and ethical content of fraud and legal definitions of fraudulent conduct. It discusses operational issues in the identification, prevention, and punishment of healthcare fraud in the United States and Europe.

Radicant Israeli Art: From Past to Future

Mieke Bal’s concept of “migratory aesthetics” and the observation by Saloni Mathur and Anne Ring Peterson that “traditional notions of location, origin and authenticity seem obsolete and in urgent need of reconsideration” perfectly encompass the phrase “Jewish art”, and within that difficult-to-define subject, Israeli art (which, among other things, is not always “Jewish”). As Hava Aldouby has noted, Israeli art presents a unique inflection of the global condition of mobility—which in fact contributes to the problem of easily defining the category of “Israeli art”. Nothing could be more appropriate to the discussion of Israeli art, or to the larger definitional problem of “Jewish art” than to explore it through Nicolas Bourriaud’s botanical metaphor of the “radicant”, and thus the notion of “radicant art”. The important distinction that Bourriaud offers between radical and radicant plants—whereby the former type depends upon a central root, deep-seated in a single nourishing soil site, whereas the latter is an “organism that grows its roots and adds new ones as it advances…” with “…a multitude of simultaneous or successive enrootings”—is a condition that may be understood for both Israeli and Jewish art, past and present: Aldouby’s notion that the image of the Wandering Jew offers the archetypal radicant, informs both the “altermodernity” concept and Israeli art.

The Value of Human Knowledge

This chapter addresses the question of what sort of normativity is constitutive of a person's knowledge. A belief that falls short of knowledge is thereby inferior. A satisfactory answer to the value problem likely requires a correct view of the definitional problem. Two of Plato's best-known dialogues are inquiries about knowledge. The Theaetetus inquires into its nature, while the Meno into its value. Scholars assume that knowledge requires a belief that is true, and therefore asks what condition must a belief satisfy, in addition to being true, in order to constitute knowledge. This question about the nature of knowledge has been central to epistemology in recent decades, as it had been for Plato.

Reflections on Latina/o Theater

“Theatre,” modified by the adjective “Latina/o”, like any other genre of human expression, is extraordinarily rich. It includes the legacy, and continuing vitality of varied and often conflicting aesthetic projects. This article discusses the vexed definitional problem of what is theater by, about, and for Latinas and Latinos, both in terms of production of plays and the academic study of theater. It provides a historical timeline that focuses on the 1960s to the present, a commentary on play production, an overview of academic discussions, and conclusions drawn from a survey of course syllabi. It uses the examples of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton and works by the Coatlicue Theater Company to challenge simplistic understandings of what Latina/o theater is and does.

How do strategic actors think about the value of talent management? Moving from talent practice to the practice of talent

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of strategic actors in multinational organisations and to contribute to our understanding of how multinational companies articulate and define talent management and how – or what – they perceive its value to be. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on an empirical research study in which data were collected through 50 in-depth interviews across five multinational companies, conducted at a regional level across ten countries. Participants in the study were strategic actors representing two groups of managers/leaders (HR and talent management system designers and business leaders who are directly involved in the implementation of talent management). Findings The absence of a formal talent management definition led to the emergence of different views and interpretations of what it is. It was viewed as a bundle, or set, of management ideologies manifested in all HR-related practices across four key areas: hiring the right talent, performance management, succession planning and development and retention. Performance management acted as the cornerstone. Talent management strategies displayed little participation for both system designers and implementers and distinct patterns of mystification, technologization and concretisation. The language of value was uncommonly used but provoked different ways of thinking about the role and meaning of talent management. Practical implications The strategic actors in the talent system continue to see talent management in narrow functional and HR process terms. However, by bundling these HR functions and processes together, it is evident that they can be encouraged to recast their activity in a broader strategic narrative. Borrowing the notions and theories of value and value creation, and investigating talent management through this lens, should help to surface interesting insights into how talent management might be defined in practice, and how the language of value may in future be used to understand what talent management really is. Originality/value The global study underpinning this paper attempts to deconstruct the understanding that strategic actors have about talent management from an empirical base. It contributes to the conceptual development of the talent management discourse by revealing the logics being pursued and address the definitional problem currently evidenced in the literature. It also provides direction for future research.

The mutuality metaphor: understanding healthcare provision in NHS Scotland

Purpose – Better Health, Better Care Action Plan (Scottish Government, 2007) sets out how the Scottish Government intends to strengthen public ownership of the National Health Service in Scotland. The purpose of this paper is to advance extant knowledge by understanding how a state-led mutual health policy may be interpreted, and importantly, communicated. Design/methodology/approach – The definitional problem of mutuality will be discussed and analysed in terms of how it is (or perhaps should be) communicated? will be offered. Findings – It actually may be more instructive to think of, and communicate, mutuality as a metaphor to aid understanding of the openness and fluidity found in NHS Scotland. Research limitations/implications – The existence of paradox and ambiguity does not, however, negate the usefulness of the term “mutuality”. Quite the opposite in fact: it is precisely by examining healthcare and its delivery through the lens of mutuality (rather than rejecting its complexity as a failure) that this amorphousness can be better appreciated. Practical implications – There is a need for more public, professional, and academic debate to explore and clarify its implementation, and how it is to be led. This must be provided whilst recognising the daily imperatives that NHS leaders must face. This would suggest, therefore, that a dual development path may help. Originality/value – Although Better Health, Better Care Action Plan was published in 2007, some eight years on there is still confusion and misunderstanding as to what mutuality in healthcare is, not only in policy and theory, but also in practice. It is hoped that this analysis will help address, in part, some of this confusion and misunderstanding.

What Is a Host? Incorporating the Microbiota into the Damage-Response Framework: TABLE 1

Since proof of the germ theory of disease in the late 19th century, a major focus of the fields of microbiology and infectious diseases has been to seek differences between pathogenic and nonpathogenic microbes and the role that the host plays in microbial pathogenesis. Remarkably, despite the increasing recognition that host immunity plays a role in microbial pathogenesis, there has been little discussion about what constitutes a host. Historically, hosts have been viewed in the context of their fitness or immunological status and characterized by adjectives such as immune, immunocompetent, immunosuppressed, immunocompromised, or immunologically impaired. However, in recent years it has become apparent that the microbiota has profound effects on host homeostasis and susceptibility to microbial diseases in addition to its effects on host immunity. This raises the question of how to incorporate the microbiota into defining a host. This definitional problem is further complicated because neither host nor microbial properties are adequate to predict the outcome of host-microbe interaction because this outcome exhibits emergent properties. In this essay, we revisit the damage-response framework (DRF) of microbial pathogenesis and demonstrate how it can incorporate the rapidly accumulating information being generated by the microbiome revolution. We use the tenets of the DRF to put forth the following definition of a host: a host is an entity that houses an associated microbiome/microbiota and interacts with microbes such that the outcome results in damage, benefit, or indifference, thus resulting in the states of symbiosis, colonization, commensalism, latency, and disease.