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Several theoretical studies have investigated biological determinism. First, it leaves no room for divine intervention in the various spheres of human activity. Second, it asserts that heredity significantly influences human behavior. This notion emphasizes the idea that humans possess both freedom and wildness. According to biological determinism, behavior is predetermined by DNA, reducing physiological brain activity. Consequently, what is commonly perceived to be human freedom is illusory. If an individual’s actions are not a result of their own will, the issue of justice arises from the rewards and punishments that God metes out in response to human behavior. To address the theological dilemmas posed by these assertions of biological determinism, we sought to ground human freedom, will, and responsibility within the framework of God’s justice, by drawing on insights from epigenetics and brain plasticity. However, can recent developments in genetic science comprehensively elucidate human behavior, potentially revealing the freedom we once believed we possessed to be an illusion? Answering this question was one of the primary objectives of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instances of convergent or parallel evolution provide a potent model system for exploring contingency and determinism in evolutionary biology. Likewise, the multiple, independent habitat transitions from saltwater to freshwater biomes offer opportunities for studying convergent evolution within and among different vertebrate lineages. For example, stingrays have invaded freshwater habitats multiple times across different continents, sometimes even several times within the same clade (e.g. Dasyatidae). We evaluated the frequency of saltwater–freshwater invasions in stingrays, compared ecological and phenotypic diversification among freshwater and saltwater lineages, and assessed the degree of convergence among freshwater species. Despite not being morphologically distinct from saltwater stingrays, freshwater stingrays do expand the margins of stingray morphological diversity. According to our data, trophic specialists occupied non-overlapping regions of morphospace, with piscivores and molluscivores being distinct from other diet guilds. Freshwater stingrays as a group did not strongly converge morphologically, neither did freshwater rays from different lineages, which shared similar niches. These findings could be explained by there not being enough time for convergence to occur among more ancient and more recent freshwater lineages. Alternatively, the different ancestral bauplans of various freshwater ray lineages and weak selection on optimal phenotypes could promote contingency in the form of evolution along paths of least resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last several decades, a growing group of environmental and medical historians have argued that engagement with the materiality of disease is critical to eroding the false boundaries between environment and health, and especially to the historical study of major epidemics and pandemics. This article evaluates the ways in which environmental and medical historians have engaged materiality when thinking through questions of infectious disease. It argues that far from eschewing cultural constructions of disease and analysis of medical systems, these works demonstrate that engagement with materiality in the study of disease articulates the stakes of medical regimes and practices of healing, and renders legible the multiple scales at which epidemics occur. Addressing key controversies in the use of sources, it provides examples of works that incorporate material objects, biological ideas and actors, and non-humans without falling prey to the extremes of "biological determinism" or "constructivism." It argues that commonalities in the methods employed by these works – utilization of scientific frameworks and data, multispecies analysis, attention to scale, and spatial thinking – reveal unseen and untold aspects of past pandemics. It concludes with a brief example of how these frameworks come together in practice through a case study on the history of enteric fever in Dublin, Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is an environment where binary discourses produce gendered bodies. Following a qualitative approach, this study has two major aims: (a) to analyze ECEC educators' and parents' perception regarding gender as a correlate for explaining toddlers' physical activity (PA) and (b) to discuss from a critical perspective how these perceptions could impact PA promotion from a very young age. The major findings were as follows: while some educators perceive no differences in PA patterns between girls and boys, others consider that girls are less active than boys and attribute this tendency to a greater propensity for symbolic play and biological determinants; and families perceive that their daughters are physically active and with natural predisposition to movement. In conclusion, despite the fact that some teachers' perceptions of young children continue to be encouraged into binary gendered practices, families show resistance and alternative ways to interpret the emphasized femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie ( KZfSS) is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In light of the increased interest in state, corporate, and individual policies regarding social issues related to healthcare, emotional well-being, and human life, the article analyzes the discourse and practices presented in popular science guides on hormones. These analyses aim to address significant questions within the framework of an adopted analytical approach, which results from an alliance between governmentality studies and rhetoric culture theory. Key questions include: How is the mechanism of hormone action understood? Do the guides link hormones with social specifications? Do they offer strategies for managing hormonal imbalances? Do these guides serve as a response to the processes of implementing neoliberal technologies of governmentality – such as healthism, technologies of individual responsibility, and technologies of the self – in both professional and non-professional spheres of social life? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Taylor & Francis Ltd) is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay explores how anthropological assumptions about the differential place of kinship in kin-based and state-based societies shaped the work of Marshall Sahlins. On the one hand, I show how his expansive excursions into what kinship is, means, and does within the scope of kin-based societies clearly motivated some of his major contributions to anthropological theory: his critique of Western economic and biological determinisms; his exploration of the cultural dynamics of kinship as they articulate relations of hierarchy, power, and sovereignty; his rethinking of anthropological theories of structure; and his formulation of the concept of "performative" kinship. On the other hand, I analyze how these assumptions about the distinction between kin-based and state-based societies ultimately limited the scope of inquiry in his book, What Kinship Is—And Is Not. I then look beyond these limitations to more recent work in kinship studies that challenge the distinction between kin-based and state-based societies, and I end by arguing that, with regard to kinship studies, this distinction should best be left behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Church in the World / Crkva u Svijetu is the property of University of Split, Catholic Faculty of Theology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Lituanistica is the property of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is the property of Canadian Disability Studies Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The work of Rufino Blanco Fombona (1874–1944) and Rómulo Gallegos (1884–1969) is generally understood as reinforcing the then-common Venezuelan representation of race as biological and binary – as separable into either "white" or "non-white", with the latter category including all mixed-race people who made up 60% of Venezuela's total population at the time. These authors' narratives attempt to reinforce these binaries by racially classifying Jewish immigrants at the beginning of the twentieth century – by understanding where they fit within this racial taxonomy. Instead, as I show, these attempts destabilise the categories themselves, leaning first on biological determinism, and then on cultural and ethnic profiling. To make this argument, I analyze Blanco Fombona's Judas Capitolino (1912) contextualised by his writings on race outside of his fiction, alongside Gallegos's short-story "Los inmigrantes" (1922). These works take biologically deterministic positions on race in their caricatures of Jews and mixed-race individuals, demonstrating the inability of Jewish immigration to whiten what Gallegos denotes as the"raza autóctona", the Venezuelan mixed-race individual that he believes to be barbaric and impure. Without the correct shade of whiteness to lighten Venezuela's mixed-race majority, the "raza autóctona" will take over positions of power, becoming a ruling "barbarocracia", threatening the white order and dooming Venezuela's (white) future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the eugenics movement become popular in various parts of the world. Mexico, like many other Latin American countries, considered it appropriate to analyze the eugenic knowledge of the time and then apply it to the country’s population. eugenic knowledge of the time and then apply it to the country’s population. To achieve this, they considered that their main tool would be a scientific popularization magazine. The objective of this article is to analyze the main characteristics of the Eugenesia magazine and to link them with the direct effects it had on the promotion of eugenics in Mexico between 1930 and 1945, using a qualitative methodology, through a discourse analysis of the texts of the Eugenesia magazine. It was concluded that eugenics was easily promoted in Mexico, largely because of the racist and hierarchical logic that had been established in the country at that time, on the other hand, it kept the general characteristics of eugenics in other parts of the world, information was promoted without scientific support. information was promoted without scientific support.

Recent developments regarding the pharmacology of psychoactive substances are significant for treating depressions or opioid addictions. Current theories, hypotheses, and models of drug effects assume a cause–effect narrative, which is based on a stimulus/response mechanism. These narratives prioritize effects rather than conscious experiences. In this sense, drug experiences are quickly subsumed into common categories and codes of biological determinism. If subjective experiences are in the focus of the research, it quickly becomes a link to mystical, spiritual, or transcendental narratives. These classifications lead to epistemological doublets (Gadamer). In this article, psychedelic experiences of drug users are analyzed in the frame of the pharmaco-analysis by Deleuze/Guattari. These framed psychedelic experiences are interpreted by means of a non-philosophical approach through philo-fictions (Laruelle), i.e., contradictory assumptions and hyperspeculations. In this respect, the aim of this article is to bring philo-fictions in relation to psychedelic experiences and to discuss them with models of information science, quantum mechanics, new materialism, and the philosophy of immanence. The result will be an open synthesis, with the assumption of further reflections on the agency, immanence, and the wholeness of matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Eleuthera is the property of Universidad de Caldas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

America's notorious eugenics case Buck v. Bell is being resurrected as anticanon in abortion jurisprudence. Buck became one of the Court's worst decisions by upholding eugenic practices, but these recent anticanonical citations also prove harmful by misidentifying eugenics. This Article joins critics of this misuse of "eugenics" labeling and warns that the rhetorical use of Buck in abortion cases has dangerous implications for reproductive medicine. It draws on Buck as the leading precedent for eugenics under the law and demonstrates that selective-abortion cases are distinguishable because of two failures of the Buck Court: the failure to recognize state interference with reproductive choices and a failure to engage with the underlying science. When judges misidentify eugenics today, they do so by recreating these same mistakes in their decisions. If these mistakes are ignored, the only remaining meaning of eugenics will be that some element of selection occurs after fertilization but before birth. Defining eugenics as selection goes too far and implicates a host of other factual settings well-engrained in society and reproductive medicine. These medical procedures are already being met with mixed reception in tort law-- despite having secured reception in medicine and society--and a eugenics label would feed courts' rejection of these claims. Moreover, the reasoning underlying those courts' rejection reflects the same two failures underlying Buck and the misapplication of the eugenics label in selective-abortion cases. Therefore, a better analysis of these two factors in each context, selective-abortions and torts, can lead to better resolutions in both cases. This Article does not purport to take a normative stance on abortion, but it instead aims to relocate the debate surrounding selective abortions away from eugenics and into conversation with medical negligence through the courts' own inclination to draw on Buck v. Bell. It concludes by looking to Dobbs and the opportunity that decision provides for judges to either reevaluate the rhetoric employed in reproduction law or continue the mistakes of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate over the origins of sexuality has animated a great deal of research on homosexuality, centering largely on whether sexuality is biologically determined or socially constructed. The contours of this debate have important ramifications regarding experiences of marginalization within the gay imagined community. Dominant discourses of sexuality can flatten and obscure differences within this community, and these discourses are often connected to essentialist notions of the origins of homosexuality. Nonetheless, the mechanisms through which essentialist notions affect non-heterosexual individuals' understandings of sexual identity and of the gay community remains somewhat unclear. Through analysis of interviews with 29 non-heterosexual men, I find evidence of essentialist logic concerning not only origins but also race, nationality, class, and sexual identity/preference. I synthesize these by advancing the concept of gay essentialism, arguing for a more intersectional approach to the concept that deemphasizes debate over origins. I also examine how gay essentialist logic helps to (re)produce and obscure inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores nostalgia for the not-so-queer nineties, or rather, what Amin Ghaziani called the "post-gay" nineties. Inspired by Rosalind Gill's "postfeminism as a sensibility," I coin "post-gay as a sensibility" as I explore the affective dimensions of post-gay culture. As an example of post-gay politics, I dive into a critical study of Walk Away, a coming-out-as-conservative social movement. Sparked by a video testimonial and the hashtag #WalkAway, the movement documents the exodus of ex-Democrats who now ride the Trump train, with the goal of attracting liberals, and especially minorities, to the GOP. Assembling a bricolage of methodologies, I blend a discursive analysis of #WalkAway's online content and participant observation of the Walk Away LGBT town hall, as I explore how conservative influencers construct nostalgia for the nineties as a site of longing for a time before marriage equality, when there was a normative push to devote all movement energy toward political legibility and respectability. I focus on two elements of this constructed nostalgia: reliance on the political power of the coming-out ritual, and the supremacy of biological determinism over social constructivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The circulation of knowledge poses new questions to the scholarship on eugenics in the Habsburg Empire. Focusing on imperial networks and the cognitive management of imperial diversity, this paper analyses three cases of imperial circulation of eugenic knowledge. It shows that the actors, institutions, and geographies of such circulation varied substantially, depending on the practices out of which the particular type of eugenic knowledge emerged and the functions it served. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This bibliographical review presents a set of research about motherhood as a constructed social practice, the deterministic discourse of biology, and how it emerges in the training of biologists and teachers. The focus is on the Brazilian academic productions about this subject and its related aspects. About the methodological approach, the papers were raised from CAPES Portal in searches directed by descriptors previously defined. A set of 23 papers were found, and their analysis resulted in 3 thematic categories: 1. What is a mother?; 2. Breastfeeding; 3. What is a woman? - the biological discourse on stage. The results demonstrate the scarce discussion on specific topics. In general terms, discourses that speak directly about biological characteristics in women corroborate with the social place intended for them, over time, gave way to other sexist discourses, however masking under scientific neutrality. Within the production of scientific knowledge, it is evident that the purpose is to justify stereotypes in female and male bodies ways and, consequently, inequalities.

Sherlock Holmes is often oversimplified as a secular modern professional, with a remorselessly scientific outlook. This hypothesis overlooks late-nineteenth-century English society's pursuit of new social possibilities for spiritualism, following challenges from Darwinist biological determinism to orthodox biblical mythology and morality. If we see Holmes in a default empirical scientism affiliated to imperial ideologies, we will remain blind to the effects of multiple countercultural and spiritual tones that also underpin the "science of deduction." Holmes' methods were subliminally informed by theosophy, as Doyle gleaned much of his spiritual knowledge from first- or second-hand readings on Blavatsky. Thus, Vedantic and Buddhist philosophy find inadvertent—but not coincidental—traces in Holmes through theosophy. An intellectual offspring of the trinity of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall, Holmes was also a child of Blavatsky's occult philosophy. Adopting a decolonial praxis, this paper argues that comparisons between the materialistic principles of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall, on the one hand, and Holmes on the other, are as useful as comparing the detective's work to Blavatsky's theosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In experimental biology, the last three decades have seen a flood of techniques dedicated to study biological phenomena at the single-cell level, and this article aims to reflect on how these technical advances can contribute to the renewal of theoretical perspectives in biology. The case studied here is that of the critique of the genetic determinism of molecular biology. The demonstration of unpredictability in gene expression at the single-cell level, a phenomenon known as stochastic gene expression, even in clonal populations, initially appeared to be a decisive indication that cells do not actually behave as predicted by deterministic frameworks. However, single-cell techniques have also revealed other sources of genetic variation that nuance this picture. The role of single-cell studies thus appears contrasted, and can be used to support or challenge the paradigm of genetic determinism (GDP). This opens up a more general debate on the practical ability of molecular biologists to criticize their own paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several nations, including Canada, Norway, and Sweden, are increasingly integrating gender and feminist perspectives into their foreign and security strategies. This paper examines feminist foreign policy through an ethical lens, emphasizing that prevailing studies on ethical foreign policy and international conduct often neglect gender considerations. In the late 20th century, women progressively engaged in global politics, prompting discussions about gender-based behavioral and leadership differences rooted in biological determinism. This perception is deeply ingrained in global cultural practices, leading this paper to explain the reasons behind women's marginalization in mainstream foreign policy-making in Pakistan. It delves into how cultural beliefs and practices create disadvantages for women while providing advantages for men, and the role played by primordial or constructed identities in shaping these dynamics. Furthermore, the paper explores avenues for implementing feminist foreign policy in the South Asian region specifically in Pakistan, addressing the unique challenges and opportunities within this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical approaches to the canon of Western political and legal thought from the point of view of race or gender have developed in recent years, as have studies highlighting the connections between supposedly universalist philosophies and their role in sustaining or legitimizing imperial and colonial conquests. On social contract theory in particular, seminal works include Charles Mills' The Racial Contract and Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract. The importance of this type of work cannot be understated, and Mills is right to insist on the "blinding whiteness of the discipline." In the case of Hobbes, I argue, the privilege established in his texts is better qualified as "civilizational" rather than "racial." Hobbes's texts construct a certain image of civilization, a form of exclusion and domination that eschews biological determinism in favor of social, historical bias. This "civilizational" thinking certainly can work – and will work later on in conjunction with modern racism and white privilege – to exclude many. The racial contract – as per Mills – is only a late installment on a more fundamental one, the civilizing contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The search for quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting traits of interest in mammals is frequently limited to autosomes, with the X chromosome excluded because of its hemizygosity in males. This study aimed to assess the importance of the X chromosome in the genetic determinism of 11 complex traits related to milk production, milk composition, mastitis resistance, fertility, and stature in 236,496 cows from three major French dairy breeds (Holstein, Montbéliarde, and Normande) and three breeds of regional importance (Abondance, Tarentaise, and Vosgienne). Results: Estimates of the proportions of heritability due to autosomes and X chromosome (h²X) were consistent among breeds. On average over the 11 traits, h²X=0.008 and the X chromosome explained ~ 3.5% of total genetic variance. GWAS was performed within-breed at the sequence level (~ 200,000 genetic variants) and then combined in a meta-analysis. QTL were identified for most breeds and traits analyzed, with the exception of Tarentaise and Vosgienne and two fertility traits. Overall, 3, 74, 59, and 71 QTL were identified in Abondance, Montbéliarde, Normande, and Holstein, respectively, and most were associated with the most-heritable traits (milk traits and stature). The meta-analyses, which assessed a total of 157 QTL for the different traits, highlighted new QTL and refined the positions of some QTL found in the within-breed analyses. Altogether, our analyses identified a number of functional candidate genes, with the most notable being GPC3, MBNL3, HS6ST2, and DMD for dairy traits; TMEM164, ACSL4, ENOX2, HTR2C, AMOT, and IRAK1 for udder health; MAMLD1 and COL4A6 for fertility; and NRK, ESX1, GPR50, GPC3, and GPC4 for stature. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the importance of the X chromosome in the genetic determinism of complex traits in dairy cattle and highlights new functional candidate genes and variants for these traits. These results could potentially be extended to other species as many X-linked genes are shared among mammals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everett Mendelsohn, a biologist, historian of ideas, teacher, editor, and humanist, had a positive impact on the lives of his students and colleagues. The author of the article recounts their personal experiences with Everett, highlighting his support and guidance in their own professional development. Everett founded and developed the Journal of the History of Biology, which the author found to be a valuable platform for publishing their work. The author also discusses Everett's belief that society plays a significant role in shaping scientific development, a view that was controversial at the time. Additionally, the author mentions Everett's assistance in helping seminar participants navigate their careers during difficult times. Overall, Everett Mendelsohn's contributions to the field of biology and history of science are remembered fondly by those who knew him. [Extracted from the article]

Nancy Bisaha's intellectual biography of Pope Pius II, titled "From Christians to Europeans: Pope Pius II and the Concept of the Modern Western Identity," explores the complexity of Pius's thought and his writings in the mid-fifteenth century. Bisaha argues that Pius's representations of the Ottomans as Europe's boogeyman reveal a heightened awareness among fifteenth-century writers of cultural and geographical differences, not just religious ones. However, the book could benefit from a deeper engagement with scholarship on the formation of Europe and the West, as well as with studies on colonialism and race. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into how Europe came into being, but leaves some gaps in understanding the role of Pius and his contemporaries in creating the Europe that impacted the lives of individuals like Frantz Fanon. [Extracted from the article]

The recent debate in feminist philosophy about an adequate concept of woman presupposes the distinction between sex and gender, and most proposals operate on the gender level. Building on Simone de Beauvoir, Toril Moi suggested an account of "woman" that does not rely on the distinction between sex and gender (Moi 1999a). She criticizes that this distinction suggests too strong a separation between the bodily and social dimensions of a person's identity. Instead, her account of "woman" centers around the phenomenological concept of the "body as situation" or the lived/living body (Leib). This understanding of the body emphasizes a person's subjective experience of their own body rather than a third-personal (for example, medical) perspective on humans' bodies. With her proposal, Moi aims, on the one hand, to resist biological determinism, and, on the other, to avoid the dualism of the sex/gender distinction. In this article, I re-introduce Moi's position to the recent debate and examine how it fares regarding the "inclusion problem" (Katharine Jenkins) toward trans women. I suggest that Moi's account provides resources for an attractive, individualistic, and hence inclusive account of embodied gender identity. For political purposes, however, we also need to analyze concrete contexts of gender-related oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Adults deleteriously infer traits are fixed on hearing they are inheritable. • The present studies found this association is also true by third grade. • The association affects ideas about mental traits including fixed mindset beliefs. • However, children view bodily traits as more inheritable and fixed than mental traits. • This mind–body distinction is robust in face of science teaching that might derail it. In adults, biological causes are commonly associated with immutability. However, it remains unclear when during their development children coherently connect these ideas in relation to reasoning about physical and mental traits and whether children reason differently by domain. Understanding this is relevant to illuminating children's conceptions about the body versus the mind. Prior work has suggested that a more sophisticated differentiated understanding of psychological traits may begin to emerge around 8 years of age. In Study 1a, therefore, we examined U.S. third graders' reasoning about the inheritance and malleability of physical and mental traits and whether their ideas coherently covary within each domain. In Study 1b, we further investigated the robustness of this differentiated understanding by exploring whether participating in a curriculum that presented simplified information about physical traits affected thinking about mental traits. Results reveal that third graders display robust coherence in their reasoning about trait inheritance and malleability. Children consistently judged physical traits as more inherited and less malleable than mental traits, with children's ideas about inheritability and malleability showing consistent connections within each domain. Moreover, exposure to science teaching about physical traits did not alter children's perception that mental traits are less inherited and more malleable. By 8 years of age, therefore, children clearly distinguish body from mind in theoretically coherent ways. Nevertheless, the covariance between beliefs about inheritability and immutability should provoke caution when talking to children about parent–child resemblances in capacities like intelligence lest some children infer that their abilities cannot be improved through effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Slavica Wratislaviensia is the property of Wroclaw University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The southern island of Tasmania is renowned for being the last Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality in 1997. Twenty years after the repeal of these laws, the state parliament of Tasmania passed legislation introducing an expungement scheme for historical homosexual convictions and delivered an apology for their harms. In this article, we draw upon theories of sexual citizenship to develop a critical place-based analysis of the Tasmanian apology that is attentive to the specificities of the region's political, social, and cultural context. We argue that the parliament's attempts to redefine the boundaries of sexual belonging through apology and expungement entail new forms of erasure, exclusion and policing. The limits of the apology's liberal discourse of progress are foretold by several tendencies within its narration, including: the persistent impulse to erase both past records of the law's violence and future LGBTQIA + identities; assumptions of sexual essentialism and biological determinism; and the uneasy demarcation of il/legal sexual practices, which reasserts the state's authority to govern sexuality through recourse to the criminal law. Our analysis highlights the need for more place-based analysis of emergent modes of sexual governance within queer criminology and for further research into the material benefits, if any, that apologies and expungement schemes provide to those affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is popular in psychology to hypothesize that representations of exact number are innately determined--in particular, that biology has endowed humans with a system for manipulating quantities which forms the primary representational substrate for our numerical and mathematical concepts. While this perspective has been important for advancing empirical work in animal and child cognition, here we examine six natural predictions of strong numerical nativism from a multidisciplinary perspective, and find each to be at odds with evidence from anthropology and developmental science. In particular, the history of number reveals characteristics that are inconsistent with biological determinism of numerical concepts, including a lack of number systems across some human groups and remarkable variability in the form of numerical systems that do emerge. Instead, this literature highlights the importance of economic and social factors in constructing fundamentally new cognitive systems to achieve culturally specific goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical essay aims to analyze the contributions of Schatzki epistemology to the understanding of gender as a social practice. Thus, it is considered that it is possible to draw a parallel between the happening of phenomena/social practices of Schatzki's epistemology and Butler's gender performativity. Despite the genre be materialized in the organizational space, in and through it, according to the normativity that shapes organizational life, this theme is relatively neglected by the Organizational Studies. Despite the heteronormativity, subjects are able to (re)interpret the rules, giving new meaning to them, making a continuous (re)arrangement continued the space/time of their lives. Thus, individuals incorporate their own micro-versions of gender practices that happening in social and organizational contexts in which they are intertwined. Thus, the term gender is comprehended not as a biological determinism, "natural" or social; but as a practical (a connection of "sayins" and "doyings", and not only a reproduction of a standard action) which is historically and socially (re)constructed, in a fluid and dynamic way through discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuroscience has become a new 'truth' in early childhood education across the globe, including in Indonesia. This article aims to demonstrate how the alignment of neuroscience discourse and the legacy of neoliberalism constructs a new form of childhood in Indonesia. The conceptual framework of brain science, predicated on biological determinism, suggests that the brain will significantly influence not only children's development in the present but also will have an impact in the future. Neuroscience is also based on the idea of transparency. Beneath this conceptual framework lies the idea that a child's mind can be made visible through both technological means and standardized development measures. Global neoliberal discourse reinforces this techno-scientific approach through the concept that stimulating children's development facilitates economic growth in a country. This instrumental use of child development contrasts with the paradigm which emphasizes children's agency. This article is based on ongoing and previous fieldwork from both authors. Using Foucault's concept of discourse and disciplinary power, the authors argue that neuroscience has become the truth that hides societal issues such as poverty as well as becomes a form of surveillance that constructs a child as being open to the adult gaze and surveillance. The findings will also illuminate the tension and negotiation between local values and global values in assembling a new form of childhood in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper critically assesses and reflects on the ideals and realities of two major (British) child migration schemes, namely the British Home Child scheme (1869–1930) and the Kindertransport scheme (1938–1940), to add to current understandings of their place within wider international histories of child migration, moral reforms, eugenics, settlement, and identity. Specifically, we focus on constructions of "mentally and physically deficient" children/young people, informed by eugenic viewpoints and biological determinism, and how this guided inclusion and exclusion decisions in both schemes. Both schemes made judgements regarding which children should be included/excluded in the schemes or returned to their country of origin (as was the case with children in the Canadian child migration scheme) fueled by a type of eugenics oriented to transplanting strong physical and psychologically resilient specimens. By viewing the realities of the child migration schemes, including the varied experiences and narratives in relation to child migrants, in light of eugenicist narratives of difference, pathology, victimhood, and contamination, we shed a light on uneven practices, formations of power, and expectations of the times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lewontin's 1972 paper (RC Lewontin, 1972 The apportionment of human diversity, in Evolutionary biology, vol. 6 (eds T Dobzhansky, MK Hecht, WC Steere), pp. 381–398) can be viewed as one foray in his battle against biological determinism. Our paper shows where Lewontin, The apportionment of human diversity, fits in the debate over human classification that it stimulated. We outline three assumptions inherent in the biological deterministic view of human phenotypic diversity and show how the 1972 paper, as well as Lewontin's papers in 1970 and 1974 on the problems with the heritability statistic and his 1979 criticism of naive pan-selectionism, invalidate these assumptions. These papers were crucial components of his campaign against biological determinism and the racism with which it was associated. In the current climate of widespread racism and the rise of sociogenomics, it is important to revisit Lewontin's writings and to disseminate the messages they contain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1970s, ethologists at the German Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen started a series of research projects at several regional kindergartens in search of natural predispositions in human behavior. This so‐called "Kindergarten Project" became one of the pillars of research activity at the newly founded Forschungsstelle für Humanethologie (Research Center for Human Ethology) where Irenäus Eibl‐Eibesfeldt and a team of researchers set out to explore new fields of research for the discipline of ethology. Taking the research project conducted by biologist Barbara Hold on ranking behavior among kindergarten children as a vantage point, this paper explores the shift in ethology from animal to human behavior which occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes how human ethologists coped with the methodological, conceptual, and ethico‐political challenges which arose from crossing the human‐animal divide. This article thus sheds light on the hitherto unwritten history of human ethology as it was developed at the MPI since the late 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

McKittrick exhibits "other stories" ahead of the letter addressed to science, which I read as a strategy to combat science's othering of stories. The book closes with a letter to "science" that personifies science and exemplifies McKittrick's attempts to actualize the liberation of black livingness from its dehumanizing systems. I Dear Science and Other Stories i makes an obvious contribution to Black Studies, which is McKittrick's primary audience. [Extracted from the article]

Qualitative study with a Thematic Oral History approach, aiming to understand women's health care from the point of view of childless women, considering public health policies. The snowball technique was used to define the 19 participating women, without children, aged between 18 and 90 years, who know or use public health policies. The narratives were collected through interviews, with a semi-structured script, and submitted to the narrative analysis method. Among the findings, there are the discourses and representations of motherhood, produced and conveyed in public health policies, in which the biological characteristics of women are implicit in the fragmentation of the female body into uterus and breast. Also noteworthy is the perception of childless women that health programs and policies, by focusing on reproductive aspects, reaffirming the female ideal of a woman-mother, neglecting other aspects and disregarding the woman who chooses no maternity. The representations of the feminine focus on the body, the target of power, linking the condition of being a woman to motherhood, based on biological determinism. It is necessary to re-elaborate these policies, considering the transformations in the female role and women's freedom of choice in contemporary times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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