ABSTRACT
In the introduction to this special issue of Volkskunde on heritage and controversies, the urgency and relevance of this topic in the 2020s are emphasized. The wave of symbolic violence and protests against statues of persons linked with slave trade or colonization (illustrated with the case of the Melville Monument in Edinburgh) in the 2020s, was fuelled by the Black Lives Matter Movement, in particular after the death of George Floyd in 2020. The expansion and proliferation of the concept of heritage in the 21st century, well beyond only monuments and statues, is accompanied by an expansion of controversies. An extended series of adjectives like dark, difficult or toxic has recently been introduced in museology and critical heritage studies to draw attention to problematic aspects of heritage, memories, and tourism. This is contextualized by problematizing and addressing historical and contemporary events, traumas, and development. This is not only the case for slavery, imperialism, racism, colonialism, and gender relations in the past but also for climate change, sustainability, and anxieties about the future(s). These agendas and new challenges have effects on education, in particular history and history didactics. This field is now confronted with strong political attempts at orientation and reframing (as the attempts to launch a selective canon trajectory in Flanders demonstrate). But resilience can be expected, just like strategies of multiplication of perspectives, stories, canons, and frames. In the last five years, several projects were launched by Paul Janssenswillen en Wil Meeus, focusing on the topic of controversies in heritage (organizations) and teaching history, emphasizing multiperspectivity and the need for tools and didactic frames. This even leads to an article in this journal Volkskunde, published in 2019. One of these projects, the REGER project, bumped halfway into the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns and other problems in 2020 and 2021. But as the present volume demonstrates, literature reviews and numerous experiments were realized in the second phase. Some results are published in this special issue. Confronted with the pandemic's impact and several evolutions, a reorientation of the trajectory of the project led to the discovery of controversy mapping and its application in high schools and higher education in France. Many other promising lines are explored, including the legacy of the late Bruno Latour, the work of Tommaso Venturini and Anders Kristian Munk and the potential of thinking in terms of "Streitwert" (agonistic value), as launched by Gabi Dolff-Bonekamper.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has put public health systems in crisis due to the accelerated increase in admissions to emergency services and intensive care units (ICU). This demand for critical care in a global health emergency has led to the need for triage methods to adequately select the patients most likely to survive the disease with better quality of life and years of survival. However, problematic decisions about triage are not merely a medical matter, but a bioethical decision that involves considering other social criteria to select patients fairly and equitably. These decisions must be deliberate and endorsed by hospital bioethics committees, they should not be taken solely by the health personnel in charge. This article addresses the problem in a general way and refers to the situation in Mexico, based on available data. The use of random and first-come arrival methods at the hospital is questioned for not being the fairest and most efficient in the use of scarce critical medicine resources during this pandemic. It also discusses the feasibility of using, together with medical criteria, the criteria of "social utility", some of which have already been applied in cases of waiting lists in organ transplants, in cases of tie-breaking and to help a more careful selection of patients to increase the number of people benefited in the ICU and the quality of life of the survivors. © 2022 Universitat de Barcelona, Observatorio de Bioetica y Derecho. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked an unprecedented public debate over socio-scientific controversies, particularly regarding vaccination and social distancing measures. Despite the potential of such subjects for developing critical thinking and a sense of citizenship, the theme of controversies is still incipient in science museums. This documentary study investigates the way three science institutions have proposed online exhibits on Covid-19 on Google Arts & Culture platform and checks their potential for favoring teaching on controversial science topics. Google Arts & Culture platform was searched for Covid-19-related keywords and the filtering of the results was based on focus and organizing institutions. Three exhibits were detected, whose analysis was submitted to an inter-rater agreement (Cohen's kappa). The results revealed the predominance of social and economic aspects that can strongly favor more scientifically progressive views of both science literacy and a socially undistorted science. On the other hand, the superficiality of political discussions on science topics, a lack of naturalization of the controversial discussions, and an excessive use of textual content were identified, thus revealing some initiatives have not explored the interactivity, multimediality, and the way dilemmas that mark the trajectory of science museums extend to online exhibits. From this perspective, we point out paths for teaching and learning socio-scientific controversies in museums.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked an unprecedented public debate over socio-scientific controversies, particularly regarding vaccination and social distancing measures. Despite the potential of such subjects for developing critical thinking and a sense of citizenship, the theme of controversies is still incipient in science museums. This documentary study investigates the way three science institutions have proposed online exhibits on Covid-19 on Google Arts & Culture platform and checks their potential for favoring teaching on controversial science topics. Google Arts & Culture platform was searched for Covid-19-related keywords and the filtering of the results was based on focus and organizing institutions. Three exhibits were detected, whose analysis was submitted to an inter-rater agreement (Cohen's kappa). The results revealed the predominance of social and economic aspects that can strongly favor more scientifically progressive views of both science literacy and a socially undistorted science. On the other hand, the superficiality of political discussions on science topics, a lack of naturalization of the controversial discussions, and an excessive use of textual content were identified, thus revealing some initiatives have not explored the interactivity, multimediality, and the way dilemmas that mark the trajectory of science museums extend to online exhibits. From this perspective, we point out paths for teaching and learning socio-scientific controversies in museums.
ABSTRACT
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria are novel and exciting tools of corporate disclosure for decision making. Using quantitative and qualitative analyses, the present study examined the key characteristics and trends of ESG controversies in the European market. At the same time, it identified the controversies’ determinants. A bibliometric analysis was the qualitative method employed on the data derived from Scopus using Biblioshiny software, an R package. The quantitative analysis involved an international sample of 2278 companies headquartered in Europe from 2017–2019 being studied using a Generalized Linear Model. The findings of this research highlighted the role of the “S” and the “G” dimensions of the ESG controversies as the most crucial in affecting controversies. Women are under-represented in the business hierarchy, but their natural characteristics such as friendliness and peaceability lead to a low level of illegal business practices. However, independent of gender, executives have personal gains that they want to satisfy. Thus, executives may become involved in unethical practices and harm their colleagues and the business’s reputation. On the other hand, democracy emerged as one of the most disputed factors. Democracy gives people the voice to express themselves and publicly support their ideas without restrictions. Although, the regression results showed that democracy is not always operated as the “pipe of peace” and can affect, to some extent, controversies.
ABSTRACT
The article investigates the controversies that emerge with the production of the CoronaVac vaccine, the first Covid-19 vaccine available in Brazil, on June 11th, 2020. Based on Actor-Network Theory, this study is inspired by virtual ethnography. We thus privilege digital documents from government agencies and medical entities, specialized publications, publications in Facebook groups, and the writing of a virtual field diary. Our investigation ends with the approval of the CoronaVac and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines by the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa). We identify the construction of factoids by groups that were critical of social distancing measures, basing themselves on the use of purportedly scientific arguments. The alliances established between doctors and the federal government through the Ministry of Health challenged the vaccine as a technoscientific artifact, and advocated for drugs that were part of the so-called “early treatment” as the “cure” for the pandemic in Brazil. © 2022, Brazilian Anthropology Association. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Net wealth taxes are one of the most controversial topics in taxation. Strained government finances due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth are fuelling this debate. While some countries (especially France: The net wealth tax – referred to as the ISF (impôt sur la fortune) – was abolished in 2017) have abolished net wealth taxes, their (re)introduction is being considered in others (for example, Austria, Germany, and the United States). Unfortunately, legal and economic arguments are rarely brought together in the public discussion, and the academic tax community has remained relatively quiet. Given the politically delicate nature of net wealth taxes, an interdisciplinary discussion seems necessary. This policy note focuses on the policy discussion on net wealth taxes from both economic and legal perspectives. It begins by identifying the characteristics of a net wealth tax compared to related taxes, such as property taxes and inheritance and gift taxes (Chapter I.). This is followed by an overview of the status quo of net wealth taxes and wealth-related taxes in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries (Chapter II.). Building on this, the article deals with the main arguments proposed in the literature in favour of and against the (re)introduction of net wealth taxes (Chapter III.). Since a net wealth tax has far-reaching effects on economic decision-making and on taxpayer compliance, a purely legal analysis is necessarily incomplete and requires an economic counterpart. Likewise, economically motivated tax reform proposals require an analysis of their legitimacy. A comprehensive discussion therefore requires a simultaneous legal and economic analysis. Since net wealth taxes are predominantly justified with distributional reasons, this note also discusses whether an inheritance and gift tax represents a reasonable alternative to a net wealth tax (Chapter IV.). After all, an inheritance and gift tax could also counteract the inequality of wealth. The objective of this article is to provide an interdisciplinary basis for the tax policy debate on wealth-related taxes.
ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the resurgence of Covid infections since the second half of 2020. Many countries again are not sufficiently prepared for new waves of the pandemic. While most policy-makers emphasize that their decisions are based on scientific evidence, the fundamental problem is that evidence about effective policy measures is insufficient. Policy decisions need to be taken in a context of uncertainty and unknown risks. Major controversies exist regarding the origin and characteristics of the virus, symptomatology, infectiousness, transmission, distancing, masking, immunity, vulnerability, and the role of animals. In all these cases, scientific facts are lacking, weak, questionable, or contested so that in practice policy decisions are based on value judgments. Interpreting the available evidence and proposing what should be done often involves an ethical point of view. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
This crossing boundaries section addresses the substantial aspects at stake in reshaping the nexus between science, politics and society triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, three main dimensions are explored: first, the emerging forms of science-related populism and how political narratives challenge and dispute prevailing scientific knowledge;second, the platformization of science communication and the active role of users and communities in consuming and spreading online misinformation;third, the role of lay expertise in contesting the epistemic authority of science during the health emergency. The authors explore the related topics by mobilizing different theoretical frameworks from STS studies, media studies and legal science, also moving from empirical to theoretical level in order to challenge the "surface" of a multilayered phenomenon.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), first identified in 2019 and still raging at the time of writing in 2021, has impacted on every sphere of life in every country. This situation is almost unprecedented apart from the two World Wars of the 20th Century and has pervaded both the mainstream media (print, broadcast and online) and social media. This article surveys the media reporting and representation of various controversies in the first few months of the lockdown in South Africa, from 23 March to 17 August 2020. It is based on a content analysis of articles culled from two aggregated online news sites, News24.com (www.news24.com) and the South African Independent Online (IOL) (www.iol.co.za). After an initial survey of the material, three dominant themes were chosen on which to focus: the manner in which the security forces, made up of the South African Police (SAP) and sections of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), enforced the lockdown in its early phases;the ban placed on alcohol and tobacco products during the first three levels of the lockdown;and the highly controversial deployment of medical staff from Cuba who came to South Africa in order to aid South African medical personnel. These themes were purposely chosen for their dominance in the news coverage of COVID-19 related controversies. © 2021 The Author. All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
Doubt is a double-edge sword. On the one hand, uncertainty is essential for epistemic progress, and yet, doubt can also make us vulnerable to deception, confused to the point of no longer knowing what is true. What distinguishes a doubt that is epistemologically beneficial from one which is deceptive, or even manufactured in the context of a conspiracy theory? In this chapter, we explore doubt, its role, and the way it is being handled in the context of the public controversy about the COVID-19 vaccine. We approach conspiracy theories as argumentative discourses and reconstruct the generic structure of a conspiracy theory macro argument. Through the structure, we look into the discourse of the twelve prominent anti-vaxxers known as the “Disinformation Dozen”, focusing on the argumentative potential that doubt can have in the public controversy about the COVID-19 vaccine. We suggest to distinguish ambivalence from scepticism and denialism as three argumentative potentials that a motivated doubt can have. We argue that ambivalent doubt ought to be acknowledged, addressed and incorporated into the public health narrative, in order to avoid that an unnecessarily broad interpretation of conspiracy theory dominates the public debate and leaves an uncertain public a prey to it. © 2022, The Author(s).
ABSTRACT
A cartografia de controvérsias, proposta baseada na Teoria Ator-Rede, foi utilizada neste estudo como metodologia para seguir os rastros de atores (ou actantes) humanos e não humanos envolvidos na controvérsia em torno da origem do vírus causador da COVID-19. A pesquisa consistiu na escolha de reportagens que circularam na grande mídia no ano de 2020, na identificação dos atores humanos e não humanos envolvidos e de seus respectivos interesses, no estabelecimento das redes formadas pela relação dos atores entre si com base no aplicativo Gephi , e na delimitação dos cosmos, sendo eles: 1) origem laboratorial, 2) seleção natural e 3) origem desconhecida, e um último grupo considerado “oportunista”, já que não possuía um ponto de vista próprio. Dessa forma, defendemos a cartografia de controvérsias como metodologia para tratar questões controversas no ensino de ciências, por permitir que os diferentes posicionamentos em torno destas questões sejam explicitados, de modo a potencializar a participação cidadã dos estudantes em questões relativas à ciência e tecnologia.Alternate : The cartography of controversies proposal based on Actor-Network Theory, was used in this study as a methodology to follow the traces of human and non-human actors (or actants) involved in the controversy surrounding the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19. The research consisted of selecting reports that circulated in the mainstream media in the 2020 year, in the identification of the human and non-human actors involved and their respective interests, in the establishment of networks formed by the relationship of the actors among themselves based on the Gephi app, and in the delimitation of the cosmos, being they: 1) laboratory origin, 2) natural selection and 3) unknown origin, and a last group considered “opportunist”, since it didn't have an own point of view. Thus, we defend the cartography of controversies as a methodology for dealing with controversial issues in science education, as it allows the different positions around these issues to be explicit, in order to enhance the citizen participation of students in issues related to science and technology.
ABSTRACT
Our purpose in this article is to discuss the roles for HPSS in Science Education considering the crisis of COVID-19, as well as to think what Science Education could look like beyond the pandemic. Considering the context of a pandemic as a starting point, we defend in this article the thesis that contours of public controversy involving COVID-19 bring elements that allow us to argue that Science Education needs to embrace perspectives that highlight politics as co-constitutive of science, and not in a subsidiary role to it. To defend this thesis, we begin with a theoretical framework based on arguments of science studies and from exemplary cases from history of science. Then, we analyze some of the public controversies surrounding COVID-19, in its most central aspects, trying to interpret how intertwining between science and politics took place. Brazilian case is analyzed in more details. Finally, based on educational scholarship and considering the previous discussions, we propose some implications for Science Education research and practices, both concerning the role of HPSS in its teaching and discussing critically boundaries of this research field.
ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 pandemic is the reason why humanity is paying more attention to the importance of regular and rigorous handwashing. Interestingly, in the nineteenth century, regular and rigorous handwashing was a key (and controversial) solution proposed by the Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis to cut drastically cases of puerperal fever. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence that the case of Semmelweis and puerperal fever-a crucial historical scientific controversy-can be used as a springboard to promote university student argumentation. Our study was inspired by the fact that the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD) stressed that more efforts and resources should be invested in promoting argumentation as an essential component for scientifically literate citizens in twenty-first century societies. However, nowadays, argument and debate are virtually absent from university science education. The data was derived from 124 undergraduates' (64 females and 60 males, 15-30 years old) written responses and audio and video recordings in a university biology course in Colombia. The findings show that the articulation of this historical controversy with decision-making, small-group debate, and whole-class debate activities can be useful for promoting undergraduates' argumentation. This study contributes to the development of a research-based university science education that can inform the design of an argumentation curriculum for higher education.
ABSTRACT
The outbreak of novel coronavirus disease (2019-nCoV or COVID-19) is responsible for severe health emergency throughout the world. The attack of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is found to be responsible for COVID-19. The World Health Organization has declared the ongoing global public health emergency as a pandemic. The whole world fights against this invincible enemy in various capacities to restore economy, lifestyle, and safe life. Enormous amount of scientific research work(s), administrative strategies, and economic measurements are in place to create a successful step against COVID-19. Furthermore, differences in opinion, facts, and implementation methods laid additional layers of complexities in this battle against survival. Thus, a timely overview of the recent, important, and overall inclusive developments against this pandemic is a pressing need for better understanding and dealing with COVID-19. In this review, we have systematically summarized the epidemiological studies, clinical features, biological properties, diagnostic methods, treatment modalities, and preventive measurements related to COVID-19.