scholarly journals Compromised Agency: The Case of BabyLegs

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Liboiron
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Monitoring Tool ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
Set Up

The concept of agency is ubiquitous in STS, particularly regarding cases of alternative ways of knowing and doing science such as civic, citizen, and feminist sciences, among others. Yet the focus on agency often glosses over the constraints placed on agents, particularly within asymmetrical power relations. This article follows the case of BabyLegs, a do-it-yourself monitoring tool for marine microplastic pollution, and the attempt to keep the technology open source within an intellectual property (IP) system set up to privatize it. The tactics used to design BabyLegs as a feminine, silly, doll-tool to discredit the device in the eyes of an IP system that valued traditional gender roles lead to the eventual success of keeping the device open source. Yet, those same tactics also reinforced and reproduced the structures of power and essentialism they were designed to resist. I characterize this technological ambivalence as compromise, and argue that all agency exercised within asymmetrical power relations is compromised. This is not to say resistance is futile, but that agency is never pure, and this recognition lets us be more intentional in how we might compromise as practitioners of diverse scientific knowledges. 

scholarly journals 3D printing, the Maker Movement, IP Litigation and Legal Reform

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Rimmer
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
3D Printing ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Maker Movement ◽  
Subtractive Manufacturing ◽  
Do It Yourself ◽  
A Chain ◽  
The Maker Movement

3D printing is a field of technology, which relies upon additive manufacturing (as opposed to traditional subtractive manufacturing). 3D printing has also been associated with the Maker Movement – a social movement focused upon developing and sharing design files. The field of 3D printing is currently undergoing a transitional phase. The consumer 3D printing revolution – which had hoped that there would be a 3D printer every home - has been a disappointment. The pioneering home 3D printing company MakerBot was embroiled in a number of controversies over its changing approach to intellectual property, resulting in disenchantment with the open source maker community, and alienation from its user-base.. Bre Pettis – the former head of MakerBot – reflected in an interview: ‘The open-source community cast us out of heaven.’ In the end, MakerBot was taken over by the leading 3D printing Stratsys, and restructured and repurposed. A number of other key companies became insolvent. TechShop, a chain of membership-based, open-access, do-it-yourself workshop and fabrication studios, went into bankruptcy. Maker Media – which runs Make Magazine and a couple of United States maker festivals – went into administration. Dale Dougherty, founder of Make Magazine has sought to revive the venture with Make Community LLC. Nonetheless, while personal 3D printing has not developed as anticipated, there has been a rise in a number of other forms and modes of 3D printing. Industrial 3D printing – along with robotics and Big Data – has become integrated into advanced manufacturing. Information technology and design companies have sought to improve the applications of 3D printing. Metal 3D printing has attracted significant investment – particularly from transportation companies. There has also been much experimentation with health applications of 3D printing – such as dental 3D printing, medical 3D printing, and bioprinting. As the technology has matured and advanced, there have been a number of early pieces of litigation and some policy developments in respect of 3D printing regulation. Our recent book 3D Printing and Beyond explores some of the key developments in intellectual property (IP) and 3D printing. In particular, it investigates 3D printing issues in the domains of copyright law, designs law, trademark law, patent law, and trade secrets (as well as some larger questions about 3D printing regulation). It also looks at the use of open licensing models in respect of 3D printing.

Profaning Jewish Mores in Chochana Boukhobza's Un été à Jérusalem

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-91
Author(s):  
Nancy M. Arenberg
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The City ◽  
Traditional Roles

As a transnational Israeli writer, Chochana Boukhobza delves into the complex problem of crossing borders in Un été à Jérusalem (1986), a text which focuses on the unnamed protagonist's trip from Paris to visit her family during the summer months in Jerusalem. Although the narrator had resided in Israel previously, she is forced to grapple with her ‘Otherness’ in Jerusalem, especially as a Jew originally from Tunisia. The narrator's crisis of exile is defined by her sense of disconnection to her family, the city, Israeli politics, and women's traditional roles. In this essay, particular emphasis will be placed on the protagonist's penchant for profaning Jewish cultural and religious practices, which is articulated through a series of corporeal transgressions. To launch this revolt against the patriarchal structure of the nation in Israel, the narrator rejects the submissive role assigned to Jewish-Tunisian women, and, in so doing, dismantles traditional gender roles.

Material World: Gender and the Bible in Evangelical Purity Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Moslener
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young People ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Material World ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
The Bible

For evangelical adolescents living in the United States, the material world of commerce and sexuality is fraught with danger. Contemporary movements urge young people to embrace sexual purity and abstinence before marriage and eschew the secular pressures of modern life. And yet, the sacred text that is used to authorize these teachings betrays evangelicals’ long-standing ability to embrace the material world for spiritual purposes. Bibles marketed to teenage girls, including those produced by and for sexual purity campaigns, make use of prevailing trends in bible marketing. By packaging the message of sexual purity and traditional gender roles into a sleek modern day apparatus, American evangelicals present female sexual restraint as the avant-garde of contemporary, evangelical orthodoxy.

scholarly journals What Lies beneath Sustainable Education? Predicting and Tackling Gender Differences in STEM Academic Success

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1671
Author(s):  
Maura A. E. Pilotti
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
Interior Design ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Stem Fields ◽  
High School Gpa ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles

In many societies across the globe, females are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM fields), although they are reported to have higher grades in high school and college than males. The present study was guided by the assumption that the sustainability of higher education critically rests on the academic success of both male and female students under conditions of equitable educational options, practices, and contents. It first assessed the persistence of familiar patterns of gender bias (e.g., do competencies at enrollment, serving as academic precursors, and academic performance favor females?) in college students of a society in transition from a gender-segregated workforce with marked gender inequalities to one whose aims at integrating into the global economy demand that women pursue once forbidden careers thought to be the exclusive domain of men. It then examined how simple indices of academic readiness, as well as preferences for fields fitting traditional gender roles, could predict attainment of key competencies and motivation to graduate (as measured by the average number of credits completed per year) in college. As expected, females had a higher high school GPA. Once in college, they were underrepresented in a major that fitted traditional gender roles (interior design) and over-represented in one that did not fit (business). Female students’ performance and motivation to graduate did not differ between the male-suited major of business and the female-suited major of interior design. Male students’ performance and motivation to graduate were higher in engineering than in business, albeit both majors were gender-role consistent. Although high school GPA and English proficiency scores predicted performance and motivation for all, preference for engineering over business also predicted males’ performance and motivation. These findings offered a more complex picture of patterns of gender bias, thereby inspiring the implementation of targeted educational interventions to improve females’ motivation for and enrollment in STEM fields, nowadays increasingly available to them, as well as to enhance males’ academic success in non-STEM fields such as business.

scholarly journals Prejudice Nation: Hypersexualization and Abuse in Jude Dibia’s Unbridled

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402110326
Author(s):  
Chinenye Amonyeze ◽  
Stella Okoye-Ugwu
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Implicit Bias ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Feminine Gender ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Culture Of Silence

With the global #Metoo movement yet to arrive in Nigeria, Jude Dibia’s Unbridled reflects an emblematic moment for the underrepresented to occupy their stories and make their voices heard. The study analyzes patriarchy’s complicated relationship with the Nigerian girl child, significantly reviewing the inherent prejudices in patriarchy’s power hierarchies and how radical narratives explore taboo topics like incest and sexual violence. Contextualizing the concepts of hypersexualization and implicit bias to put in perspective how women, expected to be the gatekeepers of sex, are forced to navigate competing allegiances while remaining submissive and voiceless, the article probes the struggles of sexual victims and how hierarchies in a patriarchal society exacerbate their affliction through a culture of silence. Arguing that Dibia’s Unbridled confronts the narrative of silence in Nigerian fiction, the article explores ways the author empowers gender by challenging social values and traditional gender roles, underscoring gender dynamics and the problematic nature of prevalent bias against the feminine gender in Nigeria.

scholarly journals Short-term adoption rates for a web-based portal within the intranet of a hospital information system

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. e100004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athanasios Kotoulas ◽  
Ioannis Stratis ◽  
Theodoros Goumenidis ◽  
George Lambrou ◽  
Dimitrios - Dionysios Koutsouris
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Resistance To Change ◽  
Content Management ◽  
Healthcare Management ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Average Growth ◽  
Greek Hospital ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Free Open Source

ObjectiveAn intranet portal that combines cost-free, open-source software technology with easy set-up features can be beneficial for daily hospital processes. We describe the short-term adoption rates of a costless content management system (CMS) in the intranet of a tertiary Greek hospital.DesignDashboard statistics of our CMS platform were the implementation assessment of our system.ResultsIn a period of 10 months of running the software, the results indicate the employees overcame ‘Resistance to Change’ status. The average growth rate of end users who exploit the portal services is calculated as 2.73 every 3.3 months.ConclusionWe found our intranet web-based portal to be acceptable and helpful so far. Exploitation of an open-source CMS within the hospital intranet can influence healthcare management and the employees’ way of working as well.

scholarly journals Misogyny in Health Professions? An Analysis of the Dalhousie Dentistry Scandal

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Hunter ◽  
Erika Maxwell ◽  
Fern Brunger
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Hidden Curriculum ◽  
Health Professions ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles

This commentary offers an explanation for how and why the Dalhousie Dentistry scandal could occur in a society and time where traditional gender roles are seemingly being eradicated. We use Foucault’s modes of objectification, applied to an analysis of the use of “manhood acts” and in relation to the hidden curriculum, to argue that when women threaten the authority of men in health professions, men may subconsciously look for ways to re-exert an unequal and gendered subject-object binary.

Open-source and do-it-yourself microfluidics

2021 ◽  
pp. 130624
Author(s):  
Joong Ho Shin ◽  
Sungyoung Choi
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Do It Yourself

Legal Change and Stigma in Surrogacy and Abortion

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-195
Author(s):  
John A. Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Reproductive Rights ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Legal Change ◽  
Procreative Liberty ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Cultural Paradigm ◽  
Good Mother

The role of stigma in limiting reproductive rights has long hovered in the air. Paula Abrams has sorted through the concept and shown how it operates in two major areas of procreative liberty — having a child through surrogacy and avoiding childbirth by abortion. Her paper is especially useful for showing how legal change initially dilutes stigma but may reinstall it with post-legalization regulation.Abrams argues that both abortion and surrogacy are stigmatized because they deviate from traditional gender roles and social expectations about pregnancy and maternity. Past restrictions have rested on a common legal and cultural paradigm of the good mother: a woman who conceives, carries her child to term, and then rears the child. Indeed, as she later argues, evidence of stigma surrounding a practice is “relevant to determining whether laws regulating abortion or surrogacy are based on impermissible stereotyping.”

scholarly journals Building an Open Source Institutional Repository at a Small Law School Library: Is it Realistic or Unattainable?

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fang Wang
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
School Library ◽  
Law School ◽  
Institutional Repository ◽  
Digital Repository ◽  
Law Faculty ◽  
Development Support ◽  
The Law ◽  
Texas Tech University ◽  
Set Up

Digital preservation activities among law libraries have largely been limited by a lack of funding, staffing and expertise. Most law school libraries that have already implemented an Institutional Repository (IR) chose proprietary platforms because they are easy to set up, customize, and maintain with the technical and development support they provide. The Texas Tech University School of Law Digital Repository is one of the few law school repositories in the nation that is built on the DSpace open source platform.1 The repository is the law school’s first institutional repository in history. It was designed to collect, preserve, share and promote the law school’s digital materials, including research and scholarship of the law faculty and students, institutional history, and law-related resources. In addition, the repository also serves as a dark archive to house internal records.

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