Abstract: The regulatory, ethical, and legal barriers imposed on medical robots necessitate careful consideration of different levels of autonomy, as well as the context for use.

Abstract: Moral distress occurs when professionals cannot carry out what they believe to be ethically appropriate actions. This review describes the publication trend on moral distress and explores its relationships with other constructs. A bibliometric analysis revealed that since 1984, 239 articles were published, with an increase after 2011. Most of them (71%) focused on nursing. Of the 239 articles, 17 empirical studies were systematically analyzed. Moral distress correlated with organizational environment (poor ethical climate and collaboration), professional attitudes (low work satisfaction and engagement), and psychological characteristics (low psychological empowerment and autonomy). Findings revealed that moral distress negatively affects clinicians’ wellbeing and job retention. Further studies should investigate protective psychological factors to develop preventive interventions.

Abstract: Self-tracking devices point to a future in which individuals will be more involved in the management of their health and will generate data that will benefit clinical decision making and research. They have thus attracted enthusiasm from medical and public health professionals as key players in the move toward participatory and personalized healthcare. Critics, however, have begun to articulate a number of broader societal and ethical concerns regarding self-tracking, foregrounding their disciplining, and disempowering effects. This paper has two aims: first, to analyze some of the key promises and concerns that inform this polarized debate. I argue that far from being solely about health outcomes, this debate is very much about fundamental values that are at stake in the move toward personalized healthcare, namely, the values of autonomy, solidarity, and authenticity. The second aim is to provide a framework within which an alternative approach to self-tracking for health can be developed. I suggest that a practice-based approach, which studies how values are enacted in specific practices, can open the way for a new set of theoretical questions. In the last part of the paper, I sketch out how this can work by describing various enactments of autonomy, solidarity, and authenticity among self-trackers in the Quantified Self community. These examples show that shifting attention to practices can render visible alternative and sometimes unexpected enactments of values. Insofar as these may challenge both the promises and concerns in the debate on self-tracking for health, they can lay the groundwork for new conceptual interventions in future research.

Abstract: Based on three years of detailed anthropological observation, this account of undergraduate culture portrays students' academic relations to faculty and administration as one of subjection. With rare intervals in crisis moments, student life has always been dominated by grades and grade point averages. The authors of "Making the Grade "maintain that, though it has taken different forms from tune to time, the emphasis on grades has persisted in academic life. From this premise they argue that the social organization giving rise to this emphasis has remained remarkably stable throughout the century. Becker, Geer, and Hughes discuss various aspects of college life and examine the degree of autonomy students have over each facet of their lives. Students negotiate with authorities the conditions of campus political and organizational life--the student government, independent student organizations, and the student newspaper--and preserve substantial areas of autonomous action for themselves. Those same authorities leave them to run such aspects of their private lives as friendships and dating as they wish. But, when it comes to academic matters, students are subject to the decisions of college faculties and administrators. Becker deals with this continuing lack of autonomy in student life in his new introduction. He also examines new phenomena, such as the impact of "grade inflation" and how the world of real adult work has increasingly made professional and technical expertise, in addition to high grades, the necessary condition for success. "Making the Grade "continues to be an unparalleled contribution to the studies of academics, students, and college life. It will be of interest to university administrators, professors, students, and sociologists.

Abstract: The dominant, individualistic understanding of autonomy that features in clinical practice and research is underpinned by the idea that people are, in their ideal form, independent, self-interested and rational gain-maximising decision-makers. In recent decades, this paradigm has been challenged from various disciplinary and intellectual directions. Proponents of 'relational autonomy' in particular have argued that people's identities, needs, interests - and indeed autonomy - are always also shaped by their relations to others. Yet, despite the pronounced and nuanced critique directed at an individualistic understanding of autonomy, this critique has had very little effect on ethical and legal instruments in clinical practice and research so far. In this article, we use four case studies to explore to what extent, if at all, relational autonomy can provide solutions to ethical and practical problems in clinical practice and research. We conclude that certain forms of relational autonomy can have a tangible and positive impact on clinical practice and research. These solutions leave the ultimate decision to the person most affected, but encourage and facilitate the consideration of this person's care and responsibility for connected others.

Abstract: Advances in technology have transformed and expanded the ways in which sexual violence can be perpetrated. One new manifestation of such violence is the non-consensual creation and/or distribution of private sexual images: what we conceptualise as ‘image-based sexual abuse’. This article delineates the scope of this new concept and identifies the individual and collective harms it engenders. We argue that the individual harms of physical and mental illness, together with the loss of dignity, privacy and sexual autonomy, combine to constitute a form of cultural harm that impacts directly on individuals, as well as on society as a whole. While recognising the limits of law, we conclude by considering the options for redress and the role of law, seeking to justify the deployment of the expressive and coercive powers of criminal and civil law as a means of encouraging cultural change.

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between school autonomy gap, principal leadership, school climate, teacher psychological factors, teachers’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment under the context of school autonomy reform. A path model has been developed to define the relationships between principal leadership and teachers’ outcomes via mediating variables. Multiple-group comparison was used to explore the effect of school autonomy gap in this process. We collected the data through a survey carried out in 26 senior secondary schools in China. In total 528 teachers and 59 principals and assistant principals participated. The results suggest a significant influence of instructional and transformational leadership on teachers’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment, mediated by the indirect impact of school climate and teachers’ self-efficacy. School autonomy gap, which is closely related to principal leadership, emerged as an important influence in the path model.

Abstract: Informed consent process is the cornerstone of ethics in clinical research. Obtaining informed consent from patients participating in clinical research is an important legal and ethical imperative for clinical trial researchers. Although informed consent is an important process in clinical research, its effectiveness and validity are always a concern. Issues related to understanding, comprehension, competence, and voluntariness of clinical trial participants may adversely affect the informed consent process. Communication of highly technical, complex, and specialized clinical trial information to participants with limited literacy, diverse sociocultural background, diminished autonomy, and debilitating diseases is a difficult task for clinical researchers. It is therefore essential to investigate and adopt innovative communication strategies to enhance understanding of clinical trial information among participants. This review article visits the challenges that affect the informed consent process and explores various innovative strategies to enhance the consent process.

Abstract: Informed consent is an ethical concept that is codified in the law and is in daily practice at every health care institution. Three fundamental criteria are needed for clinical informed consent: the patient must be competent, adequately informed and not coerced. Physician-patient interaction is rooted in the ethical concept of beneficence, but over the 19th and 20th centuries, case law and societal changes brought respect for autonomy and with it--informed consent. This article briefly reviews the basics of informed consent, when is it required, how did informed consent evolve into what it is today and what can the surgeon do to truly achieve informed consent.

Abstract: Adopting a dynamic within-person perspective on employee innovation, the present study investigates the role of situational job autonomy and momentary work engagement as day-level correlates of innovative behaviour. Anticipating individual differences in the strength of these intraindividual associations, we propose dispositional creative self-efficacy (CSE) to serve as a cross-level moderating influence amplifying the day-specific predictive power of autonomy and work engagement for innovative behaviour. Hierarchical linear modelling analyses of the nested data from 123 employees surveyed over 5 consecutive work days suggest that both autonomy and work engagement positively predict self-reported innovative behaviour on a daily basis. Whereas the engagement–innovation link emerges as homogenous across persons, results indicate that the daily within-person effect of autonomy on innovative behaviour varies significantly as a function of CSE such that it is greater for individuals who hold higher rat...

Abstract: The abstract legal subject of liberal Western democracies fails to reflect the fundamental reality of the human condition, which is vulnerability. While it is universal and constant, vulnerability is manifested differently in individuals, often resulting in significant differences in position and circumstance. In spite of such differences, political theory positions equality as the foundation for law and policy, and privileges autonomy, independence, and self-sufficiency. This article traces the origins and development of a critical legal theory that brings human vulnerability to the fore in assessing individual and state responsibility and redefining the parameters of social justice. The theory arose in the context of struggling with the limitations of equality in situations I will refer to as examples of ‘inescapable’ inequality. Some paired social relationships, such as parent/child or employer/employee are inherently, even desirably, unequal relationships. In recognition of that fact, the law creates different levels of responsibility, accepting disparate levels of authority, privilege, and power. Those laws, and the norms and rules they reflect, must carefully define the limits of those relationships, while also being attentive to how the social institutions in which they exist and operate (i.e. the family and the marketplace) are structured and functioning.

Abstract: Emerging affordability problems in British housing have accentuated the role of parental support in facilitating entry to homeownership, with financial transfers and in-kind support smoothening transitions for many. This article explores housing trajectories, focusing on how dependency and autonomy are negotiated within and across generations in relation to gifts, loans and in-kind transfers for home purchase. It draws on the experiences of a group of young adults aged 25–35 and those family members who supported them in acquiring a home. We consider the nature of support, and how those giving and receiving it understand this exchange. We show that gifting for homeownership is an ‘ideal gift’, allowing givers to exercise moral control over the receivers by supporting a normalized tenure choice. Managing relationships of indebtedness between kin presupposes negotiations in which the maintenance of autonomy is paramount. The article examines four types of negotiations and their impact on intergenerational r...

Abstract: This article explores the relationship between different forms of autonomy, categorized into “job control” and “schedule control,” and measures of subjective well-being, using UK panel data from Un...

Abstract: Although informed consent is important in clinical research, questions persist regarding when it is necessary, what it requires, and how it should be obtained. The standard view in research ethics is that the function of informed consent is to respect individual autonomy. However, consent processes are multidimensional and serve other ethical functions as well. These functions deserve particular attention when barriers to consent exist. We argue that consent serves seven ethically important and conceptually distinct functions. The first four functions pertain principally to individual participants: (1) providing transparency; (2) allowing control and authorization; (3) promoting concordance with participants' values; and (4) protecting and promoting welfare interests. Three other functions are systemic or policy focused: (5) promoting trust; (6) satisfying regulatory requirements; and (7) promoting integrity in research. Reframing consent around these functions can guide approaches to consent that are context sensitive and that maximize achievable goals.

Abstract: Despite increasing global attention and commitments by countries to end the harmful practice of child marriage, each year some 15 million girls marry before the age of 18. The preponderance of the evidence produced historically on child marriage comes from South Asia, where the vast majority of child brides live. Far less attention has been paid to child marriage in sub-Saharan Africa, where prevalence rates remain high. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) recently conducted research in Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia to contribute to greater understanding of the drivers of child marriage in each of these contexts. Synthesizing findings from 4 diverse countries provides a useful opportunity to identify similarities and differences, as well as understandings that may be applicable to and helpful for preventing child marriage across these and other settings. Across the 4 countries, ICRW's research echoes the existing literature base in affirming that child marriage is rooted in inequitable gender norms that prioritize women's roles as wives, mothers, and household caretakers, resulting in inadequate investments by families in girls' education. These discriminatory norms interact closely with poverty and a lack of employment opportunities for girls and young women to perpetuate marriage as a seemingly viable alternative for girls. We found in the African study sites that sexual relations, unplanned pregnancy, and school dropout often precede child marriage, which differs from much of the existing evidence on child marriage from South Asia. Further, unlike in South Asia, where family members typically determine the spouse a girl will marry, most girls in the Africa study settings have greater autonomy in partner choice selection. In Senegal, increasing educational attainment and labor migration, particularly by young women, has contributed to reduced rates of child marriage for girls. Our findings suggest that improving gender equitable norms and providing more-and more equitable-opportunities for girls, particularly with regard to education and employment, are likely to improve child marriage outcomes. Providing comprehensive sexuality education and youth-friendly reproductive health services can reduce rates of early pregnancy that contribute to child marriage. Finally, identifying ways in which to improve communication between parents and adolescent daughters could go far in ensuring that girls feel valued and that parents feel heard as they make decisions together regarding the lives and opportunities of these adolescent girls.

Abstract: The concept of “autonomy”, once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind (Varela et al. in The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991), is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor accounts of cognition cannot ignore: they provide a naturalized account of normativity and the resources to ground the identity of a cognitive subject in its specific mode of organization. There are, however, good reasons for the contemporary neglect of autonomy as a relevant concept for enactivism. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy has too often been assimilated into autopoiesis (or basic autonomy in the molecular or biological realm) and the implications are not always clear for a dynamical sensorimotor approach to cognitive science. On the other hand, the foundational enactivist proposal displays a metaphysical tension between the concept of operational closure (autonomy), deployed as constitutive, and that of structural coupling (sensorimotor dynamics); making it hard to reconcile with the claim that experience is sensorimotorly constituted. This tension is particularly apparent when Varela et al. propose Bittorio (a 1D cellular automata) as a model of the operational closure of the nervous system as it fails to satisfy the required conditions for a sensorimotor constitution of experience. It is, however, possible to solve these problems by re-considering autonomy at the level of sensorimotor neurodynamics. Two recent robotic simulation models are used for this task, illustrating the notion of strong sensorimotor dependency of neurodynamic patterns, and their networked intertwinement. The concept of habit is proposed as an enactivist building block for cognitive theorizing, re-conceptualizing mental life as a habit ecology, tied within an agent’s behaviour generating mechanism in coordination with its environment. Norms can be naturalized in terms of dynamic, interactively self-sustaining, coherentism. This conception of autonomous sensorimotor agency is put in contrast with those enactive approaches that reject autonomy or neglect the theoretical resources it has to offer for the project of naturalizing minds.

Abstract: Traffic dynamics are often modeled by complex dynamical systems for which classical analysis tools can struggle to provide tractable policies used by transportation agencies and planners. In light of the introduction of automated vehicles into transportation systems, there is a new need for understanding the impacts of automation on transportation networks. The present article formulates and approaches the mixed-autonomy traffic control problem (where both automated and human-driven vehicles are present) using the powerful framework of deep reinforcement learning (RL). The resulting policies and emergent behaviors in mixed-autonomy traffic settings provide insight for the potential for automation of traffic through mixed fleets of automated and manned vehicles. Modelfree learning methods are shown to naturally select policies and behaviors previously designed by model-driven approaches, such as stabilization and platooning, known to improve ring road efficiency and to even exceed a theoretical velocity limit. Remarkably, RL succeeds at maximizing velocity by effectively leveraging the structure of the human driving behavior to form an efficient vehicle spacing for an intersection network. We describe our results in the context of existing control theoretic results for stability analysis and mixed-autonomy analysis. This article additionally introduces state equivalence classes to improve the sample complexity for the learning methods.

Abstract: Empirical evidence suggests that while people hold the capacity to control their data in high regard, they increasingly experience a loss of control over their data in the online world. The capacity to exert control over the generation and flow of personal information is a fundamental premise to important values such as autonomy, privacy, and trust. In healthcare and clinical research this capacity is generally achieved indirectly, by agreeing to specific conditions of informational exposure. Such conditions can be openly stated in informed consent documents or be implicit in the norms of confidentiality that govern the relationships of patients and healthcare professionals. However, with medicine becoming a data-intense enterprise, informed consent and medical confidentiality, as mechanisms of control, are put under pressure. In this paper we explore emerging models of informational control in data-intense healthcare and clinical research, which can compensate for the limitations of currently available instruments. More specifically, we discuss three approaches that hold promise in increasing individual control: the emergence of data portability rights as means to control data access, new mechanisms of informed consent as tools to control data use, and finally, new participatory governance schemes that allow individuals to control their data through direct involvement in data governance. We conclude by suggesting that, despite the impression that biomedical big data diminish individual control, the synergistic effect of new data management models can in fact improve it.

Abstract: Hypothetical consent is puzzling. On the one hand, it seems to make a moral difference across a wide range of cases. On the other hand, there seem to be principled reasons to think that it cannot. In this article I put forward reasonably precise formulations of these general suspicions regarding hypothetical consent; I draw several distinctions regarding the ways in which hypothetical consent may make a moral difference; I distinguish between two autonomy-related concerns, nonalienation and sovereignty; and, utilizing these distinctions, I show that—and in a preliminary way, when—the objections to the moral significance of hypothetical consent fail.

Abstract: Preface Introduction Part I: The Autonomy Classroom In Practice: An Example From Lower Secondary Education 1. Using the Target Language: Spontaneity, Identity, Authenticity 2. Interaction and Collaboration: The Dialogic Construction of Knowledge 3. Letting Go and Taking Hold: Giving Control to the Learners 4. Evaluation: The Hinge on Which Learner Autonomy Turns Part II: Language Learner Autonomy: Evidence Of Success 5. Exploring Learning Outcomes: Some Research Findings 6. Language Learner Autonomy and Inclusion: Two Case Studies Part III: Language Learner Autonomy: Meeting Future Challenges 7. The Linguistic, Social and Educational Inclusion of Immigrants: A New Challenge for Language Learner Autonomy 8. Teacher Education for Language Learner Autonomy: Some Reflections and Proposals Conclusion References

Abstract: The 21st century work environment calls for team members to be more engaged in their work and exhibit more creativity in completing their job tasks. The purpose of this study was to examine whether team performance pressure and individual goal orientation would moderate the relationships between individual autonomy in teams and individual engagement and creativity. A sample consisting of 209 team members and 45 team managers from 45 work teams in 14 companies completed survey measures. To test our hypotheses, we used multilevel modeling with random intercepts and slopes because the individual-level data were nested within the team-level data. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that team-level performance pressure attenuated the positive relations between job autonomy and three dimensions of engagement. There were also 3-way interactions between job autonomy, psychological performance pressure, and learning goal orientation in predicting three dimensions of engagement and creativity. This study highlights the importance of exploring the moderating effect of team-level task characteristics and individual differences on the relationships between job autonomy and individual engagement and creativity. Organizations need to carefully consider both individual learning goals and performance pressure when empowering team members with job autonomy. This is one of the first studies to explore the association between individual job autonomy in teams and individual outcomes in a contingency model. We first introduced team performance pressure as a moderator of job autonomy and examined the 3-way interaction effects of performance pressure, individual job autonomy, and learning goal orientation.

Abstract: The Eurozone crisis has brought the imperative of democratic autonomy within the EU to the forefront, a concern at the core of demoicratic theory. The article seeks to move the scholarship on demoicratic theory a step further by exploring what we call the social construction of demoicratic reality. While the EU’s legal-institutional infrastructure may imperfectly approximate a demoicratic structure, we need ask to what extent the ‘bare bones’ demoicratic character of a polity can actually be grounded in a full-flesh social construct that is or could be acted out in the democratic experience and the self-awareness of its peoples. Ultimately, such an enquiry should help us understand whether a polity like the EU is actually and potentially a stable or unstable political form. We develop a consistent theory of popular sovereignty drawing on John Searle and HLA Hart to conceive the constitutionalised people (demos) as a social fact and the sovereignty of the people as a status ascribed to the people. We use this construction of demoicratic reality as a conceptual framework to understand the possibility of popular sovereignty being exercised concurrently by several rather than just one demos.

Abstract: What could a social-justice oriented, feminist data studies look like? The current datalogical turn foregrounds the digital datafication of everyday life, increasing algorithmic processing and data as an emergent regime of power/knowledge Scholars celebrate the politics of big data knowledge production for its omnipotent objectivity or dismiss it outright as data fundamentalism that may lead to methodological genocide In this feminist and postcolonial intervention into gender-, race- and geography-blind ‘big data’ ideologies, I call for ethical, anti-oppressive digital data-driven research in the social sciences and humanities I argue that a reflexive data scholarship can emerge from the reintegration of feminist and postcolonial science studies and ethics of care ideals Although it is not a panacea for all ails of data mining, I offer a road map for an alternative data-analysis practice that is more power-sensitive and accountable By incorporating a people-centric and context-aware perspective that acknowledges relationships of dependency, reflects on temptations, and scrutinises benefits and harm, an ‘asymmetrically reciprocal’ (Young, 1997) research encounter may be achieved I bring this perspective to bear on experiences of a two-year research project with eighty-four young Londoners on digital identities and living in a highly diverse city I align awareness of uneven relations of power and knowledge with the messy relation of dependency between human and non-human actors in data analysis This framework productively recognises that digital data cannot be expected to speak for itself, that data do not emerge from a vacuum, and that isolated data patterns cannot be the end-goal of a situated and reflexive research endeavor Data-driven research, in turn, shows the urgency for renewed feminist ethical reflection on how digital mediation impacts upon responsibility, intersectional power relations, human subjectivity and the autonomy of research participants over their own data

Abstract: Traditional accounts of clientelism typically focused on patron–client relations with minimal scope for citizen autonomy. Despite the heightened agency of many contemporary citizens, most studies c...

Abstract: Although studies have shown that self-control skills are positively linked to both personal and interpersonal outcomes in adolescent students, studies on the putative mechanisms underlying this relationship are scarce. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory and previous studies, we theorized that the association between students' self-control skills and their subjective well-being in school may be mediated by students' perceived satisfaction of their basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. The sample consisted of 1576 Israeli adolescent students (54% girls) in grades 10-12 (mean age 16) enrolled in 20 schools. A mediation model was tested with structural equation modelling and a robust bootstrap method for testing indirect effects, controlling for school-level variance. The findings supported the hypothesized model and a post-hoc multi-group comparison analysis yielded gender invariance in the model. The findings suggest that both girls and boys with high self-control skills may perceive themselves as having greater needs satisfaction in school and consequently higher school-related subjective well-being. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.