Background: When Canadian public health officials issued thousands of quarantine orders during the SARS outbreak in 2003, it raised difficult questions about the legitimacy and acceptability of restrictive measures to achieve public health goals. While public health interventions have traditionally been justified on utilitarian grounds, this project aims to establish an empirical basis to justify public health action. The objectives are: 1) Descriptive: To describe the views of members of society on the justifiability of using restrictive measures to achieve public health goals; 2) Analytic: To analyze the use of restrictive measures at the intersection of public health policy, human rights norms, and ethics; and 3) Normative: To situate public health ethics within a Habermasian model of communicative ethics that can serve as the basis of justification for the legitimate use of restrictive measures based on the intersubjective recognition of public health and human rights. Methods: Individual interviews were conducted with 62 participants, including 23 health care providers, 16 members of the public, 13 community and/or spiritual leaders from the Greater Toronto Area, as well as six public health officials and four health care regulators at the local, provincial, and federal levels of jurisdiction. Findings: Participant views were analyzed and organized into themes that revolve around the following concepts: 1) common good; 2) types of quarantine; 3) compliance; 4) reciprocity; 5) uncertainty; and 6) communication. Conclusions: Combining empirical research with conceptual scholarship, it is argued that the recognition of and commitment to the common good by participants, which emerged as an overarching theme, provide justificatory power for the use of quarantine during communicable disease outbreaks. But to respect rights, while being committed to the common good, it is argued that we must move beyond the see-sawing between ostensibly competing requirements toward a conception that gives equal weight to public health and human rights; that is, both imperatives – the community and the individual – refer to one another without dissolving into one another. Following a Habermasian account of opening processes of decision-making to a moral-practical discourse, it is argued that public health ethics offers an important site for integrating his model of discourse ethics within public health deliberations to expand the scope of moral argumentation on--and ultimately to ground the justification of--the use of restrictive measures.

Background: When Canadian public health officials issued thousands of quarantine orders during the SARS outbreak in 2003, it raised difficult questions about the legitimacy and acceptability of restrictive measures to achieve public health goals. While public health interventions have traditionally been justified on utilitarian grounds, this project aims to establish an empirical basis to justify public health action. The objectives are: 1) Descriptive: To describe the views of members of society on the justifiability of using restrictive measures to achieve public health goals; 2) Analytic: To analyze the use of restrictive measures at the intersection of public health policy, human rights norms, and ethics; and 3) Normative: To situate public health ethics within a Habermasian model of communicative ethics that can serve as the basis of justification for the legitimate use of restrictive measures based on the intersubjective recognition of public health and human rights. Methods: Individual interviews were conducted with 62 participants, including 23 health care providers, 16 members of the public, 13 community and/or spiritual leaders from the Greater Toronto Area, as well as six public health officials and four health care regulators at the local, provincial, and federal levels of jurisdiction. Findings: Participant views were analyzed and organized into themes that revolve around the following concepts: 1) common good; 2) types of quarantine; 3) compliance; 4) reciprocity; 5) uncertainty; and 6) communication. Conclusions: Combining empirical research with conceptual scholarship, it is argued that the recognition of and commitment to the common good by participants, which emerged as an overarching theme, provide justificatory power for the use of quarantine during communicable disease outbreaks. But to respect rights, while being committed to the common good, it is argued that we must move beyond the see-sawing between ostensibly competing requirements toward a conception that gives equal weight to public health and human rights; that is, both imperatives – the community and the individual – refer to one another without dissolving into one another. Following a Habermasian account of opening processes of decision-making to a moral-practical discourse, it is argued that public health ethics offers an important site for integrating his model of discourse ethics within public health deliberations to expand the scope of moral argumentation on--and ultimately to ground the justification of--the use of restrictive measures.

Miranda Fricker argues that powerless social groups may be subject to a unique form of injustice: hermeneutical injustice. On her account, deficiencies in the shared tools of interpretation may render the experiences of powerless social groups (for instance, women prior to the era of second wave feminism) both incomprehensible and incommunicable. In this thesis, I argue that Fricker has mischaracterized hermeneutical injustice and the silence of marginalized social groups: rather than lacking understanding, powerless groups are often denied rational authority with respect to their own social experiences or choose to self-silence. For this reason, I argue that many of the cases of hermeneutical injustice offered by Fricker collapse into cases of testimonial injustice. This mischaracterization has led Fricker to propose solutions to hermeneutical injustice that are inadequate; in response, I offer a solution that prescribes self-reflexive awareness of the ways that power and privilege shape our interpretive frameworks.

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Due to the multitude of widely publicized scandalous acts exhibited by managers in the sport industry, there is a pressing need for leadership philosophies and styles that embody ethical behavior. The standard for effective leadership among scholars and practitioners has recently shifted to include ethical behavior as a valuable asset. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to understand what constitutes ethical leadership in contemporary sport organizations and academic curricula geared toward sport management. This qualitative study explored ethical leadership from the perspective of 13 undergraduate students (e.g., student-interns) majoring in sport management who have acquired experience in an academic environment and business setting. Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with each of the student-interns. Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory, which is grounded in the notion that individuals learn by observing the behaviors of dependable models, was utilized to construct interview questions for this study. Findings revealed the ethical attitudes and behaviors of student-interns are heavily influenced by leaders in academic and organizational settings. Essentially, the ethical standards held by student-interns reflected the opinions and actions of valued faculty members and sport managers. In contrast to the widespread unethical leadership on display in contemporary sport, participants in this study indicated ethical conduct was the prevailing norm within academic and business settings. However, after analyzing data, there were notable discrepancies between theoretical and practical dimensions of ethical leadership in the sporting realm. This thesis contributes to the ongoing discourse concerning the level of continuity between theory and practice as it pertains to ethical leadership in sport. Findings from this study are discussed as it relates to the future ethical climate in the sport industry and academic environment.

This thesis explores the concept of moral breakdown in Auschwitz to consider what happens to the virtues under extreme circumstances. The method of exploration applies Alasdair MacIntyre’s virtue theory to the moral experience of Auschwitz inmates. The application of his theory to the moral landscape of Auschwitz sheds light on the ability of MacIntyre’s virtue ethical approach to make sense of extreme circumstances in terms of his account of the minimal conditions required for the moral life. I argue that MacIntyre’s account of narrative moral agency as fundamental to the intelligibility of moral life passes the limit test of Auschwitz experience by showing that the intelligibility of moral life is called into question when the narrative nature of moral agency is seriously interrupted and fragmented. As such, he offers good conceptual resources for understanding the demoralization Auschwitz inmates faced. This is so because he emphasizes the manner in which any moral theory must be capable of social embodiment, and he takes seriously the notion that every social situation reflects a set of moral standards that can be articulated theoretically. This allows MacIntyre to spell out the moral theory embodied in the moral landscape of Auschwitz and to judge it deficient in terms of his conceptual framework of a core conception of the virtues. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2009-11-25 16:01:42.585

The purpose of this research was to describe the experience of moral distress among regulated and unregulated nursing personnel employed in Long Term Care (LTC) facilities. The specific research questions were: 1) Do regulated and unregulated nursing personnel experience moral distress? 2) What is the nature of moral distress in LTC facilities? 3) How do nursing personnel describe and perceive the experience of moral distress? 4) What are the organizational factors that participants perceive as contributing to or reducing moral distress in their workplace? A qualitative, descriptive, study design was used. Semi-structured interviews were the method of data collection and analysis was conducted using thematic content analysis as proposed by Miles and Huberman’s (1994). A purposive sample of 16 participants was recruited from two LTC facilities. Participants described work experiences in which they felt they were unable to do the “right thing”. There were four kinds of situations that gave rise to moral distress: end of life care, resident behaviours, other direct care provider behaviours and the work environment. The experience of moral distress was described in terms of an initial emotional reaction, followed by a response, with resolved or unresolved outcomes. Half of the examples described by participants as giving rise to moral distress, remained unresolved. Participants also identified organizational factors that prevented moral distress and assisted with its resolution such as, educational courses, administrative leadership and pastoral support. / Thesis (Master, Nursing) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-24 13:59:20.125

Photography has been exposed as an infinitely complex series of intersecting technologies, industries, discourses and socio-cultural desires. Figured as an image-making medium that bears the direct trace (light) of reality, it has become a fundamental method through which we construct identity, capture memories, communicate knowledge and reflect and shape reality. Its resulting conceptualization as a discourse-laden visual language, that enables the (co)articulation of subject (self), object (device) and truth, has located it as a central locus of ethical consequence. While there has been a significant amount of research into an ethics of photographic representation, there has been very little consideration of the importance of reconsidering the intersection of photography (in and of itself) and ethics in light of digitization. While this thesis will function to map out a number of theoretical and practical trajectories, its central purpose will be to draw upon a rich understanding of analogue and digital photography in order to critically re-imagine ethics in light of digitization. This thesis begins by mapping out a series of continuities and discontinuities in the technological, sociological and practical engagements of photography as a result of digitization. Following in this vein, it will engage in a comparative review of past and present (analogue and digital) photographic practices and theories in an effort to expand the conceptual frames of these trajectories further through an inter-disciplinary and sociological lens. Following this review, and in response to a number of proposed digital novelties, this thesis will revisit past conceptualization of photographic ethics, demonstrate and legitimize their short-comings in the digital age, and begin to imagine alternative means of tackling the ‘impossible possibility’ of digital ethics. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2010-09-29 15:12:36.414