CALL FOR PAPERS – International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics

Call for papers from the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Vol. 10, No. 2: Health and Ecological Destruction: Fracking and Beyond
The deadline for submission for this issue is January 1, 2016.
IJFAB, vol. 10, no. 2
Guest Editors: Laura Purdy and Wendy Lynne Lee
“Which questions moral philosophers choose to study—and choose not to study—is itself a moral issue,” wrote Virginia Warren in her groundbreaking 1979 article. Indeed, bioethics has often focused on important, but relatively narrow issues based on the assumption that health is a natural lottery and that the chief moral questions have to do with the quality of care, and fair access to it, or with the implications of new technologies to treat or cure, and questions about reproduction and death. Of course, some writing has always acknowledged many influences on health and thus longevity, encouraged, no doubt, by scholarship in epidemiology, the social determinants of health, interest in food/agriculture issues, and concern about occupational and environmental pollution.
This special issue of IJFAB aims to examine, through a feminist lens, human activities such as fracking, that, by negatively impacting the environment, threaten health.
Science fiction, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, abounds with post-apocalyptic nightmares, but rarely devotes any attention to how they came about or whether they could have been prevented.
Yet, as ever more paths to environmental disaster are opened up by corporate and governmental decisions, the preventable is being touted as inevitable, natural, and good.
Many of us now live in disbelief at the deliberate dismantling of the conditions required for human (and nonhuman) flourishing by people apparently oblivious or disdainful of the consequences. If these forces continue to prevail, it is only a matter of time before the consequences of widespread lack of access to clean water, air and land pollution, desertification, and deforestation, will drastically reduce human life spans, and quite possibly lead to human extinction. The process will exacerbate the fight for survival at all levels, from the individual to the national.
We encourage readers to think about the many ways human activities are putting at risk human health, shortening lives, and risking species suicide.
Possible Topics:
Basic Theories/Concepts:
Public good vs. Property Rights
Precautionary Principle vs. Cost/Risk/Benefit
Environment/Ecology
Industrialized extraction
Feminist environmental bioethics
Thriveability/Flourishing
Focus:
Climate Change
Energy Production Policy
Food/Agriculture Issues
Environmental/Health Legislation
Drugs (Legal and Illegal)
Exploitation of Public Assets
Wildlife Preservation
Our main goal is to evaluate the health consequences of activities intended to maintain and expand dependence on fossil fuels, and technology in general, especially that held to be necessary for sustaining rapidly growing populations, no matter at what cost to the environment. These goals, in turn, reflect the needs and interests of continued western hegemony. We encourage potential contributors to contact us for a more detailed description of possible topics. In addition, we hope for submissions on the many related topics not listed here, such as mountain top removal, tar sands development, or as yet unidentified threats.
If you plan to contribute, please contact the guest editors at wlee@bloomu.edu or laura.purdy@gmail.com.