The role of education in citizen training has been well mapped out in youth education. What has been less studied is how this role comes into being in adult education. By providing illustrative empirical examples from a recently completed study of adult students enrolled in adult education, this article aims to offer a theoretical response to the question of the role of adult education in adult student citizen subjectivity formation. Taking on Diken’s concept of ‘reactive nihilism’, we (...) wish to make the following arguments. First, that citizen formation in adult education, when students are asked about it, is actualised as processes of recovery of will in order to be a successful and happy citizen in society. Secondly, that these processes point towards a role of adult education as one where these formation processes work in tandem with those of the reactive nihilists. This means that the citizen formation processes made possible in this educational site are those marked out by the desire to mobilise one’s will formation so that it adapts to the prevailing societal situation—that of late capitalism, which is a situation not considered by the adult students as possible to change. (shrink)

Contributing to the naturalistic virtue ethics tradition, Natural Citizens applies recent work in the life sciences to develop a form of ethical naturalism that aspires to be non-reductive yet empirically responsible.

Machiavelli is commonly known by a political theory associated to his name: "machiavellism". The initial effort of the article is to take apart Machiavellian thought from such a conception. After this it tries a detailed analysis of all occurrences of the term "education", which amounts to eleven times in his work. The hypothesis by which our reflexion is guided is that education is conceived by Machiavelli as a force addressed to control the desire's as well as the nature's inherent movement (...) disorder, preventing the deleterious effects of the first on the political life. Due to education the human being is able to know the "nature of things", i.e., to know what things "always were", and, through such knowledge, to anticipate to the "course of the things ordered by the heaven". Finally, we will try to demonstrate that for Machiavelli education provides the adaptation of the individuals behaviour in such a way that it is possible to redirect the course of things for a coherent order in regard to the collective good.Maquiavel é popularmente conhecido por uma teoria política associada ao seu nome: "maquiavelismo". O artigo realiza um esforço inicial para afastar o pensamento maquiaveliano de semelhante concepção. Em seguida, faz uma análise detalhada de todas as ocorrências do termo "educação", num total de onze, na sua obra. A hipótese que orienta nossa reflexão é de que a educação é pensada por Maquiavel como uma força destinada a controlar a desordem inerente ao movimento tanto do desejo quanto da natureza impedindo os efeitos deletérios daquele sobre a vida política. Graças à educação, o homem é capaz de conhecer a "natureza das coisas", isto é, saber o que as coisas são "desde sempre" e, desta maneira, antecipar-se ao "curso das coisas ordenado pelos céus". Por fim, procuramos mostrar que, para Maquiavel, a educação possibilita moldar o comportamento dos indivíduos de tal modo que é possível redirecionar o curso das coisas para uma ordem coerente com o bem coletivo. (shrink)

The focus on deliberation as a central principle represents a common denominator between republican and deliberative theories of democracy (White, 2008, p. 9f). Both proponents of the ‘deliberative...

The focus on deliberation as a central principle represents a common denominator between republican and deliberative theories of democracy (White, 2008, p. 9f). Both proponents of the ‘deliberative...

Citizen attitudes and opinions form an important driving force for improvements in the ethical status of farm animals in society. Hence, it is important to understand how attitudes to farm animals vary in society and what factors, mechanisms and social processes influence the development of these attitudes. In this study we examine the relative importance of socio-demographic background, animal related experiences and social-equality attitudes in the formation of attitudes to farm animals in Finland. The research is based on (...) a nationwide survey. Our research findings suggest that female gender, young age, urban residency, a non-farming background and social-equality attitudes are linked to greater concern for farm animals. A farming background, valuing social equality, and gender have the strongest connections to farm animal attitudes, followed by age and place of residence. Having a companion animal and education level have a relatively modest connection to attitudes to farm animals. In order to accumulate comparative evidence of social-group differences in attitudes to farm animals, further research should continue to develop improved indicators for attitudes to farm animal welfare and rights. Moreover, explanations for social-group differences in citizen attitudes to farm animals should be subjected to further empirical testing. (shrink)

In response to calls for a research and innovation system that is more open to public scrutiny, we have seen a growth of formal and informal public engagement activities in the past decades. Nevertheless, critiques of several persistent routines in public engagement continue to resurface, in particular the focus on expert knowledge, cognitive exchange, risk discourse, and understandings of public opinion as being static. In an attempt to break out of these routines, we experimented with an innovative engagement format that (...) employs situated speculative prototyping to support citizens in contextualizing and discussing developments regarding—in this case—nanotechnology. This format invites participants to imagine and critically reflect on technological futures through collaborative prototyping and story-writing. In this paper, we outline five reconstructed contextualization patterns in which participants engaged during the format’s exercises and use these to assess the value of the format in the current engagement landscape. We show that situated speculative prototyping has potential in the realm of informal public engagement initiatives, taking an explorative approach, but also warn of ‘the designer fallacy’ as a prominent pitfall of prototyping that could reproduce techno-scientific framings and obstruct critical reflection on technological directions and implications if not treated with caution. (shrink)

In this article we examine elite formation in relation to money power within the city of London. Our primary aim is to consider the impact of the massive concentration of such power upon the city’s political life, municipal and shared resources and social equity. We argue that objectives of city success have come to be identified and aligned with the presence of wealth elites while wider goals, of access to essential resources for citizens, have withered. A diverse national and (...) global wealth-elite is drawn to a city with an almost unique cultural infrastructure, fiscal regime and ushering butler class of politicians. We consider how London is being made for money and the monied – in physical, political and cultural terms. We conclude that the conceptualization of elites as wealth and social power formations operating within urban spatial arenas is important for capturing the nature of new social divisions and changes. (shrink)

The aim of this workshop was to ask potential end-users of the citizens’ information pack on legal and ethical issues around ICTs the following questions: What is your knowledge of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, and what actions have you taken in response to these regulations? What challenges are you experiencing in ensuring the protection and security of your project data, and compliance with the GDPR, within existing data management processes/systems? What information/tools/resources do you need to overcome these challenges? (...) What are the best formats/channels for receiving, sharing and acting upon this information? What is the most appropriate structure/format for the citizens’ information pack? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Limit Formations:Violence, Philosophy, RhetoricOmedi Ochieng For Megha Sharma SehdevNow days are dragon-ridden, the nightmareRides upon sleep: a drunken soldieryCan leave the mother, murdered at her door,To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;The night can sweat with terror as beforeWe pieced our thoughts into philosophy,And planned to bring the world under a rule,Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.—W. B. Yeats, "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen"Violence is a (...) limit formation. It is neither reducible to a brute fact nor is it ineffably ethereal. To write about violence, then, is to confront—if only as disavowed remainder—critical limits, no less of the writer than of the writing itself. Fewer subjects have proven as confounding for philosophy and rhetoric, this journal's primary charge. In both its general particulars and its specific manifolds, violence nonpluses philosophical commonplaces, upends rhetorical tropologies.Philosophy imagines itself mediator to reality's arche, the bedrock of being. Ancient Greek philosophy sought to distinguish necessity from contingency, essence from accident, dialectic from rhetoric, logic from fallacy. Those who took up this intellectual tradition came to conceptualize violence as first and foremost a question of "nature"—more specifically, those marked out by nature to rule (propertied male citizens) and those marked [End Page 330] out by nature for subjection (the enslaved, women, nonhuman animals). In the early modern context of European philosophy, still, despite its pretensions, deeply indebted to this Mediterranean legacy, the canonical lexicon of sensemaking centered on legitimacy and its conceptual appurtenances of sovereignty, will, and rights.Strikingly, it is in the opposed registers of analytic and continental philosophy that violence's cataphilosophic figuration appears most salient. Consider, for example, one such famous symposium convened in the analytic journal Philosophy and Public Affairs, as narrated by political philosopher Michael Walzer:In an earlier issue of Philosophy & Public Affairs there appeared a symposium on the rules of war which was actually (or at least more importantly) a symposium on another topic. The actual topic was whether or not a man can ever face, or ever has to face, a moral dilemma, a situation where he must choose between two courses of action both of which it would be wrong for him to undertake. Thomas Nagel worriedly suggested that this could happen and that it did happen whenever someone was forced to choose between upholding an important moral principle and avoiding some looming disaster. R. B. Brandt argued that it could not possibly happen, for there were guidelines we might follow and calculations we might go through which would necessarily yield the conclusion that one or the other course of action was the right one to undertake in the circumstances (or that it did not matter which we undertook). R. M. Hare explained how it was that someone might wrongly suppose that he was faced with a moral dilemma: sometimes, he suggested, the precepts and principles of an ordinary man, the products of his moral education, come into conflict with injunctions developed at a higher level of moral discourse. But this conflict is, or ought to be, resolved at the higher level; there is no real dilemma.(1973, 160–61)Analytic political philosophy's resolute disavowals could not be here better splayed. Morality is construed as all-encompassing. The political is not so much effaced as it is rendered derivative to a foundational drama of will, obligation, choice. Analytic philosophy's oft-preened claim to clear, transparent, terse style proves constitutive of its desire to contain, if it cannot altogether moralize away violence. [End Page 331]Where analytic philosophy conceives of violence as an object, its limits defined by morality's handmaiden, the "well-ordered society" (Rawls 2001, 8), continental philosophy conjures a sublime violence that shatters and transfigures normative violence. Walter Benjamin posits a binary opposition between mythical and divine violence: "If mythical violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythical violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates, if the former threatens, the latter strikes, if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling... (shrink)

From Emily Litella to Grumpy Old Man, from Joe Blow to Drunk Uncle, Saturday Night Live has long employed guest characters as “citizen journalists” on its famous Weekend Update segment. These characters have provided a comic take on everyday issues impacting the life of citizens in the public sphere. Two of the first philosophers who take up the modern problems of participatory democracy in the public sphere are John Dewey (1859–1952) and Walter Lippmann (1889–1974). “Weekend Update” provides us with (...) a foundation to understand what Dewey and Lippmann argued about news, democracy, and the formation of public opinion. Dewey's creative response to the problems of the public in democracy was not to rely on experts, but to rely on the arts and artists to help communicate important issues in the public sphere and foster more public participation. (shrink)

This article seeks to contextualise Ellen Meiksins Wood’s recent survey of classical and medieval political thought within the context of some of the prevailing approaches to the history of political thought. After an initial elaboration of Wood’s ‘political-Marxist’ approach to issues of historical development and contextualisation, I emphasise what is significant about Wood’s specific contribution to the study of Greek, Roman and medieval political ideas in particular, as well as to the history of political thought in general.

In this dissertation I seek to answer the question, “What are the virtues of the excellent citizen in a liberal democracy?" This question is important on three levels. First, if civic virtue is as important to the perpetuation of liberal democratic community as neo-liberal and communitarian thinkers have argued, then curiosity alone should motivate us. Second, if projects to foster the virtues are critical, then we must understand the virtues in order to foster them effectively and appropriately. Third, those (...) who wish to attain greater excellence in citizenship need to know what the virtues are so that they may pursue them. In Chapters One and Two, I argue that current accounts of civic virtue are deficient because they fail to explore its basis, nature, and constituents. To better understand civic virtue, we must explore specific citizen virtues. To fulfill this aim, we require a citizen virtue catalog structured by an explanatory framework that is anchored in the role-based nature of citizen virtue. Such a framework provides the rationale for determining which virtues should be included in the catalog and which should not as well as a basis for comparing competing catalogs. As the role of citizen is to assist his state, the citizen virtues are those qualities that enable the citizen to assist the state in achieving its aims” in protecting, promoting, and realizing the liberal democratic ideals (namely, freedom, equality, self-government, collective cooperation, and stability). In the remaining chapters, I survey neo-liberal accounts of citizen virtue proposed by Richard Dagger, William Galston, David Jones, Mark Kingwell, Stephen Macedo, and Thomas Spragens, Jr. I apply the Chapter Two framework to assess the virtue candidates they propose. These chapters share a common format but differ in focus. Chapter Three takes up the citizen virtues that treat political community: cooperation, participation, vigilance, deliberative excellence, and obedience to law. Chapter Four, the liberal citizen virtues: allegiance to liberal democratic community, tolerance, and respect for rights. And Chapter Five, the citizen virtues relating to self-governance: autonomy, responsibility, and restraint. Chapter Six concludes. (shrink)

This article contributes new insights to research on citizenship and young citizen subject formation in the context of the posthuman condition. Bringing a feminist materialist sensibility to bear, we explore citizenship as materially mobilised and produced. Considering the constitutive role that embodied and affective phenomena play in this production, we attend particularly to acts of citizenship. We show by way of vignettes how human subjects and material and natural objects ‘intra-act’ to produce civic capacities and bring citizen (...) subjectivity into effect. The forces by which these capacities are produced come into view inviting challenge to normative, human-centred framings of (youth) citizenship. The forces in question are various—affective, corporeal, temporal, spatial, spectral—but it is affect that provides the main impetus to action. Supplementing the more conventional frame of citizenship as belonging, we propose a framework of citizen becoming as a generative way to think and do citizenship in the posthuman present. The argument is made that analytic frames that attune to citizenship as an affective movement of becoming best address current conditions for producing citizen subjects and usefully extend individualised models of citizenship that have long influenced education. (shrink)

Americans have reason to be concerned about the condition of American democracy at the start of the twenty-first century. Surveys show that civic participation has declined, cynicism about government has increased, and young people have a weak grasp of the principles that underlie our constitutional system. Crucial questions must be answered: How serious is the situation? What role do schools play in shaping civic behavior? Are current education reform initiatives—such as multiculturalism and school choice—counterproductive? How can schools contribute toward reversing (...) the trend? This volume brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to probe the relation between a healthy democracy and education. Their original and provocative discussions cut across a range of important topics: the cultivation of democratic values, the formation of social capital in schools and communities, political conflict in a pluralist society, the place of religion in public life, the enduring problems of racial inequality. Gathering together the most current research and thinking on education and civil society, this is a book that deserves the attention of everyone who cares about the quality and future of American democracy. (shrink)

Americans have reason to be concerned about the condition of American democracy at the start of the twenty-first century. Surveys show that civic participation has declined, cynicism about government has increased, and young people have a weak grasp of the principles that underlie our constitutional system. Crucial questions must be answered: How serious is the situation? What role do schools play in shaping civic behavior? Are current education reform initiatives—such as multiculturalism and school choice—counterproductive? How can schools contribute toward reversing (...) the trend? This volume brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to probe the relation between a healthy democracy and education. Their original and provocative discussions cut across a range of important topics: the cultivation of democratic values, the formation of social capital in schools and communities, political conflict in a pluralist society, the place of religion in public life, the enduring problems of racial inequality. Gathering together the most current research and thinking on education and civil society, this is a book that deserves the attention of everyone who cares about the quality and future of American democracy. (shrink)

By exploring the meaning construction of Chinese citizenship stipulated in Chinese legislation and its interaction with social identities and human nature in the Chinese society, the present study investigates the nature and evolution of the conception of Chinese citizens through three selected cases from Chinese legislations, which illuminate that Chinese citizens are essentially persons with independent personalities defined by the rights and obligations stipulated in legislation. This conception is further strengthened by the entitlement to private properties and equality before law. (...) This conception of Chinese citizenship is concrete and meaningful in the sense that it is underpinned with reference to social identities as person, people and personality in Chinese legislations. The reference of the conception to human being constitutes the essence of Chinese legislation. The meaning construction of Chinese citizenship is indeed a dynamic process engineered in the social and cultural process. The findings on the evolution of the construction of Chinese citizenship in Chinese legislation suggest that the formation of legal identity through legislation varies greatly in different countries. Nevertheless, the realization of the conception of citizenship will necessarily be backed up by social identities as person, people and personality, which will be further strengthened and expanded by the legitimating of private properties and equality before law. Citizenship is achieved by social participants through mediation engineered within the social and cultural process. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the effects of religious denomination and patterns of church-going on the construction of political values for high-school students. I argue that religion plays a role in the formation of political attitudes among teenagers and it influences their political participation. I examine whether this relationship is constructed along denominational lines. From a theoretical perspective, previous research heralded the compatibility between Western Christianity and the democratic form of government. Samuel Huntington, in his famous Clash of Civilization, (...) argued that there is a natural symbiosis between Western Christianity and democratic forms of government, going insofar as to separate the world into religious civilizations. While, this approach essentializes religion as a fixed and immutable entity, Huntington also neglects the importance of dynamic historical, political and social contexts that can, and, in fact, do affect the functioning of religion in different countries, and hence their ability and willingness to accommodate democracy. Much research followed the Clash of Civilizations, either qualifying the central argument, by showing evidence of support for procedural democracy in most of the World, but without its liberal component or even arriving at the opposite conclusion that irrespective of religion, every country is “democratizable”. While I do not attempt to disconfirm fundamental huntingtonian thinking, I do raise the questions of how context can and does influence the intimate relationship between religion and politics. The analysis is conducted on survey data collected by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at Babes-Bolyai University with subjects of 14-15 years old, and the results show that, while Greek Orthodox students do not seem to differ in their political values form their Catholic and Protestant counterparts, they are more prone to participate politically. Nevertheless, their active participatory behavior is only more pronounced in what voting is concerned, an opposite effect being recorder for any other acts of political participation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent years have seen an increase in the influx of asylum-seekers in Scandinavia, and in Denmark this has led to ever-tighter immigration control. This article discusses emerging practices of refugee solidarity and resistance to migration policy in Danish civil society in the wake of what has been referred to as the European refugee crisis. To accomplish this purpose, I analyse how participants in Facebook discussions construe topoi and attitudes when facing the ethical dilemma of respecting the law versus showing concern (...) for humans in need, in line with what Foucault, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) has referred to as ‘ethical self-formation’. This is illustrated through a case study of an incident from September 2015, when a member of a Danish City Council offered private shelter to immigrants on their way to Norway. The incident led to legal proceedings in August 2016 for what the defendant referred to as ‘the offense of helping fellow human beings in need’. The study is informed by Critical Discourse Analysis. Analysing Discourse. Textual analysis for social research. London and New York: Routledge; Wodak, R.. The politics of fear. London and New York: Sage) and governmentality theory. The subject and Power. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; Foucault, M.. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–78.. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; McIlvenny, P., Klausen, J. Z., & Lindegaard, L. B.. Studies of Discourse and Governmentality. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins). Data include media representations and facebook comments published during 2016. The analytical approach combines topos analysis.. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage; Wodak, R.. The politics of fear. London and New York: Sage) and appraisal analysis to tease out evaluative meaning. (shrink)

Introduction. The development of legal culture and a culture of human rights in the modern world through media technologies, is acquiring special significance in connection with the processes of globalization and the spread of media in recent decades. The purpose of the article is to study the prospects for the use of media education in the formation of the legal social culture and a culture of human rights. Materials and methods. Based on a study of domestic and foreign sources, (...) issues of media education, media literacy, spiritual and moral education, the legal culture of society, the phenomenon of post-truth and ways of forming critical, creative thinking are considered. The use of general scientific, philosophical, and socio-pedagogical methods has made it possible to study media education as a dialogue of learning, stimulating the development of rational, critical thinking, focused on the search for the value foundations of intellectual and social activity. Results. The development of the field of information and communication technologies determines the principles for the formation of the content and orientation of modern education. Media education is interlinked with the development of democracy and human rights. It influences the formation of a culture of citizen participation, their active social position, civic and political culture. Media education plays a significant role in shaping the legal culture of society since critical media research and information research focuses on the analysis of power structures and structures of dominance in the media. A study of the interpretations of the concepts of "media education" and "media literacy" made it possible to show that media education focuses a person on a critical approach to media content. One of the main issues of media education is teaching a person the skills to critically study media and media technologies, which involves addressing the technological, cultural and historical specifics of specific media used at a specific time and place. Information and communication technologies have changed the way of life, work, communication, and ways of selfpresentation, the formation of values, participation in socially significant events. Therefore, a critical approach to mass media should be based on knowledge of socio-philosophical theories, ethics and research in the field of mass media. Discussion. Mass media are constructing a history of human rights, which updates the topic of the media policy of human rights, combining socio-legal, cultural and media theories. Education in the field of acquiring information perception skills, the ability to correctly understand the importance of audiovisual images, to competently handle and navigate information flows are necessary for the life of a modern person in society. (shrink)

Les aspirations libertaires-communautaires des mouvements étudiants de la fin des années 1960 ont rencontré un terrain politique institutionnel plus incitatif à leur application en RFA qu’en France, notamment sous forme d’entreprises dites alternatives. Celles.ci, beaucoup plus nombreuses en RFA, vont concourir à l’émergence d’un milieu contre-culturel ancré au quotidien des villes ouest-allemandes ; lequel milieu va à son tour contribuer à l’apparition et l’extension bien au-delà des seules villes d’un mouvement social contestataire : celui des « Initiatives de Citoyens ». (...) Ce mouvement, inédit en France, fournira dans la décennie 1970 une force d’appoint primordiale au mouvement écologiste ouest-allemand, et catalysera la mutation ou la création d’organisations qui joueront un rôle important dans la production et la diffusion d’idées écologistes ; de telle sorte que le mouvement écologiste tel qu’il s’est déployé en RFA y a rencontré un meilleur écho que celui qui s’est formé en France.The libertarian-communitarian aspirations of the students’ movements by the end of the 1960s met with a more open political context to their application in West Germany than in France : many more alternative enterprises were created at that time. This will contribute to the emergence of counterculture circles in West German cities. These circles will in turn bring about a social movement unknown in France : « the Initiatives of Citizens ». In the 1970s, this movement will considerably strengthen the West German ecology movement and will catalyse the mutation or birth of organizations which will play a great part in the emergence and spreading of environment ideas. So that the ecology movement, such as it spread in West Germany, was better received there than in France. (shrink)

John Dewey presented The Public and Its Problems in a series of lectures in 1926, shortly after Walter Lippmann published two influential works, Public Opinion and The Phantom Public . In those works, Lippmann had denied that broad publics should share in determining public policy. He argued that the policy issues were far removed from the lives of ordinary citizens, whose collective opinion, as a result, would inevitably be ill-informed, self-interested and readily manipulated.Dewey countered that the problem of public opinion (...) was not primarily lack of information, but rather of community formation. A democratic community, he argued, could overcome the ignorance and narrow self-interest that plagued .. (shrink)

This paper examines public meetings in the Netherlands where experts and officials interact with local residents on the human health effects of livestock farming. Using Conversation Analysis, we reveal a ‘weapon of the weak’: a practice by which the residents resist experts’ head start in information meetings. It is shown how residents draw on the given question-answer format to challenge experts and pursue an admission of, for example, methodological shortcomings. We show how the residents’ first question functions as a ‘foot-in-the-door’, (...) providing them with a strong basis for skepticism. By systematically challenging the expert responses, the residents exploit the interaction’s sequential organization, with the effect that the goal becomes them being convinced rather than being informed. Consequently, the withholding of consent becomes the residents’ ‘weapon’. Finally, we argue that in an age where expertise is increasingly contested, it is crucial to understand how, and to what end, this contestation may occur. (shrink)

Purpose of this article in the discussion of civic virtue and civic敎pottery into their education relationship. This is a number between ethics, political philosophy and civil敎between education issues. Ethics by the recent transfer of virtue ethics, deontological ethics on the development of virtue became a very important issue; in political philosophy, the formation of civil society and the role of citizens is important, you need to discuss ethics in politics civic virtue, especially in recent liberal political philosophy of the (...) Tao special attention to civic virtue; as citizens敎敎of Education Education is a very important part, with particular focus on the ethical敎civic education, the subject is the cultivation of civic virtue. This article on the one hand to discuss the civic virtue of the Tao into theoretical issues, but we also need to review Taiwan's citizens involved in civic virtue Tao敎education into the problem, as a useful reference for future improvements. First, this article will be "civil society" concept to be defined, and then discuss the ethical nature of civic virtue and ethics associated with the three theories. As a free society most needs and most suitable for the develop civic virtue, we need to further discuss the virtues of freedom and civil society relations. Furthermore, this also On several important civic virtues such as tolerance, justice, freedom and the spirit of equality, active participation ... etc. Finally, to discuss Taiwan's current education of citizens in civic virtue敎pottery into the problems encountered, especially concentrated in the敎materials and teacher in two ways. The relationship between the formation of civil virtue and civil education, is essential to contemporary ethics, political philosophy and civil education. We can see clearly in contemporary ethics that there is a changing interest from a Kantian Ethics of obligation to an Aristotelian Ethics of virtue. Both in today's political philosophy and civil education, the formation of civil societies and civil virtues is becoming more and more urgent for recently democratized countries. Envisaging these problematics, my paper will begin by defining the concept of "civil society", and then proceeds to discuss the ethical theories, utilitarianism, obligation ethics and virtue ethics. We will then try to make clear the relationship between a liberal society and civil virtue. Some important civil virtues, such as tolerance, social justice, freedom, equality and active participation, will then be discussed. We will conclude in a practical reflection by examining the function of today's civil education with Taiwan concerning the formation of civil virtues, with special regard to problems suc1i as teaching materials and credentializing teachers. (shrink)

Deliberative processes provide an important alternative input to environmental politics as they may, in contrast to often used market simulations, provide an arena for 1) discussion of lay participants' values, 2) articulating arguments grounded in other values than consequentialistic, and 3) capturing weakly comparable values. A case study of a Citizens' Jury (CJ) on genetically modified plants was used to investigate how the framing of the process affected the attitude formation among the citizens. The formal set up of this (...) specific CJ made value discussions less relevant. While it opened for value plurality, it failed to facilitate the articulation of weakly comparable values. (shrink)

The ‘participatory turn’ in science and technology governance has resulted in the growth of initiatives designed to engage lay people in consultation and decision-making on controversial matters. Almost from the start there has been both enthusiasm and serious critique of these exercises, from scholars and activists. The gaps and challenges are well known. In this paper we indicate the limitations of deliberative mechanisms as regards how they cope with familiar forms of people’s engagement with a given matter. We examine how (...) this phenomenon unfolded at the Barcelona Citizen Conference on the Digitalization of Society; a participatory exercise inspired by the model of consensus conferences that took place in 2014 in Barcelona. Our perspective on the topic is inspired by Sociology of Engagements. Focusing on how participants and organizers deal with individual anecdotes, worries and testimonies reported during the conference, the analysis shows how these formats are ignored, externalized, banned and re-formed during deliberations. This phenomenon is seen as supporting a civic-liberal regime of engagement. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to examine the potential of participatory budgeting for the formation of citizen identity and attachment to the place in terms of individual, territorial and thematic focus. In the theoretical discussion, the authors analyse the concepts of place attachment, social identity and their influence on civic participation. The authors propose a conceptual framework for the analysis of relationships between PB, place attachment, and social identity. In the case of the community development model of (...) PB, place attachment should lead to the citizens’ increased inclination to participate. In the case of participatory democracy model of PB citizen participation can lead to a stronger place attachment. The con­ceptual framework presented in the paper requires empirical confirmation. Further research on the subject should revolve around the influence of place attachment on the formation of social identity and vice versa by application of the discussed models of PB. The placemakers should take into account literature-based evidence that advisory models of PB do not reinforce place identity. The places that apply one of the transition models should consider the evolution of their PB policies towards either community development model or participatory democracy model. By review of diverse theoretical approaches on place identity and local participation, the paper creates a solid foundation for further analysis of the relationships between the applica­tion of PB and the development of civic identity and place attachment. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to observe how technologies of communication, especially the Internet - allow extensive and intensive connections between several global territories and how they begin to influence the formation of demands and the organization and participation of individuals/citizens around local and global causes. For this, the below article uses Wikileaks and the cypherpunk philosophy to exemplify how information can be both used and abused in the common space of the internet, allowing new citizenship developments as (...) well as government control strategies. (shrink)

Considering citizenship education specifically in relation to deliberative politics, first, I focus on the role that Habermas in Between Facts and Norms allots to opinion and will formation as a kind of Bildung, emphasizing the collective aspect of discursive formation in the state as well as in civil society. Secondly, even though I have stressed the crucial role of deliberation in the formation to virtue, I recognize that Habermas attempts to combine the republican call for civic virtue (...) with the liberal claims to have rights. Thirdly, I emphasize that also for Habermas Bildung in some sense constitutes the truth of human being, although it is not specified in detail. Fourthly, I argue that democratic citizenship education would benefit from a substantial notion of Bildung, but that Habermas does not support such an argument. Recognizing that Habermas’s idea of collective formation is restricted to providing justice in terms of politics and law, and bearing in mind the alienation in fact produced within the multitudes of modern capitalist and militarist society, I conclude by expressing the fear that Habermas’s account of democratic formation will not be sufficiently attractive to contemporary democratic citizens and thus unable to function as a normative ideal. (shrink)

In the study of the reproduction of state power through urban space, more attention has been paid to how states organize urban space to construct the disciplined subject than the converse of how states cultivate subjects who reproduce the material and symbolic significance of the built environment. Using the case study of public housing in the developmental state of Singapore, I argue that states attempt to shape how inhabitants navigate and interpret the built environment by constructing spatial-political subjects who reproduce (...) state hegemony through internalized mental and emotional schemas towards urban space. I analyze fifty years (1972—2021) and nearly 700 issues of periodicals by Singaporean housing authorities to illustrate two distinct phases of spatial-political subject formation which corresponded to deliberate shifts in the physical sites of state legitimacy. In the two decades following independence, the ruling People’s Action Party sought legitimacy for its program of slum clearance and public housing “New Town” construction, and accordingly cultivated the modern urban resident oriented towards the rationally-planned New Town and the high-rise apartment. Faced with political opposition in the mid-eighties but having already housed 80% of Singapore, the PAP then shifted the stakes of legitimacy towards the maintenance of existing common areas and cultivated the sociable urban citizen who equated ongoing municipal maintenance with ruling party provision while actively participating in state-sanctioned neighborhood activities. The following findings will illuminate an overlooked strategy in the state’s toolkit for reproducing its hegemony through urban space. (shrink)

In recent years, the amount of data in the world is growing rapidly. Data growth also occurs in the government sector. All ministries and institutions at every level are data producers. These government-owned data have a high potential if they can be used properly. Open government data can stimulate innovation and economic growth and enhance business models. In order to increase the willingness of citizens to use open government data and enjoy the benefits mentioned, the quality of open government data (...) needs to be improved. The quality of open government data encompasses a variety of dimensions and criteria. Also, the importance of each dimension and criterion in increasing the quality of open government data is different. Therefore, we are faced with a complex system that requires proper decision-making and management. In fact, we are dealing with decision-making in the complex management system. Given the importance of this issue, the purpose of this study is to provide a new and comprehensive method to improve the quality of open government data and increase the willingness of citizens to use the data by considering the complex network of citizens and organizations. For this purpose, library studies have been used to extract comprehensive and effective dimensions and criteria. The statistical population includes all articles related to the criteria of improving the quality of open government data and increasing the willingness of citizens to use the data. The probabilistic sampling method of simple random samples has been used, and 10 articles in this field have been reviewed. After extracting the criteria as well as the data of 112 governmental organizations and institutions related to each criterion from the open data portal, the complex network of citizens and governmental organizations and institutions has been analyzed in order to identify high-degree centrality organizations. Then, the data characteristics of the organizations that were most desired by the citizens were extracted using data mining techniques including the regression model. Also, field method and multicriteria decision-making technique including the DEMATEL technique have been used to express the solutions and identify the cause-and-effect relationships between the solutions. The criteria extracted in improving the quality of open government data and increasing the willingness of citizens to use the data are included: “data originality,” “license openness,” “up-to-datedness,” “data access,” “metadata completeness,” “number of data sets,” “format openness,” “nondiscrimination,” “understandable,” “number of categories of data sets,” “free,” “lack of missing data,” “data request ability,” “visualization,” “feedback,” and “data subject matter.” Based on the results obtained from the analysis of the complex network and the regression model, the criterion of “society subject” with a coefficient of 72.564 and a positive sign has the greatest impact on increasing the number of citizens' visits to open government data. After that, the criterion of “format openness” with a coefficient of 52.682 and a positive sign has the second rank in increasing the number of visits. Extracting comprehensive and effective criteria in improving the quality of open government data and increasing citizens' willingness to use data, calculating the weight and importance of each criterion by analyzing the complex network of citizens and organizations, as well as providing solutions, can help managers in decision-making and proper management in the complex system of citizens and government organizations. (shrink)

The author thematizes the operation of the political market of attention that is propelled by the willingness of citizens to credit populist leaders with their digital political labour. Mutual, nevertheless unequal, exchange of attention leads to the formation of a spiral of attention. Its expansive character is sustained by the strategically subsidized recognition of populist leaders. Accumulated attention, i. e. attention capital, is the resource that is used to maintain populist networked public spheres, while citizens are proletarianized: they are (...) invited to apply their labour power to distributing political ideas but are pevented from evaluating the influence of competing public actors. (shrink)

_Justice and the Just War Tradition_ articulates a distinctive understanding of the reasons that can justify war, of the reasons that cannot justify war, and of the role that those reasons should play in the motivational and attitudinal lives of the citizens, soldiers, and statesmen who participate in war. Eberle does so by relying on a robust conception of human worth, rights, and justice. He locates this theoretical account squarely in the Just War Tradition. But his account is not merely (...) theoretical: _Justice and the Just War Tradition_ has a variety of practical aims, one of the most important of which is to serve as an aid to moral formation. The hope is that citizens, soldiers, and statesmen whose emotions and aspirations have been shaped by the Just War Tradition will be able to negotiate violent communal conflict in ways that respect the demands of justice. So _Justice and the Just War Tradition_ articulates a theoretically satisfying and practically engaging account of the reasons that count in favor of war. Moreover, Eberle develops that account by engaging contemporary theorists, both philosophical and theological, by according due deference to venerable contributors to the Just War Tradition, and by integrating insights from military memoire, the history of war, and the author's experience of teaching ethics at the United States Naval Academy. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on a theory of the ideological public sphere in the age of digital media. It describes the public sphere as an initially ascending and then descending communication process that includes both polarising and integrating publics, which are organised by antagonistic media and compromise-building mass media. This framework allows us to distinguish between hegemonic, populist, and popular-oriented flows of communication, as well as register changes in the interplay of different publics driven by digital media platforms. Digital transformations of (...) the public sphere give rise to antagonistic and networked-individualistic flows of populist communication that put public hegemony under constant pressure. The challenge is to find ways to strengthen popular communications that enable democratic learning processes and the flourishing of communicative competences of all citizens. (shrink)

The article considers the notary as a subject of active influence on the formation of postmodern democratic legal society, mediation of law in postmodern society. The constitutional definition of the state in this status does not mean that the civil law consciousness prevails in all spheres of its life. Since no person in society does not need this type of legal service, it is quite objective to consider this community as a subject whose activities should be considered as a (...) subject of formation not only of legal consciousness of society but also a leading subject of civil society. This primarily applies to private notaries, who, unlike public notaries, are fully responsible for the results of their activities. After all, a legal duty is organically combined with the responsibility from which the public notary is released. The study of the manifestations of the phenomenon of postmodernism is relevant to many disciplines, including - the philosophy of law. Modern research shows that classical types of legal understanding do not satisfy the understanding of postmodern law, which indicates the need to find a fundamentally new concept of law. The author concludes that the solution to this problem should be sought in the field of theories that offer new approaches to the interpretation of legal texts; this area is considered the most promising. (shrink)

Article I.Titovskiy "Influence understanding of the Holy Trinity Christian dogmas on the formation of social and political relations" explores issues of mutual influence of religion and government, which are relevant today for Ukraine, which are able to change their socio-political relations. And since the vast majority of Ukrainian citizens are Christians, then understanding the tenets of the Holy Trinity should contribute its share of Ukrainian assistance to build a new and better society and the state, to which all citizens.

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to concepts of the self associated with the development of humanism in England, and to strategies for both inclusion and exclusion in structuring the early modern nation state. It addresses writings about rhetoric and behavior from 1495–1660, beginning with Erasmus’ work on sermo or the conversational rhetoric between friends, which considers the reader as an ‘absent audience’, and following the transference of this stance to a politics whose broadening democratic constituency needed a legitimate structure (...) for governance-at-a-distance. Unusually, the book brings together the impact on behavior of these new concepts about rhetoric, with the growth of the publishing industry, and the emergence of capitalism and of modern medicine. It explores the effects on the formation of the ‘subject’ and political legitimation of the early liberal nation state. It also lays new ground for scholarship concerned with what is left out of both selfhood and politics by that state, studying examples of a parallel development of the ‘self’ defined by friendship not only from educated male writers, but also from women writers and writers concerned with socially ‘middling’ and laboring people and the poor. (shrink)

La autonomía constituye uno de los pilares básicos de un sistema político como el democrático que se asocia a la capacidad de toma de decisiones de la ciudadanía como su núcleo moral principal. Los descubrimientos en el ámbito de las neurociencias y su aplicación al campo del marketing y a la comunicación política despiertan hoy en día las sospechas por la posible capacidad de activar el "botón del voto" de los electores. Este artículo tiene como objetivo adentrarse en el estudio (...) de los principales trabajos desarrollados sobre el neuromarketing político y la neuropolítica. La finalidad de esta propuesta consiste en presentar los debates éticos que irrumpen con el neuromarketing político. Autonomy is one of the basic pillars of a political system like democracy, which is associated with citizens’ decision-making capacity as its main moral core. Discoveries in the neurosciences domain and their application to the marketing and political communication field now arouse suspicions about the possible capacity of activating voter’s "voting button". The objective of this article is to examine the main works on political neuromarketing and neuropolitics. The purpose of this proposal consists in presenting the specific ethical debates that emerge around political neuromarketing. (shrink)

Probably the most interesting feature of the 40-year history of biomedical biotechnology is the extent to which it has been open to – and influenced by – concerns over social values and the public’s voice. Good intentions notwithstanding, however, benchmarks and best practices are woefully lacking for informing the policy-making process with public values. This is particularly true in the United States where the call for “public debate” is often heard but seldom heeded by policy-making bodies. Geneforum, an Oregon-based non-profit, (...) has developed a practical and working model designed to encourage deliberative democratic processes for addressing the ethical and social issues raised by emerging biotechnologies. Ordinary citizens do not need to be scientists to understand the important implications of the new technological advances. When factual information and basic principles are conveyed in linguistically and culturally appropriate ways, the scene is set for a shift from monologue to dialogue, from “I-thinking” to “We-thinking,” to occur. This paper describes the Geneforum model structured to intensify the democratization of policy decision-making, in general, using genomic science, in particular, as one example of its application. (shrink)

El objetivo de este estudio es conocer la percepción que tiene el alumnado de periferias escolares sobre las ciencias sociales. Para ello se ha diseñado y validado un instrumento, con la pretensión de que 120 estudiantes de centros escolares públicos de educación secundaria de la Comunidad Valenciana puedan aportar información sobre su aprendizaje de las ciencias sociales, las estrategias de enseñanza desempeñadas por el profesorado y su valoración de la formación ciudadana de esos proyectos didácticos que trabajan los problemas socialmente (...) relevantes. La percepción de las ciencias sociales es óptima y con diferencias más significativas entre los dos cursos analizados. (shrink)

Taxes are closely related to the functioning of the state. From the moral and social point of view, it should always be directed towards the common good. Implementing this principle, the state supports the improvement of citizens’ welfare. Provides them with collected taxes their services, such as internal and external security, education, culture, infrastructure, social services and others. The formation of fair tax system and the mechanism of budgetary resources also has great importance because of the importance of the (...) whole economy. In addition, the state’s fiscal system applies to every citizen as a taxpayer. Therefore, this issue also has important ethical dimension of individuality. The article focuses on these issues, emphasizing an ethical perspective the following three issues: (1) The social context of contemporary reflections on the obligations to the state, (2) the state and its goals, and (3) the moral aspects of the duty to pay taxes. (shrink)

Ukraine's integration into European economic and cultural field, building a democratic state, the emergency of new social and economic relations require finding a new national idea. Today our society needs new demands on reforming of all Ukrainian state infrastructure. In the twenty-first century in Ukraine there are two trends of the state - the Ukrainian state on the basis of conservative the Cossack era traditions and state, which it combined with the Russian and Soviet traditions. Based on the analysis of (...) European national ideas, modern Ukrainian idea has to create a common spiritual space and to become a condition for solving the existing political, religious, language problems of cultural processes, to unite all classes, stratas and ethnic groups, which lives on the territory of Ukraine. Ukrainian idea has to be united idea that it should be taken by different political parties, ethnic groups, and representatives of various religious denominations as their own. However, the contradictions between the political forces will remain, but they will exist at the level of the idea implementation ways. Experience of Ukrainian philosophical and legal thought, including G. Skovoroda heritage, discovers a main trend of the modern state development - the gradual Ukrainians` perception of elaborated by progressive political and legal thought achievements and especially those universal values as democracy, law, human rights and freedoms, humane and equitable order. Formation of Ukrainian law state, should ensure the existence of law, protection and guarantee the fundamental rights and freedoms of human being and citizen. However, it should be taken into consideration that law state can not be built by limiting laws adoption. Besides democratic, progressive legislation it is necessary to provide a system of strict observance and fulfillment laws by all participants: state, state bodies, public organizations, officials and citizens. Also the important condition of global events law state creation together the improvement of legislation, is the improvement of legal practice, which, in turn, depends on the legal, professional culture of those who create and use the law. (shrink)