We review the relationships between language, inner speech, and cognitive control in children and young adults, focusing on the domain of cognitive flexibility. We address the role that inner speech plays in flexibly shifting between tasks, addressing whether it is used to represent task rules, provide a reminder of task order, or aid in task retrieval. We also consider whether the development of inner speech in childhood serves to drive the development of cognitive flexibility. We conclude that there is a (...) close association between inner speech and cognitive flexibility in both adults and children. Experimental work has begun to specify in detail the role that inner speech might play in adult performance, suggesting that language plays a facilitative but not essential role in representing and activating the relevant task set, processes that occur on both switch and nonswitch trials. While developmental studies suggest an increase in the spontaneous use of verbal strategies with age, implying an increase in top-down control during shifting, experimental work is needed to specify more precisely the nature and precise role that inner speech plays in the development of cognitive control through childhood. (shrink)
Abstract The idea of a purely civic nationalism has attracted Western scholars, most of whom rightly disdain the myths that sustain ethnonationalist theories of political community. Civic nationalism is particularly attractive to many Americans, whose peculiar national heritage encourages the delusion that their mutual association is based solely on consciously chosen principles. But this idea misrepresents political reality as surely as the ethnonationalist myths it is designed to combat. And propagating a new political myth is an especially inappropriate way of (...) defending the legacy of Enlightenment liberalism from the dangers posed by the growth of nationalist political passions. (shrink)
Notwithstanding the advantages of physical power, the struggle for survival among societies is not merely a matter of serial armed clashes but of the nation's spiritual resources that in the end always decide upon the victory.
This volume asks which national histories underpinned which national identity constructions in almost every nation state in Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores the construction of national identities through history writing and analyses their interrelationship with histories of ethnicity/race, class and religion.
Intersectionality has attracted substantial scholarly attention in the 1990s. Rather than examining gender, race, class, and nation as distinctive social hierarchies, intersectionality examines how they mutually construct one another. I explore how the traditional family ideal functions as a privileged exemplar of intersectionality in the United States. Each of its six dimensions demonstrates specific connections between family as a gendered system of social organization, racial ideas and practices, and constructions of U.S. national identity.
During the final decade of his life, Jacques Derrida came to use the trope of autoimmunity with greater and greater frequency. Indeed it today appears that autoimmunity was to have been the last iteration of what for more than forty years Derrida called deconstruction. This essay looks at the consequences of this terminological shift for our understanding not only of Derrida's final works (such as Rogues) but of his entire corpus. By taking up a term from the biological sciences that (...) describes the process by which an organism turns in quasi-suicidal fashion against its own self-protection, Derrida was able to rethink the very notion of life otherwise and demonstrate the way in which every sovereign identity, from the self to the nation-state to, most provocatively, God, is open to a process that both threatens to destroy it and gives it its only chance of living on. (shrink)
In this article, I shall evaluate critically the democratic citizenship education project in South Africa to ascertain whether the patriotic sentiments expressed in the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy (2001) are in conflict with the achievement of reconciliation and nation building (specifically peace and friendship) after decades of apartheid rule. My first argument is that, although it seems as if the teaching of patriotism through the Department of Education's democratic citizenship agenda in South African schools is a laudable (...) initiative that can contribute toward establishing a definitive break with our apartheid past, the expression of blind patriotic sentiments (such as pledging allegiance to one's country and its citizens only) as articulated in the Manifesto can potentially marginalise others (immigrant communities) as the country endeavours to build its fledgling democracy. My second argument is that the intended democratic form of patriotism of the Department of Education can possibly be undermined by cultivating a culture of 'safe expression', which could slow down the country's quest for reconciliation and nation building. (shrink)
Gandhi’s notion of passive-resistance is critical in two ways and defines swaraj and swadeshi, leading to his assertion that India alone is the land of redemption for the world afflicted with modern civilization, “the sheet-anchor of our hope”. “Sound at the foundation”, “India remains as it was before”, while the world speeds on, “usurp[ing] the function of Godhead” and indulg[ing] in novel experiments”. This paper aims at elaborating Gandhi’s definition of nature in terms of the scalar, speed, as found in (...) Hind Swaraj and other writings in order to demonstrate that India as hind swaraj is critical nation. (shrink)
The paper explores the role played by concepts of temporality in shaping the self's identity and its moral responsibility. This theme is examined in both Kant and Benjamin, two theorists who view the modern self as an essentially historical being. For Kant, teleological and uniform time shoulders the heightening of the self's universal attributes and the constant expansion of a moral community. The desired end is the establishment of an integrated and homogeneous human space, a cosmopolitan stage wherein history is (...) finally redeemed. This progressive notion of time is seen as dangerous by Benjamin, since it generates forgetfulness and inner impoverishment of the self. Instead, Benjamin advances a fragmented conception of time, one allowing conversation between distant moments and grounding identity in concrete images. While the poetic recovery of memory leads to the distinct and exclusive, Benjamin follows Kant in demanding universal moral responsibility of the self. However, Benjamin's strategy, so to speak, is the integration of our temporal - not spatial - experience. Key Words: Benjamin • history • Kant • nation-state • space • time. (shrink)
This paper subjects to critical analysis four common arguments in the sociopolitical theory literature supporting the cultural nationalist thesis that liberal democracy is viable only against the background of a single national public culture: the arguments that (1) social integration in a liberal democracy requires shared norms and beliefs (Schnapper); (2) the levels of trust that democratic politics requires can be attained only among conationals (Miller); (3) democratic deliberation requires communicational transparency, possible in turn only within a shared national public (...) culture (Miller, Barry); and (4) the economic viability of specifically industrialized liberal democracies requires a single national culture (Gellner). I argue that all four arguments fail: At best, a shared cultural nation may reduce some of the costs liberal democratic societies must incur; at worst, cultural nationalist policies ironically undermine social integration. The failure of these cultural nationalist arguments clears the way for a normative theory of liberal democracy in multinational and postnational contexts. (shrink)
Abstract This essay explores the matter of hegemony in the global system from the standpoint of global capitalism theory, in contrast to extant approaches that analyse this phenomenon from the standpoint of the nation?state and the inter?state system. It advances a conception of global hegemony in transnational social terms, linking the process of globalisation to the construction of hegemonies and counter?hegemonies in the twenty?first century. An emergent global capitalist historical bloc, lead by a transnational capitalist class, rather than a (...) particular nation?state, bloc of states, or region, is pursuing a hegemonic project. The US state is seen as the point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups to resolve problems of global capitalism. US?led militarisation is a contradictory political?military response to the crisis of global capitalism, characterised by economic stagnation, legitimacy problems and the rise of counter?hegemonic forces. (shrink)
The idea of the “nation” has played only a small role in modern political philosophy because of its apparent irrationalism and amoralism. David Miller, however, sets out to show that these charges can be overcome: nationality is a rational element of one’s cultural identity, and nations are genuinely ethical communities. In this paper I argue that his project fails. The defence against the charge of irrationalism fails because Miller works within a framework of ethical particularism which leads to a (...) position of metaethical relativism. A consequence of this relativism is that a community’s moral principles and boundaries of exclusion cannot be rationally justified to those constructed as “outsiders”. The defence against the charge of amoralism fails because Miller does not so much provide an argument to show that nations are ethical communities as assume they are; we are therefore left without resources to discriminate between ethical and unethical nations. I apply these problems to Miller’s treatment of the question of immigration, arguing that it shows that his version of “liberal” nationalism has a tendency to collapse towards a conservative position on such issues. This should not give us any great confidence that the nation, as Miller presents it, should be embraced by modern political philosophy. (shrink)
In "Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?" Donna Gabaccia provides an illuminating account of the origin of the United States' claim to be a "Nation of Immigrants." Gabaccia's endeavor is motivated by the question "What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile or an illegal or clandestine?" (Gabaccia 5). This question is very important to the immigration debate because, as Gabaccia goes on to show, (...) "[t]o ponder this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagination of nations" (Gabaccia 5-6). In this paper, I am going to delve deeper into .. (shrink)
Overview -- Why social workers earn less than accountants : pay equity -- Can you have a job and a life? -- Can a woman do a man's job? -- You want to see my what? : sexual harassment -- Nine to five : not just a movie--the right to organize -- Working other than nine to five : part-time and temporary jobs -- What this nation really thinks of motherhood : welfare reform -- Revaluing women's work outside of (...) work -- How you can help get there. (shrink)
In this paper the author examines the main features of Jürgen Habermas's cosmopolitan view of the global political order. He specifically examines the importance Habermas accords respectively to individual rights and the nationstate in such an order. After demonstrating that a global political order founded on the defence of individual human rights rather than the nation-state is an assumption that should be taken seriously, the author maintains that it would be undesirable to attribute only a secondary role to the (...)nation-sate. In the second part of the paper, he demonstrates that the nation-state has a positive role to play in the global era, and that those who predict its imminent demise will have to revisit their positions. (shrink)
This paper analyzes how cultural diversity in Argentina is calling into question modern political concepts like republic, nation or democracy. The phenomenon of population movements, the demand for recognition of indigenous people's rights, or the conflicts arising from claims to regions' right to life and identity - as in the case of the town of Gualeguaychú in Argentina - challenge the logic of the nation-state and its sovereignty as well as the republican principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. (...) The author examines how far the representation of the Argentinean republic at the time of its foundation included a standardizing vision of diversity, and how the legacy of this representation brought about an ambivalence between a universalist wish to take part in the progress of humanity and the reality of an exclusive democracy that valued one culture over others. It studies the narrative of national identity and attempts to describe how, proceeding from this narrative, the opposition between civilization and barbarity affects the way Latin Americans see the great challenges presented by the future of democracy, and by the recognition of the plurality of cultural allegiances. (shrink)
Apart from a few notable exceptions, the current retreat from Grand Theory has been accompanied by a reluctance to think about how we might theorize different forms of social formation. The present study began as an attempt to understand one such community form, the nation. However, in delineating an analytical method that allowed the theoretical space for exploring the ontological contradictions endemic to living as part of a national community, it became necessary to work comparatively across history (...) and across different social forms. In doing so, the article argues for a method that conceives of the various kinds of human community as formed in the changing and contradictory intersections of (diacritically distinguishable) levels of integration—from the most embodied ties of face-to-face reciprocity to the most abstract relations of strangers-in-association such as exemplified in the electronic communications of "information capitalism.". (shrink)
Kate Millett's book, The Loony-Bin Trip, is an extraordinary account of her personal experience with involuntary psychiatric commitment. The drama of her conflict with professional psychiatry is so tense, so enraging, that one is likely to find oneself having to set the book aside from time to time just to calm down.
Today is dedicated to the remembrance of the Holy Innocents, who were victims of a state sponsored terrorist attack at the very beginning of the Christian era. We believe this is an appropriate spiritual time to review and question the moral judgement of the Catholic Bishops of the United States of America that our nation's war on the people of Afghanistan is just. We do this in a spirit of fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church and to (...) the charism bequeathed to us as Catholic Workers by our founders, the Servants of God Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day of New York. Our statements, questions, and conclusions may seem startling to you, they may make you uncomfortable. This is because we come to you, not as the rich and powerful, but as the weak, poor, and powerless. (shrink)
Ned Block’s Chinese Nation Argument is offered as a counterexample to Turing-machine functionalism. According to that argument, one billion Chinese could be organized to instantiate Turing-machine descriptions of mental states. Since we wouldn’t want to impute qualia to such an organized population, functionalism cannot account for the qualitative character of mental states like pain. Paul Churchland and Patricia Churchland have challenged that argument by trying to show that an adequate representation of the complexity of mind requires at least 10 (...) 30,000,000 homunculi. As such a large collection of Chinese is beyond comprehension, the intuitive force of Block’s example would be undercut. I argue that Churchland and Church land erroneously assume that every possible input-state combination in the human Turing-machine table must be assigned a homunculus. I attempt to restore the intuitive force of Block’s thought experiment by pointing to a way to simulate the human mind that does not require any such staggering number of homunculi. (shrink)
The article traces the development of Hungarian intellectual history of the early modern period from the emergence of the national romantic constructions of literary history to the recent turn towards contextualist and conceptual history. One of its main findings is the ideological importance of this period for the formation of the national canon, as it became a central point of reference for the emerging local methodological tradition of intellectual history, even if it was often compartamentalized under other categories. From this (...) perspective, the article puts particular emphasis on ideological constructions seeking to define the nation and depict the emergence of modern national identity. This finding also offers a vantage point for analyzing the interplay between literary history and the socio-culturally focused approaches, which can be considered the main framework for the developments of the last two decades, when these local historiographical traditions entered into an interesting dialogue with the Western European and American schools of intellectual history. Along these lines, while pointing out the discursive continuities with the previous paradigms, which are shaping even the contemporary historiographical production, the article also ponders the ways in which the inherited (post-)romantic constructions can be successfully challenged. (shrink)
This question presupposes a prior question: would a free nation need to defend itself from foreign aggression? Some would answer no: the rewards of cooperation outweigh the rewards of aggression, and so a nation will probably not be attacked unless it first acts aggressively itself.
The idea of forming a new libertarian nation is an attractive one for two reasons: first, as an alternative to persuasion; second, as a tool of persuasion.
There are at least three times as many nations as states in the world today. This book addresses some of the special challenges that arise when two or more national communities re the same (multinational) state. As a work in normative political philosophy its principal aim is to evaluate the political and institutional choices of citizens and governments in states with rival nationalist discourses and nation-building projects. The first chapter takes stock of a decade of intense philosophical and sociological (...) debates about the nature of nations and nationalism. Norman identifies points of consensus in these debates, as well as issues that do not have to be definitively resolved in order to proceed with normative theorizing. He recommends thinking of nationalism as a form of discourse, a way of arguing and mobilizing support, and not primarily as a belief in a principle. A liberal nationalist, then, is someone who uses nationalist arguments, or appeals to nationalist sentiments, in order to rally support for liberal policies. The rest of the book is taken up with the three big political and institutional choices in multinational states. First, what can political actors and governments legitimately do to shape citizens' national identity or identities? This is the core question in the ethics of nation-building, or what Norman calls national engineering. Second, how can minority and majority national communities each be given an adequate degree of self-determination, including equal rights to carry out nation-building projects, within a democratic federal state? Finally, even in a world where most national minorities cannot have their own state, how should the constitutions of multinational federations regulate secessionist politics within the rule of law and the ideals of democracy? More than a decade after Yael Tamir's ground-breaking Liberal Nationalism, Norman finds that these three great practical and institutional questions have still rarely been addressed within a comprehensive normative theory of nationalism. (shrink)
Representative Tom Coburn (R- Okla.), a supporter of a measure passed by the House of Representatives to Congress to overturn Oregon's law allowing physician-assisted suicide, said these words on Jim Lehrer's News Hour, last October 27. Is it possible that Representative Coburn really cannot see the flagrant contradiction between wishing the United States to be "the freest nation in the world" and insisting on ramming the belief that life has value down the throats of terminally ill people who have (...) made careful, considered, and well-grounded decisions that they do not want to continue to live? (shrink)
Abstract The nation is a mythic construct whose primary component is a shared language (often one that has been manufactured for the purpose). In the context of popular sovereignty, shared language, like other shared traits, brings with it a seemingly irresistible capacity to demonize those who do not share it. This capacity is faithfully enlisted by politicians looking for means of mass mobilization. The democratic nation?state therefore displays xenophobic tendencies; yet the urge to combat these tendencies fixes, as (...) permanent and normative ?identities,? the very myths?artificial and eminently mutable? that start the process of xenophobia in the first place. (shrink)
This paper marks the launch of a new accounting and business ethics Web project called Tender Nation. The objective of the site is to provide an emotionally supportive resource and community for the discussion of accounting and business ethics issues by accounting practitioners and accounting students. The paper explains the rationale behind the development of the site and is split into five sections. Section one develops a short critique of the development of the Web and discusses the extent to (...) which it provides an opportunity for critical engagement in the economic sphere. Section two reviews the Web based accounting and business ethics resources currently available and draws on some well established ethical theory to explain how the objectives of Tender Nation differ from other Web based attempts to critically and ethically engage with the economic sphere. Section three provides an outline of the structure and content of the site. Section four presents a survey of students'' initial responses to the Web site and the concluding section discusses plans to develop the project further. (shrink)
This article examines the Israeli documentary My Land Zion and the Palestinian documentary Paradise Lost. Both films are critical autobiographical texts and in both, the woman filmmaker negotiates her emotional and ideological ties with her culture, history, and nation. Naaman proposes that by using the autobiographical genre and by engaging emotionally as well as rationally, the women filmmakers discussed offer a particular gendered position rebelliously outside nationalism and the place of women within it.
We have been witnessing more than two hundred years of successful formation and spread of the nation-state. As a historical reminder, let me quote great French historian of the nineteenth century, Jules Michelet; in spite of its somewhat sentimental tone, his view on the unification of France is typical of what any nationalist would like to say about the successful creation of an ethno-national state: "This unification of France, this destruction of parochial spirit is often considered as the simple (...) result of the conquest of provinces. But a conquest can glue together, chain together the hostile parts, never unite them: the conquest and the war have only opened provinces to each other, and has given to isolated populations an opportunity to meet each other; the quick and lively sympathy of Gallic genius, its social instinct, has done the rest of the work. What a strange event! These provinces, of differing climate, customs and language have understood each other, fallen in love with each other, felt solidarity towards each other….”(Michelet, Histoire de la france, t. III; 1844, Histoire de la France, Anthologized in Saly et. al.1996, p. 115) Saly, P., Gerard, A., Gervais, C. and Rey, M.P., “Nations et nationalismes en Europe 1848-1914., my translation)" Contemporary sociologists express similar thoughts in a different rhetorical garb. They stress the advantages of nation-forming along ethnonational lines. By offering to people a culture in languag(es) they actually spoke, by encouragement of the formation of more local elites, directly in contact with their electorate, and by promoting capitalist mode of production it has enabled the massive democratization. As many sociologists , prominently Anderson and Gellner, have pointed out, democracy and nationalism go together.. (shrink)
Abstract The rise of nationalism parallels that of the state, suggesting that the relationship between the two is symbiotic and that nations are neither natural nor spontaneous but rather are political constructions. Ernest Gellner's economically determinist account of the rise of the nation?state, however, understates the emotive and psychological appeal of nationalist ideology. The Social Identity Theory of Henri Tajfel, by contrast, suggests that nationalism benefits from possibly innate human tendencies to affiliate in social groups and to act in (...) furtherance of these groups, while Serge Moscovici's social psychology of popular belief elucidates the means by which such tendencies can take the shape of nationalism in mass publics. (shrink)
The changing situation in South Africa and Eastern Europe prompts Charles Villa-Vicencio to investigate the implications of transforming liberation theology into a theology of reconstruction and nation-building. Such a transformation, he argues, requires theology to become an unambiguously interdisciplinary study. This book explores the encounter between theology, on the one hand, and constitutional writing, law-making, human rights, economics, and the freedom of conscience on the other. Placing his discussion in the context of the South African struggle, the author compares (...) this situation to that in Eastern Europe, and the challenge of what is happening in these situations is identified for contexts where "the empire has not yet crumbled.". (shrink)
Winthrop Pickard Bell (1884–1965), a Canadian who studied with Husserl in Göttingen from 1911 to 1914, was arrested after the outbreak of World War I and interred at Ruhleben Prison Camp for the duration of the war. In 1915 or 1916 he presented a lecture titled “Canadian Problems and Possibilities” to other internees at the prison camp. This is the first time Bell’s lecture has appeared in print. Even though the lecture was given to a general audience and thusmakes no (...) explicit reference to Husserl or phenomenology, it is a systematic phenomenological analysis of the national form of group belonging and, as such, makes a substantial contribution to phenomenological sociology and political science, grounding that contribution in phenomenological philosophy. Bell describes the essence of the nation as an organic spiritual unity that grows or develops, and is thus not a product of will, and which becomes a unity by surmounting its parts. This unity is instantiated in a given nation by tradition. The particular character of a nation’s tradition gives it a tendency to act in one way rather than another. (shrink)
Renan’s paradigmatic question ‘What is the nation?’ has been inflected in many ways: When is the nation? Where is the nation? Why is the nation? etc. However, few have explicitly considered the normative question: ‘What ought the nation to be?’, which raises the distinctively moral and philosophical-political question of the normativity of the nation in general, and in turn, that of the normative criteria that underpin the nation’s normativity. Since the choice of these (...) criteria is clearly arbitrary and culturally-determined, any normative justification will have a counterfactual character. Nonetheless, in spite of its inherent limitations resulting from axiological relativism, such an approach has the advantage of providing not only a descriptive model for countries subscribing to theselected normative principles, but also a critical basis for the evaluation of their national aspirations. (shrink)
"A Nation of Madame Bovarys" rebuts the notion that literature improves its readers morally, whether: (1) by imparting instruction, (2) by eliciting empathy for nonparochial groups, or (3) by forcibly fine-tuning our capacity to navigate difficult ethical waters. Taking Geoffrey Chaucer’s ’Nun’s Priest’s Tale’ as its test case, it argues that the positions taken by Nussbaum, Booth, Rorty, et al. -- also including the "imaginative resistance" position -- are vastly overblown; that empathy is unreliable as a guide to moral (...) behavior; that readers tend only to "learn" what they already believed going in; and that it is dangerous to expect otherwise, there being a risk, if the contemporary consensus were to hold, of the populace degenerating into a nation of Madame Bovarys. Accordingly, a view of literary engagement as primarily an opportunity for clarification may be not only more accurate but also, in the end, more salutary. (shrink)
Joep Leerssen (2008). Nation and Ethnicity. In Stefan Berger & Chris Lorenz (eds.), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories. Palgrave Macmillan.score: 12.0
"Original and wide-ranging, Murphy's discerning and important study is another reminder that America is 'the nation with the soul of a church.'" -Journal of American History -/- "A wide-ranging and thoughtful meditation on how the theo-political stories we Americans tell ourselves resonate with and sometimes even create the communities we inhabit. This book deserves an honored place among the oeuvre of work by political scientists and historians on the jeremiad." -- Politics and Religion -/- "A significant contribution to the (...) historical account of the role of religion in American politics." --Perspectives on Politics -/- "Prodigal Nation is a careful account of how theologies function politically and deserves attention from political scientists, political theologians, American historians, and others interested in the interface of religion and culture." --Religious Studies Review -/- "This highly original and wonderfully written analysis will be invaluable to anyone interested in the meaning of America." --Harry S. Stout, author of The New England Soul and Upon the Altar of the Nation -/- "A brilliant analysis of the American jeremiad. Elegant, powerful, hopeful, and wise - Prodigal Nation is required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the fitful history of the American spirit." --James A. Morone, author of Hellfire Nation and The Democratic Wish. (shrink)
Liberal nationalists advance two claims: (1) an empirical claim that nationalism is functionally indispensable to the viability of liberal democracy (because it is necessary to social integration) and (2) a normative claim that some forms of nationalism are compatible with liberal democratic norms. The empirical claim is often supported, against postnationalists’ view that social integration can bypass ethnicity and nationality, by pointing to the inevitable ethnic and cultural particularities of all political institutions. I argue that (1) the argument that ethno-cultural (...) particularity demonstrates the need for nationalist integration depends on an implausible reification of national identity at the level of social theory, and that (2) this reification ironically serves to undermine liberal nationalists’ normative claim. (shrink)
Citizens require independent reporting more than ever in the news coverage of conflict in the 21st century. The traditional role of national governments has been compromised both by terrorism and by technology that makes hard borders porous. It is unlikely that citizens or policymakers will cope with those changes unless they are reminded how the world has changed. That is an essential role for journalism, and provides a distinction between the terms nationalistic press and patriotic press. A nationalistic press simply (...) repeats governmental messages; a patriotic press reports independently and keeps fundamental interests of citizens in mind. (shrink)
This essay explores several facets of current debates about globalization: especially the role of American national culture in defining the issue of international outreach; and the examination of specific dimensions of globalism—standardization of technology, rationalization of the international monetary system, evaluation and measurement of performance. Once issues are examined in empirical rather than ideological terms, it is clear that advantages accrue to those societies capable of product innovation and satisfaction of mass needs, rather than those that resort to threat, force (...) or coercion. The age of globalization, far from being an extension of the colonial and imperial systems that dominated most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, signifies closure to the old political economy. The essay ends with a coda on globalization as the latest stage of an egalitarianism that places the modernization-developmental process at loggerheads with most varieties of totalitarian rule. (shrink)
If women are not yet accorded the full rights of citizenship internationally and especially in the military context, a feminist position on just war may have to be provisional. Drawing on Virginia Woolf's argument referenced in the title, Eide suggests in this essay that feminist theory develop its principles from women's exclusion from national privileges and argues that jus post bellum or justice after war be central to feminist theories of just war.
This book offers an intelligent and thought-provoking analysis of the genealogy of Western capitalist 'development'. Jennifer Beard departs from the common position that development and underdevelopment are conceptual outcomes of the Imperialist Era and positions the genealogy of development within early Christian writings in which the western theological concepts of sin, salvation, and redemption are expounded. In doing so, she links the early Christian writings of theologians such as Augustine and , Anselm and Abelard to the processes of modern identity (...) formation of which the West, the First World, the Rule of Law and the individual subject and his or her freedoms are but a part. The concept of development is thus identified within western culture as a symptom of loss within the desire for completion; as the logic behind the economic restructuring of nations as underdeveloped is revealed as that ruthless imaginary by which First World nations maintain their ideal of themselves. Drawing upon anthropology, economics, historiography, philosophy of science, theology, feminism, cultural studies and development studies, this book contains the best of interdisciplinary work in international law. (shrink)
Developing a national code for psychologists is a complex process that requires endurance and a proper understanding of not only contemporary needs but also cultural conditions. There are many issues to be considered carefully. It is better to look at code development beyond a text creation and rather as a process in which an ethics system may be created. In order not to merely repeat well-known codes, there are several steps that should be considered. This article intends to address the (...) conflict between suitability to the larger ethical systems and creating an innovative text. As a recent example, the development of the Turkish Psychological Association (TPA) ethics code is presented. (shrink)
In an earlier paper, written in reaction to those who argued that the African National Congress (ANC) had no alternative but to implement neoliberal economic policies in the context of the 'Washington Consensus', I discussed the strategic choices and ideological pitfalls of the 'political class' who took over state power in South Africa after the end of apartheid and implemented its own homegrown structural adjustment programme (Gibson 2001). Much of this transition has been scripted by political science 'transition literature' and (...) much of it is proactive, mapping out what should be done to establish a 'pacted', 'elite' democracy overseeing neoliberal economic policies (O'Donnell, Schmitter & Whitehead 1986). From another vantage point, I argued that Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth is perhaps one of the most perceptive critiques of the transition literature available. This article continues the discussion. (shrink)
Late Tokugawa society and the crisis of community -- Before the Kojikiden : the divine age narrative in Tokugawa Japan -- Motoori Norinaga : discovering Japan -- Ueda Akinari : history and community -- Fujitani Mitsue : the poetics off community -- Tachibana Moribe : cosmology and community -- National literature, intellectual history, and the new Kokugaku -- Conclusion : imagined Japan(s).
The Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI; Simpson & Gangestad 1991) is a self-report measure of individual differences in human mating strategies. Low SOI scores signify that a person is sociosexually restricted, or follows a more monogamous mating strategy. High SOI scores indicate that an individual is unrestricted, or has a more promiscuous mating strategy. As part of the International Sexuality Description Project (ISDP), the SOI was translated from English into 25 additional languages and administered to a total sample of 14,059 people (...) across 48 nations. Responses to the SOI were used to address four main issues. First, the psychometric properties of the SOI were examined in cross-cultural perspective. The SOI possessed adequate reliability and validity both within and across a diverse range of modern cultures. Second, theories concerning the systematic distribution of sociosexuality across cultures were evaluated. Both operational sex ratios and reproductively demanding environments related in evolutionary-predicted ways to national levels of sociosexuality. Third, sex differences in sociosexuality were generally large and demonstrated cross-cultural universality across the 48 nations of the ISDP, confirming several evolutionary theories of human mating. Fourth, sex differences in sociosexuality were significantly larger when reproductive environments were demanding but were reduced to more moderate levels in cultures with more political and economic gender equality. Implications for evolutionary and social role theories of human sexuality are discussed. Key Words: culture; gender; mating; reproduction; sex differences; sex roles; sexual strategies; sociosexuality. (shrink)
The essay examines Stanisław Brzozowski’s ideas on mutual interactions between the sphere of culture and the realm of the political. It shows how Brzozowski made use of literary texts in order to elucidate social and political processes. In doing so, he insisted on a specific form of knowledge accessible through texts of literature and literary criticism, which are not limited by the mere “logic of notions.” Following Vico and Sorel Brzozowski detected an “irrational core” at the bases of human collectivities (...) such as above all modern nations, and it is through literature that this core can be revealed. Brzozowski’s understanding of political ideas and concepts is informed—to a decisive degree—by the literary imagination. This can be shown by a semantic and rhetorical analysis of some of his later writings. (shrink)
: Carrillo Rowe provides an analysis of Monster's Ball as a cultural narrative of white masculinity's redemption from the atrocities of racism through an interracial love story that erases white masculinity's national history and implication in a racist past while it displaces the black female body from that history and identification with the struggle for reparation. The nexus of sex, race, and desire is used to produce a new whiteness consistent with the emerging national multicultural logics of color blindness by (...) undermining the narrative, memory, identity, and racing of bodies grounding the logic of reparation. (shrink)
: As the fifth national bioethics commission has concluded its work and a sixth is currently underway, it is time to step back and consider appropriate measures of success. This paper argues that standard measures of commissions' influence fail to fully assess their role as public forums. From the perspective of democratic theory, a critical dimension of this role is public engagement: the ability of a commission to address the concerns of the general public, to learn how average citizens resolve (...) moral issues in healthcare, and to monitor public opinion on the topics addressed in the commission. Such a public forum role is supported by the critical literature within bioethics, which has deemed some commissions successful, supported more generally by the history of bioethics as a reform discourse that has brought socially important values into the medical domain, and supported more generally still by the example of the great social issues commissions of the 1960s. (shrink)
There are two problems discussed in the article. The first one is the phenomenon of mass literature and semiotic approach to it. According to Lotman, mass literature of the 20th (and 21st) centuries is not so much an object of semiotics as of sociology. However, it is possible to consider mass literature of earlier times as an object of semiotics of culture. Lotman discusses Russian mass literature of the 18th and 19th centuries as such an object in the article “Massovaya (...) literatura kak istoriko-kulturnaya problema”. Considering mass literature a dynamic factor of the semiotic system, Lotman distinguishes its main features: a high degree of automatization and syndrome of retardedness. In the second part of the article the author discusses the phenomenon of mass poetry in contemporary Lithuania. This kind of mass literature is much more similar to the phenomenon discussed by Lotman than to the mass literature of the postmodernist epoch. Lithuanian mass poetry employs the codes of national romanticism (the end of 19th century) and considers itself an ignored part of high culture. This sort of poetry unknown to Western societies exhibits archaising tendencies in the modern postsoviet culture. (shrink)
Critics of functionalism about the mind often rely on the intuition that collectivities cannot be conscious in motivating their positions. In this paper, we consider the merits of appealing to the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity. We demonstrate that collective mentality is not an affront to commonsense, and we report evidence that demonstrates that the intuition that there is nothing that it’s like to be a collectivity is, to some extent, culturally specific rather (...) than universally held. This being the case, we argue that mere appeal to the intuitive implausibility of collective consciousness does not offer any genuine insight into the nature of mentality in general, nor the nature of consciousness in particular. (shrink)
Increasingly the business environment is tending toward a global economy. The current study compares the results of the Attitudes Towards Business Ethics Questionnaire (ATBEQ) reported in the literature for samples from the United States of America, Israel, Western Australia, and South Africa to a new sample (n = 125) from Turkey. The results indicate that while there are some shared views towards business ethics across countries, significant differences do exist between Turkey and each of the other countries in the study. (...) Similarities and differences are discussed in terms of the countries' ratings on the Corruption Perceptions Index (as reported by the Internet Center for Corruption Research) and Hofstede's Theory of International Cultures. Recommendations for managers interacting with employees from differing countries are provided. (shrink)
What is the norm of Americanness today, how has it changed, and how pluralistic is it in reality? from the Introduction In this volume philosophers and social ...
A majority of Americans say they are Christians. In fact, when you ask what they really believe about God you find that almost half are really deists. Let’s look at the data. A 2006 Pew survey reports that about 50 percent of Americans are Protestants and another 25 percent Catholics, which would indicate a strong Christian majority of 75 percent. Like most such surveys, however, Pew simply asked people to state their religious affiliations. A 2005 survey by Baylor University tried (...) something different and questioned people about what they actually believe. The results were surprising and have great significance in properly comprehending religious belief in the U.S. For some reason, they have received little attention. (shrink)
This comparative field study evaluated the moral reasoning used by U.S. and Belizean business students in resolving business-related moral dilemmas. The Belizeans, citizens of a less-developed country with Western heritage and a values-based education system, revolved the dilemmas using higher stages of moral judgment than did the U.S. business students.
