The earthquakes which struck Nepal’s capital in 2015 were humanitarian disasters. Not only did they inflict tragic loss of life and livelihoods, they also destroyed parts of the Kathmandu Valley’s unique UNESCO World Heritage site. These monuments were not just ornate structures but living monuments playing central roles in the daily lives of thousands, representing portals where the heavens touch earth and people commune with guiding deities. Their rehabilitation was also of economic importance as they represent a major source of (...) tourist income and employment. Unfortunately, the social and political desire for rapid reconstruction resulted in the swift removal of many traditionally constructed foundations and their replacement with modern materials without assessments of whether they contributed towards the collapse of individual monuments. These actions, combined with the wholesale removal, mixing and dumping of modern and historic debris, contributed to a second, equally destructive, cultural catastrophe – irreversible damage to Kathmandu’s Medieval fabric, in a process which frequently excluded local communities and custodians. This case study draws from our collective reflections and lessons learned from our attempts to enable equitable and ethical research partnerships between UK and Nepali colleagues as well as local communities in the debris of the Kasthamandap, Kathmandu’s eponymous monument. After briefly describing the potential of mobilising archaeologists in post-disaster contexts and outlining the challenges of undertaking research in such a setting, our case study utilises the TRUST Code to assess the character and success of our multidisciplinary collaboration in a time of crises. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility has grown on the corporate agenda and is at the heart of today’s corporate culture. While much research has examined CSR strategies and effects, the effects of post-crisis CSR communication have received relatively little academic attention. Therefore, this paper uses two experimental studies to examine several key contingency factors that influence consumers’ responses to post-crisis CSR initiatives. Results suggest that consumers demonstrate more favorable responses when a company launches a CSR initiative congruent with (...) the crisis issue, or when the crisis is the result of an accident rather than a transgression. Further, the congruence between the crisis issue and the pre-crisis CSR initiative moderates the consistency effects between pre- and post-crisis initiatives. Such findings should be understood by considering the mediating role of corporate CSR motives’ consumer attributions, which was evidenced in this study. This study theoretically contributes to an improved understanding of the underlying mechanism of the post-crisis CSR information process and managerially contributes to the strategic development of effective post-crisis CSR initiatives given a particular situation. (shrink)

This essay argues that Knafo and Teschke fundamentally misread Brenner’s original contribution to the transition debate. They equate his rejection of trans-historical or trans-modal laws of motion with the notion that social-property relations do not have strong rules of reproduction that structure the actions of agents and give rise to ‘developmental patterns’ specific to each form of social labour. Knafo and Teschke’s critique of Brenner’s analysis of capitalist expansion and crisis is also theoretically and empirically questionable.

The activity of any socio-economic system is associated with the instability of the external environment and the presence of negative factors influencing its functioning, which, in turn, can provoke the emergence of crisis phenomena, slows down the process of development of the organization and makes it less effective. The prerequisites for this may be factors that are formed not only in the external, but also in the internal environment. This issue is of particular relevance today, in the context of (...) the existence of the consequences of the pandemic in the world. Many years of experience in the activity of socio-economic systems in a market environment shows that this problem remains relevant to them even now in today's postmodern world. Successful overcoming of crisis situations depends on the effectiveness of anti-crisis management and management of anti-crisis potential, the type of crisis. After all, each crisis situation, which is formed under the influence of specific factors, has a clear characteristic and belongs to a certain category. With this information, you can form a clear plan of management actions to effectively overcome the crisis in socio-economic systems. But in order to determine what types of crises affect the activities of socio-economic systems, it is first of all necessary to determine the types of crises in socio-economic systems. The article analyzes the main features of the functioning of today's socio-economic system and the impact of such post-pandemic consequences on it. (shrink)

The questions of observational error and ambiguity of interpretation that have been raised in connection with the reported observation of a magnetic monopole have precipitated a situation calling for some further insight into the pairing principles of nature. A basic distinction relates to whether or not a pair is “ordered” (e.g., sexual pair) or without a priori order (e.g., mirror pair). It is shown that the polarity of electric charge is to be regarded as an example of pairing without (...) an intrinsic a priori order. It then follows that “action” also exhibits a pairing without a priori order. The relation ofPC andTC to unordered and ordered pairing is discussed, with neutral kaon pairing as a striking example of ordered pairing. The pairing of magnetic charge, if it exists, becomes an ordered pairing! (shrink)

Kottler, Cartan, and van Dantzig independently uncovered a key property of the Maxwell equations, which, in retrospect, is instrumental for treating noninertial situations. The essence of this KCD procedure is outlined. Present traditions incompatible with the KCD procedure are identified. KCD predicts a rotation-induced magnetoelectric effect in vacuum, as verified by the experiments of Kennard and Pegram. The description of nonvacuum situations still has some unresolved differences awaiting further experimental delineation. Explicit calculations and technical specifications of experiments receive references to (...) the literature. The emphasis of presentation stresses the conceptual reorganization necessary for lifting the Kennard-Pegram experiments out of their present state of obscurity. The question of whether or not KCD is a physically viable counterpart of the Lagrange-Hamilton-Jacobi procedure in mechanics is contingent on the outcome of more detailed experimentation of the Kennard-Pegram type. (shrink)

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic we are witnessing a significant rise in mental illness diagnosis and corresponding anti-depressant prescription uptake. The drug response to this situation is unsurprising and reinforces the dominant role (neuro)biology continues to undertake within modern psychiatry. In contrast to this biologically informed, medicalised approach, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a statement stressing the causal role of psychological and social factors.Using the concept of ontological insecurity, contextualised within the WHO guidance, the interrelation of (...) psychological and social factors is illuminated, and a psychosocial framework is produced as a means of understanding the mental health consequence of the post-Covid-19 fallout.The psychosocial framework generated provides a rationale to revise and reprioritise how we engage with the biopsychosocial model that is intended to underpin modern psychiatry. This framework establishes a connection between psychological and social theory which are too often addressed as disparate terrains within mental health services and policy creation. (shrink)

This chapter looks closely at the use of resilience as a value in pandemic discourses, and particularly at how it reflects the moral complexity of the situation the pandemic presents: an extended crisis where shocks and stressors interact and have an uncertain end. We review key aspects of how resilience has been conceptualised, generally speaking, focusing on its normative implications. Insofar as resilience is suggested as a goal, or used to evaluate individuals, groups and systems, the rhetorical use (...) of resilience in the pandemic has moral implications that we unpack. Asking questions such as resilience to what, of what, and for whom, drives our analysis of the multiple scales at which morally relevant factors must be considered, in terms of distance and certainty, and across space and over time. Further, we highlight the importance of particularly challenging, intersecting scales both within and beyond the pandemic, such as the interaction between other- and self-regarding concerns and the tension between transformation and conservation, as we consider when to take up opportunities for improving ourselves, our society and our systems, in times of extended crises and radical change. Given that a ‘return to normal’ is neither universally desirable nor likely, we recommend in this chapter ways to address resilience as a value that can shape approaches to policy and behaviour while also being explicit about the normative—evaluative and also prescriptive—implications of its use. (shrink)

The Fukushima accident was a crisis in Japan, and a crisis elsewhere. In Europe, the aftermath of Fukushima was a period of intense questioning, about how to ensure the safety of nuclear reactors, and how, at the same time, ensure the ability of the European Union to act as a consistent political actor in the face of potentially catastrophic risks. Using empirical material related to the post-Fukushima stress tests and the subsequent discussions about the European regulatory framework (...) for nuclear safety, this paper shows that stress tests have provided a peculiar form of European intervention, restabilizing regulatory boundaries while extending the European gaze. It describes the overall operation thereby performed as the “normalization of the crisis” whereby the exceptional situation enters the realm of the normal functioning of the public administrations, and where the actions undertaken take the form of the legal norm. (shrink)

By incorporating the conservation of resource theory, this study examines how high-performance work practices (HPWPs) affect the employee's in-role performance (EIRP) and employee's task performance (ETP) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Furthermore, this study investigates how organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) and positive psychological capital (PPC) affect the relationship between HPWPs and outcomes of employees such as EIRP and ETP. A quantitative technique based on the survey method was used to gather the primary data of the investigation. Two hundred and (...) eleven bank employees working in different banks of Punjab and Pakistan participated in the survey process. The PROCESS-macro was used to test the relationship among the study constructs. Our results supported all the study hypotheses, however positive psychological capital did not moderate the indirect effect of high performance work practices on employee's task performance via organization based self-esteem. This study is the earliest of its kind that focuses on HPWPs and outcomes of employees amid the COVID-19 pandemic in a developing country like Pakistan. The findings of this study provide practical implications in the post and continuing pandemic situation for organizations to human resource management to redesign workforce strategies to increase their contribution and responses to realize organizational priorities. Although researchers have explored the topic in different sectors, scant studies have investigated the potential impact, barriers, and enabling mechanisms that function as a catalyst in HPWPs during the pandemic situation. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The current crisis situation is connected with the tendency to eliminate the philosophical basis of higher education, the classical university, whose mission is to form a certain type of state, culture, and person. Philosophy and humanities in general played an important role in forming the modern concept of man. In the context of the expansion of the information society and the development of the latest technologies (biotechnologies, artificial intelligence), which stimulates the world market, the problem of the (...) fundamentals of the social and personal dimension of a person, his/her ability to consciously choose their own life, is becoming actualized. The main purpose of the article is in problematizing the development prospects for philosophy in a modern university, and its significance in the formation of a modern person with a certain level of self-awareness. To achieve this, the authors envisage providing a description of modern society, related trends in humanitarianism, determining the situation in university education, and characterizing the type of person or post-human that it mainly produces. _Theoretical basis._ The basis of the article is sociocultural anthropology. _Originality._ Trends in society and education, defined by the relationship between the state, education, and the market, reflect the situation of the post-human or trans-human, which is characterized by the creation of a nomadic subject with nomadic thinking. The crisis of the modern and classical university as an institution constituting a modern man is associated with the rapid development of technologies, the expansion of the information society, the orientation towards the knowledge economy, which subordinates the university to the market, requiring the formation of a person that corresponds to market feasibility. However, in today’s world, the realization of freedom priorities, the prevention of manifestations of unfreedom, the ability to critically interpret information, and distinguish between truth and falsehood are of great importance. The formation of this depends on the education system. But, the situation in higher education is determined by the dominance of techno-scientific understanding and development of the world, the priorities of the economy, economic viability, and profit. Under such conditions, the humanities and philosophy, in search of ways and means of their own survival, risk turning into a kind of techno-sophistry that produces various images. These images can be more or less successfully sold on the market, recreating a certain figure of a human-consumer and a human-transformer who obeys the post-truth situation, even appearing as an object of transformation by ideology or propaganda. _Conclusions._ It is, therefore, essential to form a person who is capable of critically comprehending the reasons for his/her choice, which can be provided by philosophy with the foundations of searching for truth. In the conditions of technological development, in view of the achievements of artificial intelligence, and the latest network resources, it is important in education not only to overcome the orientation towards professional fragmentation and to verify permanent knowledge but also direct live communication on the basis of critical thinking, which forms the basis in the process of cultivating a person by philosophy. (shrink)

Background:In recent years, operating theatre nurse students’ education focused on ethics, basic values and protecting and promoting the patients' dignity in perioperative practice. Health professionals are frequently confronted with ethical issues that can impact on patient’s care during surgery.Objective:The objective of this study was to present what operating theatre nursing students perceived and interpreted as undignified caring in perioperative practice.Research design:The study has a descriptive design with a hermeneutic approach. Data were collected using Flanagan’s critical incident technique.Participants and research context:Operating (...) theatre nurse students from Sweden and Norway participated and collected data in 2011, after education in ethics and dignity. Data consisting of 47 written stories and the text were analysed with hermeneutical text interpretation.Ethical considerations:The study was approved by the Karlstad University's Research Ethics Committee.Findings:The findings show careless behaviour and humiliating actions among health professionals. Health professionals commit careless acts by rendering the patient invisible, ignoring the patient’s worry and pain and treating the patient as an object. They also humiliate the patient when speaking in negative terms about the patient’s body, and certain health professionals blame the patients for the situation they are in. Health professionals lack the willingness and courage to protect the patient’s dignity in perioperative practice.Discussion:In the discussion, we have illuminated how professional ethics may be threatened by more pragmatic and utilitarian arguments contained in regulations and transplant act.Conclusion:The findings reveal that patients were exposed to unnecessary suffering; furthermore, the operating theatre nurse students suffered an inner ethical conflict due to the undignified caring situations they had witnessed. (shrink)

Many recent thinkers imagine that a new way of life, or a new kind of thinking, is beginning to unfold on the basis of the discovery that reason is an outmoded concept and that the projects of Western philosophy are defunct. Postmodernist thinkers, in particular, have tried to describe the way things look from a post?philosophical, post?rational point of view. Jean?François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition argues against the possibility of a comprehensive understanding of contemporary social and intellectual activities, (...) while most of the essays in Literature and the Question of Philosophy also reject the idea that there can be a valid comprehension of the elements found in textual or in ethical and political phenomena. Yet in every instance, the effort to establish a post?philosophical, post?rational way of looking at things involves an unwitting exercise of the rational power to conceive of a situation in terms of the relative disposition of its elements. Furthermore, the themes and ideas of post?philosophy can be shown to have originated within the two grand narratives of modern philosophy that Lyotard has incorrectly pronounced passe. Postmodemism's confusion about itself shows the continuing relevance of Hegel's concept of Reason. (shrink)

This article contributes to the environmental justice debate by analysing the case of the ILVA steel plant in Taranto, Italy. It accounts for the radical polarisation of the public debate between industrialists and environmentalists. These dominant perspectives are polarised but not politicised. In the reading of the crisis, both fronts adopt similar techno-scientific arguments while failing to problematise the multiple dimensions of environmental injustice and to connect the crisis to broader social relations of production. This article contends, therefore, (...) that the environmental debate in Taranto unfolds in a post-political situation, where technical narratives prevail at the expense of more political positions. In this context, any attempts to politicise the public debate is either absorbed by the dominant views or marginalised. (shrink)

This paper situates the subprime crisis in the context of the performance of the American economy over the last twenty-five years. The restructuring of the US economy is briefly reviewed, followed by an examination of some of the contradictions of the neoliberal model. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding the reasons behind stagnant investment, and how the US finance-led accumulation-régime has become dependent upon, and threatened by, credit-creation delinked from the financing of fixed-capital formation. I argue that while the (...) defeat of the remnants of the New-Deal/Civil-Rights liberal-democratic coalition has provided the political context for the bold re-assertion of the prerogatives of capitalist owners, the neoliberal model has not provided a path out of problems of stagnation and growing debt-dependency that presently plague the US economy. Further, I argue that evidence suggests that the post-1982 restoration of profitability that underpinned the relative improvement of US economic performance has peaked, and that compelling historical and theoretical reasons exist to expect that the profit-rate will decline in the coming decade. This will introduce additional stresses on the current debt-structure of the US economy, triggering a period of prolonged crisis and economic dislocation. The conclusion is that the US economy faces the spectre of a protracted crisis associated with the reassertion of the falling rate of profit. (shrink)

This conceptual paper explores the theoretical possibilities of posthumanism and presents ecologies of repair as a heuristic device to explore the association modes of different entities, which, when confronted with the effects of human-induced destructive events, seek to repair the damage and transform the conditions of coexistence of various life forms. The central idea is that severe socio-environmental crisis caused by an intensification of industrial activity are conducive to observing new sociomaterial configurations and affective dispositions that, through the reorganization (...) of practices of resistance, remediation, and mutual care, are oriented to generating reparative and/or transformative processes from damaged ecologies and communities. Crises constitute true ontological experimentation processes where the presence of other-than-human natures, and of artifacts or devices that participate in reparative actions, become visible. A post-human approach to nature allows us to use languages and methodologies that do not restrict the emergence of assemblages under the assumption of theira prioriontological separation, but rather examine their reparative potential based on the efficacy of situated relationships. Methodologically, transdisciplinarity is relevant, with ethnography and other engaged methods applied over units of observation and experience called socio-geo-ecologies. The relevant attributes of these socio-geo-ecologies, beyond the individual, community, or institutional aspects, are the specific geological characteristics that make possible an entanglement of interdependent relationships between human and non-human agents. The conceptual analysis is illustrated with empirical examples stemming from socio-geo-ecologies researched in Southern Chile. (shrink)

Over three decades after China ventured onto the market path, the Chinese state’s reform programme, which was intended to invigorate socialism, has instead led the country down a capitalist path. This paper situates China’s post-Mao transition in the context of the crisis of the party-state during the Cultural Revolution. Using Gramsci’s idea of ‘passive revolution’, it examines the state’s tactics of crisis management aiming to contain and neutralise emergent opposition and pressure from below. As the combined result (...) of state repression, ideological appropriation and socioeconomic incorporation, a new reform paradigm emerged to rearticulate popular demands and initiatives to an official socialism centring on economic modernisation and market liberalisation. (shrink)

Based on a critical reading of Jürgen Habermas’s journalistic writings on the European Union, the article argues that Europe’s current crisis is also a crisis of its narratives, and hence a crisis of meaning. The German philosopher has revised his political vision of a united Europe but has done so without abandoning his neo-Kantian ‘soft revolutionism’. The EU of the future is not only envisaged as an alternative to the allegedly defunct European nation-state, but also as the (...) antithesis to US-style federalism and to what is called ‘post-democratic executive federalism’. What is more, Habermas no longer fully trusts in the power of the better argument, as championed in his critical social theory. Instead, his hope of normative progress towards a socially and politically more integrated Europe is founded on a belief in the power of the crisis itself – aided by a convincing pro-European narrative – to drive us in the same direction as that indicated by reason. The conclusion contrasts Habermas’s utopian Europeanism, which has failed to find favour with the wider European public, with a less utopian alternative inspired by the highly specific, non-universal situation of the Old Continent. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has underscored the possibility that capital-adequacy regulations may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis by privileging highly rated asset-backed securities, such as mortgage-backed securities. The same regulations gave an even more privileged position to sovereign debt, leading to the question of whether they helped cause the European sovereign-debt crisis. There is little question that the regulations encouraged European banks to invest in European governments' bonds, but it does not appear that this encouragement led to more (...) government borrowing by significantly reducing the yield governments needed to pay on their debt. However, it does appear that capital-adequacy regulations—along with post-2008 liquidity regulations—concentrated sovereign risk in the European banking system, aggravating the sovereign-debt problem by requiring government bailouts that, in turn, required the issuance of more sovereign debt, further jeopardizing the governments' fiscal position and banks' solvency. Exacerbating the situation, in the midst of a panic, the European Banking Authority imposed new capital requirements on banks and effectively forced them to realize mark-to-market losses on sovereign exposures. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has underscored the possibility that capital-adequacy regulations may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis by privileging highly rated asset-backed securities, such as mortgage-backed securities. The same regulations gave an even more privileged position to sovereign debt, leading to the question of whether they helped cause the European sovereign-debt crisis. There is little question that the regulations encouraged European banks to invest in European governments' bonds, but it does not appear that this encouragement led to more (...) government borrowing by significantly reducing the yield governments needed to pay on their debt. However, it does appear that capital-adequacy regulations—along with post-2008 liquidity regulations—concentrated sovereign risk in the European banking system, aggravating the sovereign-debt problem by requiring government bailouts that, in turn, required the issuance of more sovereign debt, further jeopardizing the governments' fiscal position and banks' solvency. Exacerbating the situation, in the midst of a panic, the European Banking Authority imposed new capital requirements on banks and effectively forced them to realize mark-to-market losses on sovereign exposures. (shrink)

What is the relationship between Thailand’s human rights crisis during Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s leadership and the USA-led post-9/11 war on terror? Why did the human rights situation dramatically deteriorate after the Thaksin regime publicly supported the Bush administration’s war on terror and consequently received US counterterror assistance? This article offers two conceptual arguments that jointly demonstrate a constitutive theoretical explanation, which shows that counterterror and militaristic transnational and national discursive structures enabled the strategy of state repression (...) in Thailand under Thaksin. The first concept refers to strategic localization, which refers to how the Bush administration’s global war on terror—and its consequent overarching emphasis on military security—provided an opportunity for the Thaksin administration to strategically localize the global threat of terrorism in ways that could seem relevant to the local Thai context. The second concept pertains to resource mobilization, which shows how converging US and Thai discourses on military security facilitated Thaksin’s strategy of increased state repression that led to the proliferation of state-led human rights abuses. This research article contributes to the human rights literature in two ways: by highlighting how foreign aid programs and its constitutive political discourses shape recipient countries’ domestic human rights situation and by tracing the macro-political factors that lead to the eventual democratic decay of contemporary Thailand. (shrink)

This article looks at the history of the stem cell as an experimental life-form and situates it within the context of biological theories of cellular ageing which emerged in the 1960s, under the banner of ‘biogerontology’. The field of biogerontology, I argue, is crucially concerned not only with the internal limits to a cell's lifespan, but also with the possibility of overcoming limits. Hence, the sense of ‘revolution’ that has surrounded the isolation of human embryonic stem cells. The article goes (...) on to situate the problematic of cellular ageing within the larger historical transition from Fordist to post-Fordist modes of production – a transition whose effects on the life sciences have been insufficiently theorized – and points to resonances between the concerns of biogerontology and an emerging political rhetoric on the crisis of ageing and limits to growth. Having surfaced in parallel with the neo-liberal euphoria of the 1990s, the field of regenerative medicine presents itself as a biomedical solution to the problem of limits to growth. What is at stake in the contemporary biosciences, I suggest, is not so much the mass commodification of life itself as its transformation into a source of speculative surplus value. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis, and: The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of CreationKristel ClayvilleGreening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis David G. Horrell, Cheryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2010. 333 pp. $34.95The Bible and Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation Richard Bauckham Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2010. 226 (...) pp. $24.95Both Greening Paul and The Bible and Ecology are timely entries into the ongoing conversation about the use of the Bible in ecological ethics. Given this shared focus, the books have much in common. First, and most superficially, all four authors have academic posts in the United Kingdom; they have been [End Page 200] citing each other’s work for years and have published books with the same press. Second, all four authors are motivated by a deep concern for stemming the anthropogenic ecological crisis through a positive reformulation of Christian anthropocentrism, eschatology, and relationship to science. Third, the authors see biblical interpretation as having a central role in this reformulation. Even with these commonalities, the books approach the problem of using the biblical text in constructive Christian ethics from vastly different perspectives. David Horrell, Cheryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate are openly skeptical about the impact biblical exegesis can have in ethical constructions, whereas Richard Bauckham writes under the assumption that his exegetical work will be efficacious in adjusting Christian ethical responses to the ecological crisis.In Greening Paul, the authors develop an ecological hermeneutical lens from an exegesis of two Pauline texts (Rom. 8:19–23 and Col. 1:15–20), a lens that they then use to read the entire Pauline corpus. What emerges from this reading is a focus on Paul’s own extension of the Christian community to include non-Christians, which, ecologically speaking, becomes a biblical warrant for ethical extensionism. Additionally, this reading emphasizes Christ’s kenosis, which is expanded and transformed by the authors into other-regard, the idea that humans can and even should place the survival needs of others above their own. Extensionism and other-regard are not radical or new ideas in ecological ethics, but rarely are they given a biblical foundation. Moreover, the authors’ development of an ecological hermeneutical lens for reading Pauline texts contributes much more to the discussion of the use of the Bible in ecological ethics than any particular readings it produces.Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate devote six of their eight chapters to the development of their ecological hermeneutical lens. They situate their lens both in context of and contradistinction to recent ecotheology and hermeneutical scholarship on the Bible, such as feminist hermeneutics, while also drawing on the strengths of these positions and incorporating the tools of critical biblical scholarship, such as narrative criticism. The authors identify a typology of ecologically motivated readings of the Bible: recovery of the Bible’s positive ecological meaning, resistance to the Bible due to its negative ecological message, and resistance to ecological ethics due to the Bible’s authority. The authors construct a revisionist lens and situate it between recovery and resistance, thereby “enabl[ing] a positive, creative, and critical rereading of tradition” (43). This rereading entails reconstructing the creation narratives behind the Romans and Colossians texts, comparing them to each other, and then limiting their normative reach by putting them in conversation with scientific narratives of the world. While the authors see Pauline theology and ethics as linked through the category of narrative, such that character formation is at the heart of Paul’s ethics, the question remains as to why the epistolary genre needed to be augmented for their analysis. The turn to narrative seems somewhat reductionistic [End Page 201] in a work that is so theoretically sophisticated, and it focuses attention once again on creation narratives as the source for thinking through human relationships to nature.Even at the end of their book, the authors of Greening Paul remain skeptical about the move from exegesis to ethics, but they have done the exegetical work of preparing Pauline texts for use in ecological ethics. On their reading of Bauckham’s work, The Bible and... (shrink)

This study examines the influence of the COVID-19 crisis on academic expectations among international students from north-western China. According to past studies, academic expectations are multifaceted, making it critical to test the methods employed to assess this fundamental trait. The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in various significant changes in education, which have shifted from traditional to online or mixed formats. As a result, examining international students' academic expectations along with their interactions with adopted technologies is a topic that (...) addresses the current situation and issues. A mixed approach, comprising two different instruments, was followed to achieve this primary objective. While a survey with a questionnaire was undertaken with 551 international students, divided into two groups, ten students were interviewed during and after the lockdowns. The findings revealed that COVID-19 had a significant impact on the academic expectations of students as well as many elements such as training for employment, personal and social development, international student mobility, motivation, social pressure, and social interaction with the help of supporting technologies. In terms of gender, men outperformed women in motivation, social interaction, training for employment, and personal and social development factors. Similarly, as per the grade variable, the same higher trend was seen in postgraduates. Based on these findings, a set of recommendations was put forward. In the future, technology will be helpful in China's educational sector, such as online group collaboration, open education, managing student retention, and supervising teachers' recruitment. (shrink)

This paper examines the shortcomings and possibilities of the social contract approach in relation to the Kenyan post 2007 elections political crisis. The authorapplies philosophical analysis to a practical situation, using Kenya as a case study in the context of the challenges of post-colonial nation-building. The author reflects on the “Afro-libertarian” politico-economic framework, in which communitarian and communal traditions with egoistic and profit-making individualist libertarian market rationality are tangled in a fragile, patrimonial state, with strong sub-national (...) loyalties preventing the building of a united nation and a strong state.The thesis of the paper is that if sustainable peace, social reconstruction and national unity are to be achieved, there is need to have an adequate understanding of the moral dimensions of the concept of “social justice”. The focus has to be on the building of an impartial state, with a clear national agenda and strong ethnically and politically neutral institutions and processes. (shrink)

Combining rigorous theoretical debate with a set of articles exploring Ernesto Laclau’s thinking of politics, leading international scholars of contemporary radical theory demonstrate the relevance of Laclau’s work to conceptualizing the Political and politics. Part 1 situates Laclau’s conceptualisation of the political in the past four decades, both before and after the publication of _Hegemony and Socialist Strategy_. In particular it reviews Laclau’s critique of Marx and Marxism, in order to explore questions not addressed at the time. Part 2 addresses (...) Laclau’s work on _Rhetoric and Affect_ developed in some detail over the past decade. These chapters emphasise the centrality of affect and rhetoric to Laclau’s conceptualisation of hegemony, thinking this in relation to the importance of rhetoric to neo-liberal politics, and arguing that rhetorical tropes are central to any thinking of the political. Part 3 positions Laclau’s work in relation to _Contemporary Political theory_ marking his distance and debt from/to Althussser, Schmitt and Wittgenstein respectively. Part 4 explores Laclau’s account of _Radical Democracy_ in relation to contemporary political concerns. Authors address the recent financial crisis; debt in relation to Greek and European politics; the analysis of contemporary capitalism; the politics of the Occupy movement and Latin American populism. (shrink)

«What does art mean in a world where urgency predominates, a world that now exhausts its annual quota of renewable resources in July?» (Bourriaud [2021]: 7; my translation). The climate crisis (which began in the last century, but whose consequences have become increasingly worrying in recent years), the Covid 19 pandemic that struck the planet in 2020 and the recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the heart of Europe are epoch-making phenomena that are inevitably reshaping the present and (...) future of human societies. With respect to this situation, is art being called into question or, on the contrary, is it an essential tool for rethinking the world of tomorrow? More specifically, is public art today a lost cause or an opportunity? In this article, I will try to place these questions within the framework of what we might call eco-aesthetics, which has an essential connection to the category of “relations”. (shrink)

We often encounter the term “post-truth situation” in quite different contexts. This paper compares existing approaches to the term, reviewing sources of this notion in different domains and fundametally identifying its conceptual core. The starting point is the analysis of the recent transformation of the relationship between scientific fact and the political sphere and the change of the role of experts in relationship to society. The next section focuses on the role of digital and especially social media in (...) the emergence of the post-truth society and some important phenomena that are constitutive for the post-truth society in the information arena. Subsequently, we identify other sources of post-truth situations in the economic sphere, which is related to globalization, and also in the field of postmodern philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I try to clarify and systematize some contributions with regard to (a) the main aspects of crisis situations that impose the management of emotions, (b) the correlation of certain social emotions with the factors that trigger them and their related tendencies to act, (c) the essential elements of emotional experience, (d) the differentiation of appropriate emotional reactions to a crisis situation from the inappropriate ones; (e) the in-stances in which emotions can be managed, and (...) (f) the balance between rationality and affectivity in the organization’s response to the risks or crises which it faces. By means of logical correlations I arrived at the following conclusions. Regardless of the social sphere in which the crisis makes itself felt, regardless of its type, phase or damage control strategies, the rational control of emotions contributes significantly to overcoming the crisis situation. Beyond the specificities, crises involve digressions form the norms of rightful conduct, breaches of the social norms that support institutions (as spontaneous order structures) and maladaptive reactions to reality. They can be corrected through a good management of emotions, with the caveat that we are not dealing with a problem of knowledge, but rather with one of will and character. All people can identify the adaptive emotional responses to a crisis situation, but only a few prefer them and train assiduously to use them. (shrink)

The 2008 financial crisis exposed the dark side of the financial sector in the UK. It brought attention to the contaminated culture of the business, which accommodated the systemic malpractices that largely contributed to the financial turmoil of 2008. In the wake of the crisis there seems to be a wide consensus that this contaminated culture can no longer be accepted and needs to change. This article examines the ills of the UK financial market, more specifically the cultural (...) contamination problem, which was uncovered by the 2008 financial crisis, in order to explore its genesis and the suitable solutions for it. In this regard, the article analyses the ethical finance sector from theoretical and practical perspectives in order to assess its role in addressing the cultural contamination problem of the UK financial market. (shrink)

Given the growing prominence of nudge economics both within and beyond the academy, it is a timely moment to reassess the philosophical and political arguments that sit at its core, and in particular what Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein call libertarian paternalism. The first half of this paper provides a detailed account of the main features of this form of paternalism, before moving, in the second half, to a critical evaluation of the nudge agenda that questions, among other things, the (...) gendered basis of paternalistic governance; the idea of ‘nudging for good’; and the political values that underpin nudge. The final section of this paper builds on the existing work of John McMahon by asking whether libertarian paternalism should be understood as a new, hybrid form of neoliberalism, or, rather, as a post-neoliberal form of governance that has emerged out of, and flourished in, the post-crisis situation. (shrink)

Food-for-work programs distribute food aid to recipients in exchange for labor, and are an important mode of aid delivery for both public and private aid providers. While debate continues as to whether food-for-work programs are socially just and economically sensible, governments, international institutions, and NGOs continue to tout them as a flexible and cost-effective way to deliver targeted aid and promote community development. This paper critiques the underlying logic of food-for-work, focusing on how this approach to food aid and food (...) security promote labor force participation by leveraging hunger against poverty, and how the ideological and practical assumptions of food-for-work become enmeshed within discourses of geopolitical security. I rely on a case study examination of US-funded food-for-work programs implemented in Jakarta, Indonesia following the 1997 financial crisis. The crisis produced acute food insecurity and poverty in Indonesia, provoking fears of mob violence by the hungry poor and the spread of radical Islamism in the post-crisis political vacuum. Food-for-work programs were, in this context, meant to resolve the problems of both food insecurity and geopolitical insecurity by providing food to targeted populations, employment to those otherwise thrown out of work, and resituating the hungry poor in relation to broader scales of local, national, and global power. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Although considerable attention has been given to ethical issues related to clinical research in developing countries, in particular related to HIV therapy, there has been limited focus on health systems research, despite its increasing importance in the light of current trends in development assistance. This paper examines ethical issues related to health systems research in ‘post’‐conflict situations, addressing both generic issues for developing countries and those issues specific to ‘post’‐conflict societies, citing examples from the author’s Cambodian experience. (...) It argues that the destruction of health infrastructure results in a loss of structures and processes that would otherwise protect prospective research subjects who are part of vulnerable populations. It identifies the growth of health systems research as part of a trend towards sectoral and programmatic development assistance, the emergence of ‘knowledge generation’ as a form of research linked to development, and the potential for conflict where multilateral and bilateral donors are both primary funders and users of health systems research. It also examines the position of the health system researcher in relation to the sponsors of this research, and the health system being analysed. (shrink)

Purpose of the article is to present in two parts the selected aspects of application of monetary policy in the euro area pre and post 2008 as well as insitutional adaptations brought by the EU legislator. Methodology/methods In order to better explain these points, the article relies partially on a comparison with the framework and application of the monetary policy by the Federal Reserve as well as on a historic method when outlining the influence of definition of financial stability (...) from the ECB/eurosystem towards other prominent central banks. Scientific aim The article presents selected aspects of the monetary policy in the part of the EU where single currency was introduced in order to outline state of the art governance structure as well as a certain institutional creativity in application of powers conferred upon the central banks by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank. The goal is to prove the hypothesis of robustness of the framework and present the limits that can only be pushed further by the legislative power. The conclusions confirm on the one hand that the framework of monetary policy based on strong institutional safeguards such as legislative power and independence is very resilient and can prove efficient and creative enough to stabilise an innovative monetary system, however, on the other hand, validate the hypothesis that certain adaptations can only be performed on the basis of a legislative adaptations. (shrink)

У статті проаналізовано визначення поняття транснаціональної корпорації, а також значення цих корпорацій та їхній вплив на процеси світової економіки загалом і на приймаючі країни. Проаналізовано теоретичні концепції розвитку транснаціональних корпорацій в умовах посткризової світової економіки, узагальнено основні способи виходу транснаціональних корпорацій на ринки приймаючих країн, зокрема динаміку угод транскордонних злиттів і поглинань. Виділено загрози зниження ефективності роботи транснаціональних корпорацій у контексті світової економіки під час економічної рецесії. Згруповано основні критерії оцінки реального інвестування при виборі транснаціональними корпораціями країни. Проаналізовано та обґрунтовано (...) ряд макроекономічних показників, таких як динаміка кількості транснаціональних корпорацій; динаміка потоків прямих іноземних інвестицій у світі, а також транскордонних угод, інвестицій у нові проекти по регіонах й основних країнах світу. Висвітлено основні напрямки регуляторної практики розвитку транснаціональних корпорацій в умовах посткризової світової економіки. (shrink)

The present crisis of truth, the "post-truth" crisis, puts the philosophy of truth in a new light. It calls for a reexamination of the tasks of the philosophy of truth and sets a new adequacy condition on this philosophy. One of the central roles of the philosophy of truth is to explain the importance of truth for human life and civilization. Among other things, it has to explain what is, or will be, lost in a post-truth (...) era. Clearly, the deflationist answer that the role of truth is to serve as a tool of generalization and oblique endorsement will not do. My account of truth in this paper addresses this task. Truth, I argue, is first and foremost a human value. Its importance to our life/civilization lies, not exclusively, but principally, in the centrality of this value to our humanity. I investigate the ramifications of this answer to the issues discussed in the contemporary philosophy of truth, and I end with a comparison of the substantivist and deflationist approaches to truth in light of this new perspective. (shrink)

This article discusses the “event” in Merab Mamardashvili’s philosophy. The roots of the post-secular interpretation of the event are traced back to Sören Kierkegaard’s concept of “the moment”, which is posited within a non-classical understanding of temporality and historicity of cognition. The concept of the “event” is also explored in the broader context of non-classical and post-secular Western philosophy of the twentieth century, especially in the works of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Marion, who both belong to the phenomenological (...) tradition. The concept of the event in Mamardashvili’s philosophy is explored as one relative to analogous conceptualizations of the event in a post-secular context. (shrink)

In a world where civilians, mostly women and children, remain adversely affected by armed conflict and millions of human beings are at the mercy of state repression, insurgencies, and violence, hum...

Departing from the (post-)Anthropocenic crisis state of today’s world, fuelled by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, various post-truth populist follies, and an apocalyptic WW3-scenario that has been hanging in the air since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this article argues for the possibility – and necessity – of an affirmative posthumanist-materialist mapping of hope. Embedded in the Deleuzoguattarian-Braidottian (see Deleuze and Guattari 2005 [1980]; Braidotti 2011 [1994]) methodology of critical cartography, and infused with critical posthumanist, new materialist, and (...) queer theoretical perspectives, this cartography of hope is sketched out against two permacrisis-infused positionalities: nostalgic humanism and tragic (post-)humanism. Forced to navigate between these two extremes, the critical cartography of hope presented here explores hope in numerous historico-philosophical (re-)configurations: from the premodern ‘hope-as-all-too-human’, to a more politicised early modern ‘hope-as-(politically-)human’ – representing hope’s first paradigm shift (politicisation), and from a four decades-long neoliberal redrawing of hope as ‘no-more-hope’ – hope’s second shift (depoliticisation) – to a critical (new) materialist plea to de-anthropocentrise and re-politicise hope – hope’s third and final post-Anthropocenic shift (re-politicisation). By mapping these (re-)configurations of hope, a philosophical plea is made for hope as a material(ist) praxis that can help us better understand – and counter – these extractive late capitalist, neoliberal more-than-human crisis times. (shrink)

The polarization and charges of “post-truth” that mark contemporary politics may have its source, ultimately, in a crisis of epistemology, which is characterized by a tension between different forms of naïve realism—the view that reality appears to us directly, unmediated by interpretation. Perhaps too schematically, those on the right tend to be first-person naïve realists in treating economic and social realities as accessible to the ordinary political participant by simple common sense, while those on the left tend to (...) be third-person naïve realists in treating credentialed experts as forming a consensus—a new common sense. In treating reality as transparent enough to be legible either to oneself or to a group of experts, both sides tend to treat disagreement as a motivational problem—a problem of bad faith, motivated reasoning, perversity, and refusal to see the truth—rather than as an epistemic problem caused by the possibility that each side may hold a different set of interpretive frameworks that determines how and what it sees of reality. In obviating the possibility of genuine disagreement, the epistemological crisis is quite naturally transformed into a political crisis. (shrink)