Max Weber (1864-1920), generally known as a founder of modern social science, was concerned with political affairs throughout his life. The texts in this edition span his career and include his early inaugural lecture The Nation State and Economic Policy, Suffrage and Democracy in Germany, Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order, Socialism, The Profession and Vocation of Politics, and an excerpt from his essay The Situation of Constitutional Democracy in Russia, as well as other shorter writings. (...) Together they illustrate the development of his thinking on the fate of Germany and the nature of politics in the modern western state in an age of cultural 'disenchantment'. The introduction discusses the central themes of Weber's political thought, and a chronology, notes and an annotated bibliography place him in his political and intellectual context. (shrink)

This issue asks questions about the future of today's borders in a period of globalization and the end of bipolarization. In this new situation we are witnessing the unprecedented formation of huge regional and subregional groupings on an intercontinental scale. This allows us to glimpse the sketch plan for building a multipolar world, to compete with a world dominated by American power, against which continents and subcontinents are starting to unite to reformulate new rules of exchange. They present themselves as (...) surprise competitors for the human masses they represent, Central and South America, India, Asia, Africa …. The borders that traditionally separated states according to dividing lines that were stable and clearly identifiable have suddenly started to become porous and act in accordance with a new and complex logic we need to redefine. (shrink)

This article is the story of the partition of Moldova into two republics after the short war of the Dniestr in 1992. It is for the most part a narrative drawing on field notes gathered in June 1993 from witnesses and actors in the drama. Its consequences have relegated Moldova, a flourishing soviet republic well known for its high-quality wines and its specialized industrial products within a large military-industrial complex, to the rank of one of the poorest post-soviet entities, struggling (...) with terrible problems of survival. Numbers of its inhabitants have been thrown into every kind of trafficking (drugs, prostitution, illegal work). This story and its commentary aim to reveal the exacerbation of tensions that occurred between the end of perestroïkaand the breakup of the USSR – a period of confused loyalties, inter-ethnic and nationalist crisis, and difficult negotiations between the great powers over sharing out zones of influence. (shrink)

In this article I propose to explore the meanings, mechanisms and issues at stake in the reconstitution of identities which can now be seen taking place in the countries of the post-communist space. We shall consider this space not as a thing in itself, but in terms of its old and new interactions with the countries of western Europe, in order to understand the phenomena of reconstructed identities in general, in the context of their relationship to the period of globalisation (...) in which we now find ourselves. (shrink)

Scholars from different disciplines are seeking to construct the new field of post-communism, which has been created by the implosion of the communist regime. They explore the most important dimensions of the differences between various types of space and geographical territories: the spaces of identity and the social, political and geopolitical spaces in certain countries of Central Europe (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia), the Balkans (Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia) and the Russian world and its Eurasian borders (Russia, (...) Mongolia, Buriatia, Kazakhstan, Moldavia and the Baltic states) not to mention the borders of the Middle or Far Eastern communist world (descriptions of China and the Middle East). (shrink)

This text lays out the purpose of the current issue on shifting borders and identities. It places this question in the context of the formation of macro-regional blocs and the end of bipolarization. It moves towards showing the repercussions of this context for the functioning of border zones and the identities they have fashioned over the long period of modern history. The article aims to reveal the emergence of the dogmatism of the religion of capital beneath the new faces of (...) a multifaceted anthropological culturalism. As a result of an unprecedented media exposure on a worldwide scale, this seems to be turning into the new model for understanding the great world events, which are being taken over by a number of political actors without any real discernment. One of the chief features of our collection of articles is that they highlight the fact that the contributing authors, while belonging to different schools of thought, have all tried to stand apart from them or at least show they have limits. To conclude, in taking its inspiration from the work of Jacques Derrida, this article would like to provide some keys to reading and understanding. (shrink)

As world food and fuel prices threaten expanding urban populations, there is greater need for the urban poor to have access and claims over how and where food is produced and distributed. This is especially the case in marginalized urban settings where high proportions of the population are food insecure. The global movement for food sovereignty has been one attempt to reclaim rights and participation in the food system and challenge corporate food regimes. However, given its origins from the peasant (...) farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, food sovereignty is often considered a rural issue when increasingly its demands for fair food systems are urban in nature. Through interviews with scholars, urban food activists, non-governmental and grassroots organizations in Oakland and New Orleans in the United States of America, we examine the extent to which food sovereignty has become embedded as a concept, strategy and practice. We consider food sovereignty alongside other dominant US social movements such as food justice, and find that while many organizations do not use the language of food sovereignty explicitly, the motives behind urban food activism are similar across movements as local actors draw on elements of each in practice. Overall, however, because of the different histories, geographic contexts, and relations to state and capital, food justice and food sovereignty differ as strategies and approaches. We conclude that the US urban food sovereignty movement is limited by neoliberal structural contexts that dampen its approach and radical framework. Similarly, we see restrictions on urban food justice movements that are also operating within a broader framework of market neoliberalism. However, we find that food justice was reported as an approach more aligned with the socio-historical context in both cities, due to its origins in broader class and race struggles. (shrink)

This study examines the cognitive resources underlying the attribution of stigma in substance use and misuse. A cultural model of substance misuse risk was elicited from students at a major U.S. state university. We found a contested cultural model, with some respondents adopting a model of medical risk while others adopted a model of moral failure; agreeing that moral failure primarily defined risk led to greater attribution of stigma. Here we incorporate general beliefs about moral decision-making, assessed through Moral Foundations (...) Theory. Specifically, we examined commitment to each moral foundation in relation to stigma attribution while controlling for the specific model of substance misuse risk. We found an interaction between the purity moral foundation and the cultural model of risk. This suggests that broad moral orientations, along with more specific understandings of substance misuse risk, combine to orient an individual with respect to stigma attribution. (shrink)

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over (...) salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)

Recent literature describing the process and pathways of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia suggests that the rise of agricultural intensification and the growth of commodity markets will lead to the demise of swidden agriculture. This paper offers a longitudinal overview of the conditions that drive the agrarian transition amongst indigenous swidden cultivators and migrant paddy farmers in central Palawan Island, the Philippines. In line with regional agrarian change, we describe how a history of conservation policies has criminalized and pressured (...) swidden farmers to adopt more intensive “modern” agricultural practices. We examine how indigenous swidden cultivators adjust their practice in response to recent changes in policies, security of harvests, and socio-cultural values vis-à-vis intensification. Rather than suggest that this transition will lead to the demise of swidden, results reveal that farmers instead negotiate a shifting ground in which they lean on and value swidden as a means of negotiating agrarian change. (shrink)

Processes of rapid and truncated agrarian change—driven through expanding urbanisation, infrastructure development, extractive industries, and commodity crops—are shaping the livelihood opportunities and aspirations of Indonesia’s rural youth. This study describes the everyday experiences of youth as they navigate the changing character of agriculture, aquaculture, and fishing livelihoods across gender, class, and generation. Drawing on qualitative field research conducted in the Maros District of South Sulawesi, we examine young people’s experiences of agrarian change in a landscape of entangled rural, coastal and (...) increasingly urbanised spaces. We find that young people aspire to secure, modern, and salary-based work, while continuing to seek and sustain intergenerational farming or aquaculture-based livelihoods. Youth take advantage of increased connectivity to diversify their incomes, yet their dependence on mobility also introduces new forms of gendered and class based precarity such as insecure working arrangements, disruption to education and violence (especially for young unskilled women and youth from financially insecure households). Our study highlights the persistent conditions of precarity that many young people encounter in both rural and urban settings, while challenging assumptions that youth are uninterested in rural futures. (shrink)

Historical surveys of the concept of space considers Judeo-Christian ideas about space, Newton's concept of absolute space, space from 18th century to the ...

Patients are increasingly turning to medical crowdfunding as a way to cover their healthcare costs. In the case of Charlie Gard, an infant born with encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, crowdfunding was used to finance experimental nucleoside therapy. Although this treatment was not provided in the end, we will argue that the success of the Gard family’s crowdfunding campaign reveals a number of potential ethical concerns. First, this case shows that crowdfunding can change the way in which communal healthcare resources (...) are allocated. Second, within the UK’s National Health Service, healthcare is ostensibly not a market resource; thus, permitting crowdfunding introduces market norms that could commodify healthcare. Third, pressures inherent to receiving funds from external parties may threaten the ability of patients-cum-recipients to voluntarily consent to treatment. We conclude that while crowdfunding itself is not unethical, its use can have unforeseen consequences that may influence conceptions of healthcare and how it is delivered. (shrink)

Instructing values is being increasingly regarded as an educational goal of religious teaching. However, the concept of value, which forms the basis of this opinion, is problematic from a sociological, philosophical and a theological point of view, and is last, but not least from an educational perspective, equally problematic. It is only partially possible to target attitudes and opinions towards values and define them as educationally intended. Attitudes and opinions towards values are more likely side-etlects of the educational process. Religious (...) education should principally differ from concepts such as the school subject »Lebensgestaltung-Ethik-Religionskunde« in Brandenburg. (shrink)

The religious identity of Turkey’s Alevis, with the origins of their traditions, and in particular their relation to Islam, are the focus of a debate current in Turkey as well as in those western European countries with strong Turkish migrant populations. This debate began in the late 1980s, with the public coming-out of the Alevi community, when the Alevis set out on a manifest campaign to be recognized as a distinct cultural and/or religious tradition. Against the backdrop of this debate, (...) this article discusses the impact of Turkish politics of doxa on the possibilities of Alevi representation in Turkey. It gives particular attention to the implication of secularism and nationalism in the knowledge regime that subscribes heterodoxy to the Alevis – an ascription that secures their principal integratability in the Turkish nation, while at the same time preparing the ground for otherizing them from the Sunni majority perspective. (shrink)

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the downfall (...) of Bernard Madoff, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Explaining why traditional approaches to ethics don't work, the book considers how blind spots like ethical fading--the removal of ethics from the decision--making process--have led to tragedies and scandals such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster, steroid use in Major League Baseball, the crash in the financial markets, and the energy crisis. The authors demonstrate how ethical standards shift, how we neglect to notice and act on the unethical behavior of others, and how compliance initiatives can actually promote unethical behavior. They argue that scandals will continue to emerge unless such approaches take into account the psychology of individuals faced with ethical dilemmas. Distinguishing our "should self" from our "want self", the authors point out ethical sinkholes that create questionable actions. Suggesting innovative individual and group tactics for improving human judgment, Blind Spots shows us how to secure a place for ethics in our workplaces, institutions, and daily lives. (shrink)

Wallace, Max In trying to find an accurate way to describe the relationship between government and religion, I devised the term 'soft theocracy' and defined it as a 'state where church and government purposes coincide to garnishee taxpayers' money and resources, structurally through tax exemptions and functionally through grants and privileges'.

Wallace, Max 1215 - Magna Carta raises the principle of equality through a 'fair trial for all', leading to the notion of the rule of law. 1517 - Martin Luther posts a document on the front door of the Catholic Church in Wittenberg, Germany. It contains 95 theses attacking church indulgences. Luther later spreads his ideas through the newly invented printing press. It is the start of the Reformation.

There seem to be topics on which people can disagree without fault. For example, you and I might disagree on whether Picasso was a better artist than Matisse, without either of us being at fault. Is this a genuine possibility or just apparent? In this paper I pursue two aims: I want to provide a systematic map of available responses to this question. Simultaneously, I want to assess these responses. I start by introducing and defining the notion of a faultless (...) disagreement. Then I present a simple argument to the conclusion that faultless disagreement is not possible. Those who accept the argument have to explain away apparent cases of faultless disagreement. Those who want to maintain the possibility of faultless disagreement must deny one of the argument's premisses. The position I want to promote belongs to the latter category and is a form of genuine relativism. (shrink)

Originally published in 1973, this book shows that methods developed for the semantics of systems of formal logic can be successfully applied to problems about the semantics of natural languages; and, moreover, that such methods can take account of features of natural language which have often been thought incapable of formal treatment, such as vagueness, context dependence and metaphorical meaning. Parts 1 and 2 set out a class of formal languages and their semantics. Parts 3 and 4 show that these (...) formal languages are rich enought to be used in the precise description of natural languages. Appendices describe some of the concepts discussed in the text. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

While the central ideal of Roman philosophy exemplified by Lucretius, Cicero and Seneca appears to be the masculine values of self-sufficiency and domination, this book argues, through close attention to metaphor and figures, that the Romans also recognized, as constitutive parts of human experience, what for them were feminine concepts such as embodiment, vulnerability and dependency. Expressed especially in the personification of grammatically feminine nouns such as Nature and Philosophy 'herself', the Roman's recognition of this private 'feminine' part of himself (...) presents a contrast with his acknowledged, public self and challenges the common philosophical narrative of the emergence of subjectivity and individuality with modernity. To meet this challenge, Alex Dressler offers both theoretical exposition and case studies, developing robust typologies of personification and personhood that will be useable for a variety of subjects beyond classics, including rhetoric, comparative literature, gender studies, political theory and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This is the first English translation of _Causalite´ et Lois de La Nature,_ and is an important contribution to the theory of causation_._ Max Kistler reconstructs a unified concept of causation that is general enough to adequately deal with both elementary physical processes, and the macroscopic level of phenomena we encounter in everyday life. This book will be of great interest to philosophers of science and metaphysics, and also to students and scholars of philosophy of mind where concepts of causation (...) and law play a prominent role. (shrink)