Genocide is the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, of a people. Typically, it is a crime that is committed by a people. In this essay, I propose an analysis of the concept of an ethnic identity group, which is, I argue, the concept of ethnicity at issue in many important discussions of group rights, group acts, and the moral responsibility of group members for the acts of the groups to which they belong. I develop the account of collective (...) agency presupposed by this analysis and explore its implications for assessments of individual moral responsibility for genocide. I argue, further, that among other advantages over culturalist approaches to questions about group rights, the approach that follows from the concept of an ethnic identity group sheds light on the specific moral wrong of genocide. I reply to individualist objections to the idea that ethnic group membership may be morally significant and argue that morally adequate responses to genocide presuppose acknowledgment of the fact that groups act and are acted upon in morally significant ways. (shrink)

The paper discusses the limitations of engineering ethics as implemented in practice, with a focus on the fact that engineering and other activities are carried out without any consideration of whether the activities are themselves ethical, and on the gap between legality and ethics. This leads to the following three central ideas of the paper. The first is the need for engineers to both be aware of and critique their own values and be able to widen their perspective to that (...) of the ‘other’, i.e., marginalised and minority groups and the environment. This understanding of the ‘other’ and values is also applied to the discussion of ethical issues relating to minority world (‘developed’) country engineers working in majority world (‘developing’) countries. The second central idea is the fact that structural and contextual factors in the form of barriers and enablers affect ethical values and practices. Individuals are not necessarily unethical in themselves, but the context and organisational ethos may present barriers to ethical behaviour and encourage the development of unethical values. These barriers and enablers are investigated through a pilot survey. The third central idea is the relationship between individual and collective responsibility and the need for support to enable engineers to think and behave ethically. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between gender, nations and nationalisms vis-a-vis the Indian state's nationalist identity and perceptions of security. It explores how the postcolonial Indian state's project of nation-building — reflective of a western secular-modern identity and a Hindutva-dominated identity — incorporates gender, with continuities and discontinuities, to articulate divergent forms of nationalist/communalist identities, `cartographic anxieties' and nuclear securities. The article contends that with the recent rise of the Hindu-Right BJP, guided by Hindutva ideology, the nature of representing the (...) Indian nation, its women and securities has changed from a geopolitical to a cultural perception — thereby necessitating a rereading of the Indian nation, nationalism, gender and its perceptions of security. (shrink)