In many parts of the world, homework is a form of labour characterised by precariousness, lack of regulation, and invisibility and lack of protection of the workers who are often amongst the world's poorest and most exploited. Homework is spreading, due to firm practices such as outsourcing. The analysis and understanding of complex corporate networks may assist with the identification and protection of those most at risk within the supply chain network. It can also expose some of the key ethical (...) issues and dilemmas of supply chain management and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Based on a case-study of the Australian FairWear Campaign (FWC), this article identifies an ethical network that aims to increase corporate accountability (CA) via greater transparency in corporate supply chains and improve work conditions for homeworkers and increase their recognition in the supply chain. (shrink)

Annie Besant is primarily remembered as the international president of the Theosophical Society. One of the most important aspects of her career were the years that she was a professional atheist, which has given her a place in history as a pioneer feminist. _The Origins of Theosophy _contains thirteen of Besant’s pamphlets, originally published from 1883-1890. This book is ideal for students of theology.

The authors analyze results of a survey of members of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business classes of 1953–1987 in order to assess the potential effectiveness of firms' ethics training programs. Results suggest that such training has a positive effect, but that relatively few firms provide such programs (about one-third of the respondents worked for firms with such programs). Although the sample is not representative of American employees and managers generally, the results suggest that it may be worthwhile for (...) firms to provide formal ethics training to their employees. (shrink)

Siopis has always engaged in a critical and controversial way with the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in South Africa. For politically sensitive artists whose work has involved confronting the injustices of apartheid, the current post-apartheid situation has forced a reassessment of their practice and the terms on which they might engage with the fundamental changes which are now affecting all of South African society. Where mythologies of race and ethnicity have been strategically foregrounded in the art of any engaged (...) artist, to the exclusion of many other concerns, the demise of apartheid offers the possibility of exploring other dimensions of lived experience in South Africa. For feminists, this is potentially a very positive moment when questions of gender – so long subordinated to the structural issue of ‘race’ under apartheid – can now be explored. Penny Siopis’ work has long been concerned with the lived and historical relations between black and white women in South Africa. The discussion focuses on the ambivalent and dependent relationships formed between white middle-class women and black domestic labour during apartheid. Siopis’ work engages with how the appropriation of black women's time, lives, labour and bodies has shaped her ‘own’ history. (shrink)

Policies and position statements regarding decision-making for extremely premature babies exist in many countries and are often directive, focusing on parental choice and expected outcomes. These recommendations often state survival and handicap as reasons for optional intervention. The fact that such outcome statistics would not justify such approaches in other populations suggests that some other powerful factors are at work. The value of neonatal intensive care has been scrutinized far more than intensive care for older patients and suggests that neonatal (...) care is held to a higher standard of justification. The relative value placed on the life of newborns, in particular the preterm, is less than expected by any objective medical data or any prevailing moral frameworks about the value of individual lives. Why do we feel less obligated to treat the premature baby? Do we put newborns in a special and lesser moral category? We explore this question from a legal and ethical perspective and offer several hypotheses pertaining to personhood, reproductive choices, “precious children,” and probable evolutionary and anthropological factors. (shrink)

The history of brushtail possums in New Zealand is bleak. The colonists who forcibly transported possums from their native Australia to New Zealand in the nineteenth century valued them as economic assets, quickly establishing a profitable fur industry. Over the past 80 or so years, however, New Zealand has increasingly scapegoated possums for the unanticipated negative impact their presence has had on the native environment and wildlife. Now this marsupial—blamed and despised—suffers the most miserable of reputations and is extensively targeted (...) as the nation's number one pest. This paper examines anti-possum rhetoric in New Zealand, identifying the operation of several distinct—yet related—discourses negatively situating the possum as an unwanted foreign invader and a threat to what makes New Zealand unique; the subject of revenge and punishment ; and recognizably “cute, but...” merely a pest and therefore unworthy of compassion. This paper argues that the demonization of possums in New Zealand is overdetermined, extreme, and unhelpfully entangled in notions of patriotism and nationalism. (shrink)

Twenty-first-century biology rejects genetic determinism, yet an exaggerated view of the power of genes in the making of bodies and minds remains a problem. What accounts for such tenacity? This article reports an exploratory study suggesting that the common reliance on Mendelian examples and concepts at the start of teaching in basic genetics is an eliminable source of support for determinism. Undergraduate students who attended a standard ‘Mendelian approach’ university course in introductory genetics on average showed no change in their (...) determinist views about genes. By contrast, students who attended an alternative course which, inspired by the work of a critic of early Mendelism, W. F. R. Weldon, replaced an emphasis on Mendel’s peas with an emphasis on developmental contexts and their role in bringing about phenotypic variability, were less determinist about genes by the end of teaching. Improvements in both the new Weldonian curriculum and the study design are in view for the future. (shrink)

This dissertation consists in three essays, one in ethics, one in action theory and one at the intersection of these fields. The first essay concerns romantic love, and makes explicit both the psychological needs people commonly expect it to service and the robust yet conditional commitment it demands. The basic ideas are the following: people regularly want to form an intimate union with another, to be loved for properties of certain sorts, and to have this love generate and sustain a (...) distinctive sort of commitment to them. In particular I argue that the third idea has been underarticulated and underappreciated, and its underappreciation has given rise to seeming inconsistencies amongst peoples' wishes for lasting loving relationships. I close with a detailed account of what I term a "loving commitment." ;The second essay is devoted to a detailed examination and assessment of the Doctrine of Double Effect . I argue that in order to employ the DDE to obtain intuitively satisfying moral evaluations it needs to be supplemented by an additional principle or set of principles that specify how various aspects of the relevant action are to be classified as intended or merely foreseen. After discrediting various plausible candidates I offer a puzzle case that seems peculiarly prone to mischaracterization by the DDE. I close with some tentative suggestions as to how the DDE should be considered against the backdrop of our moral practices. ;The third essay is a detailed examination of intention, belief, intentional action, and planning, and the relations obtaining between them. I contend that plans are nothing more than clusters of intentions of greater and lesser range and immediacy and that practical rationality essentially consists in forming and acting on intentions. I then argue that while intentionally acting does not require an intention to perform that very act, Michael Bratman's powerful argument to that effect is ultimately unsatisfying. I propose that the two phenomena diverge because there is a justified belief requirement on intention that does not apply to acting intentionally, and that this justified belief requirement is tied to the intimate relation between intention and rationality. I go on to consider other features of intention, most notably its relations to skillful and habitual activity. (shrink)

In 1795 Jeremiah Aversham went to execution bearing a flower in his mouth. “He was afterwards hung in chains on Wimbledon common, and for several months,” it was reported, “thousands of the London populace passed their Sundays near the spot as if consecrated by the remains of a hero.” From the perspective of bourgeois morality this was an intolerable scandal. The display of the dead body had become one of those suspicious or ill-defined areas of life that were treated as (...) indecent or marginalised as offensive. The general rearrangement of values in the society transformed the body into an object of aversion as opposed to representation. The change of attitude made it impossible to continue inscribing the bodies of criminals with the degradation of public exposure. (shrink)

This text seeks to situate Being and Time in the line of the ancient philosophical tradition of care for self (epiméleia heautou). After a brief description of the main features of this tradition as portrayed by Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot, the author presents the elements of Being in Time in favour and those against such a link. Her hypothesis appears to encounter a major objection in the explicit refusal of Heidegger to speak of Selbstsorge. But an attentive examination of (...) the meaning of this reserve (the rejection of selfhood as a transparent and introspective relationship of the soul to itself) makes it in reality possible to show Heidegger to be one of the most consequent philosophers in the tradition of care for the soul. Indeed, by highlighting the constitutive link between selfhood and care, Heidegger shows the very condition of possibility of the tradition of care for the soul: that the self is not given as a thing, but may contribute to its own transformation through a specific form of care. (shrink)

David Annis is professor of philosophy at Ball State University. In this essay, Annis offers an alternative to the foundationalist-coherent controversy: "contextualism." This theory rejects both the idea of intrinsically basic beliefs in the foundational sense and the thesis that coherence is sufficient for justification. he argues that justification is relative to the varying norms of social practices.

Annie Bélis, À propos de la coupe CA 482 du Louvre. P. 53-59 Sur la coupe CA 482 du Louvre, le Peintre d'Hésiode a figuré, avec son élégance et son raffinement habituels, une jeune femme qui tient une cithare en berceau : sur ses genoux est posé un objet qui a résisté jusqu'à présent à toute tentative d'identification. Plusieurs hypothèses, peu satisfaisantes, ont été formulées. Schéma et mesures à l'appui, on montre qu'il s'agit en réalité d'une deuxième cithare en (...) berceau, posée à plat et donc vue de profil. Le a pris soin de lui donner exactement les mêmes dimensions et les mêmes au détail près, que l'autre. Reste une inconnue : le nom antique de la cithare en. (shrink)

In this age when idealistic themes such as contextualistic theories of meaning and coherence theories of truth are again becoming commonplace in epistemology and philosophy of science, it should be profitable to recall some of the great representatives of the idealistic tradition in order to reexamine their views on the issues of epistemology and their interpretations of science. The purpose of this paper is to examine, if only partially, idealistic views on this latter issue, i.e., on the nature of science.

More and more well-documented failure of established companies which could not respond to rapid market changes, such as Kodak and Nokia, demonstrate the importance of transferring marketing information into real firm performance. While marketing strategy and management literature has long advocated the direct impact of strong firm market orientation (MO) on new product development (NPD) performance, limited research has discussed the mediating mechanism of this MO-NPD performance relationship. Using the traditional source–position–performance (SPP) framework, this study focuses on the innovation ambidexterity (...) perspective to investigate the mediating mechanism between MO and NPD performance. Then, this study proposed a conceptual framework and propositions to examine the MO - NPD performance relationship further. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are also discussed. (shrink)

Kant’s treatment of laughter in section 54 of the Critique of Judgment is intriguing: he places laughter among the arts, but does not deem it serious enough to be a fine art. According to Kant, laughter is an agreeable art, and ministers only to the senses. But when he describes to us what laughter actually does, it turns out that this bodily phenomenon is actually a moral phenomenon akin to the sublime in that it elevates and humbles us at the (...) same time. This paper revisits Kant’s aesthetic themes, shows the distinctive role of laughter in the third Critique, and explores the possibilities of a true reunification of law and freedom through laughter. (shrink)

This collection of essays analyzes relations of social inequality that appear to be logical extensions of a "natural order," and in the process demonstrates that a revitalized feminist anthropology of the 1990s has much to offer the field of feminist theory. Fashioned as a response to the lack of cultural analysis in feminist scholarship, the contributors question the category of gender within the inclusive context of the structural dynamics of inequality. They also examine how cultural identities, domains and institutions affect (...) our perception of gender in society. The first selection of essays addresses how ideas of family and kinship have fostered society's hierarchies and legitimized the status quo. In part two, the essays show how several dimensions of inequality are implicit in the construction of identities that are based upon ideas of social solidarity. Contributors: Susan McKinnon, University of Virginia; Kath Weston, Arizona State West; Rayna Rapp, New School for Social Research; Janet Dolgin, Hofstra University; Harriet Whitehead, Duke University; Carol Delaney, Stanford University; Brackette Williams, University of Arizona; Sylvia Yanagisako, Stanford University; Phyllis Chock, Catholic University; Sherry Ortner, University of Michigan; Anna Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz. (shrink)

Children acquiring languages with noun classes have ample statistical information available that characterizes the distribution of nouns into these classes, but their use of this information to classify novel nouns differs from the predictions made by an optimal Bayesian classifier. We use rational analysis to investigate the hypothesis that children are classifying nouns optimally with respect to a distribution that does not match the surface distribution of statistical features in their input. We propose three ways in which children's apparent statistical (...) insensitivity might arise, and find that all three provide ways to account for the difference between children's behavior and the optimal classifier. A fourth model combines two of these proposals and finds that children's insensitivity is best modeled as a bias to ignore certain features during classification, rather than an inability to encode those features during learning. These results provide insight into children's developing knowledge of noun classes and highlight the complex ways in which statistical information from the input interacts with children's learning processes. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. First, I explore the scope and limitations of the doctrine of double effect (DOE) by focusing specifically on the notion of "effect classification." Turning my attention to some hard cases, I argue that the DOE has to be supplemented by additional principles that specify how effects are to be discriminated from one another and how the various aspects of the relevant actions are to be classified as intended or simply foreseen. Secondly, I draw some general (...) lessons from this specific investigation of the ODE bearing on the way in which moral principles of this sort can be seen to function helpfully in moral reflection. (shrink)

In principle Claude Bernard criticizes historical reflection, which he character- izes as a waste of time. But in spite of strong statements condemning it, Bernard makes use of history frequently and in several different ways. The coexistence of this openly antihistorical stance with a use of the historical perspective poses a problem. I will try to show that these two attitudes lead toward a common goal: promoting science. They combine to create a broad strategy that contributed a great deal to (...) the development of scientism in the nineteenth century. Bernard's arguments may be one of the sources of the distrust some scientists still feel toward the history of science. (shrink)

Explores the gamut of social theory Classical and Contemporary Social Theory: Investigation and Application, 1/e, is the most comprehensive, informative social theory book on the market. The title covers multiple schools of thought and applies their ideas to society today. Readers will learn the origins of social theory and understand the role of myriad social revolutions that shaped the course of societies around the world. MySearchLab is a part of the Delaney program. Research and writing tools, including access to (...) academic journals, help students explore social theory in even greater depth. To provide students with flexibility, students can download the eText to a tablet using the free Pearson eText app. This title is available in a variety of formats - digital and print. Pearson offers its titles on the devices students love through Pearson's MyLab products, CourseSmart, Amazon, and more. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Al Mele (2003) suggests that the Simple View of intentional action is “fiction” because it is “wholly unconstrained” by a widely shared (folk) concept of intentional action. The Simple View (Adams, 1986, McCann, 1986) states that an action is intentional only if intended. As evidence that the Simple View is not in accord with the folk notion of intentional action, Mele appeals to recent surveys of folk judgments by Joshua Knobe (2003, 2004a, 2004b). Knobe’s surveys appear (...) to show that the folk judge unintended but known side effects of actions to be performed intentionally. In this paper we will reject Mele’s suggestion that the Simple View is “fiction.” We will also discuss the relationship between surveys and philosophical theories, and the abilities of surveys to access folk core concepts. We will argue that considerations of both fail to support Mele’s suggestion. (shrink)

Exploring the relationship between conceptions of nature and (largely American) legal thought and practice, this study focuses on the politics and pragmatics of "nature talk"--as expressed in extra-legal disputes as well as different forms of legal discourse. Topics include the forces of nature, endangered species, animal experiments and bestiality. David Delaney demonstrates throughout that nearly any analysis of "nature" entails an interpretation of the essence of "humanity.".

In this paper I would like to explore Sellars' answers to these general epistemological questions in order to get clear about the sense in which he can be said to be in the empiricist tradition broadly construed and to ascertain what resources he has available to demarcate science from other (rationally acceptable or unacceptable) forms of inquiry. My contention will be that to the degree that one moves away from the notion of basic empirical proposition in the strong sense it (...) becomes increasingly difficult to draw the distinction between empiricism and other general epistemological traditions and increasingly difficult to distinguish science frow other forms of inquiry. Moreover, this latter difficulty tends to render vacuous the claims of scientific realism. (shrink)