Mary Kalantzis was from 2006 to 2016 Dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Bill Cope is a Professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. They are co-authors of multiple books including Making Sense: Reference, Agency, and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning (Cambridge, forthcoming), New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education (Cambridge, 2008, 2012), Literacies (Cambridge 2012, 2016) and e-Learning Ecologies (2017).

The challenge that confronts corporate decision-makers in connection with global labor conditions is often in identifying the standardsby which they should govern themselves. In an effort to provide greater direction in the face of possible global cultural conflicts, ethicistsThomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee draw on social contract theory to develop a method for identifying basic human rights: Integrated Social Contract Theory (ISCT). In this paper, we apply ISCT to the challenge of global labor standards, attempting to identify labor rights that (...) could serve as guides for corporations producing or outsourcing outside of their home country. In addition to identifying areas of universal agreement, we also examine whether ISCT is, in fact, a sufficient basis for determining worker rights; we seek to define the parameters of the “sweatshop” problem; we include the application and results of our ISCT analysis as applied to labor standards: the global labor rights hypernorms; and conclude that ISCT is sufficient only for rights that are universal. We also discuss whether market-driven decisions can identify the boundaries of labor rights, or at least assure that market outcomes are compatible with maintaining labor rights, in order to respond to the shortcomings of ISCT. We conclude with some comments on directions of analysis for labor rights determination. (shrink)

The payments industry – the business of transferring value through public and corporate infrastructures – is undergoing rapid transformation. New business models and regulatory environments disrupt more traditional fee-based strategies, and new entrants seek to displace legacy players by leveraging new mobile platforms and new sources of data. In this increasingly diversified industry landscape, start-ups and established players are attempting to embed payment in ‘social’ experience through novel technologies of accounting for trust. This imagination of the social, however, is being (...) materialized in gated platforms for payment, accounting, and exchange. This paper explores the ambiguous politics of such experiments, specifically those, like Bitcoin or the on-demand sharing economy, that delineate an economic imaginary of ‘just us’ – a closed and closely guarded community of peers operating under the illusion that there are no mediating institutions undergirding that community. This provokes questions about the intersection of payment and publics. Payment innovators’ attenuated understanding of the social may, we suggest, evacuate the nitty-gritty of politics. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Why everybody needs a philosophy.--What is philosophy, anyway?--The place of philosophy in American universities.--The spirit of man.--Social life.--Religion.--The life of knowledge.--Philosophy and politics.--The new alignment of the British commonwealth of nations.--Discussion in America.--The Scot abroad.--On the anniversary of Sir Walter Scott's birthday.

Some years ago Max Planck published a small book with the title Where is Science Going? in vigorous protest against the idea that the doctrine of relativity in general and the new quanta physics in particular mean that “the quest of the absolute becomes eliminated from scientific progress.” That it seems to be time to raise a similar question with regard to philosophy was suggested to me at a recent conference held at Farnham Castle on the relation between science and (...) philosophy, at which the new school of logical positivism was strongly represented by some of the ablest of the younger men. (shrink)

Second in importance only to the question raised by the short editorial in the last number of Philosophy : Why are we at War? is that on which there is at present a lively discussion going on in The Times and elsewhere under the title of “German Rulers and People”: With Whom are we at War? On one point there is no difference of opinion: we are at war with the blood- and crimestained group that, with Hitler at their head, (...) hold the reins of government. Difference begins when it is asked what share the people of Germany as a whole has in their crimes. On the one side are those who hold that, as you cannot, in historical words, “bring an indictment against a whole nation,” neither can you be at war with a whole people, and that the main problem we have before us is the discovery of the means to appeal to the intelligence and hearts of the mass of the nation in order to enlist it against its Government as a common enemy. On the other side are those who quote the equally historic words that “every nation gets the kind of government it deserves,” from which “it follows that it deserves no immunity for the acts of the Government by which it chooses, or allows itself, to be governed.” This argument is reinforced first by a general philosophy of war as the “natural” order of things from which man is only gradually emerging into an exceptional and precarious condition of peace; and secondly, with regard to Germany in particular, that “the lust for dominance through force is, and will be for generations, at the root of the German character.” The importance of the issue as thus stated requires no emphasis. (shrink)