It is a central tenet of most contemporarytheories of justice that the badly-off have aright to some of the resources of the well-off.In this paper, I take as my starting point twoprinciples of justice, to wit, the principle ofsufficiency, whereby individuals have a rightto the material resources they need in order tolead a decent life, and the principle ofautonomy, whereby once everybody has such alife, individuals should be allowed to pursuetheir conception of the good, and to enjoy thefruits of their (...) labour in pursuit of suchconception. I also endorse the value offairness, whereby the right person orinstitution makes the decision as to whether tobring about justice.I show that justice and fairness can besatisfied only if we all enjoy a combination ofprivate and collective rights over the world.In making that case, I shall argue that the setof ownership rights I advocate differs fromreadily available conceptions of restrictedprivate ownership in two important respects.First, it is such that in some circumstances,two individuals or more can have control rightsover the same property at the same time, not,as is standardly the case in legal systems, bycontracting with one another (through gifts andjoint purchase), but simply on grounds ofjustice. Second, it allows that, if necessary,property-owners be expropriated from theirproperty without compensation. (shrink)

Liberal societies conventionally treat religion as unique under the law, requiring both special protection and special containment. But recently this idea that religion requires a legal exception has come under fire from those who argue that religion is no different from any other conception of the good, and the state should treat all such conceptions according to principles of neutrality and equal liberty. Cécile Laborde agrees with much of this liberal egalitarian critique, but she argues that a simple analogy between (...) the good and religion misrepresents the complex relationships among religion, law, and the state. Religion serves as more than a statement of belief about what is true, or a code of moral and ethical conduct. It also refers to comprehensive ways of life, political theories of justice, modes of voluntary association, and vulnerable collective identities. Disaggregating religion into its various dimensions, as Laborde does, has two clear advantages. First, it shows greater respect for ethical and social pluralism by ensuring that whatever treatment religion receives from the law, it receives because of features that it shares with nonreligious beliefs, conceptions, and identities. Second, it dispenses with the Western, Christian-inflected conception of religion that liberal political theory relies on, especially in dealing with the issue of separation between religion and state. As a result, Liberalism's Religion offers a novel answer to the question: Can Western theories of secularism and religion be applied more universally in non-Western societies?--. (shrink)

Do we have the right to deny others access to our body? What if this would harm those who need personal services or body parts from us? Ccile Fabre examines the impact that arguments for distributive justice have on the rights we have over ourselves, and on such contentious issues as organ sales, prostitution, and surrogate motherhood.

Human beings are killing the planet and themselves in the process. Cecile Pineda asks a simple question: Why? An urgent reframing of current ecological thinking, Apology to a Whale addresses what the intersection of relative linguistics and archeology reveals about the present world's power relations, and what the extraordinary communication of plants and animals can teach us. This masterpiece of creative nonfiction is a wild ride on the frontiers of archeo-linguistics in search of the greatest killer on Earth--us.

Ce texte a déjà paru dans la Revue européenne des sciences sociales – European Journal of Social Science, XLVII-143, 2009, p. 65-85. I. Introduction : Avec la publication en 1862 de l'ouvrage de Clément Juglar, Des crises commerciales et de leur retour périodique, la France devint l'un des lieux de naissance du concept de cycle d'affaires. L'Académie des sciences morales et politiques avait en effet organisé l'année précédente un concours destiné à « rechercher les causes et signaler les effets des (...) - Économie et Marxisme – Nouvel article. (shrink)

: A central component of Bernard Williams' political realism is the articulation of a standard of legitimacy from within politics itself: LEG. This standard is presented as basic, inherent in all political orders and the best way to underwrite fundamental liberal principles particular to the modern state, including basic human rights. It does not require, according to Williams, a wider set of liberal values. In the following, I show that where Williams restricts LEG to generating only minimal political protections, seeking (...) to isolate his account of political legitimacy from a range of liberal principles, this is neither internal to, nor necessarily demanded by, the specifically political account of LEG. Instead, the limitation depends upon his wider ethical thought. (shrink)

The republican tradition seems to have a blind spot about global justice. It has had little to say about pressing international issues such as world poverty or global inequalities. According to the old, if apocryphal, adage: extra rempublicam nulla justitia. Some may doubt that distributive justice is the primary virtue of republican institutions; and at any rate most would agree that republican values have traditionally been realized in the polis not in the cosmopolis. The article sketches a republican account of (...) global non-domination which suggests that duties of distributive justice are not bounded to the institutions of a single society. In particular, it argues that republicans have good reasons to seek to curb those global inequalities which underpin what I call capability-denying domination. (shrink)

This book articulates a cosmopolitan theory of the principles which ought to regulate belligerents' conduct in the aftermath of war. Throughout, it relies on the fundamental principle that all human beings, wherever they reside, have rights to the freedoms and resources which they need to lead a flourishing life, and that national and political borders are largely irrelevant to the conferral of those rights. With that principle in hand, the book provides a normative defence of restitutive and reparative justice, the (...) punishment of war criminals, the resort to transitional foreign administration as a means to govern war-torn territories, and the deployment of peacekeeping and occupation forces. It also outlines various reconciliatory and commemorative practices which might facilitate the emergence of trust amongst enemies and thereby improve prospects for peace. The book offers analytical arguments and normative conclusions, with many historical and/or contemporary examples. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a compositional semantics for sentences with enough and too followed by a to-infinitive clause and for resultative constructions with so... that within the framework of possible world semantics. It is proposed that the sentential complement of these constructions denotes an incomplete conditional and is explicitly or implicitly modalized, as if it were the consequent of a complete conditional. Enough, too, and so are quantifiers that relate an extent predicate and the incomplete conditional (expressed by the (...) sentential complement) and are interpreted as comparisons between two extents. The first extent is the maximal extent that satisfies the extent predicate. The second extent is the minimal or maximal extent of a set of extents that satisfy the (hidden) conditional, where the sentential complement supplies the consequent and the main clause the antecedent. This approach permits to predict (a) the context-dependent interpretation of these constructions and (b) the duality relations between the degree words. (shrink)

The book theoretically examines the recent and topical debates over democracy and social rights, arguing that there are four fundamental rights that should be constitutionalized; minimum income; housing; healthcare; and education. The theoretical discussion is explored within an analysis of important legal cases.

The starting point of this paper is the need to promote a people-centred corporate social responsibility framework in a context where many human needs and rights remain unsatisfied and where businesses may have both a positive and a negative impact on the quality of life of human beings today and tomorrow and may even lead to irreversible damage. Our normative definition of CSR is consistent with the criteria established by the EU Commission in 2011. We conceive CSR as a responsibility (...) towards human development in two complementary ways: a holistic responsibility shared by companies together with other actors to safeguard humanity and a direct liability of each company for its impact on stakeholders' capabilities. We apply Nussbaum's list of central capabilities and concept of thresholds to specify the nature and extent of corporate responsibilities towards employees, subcontractors, investors, customers, and humanity as a whole. In addition, we leverage fieldwork in developing and developed countries to analyse the effect of business activities on human capabilities. We demonstrate that by quantifying the impact of businesses' activities on various dimensions of stakeholders' lives, and especially on the most vulnerable ones, these businesses can be held accountable for the negative externalities they produce. (shrink)

Ethics review committees have become a common institution in English-speaking research communities, and are now increasingly being adopted in a variety of research environments. In light of existing debates on the aptness of ethics review boards for assessing research work in the social sciences, this article investigates the ways in which researchers navigate issues of research ethics in the absence of a formal review procedure or of an ethics review board. Through the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, the article (...) questions the overall utility of ethics review boards. Highlighting the importance of space for sharing, the authors argue for the development of a new type of structure that takes into account researchers’ ‘ethos of responsibility’ as an adequate ethical compass for research in the social sciences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nomadic Turns:Epistemology, Experience, and Women University Band DirectorsElizabeth GouldMusic education occupations in the U.S. have been segregated by gender and race for decades. While women are most likely to teach young students in classroom settings, men are most likely to teach older students in all settings, but most particularly in wind/percussion ensembles.1 Despite gender-affirmative employment practices, men constitute a large majority among band directors at all levels.2 At the (...) postsecondary level in the U.S., women constitute less than 10%.3 In all cases and all levels, the vast majority of band directors are white. Occupational segregation inhibits the development of individuals' careers as well as the development of the profession as individuals choose or are hired for positions based on their gender and/or race rather than their abilities.In terms of women university band directors, researchers have investigated employment trends,4 personal and occupational characteristics,5 occupational role models, and professional identity.6 Their findings generally have supported the hypotheses that historical precedent, traditional socialization, discrimination, segregation, and lack of role models contribute to their persistently low percentage as band directors. Longitudinal studies7 demonstrate that the percentage of women band directors has not increased significantly, and may be actually [End Page 147] declining after thirty years of enforcing affirmative action laws, which would suggest that these interventions have not provided the basis for enacting change in the profession. Further, change does not seem possible if members of the profession do not understand what causes the situation to persist. For example, while the College Band Directors National Association has supported the Linda A. Hartley and Deborah A. Sheldon study,8 their concern seems to be in only identifying the extent of the situation with the intention of increasing the number of women and non-white individuals who are band directors within the profession as it currently is constructed. This empirical approach is inadequate because it addresses neither the values held by members of the profession, nor its structure, which as previous research indicates, is poorly understood and must change to make possible meaningful increases in the number of women and non-white people.The profession of conducting university bands exists within the profession of music education in general, which, of course, exists within the profession of music. Clearly, one cannot be adequately understood without placing it in the context of the others. What is needed, then, are richer, more substantive, and meaningful understandings of the professions in general and of specific questions within them in particular, as they may provide the basis on which change can be possible. In addition to addressing the issue of persistent occupational gender and racial segregation, questions that may be addressed include positionalities9 of bands in the music education profession, the relationship of performance/conducting to the music profession, and the role of the musician in society in general. In order to accomplish this, I propose an analytical method that is both postmodern and feminist, and in which the philosophical figuration of the nomad, as explicated by Rosi Braidotti,10 is central.Postmodern/Feminist AnalysisDescribed variously as a "philosophical perspective,"11 a "sensibility,"12 and a historical moment,13 postmodernism resists definition. It may be understood as a way of perceiving the world that accepts and even embraces contradictions and uncertainties while rejecting commonly accepted cultural beliefs and practices, including humanist understandings of identity, representation, and the subject. This is a "postmodernism of resistance"14 that interrogates cultural practices, focusing on what is unexpected, marginalized, and silenced, opening spaces for change. In contrast, analysis based on modernism is constrained by binary oppositions that inscribe the positionalities of social groups. These oppositions are exemplified by Subject/Other (for example, male/female, reason/emotion) and consist of asymmetrical power relations in which the former is privileged over the latter, and the latter is defined in terms of not-the former. Postmodern analysis [End Page 148] reveals what these dualisms exclude, distort, or obscure, and provides flexibility for research from a variety of perspectives. Braidotti describes it as a "new kind of theoretical style"15 in terms of thinking, design, and analysis of research, a style... (shrink)

This paper begins with two cases pertaining to the internet in an effort to identify some of the difficult normative issues and some of the new directions in using the Internet to facilitate democratic participation, particularly in transnational contexts. Can the Internet be used in ways that advance democracy globally both within nation-states that lack it and in newly transnational ways? Can it contribute to strengthening not only democratic procedures of majority rule, periodic elections, and representation, but also more substantive (...) forms of deliberative democracy? And specifically, which directions are to be encouraged and on what normative basis? Or, instead, is the Internet to become ever more a means for facilitating commercial sales, corporate control, or government surveillance? This sort of normative account, while not addressing public policy questions directly, suggests a framework within which, I would argue, such policy questions can be helpfully considered. (shrink)

College courses are often disconnected both from other disciplines and from student’s lives. When classes are taught in isolation from each other students experience them as unrelated fragments. In addition, college courses often lack personal meaning and relevance. Interdisciplinary learning communities—classes in which the subject matters of two or more fields are integrated—can help overcome these two problems by providing an education that is holistic and coherent. In this paper I report on how philosophy courses can be blended with English (...) classes and how theoretical perspectives can be connected to student’s personal lives. (shrink)

During the second half of the 20th century several American multidisciplinary social science „disaster research groups“ conducted numerous field studies after earthquakes, factory explosions and “racial riots”, both inside and outside of the United States. Their aim was to investigate the reactions and behavior of individuals, organizations and communities to disasters. All of these groups were either promoted or at least partly founded by different branches of the US military. This article will analyze the groups’ studies and findings on the (...) question of disasters’ psychological effects. The main focus will be on the stance the scientists took on the diagnosis of psychological trauma—especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—and the post disaster therapeutic interventions that became widespread in the 1970s and early 1980s. The disaster researchers questioned the need for, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of “disaster mental health”. At the same time they advocated early ideas of resilience, which later became one of the most important concepts in disaster management and beyond. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, philosophers have grown to recognize the role played by frameworks and models in the construction of human knowledge. Further, they have paid increasing attention to the origins of knowing processes in social and historical contexts of human practical activities, and to social transformation of the frameworks over time. In a series of original essays by prominent philosophers, Constructivism and Practice advances the understanding of the role of construction and model creation, reflects on the relationship of (...) these models to social practices, and considers whether our modes of knowing themselves have a history. These questions are thoughtfully considered in the light of the 'historical epistemology' first developed by Marx Wartofsky. Contributions by Joseph Margolis; Tom Rockmore; Lisa Dolling; Jaakko Hintikka; Anton Alterman; Stephen Toulmin; Michel Paty; John Stachel; Gregg Horowitz; Michael Kelly; Tom Huhn; Barbara Savedoff; Saul Fisher; Sybil Schwarzenbach; John Pittman; Raphael Sassower; and MaryAnn Cutter. (shrink)

They are correct that punctuated equilibria apply to sexually reproducing organisms and that morphological evolutionary change is regarded as largely (if not exclusively) correlated with speciation events. However, they err in suggesting that we attribute stasis strictly to "developmental constraints," which represent only one of a set of possible mechanisms that we have suggested for the causes of stasis. Others include habitat tracking and the internal structure of species themselves [for example, (2)].

This article explores the possible convergence between the capabilities approach and utilitarianism to specify CSR. It defends the idea that this key issue is related to the anthropological perspective that underpins both theories and demonstrates that a relational conception of individual freedoms and rights present in both traditions gives adequate criteria for CSR toward the company's stakeholders. I therefore defend "relational capability" as a means of providing a common paradigm, a shared vision of a core component of human development. This (...) could further lead to a set of indicators aimed at assessing corporate social performance as the maximization of the relational capability of people impacted by the activities of companies. In particular, I suggest a way of evaluating the contribution of extractive companies to the communities close to their industrial sites in extremely poor areas, not from the viewpoint of material resources and growth, but from the viewpoint of the quality of the social environment and empowerment. (shrink)

Many believe that agent-centred considerations, unlike agent-neutral reasons, cannot show that victims have the right to kill their attackers in self-defence, let alone establish that rescuers have the right to come to their help. In this paper, I argue that the right to kill in self- or other-defence is best supported by a hybrid set of reasons. In particular, agent-centred considerations account for the plausible intuition that victims have a special stake, which other parties lack, in being to thwart the (...) attackers. That special stake plays an important part justifying victims' right to obtain help, and rescuers' right to give it. (shrink)

J'étais au lycée depuis la neuvième. Lors de la drôle de guerre, je suis restée à la campagne dans l'Ain ­ j'étais en cinquième et ai suivi l'enseignement dispensé par mes cousines, l'une faisant les mathématiques, l'autre les lettres. Ce n'était pas très sérieux mais pas si mauvais tout de même puisqu'après un court troisième trimestre à Henri IV (nous sommes repartis en juin à l'arrivée des Allemands), j'ai pu entrer en quatrième l'année suivante grâce à quelques cours particuliers d..

J'étais au lycée depuis la neuvième. Lors de la drôle de guerre, je suis restée à la campagne dans l'Ain ­ j'étais en cinquième et ai suivi l'enseignement dispensé par mes cousines, l'une faisant les mathématiques, l'autre les lettres. Ce n'était pas très sérieux mais pas si mauvais tout de même puisqu'après un court troisième trimestre à Henri IV (nous sommes repartis en juin à l'arrivée des Allemands), j'ai pu entrer en quatrième l'année suivante grâce à quelques cours particuliers d...