Is corporate giving a matter of sporadic and altruistic generosity? Or should it be seen more as “a product to be marketed to the public”? The author is Lecturer in International Business in the Department of Commerce of the University of Birmingham, Ashley Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT.

Is corporate giving a matter of sporadic and altruistic generosity? Or should it be seen more as “a product to be marketed to the public”? The author is Lecturer in International Business in the Department of Commerce of the University of Birmingham, Ashley Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT.

This paper builds on existing research investigating CSR and ethical consumption within luxury contexts, and makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses existing knowledge gaps by exploring the ways in which consumers perform ethical luxury purchases of fine jewellery through interpretive research. Second, the paper is the first to examine such issues of consumer ethics by extending the application of theories of practice to a luxury product context, and by building on Magaudda’s :15–36, 2011) circuit of practice framework. (...) This is significant in that, to date, consumer research using practice theories has focused mainly on routine and habitual practices. Our findings and discussion provide an analysis of intentional and less intentional ethical consumer performances within the interconnected nexus of activities of consumers’ fine jewellery consumption practice, where meanings, understandings and intelligibility of social phenomena are worked through the various activities that shape such a practice. Finally, the paper concludes with significant managerial and policy-related implications, as our extended circuit of practice analysis conveys that if ethics and sustainability dimensions are to be embedded in fine jewellery consumption practice, they must first be made an intrinsic part of the nexus of the social and material environment of trading and consumption places. (shrink)

Despite a growing population of older people, traditional prejudices against age continue to flourish in society. The media in particular are often guilty of ageism, persistently focusing upon the ‘youth market’, and advertisers are particular offenders. By ignoring older people, or using them as caricatures, the advertising industry not only violates its ethical responsibilities to this group within the community, but also overlooks the commercial opportunity presented by the new generation of older consumers. The article presents research into UK print (...) media which shows that older people tend not to be featured in advertisements in mainstream publications, but are prominent in advertisements in publications for the over‐fifties. The issues this raises in terms of the duty of advertisers to respect the rights of older people are discussed, along with the commercial imperative to provide more appropriate images of older people in UK advertising. (shrink)

Despite a growing population of older people, traditional prejudices against age continue to flourish in society. The media in particular are often guilty of ageism, persistently focusing upon the ‘youth market’, and advertisers are particular offenders. By ignoring older people, or using them as caricatures, the advertising industry not only violates its ethical responsibilities to this group within the community, but also overlooks the commercial opportunity presented by the new generation of older consumers. The article presents research into UK print (...) media which shows that older people tend not to be featured in advertisements in mainstream publications, but are prominent in advertisements in publications for the over‐fifties. The issues this raises in terms of the duty of advertisers to respect the rights of older people are discussed, along with the commercial imperative to provide more appropriate images of older people in UK advertising. (shrink)

Sport sponsorship is a growth area which is under‐researched yet which displays opportunities and threats for both sponsor and sport, as well as having important ethical implications. If sponsorship funding is to be attracted, sports need to supply evidence of the opportunities for sponsors; yet “sport also needs to ensure that the negative aspects of sponsorship are reduced and the positive encouraged.” Marylyn Carrigan has a background in banking and export marketing and is currently Lecturer in Marketing and International (...) Marketing at the Business School, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, England, where she also researches the areas of Corporate Philanthropy and Sport and Leisure Marketing. Her husband worked in industry before graduating in Sports Studies and Business, and currently works as a Youth Worker for the City of Birmingham Department of Leisure and Community Services with research interests in Sport and the 50+ leisure market. (shrink)

Sport sponsorship is a growth area which is under‐researched yet which displays opportunities and threats for both sponsor and sport, as well as having important ethical implications. If sponsorship funding is to be attracted, sports need to supply evidence of the opportunities for sponsors; yet “sport also needs to ensure that the negative aspects of sponsorship are reduced and the positive encouraged.” Marylyn Carrigan has a background in banking and export marketing and is currently Lecturer in Marketing and International (...) Marketing at the Business School, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, England, where she also researches the areas of Corporate Philanthropy and Sport and Leisure Marketing. Her husband worked in industry before graduating in Sports Studies and Business, and currently works as a Youth Worker for the City of Birmingham Department of Leisure and Community Services with research interests in Sport and the 50+ leisure market. (shrink)

Just as socially irresponsible organizational behavior leaves a punitive legacy on society, socially responsible organizations can foster curative change. This article examines whether small organizations can foster societal change toward more sustainable modes of living. We contend that consumption is deeply intertwined with social relations and norms, thus making individual behavioral change toward sustainability a matter of facilitating change in individual behavior, as well as in social norms and relations between organizations and consumers. We argue that it is in this (...) facilitation process that small firms can play a major role, by adopting upstream and downstream approaches to diffuse behavioral change. By synthesizing four key strands of literature -small businesses and corporate social responsibility, ethical consumption, community social marketing, and the diffusion of innovation — and using the exemplar case of Modbury, the iconic "plastic bag-free" town, we demonstrate how responsible small firms can influence communities, and the individuals therein, to encourage environmentally sustainable practice to diffuse and support change in society. (shrink)

The present article proceeds in three parts: first, I describe George F. Hourani's approach and its continued relevance in the study of Islamic ethics. Next, I demonstrate the weaknesses of Hourani's approach, particularly his commitment to mapping Islamic thought anachronistically onto a menu of “isms” derived from modern ethical theory. To highlight the urgency of reexamining Hourani's approach and influence, I also demonstrate how scholars' continued reliance upon Hourani perpetuates the limitations of his approach in the study of Islamic ethics (...) today. Finally, I call attention to the ongoing efforts of scholars in the study of Islamic ethics to do better. I conclude that if Islamic ethics is to thrive, the field must reexamine its reliance on Hourani. (shrink)

The belief that the spirits of the dead can return to haunt the living exists either as a tenet or as a marginal conviction in all civilizations, whether ancient or modern. More often than not, the dead do not return to reunite the living with their loved ones but rather to lead them into some dreadful snare, entrapping them with disastrous consequences. To be sure, all the departed may return, but some are predestined to haunt: the dead who have been (...) shamed during their lifetime or those who took unspeakable secrets to the grave. From the brucolacs, the errant sprits of outcasts in ancient Greece, to the ghost of Hamlet’s vengeful father, and on down to the rapping spirits of modern times, the theme of the dead—who, having suffered repression by their family or society, cannot enjoy, even in death, a state of authenticity—appears to be omnipresent on the fringes of religions and, failing that, in rational systems. It is a fact that the “phantom,” whatever its form, is nothing but an invention of the living. Yes, an invention in the sense that the phantom is meant to objectify, even if under the guise of individual or collective hallucinations, the gap that the concealment of some part of a loved one’s life produced in us. The phantom is, therefore, also a metapsychological fact. Consequently, what haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.Because the phantom is not related to the loss of a loved one, it cannot be considered the effect of unsuccessful mourning, as is the case of melancholics or of all those who carry a tomb within themselves. It is the children’s or descendants’ lot to objectify these buried tombs through diverse species of ghosts. What comes back to haunt are the tombs of others. The phantoms of folklore merely objectify a metaphor active within the unconscious: the burial of an unspeakable fact within the loved one.Here we are in the midst of clinical psychoanalysis and still shrouded in obscurity, an obscurity, however, that the nocturnal being of phantoms can, paradoxically, be called upon to clarify. The most recently published book of essays by Nicolas Abraham is Rythmes de l’oeuvre, de la traduction et de la psychanalyse . “Notes on the Phantom” is the preliminary statement of his theory of transgenerational haunting. Nicholas Rand, assistant professor of French at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, is the English-language editor of Abraham’s works. (shrink)

A collection of essays argues that philosophy is an essential element of human life--a force that shapes human character and national culture and destiny--and offers the rational philosophy of Objectivism as an alternative.

Population-level biomedical research offers new opportunities to improve population health, but also raises new challenges to traditional systems of research governance and ethical oversight. Partly in response to these challenges, various models of public involvement in research are being introduced. Yet, the ways in which public involvement should meet governance challenges are not well understood. We conducted a qualitative study with 36 experts and stakeholders using the World Café method to identify key governance challenges and explore how public involvement can (...) meet these challenges. This brief report discusses four cross-cutting themes from the study: the need to move beyond individual consent; issues in benefit and data sharing; the challenge of delineating and understanding publics; and the goal of clarifying justifications for public involvement. The report aims to provide a starting point for making sense of the relationship between public involvement and the governance of population-level biomedical research, showing connections, potential solutions and issues arising at their intersection. We suggest that, in population-level biomedical research, there is a pressing need for a shift away from conventional governance frameworks focused on the individual and towards a focus on collectives, as well as to foreground ethical issues around social justice and develop ways to address cultural diversity, value pluralism and competing stakeholder interests. There are many unresolved questions around how this shift could be realised, but these unresolved questions should form the basis for developing justificatory accounts and frameworks for suitable collective models of public involvement in population-level biomedical research governance. (shrink)

“Through centuries of scourges and disasters, brought about by your code of morality, you have cried that your code had been broken, that the scourges were punishment for breaking it, that men were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blood it required. You damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but never dared to question your code. . . . You went on crying that your code was noble, but human nature was not good enough (...) to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question: Good?—by what standard? (shrink)

The relationship between Rand and Branden changed over eighteen yaears from student and teacher, to friends, to colleagues, to lovers and finally antagonists.

Denies that human senses cannot be trusted, that logic is arbitrary, and that concepts have no basis in reality and discusses universals.

In his Logic, Hegel argues that evaluative judgments are comparisons between the reality of an individual object and the standard for that reality found in the object's own concept. Understood in this way, an object is bad insofar as it fails to be what it is according to its concept. In his recent Life and Action, Michael Thompson has suggested that we can understand various kinds of natural defect in a similar way, and that if we do, we can helpfully (...) see intellectual and moral badness—irrationality and vice—as themselves varieties of natural defect. In this paper, I argue that Hegel's position on animal individuality denies the claim that irrationality and vice are forms of natural defect. Hegel's account of the individuality proper to the animal organism in the Philosophy of Nature clearly disallows evaluative judgments about animals and thereby establishes a well-defined conceptual distinction between natural defect and intellectual or ethical—i.e., broadly spiritual or geistliche—defect. Hegel thus provides a way of maintaining the difference between nature and spirit within his broader commitment to a post-Kantian conception of substantial form. (shrink)

In this empirical study, we investigate the variation in firms’ response to institutional pressure for gender-balanced boards, focusing specifically on the preservation of prevailing practices of director selection and its impact on the representation of women on the board of directors. Using 8 years of data from publicly listed Nordic corporations, we show societal pressure to be one of the determinants of female directorship. Moreover, in some corporations, the director selection process may work to maintain “a traditional type of board”. (...) In such boards, demographic diversity among male members appears to be associated with a lower share of female directors, although we cannot establish wether this reflects discrimination or a desire to maintain critical competencies. With this paper we add to the theoretical understanding of the factors underlying female board appointments by adopting an institutional theory lens to study female board representation. Viewing the demands for gender-balanced boards in terms of societal pressure for the de-institutionalization of the prevailing norms and practices, we highlight preferences for maintaining established practices as a potentially important barrier to institutional change. On these grounds, we conjecture on the relationship between the gender diversity of boards and other diversity dimensions. We suggest that a board room gender quota is supplemented by policies to ensure the transparency of board changes, in order to prevent the crowding out of other diversity dimensions. (shrink)

Svirsky, Howard, and Berman address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ’s oversight of tobacco products, the newest major area of regulation Congress assigned to the FDA. They discus...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's 'Philosophy of Nature' has often been accused of promoting a view of nature fundamentally at odds with the modern scientific understanding of nature. I show this accusation to be false by pointing to two aspects of Hegel's treatment of nature: its rejection of the 'a priori/a posteriori' distinction, and its connection to Hegel's conception of autonomy as freedom from givenness. I give a reading of Hegel's treatment of the laws of motion along these lines, and I (...) close with some points connecting this reading of Hegel to contemporary philosophy (specifically John McDowell and Catherine Malabou). (shrink)

In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned book, Ayn Rand throws a new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again Miss Rand eloquently demonstrates her refusal to let popular catchwords and conventional ideas stand between her and the truth as she has discovered it. The Romantic Manifesto takes its place beside The Fountainhead as one of the most important achievements of our time.

Why do people enter devoted relationships when they can continue looking for better partners? The “strategic ignorance” account holds that remaining ignorant about alternative partners is a signal that you are a high‐quality partner. Despite this intuition, the authors show that evolution favors a “look while allowing your partner to look” strategy, unless the costs of being rejected by a looking partner are extremely high. Thus, the origins of love must be found elsewhere.

Since man’s mind is his basic tool of survival, his means of gaining knowledge to guide his actions-the basic condition he requires is the freedom to think and to act according to his rational judgment. This does not mean that a man must live alone and that a desert island is the environment best suited to his needs. Men can derive enormous benefits from dealing with one another. A social environment is most conducive to their successful survival—but only on certain (...) conditions. (shrink)

IntroductionLittle is known about risk factors for both Long COVID and somatic symptoms that develop in individuals without a history of COVID-19 in response to the pandemic. There is reason to assume an interplay between pathophysiological mechanisms and psychosocial factors in the etiology of symptom persistence.ObjectiveTherefore, this study investigates specific risk factors for somatic symptom deterioration in a cohort of German adults with and without prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.MethodsGerman healthcare professionals underwent SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody testing and completed self-rating questionnaires at baseline (...) and 21 months later between April 2020 and February 2022. Differences in variables between the time points were analyzed and a regression analysis was performed to predict somatic symptom deterioration at follow-up.ResultsSeven hundred fifty-one adults completed both assessments. Until follow-up, n = 58 had contracted SARS-CoV-2 confirmed by serology. Between baseline and follow-up, signs of mental and physical strain increased significantly in the sample. Symptom expectations associated with COVID-19 and a self-reported history of COVID-19, but not serologically confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, significantly predicted somatic symptom deterioration at follow-up. A further predictor was baseline psychological symptom burden.ConclusionsThis study supports a disease-overarching biopsychosocial model for the development of burdensome somatic symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic and supports research findings that symptom burden may be more related to the psychosocial effects of the pandemic than to infection itself. Future studies on Long COVID should include SARS-CoV-2 negative control groups and consider symptom burden prior to infection in order to avoid an overestimation of prevalence rates. (shrink)

RésuméCet article part d'une lecture inhabituelle, inégalitaire, du terme fiṭra dans le Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān d'Ibn Ṭufayl ; cette lecture modifie de façon conséquente notre compréhension de l'ensemble de l’œuvre. Nous verrons qu’à des moments cruciaux de la démonstration, il n'utilise le terme fiṭra que pour décrire la capacité des êtres à raisonner, ce qui implique qu'un fossé divise l'humanité et défie les acceptions ordinairement égalitaires de la fiṭra. Ce fossé éclaire, selon moi, les implications politiques du conte. Alors qu'Ibn (...) Ṭufayl insiste sur la compatibilité entre la philosophie récemment parvenue en Andalousie et celle, plus établie, de la religion révélée, il montre, à l'aide de la fiṭra, que la vie philosophique n'est destinée qu’à un petit nombre. Prêter attention à l'usage qu'Ibn Ṭufayl fait de la fiṭra peut aider à expliquer l'une des raisons pour lesquelles il écrivit ce conte pour la cour. Son message global accentue le rôle de la religion et tempère l'importance politique de la philosophie de deux façons : d'une part, en avançant que seuls quelques individus choisis sont capables d'accéder à la vérité indépendamment de la révélation ; d'autre part, en refusant à ces êtres exceptionnellement doués la capacité de communiquer leurs découvertes aux masses. (shrink)

Some of Catherine Malabou’s recent work has developed her conception of plasticity (originally deployed in a reading of Hegelian Aufhebung ) in relation to neuroscience. This development clarifies and advances her attempt to bring contemporary theory into dialogue with the natural sciences, while indirectly indicating her engagement with the French tradition in philosophy of science and philosophy of medicine, especially the work of Georges Canguilhem. I argue that we can see her development of plasticity as an answer to some specific (...) shortcomings in Canguilhem’s conception of organic or biological normativity as advanced in The Normal and the Pathological . Such a view of plasticity shows its potential to provide the basis for a powerful critical engagement with contemporary conceptions of selfhood, self-transformation, subjectivation, and the general theory of norms. (shrink)