The growing assumption thattransnational corporations (TNCs) will apply``best practice'''' and ``international standards''''in their operations in developing countries hasseldom been checked against close observationof corporate behavior. In this article, Ipresent a case study, based on field research,of one voluntary initiative to useinternational standards and best practice forenvironmental protection in the AmazonRainforest, by a US-based oil company,Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) in Ecuador. The moststriking finding is that the company refuses todisclose the precise standards that apply toits operations. This, and the refusal todisclose (...) other important environmentalinformation, make it impossible to verifyindependently Oxy''s claims of environmentalexcellence, or assess the effectiveness of theinitiative. At the same time, Oxy uses theinvocation of international standards to wrapitself in a veneer of corporate responsibility;reassure government officials and localresidents; cultivate confusion about standardsand practices that apply to the operations;deflect meaningful oversight and transparency;and arbitrarily legitimize norms that have beendefined by special interests. In short,international standards offer great promise forneeded environmental improvements; but can alsobe used to impede, rather than advance,corporate responsibility and the development ofeffective environmental law at the nationallevel. These findings suggest that for theapplication of international standards to bemeaningful, the international community needsto move beyond statements of principle anddevelop mechanisms that can be used toevaluate, verify, and monitor independentlyenvironmental claims by TNCs. (shrink)

As an important tool to influence stakeholders’ perception, leader messages, subsumed under public relations discourse, play an integral role in corporate communication. Drawing on the analysis of linguistic move structure and communication styles employed by researchers, this study adopts a multidimensional framework by using both discourse and quantitative analysis to compare how leaders in Global 500 corporations in China and the United States rely upon specific linguistic features to engage stakeholders in corporate discourse published on their websites. The (...) results show pertinent differences in communication styles, where Chinese corporations tend to be more instrumental, elaborate and competitive while US corporations are more affective, succinct and harmonious. These observations depart from previous findings on interpersonal communication styles in cross-cultural research. This study also extends the boundary of corporate genre analysis by suggesting that the moves adopted in the structure of corporate messages are highly specific to the particular genre. (shrink)

Ethical issues that arise because of the transcendent power of globally oriented corporate entities vis-a-vis local communities. Common problems arise from plant closings and automation, here illustrated by cases of restructuring in Indiana. Public use limitations on "eminent domain" decisions are considered. Then attention turns to the lack of constraints available to regulate decisions made by a transnational corporation. Limited applicability of Rawls's contract theory is noted, then ten real-world space-time situations are reported that involve legally uncontrolled harm to (...) locals due to supra-community control by a corporation. (shrink)

When the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed by the US Congress in 1976, its advocates pointed to new generation of genotoxicity tests as a way to systematically screen chemicals for carcinogenicity. However, in the end, TSCA did not require any new testing of commercial chemicals, including these rapid laboratory screens. In addition, although the Environmental Protection Agency was to make public data about the health effects of industrial chemicals, companies routinely used the agency’s obligation to protect confidential business information (...) to prevent such disclosures. This paper traces the contested history of TSCA and its provisions for testing, from the circulation of the first draft bill in the Nixon administration through the debates over its implementation, which stretched into the Reagan administration. The paucity of publicly available health and environmental data concerning chemicals, I argue, was a by-product of the law and its execution, leading to a situation of institutionalized ignorance, the underside of regulatory knowledge. (shrink)

The paper contrasts the economic, ethical, and organizational differences in the U.S. and Europe, as well as the differences in governance and leadership between U.S. and European managers, and how these differences impact decision-making and governance of U.S. and European businesses. In addition, the paper explores and contrasts select ethical and cultural issues between managers on both sides of the Atlantic. It is the authors' view that on both sides of the Atlantic we embrace the call for more ethics in (...) our lives and we expect it from our business leaders and our business dealings. However, in the markets we consistently have seen a short-term orientation of corporate outcomes. It is hoped that there will be a silver lining to the current economic crisis that will help move us away from this position which makes things like ethics, long-term virtues, fairness, all nice to talk about but somewhat estranged from the realities that are practiced in businesses. It remains to be seen if U.S. organizations, business schools and business leaders will change this current position more rapidly than in Europe. The authors are confident, however, that businesses and governments on both sides of the Atlantic will make all efforts for a pronounced transition to integrate ethics into the real strategic thrusts of conducting business. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article explores how neoliberal and populist elements were initially fused in US political talk to legitimize the expansion of corporate power and socioeconomic inequality that has occurred over recent decades. Applying neo-Gramscian critical semiotic analysis to speeches, news texts and legislative statements about the 1981 Reagan economic plan, I illustrate how a distinctive neoliberal-populist discourse articulates signs of ‘the American people’ with signs of market individualism, and further connects these signs to the neoliberal political project’s policy moves (...) to roll back state protections and deliver large tax cuts. Neoliberal populism is a paradigmatic instance of what Stuart Hall has termed the ‘trans-coding’ of distinct semantic elements to form a new hegemonic discourse. Through neoliberal-populist signifying processes, people who are deemed unable or unwilling to inhabit market-centric subjectivities, or to promote policies defined as ‘free market,’ are ideologically drawn outside the perimeters of social esteem and political legitimacy. These processes have created obstacles to imagining a unified, politically effective opposition to the neoliberal project in the United States. Moreover, by ideologically constructing ‘the American people’ as anti-statists in the realm of economic and social welfare policy, neoliberal-populist discourse makes it difficult to articulate democratic values and practices with the state as a mechanism through which greater economic equality and substantive democracy could be realized. My analysis illuminates the immediate historical roots of a public discourse with deep anchors in popular common sense which continues to pervade official US policy talk. The cultural resonance and political influence of neoliberal-populist discourse help to explain the persistence of the neoliberal project in the USA. (shrink)

In Ideen II Edmund Husserl delineates the three spheres which constitute the reality which human being is and this way introduces us to a different anthropologywhich is fruit of his phenomenological analysis. The tri-partite analysis of the human subjectivity, in Ideen II provides us with an anthropology which is a sound foundation for a new psychology (phenomenological psychology) where the analyses of the lived-experiences is an instrument to understand the psychic acts. Husserl after having known the psychology, a science of (...) the subjectivity and which is interrelated with the corporeality, proposes a psychology which is in connection with the nature and only in this connection it can be realized fully. In this way the concept of purely phenomenological psychology serves also to clarify what the fundamentally transcendental science i.e. transcendental phenomenology is. The phenomenologicaly transcendental psychology developed by Husserl is completely a new science of consciousness in respect to all the other historical forms of psychology and other sciences which study consciousness. As phenomenological psychology moves in its natural attitude towards the world (Welteinstellung), it has access to all the positive sciences and in this way it can be called science of all sciences. (shrink)

Today's sweatshops violate our notions of justice, yet they continue to flourish. This is so because we have not settled on criteria that would allow us to condemn and do away with them and because the poor working conditions in certain places are preferable to the alternative of no job at all. In this paper, we examine these phenomena. We consider the definitional dilemmas posed by sweatshops by routing a standard definition of sweatshops through the precepts put forward in the (...) literature on justice and virtue ethics. We conclude that fixing on definitions is pointless and misleading and that we are better off looking at whether or not a workplace violates the basic human rights of workers and whether or not the working conditions there cohere with situations on which we have already rendered judgments. In the end, we suggest guidelines for businesses that operate in the global workplace to help them avoid charges of running sweatshops. These recommendations account for the harsh living conditions in certain developing and emerging countries as well as the norms of societies in developed countries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Violence Is Not an Evil”Ambiguity and Violence in Simone de Beauvoir’s Early Philosophical WritingsAnn V. MurphyThe recent translation and compilation of several of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical essays from the 1940s shed new light on Beauvoir’s understanding of the relationship between ethics and violence. While these essays predate the publication of The Second Sex (1949) and do not concern themselves with the subject of feminism per se, Beauvoir’s philosophy (...) of violence as it is outlined in both “Pyrrhus and Cineas” (1944) and “An Eye for an Eye” (1948) speaks to one of the more thoroughgoing concerns in contemporary feminist philosophy; namely, the nature of the relation between corporeal vulnerability, violence, and ethics. Together with The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948), these early essays probe the difficulties in moving from an ontology in which violence appears to be inexorable to the terrain of ethical prescription. This essay urges recognition of the continuing relevance of Beauvoir’s philosophy in relation to the renaissance of interest in the theme of vulnerability in contemporary feminist theory. I argue that Beauvoir’s philosophy provides one of the most sophisticated accounts to date of the ethical problems posed by the experiential ambiguities of violence, and that her legacy in this regard is as important and redemptive as ever. More precisely, I read Beauvoir’s early conception of ambiguity as the philosophical predecessor to contemporary deconstructive accounts of corporeal vulnerability.Discourse on the body has governed the evolution of feminist philosophy. Recently, however, the nature of the body under investigation has changed. Whereas previously the critique of the nature/culture distinction dominated [End Page 29] feminist debates regarding the social construction of sex and gender, recent feminist work has consolidated around another conceptual pairing; namely, vulnerability and aggression. In reference to Beauvoir’s philosophical corpus, this recent development is interesting. Her magnum opus, The Second Sex, has attracted more attention because of its centrality in the debates over the social construction of sex and gender, a debate that has dominated feminist philosophy for the last several decades. Indeed, many laud this text for being ahead of its time with regard to the acknowledgement that “one is not born a woman,” but rather becomes one. This essay argues that Beauvoir’s early texts are similarly prescient with regard to the current preoccupation with the philosophical themes of violence and vulnerability. By tracing the development of Beauvoir’s idea of ambiguity, I argue that her conception of the body as the site of both aggression and vulnerability both anticipates and continues to productively address the problem of how one moves from a descriptive ontology to the terrain of ethics. This is a movement that Beauvoir arguably theorized more rigorously than either Maurice Merleau-Ponty or Jean-Paul Sartre, neither of whom published such sustained philosophical work on ethics in his lifetime.1I. Ambiguity in Beauvoir’s Early WorkIn The Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvoir’s reflections on ethics come from a resolutely secular, existentialist perspective. Beauvoir—like her contemporaries in French existential phenomenology—understood human existence to be essentially marked by failure. Importantly, this failure is not vicious; rather, it is the consequence of the fact that human freedom can only ever be determined in scenes of constraint. Despite her resistance to the universal aspirations of Kant’s ethics, Beauvoir’s understanding of subjectivity as failure is consonant with the Kantian rendering of the ethical agent as a being for whom reason does not infallibly determine the will; indeed, an agent for whom reason is necessarily undone by certain inclinations and contingencies.2 For Kant, it made no sense to speak of the will unless one was referring to a being that had the capacity to act in accord with reason but did not infallibly manage to do so. Hence, ethics is an issue for us precisely to the degree that we are capable of failure. In this sense, ambiguity and failure mark the human condition and our distance from the divine. Only a being whose existence is marked by this inadequacy would ponder right and wrong, would debate the nature of ethical atrocity and recovery, and would anguish over the... (shrink)

In a context of pervasive digitalization of the social world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of education has undergone major changes with the development of digital practices and settings. However, the physical presence of the subjects and the body remain something primordial and irreplaceable in traditional educational processes. Thus, it is often assumed that virtuality is opposed to the corporeal reality of the subjects involved in teaching, learning and studying. In this paper we aim to critically (...) challenge this assumption by addressing the phenomenon of virtuality in a more original sense: as a fundamental dimension of corporeality itself. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological insights, we argue that the experience of the virtual is inherently embodied and fully real. We understand corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena. At the same time, this leads us to rethink the digital as only one possible medium in which virtuality can appear as inherent to embodied experience. We develop our phenomenological approach in three instances. First, we question and bracket two common assumptions about corporeality. From our critical perspective, assumptions about a disembodied digitality and a devirtualized corporeality represent extremes within which educational discourses currently move. Second, we address the inherent virtuality of embodied experience. We outline the heuristic concept of the virtual body to describe corporeality and virtuality as entangled and multidimensional phenomena that encompass extension, intercorporeality and intermediality. Finally, we make some remarks on the relationships of corporeality and virtuality considering the challenges of digital education. (shrink)

The theme of this issue of Ethical Perspectives is the French tradition in liberal thought, and the unique contribution that this tradition can make to debates in contemporary liberalism. It is inspired by a colloquium held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in December of 2008 entitled “In Search of a Lost Liberalism: Constant, Tocqueville, and the singularity of French Liberalism.” This colloquium was held in conjunction with the retirement of Leuven professor and former Dean of the Institute of Philosophy, André (...) Van de Putte, who found much inspiration in this tradition. A revised version of his valedictory lecture from the conference serves as the final contribution to this issue. Much contemporary liberal political philosophy is currently done in conversation with a line of liberal thinkers starting with John Locke, running through Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and culminating in the work of John Rawls and his followers. The reasons for the enormous appeal of this philosophical tradition are, among other things, the combination of the central role of the intuitively appealing value of individual liberty with a strong rationalistic, universalistic, and normative character. The thread running through most of these liberal theories is a commitment to what the French liberal Benjamin Constant referred to as “the liberty of the moderns,” that is, liberty in a negative sense, as a lack of interference in one’s activity from others and from government. This focus has expanded over time to include a richer body of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, for instance, in the work of liberal thinkers who have tried to integrate the insights of communitarian thought and discourse ethics in their work. However, the emphasis on individual liberty in the negative sense continues to be the normative and theoretical touchstone and default position for many contemporary liberal theories. The limitation of the canon of liberal thought to the aforementioned authors and themes deprives the contemporary debate of a rich source of ideas: the French liberal tradition. Montesquieu, considered to be the father of this tradition, provides a good example of how it can enrich current debates in liberal theory. Montesquieu’s work evinces a keen eye for the dynamics of power relations and the limitations of the power of the better rational argument. His insight that power can sometimes only be checked by an equal and opposing power, so that a system of separation and balance of powers is necessary in order to preserve liberty, is reflected in the foundations of most modern democracies. Montesquieu also argues that contingent environmental, historical, social and economic conditions play a dramatic role in determining what kind of government is appropriate for a particular society. On his view, ignoring these facts when framing a government can inadvertently end in despotism. Montesquieu’s observations challenge us to reexamine some of contemporary liberalism’s universalist and rationalist claims. Benjamin Constant is most famous for his distinction between two kinds of liberty: the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The ancient form of liberty manifested itself in the active political participation of citizens in the ancient republic. While this form of government and decision-making was suitable for small, homogeneous city-states, Constant argues that it is impracticable for large modern nation-states. Hence, the concept of modern liberty shifts to an emphasis on the rule of law and the non-interference of the state in private matters. This form of liberty is familiar to us from contemporary liberalism – and Constant cherishes this form of freedom as much as any liberal does today. However, his position is complex: he also argues that the liberty of the ancients should not be neglected. Active political participation is needed to ensure that the government is executing its duty of preserving the modern form of liberty by publicly pointing out violations. The contemporary relevance of Constant’s work is clear when we consider the alleged “democratic deficit” that plagues the EU and international institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only does this democratic deficit threaten the modern form of liberty by placing decision-making processes out of sight of the people, it also threatens citizens’ sense of self-respect derived from self-governance. Constant’s argument for the necessity of combining the liberty of the ancients with that of the moderns provides a fruitful resource for confronting these contemporary issues. Tocqueville’s work on liberalism benefits from his opportunity to observe a society founded on liberal democratic principles – the United States of America – in action. In his Democracy in America, he examines the social consequences, both intended and unintended, of building a society on ‘the equality of conditions’, as he defines ‘democracy’. Tocqueville sees a tension between the democratic value of equality and the aristocratic value of the rule of the best. He observes that democratic societies do not necessarily choose the best leaders and instead promote mediocrity instead of virtue, talent, and excellence. Democracy also confronts citizens with the threat of ‘soft despotism’, where a government that preserves the outer signs of the liberty of the moderns nevertheless controls the behavior of its citizens in minute detail through a system of detailed rules ostensibly aimed at their welfare. This paternalism is an even more insidious threat to liberal values than the hard variety of despotism, since it is so difficult to detect and done in the name of liberal values themselves. Taking Tocqueville’s observations seriously would add complexity to attempts to theorize about the modern social-democratic welfare state. The contributions to this issue supplement and critique mainstream liberal thought and its relation to contemporary issues through a serious engagement with the French liberal tradition. Annelien De Dijn’s contribution discusses Bertrand de Jouvenel, a lesser-known 20th Century representative of the French political tradition she terms ‘aristocratic liberalism’. This tradition has its roots in the work of Montesquieu, and emphasizes the importance of intermediary bodies, most importantly the aristocracy, in providing a check to the top-down power of despotic state authorities and the bottom-up power of revolutionary leveling tendencies, both of which threaten liberty. De Dijn situates Jouvenel in this tradition, but then indicates an important difference between his thought and that of his predecessors: his most significant work, On Power, is not only on French history, but on European history. Pointing to the enthusiastic reception of this work in the Anglophone world, she suggests that the rise of totalitarianism in Europe gave the anti-totalitarian features of aristocratic liberalism a broader appeal. Valentino Lumowa’s paper concerns Constant’s classic text, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Lumowa argues that in order to understand Constant’s piece, we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances and decipher the argumentative thrust inherent in the text. Following Stephen Holmes, he argues that to understand the shift Constant made in the second part of the text, we should read it within the context of the increasing influence of the ultra-Royalists in the legislature during the Bourbon Restoration. However, in contrast to Holmes, he contends that the spirit of both civic and individual freedom, which enlivens representative system, is the backbone of the text in its unity. Demin Duan’s essay investigates an apparent ambivalence between liberal and imperialist tendencies in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, which has already drawn some attention from Tocquevillian scholars. These interpretations of Tocqueville and his writings on empire generally agree that Tocqueville stands in a recognized tradition of liberalism, which is characterized by respect for human rights, individual freedom and a sense of universal humanism. On this standard view, Tocqueville’s support of imperialism represents nothing but an unfortunate breach of his own otherwise consistent liberal thinking. Duan’s article questions this standard position. By questioning the assumption of Tocqueville’s liberalism in the first place, he tries to gauge the influence of both the old republican tradition and the new liberal perspective on his thinking. In conclusion, he argues that Tocqueville’s overall thought, especially his notion of freedom, is very much informed by an old republican tradition. His support of French imperialism could be better understood from this perspective rather than be rendered simply as a deviation from liberal norms. Pawel Marczewski’s contribution is an attempt to show that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcends the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. He begins by juxtaposing this conception with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The essay then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Participants on both sides of the debate seem to be so devoted to showing that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against actual and possible threats to liberty that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that ‘to be free is to be guided by one’s own will’, contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to these discussions in contemporary political philosophy. Finally, André Van de Putte’s contribution, an adaptation of his emeritus speech that closed the conference on French Liberalism, appeals to Tocqueville in order to draw attention to the importance of intermediary, dialogical bodies in mitigating the implicit despotic tendencies of the democratic drive to equality. In Tocqueville’s view, the transition from the feudal corporate inequality to democratic individual equality was not a clean break. Rather, this transition is a continual process of democratization that is driven by a desire for equality, or egalité des conditions. This dissolution of distinctions of estate, class and status has the unintended consequence of concentrating the diffuse power of these entities into a centralized state, which is responsible for ensuring the equality of all under the law. This process leaves increasingly isolated and atomized individuals to face the power of a monolithic state in defense of their freedom, and moves toward a soft, paternalistic despotism. Constant’s freedom of the moderns is not sufficient to protect individuals from this centralized power. Democracy also requires the political freedom of the ancients. Van de Putte argues for a system in which atomized individuals organize themselves into intermediary bodies that, in a Montesquieuian balance of powers, can enter into dialogue with each other and the state on more equitable terms. Van de Putte’s contribution closes with a plea for a conception of democracy as a regime of dialogue. (shrink)

Because of the declining fiscal capabilities of the German welfare state and the resulting reductions in social services provided by the government, increasing attention has been given to the voluntary social engagement of businesses, often referred to as corporate citizenship. In that context, scholars and politicians alike have pointed to the United States as a country with a strong corporate citizenship culture and advocated a transatlantic transfer of the respective practices. Against this background, it is the first aim (...) of this paper to examine the socio‐economic environment for corporate citizenship in both countries. Second, it will be investigated if corporate citizenship is really practiced more widely in the United States than in Germany and what forms of corporate citizenship are used by businesses. For that purpose, the corporate citizenship activities of the 100 largest companies in the United States and Germany each will be analyzed. Results show that more US than German companies undertake corporate citizenship activities and apply a wider variety of different forms. The possibilities for a transatlantic transfer are limited because of the differences in the cultural and political systems of both countries. (shrink)

Here, I offer a candid response to bell hooks's call for a testimony to the “movement beyond a mere ‘us and them’ discussion” that purportedly informs contemporary radical and feminist thought on difference. In alignment with a tradition that includes bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aurora Levins Morales, I offer a personal testimony to the ways in which I—a middle-class, French, immigrant, continental-philosophy-bred incest survivor—envision both that movement and its limits. To establish these alliances means forming necessary communities. (...) I call on the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to propose an account of the production of such communities that does not depend only on shared lived experience, but also on shared marginal spatiality, temporality, and “medicinal history”. I suggest that on the one hand, Deleuze's philosophy of immanence may indeed find apt expression in the politics of integrity that hooks, Lorde, and Morales call for. On the other hand, a genuine politics of integrity may benefit from drawing on the philosophy of immanence, which alone offers alternatives to the traditional, oppositional models of difference informed by transcendence. Finally, I propose the concept of “immanent forgiveness” to capture the movement at issue. (shrink)

This article focuses on what bodies know yet which cannot be expressed verbally. We started with a problem encountered during conventional interviewing in an ex-mining community in south Wales when some teen girls struggled to speak. This led us to focus on the body, corporeality and movement in improvisational dance workshops. By slowing down and speeding up video footage from the workshops, we notice movement patterns and speculate about how traces of gender body-movement practices developed within mining communities over time (...) become actualised in girls’ habitual movement repertoires. Inspired by the works of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Erin Manning, a series of cameos are presented: room dancing; the hold; the wiggle; the leap and the dance of the not-yet. We speculate about relations between the actual movements we could see, the in-act infused with the history of place, and the virtual potential of movement. (shrink)

The urgency of the problem of climate change calls upon us to investigate the climate duties of agents beyond the state. Individuals are the most salient candidate in this respect. In section I, I argue that the idea that individuals might have duties to reduce their emissions raises difficult issues about individual difference-making. The rest of the chapter, then, focuses on what I take to be the third most-salient duty-bearer: large for-profit corporations. These entities have largely been overlooked in philosophical (...) discussions of climate-related duties. In Section II, I consider two possible reasons for this neglect, and argue that neither are good reasons. In Section III, I give a positive case for weighty and demanding duties for corporations, to cut back their present and planned emissions and to offset their past emissions. In Section IV, I bring the discussion full circle: corporations’ duties always imply duties for corporations’ members, that is, for the individuals who constitute the corporation. Drawing on earlier work, I give an account of who corporations’ members are and how their duties are structured. In heavily-emitting corporations, members prominently include managers, shareholders, and rank-and-file employees. So a range of individuals are on the hook after all, because the corporations that they constitute bear duties. Additionally, even non-members may have duties to act upon corporations, from the outside, with a view to inducing corporate duty-fulfillment. (shrink)

Organizational institutionalism has shown how institutional entrepreneurs can introduce new logics into fields and push for their broader acceptance. In academic science in the United States, however, market logic gained strength without such an entrepreneurial project. This article proposes an alternative “practice selection” model to explain how a new institutional logic can gain strength when local innovations interact with changes outside the field. Actors within a field are always experimenting with practices grounded in a variety of logics. When one logic (...) is dominant, innovations based on alternative logics may have trouble gaining the resources they need to become more broadly institutionalized. But if a changing environment starts systematically to favor practices based on an alternative logic, that logic can become stronger even in the absence of a coherent project to promote it. This is what happened in US academic science, as growing political concern with the economic impact of innovation changed the field’s environment in ways that encouraged the spread of local market-logic practices. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Motherhood According to KristevaOn Time and Matter in Plato and KristevaFanny SöderbäckThe state of the maternal has been disputed among feminists for quite some time. Julia Kristeva, whose work will be my focus of attention here, has been criticized for her emphasis on the maternal, particularly with regards to her alleged equation of maternity with femininity. Critics have suggested that such equation risks reducing woman to the biological function (...) of motherhood. Judith Butler, to give an example to which I will return at length, speaks of a “compulsory obligation on women’s bodies to reproduce” (Butler 1999, 115; I will refer to this text as GT for the remainder of this essay). Kristeva herself has noted that “it seems... difficult to speak today of maternity without being accused of normativism, read: of regression” (Kristeva 2003, 207).I will argue that Kristeva by no means reduces woman to the function of motherhood. Rather, she returns to the maternal body at least in part to free woman from this very reduction. By bringing the mother out of the shadows, she provides women with a past (a genealogy of their own, a community of women, a history hitherto repressed) and, simultaneously, with a future (in the sense of liberating them from predefined roles and positions—from motherhood as the only form of subjectivity available to them). It is exactly the future that is at stake when Kristeva speaks of the maternal, and more specifically, it is the possibility of temporal change that depends on it. The maternal body to which she urges us to return must, as I see it, be understood qua temporalization : that to which we return is temporal, moving, displacing, renewing. The return is neither nostalgic nor aimed at preserving some essential notion of motherhood—it makes possible [End Page 65] new beginnings, allowing for a future pregnant with change and transformation. Butler ends her critique of Kristeva with the following remark—one that is meant to describe what would happen if we stopped focusing on the mother in the way Kristeva has done hitherto: “The culturally constructed body will then be liberated, neither to its ‘natural’ past, nor to its original pleasures, but to an open future of cultural possibilities” (GT, 119). I will attempt to show that these words in fact capture Kristeva’s own project, that such “open future” is exactly what she is aiming at through her continuous return to the maternal body.The implication of this retrieval of the maternal is twofold: First, it situates Kristeva within a materialist tradition and allows her to articulate and inscribe a morphological-phenomenological legacy of embodiment contra merely constructionist or discursive narratives.1 Second, it gives her ground to rearticulate time as inseparable from space and thus to challenge and overcome the deep-rooted tradition that divides time and space alongside a mind-body dualism. Surprisingly, perhaps, she establishes this ground by returning to a thinker who for many feminist scholars is the example par excellence of the very dualism that is put into question: Plato. This essay aims at carefully tracing Kristeva’s engagement with Plato, and I will argue that the breakdown of the distinction between time and space is to be found at the core of his writing. If, as I will argue here, the maternal body to which Kristeva returns must be understood not only as corporeal but also as a temporal principle, then we are forced to think through the intimate relation between temporality and materiality in ways that will come to challenge and renew the very materialist tradition that Kristeva herself most often is understood to represent.Kristeva’s earliest thematization of the maternal appears in her doctoral dissertation, Revolution in Poetic Language. It is here that she first articulates her notion of the semiotic chora, associating it with the maternal body and early heterogeneous drives.2 Kristeva herself picks up the Greek term chora from Plato’s Timaeus; a dialogue that more than anything deals with the question of beginnings, as it narrates the story of how the cosmos and its living creatures were created. I will turn both to the Platonic text and to... (shrink)

How can a confederation of business and industry influence companies and make them more aware of ethical issues? This article examines the work of Norwegian Business and Industry , and the results it has achieved. The author is Assistant Director of NHO, P.b. 5250, Majorstua, 0303 Oslo, and she has been responsible for its business ethics programme for the past three years. This article comes to us through the agency of our Associate Editor for Norway, Dr Heidi von Weltzien Høivik, (...) of the Norwegian School of Management, who has recently been instrumental in founding a Norwegian Centre for Business Ethics. (shrink)

By analyzing how Korea has upgraded its industrial capabilities in the course of corporate globalization, this article holds that some versions of developmental state work better in the globalization process. Globalizing national corporations, neoliberal optimism notwithstanding, does not necessarily result in upgrading domestic innovation capabilities. In the United States, free-market firms may benefit through offshoring, but they create holes in the industrial linkages or industrial commons at home, enfeebling US capability for innovation. By contrast, the Korean government successfully upgraded (...) domestic firms’ innovation capabilities and reduced the possibility of deindustrialization in the course of globalization by moving from classical developmentalism to a new form of development based on inclusive and collaborative networks. Korea’s earlier classical developmentalism focused on mobilization of physical capital, funneling it exclusively to a few firms. (shrink)

This paper aims to critically analyze one of the most impactful events reported from the Indian corporate scenario in recent years, from the premise of its aesthetic underpinnings. Our focus is on the ambitious 2008 all cash cross-border acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover businesses by Tata Motors Limited from Ford Motor Company, US. This move not only added stature to the already reputed brand but was also instrumental in positioning India in the global automotive arena. Using the Natyasastra, (...) an ancient Sanskrit scripture on Indian dramaturgy, as an aesthetic tool, we attempt to unravel the emotional performance depicted by various stakeholders partaking in the theatrics of the Jaguar Land Rover acquisition event. In the backdrop of theatrical performance, we examine the dialogical exchange between three distinct sets of actors, the firm, media, and equity market, to identify and elucidate the emotions they predominantly depict in the Jaguar Land Rover acquisition. This paper’s over-arching goal is to shift the preoccupation with metrics of organizational performance to focus instead on the emotional performance manifested through organizational activities, using an aesthetic and essentially Indian performative perspective. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 30.4 (2000) 38-58 [Access article in PDF] Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead Andrew Norris Death is most frightening, since it is a boundary. —Aristotle, Nicomachean EthicsAnd as the same thing there exists in us living and dead and the waking and the sleeping and young and old: for these things having changed round are those, and those having changed round are these. —Heraclitus, Fragment (...) 88 What is politics today? What is its relationship to the tradition from which it emerges? The questions are difficult ones to answer in part because contemporary politics seems so schizophrenic. In affluent Western countries politics is increasingly a matter of spectacle on the one hand and managed economies on the other. Hannah Arendt seems quite confirmed in her claim that the once-glorious public realm of appearance is fundamentally degraded when it is overrun by concerns more appropriate to the private realm, such as household management and gossip. If this "unnatural growth of the natural" [47] inclines us to nostalgia for a time when the two realms were more decisively separated, such nostalgia is likely intensified by the "ethnic cleansing," rape camps, and genocide that we now associate with names such as "Yugoslavia" and "Rwanda." But as improbable as any flight to the past may be, it is even less likely that the politics of that past could help us navigate the treacherous waters of our current technological society. I have in mind not only the familiar claim that the attempted genocides of our time are only made possible by quite modern forms of technology, organization, and experience, 1 but also recent scientific and "medical" advances. Consider just two: first, the corporate driven and controlled development of biotechnologies, in which huge multinationals are acquiring patents to genetic "information" such as "all human blood cells that have come from the umbilical cord of [any] newborn child." If there is any doubt that such developments will lead us to redefine the human being, these may be laid to rest by the case of John Moore, an Alaskan businessman who found his own body parts had been patented, without his knowledge, by the University of California at Los Angeles and licensed to the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Corporation [Rifkin 60-61]. So much for Locke's attempt to ground the institution of private property in the fact that "every Man has a Property in his own Person"! 2 In its place we seem to be moving [End Page 38] toward something more like the "logical synthesis of biology and economy" called for by the National Socialist Institut allemand in Paris in 1942 [Agamben, Homo Sacer 145]. A similar process of redefinition is already underway in the field of death, a phenomenon that scientists and lawyers are having a harder and harder time pinning down. Where once death was defined by the cessation of the movement of the heart and lungs, recent life support technologies have forced scientists to define death in terms of such technologies. Witness Doctor Norman Shumway's defense of the definition of death as brain death: "I'm saying that anyone whose brain is dead is dead. It is the one determinant that would be universally applicable, because the brain is the one organ that can't be transplanted" [163]. By implication, if and when technology is developed that allows for brain transplants, even those whose brains are "dead" will be brought back to some kind of life, perhaps as organ farms for others who are less ambiguously alive.Giorgio Agamben, from whose book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life I take both this last grisly example and its analysis, argues that, contrary to appearances, such developments do not represent a radical break with the tradition. His analysis both builds upon and corrects Michel Foucault's claim that politics in our time is constituted by disciplines of normalization and subjectification that Foucault labels "bio-power." For Foucault, biopower is fundamentally modern. "What might be called a society's 'threshold of modernity,'" he writes, "has been reached when the life of the species is wagered... (shrink)

Indigenous peoples struggle to survive the policies of the colonial states and their ability to annihilate, make invisible, destroy and re-construct our ancient identities. This is my story. I am an Indigenous women to the country known now as Australia. I write from the inside, about our law and life ways which hare buried alive by a dominant colonizing culture. The tale of terra nullius, its capacity to bury us and its own capacity to survive and go on burying us (...) is told. It is a story which has a resonance beyond Australia, one that can be found throughout the world wherever there is struggle for the future of the planet, wherever there is struggle for diversity, and resistance to being consumed by corporate greed and complicit states. It is finally a story about hope for a way forward, and moving in a clear direction. A direction without illusion, one that braves the truth as to our future as diverse peoples of colour, laws and cultures, the bearers of generations to come. (shrink)

This volume concludes a series dedicated to the understanding of nature by philosophers, scientists, and technicians from antiquity to today. This understanding is an issue largely debated today by philosophers as well as nonphilosophers. Being the fourth and the last, this volume includes also an index rerum of the items dealt with in this as well as in the preceding three volumes. The seven essays it presents are primarily concerned with the positions of Newton, Kant, and Einstein. In fact, the (...) volume begins with a paper by Andreas Bartels on the understanding of nature according to the theory of relativity. Basing his essay on Michael’s Friedman interpretation of Kant’s reconstruction of Newtonian physics, Bartels points out that it is not correct to see in Einstein the accomplishment of the relational theory of space. Such an interpretation would require the following two assumptions: first, that Leibniz’s theory of space is the expression of a physical principle of relativity; second, that Einstein’s relativity implies the most complete form of relativity of movement. According to Bartels, one can debate about Leibniz, but the second assumption is surely false because Einstein’s theory does not imply a complete relativity of movement. On the contrary, Einstein maintains that it is matter, as a whole, that is in motion; and this is not far from what Aristotle said about matter’s essential, natural tendency to move. The Copernican cosmos was governed by fundamental laws, Newton transformed it into a contingent world of gravitational islands, and Einstein pushed further the transformation into a wider frame of possible spacetime experience. Manfred Stöckler’s paper deals with quantum theory. With regard to the debate on realism, that is, on the scope and validity of physical theories, Stöckler remarks that it is not true that quantum physics would give any further reason against realism that is not already given by classical physics and by everyday life. Michael Drieschner refers himself first to Kant’s concepts of “nature in material significance” and “nature in formal significance,” the former for the whole of the object in reality and the latter for the essences of things, and shows that in today’s physics the rigor of this distinction has faded. In fact, today’s science declares it impossible to identify anything like a whole of all objects. The ontology of classical physics has to give place to flexible concepts such as mesocosmos, that is, something between the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. In fact, scientists like Franco Selleri have recently advocated a new form of realism with regard to quantum theory, according to which the validity of quantum physics rests upon a very defined scope of local reciprocal actions, so that everything going beyond that must be doubted. Alfred Gierer turns to biology and especially to the question of biology’s reduction to physics. Against the reductionists, Gierer proves that, on the contrary, biology is founding not only all social behaviors, but also all forms of consciousness, that is, all forms of awareness of limits, therefore also man’s answer to the ecological crisis. Elisabeth Ströcker writes on nuclear scission as possibly inaugurating a new age of nature dominance, pointing out that the evaluation of the consequences of technical application proves rather the contrary. In the concluding paper, Lothar Schäfer sketches a new idea of nature as something to be taken care of. Referring himself to Husserlian phenomenology, Schäfer invites us to reconsider the standpoint of corporeity. What eventually counts for man’s understanding of nature is its physiological relevance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: -/- [99] JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:1 JANUARY 198 5 Book Reviews Kenneth Dorter. Plato's 'Phaedo': An Interpretation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. Pp. xi + 233. $28.50. Kenneth Dorter of the University of Guelph has given us a useful and unusual study of the Phaedo, which will attract the interest of a variety of Plato's readers. He provides the careful studies of the dialogue's (...) arguments for immortality to be expected in a sound commentary, paying close attention to the text as well as to recent scholarship, and displaying a good sense of argument. What gives the book additional interest, however, are its features as an interpretation of the Phaedo. Two stand out. First, Dorter wishes to give full weight not only to the logic of the arguments but also to the dramatic details of Plato's writing, believing these to be important in disclosing Plato's intentions. Secondly, he reads the Phaedo in light of a more general understanding of Plato's philosophy, especially the nature of the soul in its cosmic as well as individual aspects. Much of this is set out in a final speculative chapter, where Dorter seeks to make intelligible Plato's developing conception of soul by means of such notions as energy and poles of consciousness. Not every reader will be persuaded; but Dorter is to be commended for an attempt to move the discussion beyond the Phaedo and Plato's own vocabulary. The study gains its coherence from Dorter's belief that Plato's view of soul cannot support the ostensible aim of the dialogue, to provide reassurance of personal immortality. Although he has no doubt that for the Platonic Socrates there is "a meaningful sense in which we may be called immortal" (94, cf. 159), Dorter's analysis must be stretched to provide that sense. In part this is a result of his assessment of the arguments. The first, from reciprocity in nature, can at most show that, given the eternal nature of the world, soul and corporeality in general must continue to exist. The argument from recollection can point only to a non-empirical element in our knowledge ; that from the soul's kinship with the divine is best seen as an analogy developed to awaken within us a sense of eternity. The final argument, though containing fallacies (157), will support the conclusion that immortal soul is imperishable as long as soul is regarded as motive force in the universe, in the first argument's sense. In none of these discussions, then, can Plato's reasoning yield up personal survival. But there is another part to Dorter's case, underlying this conclusion. For Plato the individual human being is a composite of soul and body; so even if Plato were to prove the immortality of the soul he could never establish personal survival (63-64). It is not surprising then that Dorter is left with a doctrine of immortality either reduced to a "discovery of eternity within ourselves" (77), or else dissolved into a principle of enduring cosmic energy. So in neither case does it seem meaningful for Plato to say that we are immortal: the eternal which we sense is no more us than it is anything else. Although it is of course possible that Plato did not intend this consequence of his arguments, Dorter thinks otherwise. In support he invokes literary features of the dialogue to argue that Plato operates on one level for the less sophisticated (who wish to be persuaded of personal survival) and on another for the philosophically reflective reader. Dorter treats the textual evidence for this claim with an appropriate modesty, and tries to justify Plato's apparent duplicity as an attempt to convince the weak by a 'noble lie' (95-97). Nevertheless this leads Dorter to mix together too quickly for this reader popular religion, myth, and metaphor. To the fact that Plato does not espouse the language of popular religion literally, Dorter adds his own view of myth as an imaginative appeal to emotion that can be translated without loss into rational discourse (7, 165, a95). So the accounts of the afterlife at 8oc-84 b... (shrink)

Could international financial capital impose shareholder sovereignty on Japan, the ultimate bastion of stakeholder capitalism? As the Japanese economy descended from boom to bust in the early 1990s, government and industry leaders called for a decisive move toward US-style shareholder capitalism, and increasing foreign share ownership exerted strong pressure to adapt corporate governance practices to Anglo-American norms. In practice, however, the government gave firms more options for restructuring but did not make them more beholden to shareholders. Firms on their (...) part favored superficial adjustments to prop up share prices rather than fundamental changes, because they sought to preserve the strengths of their traditional business models. This article explains how marketplace developments, domestic political dynamics, and corporate strategies combined to produce the distinctive pattern of Japanese corporate governance reforms since the 1990s. It concludes with an assessment of the consequences of these reforms for managers, workers, shareholders, and the general public. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logics and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception by Dorothea E. OlkowskiElodie BoublilOLKOWSKI, Dorothea E. Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logics and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. 180 pp. Cloth, $63.00; paper, $28.00[End Page 152]Dorothea E. Olkowski's latest book carefully examines "the relationship between the creation of ideas and their actualization in relation to semiology, logic and (...) the cosmos in the philosophies of Deleuze, Bergson, and Merleau-Ponty." However, this work is neither an extensive or historical account of Deleuze's, Bergson's, and Merleau-Ponty's philosophies, nor an attempt to homogenize their views on space, time, or perception. Instead, it subtly compares their differences and similarities to move beyond metaphysical dualism, and fruitfully rethinks the relations between formal logic and ontology. Indeed, the author aims to draw a "theory of form," based on the logic of sensation, ultimately designed "to take the place of a theory of the real, of material physical forces."Chapter 1 retraces the history of postmodernist claims and their philosophical legacy. Olkowski explains that postmodernism is not first and foremost a political worldview or a debunking of objectivity in natural sciences. Instead, "it begins as a formal system or series of formal systems." Olkowski explores how Deleuze draws on the knowledge of modern science and logic (Bolzano, Cavaillès) and on Bergson's critical analysis of it to elaborate his logic of sensation. Bergson's conception of affectivity impacted Deleuze's and Merleau-Ponty's theories of corporeality and sensation, and their understanding of perception. Bergson's concept of "body image" specifically influenced Deleuze's elaboration of the concept of "movement-image," through which he tried to overcome the dichotomy set up by mind–body dualism.Chapter 2 focuses on Deleuze and Guattari's critique of logic as an attempt to find a third way between idealism and materialism and to overcome the disconnection between formal logic and lived experience. It reviews their critique of Euclidean geometry, their objections to formal logic as set out by Frege and Russell, and their assessment of phenomenology in order to eventually show Deleuze's affinity with Peirce's pragmatist approach. Then, the author aims to determine if Deleuze's attempt could be compatible with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Bergson's understanding of quality and multiplicity.Chapter 3 focuses on Bergson. Recalling the controversy with Russell, Einstein, and Langevin, Olkowski refers to Merleau-Ponty's defense of Bergson's concept of intuition to prove the accuracy of his reflection on creative forces and pure duration. As she explains, "[T]he intent here is to clarify the relations between these different aspects of Bergson's thought and draw out how Deleuze makes use of these structures derived from Bergson's philosophy." This leads her to explore, more specifically, how Deleuze reworks the concept of "multiplicity" along the lines of Bergson's analysis of the élan vital.In chapter 4 the author focuses on Deleuze's work on cinema to deepen the philosophical correlation between Bergson's concepts, Deleuze's analysis, and the influences of Merleau-Ponty and Pierce. It aims to rethink the relation between movement and time, notably through the notions of time-image and movement-image. Olkowski notably showcases Deleuze's concept of destiny, "which is the pure power of time that [End Page 153] overflows all possible reaction. It defeats, immobilizes, and petrifies figures in their own affectivity; it sends them to their fate, destroying conventions along the way. For Merleau-Ponty, as for Bergson, acts are still possible in a network of temporal relations so that motion and time are destiny but differently than for Deleuze."Chapter 5 addresses the Phenomenology of Perception and how Merleau-Ponty provides an opportunity to rethink perception. In this book and his Courses on Nature, Merleau-Ponty "does not dismiss either position—that of objective science or that of the natural attitude—but argues that although each contains an element of truth, it is perception and only perception that allows us to bridge the gap between physical reality and behavior/comportment." Deleuze will depart from... (shrink)

This paper discusses how Salvadoran companies practice corporate philanthropy in El Salvador, and what might motivate it. First, I briefly discuss three principal theories of corporate philanthropy, and explore some current trends in international corporate philanthropy to highlight some of the motives Salvadoran companies may have to participate in charitable activities. Then, I discuss the history of the Salvadoran private sector to help us understand philanthropic activity today. Next, I suggest that philanthropic acts by Salvadoran firms are (...) driven by altruistic and politically strategic motives, and reflect individualistic and paternalistic attitudes. In the discussion, I include examples of Salvadoran corporate philanthropy as it is practiced today, based on recent field research in El Salvador. (shrink)

This paper raises a challenge for those who assume that corporate social responsibility and good corporate governance naturally go hand-in-hand. The recent spate of corporate scandals in the United States and elsewhere has dramatized, once again, the severity of the agency problems that may arise between managers and shareholders. These scandals remind us that even if we adopt an extremely narrow concept of managerial responsibility – such that we recognize no social responsibility beyond the obligation to maximize (...) shareholder value – there may still be very serious difficulties associated with the effective institutionalization of this obligation. It also suggests that if we broaden managerial responsibility, in order to include extensive responsibilities to various other stakeholder groups, we may seriously exacerbate these agency problems, making it even more difficult to impose effective discipline upon managers. Hence, our central question: is a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility institutionally feasible? In searching for an answer, we revisit the history of public management, and in particular, the experience of social-democratic governments during the 1960s and 1970s, and their attempts to impose social responsibility upon the managers of nationalized industries. The results of this inquiry are less than encouraging for proponents of corporate social responsibility. In fact, the history of public-sector management presents a number of stark warnings, which we would do well to heed if we wish to reconcile robust social responsibility with effective corporate governance. (shrink)

Researchers tend to believe that bamboo "I" more concerned about practical, and more on the ruler the people rule the country road, or self-cultivation and the country contains only two types of content, rarely discussed cosmology and Dao. However, analysis of this article pointed out, Guodian bamboo "I", although incomplete because of missing, can not present a complete and systematic channel theory and cosmology, but such ideas are still very clear. Which show more about all things back to the text (...) attributed to road, but more the lack of road itself, and discussion of all things produced by the channel. However, in the nature of the road, bamboo so-called "independent non-hai" means nothing big road boundaries, more reasonable, if not more than this as a "stand-alone does not change," stressed the same channel and into the road easily and dynamic nature of the eternal confrontation between the problem. Bamboo "I" because of the Confucian interpretation of the impact of personnel or political considerations may intervene in the Road, or the textual representation of the universe, such as "WANG Yi-big", "there are four countries, Yan Wang Ju," and other statements, highlight the "King "The existence of taxonomic status, the personnel and the existence of confusion. Sometimes, however, the influence of Confucianism can also help some of the papers in this universe purification, such as bamboo, "I," a the "between heaven and earth, and its initiatives and abandoned Yue? True and unyielding moving, but more out." period, less the object of Confucian benevolence few words of text and teaching people's advice, but more simply to save the universe in which this paper, I highlighted more clearly Bing empty space on the dynamic. For the interpretation of Confucian bamboo "I" "Germany" and "view" a greater impact on the basic concepts. "German" in the other book is a cosmological concept of the Central Plains; but in the bamboo in the "virtue" is only for people. As for the "concept" in the rest of all this in view of all things can be reverted to, as well as view the body, view home, view of town and watch the state and watch the world, but in bamboo, "I", only for the personnel of various units of the view layer, without of the "body" and "things" concept. "Concept" became the method applies only to personnel, lost cosmological meaning. The earliest manuscripts date Guodian bamboo corporations, but neither is the only transcript, it is difficult to convince me to the nearest original. One kind of transcript is often a kind of interpretation of the text lead to ideas, and ideas for all of the text should be text data. Guodian bamboo "I" is only just a sympathizer of the transcript from the Confucian, in addition, there are other more dollars transcript "instead of allowing" close to the original "ideas that shape our interpretation of a text, it is better to keep" multiple text "idea , open minded, so that each text have encountered trigger contemplation, thinking of the rich gain. The Guodian Bamboo Texts of Lao Zi, discovered in 1993, though the earliest texts we now possess, do not give support to the idea of ​​a linear development from Kuodian Texts to Silk texts, then from Silk texts to other texts such as those of Wang Bi among others'. I contend the concept of "multiple texts", in which the copying of texts or the integration of one text in a collection of texts could be thought of as inevitably imbued with interpretations. The Guodian Bamboo Texts of Lao Zi were susceptible to Confucian or pro-Confucian interpretations, by which not only those critiques of Confucian basic concepts such as Ren and Yi were minimized, but also the Taoist ontology and cosmology were thereby affected. Many scholars sustain the position that Guodian Lao Zi were more pragmatically oriented or that they contained only two categories of thought, one about self-cultivation, another about the art of governing, whereas the discourse on Dao and cosmology were neglected. But I demonstrate in this paper that the Guodian texts, though incomplete in themselves, still gave us very clear ideas of a discourse on Tao and a cosmology. In general, the Guodian Lao Zi emphasized more the way by which all things return to Dao, rather than on Tao itself and its process of producing all things. Concerning the attributes of Dao, the emphasis on the "boundlessness" of Dao is more reasonable than other versions of texts such as Wang Bi's and the Silk text Lao Zi, in which we read that Dao is "changeless", creating thereby a contradictory situation between Dao's eternity and its dynamicity. On the one hand, the Confucian interpretation might put political and human considerations into ontological and cosmological considerations; on the other hand, it could also purify some cosmological texts by dropping some texts criticizing the Confucian concepts of Ren and the sage. The most evident Confucian intervention into The Guodian Lao Tzu could be found in the concepts of Virtue De) and Retracing View The concept of Virtue had lost its cosmological meaning and was reserved merely for describing human virtue. As to the concept of Guan, the retracing regard, which was applied to all things and even Dao itself in other texts, was limited to merely human social affairs and loses its cosmological meaning totally in Guodian's texts. (shrink)

The US has built the most extensive immigration detention system globally. Over the last three administrations, several organizations have noted a systemic failure in the provision of health care in detention centers, leading to the torture and death of immigrants. This essay develops the principle of the preferential option for the poor to examine the causes of deficient access to health care and solutions to overcome them. It analyzes the substandard health care in detention centers from the notion of structural (...) violence and systematizes solutions of grassroots immigrant organizations from the idea of solidarity, understood here as a form of friendship with the poor that moves toward relational justice. Its goal is to build bridges between people so that the political will is generated to create policies to improve and enforce health care standards in detention centers and address the unjust foundations of immigration detention. (shrink)

This book covers key discussions involving major US and European multinational companies (MNCs) that source products from suppliers in developing countries. Due to the transfer of production from developed to developing nations, there is an urgent need to establish social compliance as a new form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and a means by which MNCs can meet expected social standards. The cases described are internationally relevant and can be seen to reflect or represent the behavior of many MNCs (...) and their suppliers in developing nations. The discussion offers essential insights into how different levels of social compliance risk and pressure (including broader stakeholder concerns) move managers to adopt or embrace particular social compliance accounting, reporting and auditing strategies. The book will help readers to understand the major concerns, challenges and dilemmas faced by management in the supply chains of MNCs, and proposes measures that can be taken to resolve those dilemmas. Most importantly, it develops a systematic method of assessing the social compliance performance of suppliers to MNCs. This includes highly detailed accounts of the social compliance performance of suppliers within the clothing industry (in a developing nation) that supply goods to the extensive US and European markets. The book offers a valuable guide, not only for corporate managers but also for practitioners, researchers, academics, and undergraduate and postgraduate business students. (shrink)

Using data on shareholder-initiated class action lawsuits in the US, I investigate the corporate scandals of US-listed foreign firms. The shareholders of scandal firms suffer considerable loss in both the short term and the long term. I document that firms domiciled in countries with weak institutions are more likely to be embroiled in corporate scandals, but such a relation can be moderated by the presence of Big 4 auditors. Investors automatically adjust for undiscovered misconduct when valuing the stocks (...) of non-scandal firms. Investors rely on the audit quality to form their expectations about the severity of undiscovered misconduct, and thus impose less negative spillovers on firms with Big 4 auditors, especially when the firms are from countries with weak institutions. Taken together, my results suggest that listing on US exchanges does not fully compensate for weak local institutions; voluntarily bonding to a more stringent audit process has an incremental effect on protecting shareholder interests and enhances the confidence of investors in firms’ financial integrity. (shrink)

According to the doxastic compatibilist, compatibilist criteria with respect to the freedom of action rule-in our having free beliefs. In Booth (Philosophical Papers 38:1–12, 2009), I challenged the doxastic compatibilist to either come up with an account of how doxastic attitudes can be intentional in the face of it very much seeming to many of us that they cannot. Or else, in rejecting that doxastic attitudes need to be voluntary in order to be free, to come up with a principled (...) account of how her criteria of doxastic freedom are criteria of freedom. In two recent papers, Steup (Synthese 188:145–163, 2012; Dialectica 65(4):559–576, 2011) takes up the first disjunct of the challenge by proposing that even though beliefs cannot be practically intentional, they can be epistemically intentional. McHugh (McHugh forthcoming) instead takes up the second disjunct by proposing that the freedom of belief be modelled not on the freedom of action but on the freedom of intention. I argue that both Steup’s and McHugh’s strategies are problematic. (shrink)

This paper proposes two interrelated arguments: first, it is argued that agro-commodity traders are uniquely placed at the crossroads of agricultural trade to benefit from agricultural commodity speculation; and second, that the networks constituting their operations are central to their hedging activities. The case of Cargill—the largest privately owned company in the United States and one of the largest agricultural traders in the world—is used to support this argument by unpacking its operations, structure, and hedging strategies. In order to connect (...) the operations of Cargill to its speculating strategies, this paper first traces how agriculture and finance have become increasingly intertwined leading to heightened agricultural commodity speculation. Second, Cargill will be positioned within this process by analyzing how it has financialized its own strategies and its Corporate Platform. Third, Black River Asset Management, Cargill’s private equity arm, will be analyzed to show how it uses the information moving through Cargill’s Platform to engage in hedging and/or speculation. (shrink)

This article examines the influence of the City law firms, operating through their representative body, the City of London Law Society, in shaping the?professional rules governing conflicts of interest in England and Wales, including a recent failed attempt to allow firms to act for sophisticated clients on either side of the same transaction.? It compares English developments with those in the US and Canada finding that, in all three, it is argued that conflicts rules should be relaxed to meet the (...) needs of sophisticated clients and address the economic realities of legal practice. It argues however that in England the CLLS lobbied for change to promote the economic interests of large law firms whilst paying scant regard to the public interests in publicly owned companies having independent representation, in lawyers maintaining independence from powerful clients, in promoting competition, and in maintaining public confidence in the profession.?It considers what this tells us about corporate lawyers? approach to their professional role. Finally it considers the future of conflicts regulation in large firms in England and Wales given the introduction of alternative business structures and the move to principles based, outcomes focussed, and entity regulation. (shrink)

Since the turn of the lastcentury, Michigan farmers, elevators, and stategovernment have used production and processstandards to shape the dry bean industry totheir interests and set a worldwide standardfor quality dry beans. Over the last 20 years,however, multinational agro/food firms haveintroduced their market criteria into standardssetting, and recent changes in Michigan beanstandards largely accommodate the interests ofthese firms. A review of the changes in thesestandards over time allows us to explore howconcepts of accountability and control improveour understanding of changes in (...) the structureand operation of food production and marketing.What is the measure of state governmentaccountability to corporate capital and to thestate's bean farmers? In what ways can farmersuse standards to re-assert their priorities andgain a greater measure of influence overmarketing? What challenges do changing qualitystandards pose for public research as well asfor the institutions representing Michiganfarmers and elevators? (shrink)

The film Female Perversions (1996) has received mixed reviews in newspapers and popular magazines. Critics have made appreciative comments on the powerful feminist message of the film, while many reviews registered frustration at the overuse of vulgarised Freudian psychoanalytic discourses in the film. Apart from those film reviews, however, many viewers have been somehow touched by the film and especially by the last scene, in which Eve physically ‘touches’ a girl’s face—though they do not know exactly why they felt the (...) film was so good. The difficulty of discussing the film Female Perversions lies in its contradictory appeal to the audience. While the film calls on the audience—most likely to be either ‘art-film’ fans or ‘professional’ viewers—to participate in the discussion about contemporary sexual politics, it eventually encourages them to suspend such a cerebral way of appreciating the film and to engage emotionally and physically in it as ‘lay’ cinema fans enjoy a nice entertainment movie. This apparently ‘highbrow’ film illuminates the very gap between the sophisticated analytic mode of film-watching and a more sensual and corporeal cinematic experience, and in a very subtle manner it invites us to move from the former mode of filmic experience to the latter. This paper aims to describe in words the film, the audience, and the intertwining of the two as a sensual, material, and corporeal being. For this purpose, this paper focuses on the moments of ‘touch’ in the film, the effect of which plays a crucial role in the subtle shift of the filmic mode mentioned above. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological reflection on touch, this paper textualises what happens when touch happens in the film, how touch serves to produce the power of the film, and how it works on us when we are watching it. (shrink)

There is a distinct lack of research into the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the banking sector. This paper fills the gap in the literature by examining the impact of corporate governance, with particular reference to the role of board of directors, on the quality of CSR disclosure in US listed banks’ annual reports after the US sub-prime mortgage crisis. Using a sample of large US commercial banks for the period 2009–2011 and (...) controlling for audit committee characteristics, board meeting frequency, and banks’ profitability, size and risk, we find evidence that board independence and board size, the two board characteristics usually associated with the protection of shareholder interests, are positively related to CSR disclosure. This indicates that, with regard to CSR disclosure, more independent boards of directors and larger boards are the internal corporate governance mechanisms which promote both shareholders’ and other stakeholders’ interests. Contrary to our expectations, CEO duality also impacts positively on CSR disclosure. From an agency-theoretical viewpoint, this suggests that powerful CEOs may promote transparency about banks’ CSR activities for their private benefits. While this could indicate that powerful CEOs are under particular pressure to appease stakeholders’ concerns that they might abuse their power by providing a high degree of CSR disclosure, it could also be a sign of managerial risk aversion or managers’ private reputational concerns. (shrink)

Development of carbon neutral energy sources is essential if the US is to reduce the release of greenhouse gases and the associated potential for global climate change. In the US a few giant corporations dominate the energy sector. Furthermore, there has been virtually no federal leadership on energy issues, and the awareness of the issues by the general public, let alone their understanding of them, is low. In Europe, the energy sector is also dominated by a few players, but the (...) higher awareness of the public, the long lasting efforts of NGOs and other stakeholders, in addition to the mandatory regulations (both at a national and an European level) has created a different “energy landscape”. Even in Europe, the current and pending reductions in CO2 emissions are still far short of what is required and the level of understanding of the issues by the public is still relatively low on both continents. In this paper, we identify and discuss the main politicalchallenges and drivers in the energy and climate debate, and we point out that while the energy sector has no interest to tackle greenhouse gas emissions without significantly greater public pressure, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in this sector could nonetheless play a key role in changing US energy policy, but at the same time is very unlikely to be sufficient by itself. (shrink)

From US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s 1933 judgement in Louis K Liggett Co v Lee to Matt Wuerker’s satirical cartoon “Corpenstein”, the use of Frankenstein’s monster as a metaphor for the modern corporation has been a common practice. This paper seeks to unpack and extend explicitly this metaphorical register via a recent filmic and graphic interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein myth. Whilst Frankenstein has been read as an allegorical critique of rights—Victor Frankenstein’s creation of a monstrous body, reflecting the (...) figurative construction of a body by rights discourse—the metaphoric notion of reanimating a ‘soulless corpse’ resonates with Edward’s Thurlow’s description of the corporation as having ‘no soul to damn’. By exploring the figurative and optical representations of this process of reanimating the body in Scott Beattie’s film I, Frankenstein and Kevin Grevioux’s companion graphic novel I, Frankenstein: Genesis, I would like to extend this metaphoric register, by examining the theological origin and nature of the corporate form. This theology is explicitly referenced in the film and graphic novel via the battle between Gargoyles and Demons, which dominates the plot and backstory. The role of Frankenstein’s monster—now called Adam—however, is about enabling the reanimation of thousands of corpses without souls for possession by the demon hoard headed by Prince Naberius, who in his alternative persona Charles Wessex, controls the Wessex Institute and Wessex Industries. This ‘corporate baron’ himself has devoted his ‘life’ to enabling the rediscovery of Frankenstein’s ability to reanimate the dead for the purposes of gaining immortality. This mythic framing, however, renders explicitly visible the nature and purpose of the corporate form itself—of capturing and reanimating life in a form of immortality via the mechanisms of perpetual succession. This visual rendering, of a metaphoric framing goes to show the way in which the optical nature of the dominant forms of popular culture—film, television, comic books—provide a means for seeing law’s metaphorical images and for thus unpacking, interrogating and rendering them anew. It argues for a shift from the image of the corporation as a monstrous body to one which involves relations of reciprocity, gratuitousness and gift. (shrink)

Sitting at the nexus of unchanging constitutional rights, constantly evolving social norms, and tensions between federal and state justice systems, defamation law in the US is exceedingly complex. In this work, I focus on a single conceptual and practical problem amidst this network: the fact-opinion distinction. This distinction—developed largely as a result of US Supreme Court decisions _Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc._ and _Milkovich v. Lorraine Journal Co._—states that, while opinions are protected under the First Amendment so long as they (...) do not imply “provably false” information, facts, if false, may always be actionable in a lawsuit for defamation. Thus, the judicial decision of whether an allegedly defamatory statement is fact or opinion is influential in determining whether a claim may move forward. In spite of the significance of this distinction, legal precedent and academic literature shows that there are no generally agreed upon characteristics to organize statements into these two categories. Using the framework of Appraisal Analysis (Martin and White, The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English, Palgrave Macmillan, London 2005), I examine a corpus of previously adjudicated defamatory language to answer the question: _how does expression of stance differ between judicially-determined statements of opinion and fact in defamation cases?_ This analysis reveals that judicially-determined opinions express more markers of attitude and expanding engagement than their factual counterparts. Ultimately, I argue that this research may be directly applied to the analysis of allegedly defamatory language in the US, and, in being so applied, may play a role in adding robustness to existing analytical procedures regarding the distinction between fact and opinion in defamation law in the US. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 195-198 [Access article in PDF] Implicit and Explicit Temporality Thomas Fuchs Keywords implicit/explicit temporality, embodiment, intersubjectivity, desynchronization, melancholia, schizophrenia Since Minkowski (1970), Strauss (1966), v. Gebsattel (1954), and Tellenbach (1980), temporality has been a main subject of phenomenological psychiatry. Drawing on philosophical concepts of Bergson, Husserl, and Heidegger, these authors have analyzed psychopathologic deviations of time experience, mainly from an individual point of (...) view, for example, as a slowing down or inhibition of lived time in depression or obsessive–compulsive disorder. Their analyses are still most valuable today, but may be carried further by introducing concepts such as embodied and intersubjective temporality into psychopathology. Martin Wyllie (2005), by opening up a wide scope of temporal phenomena and related concepts, makes a laudable effort to contribute to such a progress.In my commentary, I would like to propose a distinction that is suggested by much of Wyllie's analysis and may shed further light on psychopathology, namely between implicit and explicit temporality. If we look at a child while obliviously playing with his toys, lost to the world, we may assume that there is no sense of the time passing. Lived time runs with the movement of life, implicit in the child's experience of being engaged in his play and directed toward his goals. It "unfolds through the processes of bodily activity" (Wyllie 2005). Future and past do not stand out against the pure presence of "becoming." This implicit mode of temporality is retrieved every time that we are absorbed in what we are doing, and may even reach the climax of "flow experiences" (Csikszentmihalyi 1988) where the sense of time is lost in unimpeded, fluent performance.However, this changes when a gap arises between need and satisfaction, desire and fulfillment, or plan and execution. Now the future appears as a "not yet" or "yet to come," experienced as the temporality of awaiting, striving, or longing for. Time is felt as passing by and refusing the desired fulfillment; it becomes conscious or explicit. A similar gap arises between the present and something irretrievably lost, bringing the past to consciousness as a "no more." Again time is experienced explicitly, but now as moving on relentlessly and separating us from the lost object. The gap to the past may not be bridged any more: this is the temporality of missing or mourning. In both cases, explicit time arises as a negation of implicit or lived time (here my use of the term is a bit divergent from Wyllie's); it is experienced as a "not yet" or "no more," often with a component of displeasure or suffering (Fuchs 2001a, 2003)."Implicit" versus "explicit time" thus come near to another distinction well known in phenomenology, namely between the "lived" and [End Page 195] the "corporal body" (Leib versus Koerper). The first term refers to the body functioning in the tacit mode, as the medium of everyday performance. The second term points to the body as turning into the object of attention, for example, when it puts up resistance to our purposes, or is used as an instrument deliberately (Fuchs 2001b). In fact, implicit temporality and tacit performance of the body are nearly synonymous: Lived time may be regarded as a function of the lived body, opened up by its potentiality and capability. The more we are engaged in our tasks, the more we forget time as well as the body; we are, as it were, "inside time." On the other hand, in explicit temporality the body often appears in the corporal or explicit mode as well. For example, when falling ill, we experience our body no more as a tacit medium but rather as an object or obstacle, while we notice the slowing down of time and may even feel excluded from the movement of life. Thus, embodiment and temporality have a parallel background–foreground structure.I now try to carry these considerations further by including the intersubjective dimension of time. In an earlier paper, I describe the attunement of the living being to its environment as a continuous synchronization on the biological as... (shrink)

This study investigates the effect of each component of CEO compensation, including cash-based component (salary and bonus), equity-based component (stock grant and stock option), and other perks on disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information of global firms. The study uses 2SLS IV estimation method and a sample of 580 US-based firms in a seven-year period. The study finds that equity-based remuneration has a significant and positive impact on a firm's CSR disclosure while CEO salary, bonus, and other perquisites (...) have significant detrimental effects on CSR disclosure. The paper indicates that a CEO's motivation for CSR reporting might arise from stock grant and option; meanwhile, salary, bonus and other perks could demotivate the CEO in this regard. Our findings offer insight into designing CEO compensation packages to meet shareholders' interests and stakeholders' expectations for a sustainable business. (shrink)

In the article, “Precision Medicine for Whom? Public Health Outputs from “Genomics England” and “All of Us” to Make Up for Upstream and Downstream Exclusion,” Galasso focuses on how marginalized pe...

In this article it is suggested that the discourse entailing the realization of a dystopia of totalitarian surveillance, far from being a grounded fact, on the contrary, works as a screen sheltering us from the fact that we are reaching a point where we are nothing more than depersonalized, emptied forms of interest neither to corporations nor to each other; instead, we are moving towards the liquification of subjectivity as such. When our user data is “taken hostage” we are emptied (...) of personal features, submitted to a process of dissolution rather than prying surveillance. It is tempting to suggest that the various repetitions of the Orwellian theme is a basic fantasy protecting us from the ever increasing gaps in the global virtual order; working to cover up the real of digital capitalism following a desperate logic by which only nightmares suffice. What if the furthering of the digital paradigm, with its potential to add yet another layer of virtuality to experience leads, not to an increase of (Orwellian) control, but on the contrary overturns the house of cards of (symbolic) reality, exposing the core of the illusions of the self and the subject? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Queer Defamiliarisation: Writing, Mattering, Making Strange by Helen PalmerTrevor Norris (bio)Helen Palmer, Queer Defamiliarisation: Writing, Mattering, Making Strange Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020, 214 pp. ISBN 978-1-4744-3414-0Helen palmer is senior lecturer in English literature and creative writing at Kingston University in London and the author of Deleuze and Futurism: A Manifesto for Nonsense (2014). Her research examines queer theory, performance, literary modernism, gender, aesthetics, and feminist and Afrofuturist (...) fiction. Queer Defamiliarisation explores these ideas and also includes part of Palmer’s literary creative response to James Joyce. The project here is an inquiry into reading, thinking, writing, and pleasure and considers how language can change us when we experience the relationship between naming and the performance of identity as a material boundary: the places where our bodies, behavior, and language are subject to violence in gendered, sexualized, and racialized forms. Palmer also suggests how our own and others’ experiences of violence might be bound up with an aesthetics of linguistic and formal complexity, and she reimagines the difficulty of naming for violently excluded identities by reviewing a range of complex experimental and avant-garde literary works in which new identities can emerge. Showing us how we might understand the materiality of bodies, sense making, and desire in emancipa-tory ways, Palmer attunes us to a phenomenology of reading in which we [End Page 217] recognize how argument undergoes metamorphosis by always being a hybrid of theory, criticism, cultural history, appropriation, memoir, and experimental form. Palmer’s wide-ranging arguments speak about the porosity and mutual embeddedness of our selves, our language, our bodies and environments, and the queer processes of world creation that act on and emerge from these things. Placing her work with other texts that rethink gender, personhood and ecology through new materialisms is productive, therefore, and readers might find value in looking at Queer Defamiliarisation alongside Donna Haraway’s (2016) Staying with the Trouble, Timothy Morton’s (2019)Humankind, and Rebecca Tamás’s (2020) Strangers inasmuch as they think through the ethics and emergence of relatedness and examine what it means to play, be alongside, care for, and nurture other beings and their worlds. Palmer’s project stays with the kind of “serious and... lively” trouble that allows “unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost piles” (Haraway 2016, 4).The fertile landscape is mapped out in three introductions whose themes are explored in four chapters. Palmer transforms the early-twentieth-century Russian formalist concept of defamiliarization as literary and aesthetic device, the “paradoxical process that... restores sensations to things through a [linguistic] distancing that is also a re-proximation, an approximation, a touching” (9), by reading early- to mid-twentieth-century literary and cultural theorists such as Shklovsky, Brecht, and Jakobson through the ideas of contemporary queer, feminist, and decolonial scholars such as Sara Ahmed, Rosi Braidotti, and Vicki Kirby. She questions how the estrangement of naming operates for those whose bodies are not normatively gendered, racialized, and sexualized in relation to dominant forms of representation and power and explores concerns with and for queer, trans, decolonial, and feminist aesthetics. Throughout, she encourages us to think of the strangeness of language in relation to an ethics and an erotics of radical sympathy with the stranger because it is in the “continuous movement and continual transformation” (13) of naming, and categories of naming, that an emancipatory ethics can be found. This is a timely intervention by Palmer given current anxieties around naming gender and sex, and her argument seeks to move beyond “unhelpful binaries” to acknowledge the “infinite variations and permutations of existence and experience” (14).Palmer productively combines Sara Ahmed’s concept of disorientation from Queer Phenomenology (2006) with the psycholinguistic registers of Jakobson’s “contiguity and displacement” to suggest that queer defamiliarization is a performance of language and naming that “cleaves through and between sameness and difference,” “knocking signifiers loose and ungrounding bodies,” leading to “perceptual shifts and corporeal responses” that can “materially en-gender newness” (Palmer 17). From the start of the section “Spectaxa” (152), Palmer foregrounds the materiality of her text in increasingly modernistic excess to illustrate what we have been reading and... (shrink)