While there is extensive literature on both the expansion of human rights and solidarity movements, and on micro-solidarity and violent actions, here I ask what is the relationship between human rights, micro-solidarity and social action? Based on a case study of structured, face-to-face dialogue group encounters in the Israeli/Palestinian context, I draw on Randall Collins’s interaction ritual chain theory to demonstrate why emotional energy and the ritualization of historical narratives have very limited potential to translate into human rights-based moral actions. (...) Instead, I suggest, these encounters produce micro-solidarity that ascribes additional weight to ethnic categories, serving to polarize and homogenize groups along ethnic lines. (shrink)

This study explores how firms build organizational resilience (OR) through constructing their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. Based on the optimal distinctiveness theory, we propose that a firm may be able to simultaneously conform in scope and differentiate in emphasis in its CSR practices to meet the institutional and strategic needs of CSR, thus building OR. Using data collected from 574 Chinese listed firms during the unique setting of the COVID-19 pandemic, we provide evidence that CSR scope conformity enhances organizational (...) stability, whereas CSR emphasis differentiation enhances organizational flexibility during a transboundary pandemic period. Furthermore, firm competitive position strengthens the positive relationship between CSR scope conformity and organizational stability. Market concentration strengthens the positive relationship between CSR emphasis differentiation and organizational flexibility. This study contributes to the CSR and organizational resilience literature by highlighting the influence of CSR optimal distinctiveness on OR. (shrink)

Foucault's account of the shift from the sovereign, or juridical, to the disciplinary mode of power produces an understanding of the operations of power cast in terms of individuals' imbeddedness within networks of dependencies specified by `norms' that measure individual performance according to the principles of equivalency (solidarity) and difference (`ab-normality'). Individuals, therefore, must not understand themselves as finally ensnared or trapped by the specific distribution of power within which they find themselves. Under determinate conditions and according to precise strategies, (...) they can always modify power's grip upon themselves. Foucault finds interesting prototypes for this in the ethical practices of ancient Greece that, in his view, satisfied the human desire for rules and form at the same time that they gave scope to the human impatience for liberty. Foucault turns to them in his late work, believing that they may have something to offer in place of modern moral philosophy. (shrink)

In this innovative study, Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, suggesting that, instead of understanding human rights in a normative fashion, human rights should be treated as an ideology. Conceptualizing human rights as an ideology gives us useful theoretical and methodological tools to recognize the real impact human rights has on the ground. David traces the rise of the global phenomenon that is the human rights memorialization agenda, termed 'Moral Remembrance', and explores what happens once (...) this agenda becomes implemented. Based on evidence from the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine, she argues that the human rights memorialization agenda does not lead to a better appreciation of human rights but, contrary to what would be expected, it merely serves to strengthen national sentiments, divisions and animosities along ethnic lines, and leads to the new forms of societal inequalities that are closely connected to different forms of corruptions. (shrink)