The burgeoning literature on global value chains has recast our understanding of how industrial clusters are shaped by their ties to the international economy, but within this context, the role played by corporate social responsibility continues to evolve. New research in the past decade allows us to better understand how CSR is linked to industrial clusters and GVCs. With geographic production and trade patterns in many industries becoming concentrated in the global South, lead firms in GVCs have been under growing (...) pressure to link economic and social upgrading in more integrated forms of CSR. This is leading to a confluence of “private governance”, “social governance”, and “public governance”. This new form of “synergistic governance” is illustrated with evidence from recent studies of GVCs and industrial clusters, as well as advances in theorizing about new patterns of governance in GVCs and clusters. (shrink)

This article describes and accounts for variable interests in engineering ethics in France, Germany, and Japan by locating recent initiatives in relation to the evolving identities of engineers. A key issue in ethics education for engineers concerns the relationship between the identity of the engineer and the responsibilities of engineering work. This relationship has varied significantly over time and from place to place around the world. One methodological strategy for sorting out similarities and differences in engineers’ identities is to ask (...) the “who” question. Who is an engineer? Or, what makes one an engineer? While engineering ethics has attracted little interest in France and formal education in the subject might be seen as redundant, German engineering societies have, since the conclusion of World War II, demanded from engineers a strong commitment to social responsibility through technology evaluation and assessment. In Japan, a recent flourishing of interest in engineering ethics appears to be linked to concerns that corporations no longer function properly as Japanese “households.” In each case, deliberations over engineering ethics emerge as part of the process through which engineers work to keep their fields in alignment with changing images of advancement in society. (shrink)

What is the principle purpose of a brain? A simple question, but the answer has taken millennia for us to begin to understand. So critical for our everyday existence, the brain still remains somewhat of a mystery. Gary L. Wenk takes us on a tour of what we do know about this enigmatic organ, showing us how the workings of the human brain produce our thoughts, feelings, and fears, and answering questions such as: How did humans evolve such a (...) big brain? What is an emotion and why do we have them? What is a memory and why do we forget so easily? How does your diet affect how you think and feel? What happens when your brain gets old? Throughout human history, ignorance about the brain has caused numerous non-scientific, sometimes harmful interventions to be devised based on interpretations of scientific facts that were misguided. Wenk discusses why these neuroscientific myths are so popular, and why some of the interventions based on them are a waste of time and money. With illuminating insights, gentle humor, and welcome simplicity, The Brain: What Everyone Needs to Know makes the complex biology of our brains accessible to the general reader. (shrink)

From the schools of ancient times to the present day, Gary Thomas looks at how and why education evolved as it has. By exploring some of the big questions, he examines the ways in which schools work, considers the differences around the world, and concludes by considering the future of education worldwide.

Our differences with Croll and Moses centre on their interpretation of the term 'inclusion', the way in which they theorise their findings, and their use of the terms 'pragmatism' and 'ideology' as instruments of analysis in trying to understand a patchy move to inclusion. In particular, a taken-as-given use of the term 'ideological' to describe the views of others is troublesome, carrying as it does intimations of partisanship in others, but only rationality in the user. We suggest that if informants (...) and commentators employ the term 'ideological', the use of this descriptor by these informants and commentators should form a principal focus of scholarly analysis. (shrink)

Toleration is one of many responses toward diversity and difference. With the growing diversity, the theme of toleration has often taken center stage in discussions of multiculturalism and social pluralism. Nonetheless, it has not received much attention in the social work profession. Social workers often encounter situations in which they face a choice between tolerating and not tolerating. We argue that toleration is a legitimate and relevant topic in social work discourse. To make this point, first, this paper discusses different (...) conceptions of toleration. Then, it demonstrates its relevance to social work and explores a potential benefit of including the idea of toleration in social work discourse. Social work code of ethics implicitly supports toleration, or at least respect-toleration and esteem-toleration. Incorporating toleration in social work discourse may help social workers to better cope with or reduce ethical stress and disjuncture. (shrink)

This chapter explores Rainer Forst’s justification-centric view of nondomination toleration. This view places an idea of equal respect and a corresponding requirement of reciprocal and general justification at the core of non-domination toleration. After reconstructing this view, this chapter addresses two issues. First, even if this idea of equal respect requires the limits of non-domination toleration to be drawn in a manner that is equally justifiable to all affected people, equal justifiability should not be understood in terms of Forst’s requirement (...) of reciprocal and general acceptability. Second, for the equal justifiability of relevant constraints to ensure non-domination outcomes, discursive equality must be understood in substantive, purchase-sensitive terms. This means that a justification-centric view of non-domination toleration stands or falls with the participation value of what it regards as the standards of justification. This places reasonably contested matters of value at the heart of such views. (shrink)

Borrowing from epidemiological and economic analysis, we argue that the central constructs by which children are judged educationally rest in contrastive judgements and that such judgements are based on 'everyday' constructs - not objective descriptors. But because these everyday constructs become seemingly objectified by the procedures and discourses of education, they appear reliable and objective. The insistent process of contrastive judgement based on these everyday constructs has its result in cohorts of children forever being judged unfavourably next to others. A (...) model to frame the process is outlined and consequences for children's acceptance and inclusion are discussed. (shrink)

Emily Dickinson's poetry is deeply philosophical. Recognizing that conventional language limited her thought and writing, Dickinson created new poetic forms to pursue the moral and intellectual issues that mattered most to her. This collection situates Dickinson within the rapidly evolving intellectual culture of her time and explores the degree to which her groundbreaking poetry anticipated trends in twentieth-century thought. Essays aim to clarify the ideas at stake in Dickinson's poems by reading them in the context of one or more relevant (...) philosophers, including near-contemporaries such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Hegel, and later philosophers whose methods are implied in her poetry, including Levinas, Sartre and Heidegger. The Dickinson who emerges is a curious, open-minded interpreter of how human beings make sense of the world - one for whom poetry is a component of a lifelong philosophical project. (shrink)

This article explores the enterprising act of socially constructing fatness, or overweight and obesity, as an individual and collective problem. We argue that this process is complex and hence draw liberally on and extend an eclectic range of scholarship (e.g. the sociology of the body, moral panic theory, critical weight studies) when presenting a typology of obesity epidemic entrepreneurs, that is, those who actively make fatness into a correctable health problem. Using a variety of data, we consider six main ideal (...) typical entrepreneurs: creators, amplifiers/moralizers, legitimators, supporters, enforcers/administrators and the entrepreneurial self. We conclude with a critique of obesity epidemic entrepreneurship and underscore the broader salience of our work for the sociology of the body/embodiment. The relevance of social studies of the body for the obesity debate and critical weight studies is also highlighted. (shrink)

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning (...) business activity with the broader public interest . This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR. (shrink)

In this research, we examine the relationship between employee psychological entitlement and employee willingness to engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior. We hypothesize that a high level of PE—the belief that one should receive desirable treatment irrespective of whether it is deserved—will increase the prevalence of this particular type of unethical behavior. We argue that, driven by self-interest and the desire to look good in the eyes of others, highly entitled employees may be more willing to engage in UPB when their (...) personal goals are aligned with those of their organizations. Support for this proposition was found in Study 1, which demonstrates that organizational identification accentuates the link between PE and the willingness to engage in UPB. Study 2 builds on these findings by examining a number of mediating variables that shed light on why PE leads to a greater willingness among employees to engage in UPB. Furthermore, we explored the differential effects of PE on UPB compared to counterproductive work behavior. We found support for our moderated mediation model, which shows that status striving and moral disengagement fully mediate the link between PE and UPB. PE was also linked to CWB and was fully mediated by perceptions of organizational justice and moral disengagement. (shrink)

Vertes & Eastman argue against the popular idea that dreams promote memory consolidation and suggest instead that REM provides periodic endogenous stimulation during sleep. Although we suspect that much of the debate on the function of dreams reflects a too eager acceptance of the “adaptationist program,” we nonetheless support the position of the authors and propose a specific advantage of periodic REM activity. [Vertes & Eastman].

BackgroundDespite rapid growth of the scientific literature, no consensus guidelines have emerged to define the optimal criteria for editors to grade submitted manuscripts. The purpose of this project was to assess the peer reviewer metrics currently used in the surgical literature to evaluate original manuscript submissions.MethodsManuscript grading forms for 14 of the highest circulation general surgery-related journals were evaluated for content, including the type and number of quantitative and qualitative questions asked of peer reviewers. Reviewer grading forms for the seven (...) surgical journals with the higher impact factors were compared to the seven surgical journals with lower impact factors using Fisher’s exact tests.ResultsImpact factors of the studied journals ranged from 1.73 to 8.57, with a median impact factor of 4.26 in the higher group and 2.81 in the lower group. The content of the grading forms was found to vary considerably. Relatively few journals asked reviewers to grade specific components of a manuscript. Higher impact factor journal manuscript grading forms more frequently addressed statistical analysis, ethical considerations, and conflict of interest. In contrast, lower impact factor journals more commonly requested reviewers to make qualitative assessments of novelty/originality, scientific validity, and scientific importance.ConclusionSubstantial variation exists in the grading criteria used to evaluate original manuscripts submitted to the surgical literature for peer review, with differential emphasis placed on certain criteria correlated to journal impact factors. (shrink)

Subjects and Simulations presents essays focused on suffering and sublimity, representation and subjectivity, and the relation of truth and appearance through engagement with the legacies of Jean Baudrillard and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.

Over 300 years ago the father of microscopy, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, observed dried rotifers “coming back to life” upon rehydration. Since then, scientists have been fascinated by the enduring mystery of how certain organisms survive losing essentially drying out completely. Historically sugars, such as the disaccharide trehalose, have been viewed as major functional mediators of desiccation tolerance. However, some desiccation tolerant organisms do not produce this sugar, hinting that additional mediators, and potentially novel mechanisms exist. It has become apparent that (...) a common theme among such organisms is the production and use of intrinsically disordered proteins to mediate survival in this dry state. However, the basic biology of these proteins – which unlike globular proteins lack persistent three-dimensional structure – is poorly understood, as are the functional mechanisms utilized by these enigmatic proteins that allow them to mediate desiccation tolerance. We purpose that probing the biochemical and biophysical nature of stress-related IDPs will provide mechanistic insights into these fascinating proteins. Remarkably, organisms from every kingdom of life can survive losing nearly all their intracellular water. A hallmark of desiccation tolerance is the use of intrinsically disordered proteins, but how IDPs contribute to tolerance is poorly understood. Here, we discuss possible mechanisms and avenues for studying these enigmatic proteins. (shrink)

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ (...) protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)

This paper contests social psychology’s emphasis on the biased, erroneous, and constructed nature of social cognition by: showing how the extent of bias and error in classic research is overstated; summarizing research regarding the accuracy of social beliefs; and describing how social stereotypes sometimes improve person perception accuracy. A Goodness of Judgment Index is also presented to extract evidence regarding accuracy from research focusing on bias. We conclude that accuracy is necessary for understanding social cognition.

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

Within any organization (e.g. a hospital or clinic) the perception of the way things operate may vary dramatically as a function of one’s location in the organizational hierarchy as well as one’s professional discipline. Interorganizational variability depends on organizational coherence, safety, and stability. In this four-nation (Canada, Ireland, Australia, and Korea) qualitative study of 42 nurses, we explored their perception of how ethical decisions are made, the nurses’ hospital role, and the extent to which their voices were heard. These nurses (...) suggested that their voices were silenced (often voluntarily) or were not expressed in terms of ethical decision making. Finally, they perceived that their approach to ethical decision making differed from physicians. (shrink)