The social-welfare world of the poor has changed considerably since the turn of the century. It is not difficult to find dramatic evidence of progress. Most obviously, there has been a substantial reduction in the percentage of Americans who are poor. Even in 1929, about 40 percent of the population still lived in poverty. The corresponding figure for 1993 was 15.1 percent. The poor have also enjoyed notable material and physical gains in terms of income, diet, health, and housing conditions.

Fincher & Thornhill's (F&T's) central hypothesis is that strong in-group norms were formed in part to foster parochial social alliances so as to enable cultural groups to adaptively respond to parasite stress. Applied to ancestral hominid environments, the story fits with evolutionary theory and the fragmentary data available on early hominid social formations and their geographical distributions. Applied to modern social formations, however, the arguments and inferences from data are problematic.

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

Americans claim to be the most religious people in the Christian world. Religion has informed their politics ever since the Pilgrim Fathers, who began the tyranny of the majority which Tocqueville outlined in Democracy in America (1985), his version of Aristotle's ‘ochlocracy’. In recent times this has taken the form of the ‘moral majority’ institutionalized by Jerry Falwell and the fundamentalists who set out to capture the Republican Party under Nixon and Reagan. In fact, it was never a majority: ‘born (...) again’ Christians, not all of the right‐wing in politics, were less than one fifth of a national sample in 1980 ‐ a third of African Americans, who voted ten to one against Reagan. Nonetheless they influenced every President from Eisenhower to Bush, and they are the major force behind the move to impeach Clinton. Since they failed, they may now give way for a more moderate politics of Christian forgiveness. (shrink)

Christopher Wellman and some allied scholars argue that a ‘samaritan theory’ can justify state coercion. They also suppose that states may provide robust, social egalitarian welfare provisions for a variety of reasons that would arise within samaritan states. However, the most promising reasons—samaritanism itself, natural socialism, relational equality, and anti-crime paternalism—cannot support robust provision without discarding the strong presumption favoring individual liberty which must motivate the samaritan theory. Consequently, a samaritan state cannot be a robust social welfare state.

Humans possess great capacity for behavioral and cultural change, but our ability to manage change is still limited. This article has two major objectives: first, to sketch a basic science of intentional change centered on evolution; second, to provide examples of intentional behavioral and cultural change from the applied behavioral sciences, which are largely unknown to the basic sciences community.All species have evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity that enable them to respond adaptively to their environments. Some mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity (...) count as evolutionary processes in their own right. The human capacity for symbolic thought provides an inheritance system having the same kind of combinatorial diversity as does genetic recombination and antibody formation. Taking these propositions seriously allows an integration of major traditions within the basic behavioral sciences, such as behaviorism, social constructivism, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology, which are often isolated and even conceptualized as opposed to one another.The applied behavioral sciences include well-validated examples of successfully managing behavioral and cultural change at scales ranging from individuals to small groups to large populations. However, these examples are largely unknown beyond their disciplinary boundaries, for lack of a unifying theoretical framework. Viewed from an evolutionary perspective, they are examples of managing evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity, including open-ended processes of variation and selection.Once the many branches of the basic and applied behavioral sciences become conceptually unified, we are closer to a science of intentional change than one might think. (shrink)

Weiming’s notion of transcendence in terms both of its legitimacy as an interpretation of Confucianism and of its viability as an answer to modern challenges. An examination of Tu’s hermeneutical assumptions in his Zhongyong commentary leads to a discussion of his locating transcendence in the subjectivity of the junzi, the profound person. Calling the self-cultivation self-knowledge, Tu makes explicit the religious character of the xin, the basis of self-cultivation, and its transcendent character, because it is endowed from heaven. However, because (...) the xin is irreducibly human, this transcendence is also immanentized. From the xin a fiduciary community is formed, hence the covenantal nature of Confucian religiousness. The essay ends with the question: Because Tu does not elaborate on cultivating a community’s intersubjectivity, does it make the realization of the transcendent xin a deferred potentiality, without mooring in the actual formation of human community? (shrink)

A common opinion is that power has shifted from states to companies. This article discusses quantitative and qualitative aspects of power possessed by companies and by states. A more adequate comparison than that between company sales and gross national product is the one between company value added and GNP. Also more adequate is the comparison between the public sector and company net profit. These rival measures take down company power to about a tenth of the sales measure. Also in qualitative (...) terms the "exit power" of the company gives a low impact compared to governmental action and the article concludes that company power by common measures is overestimated. However, the aggregated long-term effect of the market economy on the development of society is most significant. But it is a mistake to use that judgment as an argument for the opinion that business executives are the major power holders in modern societies. Perceptions of power also have an impact on which expectations and commitments that can be judged as realistic and therefore the issue of power is central for the normative discussion about corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This article explores the discourses of citizenship through which the museum institution is currently framing its public: museum-goers as participants. Drawing on qualitative research on the London's Voices project at the Museum of London, and 1934: A New Deal For Artists at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC, this paper examines the ways in which the contemporary museum, and cultural policy internationally, has converged around the activity of inviting members of the public to ‘speak for themselves’ through a variety (...) of media technologies. Discursive analysis of such mediated activities as activities of self-representation suggests that this strategy of participation is simultaneously both productive and uneasy, as questions of institutional legitimacy and citizen empowerment co-exist within the broader social context of the self-speaking or auto/biographical society. (shrink)

The interstate highway system and environmental are seldom discussed conjointly in works on climate and sustainability programs. In this essay I employ a metaphor, likening the interstate system to environments, to illustrate a cognitive shortcoming, a failure of imagination, by the organisms found in both. I argue that several failures of the imagination combine to constitute a failure to be aware of the limitations of our situations and the parameters set by climatological considerations. However, by re-engaging with our environment through (...) the use of imaginative exercises, we can become aware of our surrounding in terms of both geographic and organismic limitations of our environment. Furthermore, to develop these sustainable policies, we can employ Kantian ethical deliberations that engage our sense of imagination to become ?situationally aware? of our place in the climates we inhabit and of others members of our environment. (shrink)

Abstract Democratic control of public policy is nearly impossible in the presence of extreme voter ignorance, and this ignorance is in part caused by the vast size and scope of modern government. Only a government limited in its scope can be meaningfully democratic. David Ciepley's response to my article does not seriously challenge this conclusion, and his attempts to show that limited government is inherently undemocratic fail. Ciepley's alternative vision of a ?democracy? that does not require informed voters turns out (...) to be not a defense of democracy at all, but a rationalization for any form of government that achieves a high level of leadership skill and bureaucratic efficiency. (shrink)

In this empirical paper, we present a model of the dynamic legitimizing processes involved in the receiving and giving of compassion. We focus on the idea of being ‘worthy of compassion’ and show how ideas on giving and receiving compassion are highly contestable. Recognition of a worthy recipient or giver of compassion constitutes a socially recognized claim to privilege, which has ethical managerial and organizational implications. We offer a model that assists managers in fostering ethical strength in their performance by (...) encouraging reflection on the ethical complexity involved in compassion relations. The model emphasizes the dynamics of both the givers and receivers of compassion and so can also be used by organizations to both assess how others may view the legitimacy of their compassion relations and also to develop a positive organizational ethic of compassionate conduct. (shrink)

We argue that claims of racial progress rest upon untenable teleological assumptions founded in Enlightenment discourse. We examine the theoretical and methodological focus on progress and its historical roots. We argue research should examine the concrete mechanisms that produce racial stability and change, and we offer three alternative frameworks for interpreting longitudinal racial data and phenomena. The first sees racism as a “fundamental cause,” arguing that race remains a “master category” of social differentiation. The second builds on Glenn’s “settler colonialism (...) as structure” framework to describe race relations as a mutually constituted and place-based system of resource allocation. The third framework draws attention to racialized agency. (shrink)

Philanthropic venture capital (PhVC) is a financing option available for social enterprises that, like traditional venture capital, provides capital and value-added services to portfolio organizations. Differently from venture capital, PhVC has an ethical dimension as it aims at maximizing the social return on the investment. This article examines the deal structuring phase of PhVC investments in terms of instrument used (from equity to grant), valuation, and covenants included in the contractual agreement. By content analyzing a set of semistructured interviews and (...) thereafter surveying the entire population of PhVC funds that are active in Europe and in the United States, findings indicate that the non-distribution constraint holding for non-profit social enterprises is an effective tool to align the interests of both investor and investee. This makes the investor behaving as a steward rather than as a principal. Conversely, while backing non-profit social ventures, philanthropic venture capitalists structure their deal similarly as traditional venture capital, as the absence of the non-distribution constraint makes such investments subject to moral hazard risk both in terms of perks and stealing and social impact focus. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville is known for his strange liberalism. One of the reasons therefore has to be found in his lesser known strange religious belief. The three main elements that determined his belief were his aristocratic and profoundly religious education, the dramatic loss of his faith after reading eighteenth century French philosophers and his conviction that the stability of the American democracy was mainly due to religious mores. These elements explain why Tocqueville appeared in his publications as an obvious believer, (...) hardly bothered by any dubiety, while internally he was a restless doubter, sometimes a panicky infidel and occasionally some sort of believer anyway. The focus of this article is a meticulous dissection of Tocqueville’s personal belief by contrasting it with approaches of religion that look familiar at first sight. Although Tocqueville had the highest esteem for Pascal, his wager was not really tempting to him. James’ will to believe seemed far more attractive, yet Tocqueville’s thinking was too empirical to fit with it. Kant furnished strong arguments to overcome this obstacle, and in that respect he offered a solid philosophical ground to consider Tocqueville’s outlook on religion as an authentic religious belief. But what Tocqueville has never found was a religious ground to Christianity. As a matter of fact, Christianity was Tocqueville’s philosophical belief, rather than his religious belief. (shrink)

Health and Social Justice (Ruger 2009a) developed the ?health capability paradigm,? a conception of justice and health in domestic societies. This idea undergirds an alternative framework of social cooperation called ?shared health governance? (SHG). SHG puts forth a set of moral responsibilities, motivational aspirations, and institutional arrangements, and apportions roles for implementation in striving for health justice. This article develops further the SHG framework and explains its importance and implications for governing health domestically.

This collection brings together a strong ethnographic and theoretical field. The volume includes chapters that address issues of identity formation and change in relation to ‘educational’ political projects and politically coloured notions of citizenship. Drawing on their different ethnographies and on comparative analysis, the contributors address the problematic of the relationship between rulers and the ruled and between élite and non-élite groups, critically raising issues of legitimacy and responsibility in the management of power and political decision-making. The empirically based analyses (...) offered here graphically demonstrate that urban issues are at the forefront of political and social debates. More specifically, the contributors address, from different perspectives, the more or less successful attempts of the state to legitimise its approach and authority through urban policies. A collective reading of the chapters provides a powerful analytical framework for the study of the processes that underlie ideologically biased definitions of citizenship and of their effects on urban dynamics. (shrink)

Economic progress in the United States has been attributed to the successful combination of two social structures — capitalism as an economic system and democracy as a political system. At the heart of this interaction is a particular work ethic in which hard work is considered the path to both immediate and future rewards. This article examines the evolution of work ethic in the United States, as well as the returns experienced through various adaptations in the country's history. From this (...) grounding, the information is structured into a proposal that key messages contained in the current, accepted work ethic are subject to distortions that may contribute to unethical decision making. These distortions result from two potentials: (1) efforts to reconcile the work ethic with contradictory messages and (2) exaggerations of the work ethic that become dysfunctional. The intent is to provide a framework that may explain to organizational leaders how people with the same basic work ethic can behave differently in terms of ethical work. Along with this understanding comes the potential to offset possible distortions and to encourage more ethical behavior. (shrink)

The recent explosion in advancements of communications technologies poses interesting challenges to courts and theorists interested in developing proper regulations. Continuing the traditional technology-based approach to press regulation risks preventing the newest technologies from filly serving the democratic dialogue. As the press has evolved into an institution and as advances in communication tend toward private rather than public interaction, we must assist community formation and face-to-face interaction, which proved vital to the success ofthe Constitution itself. Unless these new technologies are (...) regulated accordingly, comrnunity and face-to-face interaction risk extinction. (shrink)

This article deals with the notion of honor and its relation to the willingness to make sacrifices. There is a widely shared feeling, especially in Western countries, that the willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good has been on a reverse trend for quite a while both on the individual and the societal levels, and that this is increasingly problematic to the military. First of all, an outline of what honor is will be given. After that, the Roman honor-ethic, (...) stating that honor is a necessary incentive for courageous behavior and that it is something worth dying for, is contrasted with today's ruling view in the West, which sees honor as something obsolete and archaic and not as a legitimate motive for courageous behavior. The article then addresses the way honor continues to have a role in today's military, despite its diminishing role in Western society at large. (shrink)

Ambition is a curiously neglected topic in ethics. It isn’t that philosophers have not discussed it. Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Harrington, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Santayana and a number of others have discussed ambition. But it has seldom received more than a few paragraphs worth of analysis, in spite of the fact that ambition plays a central role in Western politics (one cannot be elected without it), and in spite of the fact that Machiavelli, Harrington, Locke and Rousseau each considered (...) it to be among the greatest threats to political security. The aim of this paper is to provide a long overdue analysis of ambition. The first part of the paper explores what ambition is. The second seeks to answer the question, “Is ambition a virtue or a vice?”. (shrink)

Based on qualitative analysis of the Soviet press and official state documents, this article argues that the Communist Party was, counter intuitively, an agent of capitalist dispositions in the Soviet Union during 1970s-1980s. Understanding the spirit of capitalism not simply as an ascetic ethos but in broader terms of the cult of individualism, I demonstrate that the Soviet party-state promoted ideas and values of individuality, self-expression, and pleasure seeking in the areas of work and consumption. By broadening our conception of (...) the spirit of capitalism, tracing the formation of capitalist dispositions as well as institutions, and showing that the culture of capitalism can come from within the old regime, I further the agenda of neoclassical sociology of studying varieties of origins, paths, and destinations of modern capitalisms. (shrink)

The political landscape in Malaysia has been changing since the late 1990s with a gradual rise in resistance from civil society and the opposition parties. Domestic politics have become more contentious recently, particularly evidenced by the advent of a strong civil society and a multi-cultural opposition coalition. Thus, the social capital stimulated by ICTs and CSOs has played a vital role in strengthening and empowering the role of the opposition parties in Malaysia. This study seeks to understand how ICT-driven social (...) capital has facilitated the surge in the opposition movement by situating the political use of social capital in a broader socio-political context. Hence the dramatic political change has been intertwined with the dynamics of social capital and creation of a public sphere accelerated by the rapid growth of ICTs in the country. By analyzing recent voting patterns, this study demonstrates that ICT-driven social capital does have a great impact on the changing political landscape in Malaysia, particularly in shaping voting behavior and political participation of Malay and non-Malay citizens in domestic politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hobbes and the Katéchon: The Secularization of Sacrificial Christianity Wolfgang Palaver Universität Innsbruck Hobbes and equality: his knowledge of mimetic desire When reading Thomas Hobbes we immediately recognize that he was writing in the early years of our modem age. Hobbes's world is very different from ancient cultures. This is most clearly demonstrated by the importance in his political philosophy of equality and individualism, concepts which cannot be found (...) in ancient political discourse. Hobbes fully rejected Aristotle's view that nature made some human beings commanders and others slaves (1984, 211). According to Hobbes, all human beings are equal. The same applies to individualism. Whereas Aristotle's main concern was the polis, not the individual, Hobbes takes the individual as the starting point of his political philosophy.1 The difference between the two views can be seen as a result of the biblical transformation of the world: the biblical message slowly transformed the ancient world as it increasingly replaced ancient concepts of human nature and social life with those of equality and individualism. The biblical impulse did not, however, result in the creation of a peaceful Kingdom of God on earth. Hobbes 's quite doubtful reputation does not stem from his rejection of Aristotle's philosophy but rather from his insight into the deadly consequences ofequality. According to Hobbes, the natural equality of human beings means that all have the ability to kill one another: On Hobbes and individualism, see Louis Dumont 95-9. 58Wolfgang Palaver Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as t. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIlya Somin's Democracy and Political Ignorance suffers from the fallacy of composition: It uses individual-level evidence about political behavior to draw inferences about the preferences and actions of the public as a whole. But collective public opinion is more stable, consistent, coherent, and responsive to the best available information, and more reflective of citizens’ underlying values and interests, than are the opinions of most individual citizens. Because Somin tends to blame the general public for deficiencies in our political processes, he (...) neglects the distorting roles of such elite-level factors as lies and misleading rhetoric from public officials, collusion between the major parties, and money run amok in our elections. Instead, he seeks solutions in such counterproductive measures as restricting the franchise, delegating decisions to unelected “experts,” and decentralizing and downsizing government. (shrink)

From 1922 to 1924, the Iroquois Confederacy — a federal union of six aboriginal nations — sought resolution of a dispute between themselves and Canada at the League of Nations. In this paper, the historical events of the 1920s League are employed as a case study to explore the development of the international society of states in the early 20th century as it relates to the indigenous peoples of North America. Specifically, it will be argued that the early modern practice (...) of excluding Amerindians from international political forums is related to the negative representation of indigenous peoples in the dominant theoretical discourse of the time: social contract theory. The diplomatic activities of the Iroquois, and the members of the League during this time period, demonstrate exactly how social contract theory has relied on presenting indigenous peoples as residing in a non-political and non-sovereign form, thus denying them the right to participate at the international level on par with other peoples. (shrink)

Any workable ideal of deliberative democracy that includes elections will need modern democracy's ever-present ally, parties. Since the primary function of parties is to win office rather than to reflect on public questions, parties are potential problems for the deliberative enterprise. They are more at home in aggregative models of democracy than in deliberative models. While deliberative democracy will need its moments of aggregation—and therefore, must have parties—partisans as they actually arise in the political world possess traits that undermine the (...) deliberative ideal. If partisans of partisanship are to be unembarrassed by (or are to correct) these defects, even workable ideals of deliberative democracy need to stand at some distance from the partisan imperative. (shrink)

Joseph Medill's Chicago Tribune was an influential voice for civil rights and equality in the age of slavery. By 1883, however, when the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the Tribune 's commitment to its moral principles had been compromised. The paper abandoned its editorial support for equality in favor of shoring up the declining fortunes of the Republican Party in the post-Reconstruction era. A content analysis of Tribune news and editorial items on the civil rights (...) law shows strong support for the statute in 1875 when it was passed, and an equally strong support for the Supreme Court decision that annulled it in 1883. (shrink)

The modern presidency emerged not from an effort to escape constitutional propriety, as Tulis argues, but, rather, to emancipate presidents from the localized political parties of the nineteenth century, which had come to be viewed as sites of provincial and corrupt forms of popular rule. As the troubled tenure of George W. Bush suggests, contemporary presidents are torn between the public expectation that they stand apart from party politics and act as the chief executive of the administrative state; and their (...) role as party leaders, which links them to political allies in Congress and loyalists in the electorate. In its contribution to the development of a “new” national programmatic party system, the Bush administration reveals the potential for a novel, disturbing meld of party and administration, in which presidents seek to exploit the powers of the modern executive office for partisan gain. (shrink)

The article presents a figurational sociological perspective on the recent history of the discipline of economics in the wake of the global financial crisis or ‘Great Recession’ that began in 2007–8. It is argued that the orthodox mainstream of economics has provided ideological cover for abstract individualism, for short-term greed, and for the denial of the wider social responsibilities of business and finance. The faith in ‘free markets’ has been associated with a blindness to power relationships and an indifference to (...) economic inequality. Orthodox economics is congruent with the mythical American Dream. The article draws upon the writings of Norbert Elias to reflect upon economics, and then in turn uses those reflections to raise some questions about Elias’s theories, particularly his ideas concerning functional democratization and increasing pressures towards more habitual foresight. (shrink)

This study compares findings from the author's survey of 310 French newspaper journalists in France with a simultaneous survey done in the United States. In both studies, journalists replied to the same battery of questions about ethical standards in reporting. Results provide evidence of shared values among French journalists and, to a much lesser extent, between French and U.S. journalists. The highest agreement was found in support of keeping a promise of source confidentiality. French results further indicated support for the (...) notion that journalists differentiate between the justification of active and passive deception. The study calls for polling of nonjournalists in similar future studies to aid in sorting out cultural from occupational differences and similarities. (shrink)

Since at least the 1970s, one of the stock standard tools in the animal protection movement’s arsenal has been illegal entry into factory farms and animal research facilities. This activity has been followed by the publication of images and footage captured inside those otherwise socially invisible places. This activity presents a conundrum: trespass is illegal and it is an apparent violation of private property rights. In this paper we argue that trespass onto private property can be justified as an act (...) of civil disobedience. We look at one particular type of justification: the use of information gathered through trespass in public policy formation. We then animate this analysis both with an historical overview of the effects of sharing information about animal agriculture, and with a specific case study of trespass undertaken recently. (shrink)

Why do the United States reserve the right to be called “America” by conferring the “Americas” to the whole continent?, is that a clear sign of discrimination or supremacy or both? Ideologically, America refers to the United States of “America” excluding other regions such as Latin America, central or South America. This leads some scholars to explain convincingly that, beyond this subtle grammatical difference, the Anglo-ethnocentrism in the United States has been drawn to make their citizens believe they are unique, (...) outstanding, and special. Basically, this belief allowed not only to fight against the political enemies in Europe or in any other geographical point, but also to control the incipient worker union leaderships. What merits further attention, anyway, is the sentiment of exemplarity instilled by the founding parents of this nation. Fear was historically a mechanism of control employed by US governments at different stages in several ways. Our intention is not only to review how the fear disciplined by the claims of work-force, but also explain why the sentiment of exemplarity and fear are inextricably intertwined. (shrink)

In Plato's Laws, the Athenian Stranger claims that the gods will smile only on a city where the law This passage is the origin of the slogan an abbreviation of which forms our phrase From Plato and Aristotle, through John Adams and John Marshall, down to us, no idea has proven more central to Western political and legal culture. Yet the slogan turns on a very dubious metaphor. Laws do not rule, and the is actually a specific form of rule (...) by men (including, nowadays, a few women). These rulers are not slaves to anything. Furthermore, the construction of the sloganhas unfortunate connotations. It suggests that the personal qualities of the human rulers required to secure the rule of law are nothing more than forbearance and disinterestedness—a resolution to stay out of law's way.Footnotes* I have received helpful comments and criticisms from a number of readers, including the other contributors to this volume and participants in the Georgetown University Law Center faculty workshop. In addition, I should like to thank Brian Bix, Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred Schauer, and Wibren van der Burg for extensive written comments on an earlier draft of this essay. (shrink)

Shifts in the national cultural identity of the US have been reflected in shifts in the US’ dominant constitutional narratives. For the United States, “inter-legality” has been less a matter of dealing with alternative non-state legal narratives than of contending with constantly arising and competing narratives about the “correct” nature of the “official” legal order of the state. The US Supreme Court has claimed to have the “last word” in resolving these arguments but because that Court is so often sharply (...) divided and because the Court membership and the nature of its “last words” changes so often, where a significant element of the society seeks to advance its ideas and interests, it will often do so in legal and constitutional terms. As the national culture undergoes changes, a competing constitutional narrative may gain ground and even ultimately prevail, at least for a time, and achieve Supreme Court “endorsement” for its claims. (shrink)

Of recent time, there has been a proliferation of concerns with ethical leadership within corporate business not least because of the numerous scandals at Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, and two major Irish banks – Allied Irish Bank (AIB) and National Irish Bank (NIB). These have not only threatened the position of many senior corporate managers but also the financial survival of some of the companies over which they preside. Some authors have attributed these scandals to the pre-eminence of a focus on (...) increasing shareholder value in Western business schools and/or to their failure to inculcate ethical standards. In this paper, we challenge these accounts and the aetiological view of knowledge from which they derive but are grateful for the consensus that they convey regarding the importance of business ethics. The paper focuses on different approaches to ethical leadership concluding with a view that some hybrid of MacIntyre’s virtue ethics and Levinas’s ethics of responsibility may serve as an inspiration for both educators and practitioners. (shrink)

Conspiracy theories play a troubling role in political discourse. Online forums provide a valuable window into everyday conspiracy theorizing, and can give a clue to the motivations and interests of those who post in such forums. Yet this online activity can be difficult to quantify and study. We describe a unique approach to studying online conspiracy theorists which used non-negative matrix factorization to create a topic model of authors' contributions to the main conspiracy forum on Reddit. This subreddit provides a (...) large corpus of comments which spans many years and numerous authors. We show that within the forum, there are multiple sub-populations distinguishable by their loadings on different topics in the model. Further, we argue, these differences are interpretable as differences in background beliefs and motivations. The diversity of the distinct subgroups places constraints on theories of what generates conspiracy theorizing. We argue that traditional “monological” believers are only the tip of an iceberg of commenters. Neither simple irrationality nor common preoccupations can account for the observed diversity. Instead, we suggest, those who endorse conspiracies seem to be primarily brought together by epistemological concerns, and that these central concerns link an otherwise heterogenous group of individuals. (shrink)

Korean civil society is often criticized because of its dual nature, that is, the paucity of social capital in everyday life and the plethora of collective political actions in the national civil society. Although liberals view such duality as the critical impediment to Korea’s authentic democratization, which would represent a fundamental, liberal-pluralist transformation of Korean society, this article rather acknowledges its cultural uniqueness and utilizes it as the basis on which to construct a Korean non-liberal democracy that is culturally pertinent (...) and politically viable. First, this article critically re-examines the recent neo-Tocquevillian praise for social capital in light of Tocqueville’s original idea on the art of association, and reveals the liberal-individualistic assumption behind them, with which Confucian-Koreans are culturally unfamiliar. It presents a Korean version of Confucian civil society to promote democratic collective self-government and common citizenship, while rejecting modern Western moral individualism. (shrink)

Korean civil society is often criticized because of its dual nature, that is, the paucity of social capital in everyday life and the plethora of collective political actions in the national civil society. Although liberals view such duality as the critical impediment to Korea’s authentic democratization, which would represent a fundamental, liberal-pluralist transformation of Korean society, this article rather acknowledges its cultural uniqueness and utilizes it as the basis on which to construct a Korean non-liberal democracy that is culturally pertinent (...) and politically viable. First, this article critically re-examines the recent neo-Tocquevillian praise for social capital in light of Tocqueville’s original idea on the art of association, and reveals the liberal-individualistic assumption behind them, with which Confucian-Koreans are culturally unfamiliar. It presents a Korean version of Confucian civil society to promote democratic collective self-government and common citizenship, while rejecting modern Western moral individualism. (shrink)

_Ren, the Confucian virtue par excellence, is often explained on two different accounts: on the one hand, filiality, a uniquely Confucian social-relational virtue; on the other hand, commiseration innate in human nature. Accordingly there are two competing positions in interpreting ren: one that is utterly positive about the realization of universal love by the graduated extension of filial love, and the other that sees the inevitable tension between the particularism of filial love and the universalism of compassionate love and champions (...) the latter in that filial love appears to create a serious obstacle to modernizing Confucianism. Nevertheless, both interpretations agree that compassion, given its universal and humanist implications, can be unquestionably conducive to the modern project of 'Confucian democracy'. This paper counters this shared view by arguing that in order to make Confucian democracy culturally meaningful and politically viable, it must accommodate uniquely Confucian relational virtues, particularly filiality_. (shrink)