Forestry science is firmly based on the ideas of rationalization, emancipation, and progress as embedded in the Modernity Project. Its emergence in the late Seventeenth century is primarily a rationalization of timber production, although to some extend attention is given to other functions of the forest. As an applied science, forestry was preoccupied with bio-technical and economic research. The development in forestry science during the last four decades is described as a broadening of this narrow rationalization concept. Social and ecological (...) dimensions of forestry are acknowledged as legitimate and undeniable fields for forestry research. The new rationalization concept is not yet operationalized, but encompasses besides economic efficiency also equity and ecological sustainability. Since the narrow rationalization concept resulted in irrational outcomes, the new concept of sustainable development might be characterized as a rationalization of the Modernity Project. As a critical counterpoint to this mainstream forestry thinking, a Non-modern Project is emerging. Indigenous forestry as an ethnoscience points at the cultural and philosophical biases still underlying professional forestry and forestry science. (shrink)

In Guadalcanal, regular contact with European traders beginning in the early 1800s initiated a profound shift in the nature of settlement, a reconfiguration in the pattern of life and a reorientation of economic practices away from the bush and towards the coast. The Vaturanga have come to use directional markers to explain the changes they have experienced as a result of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial processes. These include east and west, but are more pronounced in the usage of tasi and (...) longa. These directions have come to represent change not only in space but in understanding time. The main issues relevant to this are land claims, rights, exchange patterns and notions of identity. The Vaturanga assert ideas about space in order to resist and alter dominant hegemonic constructions made about them by others. (shrink)

Nowadays, the widespread view is that classical sociology is tainted with ‘methodological nationalism and it would appear that there has been a significant overlap between social and political space. We disagree with this point of view for three reasons: (1) by dealing with the global world, classical sociology has already glimpsed the possibility of going beyond the nation-state as a unit of analysis; (2) having operated above all with the notion of ‘social’ rather than ‘national’, its categories are transnational; and (...) (3) when classical sociology has dealt with national society, studies have not reified it within its political boundaries. Consequently, in our opinion, classical sociology highlights both analytical categories that go beyond the ontology of the nation-state as well as new socio-political forms defined within the trajectory of modernity under the pressure of globalization processes. (shrink)

Socio-spatial diversity of environmental ethics and regional-ethnic identity in northern Brazil is examined with the aim of presenting a culturally complex account of Amazonian worldviews in the making. These worldviews involve the variable merging of Amerindian, riverine peasant and new settler beliefs. Interpretative and empiricist textual strategies are juxtaposed in order to explore both broad human-environmental relations, as seen through the prism of enchanted and disenchanted worldviews, as well as the subtlety of belief and disbelief in specific elements of worldview, (...) which reflect the different social backgrounds of individuals. The first part deals with the cultural significance of what is believed while the second part treats the socio-environmental implications of who believes and why. (shrink)

As states grapple with the forces of liberalization and globalization, they are increasingly pulling back on earlier levels of welfare provision and rhetoric. This article examines how the eclipsing role of the state in labor protection has affected state–labor relations. In particular, it analyzes collective action strategies among India’s growing mass of informally employed workers, who do not receive secure wages or benefits from either the state or their employer. In response to the recent changes in state policies, I find (...) that informal workers have had to alter their organizing strategies in ways that are reshaping the social contract between state and labor. Rather than demanding employers for workers’ benefits, they are making direct demands on the state for welfare benefits. To attain state attention, informal workers are using the rhetoric of citizenship rights to offer their unregulated labor and political support in return for state recognition of their work. Such recognition bestows informal workers with a degree of social legitimacy, thereby dignifying their discontent and bolstering their status as claim makers in their society. These findings offer a reformulated model of state–labor relations that focuses attention on the qualitative, rather than quantitative, nature of the nexus; encompasses a dynamic and inter-dependent conceptualization of state and labor; and accommodates the creative and diverse strategies of industrial relations being forged in the contemporary era. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the metaphysical nature of necessity. My study focuses primarily on the reduction of metaphysical necessity and the question of whether a necessary truth can be reductively defined. Theodore Sider develops a new reductive account of metaphysical necessity. Unfortunately, the multiple realizability problem posed by Jonathan Schaffer undermines the credibility of Sider’s account. This underlies my motivation to search for a revised Siderian account of necessity. On this basis, I propose a modified version of Sider’s account and argue (...) that analytic, natural-kind and micro-reduction truths are necessary truths if and only if they express the same states of affairs as logical truths. Since logical truths are necessary truths, analytic, natural-kind and micro-reduction truths are necessary truths as well. In this thesis, I will proceed as follows. Chapter 1 introduces Sider’s account of necessity. In particular, I focus on his analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction truth. His analysis is largely constitutive of the notion of a metaphysical semantics and some associated notions. I reconstruct his analysis and articulate his metaphysical semantics and the associated notions. Chapter 2 presents and clarifies the multiple realizability problem of Schaffer. His critique shows that Sider’s metaphysical semantics cannot handle multiple realizability. Sider refutes this claim by arguing that the multiple realizability problem is a problem for his analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction truth, not for his metaphysical semantics itself. This is a good starting point to propound a modified account of necessity. Chapter 3 proposes and articulates my modified analysis of the necessity of a micro-reduction, where I show that the necessity of a micro-reduction truth can be reductively defined without appeal to Sider’s metaphysical semantics. I argue that analytic, natural-kind and microreduction truths are necessary truths if and only if they express the same states of affairs as logical truths. Logical truths are necessary and so are they. After that, I consider a potential objection to my modified account and attempt to respond to it. (shrink)

Reconstructing the content of Xunzi’s moral knowledge is the main goal of this thesis. A first main task of this reconstruction is to provide a clarification of the content and functions of li. A second primary goal of the reconstruction is to discuss the roles and functions of the moral sage or morally superior person, junzi, in Xunzi’s account of moral practice. The figure of the sage is important in explaining the rationale of li and exemplifying how to behave in (...) accordance with the rules of proper conduct in different situations. As truth is essential to knowledge, it is crucial to understand how moral belief can be truth-apt within Xunzian theory. To that end, the thesis reinterprets the doctrine in terms of Railton’s subjective naturalism. In the literature on Xunzi’s moral thought, the problem of the cognitive status of moral judgment has been neglected, and this thesis attempts to remedy this oversight. This thesis is divided into two parts. Part one mainly elucidates the content of Xunzi’s moral knowledge. It includes an exposition of the origin and several functions of li and the significance of the sage and his or her close relation with li. In part two, the argument focuses on whether Xunzi’s moral knowledge is truth-apt and reconstructs his position into terms of subjective naturalism. (shrink)

Section 1 of this thesis investigates one issue in meta-ethics, namely, the nature of moral judgments. What are moral judgments? What does it mean by "wrong" when we assert "Killing is wrong?" Neo-sentimentalism is a meta-ethical theory which holds that the judgment that killing wrong is the judgment that it is appropriate to have a particular negative emotion towards the action. In other words, to judge that murder is wrong is to judge that we have a right reason for having (...) a negative emotion towards the behavior. In the framework of neo-sentimentalism, the concepts of wrongness consist of negative emotions. If the moral judgment is the judgment that it is appropriate to have a negative emotion towards the action, and the concept of wrongness contains a negative emotion, then the following question is what emotions are. In section 2, I endorse the bodily attitudinal theory of emotions, a view which holds that a conscious physiological reaction which induces behavior disposition and the change of facial expression and internal organs is necessary for having an emotion. This section also articulates and replies to three major objections towards the bodily attitudinal theory of emotion. (shrink)