ABSTRACTThe United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4.7 proposes that Education for Sustainable Development should be included at all levels of education, known as ‘mainstreaming’. Howeve...

Recent philosophy of language has been profoundly impacted by the idea that mainstream, model-theoretic semantics is somehow incompatible with deflationary accounts of truth and reference. The present article systematizes the case for incompatibilism, debunks circularity and “modal confusion” arguments familiar in the literature, and reconstructs the popular thought that truth-conditional semantics somehow “presupposes” a correspondence theory of truth as an inference to the best explanation. The case for compatibilism is closed by showing that this IBE argument fails to rule out (...) two kinds of deflationism: the position Field famously accused Tarski of having; and a less familiar version of the view that defines reference in terms of a deflated notion of truth. Finally, the distinction between unifying and constitutive explanation is used to forestall the response that correspondence theory is literally part of mainstream semantics. (shrink)

This paper investigates the potential and actual contribution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to gender equality in a framework of gender mainstreaming (GM). It introduces GM as combining technical systems (monitoring, reporting, evaluating) with political processes (women’s participation in decision-making) and considers the ways in which this is compatible with CSR agendas. It examines the inclusion of gender equality criteria within three related CSR tools: human capital management (HCM) reporting, CSR reporting guidelines, and socially responsible investment (SRI) criteria on (...) employee and diversity issues. Although evidence is found of gender equality information being requested within several CSR related reporting frameworks, these requirements are mostly limited in scope, or remain optional elements. The nature and extent of relevant stakeholder opportunities are investigated to explain this unfulfilled potential. (shrink)

Mainstream and Formal Epistemology provides the first, easily accessible, yet erudite and original analysis of the meeting point between mainstream and formal theories of knowledge. These two strands of thinking have traditionally proceeded in isolation from one another, but in this book, Vincent F. Hendricks brings them together for a systematic comparative treatment. He demonstrates how mainstream and formal epistemology may significantly benefit from one another, paving the way for a new unifying program of 'plethoric' epistemology. His book will both (...) define and further the debate between philosophers from two very different sides of the epistemological spectrum. (shrink)

Ontologies are some of the most central constructs in today's large plethora of knowledge technologies, namely in the context of the semantic web. As their coinage indicates, they are direct heirs to the ontological investigations in the long Western philosophical tradition, but it is not easy to make bridges between them. Contemporary ontological commitments often take causality as a central aspect for the ur-segregation of entities, especially in scientific upper ontologies; theories of causality and philosophical ontological investigations often go hand-in-hand, (...) and were essentially inseparable in medieval thought. This constitutes the foundation for a bridge, and this article analyzes the causality-based ontology of the late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg from the viewpoint of today's upper-ontology engineering. In this bridging attempt, it offers a translation into English of the first part of Dietrich's De origine (abbreviated title) that is a compromise between traditional scholarly translations of medieval Latin philosophical texts and contemporary ontology. (shrink)

Mainstream economics, with its rational actor models, appears to be against common sense. For example, it does not take into account how tribal people are. They have a group identity and they are largely concerned with perpetuating that identity. I propose that mainstream economics is not more opposed to common sense than alternative frameworks. The appendix introduces a counterexample to transitivity of preferences, which I assume is where the chief value of the paper is.

Mapping Mainstream Economics: Genealogical Foundations of Alternativity seeks to establish a definition of the mainstream, and by extension the alternatives to it, by adopting a genealogical approach: tracing the methodological development of the economic mainstream through its ancestry, which allows for a definition of the mainstream which is separate from politically charged categories or gridlocked academic arguments between received schools of thought. The book follows the evolution of the economic mainstream through four major transformations of the discipline: from political to (...) analytical economics, debates around a logical empiricist economics, the consolidation of neoclassical economics and the recent expansion of the mainstream. For each of these steps, the key point of departure is explored, illustrated through the work of leading authors at the time. Thus, the book draws on recent research from the history of economic thought and debates the crucial role of historic concepts of economics for alternativity in the field. Finally, to put the approach into practice, the book examines the relation between today's mainstream and two of its relatives: ecological economics and degrowth. Finally, the book reflects on recent exciting developments in the discourse on alternativity and sheds light on some distant relatives of today's mainstream. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the debates around the state and nature of mainstream, alternative and heterodox economics. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare the methodology of the Austrian school to two alternative methodologies from the economic mainstream: the ‘orthodox’ and revealed preference methodologies. I argue that Austrian school theorists should stop describing themselves as ‘extreme apriorists’ (or writing suggestively to that effect), and should start giving greater acknowledgement to the importance of empirical work within their research program. The motivation for this dialectical shift is threefold: the approach is more faithful to their actual practices, it better illustrates the (...) underlying similarities between the mainstream and Austrian research paradigms, and it provides a philosophical foundation that is much more plausible in itself. (shrink)

This article seeks to explain the variable implementation of gender mainstreaming as a `policy frame' over time and across various international organisations (I.O.s). In the years since the U.N. Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing (1995),mainstreaming has been endorsed and adopted by a wide range of international organisations, and we compare the adoption and implementation of mainstreaming in four specific I.O.s: the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and (...) the European Union. The rhetorical acceptance of mainstreaming by various international organisations, however, obscures considerable variation in both the timing and the nature of the mainstreaming process within and among organisations. This variation, in turn, can be explained in terms of the categories of political opportunity, mobilising structures and strategic framing, which have been put forward by social movement theorists. (shrink)

‘Looking beyond Compliance’ assesses the role of an enabling environment as a major factor in the successful mainstreaming of gender. This article analyses the important role of political will in influencing the creation of an enabling environment. The article suggests that several role-players need to possess the political will to ensure that an enabling environment is created. Notably, the actions of an individual have an impact on the institutional reforms developed and vice versa. Political will is argued as the (...) most influential component in the development of an enabling environment and therefore creates the enabling environment through political buy-in. The argument specifically looks at the Department of Public Service and Administration located in the South African public service. (shrink)

Some notable scholars argue that traditional African worldview is a backward-looking belief system that proves to be irreconcilable with mainstream science. The contention is such that unlike the principles of mainstream science which demystifies our understanding of the universe through the search for discoverable laws of nature, traditional African worldview rather mystifies the nature of our universe by rendering explanations based on metaphysical belief systems. Using the method of concept analysis, we argue, however, that the salient advances in mainstream science (...) provide a sufficient ground to challenge what we consider to be a mischaracterization of African worldview. We do so by showing that the sound interpretations of salient developments in mainstream science demonstrate appreciable compatibility with the African worldview. Therefore, because there is no contradiction but diversity emanating from cultural differences, the claim of backwardness relative to African worldview is without merit. (shrink)

This article explores the extent to which a feminist reading of gender mainstreaming is incorporated in the EU political discourse by analysing how family policy and gender inequality in politics are framed in EU policy documents. Gender mainstreaming is treated as an open signifier that can be filled with both feminist and non-feminist content. The article provides a set of criteria to assess whether a feminist reading of gender mainstreaming has been adopted. The frame analysis of EU (...) documents on family policy and gender inequality in politics reveals but a partial adoption of a feminist understanding of gender mainstreaming and only in the area of gender inequality in politics. (shrink)

Mainstreaming Pacifism: Conflict, Success, and Ethics covers the history of philosophy concerning successful political means, and proposes an original interpretation of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Marx and Gandhi. The book counters the objection that pacifism is ineffective, and proposes that pacifism is not for a sect, but rather draws its most effective strategies from, and contributes them to, the mainstream political tradition.

Mainstream epistemologists don’t tend to discuss feminist epistemologies. They often don’t mention them in introductory courses or textbooks, and they almost invariably don’t take themselves to work on them. This is probably due to a suspicion that ‘feminist’ epistemologies are clouded by political motivations. In this paper I will argue two things. First, that this suspicion is misguided – a number of ‘mainstream’ epistemologists (specifically, hinge epistemologists), are in fact doing work which is entirely compatible with feminist epistemologies, and the (...) ‘extra ingredient’ required to turn a hinge epistemology into a feminist epistemology needn’t involve political motivations. And second, that bringing feminist epistemologies into the mainstream can benefit hinge epistemologies – by adding the extra ingredient which turns a hinge epistemology into a feminist epistemology, hinge epistemologists increase the motivations they can appeal to in support of their responses to scepticism. (shrink)

This article aims to make a contribution to the conceptualization of mainstreaming gender equality promoted by the European Union. It starts by exploring the historical periodization of equal opportunities delivery strategies and challenging the compartmentalization of these developments. It suggests that equality policies can better be conceptualized in terms of a `three-legged equality stool', which recognizes the interconnectiveness of three perspectives — the equal treatment perspective, the women's perspective and the gender perspective. The article argues that the gender perspective (...) has been closely associated with strategies for mainstreaming gender equality, but that this association is misleading. As a result mainstreaming has remained a `fuzzy' concept, which in turn has led to many different styles and forms of practical implementation in European member states. (shrink)

To determine and describe ‘mainstream US culture’ responses to the Schwartz Values Survey version 57 were collected and analyzed amongst two samples, one from 49 states, disregarding state of residence, and another from 27 US states comparing samples by state, with the 27-state populations representing about 82 % of the total US population. Statistical comparisons indicate that the responses of the samples categorised by the total US and state of residence samples and Schwartz’ ten individual cultural values show a cohesive (...) mainstream US culture of the White, generally middle class population, having high motivational value priorities for self-direction, universalism and benevolence, with lowest priorities for power and achievement. We found significant value priority differences between urban and rural residents, but minimal differences relating to gender. (shrink)

Over time, according to popular and academic accounts, alternative trade initiatives [such as fair trade, organics, forest certification, and socially responsible investing ] almost invariably lose their oppositional stance and go mainstream. That is, they lose their alternative, usually peripheral, and often contrarian character. In this paper, I argue that this is not always the case and that the path to going mainstream is not always an unproblematic one. I observe that while scholars have documented various aspects of specific alternative (...) trade initiatives, little comparative work has been done to theorize their different trajectories. To advance the scholarship, I compare two alternative trade movements, fair trade and SRI, and develop three hypotheses—the relation motivations hypothesis, the material interests hypothesis, and the organization of credibility hypothesis—that explain why going mainstream has been so hotly contested in the fair trade movement but not the SRI movement. I articulate these hypotheses and evaluate their merits. (shrink)

This article explores the dynamics and impact of the gender mainstreaming reform conducted within the European Social Fund in Poland in 2007–2013. It is based on qualitative interviews carried out with gender mainstreaming practitioners, both feminists and state administrators. The article examines factors enabling and hindering successful implementation of gender mainstreaming and discusses its potential positive spin-off effects. The analysed case suggests that civil servants’ strong professional ethics do facilitate progressive changes, whereas bureaucratic norms and non gender-specific (...) values of particular public policies eventually hinder the effectiveness of the strategy. However, gender mainstreaming reforms, even if limited in time and undertaken in a technocratic manner, may serve for feminists as a unique entry point to state institutions, and further allow for changes to public organizations’ gender regimes. Gender mainstreaming may lead to an increase in the number of feminist allies within public administrations and give more legitimization to feminists’ demands on the state. Thus, the strategy may produce a destabilizing impact on public administration gender regimes. (shrink)

El presente trabajo intenta mostrar a la “Nueva Mainstream Más Pluralista” como un camino para abrir al diálogo entre la heterodoxia, que rechaza el insistente uso de modelos formales mainstream para acceder al mundo social complejo, y la ortodoxia que defiende el uso de tales modelos para conocer el mundo social. Como representante de los defensores de los modelos formales mainstream nos referiremos a la epistemología de Uskali Mäki y como crítico de tales modelos a la propuesta de Tony Lawson. (...) Explicitaremos las razones por las que estos autores sostienen sus posiciones, mostraremos qué es la “Nueva Mainstream Más Pluralista” y la propondremos como una manera de acercar a quienes adhieren a perspectivas tan diferentes respecto del uso de los modelos en las ciencias económicas. (shrink)

This article examines the development of a gender mainstreaming strategy in the EU by illustrating how this strategy was shaped by other than gender equality policy goals. Gender mainstreaming was originally launched in 1996 to promote gender equality in all EU policies, in the context of international and European mobilization on women’s issues. It was aimed to transform mainstream policies by introducing a gender equality perspective. However, it has been largely used as an alibi for neutralizing positive action. (...) The successful implementation of positive action in political decision-making had challenged the gender distribution of political power over policy institutions and technical, human and financial resources. This led to policy softening and institutional weakening due to counteracting by the EU political and administrative hierarchies. The argument is based on text analyses of relevant Community acts and on direct observations of the policy process, based on personal working experiences in the European Commission. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of anew policy style within the E.U., characterized by voluntary policy transfer between member states and soft policy instruments including exchange of best practice, targets, benchmarking and national league tables. This article examines how these methods have been used by gender mainstreaming advocates and evaluates the impact of this strategy to-date upon E.U. policy-making procedures and outputs. It is argued that mainstreaming has provided new opportunities for feminists to influence the E.U. policy (...) agenda, but that the impact of mainstreaming varies between sectors and member states. The concluding section considers the implications of E.U. mainstreaming from the perspective of the European Women's Lobby(E.W.L.). This discussion highlights the potential opportunities and risks for feminists of mainstreaming. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDiscussions of the reception of materialist thought in Germany in the first half of the eighteenth century tend to focus, naturally enough, upon the homegrown freethinkers who advanced the cause of Lucretius, Hobbes, and Spinoza in clandestine publications and frequently courted the ire of the state for doing so. If the philosophers belonging to the mainstream of German intellectual life in that period are accorded a place in the story, it is only insofar as they actively set themselves against the (...) materialist threat and, in the course of working to undermine it, actually only succeeded in inadvertently drawing more popular attention to it. By contrast, in this paper I will show that it was not just insofar as the thinkers of the early eighteenth century played the role of the diligent critic and unwittingly propagated the views of their opponents that materialism can be said to have penetrated into the very mainstream of the German Enlightenment. Rather, as I will argue, there was a striking degr... (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the special difficulties that arise in testing and appraising mainstream economic theory. I argue that, like other theories designed to apply to complex open systems, it is very hard to confirm mainsteam economics. Parts can be tested and appraised, but the theory is only very weakly supported by evidence.

This essay is concerned with the special difficulties that arise in testing and appraising mainstream economic theory. I argue that, like other theories designed to apply to complex open systems, it is very hard to confirm mainsteam economics. Parts can be tested and appraised, but the theory is only very weakly supported by evidence.

This paper calls into question the growing tendency of quasi-absolutism within postmodern mainstream media discourse under the guise of objectivity. The tendency’s major aim is to ascribe more believability to its discourse by re-presenting that which it covers as the vehicle of objective truth to the mainstream audience. Two interweaving discourses have marked such objectivity: one in the form of indoctrinating and omnipresent narratives, which via effective propaganda become tantamount to ritualism, the other epitomised in the nostalgia for rationalisation, already (...) inherent in western positivist thought through the exponential increase of quasi-empiricism. Accordingly, what the media cover exists. What they do not remains in the order of myth. The article starts by rethinking objectivity within modern western academia, a discourse whose objectivity is already flawed from within. Then, with respect to human experience and media coverage, the paper concludes by raising the question of postmodern mainstream media’s substitution of religious quasi-absolutist narratives, be they secular or non-secular. Subjectivity thus emerges as the ultimate ground upon which our being may be legitimate. (shrink)

This article maps the conceptual history of global inequality from its marginal status in the 1980s, its minute mainstreaming within research and globalization discourse from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, until its popularization, politicization, and “economization” in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, recession, and the publication of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century in 2014. Asking when, why, and how global inequality became a key concept, it draws upon quantitative and qualitative analysis of global inequality (...) in scientific articles, books, and public media. It traces transformations in the term's temporal and spatial meanings and situates these in the contexts of rising within-nation and declining between-nation inequality, inequality research, inequality in public media, and broader discursive fields. (shrink)

El artículo profundiza en el concepto de mainstreaming de género, analizando sus dos componentes básicos: (i) su contenido sustantivo que es el enfoque de género, de acuerdo con el cual la desigualdad entre mujeres y varones es un fenómeno sistémico cuya raíz última sería el género entendido como la (re)construcción social de la diferencia entre los sexos y de las relaciones entre ellos; y (ii) el mainstreaming como estrategia para alcanzar la igualdad, estrategia consistente en incorporar la perspectiva (...) de la igualdad de género en todas las normas y en todas las políticas (transversalidad, enfoque global), estrategia que sería complementaria y no excluyente de la igualdad de trato y de las acciones positivas y que aspiraría a ser particularmente incisiva para el logro del mencionado objetivo. Teniendo en cuenta que la meta del mainstreaming de género es la transformación social, la modif icación de las relaciones entre los sexos, así como de sus representaciones sociales y la existencia de una gran ambigüedad en torno a cuál debe ser el sentido y la dirección de los cambios, en el trabajo se argumenta que la transformación social debe ir en la línea de superar tanto el asimilacionismo (asunción de los modelos masculinos por parte de las mujeres), como el dualismo entre mujeres y varones, el mantenimiento de esferas separadas y distintas, pues ambos hacen imposible la consecución de la igualdad real. La transfor- mación social, que requiere incorporar a los varones al cambio, debería orientarse hacia la consecución de una mezcla positiva (a positive form of melding), de un nuevo modelo de sociedad superador del androcentrismo, pues el paradigma de lo humano, susceptible de universalizarse, serían no sólo los valores “masculinos”, sino todas las cualidades, ca- pacidades y posibilidades humanas, tanto las que forman parte del modelo “masculino”, como las que forman parte del modelo “femenino”, pues todas ellas son valores humanos que cualquier ser humano puede practicar.Por último el artículo destaca las potencialidades que encierra la estrategia de Gender Mainstreaming y también los riesgos y las dif icultades que comporta. (shrink)

_ Americans were forced to decide during an 18-month period of intense uncertainty whether to invade Iraq as part of the war against terrorism. This article reports compelling evidence that mainstream media between September 2001 and March 2003 failed in their primary responsibility: to provide sound news and commentary on which Americans could base critical decisions about war and peace. One reason is that journalists did not use an objective approach-in part because it had been discredited by media professionals and (...) critics who advocated more activist approaches. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the superiority of a critical realist understanding of interdisciplinarity over a mainstream understanding of it. I begin by exploring the reasons for the failure of mainstream researchers to achieve interdisciplinarity. My main argument is that mainstream interdisciplinary researchers tend to hypostatize facts, fetishize constant conjunctions of events and apply to open systems an epistemology designed for closed systems. I also explain how mainstream interdisciplinarity supports oppression and gross inequality. I argue that mainstream interdisciplinarity is (...) not true interdisciplinarity and refer to it accordingly as ‘condisciplinarity’. By way of example, I examine the condisciplinarity of the World Health Organization’s ecological model applied to the issue of men’s violence against women. Specifically, I argue that critical realist interdisciplinarity is preferable because it acknowledges inter alia the empirical, actual and real layers of reality, which allows it to develop depth-explanations of phenomena. In practice, this means that critical realist interdisciplinarity can potentially provide explanations that, compared to condisciplinarity, are broader (include more of the human and non-human context) and deeper (include for example individuals’ conscious and unconscious psychological motivations). In the World Health Organization’s example of the causes of men’s violence against women, condisciplinarity resulted in the absence of historical, global and unconscious aspects of the problem. It is also restricted the analysis to reductive, constant-conjunction based theories of the causes of the problem, specifically ‘risk factors’, thereby providing a relatively shallow explanation for the problem. (shrink)

The relationship between feminism and metaphysics has historically been strained. Metaphysics has until recently remained dismissive of feminist insights, and many feminist philosophers have been deeply skeptical about any value that metaphysics might have when thinking about advancing gender justice. Nevertheless, feminist philosophers have in recent years increasingly taken up explicitly metaphysical investigations. Such feminist investigations have expanded the scope of metaphysics in holding that metaphysical tools can help advance debates on topics outside of traditional metaphysical inquiry. Moreover, feminist philosophers (...) typically bring new methodological insights to bear on traditional ways of doing philosophy. Feminist metaphysicians have also recently begun interrogating the methods of metaphysics and they have raised questions about what metaphysics as a discipline is in the business of doing. In discussing such methodological issues, Elizabeth Barnes has recently argued that some prevalent conceptions of metaphysics rule out feminist metaphysics from the start and render it impossible. This is bad news for self-proclaimed feminist metaphysicians in suggesting that they are mistaken about the metaphysical status of their work. With this worry in mind, the paper asks: how does feminist metaphysics fare relative to ‘mainstream’ metaphysics? More specifically, it explores how feminist and ‘mainstream’ debates intersect, on what grounds do they come apart, and whether feminist metaphysics qualifies as metaphysics ‘proper’. (shrink)

Gender mainstreaming has been prioritised within the national agricultural policies of many countries, including Nepal. Yet gender mainstreaming at the national policy level does not always work to effect change when policies are implemented at the local scale. In less-developed nations such as Nepal, it is rare to find a critical analysis of the mainstreaming process and its successes or failures. This paper employs a critical gender analysis approach to examine the gender mainstreaming efforts in Nepal (...) as they move from agricultural policies to practices. The research involved a structured review of 10 key national agricultural policy documents, 14 key informant interviews, and two focus group discussions with female and male smallholder farmers. Results suggest that gender mainstreaming in national agricultural policy and practice has largely failed. The creation of the Gender Equity and Social Inclusion (GESI) section within the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development is paradoxical to gender-responsive agricultural innovation because it has received limited human and financial resources with an expectation for women to manage this policy development in informal and largely unrecognized ways. At the regional and local levels, implementation of fundamental gender equity and social inclusion procedures—such as gender-responsive planning and budgeting—has become staff responsibility without requisite formal training, gender sensitization, and follow-up. In Nepal, women as smallholder farmers or agricultural labourers are recognized as a vulnerable group in need of social protection, but the welfare approach to gender mainstreaming has achieved little in terms of gender equity, social inclusion, and agricultural sustainability. This paper concludes that what is generally missing is a systemic transformation of gender roles and relations in agriculture, with policies that would support rural women's empowerment through the provision of economic and political rights and entitlement to productive resources. (shrink)

According to one prominent critique of mainstream epistemology, discoveries about what it takes to know or justifiedly believe that p can’t provide the right kind of intellectual guidance. As Mark Webb puts it, “the kinds of principles that are developed in this tradition are of no use in helping people in their ordinary epistemic practices.” In this paper I defend a certain form of traditional epistemology against this “regulative” critique. Traditional epistemology can provide—and, indeed, can be essential for—intellectual guidance. The (...) reason is that, in many cases, how you should proceed intellectually depends on what you already know or justifiedly believe: how you should treat counterevidence to your beliefs, for example, can depend on whether those beliefs count as knowledge. Therefore, to get guidance on how to proceed intellectually, it will often be essential to be able to figure out what you know or justifiedly believe. And to do that it will often be helpful to try to figure out what it takes to count as knowledge or justified belief in the first place. To do this is precisely to engage in mainstream epistemology. (shrink)

In developed economies, powerful legislative and regulatory frameworks, for people with disability over the last five decades, have provided major motivation for business compliance with disability in the workplaces. However, developing economy like India is marked by emergent disability legislation, weak institutional enforcement and an evolving disability rights movement. In the absence of strong institutional expectations, the private sector’s role in mainstreaming the disability agenda has been largely an act of voluntary participation. Drawing upon an in-depth, multilevel, cross-functional qualitative (...) study of four Indian information technology sector companies, this paper explores why these companies engage in pro-social corporate behaviour in favour of disability. The study locates itself in the context of conceptualization of PWD as employee stakeholders and the literature on strategic CSR. The findings reveal that strategic factors promote voluntary business engagement with disability at workplaces and contribute to understanding of workplace integration of minority employees. (shrink)

This paper seeks to evaluate the concept of mainstreaming against a range of feminist critiques of laws and legal systems and to examine the case for the pursuit of feminist politics through mainstreaming strategies. It begins, in section two, by identifying theme sin existing mainstreaming literature, and then in section three considers the potential of mainstreaming to tackle the causes o fine quality. In particular it questions whether mainstreaming can address the patriarchal nature of laws (...) and legal systems and the essentialising tendencies of law, and whether mainstreaming can effectively tackle market-driven inequality. A final section considers the conditions under which feminists might consider engagement with mainstreaming and the limits of such strategies. (shrink)

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 reopened what many Americans had assumed was a settled ethical question: Is torture ever morally permissible? Rebecca Gordon argues that institutionalized state torture remains as wrong today as it was before those terrible attacks, and shows how U.S. practices during the ''war on terror'' are rooted in a history that includes support for torture regimes abroad and for the use of torture in the jails and prisons of this country.

The identity of lesbian-mother combines a marginalized identity with one of the most revered mainstream identities. With data collected through exploratory in-depth interviews from nine lesbian-mothers, the authors use symbolic interaction framework to explore the strategies that lesbian birth mothers and comothers employ to gain acceptance for their marginal-mainstream identities in their family networks. Respondents experienced varying levels of resistance from their social networks, with comothers being especially vulnerable due to their lack of both biological and legal substantiation. The authors (...) explore the process of identity negotiation in three realms of everyday experience: in relationships with extended families, in relations within the nuclear family, and in lesbian relationships that have ended. (shrink)

Drawing on published materials from the Committee of Ministers, Assembly and expert working groups of the Council of Europe, this paper investigates the distinctive contribution made to the framing of women's rights over the last two decades by this regional organisation, which recent studies of the `Europeanisation' of public policies have largely neglected. Elements of congruence are identified between the major mobilising themes of second wave feminism and the Council's emphasis on protecting individual rights, and its sensitivity to the incompleteness (...) and shortcomings of `actually existing' democratic institutions and practices. The relative openness of its agenda-setting processes is also underlined. The Council's flag ship policies for women are shown to have centred since the mid-1980s on a `politics of presence' frame and the (contested) concept of `parity democracy', and the tensions between these and the more recent turn to gender mainstreaming are explored. But the paper also points to the Council's role in diffusing into the E.U. governance arena women's claims to equal participation and presence in the policy process, and notes recent French and U.K. legislation as testifying to the continuing salience of these claims at the national level. (shrink)

Green product innovation has been recognized as one of the key factors to achieve growth, environmental sustainability, and a better quality of life. Understanding green product innovation as a result of interaction between innovation and sustainability has become a strategic priority for theory and practice. This article investigates green product innovation by means of a multiple case study analysis of 12 small to medium size manufacturing companies based in Italy and Canada. First, we propose a conceptual framework that presents three (...) key environmental dimensions of green product innovation such as energy minimization, materials reduction, and pollution prevention as identified in the life cycle phases of products. Based on insights gained from in-depth interviews, we discuss firms' motivations to develop green products, environmental policies and targets for products, different dimensions of green product innovation, and challenges faced during developing and marketing of green products. Results from the study are then synthesized and integrated in a toolbox that sheds light on various aspects of green product innovation and provides solutions to challenges and risks that are faced by firms. Finally, implications for managers, academia and public policy makers are discussed. (shrink)

They are often portrayed as outsiders: ethnic minorities, the poor, the disabled, and so many others—all living on the margins of mainstream society. Countless previous studies have focused on their pain and powerlessness, but that has done little more than sustain our preconceptions of marginalized groups. Most accounts of marginalization approach the subject from a distance and tend to overemphasize the victimization of outsiders. Taking a more intimate approach, this book reveals the personal, moral, and social implications of marginalization by (...) drawing upon the actual experiences of such individuals. Multidisciplinary and multicultural, Identity on the Margin addresses marginalization at a variety of social levels and within many different social phenomena, going beyond familiar cases dealing with race, ethnicity, and gender to examine such outsiders as renegade children, conservative Christians, and the physically and mentally disabled. And because women are especially subject to the effects of marginalization, feminist concerns and the marginalization of sexual practices provide a common denominator for many of the essays. From problems posed by "complimentary racism" to the status of gays in Tony Blair's England, from the struggle of Native Americans to preserve their identities to the singular problems of single mothers, Identity on the Margin takes in a broad spectrum of cases to provide theoretical analysis and ethical criticism of the mechanisms of identity formation at the edges of society. In all of the cases, the authors demonstrate the need for theory that initiates social change by considering the ethical implications of marginalization and criticizing its harmful effects. Bringing together accounts of marginalization from many different disciplines and perspectives, this collection addresses a broad audience in the humanities and social sciences. It offers a basis for enhancing our understanding of this process—and for working toward meaningful social change. (shrink)

The central argument of this book is that Western political philosophy is a coherent tradition dominated by an agreement that the nature of man should serve as the standard for evaluating political things.

Mental health is a global priority, and states and stakeholders are taking steps toward advancing a human right to mental health for all (APA, 2018). This is evidenced by international studies, initiatives, declarations, and domestic policy interventions. From a right-based perspective, mental health is not the mere absence of a psychiatric condition or psychosocial disability (WHO, 2022). It speaks of an environment in which individuals live a life of dignity. The application of human rights principles to mental health allows us (...) to incorporate novel ideas about the role of all stakeholders in fostering the security, freedom, justice, and dignity of individuals. With this point of view in mind, many states are revisiting their mental health laws and governance practices. (shrink)