En comparant sur plusieurs scènes la réception de mes recherches sur le travail bénévole – désenchantement pour les un.es, truisme pour les autres – et en prenant au sérieux le processus de politisation par l’enquête qui a été le mien, cet article propose une analyse située à la fois socialement et politiquement du désenchantement que produirait la sociologie catégorisée comme critique. Il met en lumière deux défenses de l’autonomie de l’engagement, au cœur de la critique de la critique : celui (...) de l’autonomie de « l’engagement citoyen » des acteur.trices et de leur rapport au travail, et celui de l’autonomie du travail du chercheur.se et de ses « engagements », généralement présenté sous le topos de la « neutralité » de la recherche. Ce retour réflexif sur les effets de l’enquête sur les autres, mais aussi sur moi-même, vient questionner in fine la portée sociale et politique de cette « conception des mondes antagonistes » inscrite dans une « doctrine de la séparation des sphères » du travail et de l’engagement qui concerne ici tant l’objet que la pratique de recherche. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate among a group of non-profit organizations: a) the effect of ethical leadership on volunteers’ satisfaction, affective organizational commitment and intention to stay in the same organization; b) the role played by job satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship between ethical leadership and volunteers’ intentions to stay in the same organization, as well as between ethical leadership and affective commitment. An anonymous questionnaire was individually administered to 198 Italian volunteers of different non-profit (...) organizations. The questionnaire contained the Ethical Leadership Scale, the Volunteers Satisfaction Index, the Affective organization Scale, as well as questions regarding the participants’ age, sex, type of work, level of education, length of their volunteer works, intention to volunteer in the following months in the same organization. The construct as well the effects of EL on volunteers is approached in light of the Social Exchange Theory and the Social Learning Theory. Structural equation models were used to test hypothesized relationships. The results confirm the role of mediation of volunteer satisfaction in the relationships between the variables studied. In particular, ethical leadership was found to be positively associated both with volunteers’ intention of staying and with their affective commitment. In the first case this relationship is fully explained by the mediation of the volunteers’ satisfaction, while the latter is explained by both direct and indirect factors. To the authors’ knowledge, this the first attempt to understand the role played by ethical leadership on volunteers’ behavior and, more in general, in the management of non-profit organizations. Findings are relevant both for practitioners and managers of non-profit organization, since they suggest the relevance of the perception of ethical leadership by volunteers, as well as for scholars, since they further deepen the knowledge on EL and its effects on the followers. Limits of the study: the questionnaire was administered only among a group of non-statistical sample of volunteers. Furthermore, the study reached only volunteers from Italian non-profit organization. (shrink)

Understanding the experiences of volunteers is critical to the effective management of non-profit organizations. Many organizations benefit greatly from the work of volunteers; however, little is known about the interest of occasional volunteers in repeating their experience. Our research aims to understand occasional volunteers and their intention to repeat the experience. To achieve this objective, it is essential to understand volunteers’ motivations and the influence of volunteers’ previous experiences in motivations. At the same time, it is necessary to know (...) how these factors may impact satisfaction and therefore, the intention to repeat the experience in the future. For this research, we analyzed the campaigns organized by the Food Bank Against Hunger in Portugal. Through online questionnaires, data were collected at two different moments: one month before and one month after the campaign. Results show five motivations categories: purposive, understanding, protection and enhancement, group identification and career. The research shows that motivations vary depending on volunteers’ previous experience, and this fact may also influence the level of satisfaction with the experience. All volunteers presented a high level of satisfaction and this variable influences volunteers intention of repeating, that is, volunteers wanting to be engaged in future campaigns. (shrink)

After the COVID-19 outbreak, the health status of the general population has suffered a huge threat, and the health system has also encountered great challenges. As critical members of human capital in the health sector, medical students with specialized knowledge and skills have positively fought against the epidemic by providing volunteer services that boosted the resilience of the health system. Although volunteer behavior is associated with individual internal motivation, there is sparse evidence on this relationship among medical students, especially (...) regarding potential mechanisms. Therefore, this study had two main objectives: to examine the influence of prosocial motivation of medical students on their VB; and to verify the chain-mediating role of calling and vocation as well as social responsibility in the relationship between PM and VB. Study I: a total of 2454 Chinese full-time medical students were invited to complete an online survey. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and multiple linear regression analysis. The results demonstrated that PM significantly affected VB in medical students ; CV as well as SR chain-mediated the relationship between PM and VB. PM promoted the formation of SR by positively evoking CV of medical students, further resulting in increased VB. Study II: A 28 person qualitative interview was conducted. Qualitative data are added to reduce the limitations of online questionnaires. At the same time, we can also critically study the VB of Chinese medical students during COVID-19. The results showed that there were various reasons for medical students to volunteer in the process of fighting against COVID-19, and the experience of volunteer service and the impact on their future life were different. Lastly, the current findings suggest that fostering volunteerism among medical students requires the joint effort of the government, non-profit organizations, and medical colleges. (shrink)

Nonprofit organizations (NPOs), are quite complex in terms of organizational structure, diversity at the workplace, as well as motivational mechanisms and values rationality. Nevertheless, from an Organizational Psychology perspective, the systematic analysis of this context is scarce in the literature, particularly regarding conflicts. This qualitative study analyzes types, prevalence and consequences of conflicts in a large NPO organization considering as theoretical framework several consolidated Organizational Psychology theories: Conflict Theory, Social Comparison Theory and the Equity Theory. Conflicts were analyzed taking into (...) account volunteers’ perspective, who has been consistently protagonist on NPOs research, but also considering paid staff’s perspective, as one of the main stakeholders in these organizations, whose relative power has increase in the past decade due the professionalization of the NPO’s sector. Results confirmed the existence of four types of conflicts: task, process, status and relationship conflicts. Relationship conflict is the least reported type, revealing the protection factor that values and engagement with a social aim have on this organizational context. The most relevant finding is the strong difference between paid staff and volunteers in conflict perceptions, showing paid staff, overall, higher levels of conflicts than volunteers. Findings also show stronger negative consequences for paid staff compared to volunteers. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This article analyzes a series of encounters between the Black Panther Party and the U.S. government’s War on Poverty, beginning with the Party’s foundation in a North Oakland anti-poverty office in 1966, and culminating with the resignation of six Party members from elected positions on a West Oakland anti-poverty board in 1973. The essay theorizes these encounters as moments in an antagonistic process whereby the Party sought to separate from and launch incursions into the state’s anti-poverty apparatus, which had been (...) established in the mid-1960s by a discrete stratum of state managers who sought to transform riotous energy into labor-power. This essay understands articles published in the Party’s newspaper, documents from its archive, and records of its community service practice as components of an ideological struggle which sought to reproduce anti-capitalist social relations on an extended scale. On the basis of this historical case study, the essay argues that the autonomy of radical social movement organizations from the state should be understood as a process rather than a status. It shows how social movements which view the state as an enemy can struggle in “close-quarters antagonism” within and against it. It situates this argument in relation to debates within the critical social sciences and state theory, and it considers the political and theoretical repercussions of this hypothesis for radical movements which confront the state apparatus of non-profit organizations today. (shrink)

ExcerptTimothy Stacey, Saving Liberalism from Itself: The Spirit of Political Participation. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2022. Pp. vii + 196. Timothy Stacey, an interdisciplinary scholar with a penchant for the transformative possibilities of activism, presents a compelling story about how liberalism’s much-critiqued modernist malady of disenchantment might be ameliorated through “myths, rituals, magic and traditions that can help … people … rediscover the spirit of political participation” (7). Stacey does so by showcasing the admittedly small canvas of the Metro Vancouver (...) Alliance, “a grassroots coalition of community, faith, labour, and non-profit organizations” working toward “a world where communities of all kinds come together united by common goals.”1. (shrink)

In management literature, intellectual capital is considered the key driver of the competitive advantage of the third millennium enterprise firm; consequently, measuring, managing and reporting IC has become a critical issue. Frameworks addressed to measure and report IC have proliferated, nevertheless the adoption of these frameworks is not so widespread in practice. The strong call for critically investigating IC practices has been raised by several leading authors in the area. Doing a critical and performative IC research means empirically (...) researching IC organisational practices in specific contexts, in order to increase the understanding of the IC dynamics. By critically analysing the IC practices of ANPAS Piemonte, an Italian non-profit organisation chosen for its long-standing experience in issuing audited IC reports, the article contributes to the knowledge of how and why IC is measured and reported in a specific, outstanding NPO disclosing IC. Moreover, the case study analysis contributes to shed lights on the levers and barriers that should be faced by other managers intending to implement and effectively use an IC measurement, management and reporting system within organisation. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de mettre en perspective les débats actuels en distinguant tout d’abord deux types de critiques de la sociologie critique : celles qui opposent sociologies critiques et non critiques, et celles qui relèvent de controverses internes à la sociologie critique. Dans l’une et l’autre de ces types de controverses, l’idée de sociologie est entendue en un sens réducteur. Il semble utile de souligner la diversité des définitions, des justifications et des modèles critiques propres aux différentes formes possibles (...) de la sociologie critique. La première section de l’article porte sur la question de la définition, la deuxième sur celle des justifications, et la troisième sur celle des effets critiques. (shrink)

Self-esteem, self-monitoring, and temperamental traits are important factors that influence human behavior. The purpose of the present study was to compare groups involved in humanitarian (n= 61), political (n= 68), and religious (n= 54) activities in terms of intergroup differences in self-esteem, self-monitoring, and temperamental traits. There are two research questions that we sought to address: “What are the relationships between self-esteem, self-monitoring, and temperamental traits among those involved in social, religious, and humanitarian aid activities?” and “Do temperamental traits affect (...) self-esteem and self-monitoring among volunteers?” The study was conducted in Poland among adults aged 18 years and older, during meetings of six selected non-profit organizations, consisting of two organizations each in the humanitarian, political, and religious areas. The study used the Polish versions of the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, Snyders’ Self-Monitoring Scale, and the EAS Temperament Questionnaire. Volunteers of humanitarian organizations had the lowest self-esteem among all the examined groups. Politicians turned out to be more pragmatic than those involved in religious activities and humanitarian aid. Between the three examined groups, there were statistically significant differences in temperamental activity; the most active are those politically involved, followed by participants involved in humanitarian aid and religious activities. Moreover, volunteers involved in humanitarian aid reported a higher level of temperamental fear than those involved in political and religious activities. Furthermore, there were group differences in their reasons for social involvement. We discuss the potential sources of differences and consequences of outcomes for human resource practice in non-profit organizations. (shrink)

In recent years scholars have begun to question the usefulness of the category of ''religion'' to describe a distinctive form of human experience and behavior. In his last book, The Ideology of Religious Studies (OUP 2000), Timothy Fitzgerald argued that ''religion'' was not a private area of human existence that could be separated from the public realm and that the study of religion as such was thus impossibility. In this new book he examines a wide range of English-language texts to (...) show how religion became transformed from a very specific category indigenous to Christian culture into a universalist claim about human nature and society. These claims, he shows, are implied by and frequently explicit in theories and methods of comparative religion. But they are also tacitly reproduced throughout the humanities in the relatively indiscriminate use of ''religion'' as an a priori valid cross-cultural analytical concept, for example in historiography, sociology, and social anthropology. Fitzgerald seeks to link the argument about religion to the parallel formation of the ''non-religious'' and such dichotomies as church-state, sacred-profane, ecclesiastical-civil, spiritual-temporal, supernatural-natural, and irrational-rational. Part of his argument is that the category ''religion'' has a different logic compared to the category ''sacred,'' but the two have been consistently confused by major writers, including Durkheim and Eliade. Fitzgerald contends that ''religion'' imagined as a private belief in the supernatural was a necessary conceptual space for the simultaneous imagining of ''secular'' practices and institutions such as politics, economics, and the Nation State. The invention of ''religion'' as a universal type of experience, practice, and institution was partly the result of sacralizing new concepts of exchange, ownership, and labor practices, applying ''scientific'' rationality to human behavior, administering the colonies and classifying native institutions. In contrast, shows Fitzgerald, the sacred-profane dichotomy has a different logic of use. (shrink)

The principle of noncombatant immunity prohibits warring parties from intentionally targeting noncombatants. I explicate the moral version of this view and its criticisms by reductive individualists; they argue that certain civilians on the unjust side are morally liable to be lethally targeted to forestall substantial contributions to that war. I then argue that reductivists are mistaken in thinking that causally contributing to an unjust war is a necessary condition for moral liability. Certain noncontributing civilians—notably, war-profiteers—can be morally liable to be (...) lethally targeted. Thus, the principle of noncombatant immunity is mistaken as a moral (though not necessarily as a legal) doctrine, not just because some civilians contribute substantially, but because some unjustly enriched civilians culpably fail to discharge their restitutionary duties to those whose victimization made the unjust enrichment possible. Consequently, the moral criterion for lethal liability in war is even broader than reductive individualists have argued. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno's philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. Bernstein relates Adorno's ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range of Adorno's (...) major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno's contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music. (shrink)

The close ties between modes of governing, subjectivities and critique in contemporary societies challenge the role of critical social research. The classical normative ethos of the unmasking researcher unravelling various oppressive structures of dominant vs. dominated groups in society is inadequate when it comes to understand de-politicizing mechanisms and the struggles they bring about. This article argues that only a non-normative position can stay attentive to the constant and complex evolution of modes of governing and the critical operations (...) actors themselves engage in. The article outlines a non-normative but critical programme based on an ethos of re-politicizing contemporary pervasive modes of governing. The analytical advantages and limitations of such a programme are demonstrated by readings of both Foucauldian studies and the works of and debates regarding the French pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot. (shrink)

Governments are widely viewed by academics and practitioners as the key societal actors who are capable of compelling businesses to practice corporate social responsibility. Arguably, such government involvement could be seen as a technocratic device for encouraging ethical business behaviour. In this paper, we offer a more politicised interpretation of government engagement with CSR where “CSR” is not a desired form of business conduct but an element of discourse that governments can deploy in structuring their relationships with other social actors. (...) We build our argument through a historical analysis of government CSR discourse in the Russian Federation. Laclau and Mouffe's social theory of hegemony underpins our research. We find that “CSR” in the Russian government’s discourse served to legitimise its power over large businesses. Using this case, we contribute to wider academic debates by providing fresh empirical evidence that allows the development of critical evaluation tools in relation to governments’ engagement with “CSR”. We find that governments are capable of hijacking CSR for their own self-interested gain. We close the paper by reflecting on the merit of exploring the case of the Russian Federation. As a “non-core”, non-western exemplar, it provides a useful “mirror” with which to reflect on the more widely used test-bed of Western industrial democracies when scrutinising CSR. Based on our findings, we invite other scholars to adopt a more critical, politicised stance when researching the role of governments in relation to CSR in other parts of the world. (shrink)

This paper draws a parallel between two contemporary French conceptions of sociology. Each is first considered in terms of the principles and strategies of its sociological method. Through an analogy with Marx's philosophy of social science, critical sociology is shown to make an heuristic use for the analysis of cultures and social structures of the resistance to sociology that the sociologist encounters in the social objects, whereas pragmatic sociology adopts a pluralistic and descriptive strategy towards actions, actors and things. (...) The paper then tries to show how common interests or trading zones could allow both critical and pragmatic sociology to profit from their competitive relation by taking each other as objects of sociological analysis. (shrink)

This article describes a quantitative examination of corporate volunteering research in the form of a bibliometric analysis. Using author, journal, geography, epistemological, and industry data from 115 refereed and 445 non-refereed publications published during 1990–2015, we identify corporate volunteering as a rather young research field. Although the field has progressively developed, it is still limited in magnitude, with recent signs of stagnation. The current state is characterized by moderate publication and author activity rates, with a shift toward more peer-reviewed publications (...) conducted in coauthorship, mostly in the disciplines of business, management, and ethics; a focus on financial services as well as the professional service sector; few high-impact studies; and a narrow geographic spread, with North America as the market leader and a rising interest in Western European countries. Findings on the field's prevalent research orientation further indicate a strong employee-centered focus emphasizing the underlying business case. However, in contrast to the overarching concept of corporate social responsibility research, a relatively large share of the corporate volunteering literature also addresses society-related issues, namely, corporates' relationship with non-profits. (shrink)

Profit-oriented service sectors such as tourism, hospitality, and entertainment are increasingly looking at how professional service robots can be integrated into the workplace to perform socio-cognitive tasks that were previously reserved for humans. This is a work in which social and labor sciences recognize the principle role of emotions. However, the models and narratives of emotions that drive research, design, and deployment of service robots in human–robot interaction differ considerably from how emotions are framed in the sociology of labor and (...) feminist studies of service work. In this paper, we explore these tensions through the concepts of affective and emotional labor, and outline key insights these concepts offer for the design and evaluation of professional service robots. Taken together, an emphasis on interactionist approaches to emotions and on the demands of affective labor, leads us to argue that service employees are under-represented in existing studies in human–robot interaction. To address this, we outline how participatory design and value-sensitive design approaches can be applied as complimentary methodological frameworks that include service employees as vital stakeholders. (shrink)

Sweatshop labour is sometimes defended from critics by arguments that stress the voluntariness of the worker’s choice, and the fact that sweatshops provide a source of income where no other similar source exists. The idea is if it is exploitation—as their opponents charge—it is mutually beneficial and consensual exploitation. This defence appeals to the non-worseness claim (NWC), which says that if exploitation is better for the exploited party than neglect, it cannot be seriously wrong. The NWC renders otherwise exploitative—and (...) therefore morally wrong—transactions permissible, making the exploitation of the global poor a justifiable path to development. In this paper, I argue that the use of NWC for the case of sweatshops is misleading. After reviewing and strengthening the exploitation claims made concerning sweatshops, most importantly by refuting certain allegations that a micro-unfairness account of exploitation cannot evaluate sweatshop labour as exploitative, I then argue that even if this practice may seem permissible due to benefits otherwise unavailable to the global poor, there remains a duty to address the background conditions that make this form of wrong-doing possible, which the NWC cannot accommodate. I argue that the NWC denies this by unreasonably limiting its scope and is therefore incomplete, and ultimately unconvincing. (shrink)

Various writers point out that accepting the terms of a contract does not imply consent to the background conditions of this contract. This is an important critical insight allowing for a critical perspective on the principle of free contract, according to which the state should not interfere with what adult agents contractually agree upon. In this paper I argue that the practical relevance of this critical insight depends on the availability of answers to three questions: (1) Which (...) are the core features of baseline background conditions supporting a well-ordered labor market enhancing economic welfare? (2) In which cases and for which reasons are non-market institutions needed in order to support these features? (3) Under which conditions and at which levels can collective mechanisms be expected to support adequate non-market institutions ‘curing market failure’? Some of the core properties of labor markets and labor contracts are discussed which need to be taken into account in attempts to answer these questions, most notably problems of contract enforcement, market failure and collective action. (shrink)

An article that reflects on the adaptation of a phenomenologically inspired approach within sociological epistemology. Using two sociological as examples perspectives – interpretivism and critical theory – we point at the normative assumptions common to both approaches. We suggest these are responsible for the impossibility of transgressing dichotomization and mediation – two features continuously reproduced within social sciences. With the use of phenomenologically inspired non-dichotomous epistemology we offer a way to work around these limitations. It is possible, we argue, (...) thanks to the application of the categories of intentionality and responsiveness, to ground sociology in a non-dichotomous, and hence expanded, paradigm. (shrink)

As volunteer engagement in non-governmental organizations vary between individuals, it is vital to get to know its predictors. It can be of profit to volunteers and the ones who profit from their activities. The aim of present study was to examine a model explaining volunteer engagement examining volunteer self-efficacy as a mediator and personality traits, job resources as its predictors. Respondents were asked to fill in questionnaires accessible online. Those consisted of demographic questions as well as Ten-item Personality Inventory, and (...) three measures adjusted to volunteer environment: Work Design Questionnaire, General Self-Efficacy Scale, and Work Engagement Scale. Results. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that conscientiousness, skill variety and self-efficacy are statistically significant predictors of volunteer engagement. It was shown that the effects of conscientiousness and skill variety on volunteer engagement are mediated by volunteer self-efficacy. (shrink)

A growing number of people are relying on technologies like Google Maps not only to navigate and locate themselves in cartographic space but also to search, discover and evaluate urban places. While the spatial data that underlies such technology frequently appears as a combination of Google-created maps and locational information passively collected from mobile (GPS-enabled) devices, in this article we argue that for such systems to function as both useful tools for exploration for users and sources of revenue, users must (...) actively produce massive quantities of granular spatial data that would otherwise be significantly more difficult and expensive to collect. The production of this qualitative information about places constitutes significant unremunerated affective labour. In this article, we build on the tradition of feminist geographies, especially feminist and critical Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to examine how the labour done by gendered, raced and often classed members of a local community is alienated by Google (i.e. Alphabet, Inc.) to produce commodified spatial data/media in the Local Guides platform. We analyse how Google’s presentation of the platform hails women as care labourers—sharing their thoughts, feelings and knowledge of place for free in the name of supporting and caring for a community, however vaguely it may be constituted. At the same time, we argue that digital labour that produces the Local Guides platform draws from and reproduces specific gendering of spaces. We draw on a case study of a commercial corridor in the US city of Worcester, Massachusetts to show how the dialectic between affective digital labour and urban space has material effects on the production of raced, classed and gendered spaces and places. The article concludes with a call to maintain critical, feminist engagements with these types of platforms in order to further develop forms of digital praxis towards more just cities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 302-303 [Access article in PDF] Sedgwick, Sally, ed. The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 338. Cloth, $59.95. This collection consists almost entirely of papers from a 1995 conference at Dartmouth on "The Idea of a System of Transcendental Idealism in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel." Four categories (...) of papers address: (1) the relation between Kant's three Critiques and the Opus Postumum; (2) Fichte's reception of the Critical Philosophy; (3) Schelling's Naturphilosophie as a reaction to Kant and Fichte; and (4) Hegel's indebtedness to and famous departure from Kantianism.In "The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy," Paul Guyer argues that, appearances aside, Kant's thought from the first Critique to the Opus Postumum forms a continuous and self-consistent project. Indeed, Guyer claims that Kant's conception of transcendental philosophy remained essentially unchanged throughout this period (this despite frequent—and often flattering—remarks in the Opus Postumum concerning Spinoza). In contrast, Jeffrey Edwards' "Spinozism, Freedom, and Transcendental Dynamics in Kant's Final System of Transcendental Idealism" points to a conceptual tension present in Kant's late attempt to find common ground between Spinoza and transcendental idealism. Edwards argues that Kant's notion in the Opus Postumum of a dynamical form of matter leads him to embrace a realist (quasi-Spinozistic) conception of space. Finally, in "Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical?" Henry Allison challenges the view (common from Hegel to Guyer) that a profound change in Kant's project occurs in the Critique of Judgment, viz., that something profoundly un-transcendental emerges with Kant's notions of the intuitive intellect and purposiveness of nature.Günter Zöller, in "From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism," offers an interpretation of the development of notions of "system" and "transcendental idealism" from Kant to Fichte. This is an indispensable paper for anyone concerned with the fine points of this development and, [End Page 302] indeed, Zöller's treatment is throughout a model of clarity. In "The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre," Daniel Breazeale offers an outstanding survey of the defining features of Fichte's early Jena Wissenschaftslehre. The breadth and depth of Breazeale's paper is a signal achievement, one that puts before the reader's eyes the lay of the often convoluted and confusing land that is the Wissenschaftslehre. Furthermore, Breazeale's discussion of the subdivisions of the Wissenschaftslehre (i.e., the particular sciences grounded by the "science of science") is of particular benefit for understanding the totality of Fichte's conception of philosophy."The 'I' as Principle of Philosophy" by Allen Wood, and "The Practical Foundation of Philosophy in Kant, Fichte, and After" by Karl Ameriks offer differing evaluations of the kind of "primacy of the practical" that each author locates in Fichte. Ameriks rejects Wood's sympathetic reading of the fundamentally practical character of the Fichtean "I." What is at stake for the authors is the success or failure of Fichte's attempt to account for the unity of theoretical and practical reason. It is important to note however that, unlike Kant, Fichte does not subscribe to the "primacy of the practical" thesis; indeed, Fichte holds the two aspects of reason to be "equiprimordial." As such, some of Wood's and Ameriks' claims are either misleading or simply wrong. This point aside, a common criticism of Fichte is that he reduces the world to the bare posit of the "I," a view of which Robert Pippin's "Fichte's Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism" quickly disposes. Instead, Pippin presents a "normative non-psychologistic" interpretation of Fichtean idealism.Regarding Schelling's Kant-reception, Manfred Baum's "The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature" locates the origins of Schelling's Naturphilosophie in his youthful interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. Baum's analyses, which abound with rich historical and philological information, are complemented by Dieter Sturma's... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 302-303 [Access article in PDF] Sedgwick, Sally, ed. The Reception of Kant's Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 338. Cloth, $59.95. This collection consists almost entirely of papers from a 1995 conference at Dartmouth on "The Idea of a System of Transcendental Idealism in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel." Four categories (...) of papers address: (1) the relation between Kant's three Critiques and the Opus Postumum; (2) Fichte's reception of the Critical Philosophy; (3) Schelling's Naturphilosophie as a reaction to Kant and Fichte; and (4) Hegel's indebtedness to and famous departure from Kantianism.In "The Unity of Nature and Freedom: Kant's Conception of the System of Philosophy," Paul Guyer argues that, appearances aside, Kant's thought from the first Critique to the Opus Postumum forms a continuous and self-consistent project. Indeed, Guyer claims that Kant's conception of transcendental philosophy remained essentially unchanged throughout this period (this despite frequent—and often flattering—remarks in the Opus Postumum concerning Spinoza). In contrast, Jeffrey Edwards' "Spinozism, Freedom, and Transcendental Dynamics in Kant's Final System of Transcendental Idealism" points to a conceptual tension present in Kant's late attempt to find common ground between Spinoza and transcendental idealism. Edwards argues that Kant's notion in the Opus Postumum of a dynamical form of matter leads him to embrace a realist (quasi-Spinozistic) conception of space. Finally, in "Is the Critique of Judgment Post-Critical?" Henry Allison challenges the view (common from Hegel to Guyer) that a profound change in Kant's project occurs in the Critique of Judgment, viz., that something profoundly un-transcendental emerges with Kant's notions of the intuitive intellect and purposiveness of nature.Günter Zöller, in "From Critique to Metacritique: Fichte's Transformation of Kant's Transcendental Idealism," offers an interpretation of the development of notions of "system" and "transcendental idealism" from Kant to Fichte. This is an indispensable paper for anyone concerned with the fine points of this development and, [End Page 302] indeed, Zöller's treatment is throughout a model of clarity. In "The Spirit of the Wissenschaftslehre," Daniel Breazeale offers an outstanding survey of the defining features of Fichte's early Jena Wissenschaftslehre. The breadth and depth of Breazeale's paper is a signal achievement, one that puts before the reader's eyes the lay of the often convoluted and confusing land that is the Wissenschaftslehre. Furthermore, Breazeale's discussion of the subdivisions of the Wissenschaftslehre (i.e., the particular sciences grounded by the "science of science") is of particular benefit for understanding the totality of Fichte's conception of philosophy."The 'I' as Principle of Philosophy" by Allen Wood, and "The Practical Foundation of Philosophy in Kant, Fichte, and After" by Karl Ameriks offer differing evaluations of the kind of "primacy of the practical" that each author locates in Fichte. Ameriks rejects Wood's sympathetic reading of the fundamentally practical character of the Fichtean "I." What is at stake for the authors is the success or failure of Fichte's attempt to account for the unity of theoretical and practical reason. It is important to note however that, unlike Kant, Fichte does not subscribe to the "primacy of the practical" thesis; indeed, Fichte holds the two aspects of reason to be "equiprimordial." As such, some of Wood's and Ameriks' claims are either misleading or simply wrong. This point aside, a common criticism of Fichte is that he reduces the world to the bare posit of the "I," a view of which Robert Pippin's "Fichte's Alleged Subjective, Psychological, One-Sided Idealism" quickly disposes. Instead, Pippin presents a "normative non-psychologistic" interpretation of Fichtean idealism.Regarding Schelling's Kant-reception, Manfred Baum's "The Beginnings of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature" locates the origins of Schelling's Naturphilosophie in his youthful interpretation of Plato's Timaeus. Baum's analyses, which abound with rich historical and philological information, are complemented by Dieter Sturma's... (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the neo-republican principle of non-domination. Neo-republicans argue that domination is a capacity for one to intentionally use arbitrary power to interfere in someone’s life. Critics of neo-republicanism argue that this definition of freedom as non-domination precludes a structural analysis of domination, which would explain and critique the ways in which societies produce structural domination unintentionally. The article focuses on capitalism’s labor process and its labor markets. It argues that critics are (...) correct to think that the neo-republican principle of non-domination has an insufficient scope, but that an alternative account of structural domination should still support the neo-republican idea that agency must be involved. Otherwise, we might simply fail to explain the social processes that reproduce structural domination. What is needed is to explain how the labor process creates incentives for agents to intentionally produce structures that have unintended, yet dominating effects, and in turn, how the intentions of agents are conditioned by their social positions. Domination is thus agential and structural. (shrink)

Modern technology is more than a neutral tool: it is the framework of our civilization and shapes our way of life. Social critics claim that we must choose between this way of life and human values. Critical Theory of Technology challenges that pessimistic cliche. This pathbreaking book argues that the roots of the degradation of labor, education, and the environment lie not in technology per se but in the cultural values embodied in its design. Rejecting such popular solutions as (...) economic simplicity or spiritual renewal, Feenberg presents a compelling argument for broader democratic participation in technological choices. This book will be of special interest to scholars and students of philosophy, sociology, contemporary Marxism, and Critical Theory. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno is a widely-studied figure, but most often with regard to his work on cultural theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The Sociology of Theodor Adorno provides the first thorough English-language account of Adorno's sociological thinking. Matthias Benzer reads Adorno's sociology through six major themes: the problem of conceptualising capitalist society; empirical research; theoretical analysis; social critique; the sociological text; and the question of the non-social. Benzer explains the methodological and theoretical ideas informing Adorno's reflections on sociology and illustrates Adorno's approach (...) to examining social life, including astrology, sexual taboos and racial prejudice. Benzer clarifies Adorno's sociology in relation to his work in other disciplines and the inspiration his sociology took from social thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kracauer and Benjamin. The book raises critical questions about the viability of Adorno's sociological mode of procedure and its potential contributions and challenges to current debates in social science. (shrink)

Food charity in the United States has grown into a critical appendage of agro-food supply chains. In 2016, 4.5 billion pounds of food waste was diverted through a network of 200 regional food banks, a fivefold increase in just 20 years. Recent global trade disruptions and the COVID-19 pandemic have further reinforced this trend. Economic geographers studying charitable food networks argue that its infrastructure and moral substructure serve to revalue food waste and surplus labor in the capitalist food system. (...) The political–legal framework undergirding this revaluation process however is still poorly understood. Drawing on a 6-year institutional ethnography of the food banking economy in West Virginia, this paper takes a supply-side approach to examine the material and moral values driving the expansion of food waste recovery as hunger relief. Empirically, it focuses on the laws, contracts and fiscal incentives regulating charitable food procurement at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Feeding America. The assemblage of government agencies, private businesses and non-profit organizations enrolled into this gift economy at different scales I argue, serves to enclose food waste into a public–private governance structure that regulates food surpluses and ensures these will not disrupt the scarcity logics driving profitability along primary food circuits. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service empowers individuals and organisations to access AI on-demand, in either tailored or ‘off-the-shelf’ forms. However, institutional separation between development, training and deployment can lead to critical opacities, such as obscuring the level of human effort necessary to produce and train AI services. Information about how, where, and for whom AI services have been produced are valuable secrets, which vendors strategically disclose to clients depending on commercial interests. This article provides a critical analysis of how AIaaS vendors (...) manipulate the visibility of human labour in AI production based on whether the vendor relies on paid or unpaid labour to fill interstitial gaps. Where vendors are able to occlude human labour in the organisational ‘backstage,’ such as in data preparation, validation or impersonation, they do so regularly, further contributing to ongoing techno-utopian narratives of AI hype. Yet, when vendors must co-produce the AI service with the client, such as through localised AI training, they must ‘lift the curtain’, resulting in a paradoxical situation of needing to both perpetuate dominant AI hype narratives while emphasising AI’s mundane limitations. (shrink)

Different notions of multiple rationalities have recently been applied to describe the phenomena of co-existence of competing rationalities in organizations. These include institutional pluralism, institutional logics, competing rationalities and pluralistic contexts. The French pragmatic sociologists Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot have contributed to this line of research with a sophisticated theoretical framework of orders of worth, which has been applied in an increasing number of empirical studies. This article explores how the order of worth framework has been applied to empirical (...) studies of organizations. First, I summarize the basic ideas of the framework, stressing the aspects of special relevance for studies of organizations. Second, I review the empirical studies focusing on the coexistence of competing orders of worth in organizations showing that the order of worth framework primarily has been related to three main themes in organizational research: non-profit and co-operative organizations, inter-organizational co-operation, and organizational change. Third, I discuss how the pragmatic, process-oriented aspect of the research program, focusing on the intertwining of values and action in various forms of ‘justification work’, has been translated into empirical studies. I argue that even if highly interesting empirical studies have begun to appear on the pragmatic aspects of the order of worth program, empirical studies of ‘justification work’ may be a potentially very promising focus for future empirical studies. (shrink)

"Disenchantment" is a key term in the self-understanding of modernity. But what exactly do we mean when we use this concept? What was its original meaning when Max Weber introduced it? And can the conventional meaning or Max Weber's view really be defended, given the present state of knowledge about the history of religion? This book is an attempt to divest this concept of its enduring enchantment. The first chapters of the book deal with the three empirical disciplines history, psychology (...) and sociology of religion to develop an understanding of religion that then lays the groundwork for what is presented in chapter 4, namely the most thorough study of Weber's views on disenchantment that has ever been undertaken. It turns out that Weber's use was highly ambiguous and that his grand narrative leading from the prophets of ancient Judaism to the crisis of meaning on the eve of the First World War collapses when we recognize this ambiguity. This makes it possible to construct an alternative that takes into account the dynamics of ever new sacralizations, their normative evaluation in the light of the values of a universalist morality and the dangers of the misuse of religion in connection with the formation of power. This book constitutes a challenge - for believers and non-believers alike. (shrink)

Certification programs seek to promote decent work in global agriculture, yet little is known about their gender standards and implications for female workers, who are often the most disadvantaged. This study outlines the gender standard domains of major agricultural certifications, showing how some programs (Fair Trade USA, Rainforest) prioritize addressing gender equality in employment and others (Fairtrade International, UTZ) incorporate wider gender rights. To illuminate the implications of gender standards in practice, I analyze Fairtrade certification and worker experience on certified (...) flower plantations in Ecuador, drawing on a qualitative and quantitative field research study. (1) I show how Fairtrade seeks to bolster the wellbeing of female workers, addressing their workplace needs via equal employment, treatment, and remuneration standards and their reproductive needs via maternity leave and childcare services. My research demonstrates that for female workers, addressing family responsibilities is critical, since they shape women’s ability to take paid jobs, their employment needs, and their overall wellbeing. (2) I show how Fairtrade seeks to bolster the rights of women workers through individual and collective capacity building standards. My findings reveal how promoting women’s individual empowerment serves as a precondition for collective empowerment, and how targeting traditional labor rights is insufficient for empowering female workers, since their strategic choices are curtailed largely outside the workplace. While Fairtrade certification bolsters the wellbeing and rights of female workers in and beyond the workplace, much still needs to be done before women can claim their rights as workers and citizens. (shrink)

This book represents emerging alternative perspectives to the "constructivist" orthodoxy that currently dominates the field of science and technology studies. Various contributions from distinguished Americans and Europeans in the field, provide arguments and evidence that it is not enough simply to say that science is "socially situated." Controversial Science focuses on important political, ethical, and broadly normative considerations that have yet to be given their due, but which point to a more realistic and critical perspective on science policy.

Critical reception of Marcel Duchamp since the 1970s has tended to elevate him into the very figure of the Artist he sought to attack. One aspect of this domestication has involved neglecting Duchamp’s fin de siècle ‘eroticism’ with its sexual innuendos and double-entendres. Yet this very readymade vulgarity allows us to recover a Duchamp still capable of disrupting the genres of Art and the gendered Artist, by revealing a theory embedded in his work which continually reverses and displaces phallocentrism (...) in a game consisting of the confusion of genders and genres. We argue that Duchamp’s disruption of the discursive typologies of the genre of art can be profitably read through this apparently trivial sexualized wordplay, particularly in the transgender passage into Rrose Sélavy. Reading this aspect of Duchamp after, i.e. within and against, Lacan demonstrates how Duchamp’s singular regime of signs governed by equivocity and indetermination subverts the ‘phallic function’ of the signifier. (shrink)

Building on research conducted in feminist organizations in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, this paper explores the role, relationship, and responsibility of advocating for antiracism and social justice in the context of antiracism projects in feminist nonprofit organizations. In doing so this paper asks: What do antiracism projects look like in feminist organizations? And how are these projects informed or interrupted by racialized and Indigenous activists within these spaces? (...) Using critical race theory’s composite counterstory, this paper uses storytelling methodologies to understand how racialized settlers and Indigenous folks can collaborate and thrive – as they have been doing – on occupied unceded territories in Canada. Based on a series of interviews with racialized and Indigenous activists engaging in feminist nonprofit organizations, these stories shed light on contemporary realities of colonization, including collaboration within white settler systems. (shrink)

New challenges are constantly emerging in the social sector in South Africa. Various social (non-profit) organisations are developing new and innovative ways to accommodate these challenges and to meet social needs. The aim of this research article is to measure the current social innovation capacity of the Dutch Reformed Church (DR Church), with reference to innovation capabilities, to determine at what level the church is meeting new social needs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from six different congregations and (...) a governing body in the Pretoria area, South Africa, was included. Twelve participants were interviewed between August and October 2017. The participants, consisting of ministers and board members, each held a management position. The social innovation capacity measurement of the DR Church showed that the organisation was successfully developing new ways to serve as a social agent in society. There are obstacles that prohibit the DR Church from developing new innovative ways to meet the social needs of its society, for example, entrepreneurial, developmental and leadership change capacities. Recommendations are made to maximise social innovation capacity of the managers (ministers and board members). (shrink)

Despite enthusiastic claims around the benefits of corporate volunteering for the workplace and its widespread implementation, the impact of such programs for beneficiaries and non-profit organizations remains uncertain, particularly when employees’ participation is one-off. Previous research suggests that the benefits of CV for employees, businesses, and society are more likely to occur if employees internalize a volunteer identity—that is, if being a volunteer becomes a part of their self. This leads them to sustain their participation in CV over time, maximizing (...) CV’s positive effects on all stakeholders. This study explores the factors explaining why employees internalize a volunteer identity in a corporate context. We do so by empirically testing Grant’s :589-615, 2012) volunteer work design theoretical model with a sample of 619 employees involved in CV programs, and by comparing its relevance with an alternative, extended model relying on insights from self-determination theory. Whereas we find only partial and weak empirical support for the VWD model, our SDT-extended model is supported empirically. These results show that the quality of motivation that employees experience while volunteering plays a more important role than repeated participation, as it illuminates the process of how factors such as the quality of the projects, organizational support for CV, as well as the causes targeted affect the internalization of a volunteer identity. In particular, we show that employees are more likely to internalize a volunteer identity if they can choose what cause to engage for and if they feel that the projects they participate in are meaningful. Surprisingly, we also show that a prestigious cause as well as recognition and managerial support foster a controlled form of motivation for employees, which are then unlikely to internalize a volunteer identity. In doing so, we contribute to a better understanding of how CV can have lasting benefits for both business and society, and provide business leaders with actionable insights about how to design impactful CV programs. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on gender and the state suggests that women's agency has been critical to the formation of welfare policy. Yet, nations with strong, mobilized feminist movements do not necessarily develop the most supportive welfare policies. By historically analyzing the emergence of British and French family allowance policy, the author suggests that the key to this conundrum lies in the interaction between women's movements and the value given to women's paid and unpaid labor. Woman-friendly state policy requires an (...) active women's movement and ideologies valuing women's paid and unpaid labor. In addition, women's movements must be able and willing to strategically use those ideologies to pursue their goals. (shrink)

By his critical reflections on the crisis of modern civilization, Jan Patočka, phenomenologist of the Other Europe, incarnates the critical consciousness of the phenomenological movement. He was in fact one of the first European philosophers to have emphasized the necessity of abandoning the hitherto Eurocentric propositions of solution to the crisis when he explicitly raised the problems of a “Post-European humanity”. In advocating an understanding of the history of European humanity different from those of Husserl and Heidegger, Patočka (...) directs his philosophical reflections back to sketch a more profound phenomenology of the natural world insufficiently thematized in Husserl and absent in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. By virtue of its emphasis on the structural characteristics of movement, of praxis, and of the disclosure of the abyssal nature of human existence and of the original nothingness as the (non-)foundation of the phenomenal world, Patočka’s phenomenology of the natural world constitutes an opening towards the reception of Others and other cultures, in particular that of Chinese Taoist philosophy. (shrink)

Volunteering in Ukraine is becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon that occupies an important place in the life of society. Many people choose volunteering as a way to help people in difficult life circumstances, as well as to develop their own personality and engage in active civic participation. As a significant social phenomenon, volunteering has its own ideological foundations that define its core values and principles. Volunteering is based on the desire to help people and nature regardless of their status, nationality, (...) religion, or political beliefs. The purpose of the study. The current study examines the ideological foundations of volunteering in Ukraine in wartime and their significance for volunteering, to study the practical experience of volunteers in Ukraine in 2014-2023, and to examine the peculiarities of the legal regulation of volunteering in Ukraine in wartime. Methods. Achieving the goal and objectives of the study was made possible by using a set of interrelated modern general scientific and special methods and approaches. The systematic approach made it possible to study volunteering as a holistic set of elements in the totality of the connections between them. Through the use of the method of systematization, the author provides a review of the legal framework for volunteering, factor analysis is used to determine the factors influencing the relationship between the state and society in the field of volunteering, and system analysis is used to assess the state of relations between the state and society in Ukraine at this stage through its quantitative indicators.Results. According to the study “Volunteer Movement in Ukraine”, prepared by GfK Ukraine on behalf of the UN in Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens pay great attention to the volunteer movement in the development of social processes: 62% recognize the role of volunteers in the changes in the last year; 85% believe that the volunteer movement helps strengthen peace; 81% tend to consider the volunteer movement an essential component of civil society. Regarding the legal regulation of volunteer activities in Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine “On Volunteer Activity” of April 19, 2011, No. 3236-VI was adopted in April 2011. The Law of Ukraine of 15.08.2022 No. 2519-IX On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Volunteer Activity” on Support of Volunteer Activity regulates social relations related to volunteer activity in Ukraine. Discussion. One of the key principles of volunteering in Ukraine is selflessness and the ability to work in extreme conditions. Volunteers often work in difficult and dangerous conditions that require a high level of professionalism and skills. For many volunteers, the Ukrainian revolution of 2013-2014 and the events in eastern Ukraine were turning points that forced them to change their attitude to their own lives and start helping others. Ukrainian volunteers are an example of community and state cooperation that contributes to ensuring security and helping victims. They have shown that volunteering can be an effective tool in the fight against war and its consequences. Many volunteer organizations provided free medical care, took on the responsibility of supplying the military with necessary items and military equipment, organized the evacuation of people from the war zone, and provided psychological support to the military and their families. Conclusions.Volunteering in Ukraine is not a new phenomenon, but the war with Russia has become a catalyst for its development. This is a great example of how crises can encourage people to act together and interact to achieve a common goal. Volunteerism in Ukraine demonstrates the importance of spiritual unity and cooperation in difficult times, and is one of the most striking examples of civil society in action. The ideological principles of volunteering in Ukraine include non-profitability, openness, spirituality, and humanism, transparency and openness, security, and cooperation with government agencies and the military. The volunteer movement in Ukraine, especially in times of war, is an important factor in ensuring security and helping victims. Involvement of different groups of the population in volunteer activities, as well as cooperation with state and international structures, are important to ensure the effectiveness and success of volunteer activities. (shrink)

In this paper we conduct an analysis of the critical narratives of Stardew Valley and compare them to other relevant videogames in order to develop new possibilities for an ecological critique of capitalist extractive econo­mies. Critical narratives of this game are aimed primarily at the alienating conditions of labour and deeply devastating modes of production under capitalism that impact and severely damage the environment. Analysing these narratives, we superimpose the immediate messages of the game with the procedural (...) rhetoric and material conditions of their existence. Over the course of our analysis, we highlight a material-narrative disso­nance which, in the case of Stardew Valley, fails to function as a commu­nicative strategy of the game and remains its mere external contradiction. Although the game’s critical narrative may seem overly utopian and its political imaginary a bit underdeveloped, the game elaborates on concrete ways to tackle the alienation of labour and resolve the ecological crisis. In addition to this, the paper covers the history of the interplay between the video game industry and the field of global ecological crisis research. We compare the attempts to raise awareness of the videogames’ own material­ity that preceded Stardew Valley. We conclude that Stardew Valley utilises the language of sustainable co-existence and wasteless local production, expanding this logic both to the sphere of labour and the spectrum of en­vironmental problems. In the case of ecological critique, some gameplay decisions in Stardew Valley enable us to come up with new strategies aimed at creating critical narratives about the environment in videogames. Thus supplementing Stardew Valley’s findings with critical tropes derived from other games (mainly, Rain World), we were able to gather a set of theoretical instruments that could facilitate the creation of games about ecosystems. Following Donna Haraway’s emphasis on the crucial role of narrative fram­ing (“it matters which stories tell stories”), we highlight new opportunities for the entire medium of videogames. (shrink)

This paper elaborates on the value of a humanistic approach to the production and judgement of sociological knowledge by defending this approach against some common criticisms. It argues that humanising sociological knowledge not only lends an appropriate epistemological humility to the discipline, but also encourages productive knowledge development by suggesting that a certain irreverence to what is considered known is far more important for generating useful new perspectives on social phenomena than defensive vindications of existing knowledge. It also suggests that (...) the threat of what is called “relativism” evoked by critics of humanised conceptions of knowledge is largely illusory, and that in fact a far graver danger comes from dogmatic assertions of social truth that claim to have somehow secured access to non-contingent arenas of knowing, forestalling ongoing conversation, and tying future discovery to the limits of current perspectives. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt famously argued that acts of violence are corrosive to a free and plural politics. However, the broader implications of her critique of violence are less well known. Reading her concept of violence comprehensively, with regard to (ostensibly non-political) labor and work as well as action, this article reveals its broader relevance for contemporary political thought: the political question of violence lies at the heart of our ecological crisis and is crucial for the social structure of labor domination. While (...) Arendtian politics is without normative guarantees, the conceptual distinction between instrumental violence and free politics is crucial, because it renders the political judgment of violence possible. In every realm of human activity, the refusal to acknowledge violence stunts our capacity to care for the world. (shrink)

Humanitarian maps assembled using digital technology are indicative of transformations underway in how the world is made knowable, sensible, and actionable, including for international legal purposes. These transformations are exemplified by the Missing Maps Project (MMP), an initiative of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, a U.S.-registered non-profit, and three other non-governmental organisations operating internationally: American Red Cross; British Red Cross; and Médecins Sans Frontières. Projects such as the MMP make it harder for international lawyers to lay claim to, and seek to (...) imaginatively reorient, shared repositories of common sense. Meanwhile, international legal scholars continue to propagate ideas that the world may be reimagined with their help, largely without regard to such transformations. In lieu of imagination’s standard evocation to the end of enhancing critical agency in international legal writing, this article contends that the idiosyncratic notion of imagination advanced in the writings of Walter Benjamin may be better attuned to ongoing shifts in sense-making apparent in international humanitarian mapping. Walter Benjamin’s atypical rendering of imagination as a ‘purely receptive, uncreative’ force in a field of technological reproduction offers international legal scholars another way of thinking about agency and prospects for re-forming their field in the face of its burgeoning digitalisation. (shrink)

This paper combines the use of gift theory and the metatheory of the Morphogenetic Approach as a framework for the proposal that the relationship between unpaid interns and ‘employers’ may be conceptualized as a form of transactional, but asymmetrical, gift-exchange. The article begins by applying insights from gift theory to the findings of a range of studies into unpaid internships. It is argued that, while interns are the initial gift-givers in delivering unpaid labour, ‘employers’ often demonstrate (...) weak reciprocation in terms of offering paid work. Following that, the article combines gift analysis with the Morphogenetic Approach. This framework offers ontological depth to the substantive propositions of gift theory, and provides conceptual tools to study the interplay between structure/culture and agency that form the intern-‘employer’ relationship. The contribution of this article lies in the combined use of two key theoretical perspectives to a problematic not previously examined through such concepts. (shrink)

Specification of an appropriate relationship, or division of labor, between sociology and philosophy, remains a sensitive issue. Anthony Giddens offers a distinctive variant in his concern, in structuration theory, to develop an ontology of the social without participating in epistemological debate and without articulating and justifying a normative theory (whether a philosophical anthropology or a political philosophy). Both omissions impair the wider reception of structuration theory. The second is the more serious, however, insofar as the postempiricist community of inquirers may (...) make a virtue of the ethical and political factors that inform social science, but it does not yet have any settled means of assessing different, and contesting, values; even if it did, it could not invent Giddens's position for him. There are signs that Giddens now recognizes the need to formulate and justify models of the good society and of the actualized self. (shrink)

This paper discusses recent attempts by economists to analyze institutional structure using individualist methodology. It is argued that developments in game theory, as well as advances in the analysis of transactions costs, have proved surprisingly fertile in yielding insights into the nature and structure of institutions. The example of the university is used to illustrate the ways in which the economic approach to institutions can be applied. In particular, the nature of academic contracts and the non?profit status of universities are (...) related to the literature on contractual hazards. Although methodologically very different from sociological or historical analysis of institutions, it is argued that the new institutional economics may provide a bridge permitting greater contact between hitherto almost entirely separate disciplines. (shrink)

Discussion surrounding Marx's distinction between productive and unproductive labor too often fails to distinguish between the various forms that unproductive labor may assume and is too hasty to subsume the income of workers "unproductively" employed by capital as a non-profit component of social surplus-value. Against this, it may be argued that many forms of unproductive labor are socially necessary to the social capital and are therefore properly viewed as systemic overhead costs. As such, they should be treated, in value-theoretical terms, (...) as elements of the constant capital flow. The implications of this approach are explored for crisis theory and the evolution of the class structure with particular reference to the Canadian experience in this century. (shrink)