Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fair that everyone should bear the burdens of tackling injustice. We extend this fairness-based argument for civil disobedience to defend some acts of uncivil disobedience. Focusing on uncivil environmental activism—such as ecotage (sabotage with the aim of protecting the (...) environment)—we argue that some acts of uncivil disobedience can be morally superior to their civil counterparts, when and because such acts target people who are responsible for environmental threats. Indeed, insofar as some acts of uncivil disobedience can more accurately target responsible people, they can better satisfy the demands of fairness compared to their civil counterparts. In some circumstances, our argument may require activists to engage in uncivil disobedienceeven whencivil disobedience is available. (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial in increasing awareness of environmental degradation and preventing actions that harm the environment. A radical environmentalist movement has emerged within the community of activists. They advocate using illegal measures to attain their goals. This paper discusses these radical environmentalist groups’ motivations, their actions and their consequences. Activities that many consider unacceptable, such as art vandalism and road blockades, may result in adverse outcomes and diminish public support for environmental endeavors. We propose an alternative solidarity approach (...) whereby activists focus their efforts on disseminating information to the general public on climate change and other environmental issues, advocating for the adoption of eco-surplus culture, and fostering cooperation among governments, businesses, and individuals to develop effective solutions. (shrink)

Environmental activism plays a vital role in raising awareness of environmental degradation and halting environmentally destructive activities, which is expected to contribute to safeguarding the Earth’s system against climate and biodiversity loss crises. Although the passion and commitment of environmental activists should be acknowledged, several groups of environmental activists are embracing the radical environmentalist movement. They support using illegal actions to achieve their primary goal of environmental protection. The actions perpetrated by radical environmentalist groups are not impulsive but rather (...) part of a deliberately planned and organized following a long-term strategy. (shrink)

Although clinical ethics scholarship and practice has largely avoided assuming an activist stance, the many health care crises of the last eighteen months motivated a distinct change: On listserves, in blog postings, and in published essays, activist language has permeated conversations over such issues as the impact of triage policies on persons with disabilities and of color, and how the health care system has historically failed African Americans. In this paper, I defend this turn, arguing that clinical ethicists should embrace (...) activism—generally, and with particular emphasis on institutional, mesolevel concerns. Ethicists are often uniquely situated to understand the structural factors that regularly motivate clinical ethics cases, and they are often in a privileged position to be effective change agents. In making this case, I also stress the need not to overstep one's skills and to be acutely cognizant of the political risks associated with such work. (shrink)

Academics are, or ought to be, engaged in an impartial search for the truth. Many academics also are, but ought not to be, engaged in political activism. I defend a moral duty for academics to refrain from such activism. Ben Jones’ article in this journal rejects such a duty. This article responds to his objections, thereby more carefully formulating when and why political activism is morally problematic, and what burdens it may imply.

Activism is defined in this paper as involving local instigations of new series of elements intersecting the actual, generating new collective enunciations, experimentations and investigations, which erode good and common sense and cause structures to swing away from their sedimented identities. By appealing to Spinozism, the paper describes the microphysics of the activist encounter with stable structures and the ways in which activism imposes new regimes of succession of ideas and affective variations in the power of action. Rather (...) than understanding activism as supporting or leading social struggles, the definition of activism pursued here conceives it as an open-ended process and stresses the role of investigation in relation to practices within the social situations to which activism addresses itself. (shrink)

Environmental activism, like all great activisms, is fundamentally normative, its principal beliefs contestable, its most powerful arguments rebuttable on the grounds that they are subjective. Environmental activists, as political tacticians with complex goals, have become skilled at presenting objectified versions of their own motivations when trying to broaden support for specific policies or take advantage of regulatory or legal opportunities. While instrumentally tempting and often expedient, this practice of objectifying moral arguments is in some respects disingenuous, and its successes (...) as well as its failures bring with them characteristic risks, short-term and long-term. (shrink)

The Characters Deliberative Judgment of Activism Deliberative Procedures are Exclusive Formal Inclusion is not Enough Constrained Alternatives Hegemonic Discourse Notes.

Those who care about and engage in politics frequently fall victim to cognitive bias. Concerns that such bias impacts scholarship recently have prompted debates—notably, in philosophy and psychology—on the proper relationship between research and politics. One proposal emerging from these debates is that researchers studying politics have a professional duty to avoid political activism because it risks biasing their work. While sympathetic to the motivations behind this proposal, I suggest several reasons to reject a blanket duty to avoid (...) class='Hi'>activism: (1) even if it reduced bias, this duty would make unreasonable demands on researchers; (2) this duty could hinder research by limiting viewpoint diversity; (3) this duty wrongly implies that academia offers a relative haven from bias compared to politics; and (4) not all forms of political activism pose an equal risk of bias. None of these points suggest that researchers should ignore the risk of bias. Rather, researchers should focus on stronger evidence-based strategies for reducing bias than a blanket recommendation to avoid politics. (shrink)

In April 2017, scientists and science sympathizers held marches in the United Kingdom as part of a coordinated international March for Science movement that was held in over 600 cities worldwide. This article reports from participant-observation studies of the marches that took place in London and Cardiff. Supplemented with data from 37 interviews from marchers at the London event, the article reports on an analysis of the placards, focusing on marchers’ concerns and the language and images through which they expressed (...) those concerns. How did the protesters articulate their concerns and objectives, and how were these articulations used to build a community? The placards did not represent a clear, focused, and unifying message; they instead illustrated disparate concerns ranging from human-induced climate change, Trump and “alternative facts,” and local UK specific political issues concerning the country’s exit from the European Union. Our analysis shows that placards gave a playful and whimsical character to the march, with slogans displaying significant amounts of humor, often formulated through insider jokes, scientific puns, or self-deprecating appropriation of negative stereotypes about scientists. We analyze the march through the social movement literature and as a collective identity-building exercise for an community of scientists and sympathizers with long-term aims of establishing a louder voice for scientists, and experts, in public discourse. (shrink)

This article sketches a taxonomy of the activities in which bioethics academics engage, including activities that may make their own research more impactful, from little or no engagement outside academia to activism or extreme activism. This taxonomy, the first of its kind, may be useful in determining what obligations bioethics academics have in relation to activism and activities that fall short of activism.

In this article, I offer an account of what one of the short-term political aims of proponents of greater equality ought to be. I claim that the strengthening of reflective capacity—citizens’ ability to impose a temporary level of distance from their commitments, to consider alternatives to them, and to evaluate their origins and validity—ought to be one key aim of egalitarian politics under present political conditions. I then propose activist-led education programs as one desirable means to deliver this end of (...) strengthened reflective capacity. Where activist-led education provides plentiful informational resources and opportunities to practice deploying one’s reflective capacity, and also emphasizes and encourages intellectual humility, it seems well placed to help bring about this aim. Activist-led education programs are commonly subject to what I term the indoctrination worry, but I try to show that there are not good grounds for concluding in advance of further study that the delicate balancing of ends that permissible activist-led education requires is either categorically unachievable, or avoidable in the way these objectors often press. The argument thus provides presumptive grounds for considering the proliferation of suitably organized activist-led education programs an important component of a broader strategy of egalitarian social change. (shrink)

The question of whether activism should be overtly embraced as part of the bioethicist's role deserves serious consideration. Like others, we agree that bioethics is inescapably partisan; bioethical deliberation is based on trying to determine morally relevant features of situations and morally justifiable outcomes. Where disagreement arises is over the degree to which bioethicists should be activists. Meyers argues for a somewhat circumscribed role, limited to action on ethically concerning institutional matters, for those who are financially independent of the (...) institutions. We take a broader view, arguing that some issues are so morally egregious that there is a duty to take a stand against them, even if the prospects of success are dim. There is a need for further debate, sharing of experiences, and analysis of case studies, to support bioethicists who take a stand. (shrink)

Although justice is a central principle in clinical ethics, work that centers social justice is often marginalized in clinical ethics. In addition to institutional barriers that may be preventing clinical ethicists from becoming the activists that Meyers argues we should be, we must also recognize the barriers embedded in the field of clinical ethics itself. As clinical ethicists, we have an opportunity to support anti‐racism work in particular by altering our own organizational structures to be more inclusive and reflective of (...) the Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color we serve, enhancing clinical ethics education and training by making critical theories foundational, and decolonizing our clinical ethics consultation tools and practices. (shrink)

In this paper, we reflect on current notions of engineering practice by examining some of the motives for engineered solutions to the problem of climate change. We draw on fields such as science and technology studies, the philosophy of technology, and environmental ethics to highlight how dominant notions of apoliticism and ahistoricity are ingrained in contemporary engineering practice. We argue that a solely technological response to climate change does not question the social, political, and cultural tenet of infinite material growth, (...) one of the root causes of climate change. In response to the contemporary engineering practice, we define an activist engineer as someone who not only can provide specific engineered solutions, but who also steps back from their work and tackles the question, What is the real problem and does this problem “require” an engineering intervention? Solving complex problems like climate change requires radical cultural change, and a significant obstacle is educating engineers about how to conceive of and create “authentic alternatives,” that is, solutions that differ from the paradigm of “technologically improving” our way out of problems. As a means to realize radically new solutions, we investigate how engineers might deploy the concept of praxis, which raises awareness in engineers of the inherent politics of technological design. Praxis empowers engineers with a more comprehensive understanding of problems, and thus transforms technologies, when appropriate, into more socially just and ecologically sensitive interventions. Most importantly, praxis also raises a radical alternative rarely considered—not “engineering a solution.” Activist engineering offers a contrasting method to contemporary engineering practice and leads toward social justice and ecological protection through problem solving by asking not, How will we technologize our way out of the problems we face? but instead, What really needs to be done? (shrink)

The New Transnational Activism shows how even the most prosaic activities can assume broader political meanings when they provide ordinary people with the experience of crossing transnational space. This means that we cannot be satisfied with defining transnational activists through the ways they think. The defining feature of transnationalism in this book is relational, and not cognitive. This emphasis on activism's relational structure means that even as they make transnational claims, transnational activists draw on the resources, the networks, (...) and the opportunities in which they are embedded, and only then - if at all - on more distant transnational links. But we can no more sharply draw a line between domestic and international politics in studying transnational activism than we could ignore local politics in studying its national equivalent. Understanding the processes that link the local, the national and the international is the major undertaking of the book. (shrink)

It is likely that the process of global climate change will continue to accelerate. There is a lack of political will to confront the problem and the consequences for humanity — including widespread suffering and institutional destabilization — will be disastrous. How should educators respond to a catastrophic future? Here, Bryan Warnick argues that two criteria should guide the educational response. The response should not (1) undermine efforts to find an “unprecedented solution” to climate change, or (2) leave students unprepared (...) to adapt to a global catastrophe. Using these criteria, he analyzes several possible ways to help students adapt to disaster, including teaching survivalism, encouraging forms of emotional resilience (like the Stoic apatheia), and helping students to appreciate the current moment. These adaptive responses seem to violate the first criterion. At the same time, an educational response focused entirely on climate activism seems to violate the second criterion. Warnick ends by exploring ways to accommodate the need for both adaptation and social engagement, finding promise in the idea of a tragic activism. (shrink)

In a recent article, Iris Marion Young raises several challenges to deliberative democracy on behalf of political activists. In this paper, the author defends a version of deliberative democracy against the activist challenges raised by Young and devises challenges to activism on behalf of the deliberative democrat. Key Words: activism • deliberative democracy • Discourse • Ideology • public sphere • I. M. Young.

This paper analyzes the relationship between love and social justice activism, focusing in particular on ways in which activists rely on either the union account of love (to argue that when one person is oppressed everyone is oppressed), the sentimentalist account of love (to argue that overcoming injustice is fundamentally about how we feel about one another), or love as fate (to argue that it is in love’s nature to triumph over hatred and injustice). All three accounts, while understandable (...) and attractive, are seriously problematic, as they tend either to obscure important differences in the ways that various groups are socially situated or to enable inaction by trusting that justice is inevitable. Alternative, deeper interpretations of each account (and their relationships to activism) are explored. (shrink)

In the realm of pixels and virtual spaces, the art of placemaking transcends physical confines, weaving a digital mosaic of voices and visions. Feminist digital placemaking emerges as a vibrant brushstroke on this canvas, painting online environments with the hues of inclusion, safety, and empowerment. The "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement in Iran, mirrored in the "Year of Hope" digital exhibition, showcases the transformative power of feminist digital placemaking in amplifying voices, knitting solidarity, and challenging oppressive narratives. The "Woman, Life, Freedom" (...) movement, sparked by the tragic demise of Mahsa (Jina) Amini, unfolds like a poignant narrative, with women scripting the chapters of resistance. This movement, a collage of courage and defiance, has found a digital stage in the "Year of Hope" exhibition, where each artwork tells a story, each pixel a testament to the unyielding spirit of Iranian women. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has become a force for good in the extant corporate governance literature. In this article, we present a case study of Nigeria to show how shareholder activism, as a corporate governance mechanism, can constitute a space for unhealthy politics and turbulent politicking, which is a reflection of the country’s brand of politics. As a result, we point out some translational challenges, and suggest more caution, in the diffusion of corporate governance practices across different institutional environments. We (...) contribute to the literature on corporate governance in Africa, whilst creating an understanding of the political embeddedness of shareholder activism in different institutional contexts—i.e. a step closer to a political theorising of shareholder activism. (shrink)

“Why are millions of dollars worth of orders being left unpaid?”. With tweets like this questioning brands’ policies, activists advocating for sustainable fashion re-discuss material starting points that are assumed by fashion brands, who argue that they are sustainable because they care about their workers’ conditions. This paper argues that activists use tweets to open _subdiscussions on material starting points_ to engage citizens and consumers, re-discussing factual _data_ that brands take for granted, such as the fact that they provide fair (...) conditions for their garment workers. Activists justify their opening of subdiscussions, often through an argumentative pattern that includes an argument based on the _locus from effects to cause_. They argue that if there are negative effects, the brand cannot claim to care about the conditions of its workers. In discussing how subdiscussions are used by fashion activists, this paper also introduces a conceptualization of Twitter argumentation as a discussion that is not isolated, but is part of a polylogical argumentation that takes place in different venues. For this reason, the argumentation used in tweets is reconstructed as a response to a fashion brand’s communication campaigns around sustainability, which extend beyond the confines of Twitter. As an empirical illustration, this paper is based on the campaign targeting fashion retailer Primark; the dataset includes the brand’s website as well as activists’ tweets. (shrink)

Masks, balaclavas, eye masks, and various accessories have been consistently used to hide the face, from Greek times through the grotesque of the Middle Ages to the Latin American theatre festivals of the 1980s. In the twenty-first century, technological advances such as facial recognition, which are being used for the biopolitical control of the face, caused activists to start developing different mechanisms to cover their faces in public spaces. In other words, the mask is not used solely as a device (...) that builds unique aesthetic-political senses but is also used to avoid being captured by surveillance cameras. The aim of this paper is to identify some of the masks used by activists in Latin American public protests, generating new signs that circulate widely in the semiosphere such as physiognomy, representation, and evocation. For this, we will return to Juri Lotman’s proposal on the semiosphere and the notion of facesphere developed by José Finol, concepts that operate as epistemological and heuristic frameworks that allow understanding the concrete meaning production processes as a global dimension and not only a particular one. What faces are hidden and what physiognomies are shown in the social protest? What borders are established? What political and aesthetic meanings do they build? These are the questions that this paper attempts to answer from a perspective of cultural semiotics. (shrink)

Traditionally, acts of civil disobedience are understood as a mechanism by which citizens may express dissatisfaction with a law of their country. That expression will typically be morally motivated, non-violent and aimed at changing their government’s policy, practice or law. Building on existing work, in this paper we explore the limits of one well-received definition of civil disobedience by considering the challenging case of the actions of animal activists at sea. Drawing on original interviews with advocates associated with Sea Shepherd, (...) Greenpeace and Humane Society International we find that even if animal activists are morally motivated and civil, the transnational nature of their activity makes it difficult to assess their intention to bring about a change in law or public policy. This means that a civil disobedience defence may not be available to activists operating across international borders. This raises important questions about the usefulness of the civil disobedience concept within the context of a globalised world. We conclude that while the actions of some anti-whaling activists may not meet definitions of civil disobedience as conventionally understood, this says more about the narrow way in which that concept has been traditionally defined, than it does about the type of activity some anti-whaling activists have undertaken in the Southern Ocean. Finally, we argue that activists wishing to make a stand against whaling may have no choice but to act as global citizens because policy change within a single nation-state is unlikely to lead to the cessation of this inherently transnational activity. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Corporations, which in the past have been hesitant to contribute to conversations regarding political and social issues, are increasingly speaking out on current issues such as race, sexual orientation, gender, immigration, and environmental issues. Despite this trend, limited academic research has focused on how corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) efforts impact firm value. In addition, extant studies have not fully identified the extent to which the firm and their message influence the outcomes of this approach. The current study explores how (...) sociopolitical stances communicated on Twitter affect firms’ stock prices. Results from an event study of 260 incidents of CSA show that CSA efforts decrease firm value by an average of 0.22%, indicating that wading into social or political issues is a risky strategy. However, further analysis highlights the importance of clearly articulating stances on social issues that align with the firm’s core values. (shrink)

This article aims to understand what role Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement, and the Soweto Uprising, played in Christian activism between the early 1970s and late 1980s. The question is: did the Black Consciousness Movement and the Soweto Uprising influence Christian activists to engage differently with notions such as reconciliation during the struggle against apartheid? The article revisits the actions and thinking of Christian activists before 1994 to understand some of their views on reconciliation, but most importantly, (...) to understand their interactions, engagement with the Black Consciousness Movement and the Soweto Uprising. The article focuses on some of the church leaders and liberation theologians who were inspired and encouraged by Black Consciousness movements, including Allan Boesak and Desmond Tutu. To revisit their thinking and actions, in the heart of the struggle against apartheid, may help us understand current struggles on reconciliation, particularly in connection with the new generation of activists known as the Fallists. We may discover that the new generation is opening ‘old or new’ debates around reconciliation in South Africa. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has become a dynamic institutional force, and its associated, rapidly increasing body of scholarly literature affects numerous disciplineswithin the organizational science academy. Despite growing shareholder empowerment, the impact of shareholder activism on corporate outcomes remains equivocal. The heterogeneity of factors in shareholder activism, such as environmental, firm, proponent, and issue characteristics; the variety of activism methods and processes; and varying outcomes provides a plethora of theoretical and methodological challenges for activism researchers. Furthermore, the (...) separation of prior research on financial and social activism has left unanswered questions critical for both the scholarly discourse on shareholder activism and the normative debate on shareholder empowerment. Our multidisciplinary review integrates both the financial and social activism streams and explores shareholder activism controversies, seeking to provide an impetus for more cohesive conceptual and empirical work in the field. (shrink)

Nurses working in a newborn intensive care unit report that treatment decision disagreements for infants in their care may lead to ethical dilemmas involving all health-care providers. Applying Rest’s Four-Component Model of Moral Action as the theoretical framework, this study examined the responses of 224 newborn intensive care unit nurses to the Nurses Ethical Involvement Survey. The three most frequent actions selected were as follows: talking with other nurses, talking with doctors, and requesting a team meeting. The multiple regression analysis (...) indicates that newborn intensive care unit nurses with greater concern for the ethical aspects of clinical practice (p =.001) and an increased perception of their ability to influence ethical decision making (p =.018) were more likely to display Nurse Activism. Future research is necessary to identify other factors leading to and inhibiting Nurse Activism as these findings explained just 8.5% of the variance. (shrink)

Civil activism in the field of science is one of the most crucial issues and the key factor of autonomy of science. Herewith, the position of universities and other scientific institutions is vulnerable and hinges upon state and private financing. Science finds itself between two unattractive and doubtful prospects of developing in either bureaucratic or corporate (in the business sense) way, which leads to the abridgement of basic academic freedoms. Setting the problem of professional expertise and mediation is highly (...) important for the definition of borders and consolidation of the position of science. (shrink)

Academics are, or ought to be, engaged in an impartial search for the truth. Many academics also are, but ought not to be, engaged in political activism. I defend a moral duty for academics to refrain from such activism. Ben Jones’ article in this journal rejects such a duty. This article responds to his objections, thereby more carefully formulating when and why political activism is morally problematic, and what burdens it may imply.

During the 1920s and 1930s geneticist L. C. Dunn of Columbia University cautioned Americans against endorsing eugenic policies and called attention to eugenicists' less than rigorous practices. Then, from the mid-1940s to early 1950s he attacked scientific racism and Nazi Rassenhygiene by co-authoring Heredity, Race and Society with Theodosius Dobzhansky and collaborating with members of UNESCO on their international campaign against racism. Even though shaking the foundations of scientific discrimination was Dunn's primary concern during the interwar and post-World War II (...) years, his campaigns had ancillary consequences for the discipline. He contributed to the professionalization of genetics during the 1920s and 1930s and sought respectability for human genetics in the 1940s and 1950s. My article aims to elucidate the activist scientist's role in undermining scientific discrimination by exploring aspects of Dunn's scientific work and political activism from the 1920s to 1950s. Definitions are provided for scientific discrimination and activist scientist. (shrink)

Jon Shields's finding—that certain evangelical pro‐life activist groups are more interested in deliberative discussions about abortion than are pro‐choice activists—is wrong on methodological, normative, and philosophical grounds. He generalizes about pro‐life civility from a small, trained sample group, and ignores possibly important variables that would explain pro‐choicers' incivility. Further, politeness is not necessarily a requirement of democratic deliberation—which entails not forcing one's own beliefs on the public, as pro‐lifers manifestly are trying to do, despite their calm demeanor. Conversely, some pro‐choicers' (...) refusal to engage in debates is not a deliberative failure, as Shields suggests, as deliberation includes such things as campaigning and canvassing. Lastly, Shields, and the pro‐lifers he has observed, use the weakest of the pro‐choice arguments, instead of focusing on the best academic work in the field. (shrink)

In this revised and updated edition of a classic text, one of America's leading constitutional theorists presents a brief but well-balanced history of judicial review and summarizes the arguments both for and against judicial activism within the context of American democracy. Christopher Wolfe demonstrates how modern courts have used their power to create new "rights" with fateful political consequences and he challenges popular opinions held by many contemporary legal scholars. This is important reading for anyone interested in the role (...) of the judiciary within American politics. Praise for the first edition of Judicial Activism: "This is a splendid contribution to the literature, integrating for the first time between two covers an extensive debate, honestly and dispassionately presented, on the role of courts in American policy. —Stanley C. Brubaker, Colgate University. (shrink)

Although there are suggestions that the environmental attitudes of men and of women differ, there have been few studies that study and evaluate these differences at the workplace. Given the claim of Ecofeminist writers about the environmental superiority of women's environmental attitudes, and the proclaimed need of business to change attitudes and behaviour with regard to the environment, this is a surprise. The paper is based on 1022 (37% from women) questionnaires which were collected in a U.K. pharmaceutical company, and (...) it compares the empirical results with environmental attitude archetypes, such as those prescribed by O'Riordan. However, the attitude clusters that were found do not correspond greatly with such theoretical modes of environmental ethics. Instead, it appears that women were more likely to be actively involved in environmental behaviour, and showed greater scepticism towards the role of technology in the search for solutions to environmental problems. In addition, men sought to a much greater extent a consistency between an environmental rationality and their behaviour. Men's attitudes were also much more influenced by their position in the organisational hierarchy. There were few significant differences across age groups. (shrink)

While mainstream CSR research has generally explored and argued for positive ethical, social and environmental performance, critical CSR scholars argue that change has been superficial—at best, and not possible in any substantial way within the current capitalist system. Both views, however, only address the role of business within larger systems. Little attention has been paid to the everyday material CSR practice of individual managers. We go inside the firm to investigate how the micro-level acts of individual managers can aggregate to (...) drive transformation of the macro-level business logic. We draw on the strategy-as-practice approach to organize our research. The study reveals two orientations towards the integration of personal ethics into the workplace: abdication and activism. These orientations are supported by managerial practice such as reproductive and coping tactics and covert and overt tactics ; and, three enabling conditions of activist practice: empowerment and psychological safety, moral shock, and morality praxis. While our findings illustrate the tremendous challenges managers face when attempting to influence organizational practices towards their ethical and environmental aspirations, we also show that under specific conditions, individual managers can become fully engaged advocates and drivers of positive change from the inside. In so doing, our individual-level analysis of intrapreneurship provides a more complex picture of the possibilities for positive change than have been previously put forth by mainstream and critical CSR research. (shrink)

Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency is, first and foremost, a manifesto for an approach to political philosophy*what Ypi calls ‘activist political theory’*and can, I think, be best understood as an attempt to disturb analytic political philosophy from its ‘dogmatic slumber’ and motivate its movement towards the tradition of critical theory. In the first section of this commentary, I will lay out the grounds for this view. Having thus sketched an account of the point and purpose of this text, I (...) will then focus on the relationship of both the methodological and the substantive arguments on global justice to the question of power. At a methodological level, I will argue that Ypi does not take the significance of power sufficiently seriously as an issue for political theory with emancipatory intent. With regard to her substantive arguments concerning global justice and state power, I will argue that she does not adequately address the character of power as a positional good because the analysis does not operate at the fundamentally appropriate institutional level of analysis. (shrink)

Shareholder activism has been largely neglected in the few available studies on corporate governance in sub Saharan Africa. Following the recent challenges posed by the Cadbury Nigeria Plc, this paper examines shareholder activism in an evolving corporate governance institutional context and identifies strategic opportunities associated with shareholders’ empowerment through changes in code of corporate governance and recent developments in information and communications technologies in Nigeria; especially in relation to corporate social responsibility in Nigeria. It is expected that the (...) paper would contribute to the scarce literature on corporate governance and accountability in Africa. (shrink)

In recent years, we have witnessed the emergence of political activism through an irruption of citizen movements – 5M or Occupy–, the birth of new political platforms –5 Stelle, Zyrisa, Podemos– and the rise of new direct action groups, such as Anonymous, Stop-Evictions Movements, cooperatives, to name just a few. In some countries this activism has not just placed substantial pressure on traditional actors of representative democracy and governments, but has also opened up opportunities for structural changes in (...) the policymaking context and procedures (García Marzá, 2012). (shrink)

This article examines the diversity of tactical interventions that transpired at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2019, culminating in the resignation of the vice-chairman of its Board of Trustees. Instead of accepting the myth of museum neutrality, the activist campaign, spearheaded by the action-oriented movement Decolonize This Place, treated the Whitney as a site of ideological struggle, permeated by inner divisions and conflicting interests. Through their organizing efforts, activists prefigured a movement-based form of cultural production, mapped connections between (...) seemingly disparate struggles, and built decolonial solidarities. While the activists’ actions were essential to stage the antagonisms that had been dormant in the institution, a multiplicity of actors needed to step in during the process, creating multiple pressure points and taking sides in the division. To amplify the Whitney staffers’ attempt to hold the museum leadership accountable, they sought to bring political protest into the institution, challenging the very principle of counting who belongs to the community and who is excluded. (shrink)

Over the last century, performance art has troubled the worlds of art and of philosophical aesthetics, unleashing modes of creativity and criticality that spill outside the customary boundaries of either. One of these modes is that of political activism. Performance art is genetically related to activism due to the shared historical contexts their respective waves have emerged from and responded to. In my article, I make the claim that the relationship between performance art and activism also has (...) much to do with certain significant structural and methodological overlaps between the two. I explore these overlaps against the backdrop of extant philosophical scholarship on performativity, a selection of art historical examples, and a critique of the charge of “performative activism” that has become popular in the last decade. I see the tension between the figurative meaning of the phrase “performative activism” and its literal application to politically charged performance art as a space of philosophical opportunity. A better understanding of performance art and its political import can not only help clear up laypeople’s misconceptions of performativity, but it can also strengthen philosophy’s own position on the subject. (shrink)

Bioethics is a practically oriented discipline that developed to address pressing ethical issues arising from developments in the life sciences. Given this inherent practical bent, some form of advocacy or activism seems inherent to the nature of bioethics. However, there are potential tensions between being a bioethics activist, and academic ideals. In academic bioethics, scholarship involves reflection, rigour and the embrace of complexity and uncertainty. These values of scholarship seem to be in tension with being an activist, which requires (...) pragmatism, simplicity, certainty and, above all, action. In this paper I explore this apparent dichotomy, using the case example of my own involvement in international efforts to end forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. I conclude that these tensions can be managed and that academic bioethics requires a willingness to be activist. (shrink)

Excerpt from Activism It is not without hesitation that the present essay is submitted to the public. It would seem, however, at this time especially, when all of us are groping for whatever stray gleams of light may come our way, that a possibly fresh point of view may not be entirely supererogatory. For in the midst of the cataclysmic changes taking place on every side many of us find ourselves forced to a new searching of the spirit. The (...) older creeds and philosophies are crumbling or becoming metamorphosed. And in the intellectual world, no less than in the sphere of politics and industry, we are everywhere faced with the necessity of a revaluation of values. In philosophy a newer Idealism, Realism, and Pragmatism, as well as such iconoclastic doctrines as Behaviorism in psychology, and the Relational theory in physics, have swept many of the long received dogmas into a historic past; while many old questions have been answered with surprising solutions, and many strange and hitherto unsuspected problems have been discovered to confront us. To meet some of these newer conditions - to envisage some of these many problems from a possibly fresh angle - is the endeavor of the hypothesis here briefly outlined. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Current art world statistics demonstrate that the fight for gender and race equality in the art world is far from over: only sixteen percent of this year's Venice Biennale artists were female; only fourteen percent of the work displayed at MoMA in 2016 was by nonwhite artists; only a third of artists represented by U.S. galleries are female, but over two-thirds of students enrolled in art and art-history programs are young women. Arranged in thematic sections focusing on feminism, race, and (...) sexuality, Curatorial Activism examines and illustrates pioneering examples of exhibitions that have broken down boundaries and demonstrated that new approaches are possible, from Linda Nochlin's 'Women Artists' at LACMA in the mid-1970s to Jean-Hubert Martin's 'Carambolages' in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Including interviews with pioneering curators such as Okwui Enwezor, Linda Nochlin, Jean-Hubert Martin, and Nan Goldin, this volume is both an invaluable source of practical information for those who understand that institutions must be a driving force in this area and a vital source of inspiration for today's expanding new generation of curators. Preface by Lucy R. Lippard. (shrink)

In this introduction to The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism special issue on the aesthetics of creative activism, we canvas influential scholarship of political aesthetics to sculpt a broad typology of six interconnected mechanisms by which art might intervene in the world. We label these: Documentation, Disruption, Recognition, Participation, Imagination, and Beauty. Each has a compelling tradition of theory and application, augmented, extended, and sometimes challenged by the thirteen fresh and provocative contributions in the special issue. Yet, we (...) ask, if both politically minded artists and culturally minded activists are convinced of the power of art to provoke social change, and if we live a world that by almost all measures is now saturated with politically inclined, aesthetically informed practices, interfaces, objects, and texts, why does art not seem to be making a difference? Clearly, we need to think harder about the relationships between art and action, a task the articles assembled here call upon us to take seriously. (shrink)

This book examines Mohism as a movement in early China. To analyze how the Mohists pursued power, the author analyzes nonviolence as a goal and strategy of the Mohist movement, the Mohists' creation of strategic knowledge, and their quest for a personhood that made their activism possible.

Social activism against companies has evolved in the 50 years since Rachel Carson first put the US chemical industry under pressure to halt the indiscriminate use of the chemical DDT. Many more companies have come under the spotlight of activist attention as the agenda social activists address has expanded, provoked in part by the internationalization of business. During the past fifteen years, companies have begun to formulate corporate responsibility (CR) policies and appointed management teams dedicated to CR, resulting in (...) a change in the way companies interact with social activists. This paper presents findings from a longitudinal case study of managerial responses to social activism targeted at a company with relatively well-advanced CR practices and reputation. The case describes the unfolding of the internal processes over an 8-year period, including the role played by different managers and the tensions in the decision-making processes. The findings emphasize how values and beliefs in the company interact with economic arguments and how those are mediated through functions and relationships in the company and beyond. The paper shows how critical managers’ understanding of the motivations of activists behind the campaign is in shaping their actions. It reveals the paradoxical outcomes that can result from social activism at the level of the firm, the industry, and the field. (shrink)

"Argues that active involvement in politics can be deeply fulfilling to the individual, and that the construction of identity for all activists is both about morality and about what one wants for oneself.

This empirical study examines corporate responses to activist shareholder groups filing social-policy shareholder resolutions. Using resource dependency theory as our conceptual framing, we identify some of the drivers of corporate responses to shareholder activists. This study departs from previous studies by including a fourth possible corporate response, engaging in dialogue. Dialogue, an alternative to shareholder resolutions filed by activists, is a process in which corporations and activist shareholder groups mutually agree to engage in ongoing negotiations to deal with social issues. (...) Based on a unique dataset of resolutions filed by member organizations of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility from 2002 to 2005 and the outcomes of these resolutions, our analysis finds that corporate managers are more likely to engage in dialogue with shareholder activists when the firm is larger, is more responsive to stakeholders, the CEO is the board chair, and the firm has a relatively lower percentage of institutional investors. (shrink)