Smart grids are rolling out internationally, with the United States nearing completion of a significant USD4-plus-billion federal program funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The emergence of smart grids is widespread across developed countries. Multiple approaches to analyzing the benefits of smart grids have emerged. The goals of this white paper are to review these approaches and analyze examples of each to highlight their differences, advantages, and disadvantages. This work was conducted under the auspices of a joint U.S.-China (...) research effort, the Climate Change Working Group Implementation Plan, Smart Grid. We present comparative benefits assessments of smart grid demonstrations in the U.S. and China along with a BA of a pilot project in Europe. In the U.S., we assess projects at two sites: the University of California, Irvine campus, which consists of two distinct demonstrations: Southern California Edison’s Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project and the UCI campus itself; and the Navy Yard area in Philadelphia, which has been repurposed as a mixed commercial-industrial, and possibly residential, development. In China, we cover several smart-grid aspects of the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city and the Shenzhen Bay Technology and Ecology City. In Europe, we look at a BA of a pilot smart grid project in the Malagrotta area west of Rome, Italy, contributed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The Irvine sub-project BAs use the U.S. Department of Energy Smart Grid Computational Tool, which is built on methods developed by the Electric Power Research Institute. The TEC sub-project BAs apply Smart Grid Multi-Criteria Analysis developed by the State Grid Corporation of China based on the analytic hierarchy process with fuzzy logic. The B-TEC and TNY sub-project BAs are evaluated using new approaches developed by those project teams. JRC has adopted an approach similar to EPRI’s but tailored to the Malagrotta distribution grid. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the need to promote a people-centred corporate social responsibility framework in a context where many human needs and rights remain unsatisfied and where businesses may have both a positive and a negative impact on the quality of life of human beings today and tomorrow and may even lead to irreversible damage. Our normative definition of CSR is consistent with the criteria established by the EU Commission in 2011. We conceive CSR as a responsibility (...) towards human development in two complementary ways: a holistic responsibility shared by companies together with other actors to safeguard humanity and a direct liability of each company for its impact on stakeholders' capabilities. We apply Nussbaum's list of central capabilities and concept of thresholds to specify the nature and extent of corporate responsibilities towards employees, subcontractors, investors, customers, and humanity as a whole. In addition, we leverage fieldwork in developing and developed countries to analyse the effect of business activities on human capabilities. We demonstrate that by quantifying the impact of businesses' activities on various dimensions of stakeholders' lives, and especially on the most vulnerable ones, these businesses can be held accountable for the negative externalities they produce. (shrink)

Liberal societies conventionally treat religion as unique under the law, requiring both special protection and special containment. But recently this idea that religion requires a legal exception has come under fire from those who argue that religion is no different from any other conception of the good, and the state should treat all such conceptions according to principles of neutrality and equal liberty. Cécile Laborde agrees with much of this liberal egalitarian critique, but she argues that a simple analogy (...) between the good and religion misrepresents the complex relationships among religion, law, and the state. Religion serves as more than a statement of belief about what is true, or a code of moral and ethical conduct. It also refers to comprehensive ways of life, political theories of justice, modes of voluntary association, and vulnerable collective identities. Disaggregating religion into its various dimensions, as Laborde does, has two clear advantages. First, it shows greater respect for ethical and social pluralism by ensuring that whatever treatment religion receives from the law, it receives because of features that it shares with nonreligious beliefs, conceptions, and identities. Second, it dispenses with the Western, Christian-inflected conception of religion that liberal political theory relies on, especially in dealing with the issue of separation between religion and state. As a result, Liberalism's Religion offers a novel answer to the question: Can Western theories of secularism and religion be applied more universally in non-Western societies?--. (shrink)

This article explores the possible convergence between the capabilities approach and utilitarianism to specify CSR. It defends the idea that this key issue is related to the anthropological perspective that underpins both theories and demonstrates that a relational conception of individual freedoms and rights present in both traditions gives adequate criteria for CSR toward the company's stakeholders. I therefore defend "relational capability" as a means of providing a common paradigm, a shared vision of a core component of human development. This (...) could further lead to a set of indicators aimed at assessing corporate social performance as the maximization of the relational capability of people impacted by the activities of companies. In particular, I suggest a way of evaluating the contribution of extractive companies to the communities close to their industrial sites in extremely poor areas, not from the viewpoint of material resources and growth, but from the viewpoint of the quality of the social environment and empowerment. (shrink)

L’un des principaux arguments évoqués contre l’art contemporain au début des années 1990 en France (lors du débat autour de ce qui fut appelé la « crise de l’art contemporain ») consista en l’affirmation que puisqu’aujourd’hui n’importe quoi peut être de l’art, alors l’art d’aujourd’hui c’est n’importe quoi. Ce texte entend montrer que ce raisonnement en deux parties relève d’une confusion qui, une fois clarifiée, permettra de cerner la spécificité de l’art contemporain et des jugements qui peuvent être émis à (...) son égard. (shrink)

In this article, I compare the ways in which Baudrillard and Heidegger seek to bring attention to the importance of death for our personal existential situation which has now become repressed in conceptions of existence and society. Heidegger critiques public conceptions of death that serve to cover up its importance. Less well known is that, somewhat in parallel fashion, Baudrillard charts a ‘genealogy’ of the ‘extradition’ of the dead from the centre of the social and he claims that we live (...) currently in a death denying society. This reduces the meaning of our own impending deaths. However, unlike Heidegger, Baudrillard’s ‘genealogical’ critique of the exclusion of death in modern society is not a one-way dismissal because he proposes an alternative social role for death in the form of ‘primitive symbolic exchange’. (shrink)

A vision of future daily life is explored in Ambient Intelligence . It contains the assumption that intelligent technology should disappear into our environment to bring humans an easy and entertaining life. The mental, physical, methodical invisibility of AmI will have an effect on the relation between design and use activities of both users and designers. Especially the ethics discussions of AmI, privacy, identity and security are moved into the foreground. However in the process of using AmI, it will go (...) beyond these themes. The infiltration of AmI will cause the construction of new meanings of privacy, identity and security because the "visible" acting of people will be preceded, accompanied and followed by the invisible and visible acting of the AmI technology and their producers.A question in this paper is: How is it possible to create critical transformative rooms in which doubting will be possible under the circumstances that autonomous 'intelligent agents' surround humans? Are humans in danger to become just objects of artificial intelligent conversations? Probably the relation between mental, physical, methodical invisibility and visibility of AmI could give answers. (shrink)

During the second half of the 20th century several American multidisciplinary social science „disaster research groups“ conducted numerous field studies after earthquakes, factory explosions and “racial riots”, both inside and outside of the United States. Their aim was to investigate the reactions and behavior of individuals, organizations and communities to disasters. All of these groups were either promoted or at least partly founded by different branches of the US military. This article will analyze the groups’ studies and findings on the (...) question of disasters’ psychological effects. The main focus will be on the stance the scientists took on the diagnosis of psychological trauma—especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—and the post disaster therapeutic interventions that became widespread in the 1970s and early 1980s. The disaster researchers questioned the need for, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of “disaster mental health”. At the same time they advocated early ideas of resilience, which later became one of the most important concepts in disaster management and beyond. (shrink)

L’article se propose d’explorer ce qui est dit du mariage et de l’amour dans la correspondance d’une famille bourgeoise qui couvre plusieurs générations sur un large xixe siècle. Trois épisodes ont été retenus qui permettent d’observer bien des tensions entre mariage arrangé et mariage d’inclination. D’abord, au début du siècle, la correspondance d’un jeune homme à l’aube d’une brillante carrière scientifique explicite les « raisons » sociales et économiques qui déterminent son choix matrimonial. Puis, dans les années 1840-1843, l’échange entre (...) fiancés montre comment se construit le sentiment amoureux dans le respect de l’autorité parentale et des conventions en vigueur. Enfin, en 1858, autre moment stratégique dans le processus d’ascension sociale, la correspondance résonne des tractations menées par la famille pour conclure une union d’intérêt. À toutes ces étapes, il apparaît que les femmes assument leur destin social, qui est vécu et écrit comme une responsabilité face au cheminement des hommes de la famille. (shrink)

La prééminence que le libéralisme accorde aux libertés individuelles apparaît parfois comme un obstacle à la mise en œuvre de politiques environnementales contraignantes. Chez Rawls, cette prééminence s’incarne dans le principe de priorité de la liberté : on ne peut restreindre une des libertés de base qu’au nom de la liberté – et donc pas, semble-t-il, pour protéger l’environnement. Il est ici montré que ce principe, retouché à la suite d’une critique de Herbert L. A. Hart, autorise et même exige (...) plus de politiques écologiques qu’il n’y paraît. En outre, deux modestes aménagements internes de la théorie permettent d’en autoriser et exiger plus encore : considérer un environnement de qualité comme un bien premier, et un droit à un environnement de qualité comme une liberté de base. (shrink)

This paper argues that the self, as both the centre of our identity and the focus of our spiritual life, has not been given enough consideration with regard to the ethics of managers and leaders. Informed by models of self-realisation and the Jungian process of individuation, our discussion suggests that the way we perceive and interpret our self affects our moral behaviour. In particular, integrity of the self fully participates in enhancing servant leadership and consistent ethical practice. We illustrate the (...) argument with comments from various managers on the statement: ‘Being true to your self’. (shrink)

This paper argues that the self, as both the centre of our identity and the focus of our spiritual life, has not been given enough consideration with regard to the ethics of managers and leaders. Informed by models of self-realisation and the Jungian process of individuation, our discussion suggests that the way we perceive and interpret our self affects our moral behaviour. In particular, integrity of the self fully participates in enhancing servant leadership and consistent ethical practice. We illustrate the (...) argument with comments from various managers on the statement: ‘Being true to your self’. (shrink)

Ethics review committees have become a common institution in English-speaking research communities, and are now increasingly being adopted in a variety of research environments. In light of existing debates on the aptness of ethics review boards for assessing research work in the social sciences, this article investigates the ways in which researchers navigate issues of research ethics in the absence of a formal review procedure or of an ethics review board. Through the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, the article (...) questions the overall utility of ethics review boards. Highlighting the importance of space for sharing, the authors argue for the development of a new type of structure that takes into account researchers’ ‘ethos of responsibility’ as an adequate ethical compass for research in the social sciences. (shrink)

Do we have the right to deny others access to our body? What if this would harm those who need personal services or body parts from us? Ccile Fabre examines the impact that arguments for distributive justice have on the rights we have over ourselves, and on such contentious issues as organ sales, prostitution, and surrogate motherhood.

In this paper, I provide a compositional semantics for sentences with enough and too followed by a to-infinitive clause and for resultative constructions with so... that within the framework of possible world semantics. It is proposed that the sentential complement of these constructions denotes an incomplete conditional and is explicitly or implicitly modalized, as if it were the consequent of a complete conditional. Enough, too, and so are quantifiers that relate an extent predicate and the incomplete conditional (expressed by the (...) sentential complement) and are interpreted as comparisons between two extents. The first extent is the maximal extent that satisfies the extent predicate. The second extent is the minimal or maximal extent of a set of extents that satisfy the (hidden) conditional, where the sentential complement supplies the consequent and the main clause the antecedent. This approach permits to predict (a) the context-dependent interpretation of these constructions and (b) the duality relations between the degree words. (shrink)

Practical Knowledge, Science and Disasters. The History of Social Science Disaster Research, 1949–1979. During the second half of the twentieth century several US-American social science “disaster research groups” conducted field studies after earthquakes, factory explosions and “racial riots”. Their aim was to provide practical knowledge that could be applied in the planning and managing of future disasters of both peace- and wartime nature. In this paper, I will elaborate on how this research goal conflicted with some scientists’ aspirations to develop (...) more theoretical knowledge and their own ideals of “scientificity”. I will also show how the generated research results came to be ‘impractical knowledge’, which was difficult or impossible to apply. Furthermore this paper analyzes the scientific practices that were involved at different stages of the knowledge production process and contributed to disaster research's ‘precarious’ character. (shrink)

This paper argues that, if one thinks that the needy have a right to the material resources they need in order to lead decent lives, one must be committed, in some cases, to conferring on the sick a right that the healthy give them some of the body parts they need to lead such a life. I then assess two objections against that view, to wit: to confer on the sick a right to the live body parts of the healthy (...) violates the bodily integrity of the latter; and constitutes too much of an interference in their life. I conclude that although the sick sometimes have a right to some of the body parts of the healthy, the latter still retain a considerable degree of autonomy. (shrink)

The republican tradition seems to have a blind spot about global justice. It has had little to say about pressing international issues such as world poverty or global inequalities. According to the old, if apocryphal, adage: extra rempublicam nulla justitia. Some may doubt that distributive justice is the primary virtue of republican institutions; and at any rate most would agree that republican values have traditionally been realized in the polis not in the cosmopolis. The article sketches a republican account of (...) global non-domination which suggests that duties of distributive justice are not bounded to the institutions of a single society. In particular, it argues that republicans have good reasons to seek to curb those global inequalities which underpin what I call capability-denying domination. (shrink)

The intention of this paper's title is not to position the notion of androgyny solely on the side of women writers, even though they are the most quoted. I have considered the phenomenon among both sexes, and the authors who 'forgot' their sex early on, in order to create. This 'forgetting' even seems to be the condition for genius. Indeed the androgyne, who is more an idea than a character, becomes for many writers the complete expression of that compulsory mixture (...) of strength and grace without which art and its claims remain incomplete. In fact authors have showcased themselves and have certainly thrown the dice for their own lives by creating an androgynous character, since that character has very often been a pretext for finding themselves through words and poetry. (shrink)

This fourth volume of the Correspondance générale contains 368 letters written during the period of the Consulat when, as a member of the Tribunat until January 1802, Constant acquired a reputation as a brilliant orator and outspoken opponent of Bonaparte. It was also a period when he produced a number of manuscripts on politics and religion on which he would base works published between 1814 and 1830. The correspondence also contains letters of compelling human interest to and from Julie Talma (...) and an extraordinary epistolary exchange with Anna Lindsay, with whom Constant fell in love in 1800. (shrink)

According to the doxastic wrongs thesis, holding certain beliefs about others can be morally wrongful. Beliefs which take the form of stereotypes based on race and gender and which turn out to be false and are negatively valenced are prime candidates for the charge of doxastic wronging: it is no coincidence that most of the cases discussed in the literature involve false beliefs. My aim in this paper is to show that the thesis of doxastic wrongs does not turn on (...) the truth-value or valence of beliefs. (shrink)

Despite increasing the presence of ‘ethics talk’ in business and management curricula, the ability of business ethics educators to question the system and support the development of morally responsible agents is debatable. This is not because of a lack of care or competence; rather, this situation points towards a more general tendency of education to become focused on economic growth, as Nussbaum claims. Revisiting the nature of ethics education, I argue that much moral learning occurs through the imagination, and not (...) solely through the rational mind. Individuals are complex, and a great part of what we are lies below the threshold of consciousness. In this respect, ethics education must take into account the psyche and its influence on conscious behaviour, which can best be apprehended through the imagination. Echoing Jung’s concerns about unconscious and indiscriminate masses, I thus explore how imagination and creative material contribute to enhancing both self-knowledge and ethical reflection in the context of organisational life and business education. I especially consider how moral development and social awareness are tied up with individual psychological understanding, and argue that Jung’s analytical psychology offers insightful tools to explore our individuality. (shrink)

Transition education is a major challenge to be taken up. It is not simply a question of teaching a person a specific area of ​​knowledge – in this case ecological and societal questions – but rather recognizing that individuals are built by their reflections, with their feelings and according to their experiences. None of these dimensions should be left aside if we want to promote the full development of each individual. In this sense it seems important to us to explain (...) the values ​​that underlie our educational offer and the goals pursued by transition education, as well as its founding roots. This chapter thus starts by presenting the pillars for head-heart-body learning, namely a pedagogy that is relational and transformational, integrative and holistic, inter- and transdisciplinary, rooted and open. Secondly, we structure the pedagogy of the transition around six major areas of questioning, corresponding to the six gates of the FORTES approach. Eventually, drawing on the competency-based approach we present the six main transversal skills to be acquired. (shrink)

Western philosophy has long excluded the work of women thinkers from their canon. Presenting Women Philosophers addresses this exclusion by examining the breadth of women's contributions to Western thought over some 900 years. Editors Cecile T. Tougas and Sara Ebenreck have gathered essays and other writings that reflect women's deep engagement with the meaning of individual experience as well as the continuity of their philosophical concerns and practices. Arranged thematically, the collection ranges across eras and literary genres as it emphasizes (...) the intellectual significance of written work by key figures—for example, Hildegard of Bingen's visionary writings, Iris Murdoch's fiction, Hannah Arendt's historical narratives, and the oral storytelling in black women's literary tradition. The collection also brings to light the philosophical importance of little-known work by such writers as Mme de Sablé and Mme de Condorcet. This wide-ranging collection offers non-philosophers an introduction to women's thought but also promises to engage advanced students of philosophy with new research on unrecognized contributions. Author note: Cecile T. Tougas, formerly an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, is a teacher of Latin and Algebra at Ben Franklin Academy in Atlanta.Sara Ebenreck is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Mary's College of Maryland. (shrink)

Implementing a head-heart-body pedagogy in higher education institutions needs the mobilization of all the actors currently involved in education, to identify those who are absent today and surpass the logic that feeds on silo effects in order to support actors towards sustainable educational actions. By transforming campuses and courses, the university can thus become a learning organization where everything is about learning not only for students, but also for all actors in the university community. This chapter mentions first students, who (...) are the direct beneficiaries of education as well as the future actors of the transition. Secondly, it calls upon teacher-researchers to incarnate the multifaceted role of mentors, which far beyond the transmission of knowledge involves accompanying the students in a holistic transformation. Third, it turns towards pedagogical support services, whose diverse disciplines and skills are essential to develop the pedagogical methods required for transition education. Finally, the chapter underlies the role of public authorities to systematize good practices, to allow bottom-up incentives to grow, to put in place the necessary conditions and resources as well as to engage the whole of society. (shrink)

Hamilton's principle and Hamilton's law are discussed. Hamilton's law is then applied to achieve direct solutions to time-dependent, nonconservative, initial value problems without the use of the theory of differential or integral equations. A major question has always plagued competent investigators who use “energy methods,” viz., “Why is it that one can derive the differential equations for a system from Hamilton's principle and then solve these equations (at least in principle) subject to applicable initial and boundary conditions; but one cannot (...) obtain a solution directly from Hamilton's principle except in very special cases?” This paper provides the answer to that question. In Hamilton's own words, “... the peculiar combination it [i.e., Hamilton's law] involves, of the principles of variations with those of partial differentials, for the determination and use of an important class of integrals, may constitute, when it shall be matured by the future labors of mathematicians, a separate branch of analysis.”. (shrink)

O mágico de Oz, obra de L. Frank Baum, muito embora tenha sido escrita no fim do século XIX, permanece atuando sobre o imaginário infantil cem anos depois. Centrado na personagem feminina, o texto não só desconstrói os estereótipos do conto de fadas tradicional, ao relativizar o papel da bruxa, que pode ser boa ou má, como também garante o estatuto de herói para uma personagem infantil do gênero feminino. Nessa perspectiva, este trabalho pretende discutir qual é a representação de (...) gênero veiculada pelas personagens femininas, fundamentado em estudos de crítica feminista. (shrink)

Human beings are killing the planet and themselves in the process. Cecile Pineda asks a simple question: Why? An urgent reframing of current ecological thinking, Apology to a Whale addresses what the intersection of relative linguistics and archeology reveals about the present world's power relations, and what the extraordinary communication of plants and animals can teach us. This masterpiece of creative nonfiction is a wild ride on the frontiers of archeo-linguistics in search of the greatest killer on Earth--us.

J'étais au lycée depuis la neuvième. Lors de la drôle de guerre, je suis restée à la campagne dans l'Ain ­ j'étais en cinquième et ai suivi l'enseignement dispensé par mes cousines, l'une faisant les mathématiques, l'autre les lettres. Ce n'était pas très sérieux mais pas si mauvais tout de même puisqu'après un court troisième trimestre à Henri IV (nous sommes repartis en juin à l'arrivée des Allemands), j'ai pu entrer en quatrième l'année suivante grâce à quelques cours particuliers d..

J'étais au lycée depuis la neuvième. Lors de la drôle de guerre, je suis restée à la campagne dans l'Ain ­ j'étais en cinquième et ai suivi l'enseignement dispensé par mes cousines, l'une faisant les mathématiques, l'autre les lettres. Ce n'était pas très sérieux mais pas si mauvais tout de même puisqu'après un court troisième trimestre à Henri IV (nous sommes repartis en juin à l'arrivée des Allemands), j'ai pu entrer en quatrième l'année suivante grâce à quelques cours particuliers d...

La séparation des sexes caractérise le système scolaire français, et tout particulièrement l’enseignement secondaire, jusqu’aux années 1960. Dans la première moitié du XXe siècle, la mixité, telle que nous l’envisageons aujourd’hui, n’est pas concevable. Pourtant, à sa création, en octobre 1938, le lycée de garçons Marcelin Berthelot, à Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, accueille également des filles. Expliquer cette présence féminine, absolument singulière, oblige à faire la part des facteurs circonstanciels, de l’évolution des identités de sexe et de celle de la demande parentale. Si (...) le lycée continue, en dépit des critiques, à accueillir des élèves des deux sexes jusqu’à l’instauration officielle de la mixité, il ne faut cependant pas voir dans cette expérience une simple anticipation des évolutions postérieures. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag ist Teil des Forums COVID-19: Perspektiven in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. Mit Blick auf die sozialwissenschaftliche Katastrophenforschung des Kalten Krieges als Herkunftsort und als historisches Vergleichsmoment beschäftigt sich der Artikel mit der bisherigen sozialwissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung mit der COVID-19-Krise. Er behandelt erstens, wie die Rolle von sozialer Ungleichheit erörtert wird, zweitens die Idee der Katastrophe als „große Enthüllerin“ und drittens das Verhältnis von Katastrophenwissenschaft, Öffentlichkeit und Politik.