This article comprises a dialogue between two historians who have attempted, individually, to narrate the life of Lord George Gordon (1751 – 93), the Scottish prophet, revolutionary, and convert to Judaism. For modern cultural historians, Gordon's peregrinations between identities offer a kaleidoscopic view of Britain in the overlooked but crucial interstice between the upheavals of 1776 and 1789. Yet the partial nature of the evidence, the long omission of Gordon from the historiography of eighteenth-century Britain, and the complex, often furtive (...) nature of Gordon's activism create multiple ambiguities in his story. These ambiguities are compounded here by the authors' differing approaches. Marsha Keith Schuchard argues for a Gordon shaped by Scottish origins; Dominic Green, for a Gordon responding to English opportunities. They disagree over the likely date of Gordon's conversion to Judaism and, crucially, over whether he was a religious atavist or a Romantic pioneer. This dialogue is meant to illustrate the utility of a scholarship that acknowledges fuzziness rather than attempting to overclarify it. The article is also meant to show, however, that on the public stage fuzziness can be less benign: Gordon was a religious politician, who reworked his complexities and confusions into a violent, uncompromising critique of eighteenth-century British social order. (shrink)

Republicanism gives non-domination a central role. However, the modes of domination change over time. Expertise and anticipation have gained growing relevance in this respect. An emergent form of anticipation is pre-emption. This represents a peculiar ‘politics of time’, whereby an eschatological event is set and continuously postponed, past, present and future are no longer sequentially connected, and change reproduces the ruling order. Mainly addressed in relation to the military and security, pre-emption plays a growing role in the environmental field. The (...) paper discusses three examples: human enhancement, responsible innovation and the ‘ecomodernist’ take on the Anthropocene thesis. In all cases, what is promised on one side – respectively, empowerment, participation and care for nature – is denied on the other, hampering a transformative green politics. To circumvent this deadlock the paper explores the connection between non-domination and inoperosity. The latter does not mean passivity, resignation, but action free from the compulsion to achieve and expand. Non-domination requires recognition of limits as constitutive of the relationship with oneself and the world. On this view, a promising terrain of inquiry for civic republicanism is offered by ‘prefigurative’ mobilizations. (shrink)

Some photographs, more than mere representations, are ethical commands, calling us to respond to human suffering. Photos of Abu Graib, like iconic photos of Vietnam, called us to a posture of care, and confronted us with ourselves, with our national domination, and with how we represent ourselves to the world. This article, drawing on Kittay (1999), Butler (2004), and Levinas (1961, 1974, 1985), attempts to untangle the relation among care, domination, and representation. Implications for philosophers and journalists are suggested.

We review articles about corporate political activity published in Business & Society since its beginnings 60 years ago and in a set of other leading management journals over the past decade. We present evidence that most studies of CPA use the political markets’ perspective. Under the premise that the contemporary political environment has changed significantly since the inception of the political markets’ perspective, our review asks two interconnected questions. First, to what degree have changes in the political environment challenged the (...) ability of the political markets’ perspective to understand the pillars of politics: issues, institutions, interests, and information? Second, to what degree have CPA scholars augmented or diversified their theoretical arguments to accommodate these changes in the political environment? We document the CPA literature across these dimensions and questions and note that many scholars are already adopting other theories side by side with the political markets’ perspective. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

Republicanism gives non-domination a central role. However, the modes of domination change over time. Expertise and anticipation have gained growing relevance in this respect. An emergent form of anticipation is pre-emption. This represents a peculiar ‘politics of time’, whereby an eschatological event is set and continuously postponed, past, present and future are no longer sequentially connected, and change reproduces the ruling order. Mainly addressed in relation to the military and security, pre-emption plays a growing role in the environmental field. The (...) paper discusses three examples: human enhancement, responsible innovation and the ‘ecomodernist’ take on the Anthropocene thesis. In all cases, what is promised on one side – respectively, empowerment, participation and care for nature – is denied on the other, hampering a transformative green politics. To circumvent this deadlock the paper explores the connection between non-domination and inoperosity. The latter does not mean passivity, resignation, but action free from the compulsion to achieve and expand. Non-domination requires recognition of limits as constitutive of the relationship with oneself and the world. On this view, a promising terrain of inquiry for civic republicanism is offered by ‘prefigurative’ mobilizations. (shrink)

The disappearance of Catharine Macaulay’s eighteenth-century defense of the doctrines that justified the seventeeth-century republican parliament, has served to obscure an important strand of enlightenment faith, that was active in the lead up to the American and French Revolutions, and that also played a significant role in the history of feminism. This faith was made up of two intertwined strands, ‘Christian eudaimonism’ and ‘rational altruism’. Dominant contemporary accounts of the origins of republicanism and democratic theory during the eighteenth-century have excluded (...) serious consideration of Macaulay’s writing. Bringing her works into the mix, both poses difficulties for certain genealogies of the political thought of the period, and tends to favour a once popular view, which emphasized the centrality of Locke. Nevertheless, the Locke whose influence is found in Macaulay’s writing is not the possessive individualist, or rational egoist, that he and other liberals have been represented as being, but rather a rational altruist, whose political philosophy is grounded in natural law and harks back to Milton. This same philosophy provides the philosophical foundations for Wollstonecraft’s two most significant political texts, the Vindication of the Rights of Men and Vindcation of the Rights of Woman. (shrink)

Mainstream management scholarship has for the last half century largely legitimated its scholarship and production of knowledge on the grounds that its research is objective, neutral, scientific and uninfluenced either by its researchers or by data distorted by subjectivist human factors (Locke & Spender 2011). However, over the decades there have been serious and sustained criticisms of aspects of this scholarship not least from within the field by mainstream scholars, eg Otley (Accounting, Organizations and Society 5: 413-428, 1980, 1995, 2007) (...) and Panozzo (Accounting, Organizations and Society 22: 447-480, 1997) on grounds of the inadequacy of synchronic studies that were found to be non-replicable; of the limitations of surveys/questionnaires, so frequently used to acquire data; of abstract idealisations unrelated to the real world and on an ‘obsessive preoccupation with numbers’ (Locke & Spender 2011:xiii). Serious criticisms have been made of this type of scholarship more generally in the social sciences on the grounds of political bias (see eg Bourdieu 1990). Claims to the scientific nature and therefore legitimacy of this type of research have also been contested. On the other hand examples of alternate scholarship, advocating and using mixed method and multi-paradigmatic approaches, have been published in the same high-ranking journals as has research using the mainstream approaches mentioned above (see eg Chenhall & Euske 2007, Brown & Brignall 2007). These showed a richness in the data, generally unobtainable in solely objectivist approaches. Yet despite these factors, mainstream scholarship has in the main continued to produce objectivist, empiricist, quantitative-focussed research and knowledge (Green 2013). Reasons for this have been suggested, at the local level, the academy, including its administration, heads of department and journal editors driven by the criteria set by high-ranking journals (Green 2012b). At a wider level, the US government’s fright at the successful launch of the Soviet Sputnik led to demands for ‘hard’ science also in the management field (Green 2012b). Managerialism, a dominant ideology (and not only in the West), has been an influence on researchers’ approaches, giving managers the prerogative of having the necessary knowledge and also the power and capability successfully to implement strategies independently of their subordinates (Green 2012b, 2013). Although these explanations may have some mileage in explaining the persistence of this type of scholarship, and its resistance to the multitude of criticism against it and to compelling examples of more inclusive research, further explanations have been sought. It is argued in this paper that deeper explanations may lie in the power of neoliberal ideas, principles and policies which have spread beyond economics, permeating and seriously affecting other aspects of life including education and scholarship. (shrink)

Green innovation investments have rapidly grown since 2000. Green innovation indexes play important roles and are typically constructed by screening and indexing. However, Nobel Laureate Markowitz emphasizes portfolio selection instead of security selection and accentuates that “A good portfolio is more than a long list of good stocks.” Moreover, the screening-indexing strategies ignore that investors can take green innovation as an additional objective and thus gain additional utility. We consequently construct 3-objective portfolio selection for green innovation (...) in addition to variance and expected return. An efficient frontier of portfolio selection then extends to an efficient surface which is a panorama of the optimal variance, expected return, and expected green innovation. Investors thus fully envisage the trade-offs and enjoy the freedom of choosing preferred portfolios on the surface. In contrast, the screening-indexing strategies inflexibly leave investors with only one point. As the originality, we prove in a theorem that there typically exists a curve on the efficient surface so all portfolios on the curve dominate the green innovation index. We test the dominance by component stocks of China Securities Index 300 and obtain affirmative results out of sample. The results still hold in robustness tests. At last, we classify green innovation into categories, further model the categories by general k -objective portfolio selection, and still illustrate the dominance. Consequently, investors can consider and control each category. (shrink)

While agreeing with Bergès on the importance for philosophy of reading the works of women such as Roland, Gouges, and Grouchy, her account of them as committed to the concept of liberty as non-domination, articulated by Philip Pettit, is questioned. It is argued that their views are more accurately described as involving a commitment to the tradition of positive liberty, that was criticised by Berlin in his famous essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’. The republican writings of Catharine Macaulay are shown (...) to be part of the context in which these women wrote, and similarities between her philosophical outlook, which involves a clear commitment to positive liberty, and the positions developed by the French authors are explored. It is argued that, in general, it is methodologically problematic to uncritically apply concepts that were developed by intellectual historians who failed to include works written by women in their histories, in order to understand the philosophical commitments of neglected works by such women. (shrink)

Brings together classical and contemporary arguments about pure democracy versus representative government, the role of elites in a democracy, possibilities for greater popular participation, the relationship between democracy and capitalism, democracy and male domination, and the linkage between majority rule and minority rights.

Thinking about the representational qualities of maps and models allows one to offer a new perspective on the nature of mindreading. The recent critiques of our dominant paradigms for mindreading, theory theory and simulation theory by enactivists such as Daniel Hutto reveal a flaw in the standard options for thinking about how we think about others. Views that rely on theorizing or simulation to account for the way in which we understand others often appear to over-intellectualize social interaction. In contrast, (...) enactivists champion embodied, non-representational forms of engagement with others. I claim that one can improve on the representational views of social cognition by moving away from talk of the mental manipulation of propositions in favor of the construction of maps and models of others. Furthermore, I claim that the current state of social neurobiology lends itself towards such a view. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Understanding the Score: Film Music Communicating to and Influencing the AudienceJessica Green (bio)IntroductionWhen most people sit down to watch a film, their focus usually stays on the very dynamic images that move onscreen. The dialogue, as a form of diegetic sound, is probably the next piece of the film they concentrate on, but this only imitates actual experience, since most people understand communication by both watching and listening. (...) Christian Metz, in his influential text Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, describes film as “Born of the fusion of several pre-existing forms of expression, which retain some of their own laws (image, speech, music, and noise),” to which he later adds “written materials” as a fifth component.1 Of these five channels of information included in film, music is the most artificial because in many films the majority of music is nondiegetic. For the audience, it is also the channel most removed from everyday life. While people do interact with images, the spoken word, text, and sound in the normal course of a day, people do not walk around constantly supported by a sensitive soundtrack that follows their emotions and thoughts.Yet despite the artificiality of the musical score in comparison with everyday life, audiences have come to accept film music as an integral part of what it means to watch a film. Films that fail to use much music or fail to use it well often have a problem involving the audience as completely as films that embrace music as a tool that can expose the inner feelings and thoughts of characters and can shape the way that viewers feel about what’s happening on screen. To understand the importance of film music, Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis further explain why it is important to examine music as a significant channel through which the audience makes meaning of the film: “Metz’s definition of the cinema’s matter of expression as consisting of five tracks—image, dialogue, noise, music, written materials—served to call attention to the soundtrack and thus to undercut the formulaic view of [End Page 81] the cinema as an ‘essentially visual’ medium which was ‘seen’ (not heard) by ‘spectators’ (not auditors).”2 By distinguishing dialogue, noise, and music—all auditory channels of information—as important pieces of film, Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis support Metz’s assertion “that the cinema possesses various ‘dialects,’ and that each one of these ‘dialects’ can become the subject of a specific analysis.”3 Once audiences and critics consider music as one of the fundamental “dialects” of film, it then makes sense to understand music as an essential part of communication and argument in film.But is the film score more than just a reflection of a character’s sadness or the exciting chase music that exhilarates audiences? While most audiences would certainly be able to cite numerous instances of music reflecting the feelings of characters or the general mood of the film, some people might be surprised by the extent to which film music shapes and affects meaning in film. Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis define several types of music that can be used in scores: redundant music, which reinforces the emotional tone; contrapuntal music, which runs counter to the dominant emotion; empathetic music, which conveys the emotions of the characters; a-empathetic music, which seems indifferent to the drama; and didactic contrapuntal music, which uses music to distance the audience “in order to elicit a precise, usually ironic, idea in the spectator’s mind.”4 Though these terms can be limiting because music often fulfills more than just one role in a scene, they do demonstrate that music is making an argument or working to convince or persuade the audience, proving that film music is behaving rhetorically. Though film music does often fulfill the basic roles of conveying emotion and suggesting connections or themes in the film, film music also works in more complex roles to affect the meaning in film. Through music’s development of specific leitmotifs, themes, and cues, the calculated use of film music in conjunction with the other channels of information helps to create the narrative and control the way... (shrink)

Diversity is both an unavoidable aspect of twenty-first century living and a powerful challenge to older philosophical traditions that still assume as normatively universal a set of values, ways of thinking, institutions, and habits of living that emerged within earlier eras of more homogeneous cultures, less developed technologies, and more accepted forms of linguistic, legal, religious, economic, political, and military domination. Within recent years, new styles of philosophical discourse, including deconstruction, postmodernism, feminism, post-colonialism, and critical race theory, have persuasively challenged (...) these universalistic assumptions to reveal the important human differences they marginalize. Experience-based appreciation of the mutually educative potential of diverse standpoints as well as sober concern about the perils of our present times have led many thinkers to look for contemporary forms of pragmatism and cosmopolitanism as hospitable intellectual gathering places for urgently needed cross-difference conversations that may reflect and give substance to shared visions of democratic diversity. The eight authors in this volume engage in cross-difference conversations with other thinkers from earlier periods and other philosophical traditions, as well as with each other, in order to reconstruct pragmatism and cosmopolitanism in ways that are more attuned to our lived experience of diversity as well as our hopes for a diversity-appreciating democratic future. (shrink)

The urgency of climate change has never been greater, nor the moral case for responding to it more compelling. This review essay critically compares Darrel Moellendorf's Mobilizing Hope and Catriona McKinnon's Climate Change and Political Theory. Moellendorf's book defends the moral importance of poverty alleviation through sustainable economic growth and argues for a mass climate movement based on the promise of a more prosperous future. By contrast, McKinnon provides a political vocabulary to articulate the many faces of climate injustice, and (...) to critically examine proposed policy solutions—notably including the indefinite pursuit of economic growth. While both find reasons to be hopeful, their wide-ranging accounts reflect different visions of what a just and sustainable future might look like. They reflect different understandings of sustainable development and the significance of environmental values; the scope of permissible climate activism; and the ethics of geoengineering. Building upon them, I argue in favor of a more pluralistic vision of a just climate future, one that is capable of speaking to the range of moral interests bearing upon the climate and biodiversity crises, and that supports sustainable development that is inclusive of diverse human-nature relationships. (shrink)

Infant and young child electrophysiology studies have provided information regarding the maturation of face-encoding neural processes. A limitation of previous research is that very few studies have examined face-encoding processes in children 12–48 months of age, a developmental period characterized by rapid changes in the ability to encode facial information. The present study sought to fill this gap in the literature via a longitudinal study examining the maturation of a primary node in the face-encoding network—the left and right fusiform gyrus. (...) Whole-brain magnetoencephalography data were obtained from 25 infants with typical development at 4–12 months, and with follow-up MEG exams every ∼12 months until 3–4 years old. Children were presented with color images of Face stimuli and visual noise images that served as Non-Face stimuli. Using distributed source modeling, left and right face-sensitive FFG evoked waveforms were obtained from each child at each visit, with face-sensitive activity identified via examining the difference between the Non-Face and Face FFG timecourses. Before 24 months of age the face-sensitive FFG M290 response was the dominant response, observed in the left and right FFG ∼250–450 ms post-stimulus. By 3–4 years old, the left and right face-sensitive FFG response occurred at a latency consistent with a face-sensitive M170 response ∼100–250 ms post-stimulus. Face-sensitive left and right FFG peak latencies decreased as a function of age, and with an adult-like FFG latency observed at 3–4 years old. Study findings thus showed face-sensitive FFG maturational changes across the first 4 years of life. Whereas a face-sensitive M290 response was observed under 2 years of age, by 3–4 years old, an adult-like face-sensitive M170 response was observed bilaterally. Future studies evaluating the maturation of face-sensitive FFG activity in infants at risk for neurodevelopmental disorders are of interest, with the present findings suggesting age-specific face-sensitive neural markers of a priori interest. (shrink)

Recent research in moral psychology highlights the role of emotion and intuition in moral judgment. In the wake of these findings, the role and significance of moral reasoning remain uncertain. In this article, we distinguish among different kinds of moral reasoning and review evidence suggesting that at least some kinds of moral reasoning play significant roles in moral judgment, including roles in abandoning moral intuitions in the absence of justifying reasons, applying both deontological and utilitarian moral principles, and counteracting automatic (...) tendencies toward bias that would otherwise dominate behavior. We argue that little is known about the psychology of moral reasoning and that it may yet prove to be a potent social force. (shrink)

The link between justice and climate change is becoming increasingly prominent in public debates on climate policy. This clear and concise philosophical introduction to climate justice addresses the hot topic of climate change as a moral challenge. Using engaging everyday examples the authors address the core arguments by providing a comprehensive and balanced overview of this heated debate, enabling students and practitioners to think critically about the subject area and to promote discussion on questions such as: Why do anything in (...) the face of climate change? How much do we owe our descendants – a better world, or nothing at all? How should we distribute the burden of climate action between industrialized and developing countries? Should I adopt a green lifestyle even if no one else makes an effort? Which means of reducing emissions are permissible? Should we put hope in technological solutions? Should we re-design democratic institutions for more effective climate policy? With chapter summaries, illustrative examples and suggestions for further reading, this book is an ideal introduction for students in political philosophy, applied ethics and environmental ethics, as well as for practitioners working on one of the most urgent issues of our time. (shrink)

Over what is now a period of several decades, green political theorists have attempted to reconcile the political philosophy of John Rawls with impending environmental crises. Despite numerous attempts, the general consensus among those receptive to the idea that Rawls’ notion of “justice as fairness” can indeed be extended to incorporate environmental concerns is that such a theory cannot extend beyond minimal, “light” green notions of environmental justice. However, a theory of Rawlsian environmental stewardship can not only allow (...) for more ecocentric visions of environmental justice, but also complement the “freestanding” nature of his later, specifically political liberalism. (shrink)

Tolstoy's remarkably economical novella The Kreutzer Sonata manages to create one of the most intense, vivid, and thought-provoking portraits of jealousy in the canon, and is as disturbing to read today as it no doubt was in 1889. The rather unhinged protagonist, Pozdnyshev, explains to his traveling companion and narrator: “Of all the passions, it is sexual, carnal love that is the strongest, the most malignant and the most unyielding” (48). This article identifies not only the “bestial” element of human (...) sexuality in Tolstoy's story but also the array of animals which the author offers to ventriloquize a certain complex (and times confused) polemic about gender relations. In other words, this analysis offers an interpretation of The Kreutzer Sonata as bestiary; one which offers a moral taxonomy of creaturely life and creaturely love. From the green-eyed monster of jealousy itself, through the Venus fly-trap and porcine couple, right up to the wild murderous beast, Pozdnyshev's confession is read via this zoological trope in order to emphasize, and question, that mobile border which separates the human from the inhuman, the civilized from the uncivilized. And it does so in order to highlight the incoherencies of the anthropocentric discursive regulation of this very same borderline. Animality and animosity are thus presented as the twin avatars of Tolstoy's intense and challenging vision. (shrink)

To be radical about pornography used to mean that one favored less censorship; now it often means that one favors more. That political change reflects a shift in the dominant paradigm of pornography and its putative evils. Until quite recently, most people who believed pornography wrong thought that it offended against decency and propriety and was therefore obscene. That was certainly the view of the law. English judges first created the crime of obscene libel in 1727 on the basis that (...) such expression tended to corrupt the morals of the King's subjects, a thought that inspired most subsequent legislation in the common‐law world. Sometimes the underlying concern really was paternalistic: pornography degrades and corrupts its producers and consumers; the law forces them to become better people. More often, however, it was just moralism of the familiar sorts: the view that a majority of a community is entitled to enforce its moral views on the rest, either because that is democratic or because that is just what it means to be a community. The obscenity paradigm thus had two features. First, it was illiberal: it ranked personal autonomy below realizing the good, enforcing the majority will, or embodying communitarian values. Second, it was gender neutral: to understand the nature of pornography did not require theorizing relations between men and women. On the obscenity paradigm, pornography was a matter of virtue versus vice, majorities versus minorities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 62-79 [Access article in PDF] Literature Itself:The New Criticism and Aesthetic Experience Daniel Green I AFTER ALMOST TWO DECADES of tumult and transformation in university departments that still claim literature as part of their disciplinary domain, what is most remarkable about literary study at the beginning of the twenty-first century is how similar it is to what passed for such study at the (...) beginning of the twentieth century. Like philology one hundred years ago, academic literary study today—at least at the most eminent universities and in the most prestigious journals—is a highly esoteric activity, unlikely to appeal to anyone outside its own "professional" boundaries, anyone whose foremost interest in works of literature is simply to read them. It is, therefore, an endeavor that could hardly exist outside the university's institutional protection, and it is most strikingly concerned not with the appreciation of the intrinsic qualities of literature but with the historical and cultural "knowledge" that can be acquired from works of literature through a special kind of analysis. The effort, chronicled by Gerald Graff in Professing Literature, to make "literature itself" the focus of academic study and to establish "aesthetic criticism" as the primary mode of literary study must surely be judged a failure, the current academic scene clearly dominated by the sort of scholars Graff terms "investigators." 1But of course the motives for rejecting the merely literary as a focus of study are quite different among current scholarly investigators as compared to the philologists of 1901. The attitude of the latter can probably be captured in the words of one of them quoted by Graff: "Why then waste time and brains in thrashing over again something which is after all only subjective opinion? Mere aesthetic theorizing [End Page 62] should be left to the magazine writer or to the really gifted critic" (p. 124). Such "researchers" did not deny the value of reading works of literature; they simply considered this value to be essentially "subjective," not an appropriate object of academic scrutiny. While these remarks do imply some condescension toward the "really gifted critic" and this critic's "mere aesthetic theorizing," they do not repudiate the very idea of an aesthetic approach to literature. The present generation of academics engaged in the investigation of literature, on the other hand, have repudiated the aesthetic approach, either explicitly, through the well-publicized critiques of the canon, of the very notion of the great work, or of the remaining approaches still associated with New Criticism, or implicitly through the gradual establishment of cultural investigation as the new norm for the professional training of graduate students and as the dominant mode of analysis in the influential journals. Moreover, the primary motive behind the renunciation of the aesthetic has more to do with politics than with methodology: for these scholars, the aesthetic is literally useless, quite irrelevant to the paramount goal of "intervening" in a continuing ideological struggle that is thought to be the main business of the university scholar.In the context of the history of modern literary criticism (as opposed to the history of the American university), the current situation mirrors that which prompted the emergence of The New Criticism in the 1930s. Although Vincent Leitch identifies "the evocative mode of Impressionist criticism, the moralism of Neo-Humanism, the anti-modernist cultural criticism of Mencken and Van Wyck Brooks," as well as the "sociologizing" of Marxist criticism" as the collective bêtes noires of the New Critics, it was clearly the latter they considered to be the most unwelcome. Not only had it effectively eclipsed the other practices, but it could be said to have exhibited most of those characteristics against which New Criticism expressed the deepest antipathy. 2 Compared to the close reading New Critics would espouse, Marxist criticism was superficial, willing to settle for the most readily available interpretation (according to the Marxists' own critical assumptions), moralistic, committed to the idea that the best literature was that which could be shown to be good for you, historicist, concerned to place works... (shrink)

Social prescriptions are one term commonly used to describe non-pharmaceutical approaches to healthcare and are gaining popularity in the community, with evidence highlighting psychological benefits of reduced anxiety, depression and improved mood and physiological benefits of reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and reduced hypertension. The relationship between human health benefits and planetary health benefits is also noted. There are, however, numerous barriers, such as duration and frequencies to participate in activities, access, suitability, volition and a range of unpredictable variables impeding (...) a comprehensive approach to their use on a wider scale. From a multidisciplinary perspective, this commentary incorporates a salutogenic and nature-based approach to health, we also provide a range of recommendations that can be undertaken at the patient level to assist in shifting the acknowledged systemic barriers currently occurring. These include using simple language to explain the purpose of health empowerment scripts, ensuing personal commitment to a minimum timeframe, enabling ease of access, co-designing a script program, providing ongoing motivational support and incorporating mindfulness to counter unexpected disruptions. (shrink)

Conservation biology has amongst its aims the conservation of the biologically valuable. As a consequence, some underlying theory of value is invoked. Clear challenges to orthodox value theory have been on the table for some time now, with some arguing for recognition of intrinsic values in nature, and some conservation biologists subsequently drawing on such a view. However, this development of value theory has recently been criticised for lacking sufficient clarity and failing to serve the needs of decision-making in conservation (...) biology. These criticisms serve to highlight confusion and difficulties in the development of a coherent and efficacious theory of intrinsic value for application in decision-making. They do not, however, count as sufficient grounds for the rejection of such a theory. Sylvan appears to offer a theory that avoids the criticisms made. The debate here is instructive in clearing away some of the misguided claims frequently encountered in this area and in seeing the value in Sylvan’s “deep green theory”. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to draw attention to the breadth and importance of Mumford's philosophical outlook by exploring his critical appropriation of the theories of Marx and Jung which he employed to create a penetrating, visionary collection of works that offer us a powerful and timely insight into the ills besetting our current technological civilization. Mumford partially accepted Marx's matter–psyche dynamic but expanded it to include architecture, technology and urban planning. He surpassed the one-way process of Marxist historical-economic (...) teleology to form a conception of historical process based upon a dialectic interaction between mind and material conditions. He constructed a Jungian model of mind and explored its formative effect on material conditions. At the same time he criticized Jung's failure to engage with the external world, namely with those material conditions in urgent need of transformation. Like Jung he was concerned by the exclusion of religion from the modern scientific idolum, the dominant ideological presence, yet unlike Jung he extended his analysis further, considering not only the effect of religion on the individual but also its effect on the community. His theory of the dialectic interaction of material conditions and psyche is partly drawn from these two thinkers but transcends both by refusing to commit wholly to either. His incorporation, modification and rejection of elements of both Marx and Jung contributed more significantly than has so far been noted to his own critique of the present civilization and vision for the future. This vision involved a deeper awareness of the human personality, liberation from automatism and increased sensitivity to others and the natural world. This, according to the Mumfordian project, would be inexorably followed by a gradual withdrawal from the consumerism of the current technological civilization, the construction of a more personal and organic ideology and the subsequent regeneration of material conditions to nurture human nature. I therefore argue that it is essential to our understanding of Lewis Mumford that we witness his critical engagement with Marx and Jung and see the ways in which they inform and inspire this project. (shrink)

The study of haemopoiesis enables us to address one of the central questions of developmental biology, concerning the molecular mechanisms by which a multipotent cell develops into distinct differentiated progeny. Recent work(1) suggests specific roles for retinoic acid receptors at two distinct stages of haemopoiesis. Continuous cell lines of lymphohaemopoietic progenitors were established by infection with a retrovirus containing a dominant negative retinoic acid receptor. The cell lines depend on stem cell factor for their proliferation and can be induced to (...) diffentiate into B‐lymphocytes, erythrocytes, neutrophils, monocytes, mast cells and megakaryocytes. Since lymphohaemopoietic progenitors represent less than 0.01% of nucleated marrow cells, immortalised progenitors provide a valuable system with which to study haemopoiesis on a molecular level. (shrink)

Sanfte Chemie was a concept formulated in the 1980s in Germany by a group of environmentally conscious scholars. It emerged within a unique environment, marked by its radical critique of dominant forms of rationality, and against the rich background of German philosophical technocritical traditions. Its purpose was to profoundly reshape the practice of chemistry and the organization of the chemical industry along the lines of sustainability. In contrast to later concepts like green or sustainable chemistry, Sanfte Chemie went beyond (...) setting new research directions; it critically reevaluated the entire epistemological foundation upon which the science of chemistry was built. Under the auspices of the German Green Party, the concept flourished in the 1980s before falling out of grace in the following decade. While largely deemed overly radical in its time and then subsequently forgotten, Sanfte Chemie not only anticipated some of the most promising trends in sustainability science today but also offered unique insights that may shed new light on the challenges of the ongoing environmental crisis. (shrink)

Green republicanism can be described as a subset of republican political theory that aims at promoting human flourishing by ensuring a non-dominating and ecologically sustainable republic. An essential aspect of green republicanism is the promotion of post-productivism while preserving or expanding republican freedom as non-domination. Post-productivism implies the promotion of personal autonomy rather than the pursuit of permanent economic growth and the promotion of labour as an intrinsically positive human activity, which for green republicans will have three (...) positive aspects: reduced ecological impact, more time available for civic participation, and the extension of democratic decision-making and norms to the sphere of production. An important aspect in the definition of a post-productivist society is the way welfare schemes are designed. In this article, I will thus compare the existing welfare regimes with a participation income and with an unconditional basic income, and analyse how they promote green republican goals. I conclude that the current systems are one of the elements of the productivist society and that would not answer the green republican conditions. A green participation income could have a positive ecological impact and contribute to a shift to post-productivism but would face serious challenges from a republican perspective, namely in terms of the non-arbitrariness of its attribution. Finally, I conclude that depending on how it is defined, an unconditional basic income could contribute to post-productivism while being non-arbitrary thus obeying the green republican conditions. (shrink)

Perhaps the most problematic dimension of the ‘triple bottom line’ understanding of sustainable development has been the ‘economic’ dimension. Much of the thinking about the appropriate ‘political economy’ to underpin or frame sustainable development has been either utopian (as in some ‘green’ political views) or an attempt to make peace with ‘business as usual’ approaches. This article suggests that ‘ecological modernisation’ is the dominant conceptualisation of ‘sustainable development’ within the UK, and illustrates this by looking at some key ‘sustainable (...) development’ policy documents from the UK Government. We take the view that the discourse of ‘ecological modernisation’ has provided discursive terrain for both pragmatic policy makers and a range of views on sustainable development, from weak to strong. In particular, the article suggests that the discourse of ‘economic security’ and ‘sufficiency’ can be used as a way of articulating a radical, robust and principled understanding of sustainable development, which offers a normatively compelling and policy-relevant path to outlining a ‘green political economy’ to underpin sustainable development. (shrink)

Blanchot's work may at first seem remote from any sort of environmentalist thinking. While elements of his work share with Levinas and Heidegger a problematic privileging of the human, Blanchot nevertheless offers the basis of what might be seen as a timely ‘deeper ecological’ thinking, one that can engage the destructive anthropocentrism of Western thought and tradition in the very minutiae of its literary and philosophical texts. Unlike in much ‘green’ philosophy, no concept of nature or earth serves as (...) foundation for Blanchot's thought. He is engaged by the ‘impossible’ as that which is not a matter of human power or decision, affirmed in both its ethical force and its contestation of dominant and appropriative conceptions of knowledge, rationality and invention. A comparison is offered between Max Oelschlager's representative ecocritical essay ‘Earth-Talk: Conservation and Ecology’, with its romantic attempt to find and celebrate modes of unalienated or ‘natural’ language, and Blanchot's practice of what can be seen as a more radical and questioning ‘ecology’ based on almost opposite conceptions. (shrink)

The concept of green chemistry dominated the imagination of environmentally-minded chemists over the last thirty years. The conceptual frameworks laid by the American Environmental Protection Agency scholars in the 1990s constitute today the core of a line of thinking aimed at transforming chemistry into a sustainable science. And yet, in the shadow of green chemistry, a broader, even if less popular, concept of sustainable chemistry started taking shape. Initially, it was either loosely associated with green chemistry or (...) left undefined as a distinct but generaly different approach. In such a vague form, it was endorsed by the organizations such as OECD and the IUPAC in the late 1990s. It was not until the 2010s however, when it solidified as a separate more embracing and more overarching tradition that could compete with green chemistry by offering insights that the latter lacked. Sustainable chemistry seeks to transcend the narrow focus on chemical synthesis and embrace a much more holistic view of chemical activities including social responsibility and sustainable business models. Due to an interesting historical coincidence, it was in Germany where sustainable chemistry took roots and became institutionalized for the first time. It was thanks to German exceptionalism and the unwillingness of German scholars to embrace the “green” terminology originating from the US, the concept of sustainable chemistry could safely mature and develop in the German-speaking world, before reaching a high degree of formalization with dedicated journals, founding articles, and programmatic principles aspiring to transform the entire chemical enterprise in the years to come. (shrink)

Green entrepreneurship has a huge role in solving environmental degradation and social problems. As today’s youth are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, enhancing their green entrepreneurial intention will contribute to the sustainable development of economy in the future. The existing literature has examined the green entrepreneurial intention of college students based on self-efficacy, entrepreneurial creativity, entrepreneurship education, financial support, sustainable development values, and other influencing factors. However, these studies focus on net effect of factors on the results of college students’ (...) green entrepreneurial intention, ignoring the combination of multiple factors, and the relationship between different configurations of factors and the results of college students’ green entrepreneurial intention. Therefore, this study aimed to understand and analyze the influence of the complex relationship between multiple antecedents on college students’ green entrepreneurial intention from a comprehensive perspective. Based on 207 questionnaires collected from colleges in the coastal cities of China, this study used the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method for data analysis. The results showed three dominant paths of great significance to college students’ high green entrepreneurial intention: entrepreneurial creativity—green cognition—dominant path; entrepreneurial creativity—financial support—dominant path; and the future self-continuity—entrepreneurship culture—entrepreneurship education—dominant path. The results of this study can help college educators to plan courses on innovative thinking and green entrepreneurship to improve college students’ entrepreneurial creativity and green cognitive ability. (shrink)

AbstractThe Green Revolution still exerts an important influence on agricultural policy as a technology-centred development strategy. A main policy narrative underpinning the Green Revolution was first expounded in Transforming Traditional Agriculture, a book published in 1964 by Nobel Prize-winning economist Ted Schultz. He famously argued that traditional farmers were ‘poor but efficient’. As farmers responded to economic incentives, technology-driven strategies would transform traditional agriculture into an engine of economic growth. Schultz relied on published ethnographic data and his own (...) calculations to construct this policy narrative. My reanalysis of TTA focuses on its main case study, Panajachel, a village in Guatemala. I follow a narrative approach, evaluating whether Schultz’s story relates a plausible account of agricultural development in Panajachel and its region. I show how Schultz deliberately tried to hide that Mayan farmers in Panajachel were not challenged in technological terms and were able to reach relatively high economic returns. His interpretation of the Guatemalan rural economy ignored ethnic tensions dominating market exchange, a main barrier for agricultural development. I evaluate Schultz’s narrative further by tracing the subsequent evolution of Panajachel and its wider region. High-input strategies had to address ethnic barriers and change agents became embroiled in violent conflict along ethnic lines. Assessing the adequacy of Schultz’s contribution, from a narrative approach, shows how he ‘got the story wrong’ and that the Green Revolution policy narrative has an excessively narrow intellectual basis. New narratives should reserve a much more important place for institutional change in agricultural development. (shrink)

It is often claimed by environmental philosophers and green political theorists that liberalism, the dominant tradition of western political philosophy, is too focused on the interests of human individuals to give due weight to the environment for its own sake. In "How to be a Green Liberal", Simon Hailwood challenges this view and argues that liberalism can embrace a genuinely 'green', non-instrumental view of nature. The book's central claim is that nature's 'otherness', its being constituted of independent (...) entities and processes that do not reflect our purposes, is a basis for value and can be incorporated within liberal political philosophy as a fundamental commitment alongside human freedom and equality. Hailwood argues that the conceptual resources already exist within mainstream liberalism for a thoroughly non-instrumental perspective. Adopting a rigorous philosophical approach Hailwood tackles a wide range of themes across environmental ethics, including holistic theories, deep ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism, as well as issues in value theory and political philosophy more generally. In making the case for liberalism's green credentials "How to be a Green Liberal" is a formidable challenge to recent green political theory and will be required reading not only for students of political philosophy but for all those interested in the natural world and man's relationship to it. (shrink)

It is often claimed by environmental philosophers and green political theorists that liberalism, the dominant tradition of western political philosophy, is too focused on the interests of human individuals to give due weight to the environment for its own sake. In "How to be a Green Liberal", Simon Hailwood challenges this view and argues that liberalism can embrace a genuinely 'green', non-instrumental view of nature. The book's central claim is that nature's 'otherness', its being constituted of independent (...) entities and processes that do not reflect our purposes, is a basis for value and can be incorporated within liberal political philosophy as a fundamental commitment alongside human freedom and equality. Hailwood argues that the conceptual resources already exist within mainstream liberalism for a thoroughly non-instrumental perspective. Adopting a rigorous philosophical approach Hailwood tackles a wide range of themes across environmental ethics, including holistic theories, deep ecology, eco-feminism and eco-anarchism, as well as issues in value theory and political philosophy more generally. In making the case for liberalism's green credentials "How to be a Green Liberal" is a formidable challenge to recent green political theory and will be required reading not only for students of political philosophy but for all those interested in the natural world and man's relationship to it. (shrink)

DI.1 On everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea – an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern immobile cast of the non living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying (...) bodies – living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will is visible in the grass blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the free world of air. DI.2 Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have seen it. Last summer I trained some morning glory vines up over a second story balcony; and every day they blew and curled in the wind, their white, purple dashed faces winking at the sun, radiant with climbing life. Higher every day the green heads crept, carrying their train of spreading fans waving before the sun seeking blossoms. Then all at once some mischance happened, some cutworm or some mischievous child tore one vine off below, the finest and most ambitious one, of course. In a few hours the leaves hung limp, the sappy stem wilted and began to wither; in a day it was dead, – all but the top which still clung longingly to its support, with bright head lifted. I mourned a little for the buds that could never open now, and tied that proud vine whose work in the world was lost. But the next night there was a storm, a heavy, driving storm, with beating rain and blinding lightning. I rose to watch the flashes, and lo! the wonder of the world! In the blackness of the mid NIGHT, in the fury of wind and rain, the dead vine had flowered. Five white, moon faced blossoms blew gaily round the skeleton vine, shining back triumphant at the red lightning. (shrink)

This article explores Southern Saami reindeer herders’ experiences and contestations over state consultation and corporate dialogue during a conflict over the Øyfjellet wind energy project in Norway. Informed by a committed research approach and juxtaposition with findings from Indigenous peoples' territorial struggles in Latin-America, the article provides critical perspectives on governance practices in a Nordic-Saami green colonial context. The research draws on ethnography from a consultation meeting between Jillen Njaarke, the impacted reindeer herding community, and state authorities, as well (...) as diverse written material. The study suggests that the state- and corporate-led “dialogues” displaced the root cause of the conflict, revealed epistemic miscommunication, and perpetuated relations of domination which limited emancipatory effects for Jillen Njaarke. The premises and discourses underpinning the “dialogues” further reproduced racist notions which devalue ancestral Saami reindeer herding knowledges, practices, and landscape relations. These findings challenge dialogue as prescription of good governance and conflict resolution in a context where democracy and compliance with Indigenous peoples’ rights are perceived as high. (shrink)

Chloroplasts and other plastids are plant cell organelles that account for major biochemical functions. They contain their own gene expression system but are integrated into the signaling network of the entire cell. Both nuclear and plastid genes are involved in chloroplast biogenesis, and the gene expression pathways both inside and outside the organelle are subject to developmental and environmental control. The plastid transcription apparatus reflects this general scheme, with a basic organelle‐encoded enzymatic machinery surrounded by factors that may be encoded (...) by nuclear genes. Among the transcription regulatory mechanisms thought to play a role during plastid development are: (1) differential usage of promoter elements; (2) phosphorylation of transcription factors by a protein kinase, which is itself subject to phosphorylation and redox control; (3) dynamic changes in the composition of the transcription apparatus. In etioplasts, the dominating polymerase ‘B’ is a bacterial‐type enzyme, whereas the major chloroplast polymerase ‘A’ is a much larger enzyme reminiscent of those in the nucleus. These two enzyme forms may share common components and recruit others during development. (shrink)

This paper focuses on private residential green space as a site of contested meanings. Recent research points to the emergence of an activism centered on ecological restoration and a shift away from the lawn as the only accepted landscape practice for private green space. However, it is clear that the lawn, a particularly powerful cultural landscape form in residential neighborhoods, still largely dominates this space across North America. This investigation examines the voices of two groups: traditional lawn owners (...) and ecological activists. We observe two sets of discourses centered on private green space. Both groups construct residential green space as a site of identity politics-a site wherein the self is defined as pure and the other excluded as different and necessarily inferior. And both perceive their discourse as ''natural.'' The critical finding is that they are almost entirely oppositional discourses. The contest over what constitutes appropriate landscaping practices for this space provides a locus for bringing to a discursive level, the kinds of socio-cultural perspectives and practices that create and dominate our places in late capitalist society. We suggest that at present the lawn remains a barrier to alternative green space practices. (shrink)

In recent years, in addition to financial and social objectives, the microfinance industry has started to look at its environmental bottom line. The objective of this paper is to identify why microfinance institutions decide to go green. Data was collected through a quantitative survey of 160 MFIs and qualitative semi-structured interviews of 23 MFIs’ top managers. Basing our analysis on the model of ecological responsiveness developed by Bansal and Roth :717–736, 2000), we discover that MFIs for which legitimation is (...) the dominant driver tend to adopt a defensive approach and set up more superficial negative strategies to appear green. In contrast, MFIs for which social responsibility is the dominant driver tend to be more proactive and innovative and develop adapted financial and non-financial services to promote environmentally friendly practices. (shrink)

Some environmental activists occasionally use the argument that poverty is ‘no excuse’ for not going green and denounce discourses putting forward social conditions as unduly exculpatory. Employing participant observation among middle-class activists mobilising to diffuse environmental lifestyles in socially diverse suburbs near Paris (France), the article explores their relation to the working class and examines the consequences of their endeavours on local class relations. It describes the tension between their goal of mainstreaming environmental reflexivity and the stubborn existence of (...) material inequalities and constraints. While their efforts are configured by a moral economy of environmental responsibility which assigns an undifferentiated moral obligation to consume sustainably to all individuals, they make sense of social differences by drawing on culturalist representations of poverty and folk social theories. These sense-making practices enhance rather than alleviate attributions of blame against working-class people and contribute to reinforcing the activists’ dominant symbolic position. (shrink)

With increased urbanization, ecological challenges such as climate change and loss of biodiversity, and stress-related disorders globally posing a major threat to public health and wellbeing, the development of efficient multiple-use strategies for urban green spaces and infrastructures is of great importance. In addition to benefits such as climate and water regulation, food production, and biodiversity conservation, green spaces and features have been associated with various health and wellbeing outcomes from a psychological perspective. Research suggests links between exposure (...) to green environmental qualities and restoration from psycho-physiological stress and attention fatigue, promotion of physical activity, increased neighborhood satisfaction and even reduced mortality. Especially strong associations have been observed in urban and socio-economically challenged areas. Usually such salutogenic, i.e. health-promoting, effects are explained through theories related to the notion of biophilia, i.e. the idea that humans share innate tendencies to attend to natural environments and features that have been beneficial during evolution. This paper assumes an ecological approach to perception and behavior to be fruitful in order to analyze the salutogenic potential of environments such as urban green spaces and to step beyond the “green vs. gray” dichotomy that has been prevalent through much of the research on health-promoting environments. Through an analysis of environmental affordances for certain perceived qualities such an approach is explored through a proposed concept for urban green space use and management, the edible forest garden. Such gardens, based on agroecological principles, have emerged as one of the most promising models regarding ecologically sustainable food production. In addition to potential contributions of importance for urban sustainability and biodiversity, we argue that the inclusion of edible forest gardens in urban green spaces – today globally dominated by lawns – also potentially could reinforce several affordances of salutogenic importance, both in terms of e.g. social cohesion but also in regard to restoration from psycho-physiological stress and attention fatigue. Increased opportunities for contact with nature and processes of food production may also reinforce pro-environmental behaviors in the population and thus also affect long-term sustainability. (shrink)

Why is neural activity in a particular area expressed as experience of red rather than green, or as visual experience rather than auditory? Indeed, why does it have any conscious expression at all? These familiar questions indicate the explanatory gap between neural activity and ‘what it’s like’-- qualities of conscious experience. The comparative explanatory gaps, intermodal and intramodal, can be separated from the absolute explanatory gap and associated zombie issues--why does neural activity have any conscious expression at all?. Here (...) I focus on comparative gaps: why is neural activity in a given area expressed as this type of experience rather than that type of experience? (shrink)

Ideology is maintained anddriven by powerful symbols. Agricultural mediasuch as farm magazines achieve this byappropriating societal values of currency andincorporating them in imagery that accompanyadvertisements of agricultural products,including pesticides. Critical questionsrelating to environmental sustainability andsocial risks associated with the use of suchproducts are often masked as a result. Contentanalyses of two mid-western farm magazines fromthe 1940s to 1990s trace the socialconstruction of pesticide advertisements overtime, illuminating changing images ofpesticides in farm magazine advertisements inresponse to changes in the socio-culturalsetting. Changing images (...) reflect how theagricultural industry strategically repositionsitself to sustain market and corporate profitby co-opting dominant cultural themes atspecific historical moments in mediaadvertising. Sustainability implications in thebroad context of agriculture and society areexamined. (shrink)

Modern and historical Japanese societies are and were quite comfortable with a nature defined, designed, and dominated by humans. While contemporary Japanese are concerned about the environment, especially about non-timber (“green”) forest resources, conservation organizations are generally small and locally focused. Public forests, accounting for 40 percent of all Japan's forests, are intensively managed. At the national level, the timber program is operating below cost and there is increasing emphasis on non-timber management and rural economic development. A professional elite (...) largely determines forest management goals and cultural barriers minimize broad public participation. Increasingly aware of the environmental impacts of their industrial society at home and abroad, the Japanese are becoming more environmentally concerned. Government agencies are especially proactive in enhancing environmental understanding among Japanese citizens and in sharing their resource management expertise with other Pacific Rim nations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to Lyman Tower Sargent, utopias are repositories for individual and collective hopes and fears, which sometimes unleash energies that can achieve at least part of what is hoped for. The Australian green bans movement of 1971–75 can be understood as a utopian project in this sense. During this period, the construction workers organized in the New South Wales branch of a labor union, known as the Builders Labourers' Federation, refused to work on ecologically or socially harmful projects (...) and publicly argued for their collective right to socially responsible labor. Coining the term “green bans” to describe environmentally motivated withdrawals of labor, they halted projects worth five billion Australian dollars at 1970s prices. When enthusiastic resident action groups mobilized in support of these bans, the union grew into the core of a more general social movement. The success of the green bans movement suggests that the power of subversive imagining can be especially effective if coupled with the power of workers at the point of production. The movement's basic premise—that workers, acting in the general public interest, should decide what can be built and where—represented a direct challenge to the dominant power relations. Ultimately, such impossible demands could not be conceded either by the employers or by the state. But the practical effects of this utopianism nonetheless secured substantial environmental improvements, which brought the green bans activists significantly closer to their dreams. (shrink)

Karen Warren claims that there is a “logic of domination” at work in the oppressive conceptual frameworks informing both sexism and naturism. Although her account of the principle of domination as a connection between oppressions has been an influential one in ecofeminist theory, it has been challenged by recent criticism. Both Karen Green and John Andrews maintain that the principle of domination,as Warren articulates it, is ambiguous. The principle, according to Green, admits of two possible readings, each of (...) which she finds flawed. Similarly, Andrews claims that the principle is fundamentally inadequate because it cannot distinguish cases of oppressive domination from cases of nonoppressive domination. In this paper, I elucidate Warren’s views and defend her against these and other criticisms put forward by Green and Andrews. I show that Warren’s account of “the logic of domination” successfully illuminates important conceptual features of oppression. (shrink)