Through the close analysis of musical performance and tradition, the scholarly contributiors to Island Songs provide a global review of how island songs, their lyrics, and their singers engage with the challenges of modernity, migration, and social change uncovering common patterns despite the diversity and local character of their subjects"--Cover p. [4].

Transliteration and translation of a Javanese text on Javanese ethics written by Raden Atmawirapa in 1796, includes additional text of Serat pancaniti, a manuscript on the history of kingdoms in Java Island, Indonesia and their kings and rulers written by anonymous author.

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and guided (...) by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

In Social Life and Moral Judgment, author and philosopher Antony Flew examines the social problems induced by the mature welfare state. Welfare states make ever-increasing financial demands on their citizenry, yet the evidence clearly supports that such demands are not sustainable. In this superlative collection of thematic essays, Flew investigates and explains why this is so, and calls for a return to individual responsibility. The first essay establishes the philosophical basis for his argument. "Is Human Sociobiology Possible?" (...) answers its titular question in the negative, asserting that we are all members of a peculiar type of creature that can, and therefore must, be responsible for whatever choices between various courses of action or inaction that are open to us as individuals. In other essays, Flew shows how state welfare systems inevitably corrupt and demoralize their citizens by encouraging ever-more people to apply for welfare entitlements and reducing the incentives to avoid or escape the conditions warranting those entitlements. He investigates the origins of this new kind of welfare entitlement, and shows how very different what politicians and public sector employees produce is from what these people claim to be producing. Flew shows that the drive for "social" justice appears to require that the justly acquired income and wealth of all citizens should be progressively taxed away or supplemented by the state so that the eventual result is more, though never perfect, equality. This objective, he asserts, must be radically distinguished from old-fashioned, without prefix or suffix, justice. It was this type of justice Adam Smith referred to when he famously said that it is a virtue "of which the observance is not left to the freedom of our wills" but "which may be extorted by force." Flew question the aims of those who would discredit wealth creators and wealth-creating investment, showing that these are the same people who promote the rising "progressive" taxation needed to finance expenditure in the growing welfare state. Social Life and Moral Judgment is a timely critique, one that will be appreciated at a point in history when governments on both sides of the Atlantic have begun to describe spending on state health, social, education, and welfare services as investments, instead of mechanisms to achieve social justice. (shrink)

Since 2008 I have been closely following the conceptual/performance/video work of Daniel Peltz. Gently rendered through media installation, ethnographic, and performance strategies, Peltz’s work reverently and warmly engages the inner workings of social systems, leaving elegant rips and tears in any given socio/cultural quilt. He engages readymades (of social and media constructions) and uses what are identified as interruptionist/interventionist strategies to disrupt parts of an existing social system, thus allowing for something other to emerge. Like the stereoscope (...) that requires two identical images to create an illusion of a three-dimensional image, Peltz sometimes visualizes two separate elements to create an object or moment that requires space and depth to focus on its varied layers. They say your brain has to process and make meaningful sense out of all that visual information before it can accept the illusion. I say your brain has to do a similar thing when looking and seeing the divine, magical, and faithful (social) art making of Daniel Peltz. Daniel Peltz is Associate Professor of Film/Animation/Video at RISD. He divides his time between Rhode Island and Sweden and is currently at work on an exhibition at Botkyrka Konsthall, Stockholm opening February 2013 and a new project to be included in the IASKA: Spaced Biennial (Australia) in 2014. This interview took place on Skype and is part one of a two-part interview. Feliz Lucia Molina: Are you in Providence, RI? Daniel Peltz: I’m at my house in Providence. I’ve been back for six days teaching winter session at RISD and doing this workshop series—these investors’ drum circles with a group of wealth managers. a client of the firm, 2013, photo Shirin Adhami FLM: The wealth managers were all drumming together? DP: They were all drumming in response to the performance of their retirement portfolios. FLM: Is this part of the “Unrealized Gain/Loss” piece? DP: Yes, it’s part of a show I’m working on in Sweden. I can show you because it was just today. I’ll show you some of this. Lets see—share screen [click, click, click]. This is the room. I’ve been using the camera system that’s already installed in the conference rooms to record them. So the video is being recorded directly by the wealth management office’s tech staff. These are the people I worked with in the last workshop. This conference table is less wondrous. They’ve been learning to drum in response to their retirement portfolios. I started by bringing in my little bit of wealth for them to propose a management strategy, I came to the follow-up meeting with a counter proposal, which was this workshop. So they agreed to do this series of workshops instead of managing my wealth. FLM: Does everybody in the room manage your wealth? That’s kind of a lot of people. DP: That woman in the back there and Craig —they handle new client business. So when you come there with your wealth, they sit down with you and suggest to you how they would manage it. They’re very nice, responsible people. FLM: And where is this? DP: This is in Providence and the one I was showing you is in Waltham, where I was today. Then I’m going to Newport for the last one on Friday. So I will have done four of them. This is the group in Waltham that I just played with today. I played directly with the two groups in Providence and I’m working with an ethnomusicologist at Brown, Asha Tamarisa, who is facilitating the last two. She’s helped develop the workshop in terms of figuring out how to train a group to do this and thinking about the compositional challenges of working in response to retirement portfolio data. FLM: Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project. DP: I might even be able to play you a little of the audio I’ve also been working with a group of professional percussionists on what will become a quarterly public investors’ drum circle event. Their stuff was really nice, but I want you to hear what we sounded like in the workshops. They’ve all been recorded by the a/v system in the offices. We use a simple structure where the drummer investors interpret the sensation of gain or loss as embellishments to a base heartbeat rhythm. The group holds the heartbeat and, as each person experiences gain or loss, they embellish that rhythm. "Screensharing helps me to figure out tiny bits here and there about the project" FLM: Is the process all very spontaneous? DP: Its actually quite structured. We produce a custom stock ticker that shows the performance of their collective portfolios. In advance of the workshop each participant submits assets in their retirement portfolio. Then we make a stock ticker that shows the real-time performance of their assets so that they can respond to almost live data. FLM: Are they reading the stock ticker projected up on the screen in the room? Do people drum in correspondence to the visual live data of the performance of their assets? DP: Exactly. They’re looking at the stock ticker as opposed to each other, so it’s a slightly shifted drum circle. They’re looking at the ticker but they’re listening to each other—that’s what we’re practicing. For example, NVO—the price is 172.08 but it’s down -1.16 and as that moves across the screen, the person who’s retirement is invested in that asset starts to embellish when that arrow first appears, based on their experience of loss. They stop when it exits the screen and return to the heartbeat. You could have one ticker for each retirement portfolio, but the way the workshop is constructed is that we just isolate one asset from each person’s portfolio so that everyone in the group is represented in a single ticker. So they’re drumming and looking at the ticker, but they’re hearing each other experience gain and loss. We’ve removed direct visual engagement from the social structure of a drum circle but the oral engagement is still there. FLM: So they had their own sound interpretation of gain and loss? DP: Yeah and that part is quite spontaneous as you were saying. In some of the preparatory exercises we’ve been working to give the participants more strategies for interpreting the sensations of gain and loss. We’re trying to develop their capacity to embellish a heartbeat or base rhythm but I’m not invested in having a melodious result. I’m quite curious about what this kind of structure will result in without any desire for a particular result. FLM: For context, can you talk about the project you did a couple years ago in Bali, “Unrealized Gain/Loss” in relation to this current wealth management project? DP: The workshops I’ve been doing use a similar strategy to the other components in this project. It started in Indonesia on my sabbatical and I was really trying to understand where I was physically and where I was being on sabbatical—this kind of strange jubilee structure where every seventh year you’re supposed to renew your self. And it was around the time of the global financial crisis. I was on sabbatical for the global financial crisis. I remember watching my father, in particular, respond to the financial crisis by monitoring his retirement portfolio and trying to make sense of it. I realized on a visit to their home that he checked his retirement portfolio every single day and I was really struck by that because in some way our parents are mysteries to us as children, especially their moods. We know how important their moods are but we don’t know what governs them. And somehow it was like I’d figured it out, it’s the performance of the DOW! So I think there was something in that. Then I was in Indonesia and I had been drawn there by an interest in their highly ritualized Hindu culture, where so much of life is driven by a ceremonial calendar. I was interested in Bali as this predominantly Hindu pocket within a predominantly Islamic country and life there being organized by this ritual calendar functioning as a kind of resistance to the dominant global religion of free-market capitalism. So I started to explore that correlation between the ways in which this culture that I was living in was sort of “living for the afterlife” and this idea within certain segments of American society of “living for the afterwork life”. The idea that your wellbeing in the “afterwork life” is tied to forces that are unseen and largely beyond your control has strong similarities to many religious understandings of the universe. So I started to explore that and the crafts and materials that were around me were primarily Batik and percussion. Percussion is a huge part of daily life in Bali. These gamelan troupes were everywhere. And I also happened to be there for Nyepi, the day of silence, which is preceded by a very elaborate procession and construction of demonic statues. These were the things that were around me and I started studying Batik with one of the Batik artists there and also started a conversation with two master Batik artists, one who is American and her Indonesian husband. I developed these patterns that were based on symbols from the performance of my retirement portfolio and worked with the batik artists to produce two sarongs. d. peltz - 2012 In producing the designs, I treated the performance of my retirement portfolio since my arrival at RISD [7 years] as a significant interval and then I looked at the ways in which decisions are made within retirement portfolios as having an extension outwards from the individual assets that underlie the retirement portfolio, which are kind of like the base elements of the retirement world. Then there’s the allocation of your assets, which is a global way of understanding an individual according to typologies, which are often referred to in terms of risk—this notion of a ‘risk profile’. What type of ‘person’ you are is determined by your attitude towards risk, or potentiality, and I found that to be a really fascinating way of understanding the universe. I remember looking at the tabs in my retirement portfolio and finding this one for viewing ‘Unrealized Gain/Loss’ and that’s often how I work—is just going through the Cambridge Parking Code, for example, and finding this section of the code that was called ‘Crossing Non-Signalized Locations’ and just feeling “I can’t do any better than that,” you know? That’s what I was talking about in terms of ready-mades that exist in the social sphere. So I found that tab, actually, a long time ago, and I pulled it out of a journal when I was there [in Bali] working on these pieces and I wound up making these two sarongs and later on a series of porcelain vessels for holding one’s unrealized gains and losses. At the time, I knew that I wanted a performance to come out of them, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was inspired very much by this sort of thing: Pulls out a TIAA-CREF brochure with a man in a suit seated at a table. This guy is probably an actor, and [the brochure] says “TIAA-Cref announces “Individual counseling sessions at the Rhode Island School of Design. Individual counseling sessions at no additional cost to you. You can discuss your personal financial situation with an experienced TIAA consultant on a confidential basis. We are available to help you discuss how to achieve your financial goals by investing in financial solutions such as mutual funds, brokerage, life insurance, and annuities...etc....What retirement benefits best fits your situation?” Often I encounter this and I think O.K., this is one way to prepare for the after-work life and it seems inadequate to me. But, I also find it really inspiring. I really like the visual language of it. I kind of want to be that man. I’d like to see if I could maybe buy his clothes. FLM: What it is about the man on the brochure that interests you? DP: He’s offering personalized objective advice and a detailed evaluation of everything you need to know and do. Who wouldn’t want that? But he’s also something of a contemporary priest or priestess, mediating between the unseen all-powerful universe of global capitalism and the common worker. So I started off developing Unrealized Gain/Loss directly from the charts that represent the performance of my retirement portfolio. Then I came home and I wanted to use those. I had this word in my journal “unrealized gain/loss vessel.” I had this notion of vessels that would contain unrealized gains and losses. That felt really important to me that they would have somewhere to go. I had been thinking a lot about altars and making offerings—that somehow this really fickle, massive, difficult-to-comprehend-universe of the financial world—that somehow it might be nice if you could making an offering to it. [In Bali] they made such beautiful elaborate offerings. So I studied offering making as well with one of the women there and she taught me some of the standard forms created by folding leaves and the significance of the floral arrangements. I started working in clay and then moved to porcelain and I made these unrealized gain/loss vessels. I made a few of them, they have holes on either side that you can’t get your fingers in. But something can go in there and something can go out of there. It’s a nice size for putting on an altar. Then I got this commission from Artists in Context who was interested in my doing something for this project “Artists Perspectives for the Nation” project. I proposed initiating these investors’ drum circles as a new public performance form. I’m interested in bringing together those two symbols—the symbol of the djembe and the drum circle. unrealized gain/loss vessel - d.peltz - 2012 FLM: I can imagine the public digital stock ticker performing like a soft fleeting stream of information, a kind of (meaningless) illusory comfort blanket. DP: In some way you have to understand its relevance outside of the obvious, right? Because the obvious is illogical. Nobody is actually using that data to day trade, for example. People aren’t sitting there with their computers watching the market data in Times Square or setting up an outdoor office and being like “OK it’s up 3 points or it’s up 1.56, trade! Ok now buy, Ok now sell!” That would be a kind of a nice performance, actually. But actual day traders would want more up to date data than that. To understand what that data is doing is really important. And that’s something I’ve realized—that I’m interested in a particular kind of data visualization, which is not about what data can tell people, but what data can tell people who are visualizing it. For example, in the Cambridge Project “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations” I was interested in the 10,000 excuses archive of data recording five years worth of excuses for why people thought they shouldn’t have received their parking ticket. I was not interested in making that excuse wall so that the public could see and understand this data. Inevitably the data will be seen by others but I was really interested in what the action of visualizing the data told those who were visualizing it. The parking attendants themselves were writing those excuses on the wall—I was interested in what that kind action of writing the excuses on the wall told them about the data. Similarly, I’m interested in designing a way to allow people to pass this data from the unseen universe of the market, through their own bodies, which happens through the merging of the drum and the stock ticker. I’m interested in those two also as symbols; the drum as this symbol of the earth, the body and a pagan counterculture, and the stock ticker referring to the ethereal world of global markets—bringing those two together and making them dependent. I’m often drawn to conceptual propositions that I become invested in testing in a sincere way—at first they often they sound humorous to others, but I have to remember that there is humor in them. I don’t sit around and laugh about these things. I stop finding them funny at all. I’m interested in the proposition that we could know something about the after-work life by drumming in response to our retirement portfolio. So then I become really interested in how to craft that into a viable performance form for myself and others. FLM: The aspect of using sound in “Unrealized Gain/Loss” as a way of embodying the information to the asset holder is really intriguing—using sound as a means of embodying the asset data. Was sound a medium that made sense to use immediately or were you considering other means of attempting to embody it? DP: Well I do use other mediums within the project like textile, ceramic, and batik patterns. I was first drawn to the history of Batik patterns as a socio-economic stratification system and the vessels as a way of embodying or manifesting this data of unrealized gain and loss. My first approach was to work with meditation actually—a meditation workshop with my colleagues. I was going to offer this “Unrealized Gain/Loss” workshop where you would explore the sensations of gain and loss by adapting the way yogi-nidra brings you into contact with your physical surroundings and stretches your perception. FLM: At Naropa University there are/were business & compassion workshops—a sort of mash-up of business and compassion and how compassion could be incorporated into a business model. This process and engagement of “embodying data” also has to do with “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” you created at the DNC in Denver in 2008. DP: That kind of appropriation and instrumentalization of spiritual practice could be disturbing and thus compelling as a strategy. For various reasons, I’ve come to be drawn to both the form of a quarterly public performance and the established performance form of a drum circle. Its something I’ve seen myself do before, that is to mess up a really good functional social system like a drum circle or karaoke. I remember I was developing language for the karaoke project and started calling it “Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke” and one of my assistants on the project, who’s an incredible artist, said, “but don’t you think the future of karaoke is guitar hero?” and I realized that maybe he thought I was trying to improve the form. I’m just trying to get people to have this shifted embodied experience, I need to craft the performance context so that they can do that. In the case of the karaoke project, for example, what did I need in order to be able to do this [a person to stand up in front of a bar and deliver a karaoke speech]? I realized that the body is very vulnerable so I built a podium so that the speaker can feel secure enough to do this, otherwise you couldn’t get to this state achieved by passing these speeches through the body. Then I was, like, well you need to be able to practice the lyrics because you don’t know all the “songs” by heart, which became an insert to the massive track books carried by most karaoke VJs. And then sometimes the crowd in the bar isn’t there with me, so I needed to extract the voice of the crowd cheering from the original venue and I needed the local audience to cheer if they wanted to. I’m interested in both where the form succeeds and fails. In particular, one of the most interesting things is this auditory gap between the space where you are, the reduced scale of applause in your own little bar, and this grand scale of applause at the convention center where the speech was originally delivered. FLM: How did the concept of “Participatory Democracy Karaoke” come about and why did you use karaoke as a means of engaging what was happening at the DNC in 2008? DP: I was looking at a lot of different readymade media infrastructures within the city at the time. I was interested in the emergency broadcast systems and I developed a proposal to repurpose that system and karaoke became an important symbol because it was this populist form that was already engaged in exploring the sensation of celebrity but also visualizing the gap between ourselves and those with more power and influence. So it had this readymade capacity to play with power and celebrity and I felt like the Obama presidential campaign, the first one in particular, had some very curious overlaps with this culture of celebrity. Obama of course rose to power partly based on his oratory abilities and I was interested in how karaoke as a vehicle was so adept at offering people all that was left of authentic expression in a political speech. Managing a politician and constructing their identity is such a developed practice that it becomes, kind of automatically, a metaphor for the way that our own identities are constructed. Of course the Obama campaign was very hip and savvy and deploying this notion of grassroots. It was really pioneering in its use of social media and this deployment of notions of populism. I was interested at that time in the capacity of karaoke to track speech patterns, precise tempos of anyone’s delivery, and that to me was a way of thinking about what might be left of the authentic self. I was interested in karaoke’s capacity to extract that authentic component and offer it to others. So not just to stand up and be them, but to [literally] pass their speech patterns through your own body. A long time ago, it started to strike me as odd that one would make media at all. It struck me as a kind of un-contemporary way of going about making art in an age of media overflow. That logic extended into my thinking on delivery devices and installation as well. Why would one buy a screen or even set one up when there are so many out there? And the way in which these media displays function in karaoke bars and bars in general is very interesting to me. I’m drawn to this passive consumption of media where your primary social interaction is with the bartender or a few other individuals but these screens are around you and your attention is shifting back and forth between these spaces. So much political rhetoric is spoken to a half-listening audience. I was interested in what was happening in the slippage and that karaoke was a kind of slippage amplifier. So if you put people in a bar and they are delivering a Kucinich speech and Kucinich comes up on a screen then your getting a sound bite of Kucinich and an image of Kucinich and your friend is talking to you— FLM: A kind of magic takes place in that incongruency between sound and image and the karaoke participant who’s relaying the speech-text at the same time. DP: Exactly and there’s some kind of truth in that experience of reality. FLM: Yeah, there’s something uncanny about seeing the body close-up like that as though it can’t lie to you in that moment or context. It’s a weird moment of luminous clarity. The work you’ve done and all of what you’re saying about karaoke is so very interesting to me. Growing up, my dad and uncles sang karaoke a lot (and still do) and being first-generation Filipino American is a different cultural subtext entirely. I’m also seeing it from the position of witnessing family members who are carriers of these stories and songs. And seeing them cherish these Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley songs so much, I also see how their bodies are literal vessels of popular music that signifies something greater—it signifies their cultural and socioeconomic place in the world. The way that they cherish these American 1950s and 1960s pop songs is similar to having a certain kind of reverence for their spiritual faith or Catholicism. It’s a similar kind of care, focus, and attention exerted in karaoke and Catholicism—that these two structures and systems give something to focus on. Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Obama in Indiana — d. peltz — 2008 DP: Sure there something about the relationship we have to our candidate or the way we go about choosing a candidate, which is very similar to a deity or idol. I learned a lot about karaoke culture through this project. I’d never done karaoke. I’d never been interested in it as a form and then I travelled to Japan as part of the project when I made “Setsuko, Seiji and Hitoshi in Obama, Japan as Barack Obama in Indiana” and it was quite fascinating because my image of karaoke had always been this very public forum in a karaoke bar and then I discovered there’s this whole other world of karaoke where people even go on their own, they go and rent a room or cubicle and sing, or they go on a date—just the two of them go and sit in a room and do karaoke together. FLM: I’m interested in issues that take place within or as a result of specific karaoke culture(s). In the Philippines within the last several years there’s been occurring the “My Way Killings” phenomenon. Apparently baklas or gay men are employed by karaoke establishments to help “smooth over conflicts over karaoke singing”—these social forms of conduct, or lack thereof that arise out of the infrastructures of this social sport. In this one rural part of the Philippines there’s a village karaoke machine that the whole village shares—the Aeta indigenous people have an appointed “keeper” of the karaoke machine. I also see karaoke as a proxy to the confessional box in Catholicism where one goes to pour out their sins (minus the penance and redemption). The karaoke machine enables one to literally sing out whatever’s going on internally, but through highly saturated popular song lyrics. While karaoke is a public and social sport, it can also be a private one. Karaoke is a means of communion with each other. DP: Right, this preference for this kind of mediated communication. In Japan I was trying to organize people to work on this project and I was talking about throwing a party and they were like, well, we have to rent a karaoke machine because what else are we going to do? And I think its kind of serving that function of surrogacy—emotional surrogacy. FLM: And karaoke tools can be read as ritual tools—the magic mic that holds everything. There’s got to be some overlap at some point—between religious ceremony and devotion to the karaoke machine. DP: The way I designed the piece was so that it could slip right on top of the ready-made karaoke infrastructure. There was a flat-packed podium and it was made of a single sheet of plywood with no fasteners that slotted into itself. Those were sent out to a network of karaoke bars that I invited to become “karaoke convention centers.” The local VJs downloaded our custom-made, speech-extracted tracks that were designed to play on their existing equipment. In this sense the piece is a permanent installation. If you go to Denver today, some of the VJs still have the tracks in their library of offerings, the Ramones and Romney. It was this notion of re-purposing readymade infrastructure to create a distributable populist form. Obama was coming and the convention was in the Pepsi Center and 30,000 people were coming including 10,000 journalists. The impetus behind the larger art project that commissioned international artists to make works in Denver, was that local people weren’t going to have much access to this convention. It was like an invasion, the city was being descended upon, but if you lived a block away from the site, you had the same access as people in Zimbabwe&mash;30 second media bits excerpted from the speeches. So it seemed to me that the fundamental gesture was how do I take that signal, which was travelling out of the convention center, and create a local interruption? FLM: Is that what you mean by ‘intervention’? The term is frequently used to help describe your work. DP: It depends on the day. Around that karaoke project I had a conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko and he was proposing that maybe rather than intervention, we should consider the word interruption. Because intervention is kind of an overused term in the field of art and it has militaristic and therapeutic associations outside of the art context. Fundamentally, the idea of intervening speaks to the readymade social world as your primary material. So it’s basically suggesting a kind of subtractive process, which gets back to this question: what is the role of the contemporary media artist in a world that’s so saturated with media? You can’t work additively in a saturated field. If you want to make a visible mark you have to work subtractively. That’s what intervention is about to me, just another way of saying “to work subtractively.” FLM: So the interventions or interruptions aren’t necessarily adding or subtracting, but are they putting orange cones there? What are they doing exactly? DP: I think you’re right about that, they’re not really subtracting. They’re adding to the scope of possibility. I’ve been thinking (with this exhibition I’m mounting next month) about the work as explorations and expansions of social possibility. Maybe it’s more insertion. I started calling the pieces ‘insertions’ that I was making in Rejmyre—a small town in Sweden where I’ve been working for six years now. My favorite site to install there is the tourist bureau. I started calling the video pieces that I made for the tourist bureau, video insertions. This idea that you’re inserting something into the readymade media infrastructure of the world resonates with me. Insertion leverages a context, creating a possibility that the inserted object might be naturalized in the process — that someone can encounter my video in Rejmyre as tourist information. And then all of a sudden tourist information can include some American guy prostrating through town and it can include really bad relationship advice. Maybe insertion is a better word. tourist information – d. peltz 2009-present  . (shrink)

The history of Russian social anthropology has long been best known for the work of three, late nineteenth‐century “exile ethnographers,” each sent to the Russian Far East for their anti‐tsarist activities as students. All three men—Vladimir Bogoraz, Vladimir Iokhel'son, and Lev Shternberg—produced voluminous and celebrated works on Russian far eastern indigenous life, but it was the young Shternberg who had perhaps the most profound effect on setting the agenda for the canonic evolutionist line soon to take hold in (...) late Russian imperial and early Soviet ethnography. This essay draws on archival, library, and field research to revisit the life and work of Shternberg in order to tell the story of “group marriage” that he documented for the life of one Sakhalin Island indigenous people, Gilyaks (or Nivkhgu, Nivkhi). Documented in this way by Shternberg, the Nivkh kinship system proved a crucial “missing link” for Friedrich Engels, who had long been eager to provide evidence of primitive communism as man's natural state. For Gilyaks, the die was cast. Their role as the quintessential savages of Engels’ favor made them famous in Russian and Soviet ethnographic literature, and significantly enhanced their importance to Soviet government planners. This essay tracks that episode and its aftermaths as a pivotal moment in the history of Russian social anthropology and of evolutionist thought more broadly. (shrink)

Excerpt from Custom an Essay on Social Codes Still a professor extraordinarius and thus not en cumbered with the time-consuming duties of an Ordinarius (a full professor), T onnies was living in the small town of Eutin, about an hour's ride on the train to Kiel, the seat of his university, and engaged in a prolific literary and scholarly pro duction on a great variety of theoretical as well as practical sociological, political and economic prob lems. Most of his (...) articles were intended for an edu cated though not professional public of people in terested in fundamental questions of social life or in social problems of the day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Andrew Sayer undertakes a fundamental critique of social science's difficulties in acknowledging that people's relation to the world is one of concern. As sentient beings, capable of flourishing and suffering, and particularly vulnerable to how others treat us, our view of the world is substantially evaluative. Yet modernist ways of thinking encourage the common but extraordinary belief that values are beyond reason, and merely subjective or matters of convention, with little or nothing to do with the kind of (...) beings people are, the quality of their social relations, their material circumstances or well-being. The author shows how social theory and philosophy need to change to reflect the complexity of everyday ethical concerns and the importance people attach to dignity. He argues for a robustly critical social science that explains and evaluates social life from the standpoint of human flourishing. (shrink)

The central thesis of my article is that people live a life worthy of a human being only as self-ruling members of some autarchic (or self-governing) communities. On the one hand, nobody is born as a self-ruling individual, and on the other hand, everybody can become such a person by observing progressively the non-aggression principle and, ipso facto, by behaving as a moral being. A self-ruling person has no interest in controlling her neighbors, but in mastering his own (...) impulses, needs, wishes, desires, behaviors, etc. Inasmuch as he is an imperfect being who lives in an imperfect world, he needs to share certain interests, beliefs, values, customs and other characteristics with other people, i.e. to be involved in some communities. Depending on the following four criteria – the regulatory principle, the essential resources, the specific feedback and the fundamental values –, the countless and manifold human communities can be grouped in three categories: (1) affinity communities, (2) economic communities, and (3) civic communities. In other words, every community or human behavior has an affinity, an economic, and a civic dimension. If a civic community is merely a state shaped society, it can be called a political community. All communities are intrinsically variable. Throughout time, they ceaselessly change their composition, values, interpersonal processes and relations, territory, etc. Interestingly enough, the variability is unanimously recognized and accepted in affinity and communities economic, but is denied or abusively interpreted in the case of state shaped societies. If we confuse two types of order − cosmos and taxis – and two types of rule – nomos and thesis –, as well as we exaggerate the importance of certain type of community we bring some social maladies, namely the traditionalism, the commercialism and the civism, (with the worst form of it – the politicality). Whatever the communities they are involved in, all persons relate (implicitly or explicitly) to the libertarian non-aggression principle, living their life in strict accordance with the logical implications of the position they adopt. People who respect the non-aggression axiom necessarily manifest self-control, consideration for the life and property of the others, commitment to offer value for value, love of freedom and a high level of individual responsibility. By contrast, people who violate this axiom – the villains and the statists – invariably strive to control their neighbors, behave as parasites or predators, prefer forced exchanges, reject the personal responsibility (at most accepting the idea of social responsibility), and apply double moral standards. The first category of people generates a libertarian civic discourse as a spontaneous order, and the second creates a political/ statist civic discourse as a result of the human design and will to power. As a spontaneous order, the libertarian civic discourse implies free involvement, peaceful coordination, free expression, free reproduction of ideas and the power of one. Every communication performance in the frame of the libertarian civic discourse is important and has relevant results. All participants to the libertarian civic discourse are automatically members of some self-governing communities (at least members of the general libertarian community). The most important thing for these communities is to be connected to a communicational infrastructure which would make possible free involvement, free expression and the free reproduction of ideas. Inasmuch as today democracy means the tyranny of majority and participatory democracy the tyranny of majority plus the power of vested (and illegitimate) interests, only the emergence of self-governing communities by libertarian discourse offers us a little hope. It’s high time to fall in love (again) with liberty and to embrace the non-aggression principle. We don’t have to create a perfect world, but we can strive to develop our human nature. (shrink)

What is a person? This fundamental question is a perennial concern of philosophers and theologians. But, Christian Smith here argues, it also lies at the center of the social scientist’s quest to interpret and explain social life. In this ambitious book, Smith presents a new model for social theory that does justice to the best of our humanistic visions of people, life, and society. Finding much current thinking on personhood to be confusing or misleading, (...) Smith finds inspiration in critical realism and personalism. Drawing on these ideas, he constructs a theory of personhood that forges a middle path between the extremes of positivist science and relativism. Smith then builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and William Sewell to demonstrate the importance of personhood to our understanding of social structures. From there he broadens his scope to consider how we can know what is good in personal and social life and what sociology can tell us about human rights and dignity. Innovative, critical, and constructive,_ What Is a Person?_ offers an inspiring vision of a social science committed to pursuing causal explanations, interpretive understanding, and general knowledge in the service of truth and the moral good. (shrink)

A ‘vestigial social practice' is a norm, convention, or social behavior that persists even when few endorse it or its original justifying rationale. Begby (2021) explores social explanations for the persistence of prejudice, arguing that even if we all privately disavow a stereotype, we might nevertheless continue acting as if it is true because we believe that others expect us to. Meanwhile the persistence of the practice provides something like implicit testimonial evidence for the prejudice that would (...) justify it, making it rational for members of the next generation to acquire the corresponding prejudiced beliefs. This paper distinguishes between three different types of vestigial social practice in terms of the underlying explanatory mechanisms, and argues that the persistence of prejudicial social stereotypes is most tightly linked not to others’ beliefs or expectations, but to the ways that material infrastructure constrains options shapes social outcomes. Given that, the persistence of a practice only provides grounds to infer that most people endorse the corresponding prejudiced belief only if we are in a position to dismiss relevant alternative explanations. (shrink)

This paper is presented as a sociological account of social action and as part of the “cognitive and cultural turn” in sociology. It retains Weber’s definition of social action as meaningful behavior directed toward another, but employs concepts developed by Noam Chomsky, Pierre Bourdieu and Ludwig Wittgenstein to refine and amplify Weber’s understanding of meaning and subjectivity. It attempts to ground symbolic interaction in innate properties of mind suggested by Chomsky and others. It attempts to enrich Bourdieu’s concept (...) of the habitus with concepts taken from cognitive psychology. Finally it attempts to further integrate Wittgenstein’s language games in to the ethnomethodolical analysis of social situations while grounding ethnomethodological analysis in Bourdieu’s concept of social fields. (shrink)

Social death is apparent when people are considered unworthy of social participation and deemed to be dead when they are alive. Some marginalized groups are more susceptible to this treatment than others, and one such group is people with dementia. Studies into discrimination towards older people are well documented and serve as a source of motivation of older people’s social movements worldwide. Concurrently, theories of ageing and care have been forthcoming in a bid (...) to improve the quality of responses to older people in times of need. Included in this theorizing has been the analysis of values and approaches that paid carers convey to citizens who require their help. In this article, the values and approaches of social workers and mental health nurses bring to people with dementia are considered within the context of social life and social death. It is based on a small study that undertook to critically examine how participation of people with dementia was facilitated. A thanatological lens was used to interpret inclusive and exclusive practices which potentially create opportunity for participation or reinforce the loss of citizenship for older people with dementia. (shrink)

Section 1. Philosophy and tradition -- section 2. Culture, media and politics -- section 3. Culture, ecology and natural resources -- section 4. Women and culture.

BackgroundLight to moderate physical activity, which includes walking, is associated with positive effects on physical and mental health. However, concerning mental health, social and physical environmental factors are likely to play an important role in this association. This study investigates person-place interactions between environmental characteristics and momentary affective states during walking episodes. A within-subject design is implemented, in which affective states and environmental characteristics are assessed while participants are walking outside.MethodsOn smartphones, coupled with a motion sensor, e-diaries were triggered (...) as soon as people walked 100 m outside. E-diaries assessed momentary affective states, and social interaction between 6 am and 10 pm over nine days. The percentage of greenness was determined afterward from recorded GPS and GIS data. Demographics were collected in advance via an online questionnaire. Multilevel models were calculated with R for 46 individuals.ResultsAffective state dimension energetic arousal showed a significant association with social interaction and greenness, i.e., participants rated energetic arousal lower when walking alone, and if there was less greenness vs. when interacting shortly with someone while walking, and being in situations with more greenness. Furthermore, associations with social interaction and greenness were found for dimension calmness: walking together with someone was associated with higher calmness, and the higher the proportion of surrounding greenness during a walk, the higher calmness was rated, i.e., participants were calmer. Significant associations with valence were not present.ConclusionThe findings indicate that the affective states varied significantly due to different social and physical environmental factors. In the future, the importance of environmental factors should be further investigated, e.g., by assessing environmental factors right in situations contrary to a subsequent imputation. Within-subject designs, and in particular triggered assessments with the addition of GPS, can aid in developing interventions for health-promoting urban environments. (shrink)

Unraveling all the mysteries of the khipu--the knotted string device used by the Inka to record both statistical data and narrative accounts of myths, histories, and genealogies--will require an understanding of how number values and relations may have been used to encode information on social, familial, and political relationships and structures. This is the problem Gary Urton tackles in his pathfinding study of the origin, meaning, and significance of numbers and the philosophical principles underlying the practice of arithmetic among (...) Quechua-speaking peoples of the Andes. Based on fieldwork in communities around Sucre, in south-central Bolivia, Urton argues that the origin and meaning of numbers were and are conceived of by Quechua-speaking peoples in ways similar to their ideas about, and formulations of, gender, age, and social relations. He also demonstrates that their practice of arithmetic is based on a well-articulated body of philosophical principles and values that reflects a continuous attempt to maintain balance, harmony, and equilibrium in the material, social, and moral spheres of community life. (shrink)

This study illustrates the strong relationship between world views and ethical values that are embedded in the lives ofa group of people called wong pinter. Some notes on the results of the study show the following points. First, on the basis of the categories of worldviews studied (classification, causality, space, time, and self-others relation), it is found that the concept of classification is not strong enough. The concept of space is also not sufficiently patterned, in contrast to the findings (...) of the concept of space on the Ainu people, the people of Bali and Yogyakarta. Wong pinter describes the concept of space in relation to the existence of non-human beings. The concept oftime is explained in more detail. Some of the views about time are intended to discipline and self-control. On the self-other concept, God becomes the most important element in His status as the Almighty. The selfis a common creature that interacts with other humans and non-human beings. Horizontally, the worldview of wong pinter pivots on the ethical elements of the relationship between God's creatures that synergize and create harmony so as to create a comfortable and peaceful life. Secondly, the basic concept of the worldview guides the wong pinter on the pattern of life both in society, self-control, keeping not to hurt others, and care about the hassles of others. Therefore, they are regarded as people who behave nobly and become role models in society. Thirdly, even though the wong pinterhas some abilities that are relatively similar to the abilities of the shamans (comrnon dukun) that have been mentioned by most researchers but the behavior of wong pinter is different from and even contradict the general characteristics of the dukun. Fourth, this study enriches the study of the concept of space, time, causality, and self-other relationships. This study also explicitly revise the theories that generalize the understanding and characteristics of dukun or wong pinter which has been widely associated with witchcraft, money, and worldly pragmatic goals. (shrink)

Nothing really matters. All the things that we do not do, have or become in our lives can be important in shaping self-identity. From jobs turned down to great loves lost, secrets kept and truths untold, people missed and souls unborn, we understand ourselves through other, unlived lives that are imaginatively possible. This book explores the realm of negative social phenomena - no-things, no-bodies, non-events and no-where places - that lies behind the mirror of experience. Taking a symbolic (...) interactionist perspective, the author argues that these objects are socially produced, emerging from and negotiated through our relationships with others. Nothing is interactively accomplished in two ways, through social acts of commission and omission. Existentialism and phenomenology encourage us to understand more deeply the subjective experience of nothing; this can be pursued through conscious meaning-making and reflexive self-awareness. The Social Life of Nothing is a thought-provoking book that will appeal to scholars across the social sciences, arts and humanities, but its message also resonates with the interested general reader. (shrink)

When speaking of society’s role in ethics, one tends to think of society as regimenting people through its customs. _Ethics and Social Survival_ rejects theories that treat ethics as having justification within itself and contends that ethics can have a grip on humans only if it serves their deep-seated need to live together. It takes a social-survival view of ethical life and its norms by arguing that ethics looks to society not for regimentation by customs, but (...) rather for the viability of society. Fisk traces this theme through the work of various philosophers and builds a consideration of social divisions to show how rationalists fail to realize their aim of justifying ethical norms across divisions. The book also explores the relation of power and authority to ethics—without simply dismissing them as impediments—and explains how personal values such as honesty, modesty, and self-esteem still retain ethical importance. Finally, it shows that basing ethics on avoiding social collapse helps support familiar norms of liberty, justice, and democracy, and strives to connect global and local ethics. (shrink)

The question whether or not there is African philosophy has, for too long, dominated the philosophical scene in Africa, to the neglect of substantive issues generated by the very fact of human existence. This has unfortunately led to an impasse in the development of a distinctive African philosophical tradition. In this path-breaking book, Segun Gbadegesin offers a new and promising approach which recognizes the traditional and contemporary facets of African philosophy by exploring the issues they raise. In Part I, the (...) author examines, with refreshing insights, the philosophical concepts of the person, individuality, community and morality, religiosity and causality, focusing on the Yoruba of Nigeria. Part II discusses, in an original way, contemporary African social, political and economic realities from a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

The island of Palawan stretches northward from Borneo like a bridge to Luzon in the South China Sea. This tropical forest environment, rich in thousands of species of plants and animals, is home to about 50,000 people, known as the Palawan. Besides hunting with blowpipes, traps, spears, and dogs, these people also practice shifting cultivation. Hunting and gathering activities as well as work in the fields follow the alternation of two seasons, the “monsoon” and the “heat,” barat (...) and bulag. As an integral ecosystem, swidden places a high value on mobility rather than on land property. Land tenure, and recourse to physical violence of all kinds are considered unethical behavior. Social life among the Palawan is governed by a bilateral or undifferentiated kinship system, a complex customary law based on rules and values dictated by “the tradition of the Ancestors,” Adat ät Kägunggurangan. (shrink)

Socio-cultural changes in the pattern of development of a group of people often occur when there is an introduction of foreign cultures. The annexation of Gold Coast brought the Asante Empire under British rule, and from the beginning of the twentieth century Gold Coast witnessed a total transformation of the economy from it subsistence nature to a cash economy. Economic changes associated with diversification and rapid expansion of Gold Coast export mitigated for a demand in labour force. However, the (...) research focused on the people of Kumasi and using the Winick theory of alcohol dependency sought to unveil the socio-cultural changes that occurred within the period under review. Furthermore, with the use of qualitative narrative, interviews, secondary and primary data, the research was undertaken and findings revealed some changes in customs, values, and lifestyle of individuals in the community. It further indicated the role played by colonial influence and administration’s reliance on imported alcohol coupled with the introduction of a new kind of local gin (akpeteshie). It was also discovered that, European influence contributed greatly to changes that occurred in the social and cultural uses of distilled liquor in Kumasi. European liquor came to be identified with modernity and European lifestyle. Furthermore, the introduction of railway transport, road transport and creation of urbanization by colonial government policies promoted a new form of social drinking notable among the youth which was devoid of any form of restrain by elders and chiefs. In addition, there was the emergence of social classes who appreciated the European way of life and drinking because it depicted prestige wealth. On the other hand, the emergence of akpeteshie promoted social disorder and the decline in palm wine. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present Tischner’s concept of ‘people from hideouts’ in the context of contemporary problems of lack of social involvement, characteristic of Polish society. According to Tischner’s intention, the concept of ‘people from hideouts’ is understood as a manifestation of the pathology of hope, which, in my opinion, is expressed in the reluctance to participate in social life and fulfill civic duties. The paper presents key issues for Tischner’s concept related (...) to the role of hope in human life and fear as an exemplification of an abandonment for hope. The text also describes concepts related to values, freedom, and the role of encounter and dialogue in interpersonal relations. (shrink)

Christianity has existed for more than 167 years on the island of Sabu (East Nusa Tenggara). Even though the majority of Sabu people are Protestant Christians, in everyday life, the Sabu people still adhere to the Jingitiu religion’s local beliefs. The value of Christianity is still considered foreign in the appreciation of most people’s faith even though they have become Christians. This research aims to develop the contextualisation of the missiological paradigm in the social (...) culture of the Sabu people in a transformative mission challenge. Furthermore, the method used is a descriptive and qualitative research approach. The results showed the following: (1) the church needs to develop contextual studies (in the light of the Bible) on the cultural understandings of the Sabu people; (2) there is a need to bring together the gospel and culture through traditional activities and (3) the church needs to be proactive in transforming the Sabu people’s traditions as a tool to deliver education, such as moral and ethical education.Contribution: This article aims to assist churches in adopting strategies for inculcating gospel values in the religious traditions and practices of the Sabu people. This approach is proposed to further develop the appreciation of faith through transformation according to gospel values as a support system for proclaiming the message of the Great Commission in transmitting relevant and contextual Christian messages to transform the culture and society of Sabu. (shrink)

While ethnomusicologists often write about musical instruments and engage with social theories, these two predilections are typically distinct, and rarely are instruments theorized let alone considered in social terms. Drawing on recent work in Science and Technology Studies, I argue for a study of the social where musical objects (including instruments) and people are actors within patterned heterogeneous networks. I begin with literary examples of instruments framed as having agency, then move to the treatment of instrument-agency (...) within organology. As an exemplar for this methodology, I consider the social life of the saz, an ubiquitous lute from Turkey. (shrink)

Resurgent interest incommodities is linked to recent attempts toovercome the constraints posed by the binariesof economy/culture and production/consumption.Commodities and commodification represent acontentious convergence of economic, social,cultural, political, and moral concerns. Thisessay develops a conceptual framework forunderstanding this interconnectedness byexamining the relationship between commoditiesand our discourse, practices, and assumptionsabout food. We argue that the movement of afood artifact between local/global andglobal/local contexts is mediated by dynamicsof power and resistance that represent contestsof meaning regarding the criteria of that artifact's exchangeability. We (...) apply thisframework to the case of the tortilla, tracingits social life through an historical accountof its transformation from the staple food ofthe Mayan and Aztec people to its introductionas a fast food component of the diets of21st century Americans. This exampledemonstrates that food provides a powerful lensthrough which to trace and illustrate theinterconnectedness between material andsymbolic exchanges around the world that arecommonly associated with globalization. (shrink)

ContextPeople with mental disorders can acquire long-term disabilities, which could impair their functioning and quality of life (QoL), requiring permanent care and social support. Systematic data on QoL and functioning, which could support a better management of these people, were not available.ObjectiveTo analyze the QoL, level of functioning and their association with sociodemographic and clinical factors of people with mental disorders who underwent deinstitutionalization using assisted living facilities.MethodsA Cross-sectional study was conducted between July 2018 and July (...) 2019, through interviews using the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) to determine the QoL scores, and the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS 2.0) to determine the level of functioning. All adults (≥18 years old) with mental disorders, who underwent deinstitutionalization, users of assisted living facilities and assisted by the Psychosocial Assistance Centers III, in a city in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, were selected. For statistical analysis of the associated factors, Student’st-test was used for dichotomous variables and ANOVA for polynomial variables. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to measure the association between QoL and functioning scores.ResultsOut of 359 people who underwent deinstitutionalization with mental disorders, 147 met the eligibility criteria. The mean total score for the WHOQOL-BREF was 66.5 ± 13.4 and the mean score for WHODAS 2.0 was 10.4 ± 7.6. An association was found between people who were studying (n= 65.8; 95%CI, 63.5–68.1vs. n= 73.9; 95%CI, 67.5–80.3;p= 0.04) and better WHOQOL-BREF QoL scores or WHODAS 2.0 levels of functioning (n= 10.9; 95%CI, 9.6–12.2vs. n= 5.1; 95%CI, 2.5–7.7;p= 0.01). A weak negative correlation (r= 0.41) emerged between higher QoL scores and functioning improvement.ConclusionThis study indicates that the QoL of the sample is associated by their functioning levels, which, in turn, may reflect on their social interactions. Public policies that favor interventions increasing socialization of this population can result in better health outcomes. The QoL and functioning scores provide valuable insights to develop public policies more suited to this population profile. (shrink)

I endorse five central themes of Charlotte Witt's Social Goodness: the pervasiveness and irreducibility of social roles and norms; normative externalism; the artisanal model; a richer social ontology; and the possible critical transformation of social norms from within. I reframe these themes within the biological account of the evolution and development of human ways of life in Joseph Rouse's Social Practices as Biological Niche Construction. Witt's social analysis attends to human bodies as loci (...) of artisanal skills and social salience as gendered, sexed, and raced, but not to bodies as vulnerable, dependent organisms in social environments. A broader, biological conception of normativity shifts from Witt's focus on social roles and norms to the dynamics of social practices as shaping people's developmental environments. This more complex account of social dynamics enriches Witt's conservative account of how practices are transmitted and sustained. It thereby surpasses limitations in her account of how hierarchical social norms can be both obligating and open to critical challenge from within. It does so in three ways: by emphasizing normative conflicts within practices, by shifting from individual know-how to discursive practices as loci of artisanal authority, and by an account of power relations as intertwined with biosocial normativity. (shrink)

Symbolism of Javanese rites and ceremonies; collection of articles.

A number of factors must be considered in facility location decisions. Recent research on job design suggests that the effects jobs may have on quality of work life and quality of life in general should be considered in facility location decisions in addition to other normal factors. The present study was designed to examine quality of work life and quality of life factors of residents in a low income and low education area. The intent was to (...) determine what types of jobs might have the most positive effect on people in this type of region. Data were collected from 409 households in a low income/education region. The results showed that people from this region were as satisfied with their quality of work life and quality of life as people in other regions with better jobs, higher incomes, and better general life situations. Results are discussed in light of facility location decisions and types of jobs having the most positive impact. (shrink)

This article focuses on the collective leadership of the civilian authorities of the British Channel Islands during the Nazi Occupation (1940-1945), and draws lessons from their ethical performance. The first part of the article determines that local officials in the Channel Islands disposed of operative margins, but that - in the interest of collaboration - these were not always used to the full. This article then details institutional factors that contributed to commonalities between the two bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, (...) as they faced up to occupation. The second part of this article follows up with the dissimilarities, one of which is that Guernsey travelled further down the road to collaboration than her sister island. Social capital depletion is credited as being responsible for this; and this situation was further compounded by lack of 'ethical leadership'. The final part explores the relationship between social capital and leadership ethics, suggesting that virtue serves as a catalyst for social capital stock in crisis situations. The core research outcome is that ethical leadership produces tangible efficiency and moral effects in situations of extreme duress (such as Nazi Occupation) where one could have expected very little or no scope for such a thing. This is an uplifting message that runs counter to scepticism as to the practical value of business ethics. Implications are drawn with regard to the challenge of reconciling MNE activities with the moral complexity posed by globalization. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the biography of the Portuguese naturalist Francisco de Arruda Furtado, born on São Miguel Island, in the Azorean archipelago, in 1854, who became part of an international network of naturalists. Despite his short life, he produced original research on malacology, and from his youth Furtado claimed to be a disciple of Darwin. Informed by recent literature reflecting on the resurgence of biography in the history of science, the narrative of Furtado’s life will take (...) into consideration what it meant to be, and the implications of considering oneself, a disciple of Darwin in the nineteenth-century natural sciences. In the history of science, the concept of disciple has often been associated with research schools, but Darwin did not create one and never surrounded himself with young apprentices. In this paper we argue that in Furtado’s case, and in all probability in many others, in addition to being a scientific theory, evolution had the status of a doctrine. As such, Darwinian evolution had a strong ideological and political dimension. By propagating it among lay people it had the potential of changing attitudes individually and socially, while at the same time it provided the scientific foundations for social and political transformation. Consequently, in addition to scientific research based on Darwin’s theory, Furtado deeply engaged in proselytizing the natural sciences and Darwinian evolution, becoming representative of the importance of Darwin’s disciples in Furtado’s sense, in the reception and endorsement of evolution around the world, with repercussions beyond natural history. (shrink)

In the ideology of capitalism, problems of standard of living and consumption are treated in isolation from the content of social relationships. An example of this is provided by the works of Galbraith, who speaks of the "affluent society," defined by the level and volume of consumption, as a higher level of social development. His interpretation - and it is shared by many bourgeois ideologists - does not deal with the question of on what the achievement of an (...) abundance of various goods and services, and hence abundance in consumption, is based. Left out of consideration is the fact that it is because of particular historical conditions that the capitalist states of our day have at their disposal a developed base in technology, while such a base is lacking over most of the globe, inasmuch as its creation is an as-yet uncompleted task in the so-called developing countries. If we were to judge the essence of social development without considering the concrete class structure of society and the vagaries of historical development, without analyzing the existing base in technology and science, etc., we would be unable to go beyond the bounds of very vague abstractions. (shrink)

On Javanese ethics, manners, and customs.

Many readers have suspected that Hegel---in arguing against Kant’s individualistic and critical way of approaching ethics and favoring instead an “ethical life” he associates with custom and habit---is in effect eliminating both individual judgment and any basis for criticism of corrupt or unjust communities. Most specialists reject this view of Hegel’s ethical theory, but they haven’t explained precisely how, on the contrary, ethical life preserves individual judgment and criticism within a new way of thinking about ethics. The goal (...) of this paper is to do that. (shrink)

Many readers have suspected that Hegel---in arguing against Kant’s individualistic and critical way of approaching ethics and favoring instead an “ethical life” he associates with custom and habit---is in effect eliminating both individual judgment and any basis for criticism of corrupt or unjust communities. Most specialists reject this view of Hegel’s ethical theory, but they haven’t explained precisely how, on the contrary, ethical life preserves individual judgment and criticism within a new way of thinking about ethics. The goal (...) of this paper is to do that. (shrink)

International integration is deepening, so people develop in all aspects. In society, communities with individuals have relationships in humans' material and spiritual life. When society grows, more people's knowledge of the world needs to learn so that people can understand themselves and act for the development of society. The article studies the thought of Thomas Aquinas to clarify human nature in social life. The paper uses analytical, synthesis, and argumentative methods to explain human nature (...) with its behaviors and perceptions in social life; Aquinas argued that it is human nature to do the right thing to achieve happiness. However, society is more progressive and liberals, but people always realize their lives have many injustices and difficulties. People want their lives to be happy and good but feel depressed. In this article, in an excellent society, people live according to the law and adjust their behavior according to the regulations of society; each person in the society is also better, from which the society is also humane and reasonable that the basis for building a better society in Vietnam. (shrink)

There is a view that what we owe to other people is explained by the fact that they are human beings who share in a common human life. There are many ways of construing this explanatory idea, and I explore a few of these here; the aim is to look for constructions that contribute to an understanding of what we owe to people with profound and multiple learning difficulties and disabilities. In exploring the idea of sharing in (...) a common life I construe ‘sharing’ as ‘participating in’, and ‘common life’ as the social life characteristic of the environment that someone lives in. My principal purpose is to render the idea of sharing in a common life in terms that help explain its eligibility as a ground for establishing the moral status of people with PMLD. The participatory options I examine each make some call on agency, if only as something hoped for in the future, including when hope flies in the face of expectation. Accordingly I look at conceptions of actual and potential participation in social life, and at the idea of treating people as if they have the potential to participate, even when the existence of any such potential is unlikely. I conclude with some thoughts on the relation between participation and the moral status of profoundly disabled people, and about how much, and how little, the argument has achieved. (shrink)