Recent years have witnessed growing concerns about how we should conduct conservation activities in a world of human-altered biophysical conditions. The 'novel ecosystems' perspective has emerged as a way to meet this challenge. Yet its focus on accepting 'new natures' as the 'new normal' has drawn much criticism from those wedded to conventional forms of conservation, such as 'ecological restoration'. This paper: 1) provides a much needed review of this dispute; 2) formulates and deploys an original analytical framework, which draws (...) on Thomas Kuhn's 'theoretical history' of science and Charles Taylor's moral philosophy to extricate the entangled moral and material ontologies of nature which conflate facts with values in the world-building activities of disputants; and 3) identifies and examines the processes underlying these world-building activities. The paper closes by offering an initial suggestion on how to explore options for resolving this highly contentious debate. (shrink)

Then Wendy began to see that one didn't stay at two for the rest of one's life. Indeed two is the beginning of the end. The end is being grown-up. Once you get to twenty one or so, you can never be ungrown-up again. But Mrs. Darling did not tell this to Wendy. Between two and twenty one, there was lots of time for her to find out.

A critical but sympathetic treatment of Pierre Bayle.

The global crisis is heralding change within collective consciousness and humanity will be challenged to transform behaviors to co-create a sustainable future. Ervin Laszlo's Akashic Field could inspire such an archetypal shift, as exemplified in C.G. Jung's individuation process. Jung's encounters with the archetypes from the collective unconscious led him to connect deeply with Akashic experiences, which resulted in him expressing his human potential through renewed ways of doing and being. Humanity has an opportunity to develop and integrate transpersonal consciousness (...) through engaging archetypal and Akashic experiences, which could inspire collective action for the co-creation of an improved future. (shrink)

'This book radically raises the level of debate.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 128-129 [Access article in PDF] Robert Crocker, editor. Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Pp. xix + 228. Cloth, $77.00. By describing the early modern period as such, we thereby avow a continuity with it that ill squares with the following, insufficiently appreciated fact. The early modern counterparts of the largely atheistic American Philosophical Association, let's (...) say, were to an even greater degree theistic, and, moreover, theism affected their description and explanation of the world in a profound way—certainly more so than it does their few theistic descendents. This is true even of authors, like Hobbes and Spinoza, who might be read as leading to later atheism. The fact of early modern theism and its centrality in early modern philosophy and science are amply demonstrated in one after another of the eleven essays of this book.An emblematic figure is Robert Boyle, who figures as a main player in three of the essays, and is at least mentioned in five of the others. Lotte Mulligan, for example, investigates the role of "right reason" in Boyle's argument that religion is illuminated and made [End Page 128] plausible by metaphorically expressed analogies with natural philosophy, and conversely. The upshot is that only the "Christian Virtuoso," endowed with right reason whereby he is inspired to notice and express these analogies, was in a position to interpret the codes expressed both in the book of revelation and in the book of nature, one being incomplete without the other.Luisa Simonutti treats Boyle's engagement with the theological and scientific work of Spinoza through Spinoza's correspondence with Oldenburg. And G. A. J. Rogers deploys the work of Boyle, as well as of Locke, Newton, and the Cambridge Platonists, against the once-standard view (vide Butterfield) that "a major feature of the seventeenth-century was a secularization of knowledge." (Given just the other papers in this volume, this may seem like shooting fish in a barrel. Even so, perhaps one or two of the shots appear to miss. Newton seems proleptically to answer Hume's skepticism about induction by invoking, not divine simplicity, but an argument to the best explanation.)These papers overlap with two others, forming the core of the book. Sarah Hutton and Robert Crocker take on Cambridge Platonism. The former deals with Ralph Cudworth's rejection of Cartesian voluntarism in favor of an intellectualism of goodness and wisdom that grounds both the providential governance of the world and its intelligibility to human inquiry. The latter deals with Henry More's doctrine of the soul's pre-existence, a prima facie unlikely doctrine, but one that is less problematic, according to More, than the orthodox alternatives (creationism and traducianism).Three other papers fall outside this core, but their topics are no less relevant. Perhaps the most undeniable connection between the natural and the supernatural is to be found in Grotius, here studied by Jacqueline Lagree. Likely the most unexpected player will be the eccentric esprit fort, Cyrano de Bergerac. His work of nearly pure fantasy, in the Rabelaisian tradition, might well have made later, more serious heterodoxies possible. James E. Force provides a nice case study in Newton's reliance on what he took to be providentially guided comets as sources for the replenishment of otherwise declining celestial motion and matter (a line which, ironically, was picked up by Hume as a premise of an argument designed to undo the argument from design). Richard H. Popkin outlines three views of Judaism in the period. There is little connection with nature, but an important one with reason via a problem that exercised Cudworth and Newton: most peoples are polytheistic despite the clear monotheism of revelation. One theory had it that Judaism was the original, pure religion, which degenerated into various forms of paganism. But this degeneracy was soon read by the English deists such that originally there was a natural religion, of which Judaism and all others were a degeneration. Transmitted to the Enlightenment by Spinoza... (shrink)

Probably the most celebrated controversy in all of the history of science was that between Newton and Leibniz over the invention of the calculus. The argument ranged far beyond a mere priority dispute and took on the character of a war between two different philosophies of nature. Newton was the first to devise the methods of the calculus, but Leibniz (who independently discovered virtually identical methods) was the first to publish, in 1684. Mutual toleration passed into suspicion and, at last, (...) denunciation of each by the other as a fraud and a plagiarist. The affair became a scandal, as British mathematicians asserted Newton's claims before the public while their Continental colleagues hotly defended Leibniz's priority. Professor Hall analyzes the situation out of which the dispute arose, the circumstances that caused it to become embittered, the dispositions of the chief actors, and the shifts in their opinions of each other. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of the political agency of Cultural Studies within the contemporary conjuncture. It begins by examining critical polemics around culture and postmodernity and moves on to consider Bennett's Foucauldian approach to cultural criticism. Although critical of Bennett's approach, the paper retains the Foucauldian notion of governmentality as the explanation of governance as a form of rule. The relevance of governance to cultural studies is shown through the argument that the political agency of cultural studies rests on (...) an administrative structure that can no longer be verified empirically or conceptually. The argument proceeds by proposing that the liquidation of this political agency has been caused by the cultural agency of postmodernity, to which administrative and political authority is subordinate. Governance is the political expression of this state of affairs. After outlining the general features of governance the paper concludes with a discussion of how the political agency of culture is expressed through governance. (shrink)

This book sets out to redress the balance and develop an understanding of what comprises ethical leadership in organizations.

Poststructuralist Discourse Theory is, in my view, a social theory for our time; embracing, as it does, the unconscious and capable of providing new insights into everything from the rise of Trumpian “post truth” through to our collective inability to universally engage with the existential threat of climate change. This article suggests an approach to the empirical analysis of problematised discourses starting from a search for dislocations. I draw from the writings of Laclau, Adorno and Derrida and use Žižek’s Lacanian (...) reading of Hegel to find support for this approach as one useful way to proceed towards new critical explanations and understandings. (shrink)

Since 1990, the allocation of foreign development aid has come to be shaped by donors' concerns about promoting "good government" in developing countries. Yet the aid donors adopt a wide variety of implicit and actual definitions of "good government.".

Cognitive fatigue is a problem for the safety of critical systems as it can lead to accidents, especially during unexpected events. In order to determine the extent to which it disrupts adaptive capabilities, we evaluated its effect on online and anticipatory control. Despite numerous studies conducted to determine its effects, the exact mechanism affected by fatigue remains to be clarified. In this study, we used distribution and electromyographic analysis to assess whether cognitive fatigue increases the capture of the incorrect automatic (...) response or if it impairs its suppression, and whether the conflict adaptation effect is reduced. To this end, we evaluated the evolution of the performance over time during the Simon task, a classic conflict task that elicits incorrect automatic responses. To accentuate the presence of fatigue during the Simon task, two groups previously performed a dual-task with two different cognitive load levels to create two different levels of fatigue. The results revealed that time on task impaired online control by disrupting the capacity to suppress the incorrect response but leaving unaffected the expression of the automatic response. Furthermore, participants emphasized speed rather than accuracy with time on task, with in addition more fast guesses, suggesting that they opted for a less effortful response strategy. As the implementation of the suppression mechanism requires cognitive effort, the conjunction of these results suggests that the deficits observed may be due to disengagement of effort over time rather than reflecting an incapacity to make an effort. (shrink)

New forms of river management have emerged following widespread recognition of the environmental damage caused by attempts to harness and control rivers for navigation, consumptive water use and power generation. A dominant top-down engineering-based paradigm is being challenged by catchment-framed, ecosystem-based approaches which claim to place greater emphasis on participation and equity. However, there has been limited attention given to examining these claims, and principles of justice are frequently left unarticulated or embedded in what is still presented as an essentially (...) technical, outcome-driven management process. This paper examines the contribution of an environmental justice framework in articulating and explicating the ethical and political nature of decision making in stream rehabilitation practice. Particular attention is given to distributive, procedural and relational elements of justice, and to the limitations of an anthropocentric approach. A broader-based ecological justice framework is proposed. Several key issues in applying this framework are discussed, including the need for 'situated justice', for multiple voices to be heard, for dealing with unity and diversity at the catchment scales, and in integrating knowledge through genuine transdisciplinary research and practice. (shrink)

The ecological crisis is confronting humanity with a need to recognize the interconnectedness of all life, and the Akashic Field as formulated by Ervin Laszlo (2004a) has identified how a universal information field connects humans to a greater transpersonal consciousness. The Akashic Field could provide humanity with a focus to deepen its understanding of a holistic view of life. The global crisis will confront human beings with the need to develop their transpersonal potential and spiritual intelligence, which has the potential (...) to contribute to an ecological actualization of human beings' relationship to the world, and the development of a sustainable future. (shrink)

The paper discusses the role that ethics theory might play in business ethics teaching. It is noted that little attention is devoted to the explanation and application of ethics theory in business ethics textbooks, which suggests that ethics theory is held in low esteem by business ethics educators. This relative disregard has been justified by some critics on the basis of the limited usefulness of ethics theory to business ethics pedagogy. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the paper argues that ethics theory can (...) play an important role in business ethics teaching which conforms to a speculative agenda. A speculative agenda is described, and a contribution that ethics theory can make to it is explained. This constitutes a form of immanent critique, which enables putative statements of business ethicality to be subjected to critique against the cultural values upon which their credibility rests. Ethics theory is offered as a mediating resource to facilitate such critique. Some criteria that the presentation of ethics theory needs to meet if it is to fulfill this speculative agenda are also outlined. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 225-237 [Access article in PDF] Did Bayle Read Saint-Evremond? Thomas M. Lennon Of course Bayle read Saint-Evremond—he quotes him. Moreover, he published one of Saint-Evremond's texts. But there is reading, and then there is reading. There is selective, inattentive perusal of excerpts or even secondary sources, with no attempt to penetrate beyond a superficial understanding; and then there is comprehensive, (...) close scrutiny of the best primary sources, with sensitivity to nuance, and attention to context. In short, there is a difference between skimming and studying. Did Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) skim or study the work of Saint-Evremond (ca.1614-1703)?This article argues that Bayle's first-hand knowledge of Saint-Evremond's work was superficial and dependent on a secondary source that gives that work a less than obvious, and hitherto unappreciated meaning for Bayle. This shift matters because it bears on the question of the status of Bayle's religious faith. With her classic Pierre Bayle (1963-64), Elizabeth Labrousse set aside the traditional view of Bayle as a religious skeptic whose professions of faith cannot be taken at face value. Such had been the view held by many in Bayle's own time, most notably by Pierre Jurieu, and near-universally from the Enlightenment into the twentieth century. Very recently, in a work that is no less impressive than hers on this and other topics in Bayle, Gianluca Mori has defended the traditional view, basing a part of his argument on Bayle's use of Saint-Evremond. 1 Thus the question above. Moreover, the matter of Bayle's religious belief is not a merely biographical one. First, there is the fact of his [End Page 225] influence, especially given his huge readership, although Bayle's influence may well be other than anything he intended. Secondly, in any case, the interpretation of Bayle's work as a whole depends on it, for virtually everything he wrote besides the Dictionnaire has a religious dimension.To appreciate the importance of the question, something must first be said about Charles de Marguetel de St. Denis, sieur de Saint-Evremond. He was known in his time, and still is, as a libertine. It is difficult, however, to define libertinage beyond a combination of hedonistic mores and dubious religious beliefs—Epicureanism in some loose and popular sense. 2 What is more important, in any case, is how Bayle might have thought the term applied to Saint-Evremond; and here it is clear that outright atheism may have been at issue. Bayle reports that it was publicly known that Saint-Evremond "ended his long life, just as he had lived it, en esprit fort." He seems certainly to have died without benefit of religion. When asked on his deathbed whether he wished to be reconciled, says Bayle, he answered yes, "with all my heart. I would like to be reconciled with my appetite. For my stomach is no longer functioning in its usual way." Bayle was often at pains to insist upon the ultimate inaccessibility of others' real beliefs (and of the inappropriateness of attempting to reach them). In this case, however, he was prepared to hold up Saint-Evremond as a counter-example to the widely-held belief that there were no speculative atheists, i.e., people who would sincerely deny the existence of God, but only practical atheists, i.e., people who live as if they did not believe in the existence of God, but who, try as they may, are at least occasionally aware of it. 3This view of Saint-Evremond is important because, when accused of irreligion himself, Bayle cited the libertine's work as indicative of his own beliefs. To understand how Bayle came to be accused, and the significance of this response to it, some of the historical background is first necessary. Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique sold better than any text in the eighteenth century, philosophical or otherwise; and it was a best-seller right from the publication of its first edition, in... (shrink)

Longtime San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle's freewheeling journey through several dozen big-screen visions of California.

This book uses a theory of cyborg semiotics to explore the similarities between language and cyborgs in their formation, interpretation, and relationships. This intersectional theory provides a unique perspective on power and the human condition.

The physician's son -- Two great masters -- The natural scientist -- The lyceum -- "The philosopher".

The scope of this article is feminist philosophical engagement with the natural sciences. As a starting point we can view science as having the objective of “producing general propositions about nature, the physical ‘out there,’ that can be tested empirically where appropriate, and that are rational in character” but we also need to recognize the fluidity of the term “science”; for to term something “scientific” is honorific. It is signaled as something to be trusted and relied on, and there are (...) political as well as intellectual debates concerning what is to be dignified with this title. (shrink)

According to the Rationality Constraint, our concept of belief imposes limits on how much irrationality is compatible with having beliefs at all. We argue that empirical evidence of human irrationality from the psychology of reasoning and the psychopathology of delusion undermines only the most demanding versions of the Rationality Constraint, which require perfect rationality as a condition for having beliefs. The empirical evidence poses no threat to more relaxed versions of the Rationality Constraint, which only require only minimal rationality. Nevertheless, (...) we raise problems for all versions of the Rationality Constraint by appealing to more extreme forms of irrationality that are continuous with actual cases of human irrationality. In particular, we argue that there are conceivable cases of “mad belief” in which populations of Lewisian madmen have beliefs that are not even minimally rational. This undermines Lewis’s claim that our ordinary concept of belief is a theoretical concept that is implicitly defined by its role in folk psychology. We argue that introspection gives us a phenomenal concept of belief that cannot be analyzed by applying Lewis’s semantics for theoretical terms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Rejoinder to MoriThomas M. LennonGianluca Mori and I are broadly in agreement about everything in my paper except the answer to its main question, viz., how Bayle's use of Saint-Evremond is to be understood in the third Eclaircissement. Mori thinks that Bayle's use of Saint Evremond was one of his "provocations aimed at orthodox readers." It is an instance of his thesis that "Bayle's professions of Christian faith, (...) though frequent, are generally far from being above suspicion: indeed almost every one of them raises questions about their actual significance."1 On my view, one line of argument for not taking Bayle's use of Saint-Evremond "at face value in his profession of religious faith... is highly questionable."2 That is, as far as his use of Saint-Evremond is concerned, Bayle should be taken as the fideist that he, here and in many other places, in effect claimed to be.We are in agreement about the nature of the key text itself that Bayle cites from the Conversation. It is a "ridiculous" text, dripping with sarcasm, an ironic parody of the very views that Bayle claims to believe. Moreover, Bayle himself is in agreement with this view of the text, and expresses it in so many words. The knot of our disagreement consists in how Bayle could have used such a text to express fideist views. Mori thinks that the very use of the text itself is sufficient to call those views into doubt. "Bayle was fully aware that the text he presented as a 'clarification' of his fideism had very little right to be considered as Christian orthodoxy,... In a word, Bayle knew full well that his fideism would be regarded as insincere and destructive of faith."3The basis for my view begins with what Bayle says about this text in a statement that Mori has so far not acknowledged either in his book or in his reply to me. Says Bayle after citing Saint-Evremond, "Give this thought a more serious and proper tone and it will become reasonable." It is here that Bayle [End Page 335] acknowledges the inappropriateness of Saint-Evremond's text, but he does so to reject it as it stands. Bayle did not, as Mori claims, present the text "as a clarification of his fideism." Only when the text is given a "more serious and proper tone," that is, when it is stripped of its irony and sarcasm, does it cease to be a parody of his views and become an accurate expression of them. Bayle explicitly dissociates himself from the unamended text, introducing it with the comment that "this thought has been given a ridiculous sense, in the hands of a master."4 But Mori takes this text as it stands to convey Bayle's message, as if Bayle had not commented on it at all. It is as if, to repeat the text at the end of my paper, the Bible were to be cited as stating the claim that there is no God. It does so, of course, but only preceded by the disclaimer that only "the fool hath said in his heart there is no God" (Psalm 14: 1).According to Mori, Bayle's use of Saint-Evremond was provocative. Bayle's text is not provocative, however. Had he intended it to be, he would have directly cited Saint-Evremond, without comment. Instead, he is perfectly clear about whom he is quoting and how that source should be understood. To be sure, such a citation is dramatic, and no doubt designed for effect, but the effect is to show how unexceptional Bayle took his conception of the faith-reason relation to be. Bayle in the Eclaircissement is not trying to convert anyone but to explain his position in a way that makes it acceptable to the Consistory of the Walloon Church. To be sure, it is an irony that Saint-Evremond's text, slightly but importantly corrected, expresses Bayle's view, but it is not an irony in the sense of winking sarcasm.Mori insists that, as a matter of historical fact, Bayle's text was found to be provocative... (shrink)

From Ansel Adams to Carleton Watkins, Diane Arbus to Weegee, Richard Avedon to James VanDerZee, American photographers have recorded their vast, multicultural nation in images that, for more than a hundred years, have come to define the USA. In Photography and the USA, Mick Gidley explores not only the medium of photography and the efforts to capture key events and moments through photographs, but also the many ways in which the medium has played a formative role in American culture. (...) Photography and the USA encompasses the major movements, figures and works that are crucial to understanding American photography, but also pays attention to more obscure aspects of photography’s history. Focusing on works that reveal many different facets of America, its landscapes and its people, Gidley explores the ambiguities of American history and culture. We encounter images that range from an anti-lynching demo in 1934 to Dorothea Lange’s poster “All races serve the crops in California;” an early photographic view of Niagara Falls against the painstaking detail of Edward Weston’s Pepper, No. 30; a fireman’s fight in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to the Ground Zero images of 2001 by Joel Meyerowitz; an 1890s “Wanted” image to Elliot Erwitt’s shot of the Nixon–Kruschchev “Kitchen Debate.” Organizing his narrative around the themes of history, technology, the document and the emblem, Mick Gidley not only presents a history of photography, but also reveals the complexities inherent in reading photographs themselves. A concise yet comprehensive overview of photography in the United States, this book is an excellent introduction to the subject for American Studies or visual arts students, or for anyone interested in US history or culture. (shrink)

This article examines the technical apparatus of the Warburg Haus in Hamburg and its relationship with Aby Warburg’s art historical methodology. A link is made to an exhibition in 1941 by Saxl and Wittkower entitled English Art and the Mediterranean that was published in 1948 and again in 1969 as British Art and the Mediterranean. In turn, the manner in which this exhibition and publication was image led, the text serving to annotate the images, links to broadcast media, namely, Clark’s (...) Civilisation (1969) and Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1972), as a strong example of a working practice. (shrink)

This article examines the technical apparatus of the Warburg Haus in Hamburg and its relationship with Aby Warburg’s art historical methodology. A link is made to an exhibition in 1941 by Saxl and Wittkower entitled English Art and the Mediterranean that was published in 1948 and again in 1969 as British Art and the Mediterranean. In turn, the manner in which this exhibition and publication was image led, the text serving to annotate the images, links to broadcast media, namely, Clark’s (...) Civilisation and Berger’s Ways of Seeing, as a strong example of a working practice. (shrink)

This article examines the technical apparatus of the Warburg Haus in Hamburg and its relationship with Aby Warburg’s art historical methodology. A link is made to an exhibition in 1941 by Saxl and Wittkower entitled English Art and the Mediterranean that was published in 1948 and again in 1969 as British Art and the Mediterranean. In turn, the manner in which this exhibition and publication was image led, the text serving to annotate the images, links to broadcast media, namely, Clark’s (...) Civilisation and Berger’s Ways of Seeing, as a strong example of a working practice. (shrink)

As American settlement expanded westward in the 1860s, the U.S. government undertook large-scale investigations of its new territories. Images of the West: Survey Photography in French Collections, 1860–1880 presents memorable glass-plate photographs from these federal surveys. The selection includes breathtaking views of such iconic sites as Yosemite, as well as lesser-known ethnographic portraits taken by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, William H. Jackson, and William Bell, among others. The accompanying essays discuss how the photographs were used to promote white settlement, how their (...) distribution at home and abroad contributed to the aggrandizement of the American West, and how the exploitative ideology underlying the use of photography extended to attitudes toward both American landscapes and American Indians. The images are all drawn from French public collections, which hold an astonishing number of these U.S. survey photographs. Accompanying an exhibition at the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Images of the West provides a critical new examination of a bygone era. (shrink)

This handbook gives an overview of cognition and emotion research. It provides readers with the historical background and the philosophical arguments on the debate, before moving on to outline the general aspects of various research traditions. Split into comprehensive sections, it discusses cognitive processes, including memory, decision-making, and reasoning, and also emotions such as anger, anxiety, sadness, and jealousy. With contributions from leading researchers in the subject, this volume examines the main theories, and also the application of these to other (...) areas of psychology. (shrink)

This discussion paper offers a critical provocation to my mental health nursing colleagues. Drawing upon David Graeber's account of bullshit work, work that is increasingly meaningless for workers, I pose the question: Is mental health nursing a bullshit job? Ever‐increasing time spent on record keeping as opposed to direct care appears to represent a Graeberian bullshitisation of mental health nurses' work. In addition, core aspects of the role are not immune from bullshit. Professional rhetoric would have us believe that mental (...) health nursing is a therapeutically beneficent occupation organised around ideals of care and compassion and providing fulfilling work for practitioners. Yet, there are some key characteristics of the experience of mental health nursing work that afford alternative judgements on its value and meaningfulness. Not least of these is the fact that many mental health nurses feel quite existentially unsettled in the practise of their work and many service users do not recognise the professional ideal, especially when compelled into increasingly coercive and restrictive services. In this context, Graeber's thesis is explored for its applicability to mental health nursing with a conclusion that many aspects of mental health nursing work are commensurate with bullshit but that mental health care can possibly be redeemed from bullshitisation by authentically democratising reforms. Engaging with posthumanist ideas, this exploration involves a flexing of aspects of Graeber's theory. (shrink)

The pursuit of happiness is a long-enshrined tradition that has recently become the cornerstone of the American Positive Psychology movement. However, “happiness” is an over-worked and ambiguous word, which, it is argued, should be restricted and only used as the label for a brief emotional state that typically lasts a few seconds or minutes. The corollary proposal for positive psychology is that optimism is a preferable stance over pessimism or realism. Examples are presented both from psychology and economics that illustrate (...) the dangers of optimism, and in which better outcomes can occur with a pessimistic stance. A more sophisticated approach is then presented in which, in relation to well-being and quality of life, neither optimism nor pessimism is seen as inherently better than the other, but, rather, in which psychological flexibility may contribute optimally to health and well-being. (shrink)

If, as Lefebvre argues, every society produces its own social space, then modernity might be characterized by that (anti-)social and instrumental space epitomized and idealized in Le Corbusier's writings. This repetitively patterned space consumes and regulates the differences between places and people; it encapsulates a normalizing morality that seeks to reduce all differences to an economic order of the Same. Lefebvre's dialectical conceptualization of 'difference' can both help explain the operation of this (im)moral landscape and offer the possibility of alternative (...) post-modern social spaces that might produce and respect Otherness. In this sense Lefebvre's work is an incipient 'difference ethics'. (shrink)