Examining how new forms of currencies diffuse is important to uncover their impact on the organization of communities, and thus motivates our study of community currencies. Community currencies provide a medium of exchange by using alternative banknotes or electronic money, which circulates only within particular communities, allowing members to trade goods, increase social cohesion, and achieve collective goals. In this study, we examine how community currencies help facilitate social commons by serving as a setting for building community relationships and a (...) catalyst for other social activities beyond market relations. We analyze cases of community banks that provide microfinance and issue community currencies in Brazil. We find that microfinance entrepreneurs who involve a greater diversity of stakeholders from public, private, and nonprofit sectors in decision making even prior to startup, while also facilitating the formation of supportive social capital from diverse cross-sector stakeholders, increase opportunities for developing new community currencies. By exploring the implications of entrepreneurial actions that promote inclusive participation of diverse stakeholders for accomplishing collective goals, our findings are relevant for other activities that create a common pool of resources while also developing the vitality of the community, including initiatives that use cryptocurrencies and other emerging forms of currencies for building social commons. (shrink)

A collection of essays on the human genome, European patent law, cloning, and genetic malpractice suits.

This study developed and tested a model of culture’s effect on budgeting systems, and hypothesized that system variables and reactions to them are influenced by culture-specific work-related and ethical values. Most organizational and behavioral views of budgeting fail to acknowledge the ethical components of the problem, and have largely ignored the role of culture in shaping organizational and individual values. Cross-cultural differences in reactions to system design variables, and in the behaviors motivated or mitigated by those variables, has implications for (...) the design and effectiveness of budgeting systems. The data largely support our research model, demonstrating the hypothesized national cultural differences in system design variables (e.g., participation, standards tightness, budget emphasis, etc. which we characterized as the opportunity and incentives to create budgetary slack), and the expected relationship between incentives (but not opportunity) to create slack and slack creation behavior. The data demonstrate hypothesized cultural differences in ethical ideology but show ethical ideology related to slack creation behavior only for U.S. managers. A discussion of the results and their implications is included. (shrink)

The "Ibercorp affair" was front-page news in Spain at various times between 1992 and 1995. In itself, there was nothing particularly new about it: a newly formed financial group engaged in legally and ethically reprehensible behaviour that eventually came to light in the media, ruining the company (and the careers of those involved). What aroused public interest at the time was the fact that it involved individuals connected with Spanish public and political life, the media and certain business circles. Above (...) all, it demonstrated the personal, economic, social and political consequences of a business culture based on the pursuit of easy profits at any price (what came to be known as the cultura del pelotazo or "culture of the fast buck"). Again, this is all too familiar in business ethics. But it served to goad Spanish society into a rejection of such behaviour. This article describes the facts and their ethical implications. (shrink)

In African society today, ubuntu as a notion of African humanism has been, and still is, subject to critical discussion. In African literature, philosophy, ethics, anthropology and theology, ubuntu plays a vast role and scholars in Africa and globally find the notion highly debated. The concept of identity development on the African continent has been written about broadly. This article unpacks the ubuntu philosophies of Augustine Shutte, Kwame Gyekye and John Mbiti. The views of these scholars will be contrasted to (...) critically engage the conceivable commonalities for identity development through cultures. The question addressed herein is: What are the similarities and dissimilarities of ubuntu as a cornerstone for identity development in modern Africa? This article also examines the divergent definition and historical development of ubuntu culture, ubuntu philosophy of identity development, environmental development and various thinkers’ understanding of this African worldview in current Africa and further afield. Contribution: This research contributes to African theological ethics of the new landscape identity and explores the ubuntu worldviews as a developmental process of identities across cultures. Since identity development across cultures is highly dynamic, the hermeneutical interpretation of the principles of ubuntu is crucial. (shrink)

Western imperialism and colonialism have tremendously affected the epistemological conception of Africa and Africans. In the same vein, early missionaries did not countenance the cosmologies and lived experiences of the Africans in their interpretation and application of the Bible. On the contrary, they imposed Western epistemologies and theological images on Africa. Although much work has been carried out in these areas, little attention has been devoted to how contextuality, interculturality and decolonisation are exercised in power struggles: the power to define (...) what counts for Africa and Africans as they daily deploy the resources of the Bible. The author argues that contextuality, interculturality and decolonisation are schemes of power relations on the one hand and of owning the Bible on the other, rather than mere methods of biblical hermeneutics in Africa. As schemes of power, they reject imperialist agenda of unequal barter of cultural exchange claimed as civilising the African. Presenting contextuality as a finished product is a violation of the rights of Africans to productively apply the Bible as a text seeking understanding in a different clime from the West; it is also a denial of the reality of interculturality, and thus it ignites the need for decolonisation. By utilising conceptual analysis as a framework, it is argued that these schemes are beyond hermeneutical methods but have the power to resist the suffusing influence of Western theological suffocation in Africa. CONTRIBUTION: This study argues that contextuality, interculturality and decolonisation are not mere hermeneutical methods for studying the Bible in context; they are instruments of struggle to liberate it from Western epistemological stranglehold. (shrink)

There has been increasing research into the COVID-19 pandemic and the theological responses to it. However, not much research has been done on the COVID-19 and how women, particularly in Africa, utilised spiritual resources to respond to the pandemic. This article sought to bridge this gap. The article utilised both descriptive and analytical methods, and argued that many African women were more concerned about the health of the community than their male counterparts who concentrated more on arguments about the pandemic. (...) Gleaning from our ethnographic data carried out from the Christ Apostolic Church and the Spirit and Life Family Bible Church in Nigeria, the article used Galen Watts’ theory of ‘spirituality of and for’ to analyse how African Christian women deployed their spirituality and resources to address the existential challenges the pandemic posed. It argued that the African Christian women shunned the ‘spirituality of’ argument that relates with discursive functions of being spiritual, which does not correspond to its practical application, and adopted ‘spirituality for’ which resonates with how spiritual resources are deployed to (re)solve existential challenges towards human flourishing. This, it argued, aligns much with the theology of The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.Contribution: The article concluded that most women were accentuated towards ‘spirituality for’ because it is compassion-driven and responds to the existential quest for the health of the community. (shrink)

In the decade since Al-Qaeda, led by the late Osama Bin Laden, attacked America, there has been a resurgence in the debate about the relationship between religion and politics. The global Islamic terrorist networks and their successful operations against various targets around the globe increasingly draw attention to what constitutes the core values of Islamic extremism: the logic of evangelistic strategy, the import and relevance of its spiritual message and consideration of the composite view of life that does not distinguish (...) between sacred and temporal mandates. Suspicions have been fuelled that Islam is incompatible with modern democratic systems and pluralist outlooks. The real cause of Islamic militancy is at once universal and particular. The Nigerian experience of this radical Islamism-Boko Haram-brings home the once “distant” threat to global peaceful co-existence. While there exist arguments regarding the raison d’etre and means or methods of the operations of Boko Haram, the end has been normative; to achieve a purely religious nationalistic system on the basis of the sharia code of ethics. This paper, therefore, critically analyses the historical and philosophical interpretations of Islamic history constructed as an infallible corpus, and how it has been impacted by the democratic vision in Nigeria. It concludes with a consideration of the possibility and practicability of a liberal system at once free and religious in a pluralist and global society. (shrink)

In the decade since Al-Qaeda, led by the late Osama Bin Laden, attacked America, there has been a resurgence in the debate about the relationship between religion and politics. The global Islamic terrorist networks and their successful operations against various targets around the globe increasingly draw attention to what constitutes the core values of Islamic extremism: the logic of evangelistic strategy, the import and relevance of its spiritual message and consideration of the composite view of life that does not distinguish (...) between sacred and temporal mandates. Suspicions have been fuelled that Islam is incompatible with modern democratic systems and pluralist outlooks. The real cause of Islamic militancy is at once universal and particular. The Nigerian experience of this radical Islamism-Boko Haram-brings home the once “distant” threat to global peaceful co-existence. While there exist arguments regarding the raison d’etre and means or methods of the operations of Boko Haram, the end has been normative; to achieve a purely religious nationalistic system on the basis of the sharia code of ethics. This paper, therefore, critically analyses the historical and philosophical interpretations of Islamic history constructed as an infallible corpus, and how it has been impacted by the democratic vision in Nigeria. It concludes with a consideration of the possibility and practicability of a liberal system at once free and religious in a pluralist and global society. (shrink)

Western imperialism and colonialism have tremendously affected the epistemological conception of Africa and Africans. In the same vein, early missionaries did not countenance the cosmologies and lived experiences of the Africans in their interpretation and application of the Bible. On the contrary, they imposed Western epistemologies and theological images on Africa. Although much work has been carried out in these areas, little attention has been devoted to how contextuality, interculturality and decolonisation are exercised in power struggles: the power to define (...) what counts for Africa and Africans as they daily deploy the resources of the Bible. The author argues that contextuality, interculturality and decolonisation are schemes of power relations on the one hand and of owning the Bible on the other, rather than mere methods of biblical hermeneutics in Africa. As schemes of power, they reject imperialist agenda of unequal barter of cultural exchange claimed as civilising the African. Presenting contextuality as a finished product is a violation of the rights of Africans to productively apply the Bible as a text seeking understanding in a different clime from the West; it is also a denial of the reality of interculturality, and thus it ignites the need for decolonisation. By utilising conceptual analysis as a framework, it is argued that these schemes are beyond hermeneutical methods but have the power to resist the suffusing influence of Western theological suffocation in Africa. Contribution: This study argues that contextuality, interculturality and decolonisation are not mere hermeneutical methods for studying the Bible in context; they are instruments of struggle to liberate it from Western epistemological stranglehold. (shrink)

In most societies, greetings are the expression of emotions such as friendliness or rejection, and form the basis of social and moral order. The symbolic dimension of greetings is frequently entwined in the cultural and metaphysical reality of a community. In African societies this ethical and religious dimension carries its own peculiarities. It is interesting to see how much of the content-meaning of greetings depends on cultural traditions. This paper presents an analysis of greetings in the Yoruba culture in Nigeria.

This article examines methodological and ethical issues of ethnographic research through the lens of Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy. Levinas is relevant to a critical analysis of ethnographic methods because his philosophy turns on the problematic relationship between self and other, among other important problems that define and guide contemporary anthropological research, including questions of responsibility, justice, and solidarity. This article utilizes Levinas's philosophy to outline a phenomenology of the “doing” of fieldwork, emphasizing the contingency of face-to-face encounters over controlled research design. (...) This account provides a basis for going beyond the polarized opposition between objective and subjective ethnographic approaches. Levinas allows for an ethically informed ethnography premised upon an acknowledgement of risk and uncertainity over researcher control or reflexivity. Providing a handful of concrete examples, the article argues that critical self-reflection about the fundamental face-to-face dimension of fieldwork is central to ethnography's ethical possibilities. (shrink)

Studies on informed consent to medical research conducted in low or middle-income settings have increased, including empirical investigations of consent to genetic research. We investigated voluntary participation and comprehension of informed consent among women involved in a genetic epidemiological study on breast cancer in an urban setting of Nigeria comparing women in the case and control groups.

Hegel introduced the Phenomenology of Mind as a work on the problem of knowledge. In the first chapter, entitled “Sense Certainty, or the This and Meaning,” he concluded that knowledge cannot consist of an immediate awareness of particulars ). The tradition discusses sense certainty in terms of this failure of immediate knowledge without, however, specifically addressing the problem of reference. Yet reference is distinct from knowledge in the sense that while there can be no knowledge of objects without reference, there (...) may be reference without knowledge. If that is the case, then the failure of immediate knowledge does not entitle us to conclude anything about the success or failure of reference. It is not surprising, then, that a few scholars have begun to examine sense certainty primarily as a thesis about reference. (shrink)

Evidence that an animal is capable of some degree of symbolic, human language processing supports the argument that the animal's consciousness is to some degree human-like. In this paper, we reinterpret the findings of Savage- Rumbaugh et al. using the twin tools of Deacon's referential hierarchy and Systemic Functional Linguistics, with a view to providing further corroborative evidence for a Bonobo ape's symbolic processing abilities, and as a result to open a window into the consciousness of at least one non-human (...) primate. (shrink)

While it is acknowledged that there is a need for more qualitative research on suicide, it is also clear that the ethics of undertaking such research need to be addressed. This article uses the case study of the authors’ experience of gaining ethics approval for a research project that asks people what it is like to feel suicidal to (a) analyse the limits of confidentiality and anonymity and (b) consider the ways in which the process of ethics review can shape (...) and constrain suicide research. This leads to a discussion of the ways in which ethics committees assess and monitor qualitative research more generally and some preliminary suggestions for how this might be improved. (shrink)

An accessible guide to philosophy, presenting a collection of 70 essays covering the major themes, theories and arguments of the most prominent thinkers of ancient Greece.

This edited book considers the need for the continued dismantling of conceptual and cultural hegemonies of 'East' and 'West' in the humanities and social sciences. Cutting across a wide range of literature, film and art from different contexts and ages, this collection seeks out the interpenetrating dynamic between both terms. Highlighting the inherent instability of East and West as oppositional categories, it focuses on the 'crossings' between East and West and this nexus as a highly-charged arena of encounter and collision. (...) Drawing from varied literary contexts ranging from Victorian literature to Chinese literature and modern European literature, the book covers a diverse range of subject matter, including material drawn from psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory and studies related to race, religion, diaspora, and gender, and investigates topical social and political issues -including terrorism, nationalism, citizenship, the refugee crisis, xenophobia and otherness. Offering a framework to consider the salient questions of cultural, ideological and geographical change in our societies, this book is a key read for those working within world literary studies. (shrink)

In the last five years, a number of U.S. companies have either moved their locus of incorporation to countries with more favorable tax laws, or announced such moves. Given this trend toward “inversions”, and the polemics that have accompanied it, we offer two ways in which the ethics of such a move can be evaluated. We provide multinational executives with two applications of ethics to inversion: Kant’s deontological theory and the consequentialist perspective of utilitarianism.

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

BackgroundReports suggest that some health care personnel fear retaliation from seeking ethics consultation. We therefore examined the prevalence and determinants of fear of retaliation and determined whether this fear is associated with diminished likelihood of consulting an ethics committee.MethodsWe surveyed registered nurses (RNs) and social workers (SWs) in four US states to identify ethical problems they encounter. We developed a retaliation index (1–7 point range) with higher scores indicating a higher perceived likelihood of retaliation. Linear regression analysis was performed to (...) identify socio-demographic and job characteristics associated with fear of retaliation. Logistic regression analysis was performed to determine whether fear of retaliation was associated with less likelihood of seeking consultation. Results Our sample (N = 1215) was primarily female (85%) and Caucasian (83%) with a mean age of 46 years and 17 years of practice. Among the sample, 293 (48.7%) RNs and 309 (51.3%) SWs reported access to an ethics consultation service. Amongst those with access, 2.8% (n = 17) personally experienced retaliation, 9.1% (n = 55) observed colleagues experience retaliation, 30.2% (n = 182) reported no experience with retaliation but considered it a realistic fear, and 50.8% (n = 305) did not perceive retaliation to be a problem. In logistic regression modeling, fear of retaliation was not associated with the likelihood (OR = 0.64; 95% CI = 0.22–1.89) or frequency of requesting ethics consultation (OR = 0.81; 95% CI = 0.27–2.38). Conclusion Fear of retaliation from seeking ethics consultation is common among nurses and social workers, nonetheless this fear is not associated with reduced requests for ethics consultation. (shrink)

As bearers of the divine image, all of us are storytellers and artists. However, few people today believe in truth that is not empirically knowable or verifiable, the sort of truth often trafficked through direct forms of communication. Drawing on the works of Soren Kierkegaard, Benson P. Fraser challenges this penchant for direct forms of knowledge by introducing the indirect approach, which he argues conveys more than mere knowledge, but the capability to live out what one takes to be (...) true. Dr. Fraser suggests that stories aimed at the heart are powerful instruments for personal and social change because they are not focused directly on the individual listener; rather, they give the individual room or distance to reconsider old meanings or ways of understanding. Indirect communication fosters human transformation by awaking an individual to attend to images or words that carry deep symbolic force and that modify or replace one's present ways of knowing, and ultimately make one capable of embodying what he or she believes. Through an examination of the indirect approach in Kierkegaard, Jesus, C. S. Lewis, and Flannery O'Connor, Fraser makes a strong case for the recovery of indirect strategies for communicating truth in our time"--Back cover. (shrink)

Purpose/methods: This study investigated the relationship between ethics education and training, and the use and usefulness of ethics resources, confidence in moral decisions, and moral action/activism through a survey of practicing nurses and social workers from four United States (US) census regions. Findings: The sample (n = 1215) was primarily Caucasian (83%), female (85%), well educated (57% with a master's degree). no ethics education at all was reported by 14% of study participants (8% of social workers had no ethics education, (...) versus 23% of nurses), and only 57% of participants had ethics education in their professional educational program. Those with both professional ethics education and in-service or continuing education were more confident in their moral judgments and more likely to use ethics resources and to take moral action. Social workers had more overall education, more ethics education, and higher confidence and moral action scores, and were more likely to use ethics resources than nurses. Conclusion: Ethics education has a significant positive influence on moral confidence, moral action, and use of ethics resources by nurses and social workers. (shrink)