Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas.

American Christian Zionism has recently become the subject of much publishing and discussion, most of which focuses on the idea that millenarian convictions are motivating Christian Zionists to attempt to hasten the apocalypse. This approach is neither entirely fair nor particularly beneficial for the purposes of challenging this influential movement, as it trades more in the easy dismissal of caricatures than in substantive theological engagement. This essay explores a narrow facet of such engagement through dialogue between the eschatologies of John (...) Howard Yoder and contemporary American Christian Zionism. An exposition of the connections between the cross, ecclesiology, social action, and apocalyptic in Yoder's eschatology will bring into relief particularly problematic aspects of traditional dispensationalist Christology and ecclesiology which leave continuing legacies in the system of convictions which sustains contemporary Christian Zionist activism. (shrink)

Reading, a micro-level and subjective activity, is a mechanism through which gender is constructed and reinforced. Drawing on insights from cultural studies and feminist literary critics, and applying sociological perspectives and methodologies, we explored how 53 women and men read and interpreted two short stories, William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily” and Jayne Anne Phillip's “Home.” We found that the gender of the readers had relatively few effects on their interpretations, but that indicators of life experience were influential. In (...) general, more substantial life experience as reflected in greater age, being married, and having children was associated with more sympathetic, empathic reactions to the major characters. Ideological positions also influenced readers' interpretations, when those positions were relevant to the themes of the text; these individual values and attitudes were associated with more particularistic patterns of empathy. Rather than dismissing gender as an influence on reading, however, we suggest that gender influences reading and interpretation partially through the pervasive gender-markings of social context. (shrink)

Both John Foster and Howard Robinson hold that idealism, construed as a position about perception and the material world, is far more defensible than most philosophers think. The former, indeed, wrote The Case for Idealism. This may be enough to explain their project to celebrate Berkeley’s tercentenary, since he surely is the decisive figure in the development of the kind of idealism they take seriously. In their “Introduction,” the editors attempt to link together the twelve essays which follow, but (...) do so only by finding a place for the themes and arguments of some of them in an overview, a nicely structured one, of their own making. The reality, not surprisingly, is that like most anthologies devoted to a single topic or philosopher, the papers are fundamentally unrelated. The contributors mind their own business and do not address each others’ arguments and contentions. This is no criticism; for it to be otherwise would require a level of organization and ongoing interaction among the contributors that is all but impossible to achieve. Nevertheless, one would rather avoid the unsettling experience of finding different and even incompatible assumptions being proffered by different authors as the central principle of Berkeley’s immaterialism, especially since each author offers a candidate without attempting to discredit its rivals textually. Despite this unavoidable flaw, it is a useful anthology. (shrink)

Narrator Ron Howard tells us that Arrested Development is the “story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.” The cult-classic follows Michael Bluth – the middle son of an inept, philandering, corrupt real-estate developer, George Bluth Sr., who is arrested for white-collar crimes. Constantly faced with crises created by his eccentric family, Michael does his best to preserve the family business, put out fires, and serve (...) as a role model for his teenage son, George Michael. The Bluths’ misadventures raise the question, what, if anything, do adult children owe their parents? This chapter explores the relationships between the members of the Bluth family and argues that Arrested Development makes the case that, insofar as adult children “owe” their parents anything, such an obligation is grounded in a sense of friendship – a voluntarily entered relation that can be terminated at any time. As a result, Arrested Development challenges the often-unquestioned assumption that children owe their parents special consideration simply in virtue of the parent-child relationship. (shrink)

The main argument in this article is that the Australian government in power from 1996 to November 2007 failed women's domestic security by denying the central policy role of women's organizations in the struggle against domestic violence and by successfully expunging public debate on gender issues in Australian governance, while participating in the ‘war on terror’ to guard national security. In bringing together a discussion about the war on terror and the importance of feminism for women's security, key issues about (...) feminism, race and gender are considered. This article also explores the prevalence of violence against women and the social implications of the lack of leadership in public debate about the gendered nature of violence against women. Under the Australian government led by Prime Minister John Howard that gained power in 1996 and was defeated in 2007, women's organizations lost financial support and women's policy infrastructure was decimated. Violence against women, however, continued to increase, reaffirming women's place in Australian society as insecure and dangerous. After more than 30 years of struggle to maintain domestic violence and sexual assault as serious social policy problems, provide services, support and advocacy for women who are victims of violence and assault, women's organizations are coming to terms with a society where there is a blindness to the role of gender in violence against women. (shrink)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft can be viewed as a Romantic based on his lifelong relationship with wonder. This short essay gathers further evidence of Lovecraft’s Romanticism, beginning with a brief exploration of what Romanticism is and then moving on to highlight elements of Romanticism in Lovecraft’s poem “Fact and Fancy” (1917). The essay concludes that, as much as Lovecraft can be labelled a Romantic based on his affinity with wonder, he can also be classified as such based on his aversion (...) to the cold light of reason, which to him was an insufficient antidote to the otherwise dreary world in which he found himself. (shrink)

In his tale entitled The Nameless City, Howard Phillips Lovecraft includes unspecified «paragraphs from the apocryphal nightmares of Damascius» among the «fragments» of the «cherished treasury of daemoniac lore» of the protagonist In the present essay, I suggest that there is a connection between this unusual reference and a note in the writer’s Commonplace Book, which refers to the notice by Photius on a lost work by Damascius that nowdays is generally referred to as Paradoxa and assumed to consist (...) of a variegated collection of extraordinary stories and facts. I, therefore, delineate a general presentation of the testimony by the Byzantine Patriarch, upon which I attempt to bring into focus the motivations that led the Providence to make the writer insert the name of Damascius in the fantastic plot of his story. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is a preliminary attempt to better understand the concept of legitimacy in stakeholder theory. The normative component of stakeholder theory plays a central role in the concept of legitimacy. Though the elaboration of legitimacy contained herein applies generally to all “normative cores” this paper relies on Phillips’s principle of stakeholder fairness and therefore begins with a brief description of this work. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of legitimacy to stakeholder theory as well as the (...) general ambiguity of the term. A distinction is then drawn between normative and derivative legitimacy. Reference to this distinction helps distinguish between a relationship with the organization based on direct moral obligation and one based on the power to help or harm the organization. It is concluded that stakeholders who retain the ability to affect the organization arelegitimate(derivatively), but that this legitimacy is derived from the moral obligation owed other (normative) stakeholders and that the two sorts of legitimacy are importantly different from one another. An example of the normative/derivative distinction at work in managerial decision making is elaborated upon and managerial and research implications are then suggested. (shrink)

Howard J. Curzer presents a fresh new reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which brings each of the virtues alive. He argues that justice and friendship are symbiotic in Aristotle's view; reveals how virtue ethics is not only about being good, but about becoming good; and describes Aristotle's ultimate quest to determine happiness.

Questions the research, assumptions, and intention behind Danish statistician Bj²rn Lomborg's attacks on peer-reviewed scientific theories of global warming.

Phillip Cary argues that Augustine invented or created the concept of self as an inner space--as space into which one can enter and in which one can find God. This concept of inwardness, says Cary, has worked its way deeply into the intellectual heritage of the West and many Western individuals have experienced themselves as inner selves. After surveying the idea of inwardness in Augustine's predecessors, Cary offers a re-examination of Augustine's own writings, making the controversial point that in (...) his early writings Augustine appears to hold that the human soul is quite literally divine. Cary goes on to contend that the crucial Book 7 of the Confessions is not a historical report of Augustine's "conversion" experience, but rather an explanation of his intellectual development over time. (shrink)

It follows from Humean principles of plenitude, I argue, that island universes are possible: physical reality might have 'absolutely isolated' parts. This makes trouble for Lewis's modal realism; but the realist has a way out. First, accept absolute actuality, which is defensible, I argue, on independent grounds. Second, revise the standard analysis of modality: modal operators are 'plural', not 'individual', quantifiers over possible worlds. This solves the problem of island universes and confers three additional benefits: an 'unqualified' principle of compossibility (...) can be accepted; the possibility of nothing can be accommodated; and the identity of indiscernible worlds can be decisively refuted. (shrink)

This volume contains eighteen papers, three with new postscripts, that were written over the past 35 years. Five of the papers have not been previously published. Together they provide a comprehensive account of modal reality—the realm of possible worlds—from a Humean perspective, with excursions into neighboring topics in metaphysics. Part 1 sketches an account of reality as a whole, both the mathematical and the modal, defending a form of plenitudinous realism: every consistent proposition is true of some portion of reality. (...) Part 2 presents and defends a realist theory of concrete possible worlds with an absolute ontological distinction between the actual and the merely possible. Part 3 presents and defends a Humean account of modal plenitude, formulating and endorsing principles of recombination, of plenitude of possible structures, and of plenitude of alien contents. Part 4 applies the Humean account to truthmaking, mereology, spacetime, and quantities. I argue that holding fast to Humean strictures leads to views that differ in radical ways from those put forth by contemporary metaphysicians. (shrink)

In this chapter, I survey what I call Lewisian approaches to modality: approaches that analyze modality in terms of concrete possible worlds and their parts. I take the following four theses to be characteristic of Lewisian approaches to modality. (1) There is no primitive modality. (2) There exists a plurality of concrete possible worlds. (3) Actuality is an indexical concept. (4) Modality de re is to be analyzed in terms of counterparts, not transworld identity. After an introductory section in which (...) I motivate analyzing modality in terms of possible worlds, I devote one section to each of these four theses. For each thesis, I take Lewis’s interpretation and defense as my starting point. I then consider and endorse alternative ways of accepting the thesis, some of which disagree substantially with Lewis’s interpretation or defense. There is more than one way to be a Lewisian about modality. (shrink)

From the scorched-earth works of action-movie provocateurs Seijun Suzuki and Sam Peckinpah to the cargo cult soundscapes of Pere Ubu and the Czech dissidents ...

Business ethics is a topic receiving much attention in the literature. However, the term 'business ethics' is not adequately defined. Typical definitions refer to the rightness or wrongness of behavior, but not everyone agrees on what is morally right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or unethical. To complicate the problem, nearly all available definitions exist at highly abstract levels. This article focuses on contemporary definitions of business ethics by business writers and professionals and on possible areas of agreement among (...) the available definitions. Then a definition is synthesized that is broad enough to cover the field of management in a sense as full as most managers might conceive of it. (shrink)

I am a realist of a metaphysical stripe. I believe in an immense realm of "modal" and "abstract" entities, of entities that are neither part of, nor stand in any causal relation to, the actual, concrete world. For starters: I believe in possible worlds and individuals; in propositions, properties, and relations (both abundantly and sparsely conceived); in mathematical objects and structures; and in sets (or classes) of whatever I believe in. Call these sorts of entity, and the reality they comprise, (...) metaphysical. In contrast, call the actual, concrete entities, and the reality they comprise, physical. Physical and metaphysical reality together comprise all that there is. In this paper, it is not my aim to defend realism about any particular metaphysical sort of entity. Rather, I ask quite generally whether and how any brand of realism about metaphysical sorts of entity could be justified? (shrink)

This paper seeks to show Kant’s importance for the formal distinction between descriptive natural history and a developmental history of nature that entered natural history discussions in the late eighteenth century. It is argued that he developed this distinction initially upon Buffon’s distinctions of ‘abstract’ and ‘physical’ truths, and applied these initially in his distinction of ‘varieties’ from ‘races’ in anthropology. In the 1770s, Kant appears to have given theoretical preference to the ‘history’ of nature [Naturgeschichte] over ‘description’ of nature (...) [Naturbeschreibung]. Following Kant’s confrontations with Johann Herder and Georg Forster in the late 1780s, Kant weakened the epistemic status of the ‘history of nature’ and gave theoretical preference to ‘description of nature’. As a result, Kant’s successors, such as Goethe, could draw from Kant either a justification for a developmental history of nature, or, as this paper argues, a warrant from the critical philosophy for denying the validity of the developmental history of nature as anything more than a ‘regulative’ idea of reason. (shrink)

From Nietzsche to the present, the Western philosophical tradition has been dominated by a secular thinking that has dismissed discussion of God as largely irrelevant. In recent years however, the issue of theology has returned to spark some of the most controversial debates within contemporary philosophy. Discussions of theology by key contemporary philosophers such as Derrida and Levinas have placed religion at centre stage. _Post-Secular Philosophy_ is one of the first volumes to consider how God has been approached by modern (...) philosophers and consider the links between theology and postmodern thought. Fifteen accessible essays present a clear and compelling picture of how key thinkers including Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida have made God a central part of their thinking. Each philosopher and how they have approached and criticised theology is placed in a clear historical context. Placing the collection in context with Phillip Blond's outstanding introduction, _Post-Secular Philosophy_ presents a fascinating discussion of the alternatives to the relativism and nihilism that dominate Western thinking. (shrink)

In this new lexical survey of Kant's works, Howard Caygill presents Kantian concepts and terminology in terms that will introduce and clarify his ideas for students and general readers alike.

This book explores the controversial relationship between physicians and the pharmaceutical industry, identifies the ethical tensions and controversies, and proposes numerous reforms both for medicine's own professional integrity and for effective public regulation of the industry.