"Since the end of the Cold War the human face of economics has gained visibility and generated new conversations among economists and other social theorists. The reductive and mechanical "economic systems" that characterized the capitalism-vs.-socialism debates of the mid-20th century have given way to pluralistic ecologies of economic provisioning in which complex agents cooperate via heterogeneous forms of production and exchange. This book examines how this pluralistic turn in economic thinking bears upon the venerable social-theoretic division of cooperative activity into (...) separate spheres of impersonal Gesellschaft and ethically thick Gemeinschaft. This book facilitates critical exchange among economists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social theorists by exploring the overlapping notions of cooperation, rationality, identity, reciprocity, trust, and exchange that emerge from multiple traditions of thought within and across their respective disciplines"--. (shrink)

With contributions from a galaxy of economists -€including David Colander, Robin Hahnel, Yanis Varioufakis and Fred Lee - this book is an important read and an€attempt to break down the varied barriers that have been erected to economic pluralism.

Students enter the classroom with a variety of perspectives and beliefs, adhering strongly to such beliefs that are most likely acquired from the teachings of certain authorities. Educators seeking to promote critical thinking often encounter resistance from those students who are primarily interested only in dismantling the arguments of others, as opposed to students’ being skeptical of their own beliefs as well. This paper suggests that educators can promote strong-sense critical thinking through the use of joint inquiry, striving to create (...) an environment of greater communal learning, where students are taught how to ask the right questions and not just how to look for the right answers. (shrink)

Laboratory of Synthesis is a publishing project edited by Robert Garnett and Andrew Hunt that will bring together philosophers, artists, theorists and critics in order to discuss new approaches to art writing. It intends to operate in the widening gap between the mainstream art magazine and the academic journal in order to create new conjunctions and productive disjunctions between theory and practice out of which new voices and new modes of art writing might emerge.

In this paper, I employ the pioneering works of Nussbaum, Sen, Saito, and Walker, in conjunction with the U.S. tradition of academic freedom, to outline a capability-centered vision of undergraduate education. Pace Nussbaum and Walker, I propose a short list of learning capabilities to which every undergraduate student should be entitled. This working definition of undergraduate education offers a starting point for discussion and experimentation. I employ it here to engage the current controversy in U.S. colleges and universities over the (...) nature, value, and legitimacy of undergraduate students’ academic freedoms. In contrast to the anti-indoctrination emphasis of David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights, I argue that students’ academic freedoms can be more effectively secured through the articulation of “essential freedoms for liberal learning” whose principal focus is not the behavior or political affiliations of teachers but the intellectual needs and circumstances of students. (shrink)

A crucial, but often overlooked, dimension of the human and constitutional right to religious freedom is the autonomy of religious institutions, associations and societies with respect to matters of governance, doctrine, formation and membership. Although the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed this autonomy in the context of American constitutional law, it is vulnerable, and even under threat, for a variety of reasons, including a general decline in the health of civil society and mediating associations and a crisis (...) of confidence and authority caused by clerical sexual abuse and churches’ failure to respond to it. (shrink)