The U.S. military is developing augmented reality (AR) capabilities for use on the battlefield as a means of achieving greater situational awareness. The superimposition of digital data—designed to expand surveillance, enhance geospatial understanding, and facilitate target identification—onto a live view of the battlefield has important implications for virtuous conduct in war: Can the soldier exercise practical wisdom while integrated into a system of militarized legibility? Adopting a virtue ethics perspective, I argue that AR disrupts the soldier’s immersion in the scene (...) such that he is blinded to features beyond those identified in advance by the military’s system of cybernetic judgment. I turn to Michael Walzer’s classic account of the “naked soldier” dilemma to illustrate how AR capabilities radically shrink the bounds within which the soldier can cultivate the capacity for right conduct. By transforming the ambiguous ethical matter of killing an enemy combatant into the straightforward application of a rule, AR hollows out the soldier’s potential for virtuous action. The “smart battlefield” leaves no space for deliberative judgments that transcend the technical and legal determinations already written into the soldier’s view of the scene. (shrink)

The importance of addressing the existential threat to humanity, climate change, has grown remarkedly in recent years while conflicting views and interests in societies exist. Therefore, climate change agendas have been weaponized to varying degrees, ranging from the international level between countries to the domestic level among political parties. In such contexts, climate change agendas are predominantly driven by political or economic ambitions, sometimes unconnected to concerns for environmental sustainability. Consequently, it can result in an environment that fosters antagonism (...) and disputes over power and position and increases the risk of prolonged confrontations, hindering the collective global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Through the current discourse, we aim to provide a preliminary definition of the weaponization of climate change and environmental sustainability and examine its risks and consequences on international relations, political dynamics, public perception, and the comprehensive integrity of climate action. We also recommend embracing a globally coordinated, scientifically substantiated approach to circumvent climate change by building an eco-surplus cultural value system. (shrink)

Drawing its strength from the UN Charter and UDHR, human rights ethics is a beacon of hope and a promise that requires continuous reaffirmation during these turbulent times. These two documents, with their unwavering faith in ‘fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’ have shaped our understanding of human rights as global and universal ethics. However, this faith is now being severely (...) tested by four countercurrents: extremism, exclusionism, selectivism, and populism. These countercurrents pose significant and urgent human rights threats that activists, academics, and policymakers must confront by reasserting the basic core values of the UN Charter and UDHR. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty developed a phenomenology of the body that promoted a non-dualistic account of human existence. In this paper I intend to develop Merleau-Ponty's analysis further by questioning his account of the body on the issues of body perception, and the body's relation to its environment. To clarify these issues I draw from both the phenomenological tradition and recent psychological investigations.

The theory of the organism-environment system starts with the proposition that in any functional sense organism and environment are inseparable and form only one unitary system. The organism cannot exist without the environment and the environment has descriptive properties only if it is connected to the organism. Although for practical purposes we do separate organism and environment, this common-sense starting point leads in psychological theory to problems which cannot be solved. Therefore, separation of organism and (...) environment cannot be the basis of any scientific explanation of human behavior. The theory leads to a reinterpretation of basic problems in many fields of inquiry and makes possible the definition of mental phenomena without their reduction either to neural or biological activity or to separate mental functions. According to the theory, mental activity is activity of the whole organism-environment system, and the traditional psychological concepts describe only different aspects of organisation of this system. Therefore, mental activity cannot be separated from the nervous system, but the nervous system is only one part of the organism­environment system. This problem will be dealt with in detail in the second part of the article. (shrink)

This paper examines stakeholder responses to impression management tactics used by firms that express environmental commitment. We inductively analyzed data from 98 open-ended questionnaires and identified two impression management tactics that led respondents to believe that a firm was credible in its commitment to the natural environment. Approximately, half of the respondents responded to illustrative impression management tactics that provide images of, and/or broad-brush comments about, the firm's commitment to the natural environment. The other half responded to demonstrative (...) impression management tactics, which provide specific facts and details about the firm's operations. The research results provide important insights into the effects of organizational transparency. In this paper, we explore these findings and provide directions for future research. (shrink)

This essay examines the origin of genotype-environment interaction, or G×E. "Origin" and not "the origin" because the thesis is that there were actually two distinct concepts of G×E at this beginning: a biometric concept, or \[G \times E_B\], and a developmental concept, or \[G \times E_D \]. R. A. Fisher, one of the founders of population genetics and the creator of the statistical analysis of variance, introduced the biometric concept as he attempted to resolve one of the main problems (...) in the biometric tradition of biology - partitioning the relative contributions of nature and nurture responsible for variation in a population. Lancelot Hogben, an experimental embryologist and also a statistician, introduced the developmental concept as he attempted to resolve one of the main problems in the developmental tradition of biology - determining the role that developmental relationships between genotype and environment played in the generation of variation. To argue for this thesis, I outline Fisher and Hogben's separate routes to their respective concepts of G × E; then these separate interpretations of G × E are drawn on to explicate a debate between Fisher and Hogben over the importance of G × E, the first installment of a persistent controversy. Finally, Fisher's \[G \times E_B\] and Hogben's \[G \times E_D \] are traced beyond their own work into mid-2Oth century population and developmental genetics, and then into the infamous IQ Controversy of the 1970s. (shrink)

This paper examines the conditions of trustworthy science advice mechanisms, in which scientists have a mandated role to inform public policymaking. Based on the literature on epistemic trust and public trust in science, we argue that possession of relevant expertise, justified moral and political considerations, as well as proper institutional design are conditions for trustworthy science advice. In order to assess these conditions further, we explore the case of temporary advisory committees in Norway. These committees exemplify a de facto trusted (...) and seemingly well-functioning science advice mechanism. Still, this mechanism turns out to poorly realize some central conditions of trustworthy science advice. From this we draw three lessons. Firstly, it remains crucial to distinguish between well-placed and de facto trust. Secondly, some conditions of trustworthy science advice seem more significant than others and there are thresholds for realizing each condition. Thirdly, not only does the institutional design and organization of science advice matter more than often recognized; the trust and trustworthiness of the broader social and political context and institutional environment make a difference as well. (shrink)

The influence of environment on social entrepreneurship requires more concerted examination. This article contributes to emerging discussions in this area through consideration of social entrepreneurship in South Africa. Drawing upon qualitative case study research with six social enterprises, and examined through a framework of new institutional theories and writing on new venture creation, this research explores the significance of environment for the process of social entrepreneurship, for social enterprises, and for social entrepreneurs. Our findings provide insights on institutional (...) environments, social entrepreneurship, and the interplay between them in the South African context, with implications for wider social entrepreneurship scholarship. (shrink)

The concept of biological inheritance has recently been extended so as to integrate, among other elements, parts of organisms’ environments. The literature refers to the trans-generational reconstruction of these parts in terms of environmental or ecological inheritance. This article’s main objective is to clarify the different meanings of "environmental inheritance," to underline so far unnoticed theoretical difficulties associated to this polysemous notion and to consequently argue that inheritance, even when extended, should be theoretically distinguished from trans-generational environmental stability. After disentangling (...) the different meanings of environmental inheritance, I underline that studies dealing with this concept place themselves in the wake of earlier contributions about biological environment and elaborate on the role of organisms in the determination of their relevant developmental and selective surroundings. This leads me to question the legitimacy of the category shift operated by niche inheritance proponents—from environment to inheritance—and to explain why the very concept of inherited environment shows important and so far unnoticed theoretical limitations. In this context, I assert the necessity to distinguish two related but different research programs: the construction of a finer-grained theory of environment and the elaboration of an extended theory of inheritance. (shrink)

It is common to designate Lamarck and Lamarckism as the main historical references for conceptualizing the relationship between organisms and the environment. The Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of acquired characters is often considered to be the central aspect of the “environmentalism” developed in this lineage, up to recent debates concerning the possible Lamarckian origins of epigenetics. Rather than focusing only on heredity, this article will explore the materialist aspect of the Lamarckian conception of the environment, seeking to (...) highlight that the life-supporting function of physicochemical milieux was its cornerstone. Indeed, compared to the Darwinian conception of the environment, which focuses on interindividual and interspecific relationships in a given habitat, Lamarck’s emphasis on the dependencies of organisms on physicochemical environments appears to have given rise to a very active philosophical environmentalism. Studying the environmental Lamarckism of 19th-century philosophers and social scientists in France, Great Britain, and the United States, such as Comte, Quatrefages, Spencer, and Ward, I propose to analyze their contribution to the conceptualization of the environment. The social, moral, or psychological conceptions of human environments that proliferated in the second half of the 19th century deviated from Lamarck’s more material approach, but they were still referencing Lamarck. Examining the scope of their “Lamarckism,” this article seeks to highlight the common context of life sciences and social philosophy, in which the environment emerged as a central issue in the 19th century. (shrink)

A major puzzle in contemporary political theory is how to extend notions of justice to the environment. With environmental entities unable to communicate in ways that are traditionally recognised within the political sphere, their interests have largely been recognised instrumentally: only important as they contribute to human interests. In response to the multispecies justice project's call to reimagine our concepts of justice to include other-than-human beings and entities, we offer a novel reading of Edmund Burke's account of political representation (...) that, we argue, can be applied to the environment. Burke claimed that interests are ‘unattached’ to any actual class or group, and that it is the duty of the representative to represent these unattached interests. Beyond providing an original application of Burke's work, the paper offers an alternative to the ‘allure’ of authoritarian environmentalism, an alternative which conservative thinkers may use as an entryway into debates on environmental justice. (shrink)

Parental participation has gained significant attention in environmental psychology, which has revealed a need for an instrument that can measure parental participation with children regarding environmental issues. The present study met this need by validating the parental participation in the environment (PPE) scale. This process began with 45 Chinese parents participating in an individual interview and group discussions, which helped generate a list of eighteen parent-child environmental activities. The activities were then modified and validated in the current study with (...) a diverse group of 969 parents recruited from six major Chinese cities. Both score structure evidence and generalizability evidence were obtained within this sample, and psychometric tests suggested a single factor construct with nine items. Once the PPE scale was revised, it showed measurement invariance across the parent who responded to the items (mother vs. father), across the child’s primary caregiver (mother vs. father vs. grandparent), across the family’s living region (North China vs. South China), as well as across the family’s income group. Finally, evidence based on relations to other variables showed a relationship among parents’ PPE, pro-environmental behavior, and connectedness with nature. As a result, the study provided a novel measure to assess pro-environmental socializationviaparental participation. (shrink)

Throughout our entire evolutionary history, the physical environment has played a significant role in shaping humans’ subsistence adaptations. As early humans began to colonise novel biomes and construct ecological niches, their behavioural flexibility appeared as an unquestionable fact. During the Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition, the shift from foraging to farming radically altered ecosystem services, resulting in increased exposure to zoonotic pathogens and the emergence of structural inequalities that pervade our current human condition in the Anthropocene epoch. The article seeks to (...) use an anthropological biosocial analysis to explore the diverse evolutionary paths humans have taken, which in turn shape their relationships with the natural world. Given the enigmatic nature of human behavior, it is essential to examine it holistically to understand how different subsistence patterns (e.g., intensive agriculture, foraging, and horticulture) have influenced resilience and adaptation to environmental challenges. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the creative environment of the technical colleges operating in Gaza Strip. The analytical descriptive method was used through a questionnaire which was randomly distributed to 289 employees of the technical colleges in Gaza Strip with a total number of (1168) employees and a response rate equal to (79.2%) of the sample study. The results confirmed the existence of a high degree of approval for the dimensions of the creative environment with a relative weight (...) of (75.19%) according to the perspective of the employees of the technical colleges in Gaza Strip. The results of the study showed a high level of creative environment (fluency, flexibility, originality, sensitivity to problems) in the technical colleges in Gaza Strip, where the field (fluency) ranked first and relative weight (76.86%), in the second place came the area (sense of problems) and relative weight (74.89%). The field of elasticity came in third place with a relative weight of (74.59%). Finally, the field of originality came in fourth and final rank with a relative weight of (74.41%). The results showed that there are differences between the technical colleges in the principles of the creative environment in all fields and the overall degree except for the field of flexibility. The most available colleges in these principles were the university college of applied sciences, and that was the least of the Faculty of Al-Aqsa Society. The results showed that there were differences according to the age variable in the areas of creative environment only in the sense of problems for age groups (less than 30 years) and (from 40 to 50 years). The researchers suggested a number of recommendations, the need to enhance the dimensions of the creative environment in technical colleges by working to improve the faculties of fluency, flexibility, originality and sensitivity to problems. The need to work on continuity and improve aspects of the creative environment of the colleges and the creation of new and innovative ways to support and develop and support these aspects combined. Necessity of technical colleges to continue to develop the creative environment (fluency, flexibility, originality, sensitivity to problems) for employees by engaging them in specialized training courses for creative thinking and problem solving. Developing work procedures with new innovative methods that will accomplish the various tasks quickly and accurately, and provide the effort, time and costs. The researchers urged more future studies that address the same variables of the current study in the field of creative environment and applied to other sectors. (shrink)

It is natural to assume that we would not be willing to compromise the environment if the conveniences and luxuries thereby gained did not have a substantial positive impact on our happiness. But there is room for skepticism and, in particular, for the thesis that we are compromising the environment to no avail in that our conveniences and luxuries are not having a significant impact on our happiness, making the costs incurred for them a waste. One way of (...) defending the no-avail thesis fits neatly with what I will call the exalted view , according to which the key to human happiness lies in the mental (or spiritual) realm rather than in the material realm. After considering this familiar approach to defending the no-avail thesis, I sketch out a very different approach—one that will, I hope, appeal to those who have doubts about the familiar line of defense. The alternative and novel approach builds on a strand of empirical research on (self-reports concerning) happiness that suggests that we are, in a way, quite shallow, and that our happiness depends on whether we are keeping up with the Joneses. I call this view concerning happiness the worldly view . My reasoning suggests that even if the current rift between exalted pictures of human nature and happiness, on the one hand, and worldly pictures of human nature and happiness, on the other, cannot be repaired, it need not hinder agreement on the plausibility of the no-avail thesis; rather, with the rift come two different routes to the same thesis. I conclude that we should take the no-avail thesis very seriously, and that evidence that we are shallow materialists need not be bad news for the environment(alist). (shrink)

The role of uncertainty within an organization’s environment features prominently in the business ethics and management literature, but how corporate investment decisions should proceed in the face of uncertainties relating to the natural environment is less discussed. From the perspective of ecological economics, the salience of ecology-induced issues challenges management to address new types of uncertainties. These pertain to constraints within the natural environment as well as to institutional action aimed at conserving the natural environment. We (...) derive six areas of ecology-induced uncertainties and propose ecology-driven real options as a conceptual approach for systematically incorporating these uncertainties into strategic management. We combine our results in an integrative investment framework and illustrate its application with the case of carbon constraints. (shrink)

In order to maximize human performance, defence forces continue to explore, develop, and apply human performance enhancement (HPE) methods, ranging from pharmaceuticals to (bio)technological enhancement. This raises ethical, legal, and societal concerns and requires organizing a careful reflection and deliberation process, with relevant stakeholders. We discuss a range of ethical, legal, and societal aspects (ELSA), which people involved in the development and deployment of HPE can use for such reflection and deliberation. A realistic military scenario with proposed HPE application can (...) serve as a starting point for such an iterative and participatory process. Stakeholders can discuss this application, modify its features, and design appropriate processes around it – for instance, procedures for informed consent. We propose that organizing aspects into these three categories – ethical, legal, and societal – can help involve appropriate interlocutors at different moments: legal aspects with people in strategy or management roles, from the start of a project; ethical aspects with people in operations and medical roles, during development; and societal aspects with people in communication and personnel roles, during deployment. Notably, we developed and discussed this framework and the three aspects in close collaboration with personnel from the military. (shrink)

One of the legacies of modern philosophy is to have separated or bifurcated the human from nature. Marco Altamirano offers a critique of the modern concept of nature in order to chart a new trajectory for the philosophy of nature. -/- By examining the history of the concept of nature, Altamirano shows how a spatial and epistemological concept of nature emerged in Descartes, where a subject confronts an object in space and subsequently wonders about her mode of access to that (...) object. He then argues that a time-based concept of nature is necessary in order to reinstall the subject within its eventual ecology. Deploying conceptual resources from Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, and Leroi- Gourhan (among others), Altamirano shows how the concept of technology harbors an escape route from the spatial and epistemological picture of nature. Ultimately, this book draws the profile of a concept of nature based on time and technology that bypasses the nature-artifice distinction that has mired the philosophy of nature since modern philosophy. (shrink)

We consider, from a physical perspective, the case where the interface between an organism and its environment becomes large enough that it acts as a buffer regulating their matter and energy exchanges. We illustrate the physiological and evolutionary role of buffers through the example of lungfish estivation. Then we ponder the relevance of buffers of this kind to the quest for a general definition of concepts like niche construction, the extended phenotype, and related ones, whose meaning is conveyed at (...) present mostly through particular examples. Finally, we comment on the potential significance of buffers to organism—environment codetermination in the sense originally suggested by Lewontin. (shrink)

Most contemporary models of disease development consider the interaction between genotype and environment as static. The authors argue that because time is a key factor in genotype–environment interaction, this approach oversimplifies the pathology analysis and may lead to wrong conclusions. In reviewing the field, the authors suggest that the history of genotype–environment interactions plays an important role in the development of diseases and that this history may be analyzed using the phenotype as a proxy. Furthermore, a theoretical (...) and experimental framework is proposed based on the assumption that phenotypes do not change from one to another randomly but are interconnected and follow certain phenotype trajectories. It then follows that analysis of such phenotype trajectories might be useful to predict the future phenotypes including the onset of disease. In addition, an analysis of phenotype trajectories can be subsequently used to choose better control subjects in comparative studies reducing noise and bias in studies investigating disease mechanisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anger in a Perilous Environment:María LugonesMariana Alessandriin a hundred years, maybe our commonsense beliefs about anger will come from a distinguished line of Women of Color like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and María Lugones, who make a case for listening to our anger instead of stifling it. But our ideas about anger still come from ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Their stories about how anger works and why (...) it is bad have been dominant throughout history, and they are not kind to angry women in the twenty-first century. They have created a perilous environment for us, existentially speaking, by painting anger as irrational, crazy, and ugly. They have left us no way to handle our anger that does not amount to trying to control, suppress, or eradicate it. In this short paper, I contrast a philosophy of anger left to us by ancient Western philosophy with a contemporary one offered by Latina feminist María Lugones. Lugones offers a philosophy of anger that assumes it has something to teach us about our perilous environment.1Part I: Anger Seen in the LightPlato compared passions like anger to a hard-to-control, hot-blooded, black-skinned horse that must be reined in by the "charioteer" of reason (Phaedrus, ln. 253E). He thought we should use self-control to contain our anger, and he was not alone. The Roman Stoic Seneca, who described anger similarly, once told a story about Plato getting livid (Potegal and Novaco 9–24). Instead of beating one of his slaves, Plato froze, his hand drawn back in striking position. A friend asked Plato what he was doing. "I am making an angry man expiate his crime," Plato replied (Seneca, De Ira, Book III, section 12). Plato's freezing was his way of acknowledging that rage is weakness. Seneca formulated this scene into a principle: the only appropriate time to express anger is when you are not angry. Otherwise, you are a slave to your emotion. [End Page 23]I became angry during quarantine. I had been promised a year without teaching or administrative responsibility, but everything changed when the schools went remote. Since my kids were home anyway, I decided to home-school them. But I found myself becoming angry almost daily, and it was upsetting. To make sense of it, I went back to my philosophical sources.I consulted Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher whose Handbook I used to read every year. For the fifteenth time, he told me that "an uneducated man blames others; a partially educated man blames himself. A fully educated man blames no one" (13). While I could not control my circumstances in 2020—Epictetus granted that I did not have the power to end a pandemic or reopen schools—I could control my bursts of anger. Instead of blaming my spouse and kids for my troubles, I should blame myself for expecting life to be easier. Better yet, I should blame no one and accept the new normal gracefully. I also reread the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the second-century Roman emperor and Stoic who believed that yielding to anger is a sign of weakness (Potegal and Novaco 16). Marcus reformulated one of the central tenets of Stoicism: "Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions" (38). His advice? Lower your expectations. Remember that the only person you can change is yourself. To that end, expect people to irritate you daily and you will be ready for it (17). For me, that meant remembering that having kids meant having messes. But expecting a mess did not clean the table every night, load or unload the dishwasher, or vacuum the crumb-riddled floor. Marcus did not send his servants to clean my house. So, I left him for Aristotle.Aristotle's soul was not a charioteer with horses, but it was tripartite: feelings, predispositions, active conditions. Feelings are hard to change, Aristotle thought, so let's not waste too much energy trying. Predispositions just name the likelihood of feeling a particular feeling. Both categories matter, but chiefly because self-knowledge is a philosophical virtue. Mostly, Aristotle urged us to cultivate our "active conditions." Forever a... (shrink)

Three nature images influence the environmental policies of major American corporations. Successively they are images of the (1) unfouled nest, (2) protected habitat, and (3) uncontaminated environment. Each contains unexpected surprises for its corporation, however. Polaroid, for example, does not foul its company precincts, but is now a Superfund Potentially Responsible Party for its deposited wastes in its home and neighboring states. This anomaly thus extends its unfouled-nest image to its dumpsites and beyond, but also implodes upon its workplace. (...) Parallel extensions and inversions affect Martin Marietta's favored image of the protected habitat and Union Carbide's of the uncontaminated environment. These are shown with references to Kant and to Aristotle, but a concluding moral compares further neglect of the full consequences of such images to Dante's allegorical Circles 4 and 5 of Hell. (shrink)

The essays in this welcome collection put environmental thinking into the broader context of philosophical thought.

First published in 1997, this book discusses the interplaying factors environmental issues have on justice and property and other social problems. Endeavouring create a discourse on what sustainability means in implementation, each of the contributors to this book approaches this via different theoretical viewpoints.

In the earlier literature the importance of public policies and regulatory changes to firm performance and competitive position has been well established (e.g., Bonardi, 2004). However, little research has been done on the dynamics of this relationship. In this paper, we examine how and why regulatory changes can affect on the evolution of market and nonmarket strategies of a firm. We use a longitudinal case study on Finnish retail industry to illustrate the interactions between regulatory change, strategic responses and firm (...) performance. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic analysis of the ethical implications of traditional and complementary medicine, focusing on pragmatic solutions. The author uses a bioethical methodology called the “Ethical Matrix,” to consider the impact of T&CM use for animals and the environment as well as for humans. A systematic search of the literature reveals that most published ethical concerns are related to the safety of T&CM use for humans. However, application of the Ethical Matrix demonstrates that the ethical implications for (...) T&CM use are much broader. In this book, the author analyses the most serious implications, including adverse events related to homeopathy, the use of animals in T&CM products, and the impact of herbal medicine on the environment. Comparisons with the ethical implications of conventional biomedicine help readers to contextualise debate, and highlight aspects that may be unique to T&CM. Globally, many high-level health policy makers promote T&CM as an accessible and affordable healthcare option. However, their use is considered by some to be a waste of resources, unscientific, and unethical. Offering a frank analysis of this largely ignored field of healthcare ethics, this book is both timely and essential. It helps patients, policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and students gain the knowledge they need to make more informed decisions. (shrink)

Wayfinding is generally understood as the process of purposefully navigating to distant and non-visible destinations. Within this broad framework, uninformed searching entails finding one’s way to a target destination, in an unfamiliar environment, with no knowledge of its location. Although a variety of search strategies have been previously reported, this research was largely conducted in the laboratory or virtual environments using simplistic and often non-realistic situations, raising questions about its ecological validity. In this study, we explored how extant findings (...) on searching translate to a real-world environment, using a phenomenologically informed experiment. Our findings demonstrate a previously undescribed complex and dynamic interplay of different search strategies. Importantly, our results reveal that: (i) the presence of other people is importantly entangled with the process of searching; and (ii) people frequently probe and switch between search strategies based on local environmental characteristics. Together, our results reveal that search behaviour is critically dependent on environmental features and that searching in complex real-world settings should not be conceptualised as depending on a simple singular strategy. This raises questions about the dominance of laboratory-based experiments and their narrow cognitivist framework, highlighting the value of studying wayfinding in the real world. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly important in the global environment. Businesses that want to be socially responsible, but do not have the resources of multinational corporations, can partner with non-governmental (NGO), not-for-profit (NFP), and religious organizations to access information about the culture, customs, and needs of the people in areas where they wish to do business. Without such information, CSR projects can have unintended consequences that are not beneficial for the community. Suggesting that local farmers sell corn to (...) ethanol producers may increase the farmers' income but also increase the cost of a food staple to the community. Providing food aid may result in local farmers being unable to sell their crops for enough money to buy seed for the next harvest. Donating cheaper cinder blocks instead of adobe bricks may result in more available housing, but the housing may be unlivable in the summer heat. This paper presents a three-part model for businesses to follow to develop socially responsible projects. The first strategy is to use electronic sources of information about a country and area for background information. The second strategy is to gather on-the-ground information about important issues from the people who are already operating in a community as part of NGO, NFP and missionary initiatives. The third strategy is to develop scenarios that will help identify possible negative consequences of socially responsible projects so that the project implementation can be monitored for such consequences and interventions designed to decrease or counter the impact of negative consequences. (shrink)

In 1960 Sir Solly Zuckerman proposed the idea of an interdisciplinary department of ‘environmental sciences’ (ENV) for the newly established University of East Anglia (UEA). Prior to this point, the concept of ‘environmental sciences’ was little known: since then, departments and degree courses have rapidly proliferated through universities and colleges around the globe. This paper draws on archival research to explore the conditions and contexts that led to the proposal of a new and interdisciplinary grouping of sciences by Zuckerman. It (...) argues that the activities of Zuckerman and other scientists in Britain during the Second World War and in the post-war period helped to create fertile conditions for a new kind of scientific authority to emerge as a tool of governance and source of policy advice. In particular, the specific challenges of post-war Britain – as addressed through scientific advisers and civil servants – led to the ‘environment’ becoming both the subject of sustained scientific study and an object of concern. (shrink)