Corporate ethics has undergone significant change in response to environmental issues, and is beginning to evolve further in response to emerging notions of social responsibility, defined in terms of human rights issues. Three dimensions of ethical behaviour – national, international and theoretical – are defined and illustrated through three case studies. The increasingly complex interaction between two of the dimensions, national and international in a global context, poses a significant challenge to corporations attempting to develop and extend best practices. Essentially, (...) that challenge is not only one of corporate compliance, either voluntary or enforced by a system of regulatory and legal measures, but also a question of responsibility for damage or abuse. Three cases are presented which illustrate the complexity of the interactions. The Simon Jones case emphasises the dangers of casual work in multinational labour transactions, and the shortcomings of national remedies even in an advanced economy such as the UK. The second case, Tommy Hilfiger et al., raises a complex set of questions regarding national and international responsibility for compensation in developing economies. The third case, the Royal/Dutch Shell Group, serves as a model of voluntary corporate reform designed to bridge the gap between principles and practice both nationally and internationally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is a critical study of Jason Brennan's Against Democracy. We make three main points. First, we argue that Brennan's proposal of a right to competent government only works if one considers the absence of government a viable proposition, something most of his opponents are not prepared to do. Second, we suggest that Brennan's account of competent decision-making is blind to forms of oligarchic power that work against the very ideals of justice and epistemic virtue that competence is (...) meant to safeguard. Third, we muster empirical evidence to argue that, in the real world, democracy is not just about making decisions and selecting policies, in which case Brennan's argument misses its mark. (shrink)

This article tackles the issue of offshore tax sheltering from the perspective of normative political realism. Tax sheltering is a pressing contemporary policy challenge, with hundreds of billions in private assets protected in offshore trusts and shell companies. Indeed, tax sheltering produces a variety of empirical dilemmas that render it a distinctive challenge for global governance. Therefore, it is crucial for normative political theorists to confront this problem. A realist approach offers three distinct advantages, elaborated in the three subsequent sections (...) of the article. First, it relaxes the theoretical burden by starting from the real practice of tax evasion rather than from an abstract theory of equality or justice. Second, this approach recognizes that sheltering is a political harm: a threat to the very maintenance of order, not just a problem of inequality or injustice. If politicians fail at such polity maintenance, realism's ethic of responsibility provides clear political reasons why they should be held accountable. Third, realism's focus on power and its acceptance of coercion open up new strategies for addressing the problem that would not be allowed by theories with a stronger emphasis on consensus. (shrink)

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the “democratization of tax enforcement,” by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the (...) letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes. (shrink)

Today’s medical training environment exposes medical trainees to many aspects of what has been called “the hidden curriculum.” In this article, we examine the relationship between two aspects of the hidden curriculum, the performance of emotional labor and the characterization of patients and proxies as “bad,” by analyzing clinical ethics discussions with resident trainees at an academic medical center. We argue that clinicians’ characterization of certain patients and proxies as “bad,” when they are not, can take an unnecessary toll on (...) trainees’ emotions. We conclude with a discussion of how training in ethics may help uncover and examine these aspects of the hidden curriculum. (shrink)

Methods to facilitate co-production in mental health are important for engaging end users. As part of the Technology for Healthy Aging and Wellbeing initiative we organized two interactive co-production workshops, to bring together older adults, health and social care professionals, non-governmental organizations, and researchers. In the first workshop, we used two activities: Technology Interaction and Scavenger Hunt, to explore the potential for different stakeholders to discuss late life mental health and existing technology. In the second workshop, we used Vignettes, Scavenger (...) Hunt, and Invention Test to examine how older adults and other stakeholders might co-produce solutions to support mental wellbeing in later life using new and emerging technologies. In this paper, we share the interactive materials and activities and consider their value for co-production. Overall, the interactive methods were successful in engaging stakeholders with a broad range of technologies to support mental health and wellbeing and in co-producing ideas for how they could be leveraged and incorporated into older people’s lives and support services. We offer this example of using interactive methods to facilitate co-production to encourage greater involvement of older adults and other under-represented groups in co-producing mental health technologies and services. (shrink)

As one reads the classic works of political philosophy one is limited to books written by male authors. When reading interpretations of these authors it seems that the male philosophers were only concerned with the male citizen. Arlene Saxonhouse argues that these classic authors, from Plato to Machiavelli, while they praised the world of male public action, also recognized that the public world was not the totality of human existence. These authors, Saxonhouse says, saw that a private sphere which (...) included women existed, and that that sphere set limits upon and defined the possibilities of the public world. She argues further that the authors did not ignore the female, rather it is the inadequacies of modern scholarship that have made them appear to have done so. This volume shows how women have been an integral part of political philosophers' vision of the world, not a scattered side show in certain philosophical works. (shrink)

Intersex people first began to publicly tell their stories in the 1990s. Twenty years on, these narratives, scorching in their candor, attest to a continuing failure to bear witness to or to acknowledge some of the most painful experiences we inflict on one another. More than anecdotes, these narratives provide a first–person reflection on care and thus represent a type of long–term follow–up that is largely absent in clinical literature. Out of respect for their courage, we owe these narratives serious (...) consideration. Clinicians who must make daily decisions that may alter patients’ lives may distance themselves from negative outcomes and stories like those told here to avoid professional regret. Honest self–appraisal and accepting regret open the door to feeling guilty, devalued and ashamed, but experiencing these emotions can be a crucial first step in changing clinical practice. (shrink)

This article argues that language without the body does not `mean' at all; corporeality provides language with meaning under socio-cultural constraints. Traditional ways of interpretation have been dominated by the transference of linguistic interpretation to the non-linguistic. At the same time, traditional linguistically focused interpretation is heavily laden with orthodox value systems. This makes the body a secondary phenomenon. In many art forms, however, the body is primary and yet transient. This requires a reversal of traditional approaches. Recent liminal performances (...) have attempted to offer a non-verbal critique of both that linguistic dominance and such value orthodoxy. Unless the immediacy of the body, including corporeal readings (visual, tactile, haptic, olfactory, gustatory, kinetic, proximic, etc.) is made the focus of interpretation, such recent experimental genres as Viennese Actionism, Tanztheater, digitized music, high-definition television and its filmic consequences, cannot be appreciated. However, I suggest it would be a mistake to read their presentations of the immediacy of the body as an escape from representation altogether. Rather, what we are dealing with here is a radical transvaluation of corporeality. The article questions some recent theories from this perspective, using selected excerpts from liminal performances to illustrate this critique. (shrink)

Virtual Futures explores the ideas that the future lies in its ability to articulate the consequences of an increasingly synthetic and virtual world. New technologies like cyberspace, the internet, and Chaos theory are often discussed in the context of technology and its potential to liberate or in terms of technophobia. This collection examines both these ideas while also charting a new and controversial route through contemporary discourses on technology; a path that discusses the material evolution and the erotic relation between (...) humans and machines. Virtual Futures brings together diverse fields such as cyberfeminism, materialist philosophy, postmodern fiction, computing culture and performance art, with essays by Sadie Plant, Stelarc and Manuel de Landa (to name a few). The collection heralds the death of humanism and the ride of posthuman pragmatism. The contested zone of debate throughout these essays is the notion of the posthuman, or the possibility of the cyborg as the free human. Viewed by some writers as a threat to human life and humanism itself, others in the collection describe the posthuman as a critical perspective that anticipates the next step in evolution: the integration or synthesis of humans and machines, organic life and technology. This view of technology and information is heavily influenced by Anglo American literature, especially cyberpunk, Pynchon and Ballard, as well as the materialist philosophies of Freud, Deleuze, and Haraway, Virtual Futures provides analyses by both established theorists and the most innovative new voices working in conjunction between the arts and contemporary technology. (shrink)

Someday soon (if it hasn't happened in secret already), a human will be cloned, and mankind will embark on a scientific and moral journey whose destination cannot be foretold. In Copycats: The Science and Ethics of Cloning, Arlene Judith Klotzko describes the new world of possibilities that can be glimpsed over the horizon. In a lucid and engaging narrative, she explains that the technology to create clones of living beings already exists, inaugurated in 1996 by Dolly the sheep, the (...) first mammal cloned from a single adult cell. Dolly is the culmination of a long scientific quest to understand the puzzle of our development from one cell into a complex organism--the outcome of a "fantastic experiment" envisioned six decades before her birth. Scientists have since cloned mice, cows, goats, pigs, rabbits and cats. Using the same laboratory tools and techniques, they are trying to grow an embryo, cloned from a single cell of a human being. Their goal is not to make copies of existing people, but to design therapies for currently untreatable diseases and the afflictions of old age. Our fascination with cloning is about much more than science and its extraordinary medical implications. In riveting prose, full of illusions to art, music and the cinema, Klotzko shows why the prospect of human cloning triggers our dearest hopes and especially our darkest fears, forcing us to ponder anew what it means to be human. And what it would be like to have "a clone of your own.". (shrink)

This essay identifies ‘oligarchic harm’ as a dire threat confronting contemporary democracies. I provide a formal standard for classifying oligarchs: those who use personal access to concentrated w...

This project investigates the implications of technology on identity in embodied performance, exploring the interrelationship of & between identities in performance practices & considering how identity is formed, de-formed, blurred & ...

What are the sources of continuing antipathy toward homosexuality, and what might they tell us about changing forms of American masculinity? This article documents some emergent homophobias circulating among conservative activists in relation to campaigns against gay rights in the early 1990s and against gay marriage in 2004. As feminist critiques of traditional masculinity make their way into conservative rhetoric and as men struggle to define a role that maintains male authority without sounding overly authoritarian, new forms of homophobia have (...) emerged that are compatible with conservatives’ quest to be seen as compassionate protectors of the family. (shrink)

Evidence is presented that the singularities induced in causal Lorentzian spacetimes by changes in 3-space topology give rise to infinite particle and energy production under reasonable laws of quantum field propagation. In the case of the gravitational field, if 3-space is compact the total energy must vanish. A topological transition therefore induces a violent collapse that effectively aborts the transition, since the collapse mode is the only mode carrying the negative energy needed to compensate the associated infinite energy production. The (...) existence of the Hamiltonian constraint of general relativity suggests that topological stability is a local property of the quantum theory that is maintained even when 3-space is noncompact. (shrink)

This article analyses how child victims of abuse may be subjected to hermeneutical injustice. I start by explaining how child victims are hermeneutically marginalised by adults’ social and epistemic authority, and the stigma around child abuse. In understanding their abuse, I highlight two epistemic obstacles child victims may face: (i) lack of access to concepts of child abuse, thereby causing victims not to know what abuse is; and (ii) myths of child abuse causing misunderstandings of abuse. When these epistemic obstacles (...) cause the child victims to fail to see themselves as being abused and/or to get adults to recognise that they are being abused, I argue that this constitutes hermeneutical injustice. While some may justify obstructing epistemic access to concepts of abuse on the grounds of parental rights and protection of children’s innocence, I reply that both grounds are unjust in light of children’s basic rights and the fact that children can easily be taught such concepts in a child-appropriate manner. The case of child abuse prompts important reflections on existing epistemic injustice literature, particularly on the ways in which hermeneutical injustice materialises, the epistemic responsibilities of institutional bodies and individuals, and the interrelationship between testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

The structure of rhodopsin is a subject of intense interest. Solving the structure by traditional methods has proved exceedingly challenging. It may therefore be useful to confront the problem by a combination of alternate techniques. These include FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) and AFM (atomic force microscopy) on the intact protein. Furthermore, additional insights may be gained through structural investigations of discrete rhodopsin domains.

This article addresses the lack of gender specificity in immigration literature on ethnic economies. In particular women's work in income-generating economic activity in ethnic enterprises is unveiled. Immigrant Iranian women's combined utilization of ethnic, gender, and class resources in the ethnic economy of Los Angeles is examined through two case studies of women's entrepreneurial endeavors in family-run businesses and in home-operated businesses. This article illustrates how ethnic resources are gender specific and that there is differential access to these resources in (...) the ethnic economy. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 5, Page 13-14, May 2012.

The book roots corruption in the idea of a departure from conventional standards, and thus offers an account not only of its corrosiveness but also of its malleability and controversiality. In the course of a broadranging exploration, it examines various links between private and public corruption, connecting the latter with other social and political structures.

Insulin‐dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) is an autoimmune disease whose etiology is complex. Both genetic susceptibility, which is polygenic, and environmental factors, including virus infections, appear to be involved in the development of IDDM. In this review, we have tried to balance the discussion of diabetes by examining both immunological and virological perspectives. Several mouse models, including viral and non‐viral models, have been used to study diabetes. For this review, we include lessons gleaned from the non‐obese diabetic (NOD) mouse and from (...) mouse models of coxsackievirus‐ and encephalomyocarditis‐virus‐induced diabetes. Finally, we present a multi‐stage model in which several viral infections, including the coxsackieviruses, are postulated to play a role in the autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta cells. (shrink)

This encyclopedia presents important research on ethics. The five set volume includes discussions on religious, spiritual, economic, political, medical, environmental, and business ethics.

This article describes the changes in the conception of political theory. It provides a brief history of the study of political theory and considers the notable works of Robert Dahl, Leo Strauss, and George Sabine. It argues against the claim that political theorists today is too abstracted from the world in which we live and argues in defence of a reading of texts as a practice of political theory that continues as a vibrant method employed by a wide range of (...) practitioners in the field and as one that should continue from this point on. (shrink)

I consider Sophocles’s tragedy the Ajax against the backdrop of Pericles’s invocation of silence about and from women, Pericles’s citizenship law of 451BCE and Aristotle’s understanding of the human being as a political animal possessing logos. I argue that in the actions and speeches of the play there is a questioning of the exclusion of women and bastards from political deliberation. A study of the language of the play reveals that Tecmessa, Ajax’s concubine, and Teucer, his bastard half-brother, exercise logos (...) while the Homeric hero Ajax consistently resorts to the sort of sounds used by animals that give voice to pain. The dismissal of the speech of women and those from the lower ranks of society proves detrimental to the lives of those who choose to silence them. (shrink)

Socrates's wife Xanthippe has entered the popular imagination as a shrewish character who dumps water on the inattentive Socrates. Such popular portrayals are intended largely to highlight what makes Socrates such an appealing character. But she also appears briefly in Plato's dialogue the Phaedo, the dialogue that takes place in Socrates's prison cell, recounts the conversation about death and immortality that took place there, and then reports the events surrounding Socrates's death after drinking the hemlock. After a review of the (...) ancient anecdotes about Xanthippe and possible readings of those anecdotes, this article considers the significance of Xanthippe's presence early in the Phaedo for our understanding of the conversation between Socrates and his companions. In this way, Xanthippe moves from the role of the shrew to—if not exactly a muse—at least a question mark. That we even know her name may indicate a force of personality too readily scorned by those highlighting her shrewish nature. (shrink)

Plato wrote dialogues. While there has been attention to the dramatic elements of Plato's dialogues by a number of scholars, there has been much less attention to the narrative style of the dialogues. I argue that we should consider whether the dialogues are recited or presented like dramatic works with each character speaking his own words—or as a mixture of these narrative forms. By employing this interpretive tool to read the Republic, I illustrate how paying attention to the narrative style (...) enables us to see a democratic Socrates who undermines readings of the Republic famously offered by Karl Popper and Leo Strauss. Plato appears then as neither a defender of the "closed society" nor an advocate of the elite rule of the wise over the many. (shrink)