Amartya Sen’s capability approach has become increasingly popular in development studies. This paper identifies controllability and operationalisability as two key stumbling blocks which prevent the capability approach from being used even more widely in development practice. It discusses the origins and application of the Choice Framework, a conceptual tool designed to help operationalise the approach. The framework can be used to deconstruct embedded ideologies and analyse the appropriateness of development goals, to map development as a systemic process, and to plan (...) interventions which can result in increased freedom of choice for people. Three examples of the application of the Choice Framework in the field of information and communication for development (ICT4D) are given. The three technologies which are examined, telecentres (Infocentros), Chilecompra and Fair Tracing, can be placed at different places of a determinism continuum, some reducing the spectrum of choices a user has. The paper argues that while frameworks such as the Choice Framework can be developed further to increase the operationalisability of the capability approach, it is up to development funders to accept the fact that people’s choices are never fully predictable and thus Sen’s ‘development as freedom’ will inevitably be a dynamic and open-ended process. (shrink)

English summary: According to a current prejudice, the God of reason does not have a home in Protestantism. On the basis of model studies on the connection between biblical, Platonic and Aristotelian themes in the development of the Christian concept of God in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the authors of this volume show that the reformers did not at all flatly dismiss the rationality of faith. The articles focus on the modern transformations of the concept of (...) God in the 18th and 19th centuries. The volume, a collection of case studies of the history of the problem of the Christian concept of God, concludes with prominent syntheses of revelation and reason in the 20th century. German description: Einem gangigen Vorurteil zufolge hat der Gott der Vernunft im Protestantismus keine Heimat. Nach exemplarischen Studien zur Verbindung von biblischen mit platonischen und aristotelischen Motiven bei der Entfaltung des christlichen Gottesgedankens in Spatantike, Mittelalter und Renaissance zeigt der vorliegende Band aber, dass die Reformatoren der Vernunft des Glaubens keineswegs pauschal den Abschied gaben. Der Schwerpunkt der Beitrage liegt auf den neuzeitlichen Transformationen des Gottesgedankens im 18. und 19. Jh. Prominente Synthesen von Offenbarung und Vernunft im 20. Jh. schliessen den Band ab, der Fallstudien zu einer Problemgeschichte des christlichen Gottes-Denkens versammelt. Mit Beitragen von: Martin Arneth, Christine Axt-Piscalar, Ulrich Barth, Markus Buntfuss, Jorg Dierken, Douglas Hedley, Thomas Kaufmann, Dietrich Klein, Dietrich Korsch, Martin Laube, Jorg Lauster, Friederike Nussel, Bernd Oberdorfer, Joachim Ringleben, Friedemann Voigt, Dorothea Wendebourg, Gunther Wenz. (shrink)

Current corporate social responsibility approaches attempt to implement the vision of sustainable development at the corporate level. In fact, the term "corporate sustainability" may be a more accurate descriptive label for these attempts. Ambitious governmental, business and academic goals, and corresponding efforts have been established. Nonetheless, a truly satisfactory implementation of the broad CSR concept as well as the more specific challenges of corporate sustainability continue to be an elusive goal at the corporate management level. This article presents a description (...) of a new management tool, a systematic method for implementing CSR successfully on the basis of a triple bottom line approach to sustainability. It fills in many of the still missing gap on the corporate level. The method presented here offers a multi-purpose approach for the collection, systematization, quantification, and evaluation of all the relevant issues found within a corporate environment. It allows for specifying and systematizing appropriate areas of action, taking into account the continuum of economic, ecologic,1 and social dimensions. Accordingly, the article is best characterized as a treatment of complex CSR issues, developed against the normative anchor of sustainability as the conceptual background. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 1-2.

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 3-34.

Purpose Cybersecurity in healthcare has become an urgent matter in recent years due to various malicious attacks on hospitals and other parts of the healthcare infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to provide an outline of how core values of the health systems, such as the principles of biomedical ethics, are in a supportive or conflicting relation to cybersecurity. Design/methodology/approach This paper claims that it is possible to map the desiderata relevant to cybersecurity onto the four principles of medical (...) ethics, i.e. beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice, and explore value conflicts in that way. Findings With respect to the question of how these principles should be balanced, there are reasons to think that the priority of autonomy relative to beneficence and non-maleficence in contemporary medical ethics could be extended to value conflicts in health-related cybersecurity. Research limitations/implications However, the tension between autonomy and justice, which relates to the desideratum of usability of information and communication technology systems, cannot be ignored even if one assumes that respect for autonomy should take priority over other moral concerns. Originality/value In terms of value conflicts, most discussions in healthcare deal with the conflict of balancing efficiency and privacy given the sensible nature of health information. In this paper, the authors provide a broader and more detailed outline. (shrink)

Most analysis of the metaphors of AIDS has considered lay rather than scientific discourse. In general, that analysis has uncovered linguistic strategies that tend to distance the disease from people who are healthy. Moreover, it has criticized those strategies insofar as they categorize and dehumanize the AIDS patient. My own analysis, however, focuses on the writing of Robert Gallo, one of the virologists who claimed credit for isolating the HIV as the cause of AIDS. By examining Gallo's popular and scientific (...) writing, I uncover the metaphor system that underlies his work — and perhaps the work of other virologists studying the HIV. I find in Gallo's writing a system of metaphor that personifies and humanizes the HIV (or the HTLV-III as he originally named it). This system differs significantly from lay systems that tend to objectify AIDS. I argue that the metaphor system that underlies Gallo's work is in fact productive, but that it might preclude other ways of conceptualizing the disease and its causes. The co-factor theory, for instance, entails a different metaphoric system entirely. I suggest that AIDS researchers might examine their own language in an effort to critique the metaphors they use and explore the possibility of using new metaphors. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 2 Seiten: 181-195.

This paper presents a report on the first Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility, which was held between the 8th and 9th December 2006 at HEC Lausanne in Switzerland. The first section of the report introduces the topic of the master class – ‚Corporations as Political Actors – Facing the Postnational Challenge’ – as well as the concept of the master class. The second section gives an overview of papers written by nine young scholars that were selected to present (...) their research. The brief summary of each paper also includes a summary of comments from the masters, practitioners, and NGO representatives at the event. The third section brings in the perspectives of one master and one NGO representative on the discussed issues. The final section offers a brief wrap-up of the discussed topics and outlines ways to structure future conceptual and empirical research. (shrink)

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the chapters making up the book, which are grouped into six sections: challenges and alternatives to the causal theory of memory; activity and passivity in remembering; the affective dimension of memory; memory in groups; memory failures: concepts and ethical implications; and the content and phenomenology of episodic and semantic memory.

We describe a set of two computer‐implemented models that solve physics problems in ways characteristic of more and less competent human solvers. The main features accounting for different competences are differences in strategy for selecting physics principles, and differences in the degree of automation in the process of applying a single principle. The models provide a good account of the order in which principles are applied by human solvers working problems in kinematics and dynamics. They also are sufficiently flexible to (...) allow easy extension to several related domains of physics problems. (shrink)

Developmental, epidemiological, and neurobiological studies indicate that the adaptive and maladaptive functions, as well as immediate and long-term consequences of drug use, may vary by age. Early initiation seems to be associated with a reduced ability to use drugs purposely in a temporally stable, non-addictive manner. Prevention strategies should consider social environmental factors and aim to delay age at initiation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:I Am Food: The Mass in Planetary PerspectiveMaria Reis HabitoI Am Food: The Mass in Planetary Perspective. By Roger Corless. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004. 104 pp.In this timely reprint of I Am Food: The Mass in Planetary Perspective (originally published by Crossroad in 1981), the late Roger Corless demonstrates the potential for spiritual and intellectual creativity contained within a stance of dual religious belonging. Corless passed (...) away in January 2007, but this book remains as a way for us to know him and to appreciate, as he did, the possibilities for spiritual revitalization and transformation that may be generated at the intersection and interpenetration of Christian and Buddhist traditions.Corless was raised as a Protestant but as a teenager became deeply engaged with the study of world religions and claimed Buddhism in particular as his own. Eventually he would become a scholar of Chinese Buddhism and a practitioner within the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. At the same time, however, that the young Corless was being drawn to Buddhism, his connection to his Christian faith was also deepening; his profound experiences of the loving power of God could not be denied even if Christianity's theism could not be easily reconciled with Buddhism's doctrine of emptiness. Instead of leaving one religion for the other, he deepened his engagement with both. He did not seek to synthesize or reconcile Christianity and Buddhism but rather held these traditions together in a dynamic, creative tension and lived each one fully in its turn. When asked about his religious affiliation, Corless would respond playfully that he was "a Buddhist on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, a Christian on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday, and a Gaia worshipper on Sundays." In I Am Food, however, Corless shows us that on some Sundays, specifically at the celebration of the Mass, he was both Christian and Buddhist at the same time. The great contribution of this book is in its offering of a fresh and transformative approach to the Mass through the application of the symbolic structures of Tibetan Buddhist mandala visualization as a template for active participation in the communion ritual. [End Page 161]Corless's focus in this book is the ritual of the Mass as celebrated within the Roman Catholic tradition. His conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism occurred much to his "own surprise," prompted by his discovery in Catholicism of "a curious growing center which had great power and potential." This center "brought together many insights which I had picked up from other religions, and moved them to a new synthesis. This synthesis was concentrated in the oddly named 'Mass' " (p. 13). I Am Food offers a scholarly and personal meditation on the meaning, symbolism, and power contained in this central ritual of Catholicism. This project is signaled in the grammatically awkward but intriguing title of the book's first chapter, "Why Is the Mass?" Corless knows that many routine churchgoers never think or dare to ask this question, and the few who do ask it rarely find satisfactory answers. His book seeks to encourage such questioning among those who are in search of a personal religious experience "away from the dullness of minimalist routine" (p. 34). His very lively, humorous, and slightly irreverent style is intended to take the boredom out of the Mass, providing a very personal and original guide to it, different from the series of "excellent, but ultimately claustrophobic, devotional books on 'the spiritual meaning of the Mass'" (p. 13).Among Christian writings that were influential for his understanding of the Mass, Corless names The Mass in Slow Motion (1948) by Ronald Knox, which attempts to describe the inner meaning of the Mass, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Hymn of the Universe (1965), which describes a vision of the world as sacrament and celebrates Mass as a cosmic event. While Teilhard de Chardin inspires Corless's "planetary perspective" on the Mass, Nicholas Casabilas's A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (1978) sharpens the focus on "the mystical significance of each and every act of the priest and people" (p. 13).Corless argues that what makes the Mass seem stifling is the notion of... (shrink)

The contributors to this international volume take up questions about a phenomenology of time that begins with and attunes to gender issues. Themes such as feminist conceptions of time, change and becoming, the body and identity, memory and modes of experience, and the relevance of time as a moral and political question, shape Time in Feminist Phenomenology and allow readers to explore connections between feminist philosophy, phenomenology, and time. With its insistence on the importance of gender experience to the experience (...) of time, this volume is a welcome opening to new and critical thinking about being, knowledge, aesthetics, and ethics. (shrink)

The article is a lightly edited transcript of a digital roundtable discussion. The participants were invited based on their prior work on critical realism and epistemology. The roundtable discussion includes introductory statements on judgemental rationality by Jamie Morgan, Ruth Groff, Dorothea Schoppek, Leigh Price, and Frédéric Vandenberghe, followed by a discussion between the participants on a variety of topics related to judgemental rationality. The discussion demonstrates a variety of opinions and perspectives, as well as the clashing of opinions in (...) a respectful manner. The roundtable provides interesting discussion points about Bhaskar's approach to judgemental rationality, how we adjudicate between different meta-theories (such as between that of Bhaskar and Harré), and what role should normative values have in theoretical adjudication. (shrink)

This volume, including sixteen contributions, analyses ancient and medieval theories of intentionality in various contexts: perception, imagination, and intellectual thinking. It sheds new light on classical theories and examines neglected sources, both Greek and Latin.

A Scientific Integrity Consortium developed a set of recommended principles and best practices that can be used broadly across scientific disciplines as a mechanism for consensus on scientific integrity standards and to better equip scientists to operate in a rapidly changing research environment. The two principles that represent the umbrella under which scientific processes should operate are as follows: Foster a culture of integrity in the scientific process. Evidence-based policy interests may have legitimate roles to play in influencing aspects of (...) the research process, but those roles should not interfere with scientific integrity. The nine best practices for instilling scientific integrity in the implementation of these two overarching principles are Require universal training in robust scientific methods, in the use of appropriate experimental design and statistics, and in responsible research practices for scientists at all levels, with the training content regularly updated and presented by qualified scientists. Strengthen scientific integrity oversight and processes throughout the research continuum with a focus on training in ethics and conduct. Encourage reproducibility of research through transparency. Strive to establish open science as the standard operating procedure throughout the scientific enterprise. Develop and implement educational tools to teach communication skills that uphold scientific integrity. Strive to identify ways to further strengthen the peer review process. Encourage scientific journals to publish unanticipated findings that meet standards of quality and scientific integrity. Seek harmonization and implementation among journals of rapid, consistent, and transparent processes for correction and/or retraction of published papers. Design rigorous and comprehensive evaluation criteria that recognize and reward the highest standards of integrity in scientific research. (shrink)

It is of fundamental importance to understand how the individual processes of gene expression, transcription, and translation, as well as mRNA and protein stability, act in concert to produce dynamic cellular proteomes. We use the concept of response times to illustrate the relation between degradation processes and responsiveness of the proteome to system changes and to provide supporting experimental evidence: proteins with short response times tend to be more strongly up‐regulated after 1 hour of TNFα stimulation than proteins with longer (...) response times. Furthermore, based on process‐dependent response times, we demonstrate that synthesis and degradation act in concert to enable rapid responses. Finally, by building on a previously published data set quantifying the mammalian gene expression cascade, we speculate on how combinations of stable and unstable mRNAs and proteins may be wired to transcriptional or translational regulation to support gene function. (shrink)