Rights-based approaches (RBAs) are increasingly gaining favour among practitioners in the field of natural resource conservation and management. RBAs are a non-binding operational framework through which conservation actors can integrate human rights standards and principles into the design, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of projects and programmes. In addition to promoting the human rights of local populations, it is also argued that RBAs may hold benefits for conservation initiatives. This article draws on existing research on the social psychology of procedural (...) fairness to develop a relational account of how and whether RBAs may enhance levels of legitimacy and cooperation in conservation. This relational account stresses the importance of fair experiences for generating positive feelings of legitimacy and associated cooperative behaviour among individuals interacting with organisations or authorities. On the whole, this article suggests that if RBAs can ensure respect for the human rights of local populations, they have the potential to engender fair experiences and related positive institutional effects, thereby significantly strengthening the overall effectiveness of conservation initiatives. (shrink)

The article examines the case of springtime bird hunting in Åland from a moral point of view. In Åland springtime hunting has been a cultural practice for centuries but is now under investigation due to the EU Directive on the protection of birds. The main question of the article is whether restrictions on bird hunting have a sound basis. We approach this question by analysing three principles: The animal rights principle states that if hunting is not necessary for survival, it (...) cannot be morally justified. Therefore hunting merely to engage in a cultural custom is morally suspect. In the light of the species conservation principle the hunting is questionable due to the fact that it seems to have a diminishing effect on the species populations. The formal principle of justice makes up a more difficult question since the special position of the minorities in regard to the use of natural resources is generally recognised so that they have the right to maintain their cultural practices. We claim, however, that even though cultural practices have substantial value and can be the object of special rights, they should be coherent with other principles. The springtime bird hunt in Åland does not accord with the relevant moral principles and for this reason we conclude that the basis for its continuation is weak. (shrink)

Conservative opponents of abortion hold that from the moment of conception, developing fetuses have (or may have) full humanity or personhood that gives them a moral standing equal to that of postnatal human beings. To have moral standing is to be a recognized member of the human moral community, perhaps having moral duties to others or rights against them, at least as being the recipient of duties owed by others. Conservatives give neo-conceptuses full moral standing, including a right (...) to life that is equal to adults. They sincerely equate feticidal abortions with murder. This article presents both legal and philosophical considerations that count strongly against this conservative position. (shrink)

In August 2001,just after President Bush announced his stem cell funding policy and the creation of a new Presidents Council on Bioethics PCB), the new chair of the PCB, Leon Kass, set out his philosophy for constructing public bioethics bodies: There are several ways of running commissions, he said. One is to stack it with your people, make them homogenous, and force a consensus. Another is to make them heterogeneous, so that you can only come to the lowest common denominator. (...) We re not going to adopt either. We are going to allow the debate to be developed and heard. Now, three years, sixteen meetings, and five reports later, there are nagging questions about whether this council indeed has allowed the debate to be developed and heard. And the charge of politicizing public bioethics to a degree heretofore unknown and stifling the voices of dissenting members comes not from the political left but from President Bushs own appointees, including one scientist who was dismissed from further service. (shrink)

This article was one of SCSS President Stephen M. Krason’s online “Neither Left nor Right, but Catholic” columns. It appeared on May 1, 2012. There is a link to Krason’s monthly column at the SCSS website. Since August 2012, his column also appears at Crisismagazine.com. This article considers weaknesses in present-day conservatism, and how embracing certain principles of Catholic social teaching could rectify those weaknesses.

The purpose of this article is to systematize and generalize information about the political right-conservative movement in modern Poland. In the course of the study, the potential for support for right-wing parties exists in every society. It can grow due to two groups of factors. The first concerns issues related to the difficult economic situation, the modernization of societies or cultural aspects, which are called demand-related in the literature. The second large group consists of supply factors: factors (...) of possible political success (structure of political opportunities), electoral rules, inter-party competition, the role of the mass media, the structure of political divisions or the role of the winning ideology. Polish right-wing conservatism and nationalism is characterized, both in the past and in the present, by a powerful influence on the social and political life of the Republic of Poland, acting as a fundamental element of the unification of the Polish people. This movement retains its traditional features, which are reflected in the ideology of the Polish ruling party “Law and Justice”, which adheres to a national-conservative orientation with elements of clericalism, maintains close ties with the Catholic Church and organizations close to it. In the period after coming to power (2015), “PiS” slowly but steadily lost its Christian-democratic character and evolved into a conservative political force. This allowed “PiS” to win elections for a long time, and in 2023, it allows it to maintain leading positions in public opinion polls regarding support for political parties. In the field of international relations, supporters of “PiS” operated with judgments that expressed the ideas of nationalism, presenting the Poles as a strong nation that should occupy an important place among other countries. The process of creating right-wing conservative political parties and associations in Poland continues on an ongoing basis. The strengthening of nationalist movements in Poland takes place with the support of the state authorities of the Republic of Poland and is accompanied by a gradual shift of emphasis on controversial historical issues in the direction of nationalist ideology. Despite official Warsaw providing political support to Kyiv in the international arena in connection with the Russian military threat, the authorities of the Republic of Poland have no intention of blocking anti-Ukrainian activities carried out by Polish national-patriotic right-wing movements. This is due to the preparation of the ruling elite for the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the tragic events in Volyn in 2023, as well as the parliamentary election campaign. In the future, the activation of radical right-conservative formations on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth may lead to protest actions in Poland, the purpose of which will be the dissemination of information unfavorable to our state in the Polish information space, which will have a negative impact on the formation of the foreign policy vector of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Ukrainian direction. (shrink)

Wildlife conservation seems unaffected by decolonization movements that recently led to removing or vandalizing several statues of geographers and colonizers worldwide. Instead, we observe an increased emphasis on total protection of species and habitats that, although strategic in a period of environmental crisis, may have grossly negative impacts on living standards of local indigenous communities. In this regard, we should decolonize society, and specifically conservation, by adding new metaphoric statues to the old ones, preferably of those living side by side (...) with wildlife. In this essay, we suggest that zoos, as popular places where urbanized people meet biodiversity, should change their messages that too often reinforce the subtle colonial ideology pervading international environmentalism and often driven by increasing animal rights activism. For example, a new storytelling ethos in zoos should communicate that, in some sensitive contexts (e.g. most tropical countries), the current over-emphasis on protected areas and military law enforcement is also causing serious human rights violations. We need ‘humanised zoos’, i.e. places where conservation of biodiversity is put in a broader socio-ecological context and a central role for the future of ecosystems is given to local communities, ethnic minorities and ‘wise people’ (i.e. people having local traditional knowledge). Zoos should direct more resources toward community-based conservation; foremost, they should shape urban and ‘Western’ attitudes toward wildlife with a less colonized perspective, including spreading the importance of traditional ecological knowledge in ecosystem management. (shrink)

The public sphere has been seen by conservatives as an arena for safeguarding private relations. Private power relations could be threatened by newly recognized social groups that make claims on the state for justice and equality. Therefore, conservatives have been concerned about who can speak and exist in public and who can thereby make demands on the state. In the debates over transgender rights in Canada, social conservatives and neoliberal forces have merged in complex and impactful ways. Analyzing House of (...) Commons and Senate debates and committee proceedings for Bill C-279 and Bill C-16, I examine three conservative arguments that illustrate attempts to maintain private power relations and hierarchal gendered divisions by ensuring that transgender and gender nonconforming people are not allowed to exist, speak or make claims in public: first, the assertion that gender identity and gender expression are not definable identity categories for claims-making because transgender people are deceptive and can change their gender based on their feelings; second, the targeting of public facilities, and particularly public bathrooms, as sites of contention, danger and necessary gender segregation; and third, the attempt to delegitimize rights claims by criminalizing transgender people in relation to cisgender women and children. (shrink)

Tropical forest conservation in developing countries has repeatedly been highlighted as a new element in international climate policy. However, no clear ideas yet exist as to what shape such a conservation strategy might take. In the present paper, we would like to make some observations to this end. It is shown how projects in order to reduce CO 2 -emissions resulting from deforestation and degradation (REDD) can be integrated into a system of tradable emission rights in an industrialised country and (...) which requirements ought to be fulfilled. Instruments are emission credits and emission allowances. Driving actors interested in emission rights through forest projects may be private investors or the rainforest state itself. The efficiency of the system depends on a great extent on a binding reference path for the tolerable emissions from deforestation, which has been agreed upon and adhered to by the rainforest country by means of a forest law aimed at limiting deforestation. Our considerations lead us to conclude that the national baseline approach with an appropriate contribution by the rainforest country coupled with a decentralised system with private investors seems the most viable option. Since additional burdens are imposed on the rainforest country to some extent, a compromise could consist of agreeing on a moderate deforestation path, which is harmonised with the benefits from the forest projects. Combining both programmes (offset credits and emission allowances) is particularly attractive because all participants, and especially the industrialised country, benefit from it. The industrialised country can expand its climate conservation programme without any additional costs to a certain degree. (shrink)

CLARE PALMER | : This paper argues that there is no simple rift between animal liberation and environmental ethics in terms of strategies for environmental conservation. The situation is much more complicated, with multiple fault lines that can divide both environmental ethicists from one another and animal ethicists from one another—but that can also create unexpected convergences between these two groups. First, the paper gives an account of the alleged rift between animal liberation and environmental ethics. Then it’s argued that (...) this rift was always exaggerated. For instance, animal ethicists who prioritize aggregate animal welfare have always converged with environmental ethicists in supporting certain cases of hunting and culling, and, in doing so, they have diverged from animal rights theorists, who generally oppose these practices. Pervasive threats such as climate change make it likely that environmental ethicists will also diverge from one another in terms of the conservation strategies they support, depending on what values they prioritize. For instance, conservation strategies that protect species may not necessarily protect other environmental values such as ecosystem flourishing or wildness. The paper concludes that conservation under climate change is likely to bring both new divergences and new convergences, and that these are unlikely to take the form of a rift between animal liberation and environmental ethics. | : Cet article soutient qu’il n’existe pas un clivage simple entre le mouvement de la libération animale et l’éthique environnementale quant aux stratégies de conservation environnementale. La situation est bien plus complexe, de nombreuses lignes de faille pouvant d’une part diviser autant les spécialistes d’éthique environnementale que les spécialistes d’éthique animale et, d’autre part, créer des convergences inattendues entre ces deux groupes. L’article fait d’abord état du prétendu clivage entre le mouvement de la libération animale et l’éthique environnementale, pour ensuite démontrer l’exagération de ce clivage. Par exemple, les spécialistes d’éthique animale qui priorisent le bien-être global des animaux se sont toujours accordé avec les spécialistes d’éthique environnementale pour approuver certains cas de chasse et d’abattage, divergeant par là-même des théoriciens des droits des animaux, qui s’opposent généralement à ces pratiques. De plus, des menaces omniprésentes telles que le changement climatique auront vraisemblablement pour effet de diviser les éthiciens environnementaux selon les stratégies de conservation qu’ils préconisent en fonction de leurs valeurs prioritaires. Ainsi, les stratégies de conservation qui protègent certaines espèces ne protègeront pas nécessairement d’autres valeurs environnementales telles que l’épanouissement des écosystèmes ou la préservation de leur état sauvage. L’article tire la conclusion que, dans le contexte des changements climatiques, la question de la conservation est susceptible de soulever à la fois de nouvelles divergences et de nouvelles convergences, lesquelles ne prendront probablement pas toutefois la forme d’un clivage entre le mouvement de la libération animale et l’éthique environnementale. (shrink)

The Islamic Republic of Iran is unsecular and follows religious interpretations from Shia Islam in deciding the laws of the land. In recent decades, the strengthening of civil society in the country has shaped various political debates on human rights among secular intellectuals and reflected in the discourse of some religious figures as well. While the regime has officially adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) since 1990, different views on the Islamic human rights and its social (...) implications still exist among the conservative and reformist Shia clergy within the country. This paper examines the view of an influential conservative pro-regime clergy, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who has been concerned about the Western interpretation of human rights and engaged in its theorization based on his interpretation of Shia Islam. He has criticized the theoretical and philosophical foundations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its each single item and has also proposed his own version of the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights and Obligations. While Islamic fundamentalists have no concrete theoretical support for their negative view of the Western conceptions regarding human rights, Mesbah Yazdi’s approach is based on a reading of Shia theology and Sadraean ontology. He engages in a dialogue with the Western ideologies and rejects UDHR after philosophical and theological reasoning. His stance can be viewed as a reflection of the unsecular political Shia Islam as the main characteristic of the conservative faction within the Islamic Republic of Iran which results in serious policy and social implications on the rights of the people living in the country. (shrink)

New right vs. old right -- Hegemony -- Metapolitics & occult warfare -- Theory & practice -- Reflections on Carl Schmitt's The concept of the political -- The moral factor -- The psychology of conversion -- The burden of Hitler -- Dealing with the Holocaust -- White nationalism & Jewish nationalism -- The Christian question in white nationalism -- Racial civil religion -- That old-time liberalism -- The woman question in white nationalism -- Notes on populism, elitism, & (...) democracy -- The perils of positive thinking -- The politics of resentment -- Worse is better -- Learning from the left -- Explicit white nationalism -- Secret agents -- The psychology of apostasy -- First, do no harm -- White nationalists & the political "mainstream" -- Why conservatives still can't win -- Status competition, Jews & racialist mainstreaming -- The laugh test -- Premature populism -- On violence. (shrink)

The contemporary debate over man’s relation to his natural environment raises many complex issues which have thrown our familiar liberal and conservative political alignments into disarray. Although ecology is now generally regarded as a liberal cause with conservatives supporting commercial and industrial expansion, until very recently liberals almost unanimously championed industrialization andtechnological advance. Resistance to “progress” was the folly of only the most eccentric conservatives. Today, both liberal proponents of environmental protection and conservative defenders of business and industry (...) argue on merely prudential grounds: each side maintains that only the adoption of its own program can save human civilization from collapse, or even the race from extinction. Extremely radical environmentalists have based their arguments on nloral principle: humanity is just one species among many, and men are, therefore, morally obligated to respect the rights of other organisms and of the ecosystem as a whole. This position, however, is ultimately reducible to a self-contradictory utilitarianism. It is the reverent attitude of traditional conservatism - that man is superior to other creatures as the steward of creation, holding it not as absolute possessor but only in trust from his Creator - that promises both the most moral and the most sensible approach to environmental affairs. (shrink)

Raised right -- Something to believe in : modern American conservatism & the paternal rights discourse -- Penetrating the inner sanctum : William F. Buckley, Jr., paternal desire, and the rights of man -- "The greatest nation on earth" : Ronald Reagan, fathers, and the rights of Americans -- All the rage : Clarence Thomas, daddy, and the tragedy of rights -- A nightmare walking : the haunting of modern American conservatism.

Covenantal Rights is a groundbreaking work of political theory: a comprehensive, philosophically sophisticated attempt to bring insights from the Jewish political tradition into current political and legal debates about rights and to bring rights discourse more fully into Jewish thought. David Novak pursues these aims by presenting a theory of rights founded on the covenant between God and the Jewish people as that covenant is constituted by Scripture and the rabbinic tradition. In doing so, he presents a powerful challenge to (...) prevailing liberal and conservative positions on rights and duties and opens a new chapter in contemporary Jewish political thinking.For Novak, "covenantal rights" are rooted in God's primary rights as creator of the universe and as the elector of a particular community whose members relate to this God as their sovereign. The subsequent rights of individuals and communities flow from God's covenantal promises, which function as irrevocable entitlements. This presents a sharp contrast to the liberal tradition, in which rights flow above all from individuals. It also challenges the conservative idea that duties can take precedence over rights, since Novak argues that there are no covenantal duties that are not backed by correlative rights. Novak explains carefully and clearly how this theory of covenantal rights fits into Jewish tradition and applies to the relationships among God, the covenanted community, and individuals. This work is a profound and provocative contribution to contemporary religious and political theory. (shrink)

It has been estimated that three species on the planet now go extinct every hour and that this rate is orders of magnitude higher than the planet has seen in previous catastrophic extinction events. We clearly are in the midst of a sixth extinction, and this one is different from the previous five. Why? This sixth extinction is caused by the activity of a single species—us. If there is any hope of ameliorating this extinction, it will entirely be up to (...) us, as the current stewards of this planet, to change the course. There are many challenges, though, to marshaling this effort. Two primary ones immediately come to mind. The first is that we simply haven't found the right biological tools to address this crisis. The second is that many humans on this planet don't even admit we have a problem. These are two very different problems. The first is primarily technological. Only recently has some of the more advanced biologically focused technology been available to conservation biology and extinction science. Humans are enthralled by cutting‐edge technology for the most part, and for the public, one of the more exciting possibilities in the realm of conservation biology is that some of the more charismatic species that have gone extinct might be resurrected through next‐generation technologies. While our discussion will articulate some weaknesses with the de‐extinction approach to conservation biology, we suggest that the “sexiness” of the technologies used in de‐extinction may simultaneously provide a definition of the techniques viable in conservation biology and afford a teachable moment. (shrink)

Conservative subtheories of $${{R}^{1}_{2}}$$ and $${{S}^{1}_{2}}$$ are presented. For $${{S}^{1}_{2}}$$, a slight tightening of Jeřábek’s result (Math Logic Q 52(6):613–624, 2006) that $${T^{0}_{2} \preceq_{\forall \Sigma^{b}_{1}}S^{1}_{2}}$$ is presented: It is shown that $${T^{0}_{2}}$$ can be axiomatised as BASIC together with induction on sharply bounded formulas of one alternation. Within this $${\forall\Sigma^{b}_{1}}$$ -theory, we define a $${\forall\Sigma^{b}_{0}}$$ -theory, $${T^{-1}_{2}}$$, for the $${\forall\Sigma^{b}_{0}}$$ -consequences of $${S^{1}_{2}}$$. We show $${T^{-1}_{2}}$$ is weak by showing it cannot $${\Sigma^{b}_{0}}$$ -define division by 3. We then consider (...) what would be the analogous $${\forall\hat\Sigma^{b}_{1}}$$ -conservative subtheory of $${R^{1}_{2}}$$ based on Pollett (Ann Pure Appl Logic 100:189–245, 1999. It is shown that this theory, $${{T}^{0,\left\{2^{(||\dot{id}||)}\right\}}_{2}}$$, also cannot $${\Sigma^{b}_{0}}$$ -define division by 3. On the other hand, we show that $${{S}^{0}_{2}+open_{\{||id||\}}}$$ -COMP is a $${\forall\hat\Sigma^{b}_{1}}$$ -conservative subtheory of $${R^{1}_{2}}$$. Finally, we give a refinement of Johannsen and Pollett (Logic Colloquium’ 98, 262–279, 2000) and show that $${\hat{C}^{0}_{2}}$$ is $${\forall\hat\Sigma^{b}_{1}}$$ -conservative over a theory based on open cl-comprehension. (shrink)

Loss of the green belts in the cities as an antecedent outcome of haphazard and irregular urbanization as one of the principle factors has a negative bearing on the socio ecological services that nature entails. Our paper represents the conditions under which the contemporary statist conservationist efforts to preserve the urban protected areas in India induces a marginal existence and livelihood vulnerability upon the survival of the population residing within these PAs. A recent survey to Sanjay Gandhi National Park in (...) Mumbai reflects the ways in which a politics of conservation operates not only in the rural regions but also in cities, in highly inequitable and fabricated ways. This has consequently affected the impoverished, disempowered and impecunious inhabitants who comprise a considerable segment of population in cosmopolitan Mumbai, residing within the PAs. The present article assesses the ways in which in metropolises, PAs by definition determine jurisdictions and exercise rights to exclude the social groups who are marginal and less powerful. This is to preserve a pristine people free aesthetic environment in cities, for which there is an increasing demand from the local elite. The results of the study indicate the socio ecological aspects of the conservation politics in the city of Mumbai. The emergent consequences are in terms of the questions of universal rights to the PAs or reflecting an elitist provision of environmental integrity to the privileged visitors in the city. (shrink)

AT the time Strauss published Natural Right and History the state of the question of natural right was a mixture of oblivion and fitful restoration. Natural right had disappeared from the center of discussion in political philosophy for well over a century. No philosopher of the first rank had written a treatise on, or advocated the necessity of, natural right since the time of German idealism or perhaps since Rousseau. Kant more than any other had emptied (...) "natural right" of meaning--by asserting that the moral law must be a law of reason and not a law of nature. Naturrecht in the subtitle of Hegel's great treatise on right did not mean right derived from human nature or from nature as a norm or standard: right was to be sought in the conjunction of the rational and the historical. By the middle of the last century there arose a virtually unanimous agreement between the conservative right and the radical left: the question of right had to be decided on the plane of "history" and not by reference to "nature." The attack on natural right in its explicit form had begun with the critique of modern natural right by the great conservatives of "the historical school." It was completed by Nietzsche and Heidegger who traced the "nihilism" of the age to the continuing power of the belief in trans-historical or "eternal" truths, e.g., to the belief in natural right. (shrink)

It is common for conservationists to refer to non-native species that have undesirable impacts on humans as “invasive”. We argue that the classification of any species as “invasive” constitutes wrongful discrimination. Moreover, we argue that its being wrong to categorize a species as invasive is perfectly compatible with it being morally permissible to kill animals—assuming that conservationists “kill equally”. It simply is not compatible with the double standard that conservationists tend to employ in their decisions about who lives and who (...) dies. (shrink)

This paper explores conservative Christian demands that religious-based objections to providing services to lesbians and gay men should be accommodated by employers and public bodies. Focusing on a series of court judgments, alongside commentators’ critical accounts, the paper explores the dominant interpretation of the conflict as one involving two groups with deeply held, competing interests, and suggests this interpretation can be understood through a social property framework. The paper explores how religious beliefs and sexual orientation are attachments whose power (...) has been unsettled by equality law. But entangled with this property is another—that held in workers’ labour and public bodies’ resources. Arguing against the drive to balance competing interests, the paper uses social property to illuminate the agonistic character of the stakes. At the same time, it questions property as a normative framework for sexual orientation and religious beliefs. (shrink)

_Moral Politics_ takes a fresh look at how we think and talk about political and moral ideas. George Lakoff analyzed recent political discussion to find that the family—especially the ideal family—is the most powerful metaphor in politics today. Revealing how family-based moral values determine views on diverse issues as crime, gun control, taxation, social programs, and the environment, George Lakoff looks at how conservatives and liberals link morality to politics through the concept of family and how these ideals diverge. Arguing (...) that conservatives have exploited the connection between morality, the family, and politics, while liberals have failed to recognized it, Lakoff explains why conservative moral position has not been effectively challenged. A wake up call to political pundits on both the left and the right, this work redefines how Americans think and talk about politics. (shrink)

What are human rights? In this article Enoch Powell, MP (a former Conservative Minister of Health), approaches this question through a critical discussion of Article 25 (I) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Professor R S Downie in his accompanying commentary analyses Mr Powell's statements and takes up in particular Mr Powell's argument that claiming rights for one person entails compulsion on another person. In Professor Downie's view there is nothing in Article 25 (I) that cannot (...) embody acceptable moral rights, the commonly accepted interpretation of that Article of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which many people think is wholly acceptable. (shrink)

The greatest threat faced by wild animals often comes from the destruction of their habitats by humans. Traditional environmental-conservation paradigms often fail to prevent this destruction. This paper claims that, where access to habitat is a necessary condition of their continued existence or wellbeing, wild animals have sufficiently strong interests in their habitat to generate rights to it. The paper argues that these rights should be instantiated in the form of collective usufructuary property rights, and, in cases of serious and (...) systematic violation of these rights, wild animals gain a remedial right of secession for their habitat. (shrink)

In The Colorful Conservative, R.O.P. Lopez culls important insights into American culture from the works of Phillis Wheatley, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, William Wells Brown, and Walt Whitman. Lopez contends that many of the tensions that emerged prior to the Civil War remain unresolved; thus, the nineteenth century never ended and Americans still live in the literary framework of the 1800s. Beyond political distinctions of the left and the right, there are really four poles: The Left, (...) The Conformist Burkeans, The Anarchist-Nihilist-Libertarians, and The Colorful Conservatives. The Left and the Colorful Conservatives are the two poles most at odds with each other. The Colorful Conservatives, Lopez argues, encompass these five American authors and are the driving force behind many unique paradoxes in the United States' political culture"--Back cover. (shrink)

It is noteworthy that much of recent liberal scholarship aimed at empowering aboriginal peoples, and supporting their land rights, has often unwittingly embraced the conservative Lockean‐Nozickian tradition rather than the tradition of left‐leaning thinkers. Many of the supporters of aboriginal land rights tend to view property rights as contingently determined historical entitlements which are established independently of the state’s authority, thereby creating structures which morally bind the authority of the state. This, in fact, also represents the view of the (...) conservative supporters of untrammelled capitalism. Secondly, there is often little discussion of the bundle of rights which are derived from these acts of original acquisition. This may lead one to the assumption that these supporters of aboriginal land rights agree with the conservative view that all the recognised components of modern liberal ownership, from the right to use, to the right to income, are acquired in the initial events associated with historical entitlement. It is my argument in this paper that basing aboriginal land claims solely on customary historical entitlement results in too close an alignment with a conservative ideology which has been used to support unrestrained capitalism. (shrink)

Analysis of conservative political participation in local food initiatives tends to be critical and dismissive, positing this participation as self-serving, individualistic, exclusionary, nativist, or reactionary. While there are nefarious aspects to certain forms of conservative local food politics, my research at three farmers’ markets in the Upper Midwest reveals that self-identified conservatives can and do hold more nuanced positions. Those with whom I met recognize the need for both local and broader change, are concerned about marginalized and struggling (...) people, are troubled by the impacts of conventional agriculture on the health of farmers, consumers, and other species, and are humble and willing to listen to other perspectives. Most analyses of food systems miss these nuanced perspectives because they approach American political ideology through a rigid left–right binary. Using more fluid approaches to understanding political ideology can create room for recognizing the complexity and diversity of views pigeon-holed under the label of “conservatism.” Along with these different approaches, a politics of empathy and mutual respect across ideological difference can help reveal common values, concerns, and aspirations for changing the food system. Recognizing these commonalities can help build a broader base of support for food system transformation. (shrink)

After years of progress in terms of gender and sexual rights, since 2012 Europe is facing a so-called gender backlash – opposition directed to issues related to reproductive policies and abortion, violence against women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) rights and gay marriages, gender mainstreaming and sex education at schools as well as antidiscrimination policies. In this article, firstly, by taking the anti-gender developments as point of reference, I examine the emergence of anti-gender movement in Europe via (...) the use of what I call troll science. Troll science is based on (distorted) scientific arguments moulded into populist discourse, creating an alternative narrative on the conceptions of gender equality. Similar to troll accounts posting provocative, superfluous and even off-topic messages on social media to start arguments and quarrels aiming to distract, troll science, I argue, creates an alternative narrative opposing the scientific facts and discourses (i.e. climate change, evolution, vaccination and gender theory). Later, I discuss the emerging conservative troll-scientific discourses and the gendered public normative order of Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP; Justice and Development Party) government, under the New Turkey. I previously argued that New Turkey and the society under the party’s rule perpetuated by a new set of standards create an alternative narrative on the conceptions of gender equality through troll-science narratives. I concluded by showing how such ideological discourses help create emotional echo chambers – enabling its fast distribution and acceptance by the ideologically conservative groups. Contribution: This paper contributes to the Special Collection Gender Justice, Health and Human Development with the theory of troll-science it introduces to discuss the alternative and anti-gender scientific discourse that is dominating academia. (shrink)

The paper studies the significance of Martin Heidegger's philosophy of history for two key thinkers of contemporary radical conservatism and the Identitarian movement, Alain de Benoist and Aleksandr Dugin. Heidegger's often-overlooked affinities with the German “conservative revolution” of the Weimar period have in recent years been emphasized by an emerging radical-conservative “right-Heideggerian” orientation. I first discuss the later Heidegger's “being-historical” narrative of the culmination and end of the metaphysical foundations of Western modernity in the contemporary Nietzschean era (...) of nihilism and of an emerging postmodern “other beginning” of Western thinking, focused on historical and cultural relativism and particularism. In Heidegger's work of the 1930s and 1940s, we find attempts to apply this historical narrative to interpreting contemporary geopolitical and ideological phenomena in ways that connect Heidegger to certain central ideas and concerns of the conservative revolutionaries, especially Carl Schmitt's geopolitical particularism. De Benoist, the key name of the French Nouvelle Droite and a founding figure of contemporary Identitarianism, is particularly inspired by Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche as the culmination of the “metaphysics of subjectivity” dominating Western modernity. For de Benoist, this modern metaphysics is the root of the “ideology of the Same” underlying the liberal universalism and individualism that he opposes in the name of a cultural ethnopluralism. De Benoist's Russian disciple Dugin bases the pluralistic geopolitics of his radical-conservative “fourth political theory” on the legacy of the conservative revolution, the key intellectual model of which Dugin discovers in Heidegger's notion of the “other beginning”. (shrink)

According to a long-standing conservative critique, the proponents of fundamental or revolutionary social change necessarily fail by sacrificing the organic complexity of society and the individual upon a procrustean bed of dogmatic and rigid universal principles. I will argue that Marx's concept of proletarian self-emancipation is not only compatible with this conservative critique but is appropriately understood as a variant of it. The self-emancipation of the working class is the core of Marx's critique of the Utopian socialists, for (...) whom socialism is the instantiation of universal ideals rather than the product of class struggle. This critique should be construed, not as a theoretical promissory note for the realisation of these ideals through the agency of the workers, but as a criticism of the very project of founding political ethics on the basis of universal ideals. Marx's political thought bears a structural similarity to conservative thought in that each seeks to ground its political programme upon the study of society as it actually exists, rather than upon a vision of human nature considered apart from society. If Marx's critique of Utopian socialism holds water, the intellectual roots of Stalinist authoritarianism may be traced, not to the failure of Marx fully to outline the ideal communist society, but to the assimilation of elements of his thought to the Utopian style and tradition of political thought. There should be no surprise, therefore, when attempts to transcend Stalinism by basing radical politics upon sanitised versions of a socialist Utopia or socialist renditions of such universal liberal principles as human rights prove counter-productive. (shrink)

I agreed to come here today to speak on some such subject as "The Libertarian as Conservative." To me this is so obvious that I am hard put to find something to say to people who still think libertarianism has something to do with liberty. A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs. I'd have preferred a more controversial topic like "The Myth of the Penile Orgasm." But since my attendance here is subsidized by the esteemed distributor of (...) a veritable reference library on mayhem and dirty tricks , I can't just take the conch and go rogue. I will indeed mutilate the sacred cow which is libertarianism, as ordered, but I'll administer a few hard lefts to the right in my own way. And I don't mean the easy way. I could just point to the laissez faire Trilateralism of the Libertarian Party, then leave and go look for a party. It doesn't take long to say that if you fight fire with fire, you'll get burned. (shrink)

A culture war has been brewing in Singapore since 2009 when a conservative Christian group conducted a reverse takeover of a feminist civil society organization and was subsequently expelled from the organization in a publicized meeting between the two groups. Since then, the state has mediated the contestation of values between religious conservatives and liberal groups allied around issues of gender and sexuality. The culture war between the two sides has revolved around creative protests that have evaded state prohibitions (...) against public contestations over what is legally considered private beliefs and affairs. They involve innovative hybridizations of American discourses on values and rights mixed with Asian emphases on family traditions and sentiments. The COVID-19 pandemic has, however, laid bare the adaptation of the American culture war into the Singaporean public sphere. This article looks at and analyzes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among conservative Christians in Singapore and their incorporation of anti-vaccination views from American Christian nationalism into secular framings, invoking legal rights and responsibilities aligned with the state’s nationalist discourse. I argue that this represents a new phase of contestation by conservatives, refashioning their religious views into secular frames of public good and morality serving the secular nation. By doing so, they implicitly challenge the state’s regulation of religion as private interests and beliefs. This altered religious activism has shifted the terms of secularism and loosened the hegemony of the state in defining these terms. (shrink)

A great deal of recent academic writing claims—but, more often, assumes—that the American news media have a predominantly conservative bias, slanting and shaping their coverage in ways that favor right‐wing foreign, economic, cultural, and social policies. Two major books pioneered this position and have gone largely uncriticized, despite their immense influence. A detailed examination of Herbert Gans's Deciding What's News and Ben Bagdikian's The Media Monopoly shows, however, that they fall far short of proving their claims about media (...) bias. The logic of many of their arguments is highly problematic, but especially glaring is the almost complete lack of solid evidence in either book as to the purportedly conservative nature of media content. (shrink)

There has been a long-standing debate about the roles of San in the militaries of southern Africa and the prevalence of violence among the Ju/'hoansi and other San people. The evolutionary anthropology and social anthropological debates over the contexts in which violence and warfare occurs among hunters and gatherers are considered, as is the “tribal zone theory” of warfare between states and indigenous people. This paper assesses the issues that arise from these discussions, drawing on data from San in Angola, (...) Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe. Utilizing cases of how San have been affected by military forces and wildlife conservation agencies in what became protected areas in southern Africa, this article shows that indigenous peoples have been treated differentially by state and nongovernmental organizations involved in anti-poaching, shoot-to-kill, and forced resettlement policies. Particular emphasis is placed on the!Xun and Khwe San of southern Angola and northern Namibia and the Tshwa San of western Zimbabwe and northern Botswana, who have been impacted by militarization and coercive conservation efforts since the late nineteenth century. Principal conclusions are that conservation and militarization efforts have led to a reduction in land and resources available to indigenous people, higher levels of poverty, increased socioeconomic stratification, and lower levels of physical well-being. San have responded to these trends by engaging in social activism, forming community-based institutions, and pursuing legal actions aimed at obtaining human rights and equitable treatment. (shrink)

Based on the claim that animals have rights, Tom Regan ultimately endorses some radical conclusions: we ought to be vegans; it’s wrong to wear leather; we shouldn’t care about conserving species, but about respecting the rights of individual animals; etc. For many, these conclusions are unbelievable, and incredulous stares abound. Incredulous stares are not arguments, but they do force us to consider whether it might be reasonable for some people to reject Regan’s conclusions based on their considered beliefs. My aim (...) here is to argue that it is. The argument is based on an analogy between Regan's defense of animal rights and David Lewis's defense of modal realism. In short, if it's reasonable to reject modal realism based on its incredible implications, then it’s probably reasonable to reject the thesis that animals have rights, and to instead accept a moral theory that, while much less elegant, doesn’t require abandoning any of our Moorean beliefs. (shrink)

Nicholas Wolterstorff and Christopher J. Eberle have defended the view that the ethics of liberal citizenship allows citizens to publicly support the passage of coercive laws based solely on their religious convictions. They also develop positive conceptions of virtuous citizenship that place moral limits on how citizens may appeal to their religion. The question I address in this essay is whether the limits they impose on citizens’ appeals to their religion are adequate. Since Eberle’s “ideal of conscientious engagement” provides us (...) with the most extensive statement of these limits, it is the primary focus of my attention here. My conclusion is that in its current form, Eberle’s ideal is not constraining enough. In the first section, I argue that Eberle’s ideal does not require citizens to be self-critical enough about their religious and political commitments. In the second section, I highlight a conflict between Eberle’s ideal and the need for citizens to respect the religious freedom of their fellow citizens. I argue that the way to resolve this conflict is to adopt a more fine-grained conception of religious reasons and to hold that citizens should not rely on religious reasons of certain kinds. In the final section, I argue that laws punishing or discouraging homosexual conduct (which Eberle’s ideal would apparently allow) violate what Wolterstorff calls “the Idea of liberal democracy” and so are not the kind of proposal that virtuous citizens can defend. (shrink)

Due to the significant and often careless human impact on the natural environment, there are serious problems facing the people of today and of future generations. To date, ethical, aesthetic, religious, and economic arguments for the conservation and protection of the natural environment have made relatively little headway. Another approach, one capable of garnering attention and motivating action, would be welcome. There is another approach, one that I will call a rights approach. Speaking generally, this approach is an attempt to (...) address environmental issues via the language and theory of legal and moral rights. Ultimately, it is our duties to our fellow humans that explain why we have duties regarding the natural environment. There are three main contenders among theories that can be called rights approaches to environmental issues. The first identifies the (alleged) human right to a healthful environment as the source of our obligations to conserve and protect nature. The second approach has it that our duties to nature arise from the rights of the constituents of nature themselves, its flora and fauna. The third approach to addressing environmental problems via rights is, I argue, the best path to environmental conservation and protection. This approach—which grounds duties toward nature on the human right to health—has the benefits of being a straightforward, uncontroversial, and simple approach to issues and problems that desperately need to be resolved. (shrink)

Glivenko’s theorem says that classical provability of a propositional formula entails intuitionistic provability of the double negation of that formula. This stood right at the beginning of the success story of negative translations, indeed mainly designed for converting classically derivable formulae into intuitionistically derivable ones. We now generalise this approach: simultaneously from double negation to an arbitrary nucleus; from provability in a calculus to an inductively generated abstract consequence relation; and from propositional logic to any set of objects whatsoever. (...) In particular, we give sharp criteria for the generalisation of classical logic to be a conservative extension of the one of intuitionistic logic with double negation. (shrink)

My main concern will be to show that it makes sense to speak of the rights of unborn generations against us, and that given the moral judgment that we ought to conserve our environmental inheritance for them, and its grounds, we might well say that future generations /do/ have rights correlative to our present duties toward them. Protecting our environment now is also a matter of elementary prudence, and insofar as we do it for the next generation already here in (...) the persons of our children, it is a matter of love. But from the perspective of our remote descendants it is basically a matter of justice, of respect for their rights. My main concern here will be to examine the concept of a right to better understand how that can be. (shrink)

The chapter examines Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin’s (b. 1962) challenge to the Western liberal order. Even though Dugin’s project is in many ways a theoretical epitome of Russia’s contemporary attempt to profile itself as a regional great power with a political and cultural identity distinct from the liberal West, Dugin can also be read in a wider context as one of the currently most prominent representatives of the culturally and intellectually oriented international New Right. The chapter introduces Dugin’s (...) role on the Russian right-wing political scene and his international networks, Russian neo-Eurasianism as his ideological footing, and his more recent “fourth political theory” as an attempt to formulate a new ideological alternative to liberalism as well as the two other main twentieth-century ideologies, communism and fascism. Dugin’s fourth ideology, essentially meant as an alternative to a unipolar post–Cold War global hegemony of victorious liberalism, draws inspiration from the German conservative revolutionary movement of the Weimar era. In particular, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of history, with its thesis of the end of modernity and another beginning of Western thought, and Carl Schmitt’s pluralistic model of geopolitics are highlighted as key elements of Dugin’s eclectic political thought, which is most appropriately characterized as a form of radical conservatism. (shrink)

This book examines the role of ethics and philosophy in biodiversity conservation. The objective of this book is two-fold: on the one hand it offers a detailed and systematic account of central normative concepts often used, but rarely explicated nor justified, within conservation biology. Such concepts include 'values', 'rights', and 'duties'. The second objective is to emphasize to environmental philosophers and applied ethicists the many interesting decision-making challenges of biodiversity conservation. The book argues that a nuanced account of instrumental values (...) provides a powerful tool for reasoning about the values of biodiversity. It also scrutinizes relational values, the concept of rights of nature, and risk, and show how moral philosophy proves indispensable for these concepts. Consequently, it engages with recent suggestions on normative aspects of biodiversity conservation, and show the need for moral philosophy in biodiversity conservation. The overriding aim of this book is to provide conservation biologists and policy-makers with a systematic overview of concepts and assessments of the reasons for reaching prescriptive conclusions about biodiversity conservation. This will prove instrumental in clarifying the role of applied ethics and a refined understanding of the tools it can provide. This title will be of interest to students and scholars of conservation biology, conservation policy, environmental ethics and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

This article examines the arguments used by the French philosopher Charles Renouvier to support the notion of a 'conservative Republic' during the formative years of the French Third Republic. After documenting Renouvier's accommodation to the linking of conservatism and republicanism and his defence of opportunism, the author argues that while this accommodation was motivated by his determination to help consolidate the new Republic, it was nevertheless consistent with Renouvier's moral and political philosophy with its focus on liberty, equality and (...) individual rights, particularly the 'right of defence' in the 'state of war'. Moreover, in applying this philosophy to the politics of the 1870s, Renouvier elaborated an original theory of republican governance which differed in a number of fundamental respects from the support for republicanism provided by the majority of Renouvier's contemporaries. The article concludes with some observations on the relevance of Renouvier's political thought during this period to modern political philosophy. (shrink)

The American environmental movement has a longstanding tradition of respect for American Indians. Recently, however, there has been a noticeable erosion of that tradition. The most volatile issues in the Indian/environmentalist controversey at present are those involving the right of many Indians to hunt and fish unrestricted by state or federal conservation regulations. Especially where endangered species areinvolved, some environmentalists have been quick to recommend that this unique privilege accorded to Indians be curtailed. While I share a deep concem (...) for the preservation of endangered species and ecosystems, I suggest that the environmental movement has so far been insensitive to the concems of the American Indian community. Rather than simply seeking to take away rights to which Indians havebeen entitled for decades, environmentalists should be prepared to negotiate on such matters. As an example, I suggest that-in exchange for the Indians’ voluntary surrender of some of their treaty rights--environmentalists might agree to seek legislation opening national forest lands to Indians who wish to live subsistence life styles, as some Alaskan wildemess lands are now open to the Inuit. (shrink)

The dominant approach to environmental policy endorsed by conservative and libertarian policy thinkers, so-called “free market environmentalism”, is grounded in the recognition and protection of property rights in environmental resources. Despite this normative commitment to property rights, most self-described FME advocates adopt a utilitarian, welfare-maximization approach to climate change policy, arguing that the costs of mitigation measures could outweigh the costs of climate change itself. Yet even if anthropogenic climate change is decidedly less than catastrophic, human-induced climate change is (...) likely to contribute to environmental changes that violate traditional conceptions of property rights. Viewed globally, the actions of some countries—primarily industrialized nations—are likely to increase environmental harms suffered by other countries—less developed nations that have not made any significant contribution to climate change. It may well be that aggregate human welfare would be maximized in a warmer, wealthier world, or that the gains from climate change will offset environmental losses. Yet such claims, even if demonstrated, would not address the normative concern that the consequences of anthropogenic global warming would infringe upon the rights of people in less-developed nations. As a consequence, this paper calls for a rethinking of FME approaches to climate change policy. (shrink)