This chapter provides an explanation of precedent as a kind of artefact, in keeping with broader accounts of law that do so, specifically the author’s account of law as a genre of institutionalized abstract artefact. The chapter develops its explanation by responding to an argument by Dan Priel against seeing the common law as an artefact when understood to be a form of custom. The chapter shows that customs can themselves be artefacts but also that the precedential elements of common (...) law are not necessarily quite as customary as sometimes considered, showing that the common law built from precedents fits within a distributed design model of artefacts and that stare decisis has a wider systemic function of upholding certain rule of law principles. It ends with some considerations about the institutional nature of precedents, specifically that judicial decisions are most often both applications and developments of legal norms, but also determinations of legal validity. (shrink)

: Debates on precedent autonomy and some forms of paternalistic interventions, which are related to questions of personal identity, are analyzed. The discussion is based on the distinction between personal identity as persistence and as biographical identity. It first is shown that categorical objections to advance directives and "Ulysses contracts" are based on false assumptions about personal identity that conflate persistence and biographical identity. Therefore, advance directives and "Ulysses contracts" are ethically acceptable tools for prolonging one's autonomy. The notions of (...) personality and biographical identity are used to analyze the ethically relevant features. Thereby, it is shown that these concepts are operative in and useful for thinking in biomedical ethics. The overall conclusion is that categorical arguments against precedent autonomy or "Ulysses contracts" are based on misleading theories of personal identity and that advance directives are an ethically respectable tool for prolonging individuals' autonomy in cases of dementia and mental illness. (shrink)

"Si le "jargon de l'authenticité" a sans doute rendu nombre de phénoménologies incapables de penser l'histoire et le politique, Merleau-Ponty a su le faire au coeur des textes étrangement les moins commentés, dans leur lien même, ceux des cours au Collège de France de 1954-1955: L'Institution et La Passivité. Des cours que cet ouvrage se propose enfin de relire, en discussion serrée avec l'ensemble de l'oeuvre merleau-pontienne, tant celle qui les précède que celle qui leur succède, pour la dévoiler autrement. (...) Cela, en trois temps, qui sont autant de "lectures de Merleau-Ponty", et de portes d'entrée dans son oeuvre la moins connue. Trois temps formant les parties de cet ouvrage qui suivent l'élaboration du concept merleau-pontien d'institution dans son rapport même à la passivité, sans chronologie fixe, et sans voeu de systématicité, mais en tentant d'être fidèle à la rédaction même de ces notes de cours d'une rare densité. Des cours qui foisonnent de références, tant à son oeuvre propre qu'aux nombreux auteurs avec lesquels Merleau-Ponty dialogue, tissant ainsi de nouveaux liens thématiques, et n'hésitant pas, par exemple, au coeur même d'un chapitre sur le vivant, à évoquer la question de la révolution marxiste. De Ruyer, Gesell, Lévi-Strauss, Alquié, Lachièze-Rey, à Sartre et Freud, etc., ce sont autant de dialogues qui éclairent en effet l'oeuvre et l'auto-critique de Merleau-Ponty, qui se confronte ici, mieux que nulle part ailleurs, à l'échec de son oeuvre passée, comme au contexte de l'époque. Plutôt qu'une exégèse ou qu'une interprétation orthodoxe, il s'agit au fond de continuer la pensée de Merleau-Ponty en questionnant ses dilemmes, ceux de la praxis mais aussi et en amont ceux de la méthode entre analogie et métaphore, en puisant à des essais qu'il aura en partie abandonnés, et qui nous semblent pourtant les plus prometteurs. D'où le pluriel, encore, de ces lectures."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that calls for widespread implementation of ethics measurement systems would be better informed by institutional economic analysis. Specifically, we assert that proponents of such systems must first recognize and understand the institutions that potentially impede such efforts. We identify two potential institutional impediments to measuring ethics and social responsibility. First, we suggest that neoclassical economics, supported by traditional business education and legal precedent, serves to reinforce the notion that shareholders are the primary corporate (...) constituency group. Such an emphasis on the needs of shareholders severely hinders implementation of measurement systems that address the needs of multiple stakeholder groups. Second, we argue that the threat of litigation may constrain corporate managers from measuring and considering ethics and corporate social responsibility matters. In particular, managers may be reluctant to quantify various ethical concerns if the resulting measurements could be used as evidence against the corporation in a lawsuit. (shrink)

The quality of a research study application sends a distinct signal to the institutional review board (IRB) about the skills, capacities, preparation, communication, experience, and resources of its authors. However, efforts to research and define IRB application quality have been insufficient. Inattention to the quality of an IRB application is consequential because the application precedes IRB review, and perceptions of quality between the two may be interrelated and interdependent. Without a clear understanding of quality, IRBs do not know how (...) to define quality and researchers do not know how to achieve quality. This position has not been systematically studied to date, and future research could provide much-needed empirical validation. This paper lays the conceptual groundwork for future investigation into what constitutes quality in an IRB application. It includes a landscape review of multidisciplinary research on quality, as well as a discussion of quality frameworks analogous to research with human participants that exist in the published literature. It also examines the background and significance of federal research regulations, regulatory burdens, researchers’ regulatory literacy, and the roles and responsibilities of IRB professionals within this ecosystem. (shrink)

Debate rages over whether Canadian provincial and territorial governments should allow healthcare institutions to conscientiously object to providing medical assistance in dying (MAiD). This issue is likely to end up in court soon through challenges from patients, clinicians, or advocacy groups such as Dying With Dignity Canada. When it does, one key question for the courts will be whether allowing institutional conscientious objection (ICO) to MAiD respects (i.e., shows due regard for) the consciences of the objecting healthcare institutions, understood (...) as unitary entities. This question has been thoroughly explored elsewhere in the academic literature. However, another key question has been underexplored. Specifically, precedent set by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Loyola High School v. Quebec (Attorney General) suggests that the courts will consider whether allowing ICO to MAiD respects the consciences of the personnel within objecting healthcare institutions. My answer to this question is no, by which I mean that allowing ICO to MAiD shows undue disregard for some consciences and undue regard for others. To justify this answer, I analyze the arguments that hold that allowing ICO in healthcare respects the consciences of the personnel within objecting healthcare institutions. My conclusion is that none of these personnel-based arguments succeed in the case of ICO to MAiD. Some fail because they are wrong about the nature of conscience and complicity. Others fail because they contradict the arguments’ proponents’ positions on conscientious objection by individual healthcare providers. Still others fail because they are internally inconsistent. (shrink)

En el artículo se realizó una revisión de los modelos de planificación estratégica en sentido general, pero que son aplicados en los momentos actuales en el ámbito de las instituciones de educación superior. El modelo globalizador, el cual es el básico en la mayor parte de los ejercicios de planificación; el modelo sectorial, que tiene un importante arraigo en el sector educativo latinoamericano, y el modelo situacional, cuya noción básica consiste en que planificar es una acción de todos los actores. (...) Igualmente se describen otros como el denominado complejo, el cual va cobrando interés en los estudiosos del tema; pues aunque esta línea de pensamiento posee sus ángulos de interés en el campo específico de la planificación estratégica, en el ámbito universitario aún le queda camino por recorrer para el logro de una mayor profundización en la temática, de manera que ella pueda ser aplicada al proceso formativo universitario. In the article, a general revision of the strategic planning models that are applied to the present times in the field of high education institutions was made. The models are: the globalizing model, which is the basic in the most part of the planning exercises; the sectorial model, which is very well established in the Latin-American educational sector; and the situational model, the basic notion of which consists on the fact that planning is an action that correspond to all the actors. The model known as complex was described as well. This model has become important among the specialists in the subject because, although this line of thinking has established its angles of interest in the specific field of strategic planning, it still has a long way to run, in the university field, for getting a greatest deepening in the theme, in a way that it could be applied to the university formative process. (shrink)

La question du sacerdoce des femmes dans l'Occident chrétien doit être examinée à la lumière des catégories sociales (masculin/féminin, laïc/ecclésiastique) imaginées par l'Église durant le Moyen Age. C'est en forgeant, entre le IIIe et le XIIe siècle, des systèmes de classification adaptés à leur insertion croissante dans la société que les clercs en vinrent à exclure catégoriquement les femmes du ministère sacerdotal, tout en définissant des fonctions socio-religieuses spécifiquement féminines. Au cours du XIIIe siècle, alors que l'ordre social défini par (...) les clercs était ébranlé par des expériences religieuses originales, qui furent le fait de femmes contestant (plus ou moins explicitement) leur état de subordination au sein de l'Église, l'institution ecclésiale surmonta l'épreuve en éradiquant toute forme de contestation et en réaffirmant de manière nouvelle les classifications qu'elle avait élaborées durant les siècles précédents. (shrink)

Deviance is esteemed in the art world, and all great artists have broken with the traditions that preceded them and rebelled against their contemporaries. Yet in society deviance is more often than not condemned. Our apparently contradictory attitudes toward artistic and social deviance are explicable in light of the conservative nature of institutions and the nature of comprehensibility and psychiatry.

A general practice of precedent is one that can plausibly apply to any well-functioning legal system. This practice, which can be grounded in the Rule of Law, needs to make it the case that courts always have a legal reason for following relevant precedent – even if the precedent is morally suboptimal, so long as it is not evil. Without this reason, a precedent may be treated as having no legal influence for the later court (‘the Null Model’), and this (...) runs counter to the Rule of Law. On top of this reason, courts may have a general legal obligation to follow precedent – stare decisis – but this risks entrenching morally bad decisions in the law. We need, therefore, a type of reason that lies in between the Null Model and stare decisis as a necessary step for any future justification of stare decisis. But how can courts have a legal reason for following morally suboptimal precedent? They can have that reason, I argue, in virtue of a specific judicial duty, positively laid down in a legal source, which aims to advance the Rule of Law in an institutionalised way. In this article, I aim to explain and justify that judicial duty. (shrink)

In Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty poses the intriguing thesis that ideology, or ideas about how society should be governed, is a powerful determinant for how society will be governed-as long as we take advantage of historical switch points. In this review essay I challenge this thesis by pointing out that many powerful ideas have run aground because of countervailing institutional arrangements. Oftentimes, they are leftovers from earlier times that precede the change and are now strategically employed for reconstituting (...) private wealth. Clearly, ideology and institutions are deeply intertwined. I credit Piketty for putting ideology on the map of institutionalists in history, political sciences, sociology, and law. I therefore call for more research on the interaction of ideas and institutions. (shrink)

The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and the “Geneva Declaration” by the World Medical Association, both in 1948, were preceded by the foundation of the United Nations in New York (1945), the World Medical Association in London (1946) and the World Health Organization in Geneva (1948). After the end of World War II the community of nations strove to achieve and sustain their primary goals of peace and security, as well as their basic premise, namely the health of human beings. (...) All these associations were well aware of the crimes by medicine, in particular by the accused Nazi physicians at the Nuremberg Doctors Trial (1946/47, sentence: August 1947). During the first conference of the World Medical Association (September 1947) issues of medical ethics played a major role: and a new document was drafted concerning the values of the medical profession. After the catastrophe of the War and the criminal activities of scientists, the late 1940s saw increased scrutiny paid to fundamental questions of human rights and medical ethics, which are still highly relevant for today’s medicine and morality. The article focuses on the development of medical ethics and human rights reflected in the statement of important persons, codes and institutions in the field. (shrink)

During the 1980s, federal regulations transferred significant portions of the responsibility for monitoring the care and use of research animals from animal care programs to Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUCs). After a brief review of the history of the regulation of the use of animals in research preceding and during the 4 decades following World War 11, this article raises 4 problems associated with the role IACUCs currently play in monitoring the use of animals in research: (a) (...) lack of expertise, (b) diverted resources, (c) conflict of interest, and (d) restrictions of academic freedom. It is concluded that the care and treatment of animals used in research would be served better and organized more rationally if the day-to-day responsibilities for approving projects and caring for animals were separated more clearly from broader, oversight functions, with the former being assigned to animal care programs and the latter to IACUCs. (shrink)

From his earliest work in The Structure of Behavior, Maurice Merleau-Ponty abrogates accounts of organic form that posit the organism as either passively ordered by the environment which precedes it, or as actively constituting its environment. I argue that Merleau-Ponty first develops what I term a genetic concept of form, in which the organism-environment relationship unfolds developmentally. This account of genetic form, however, requires a further concept of generative form to overcome the conceptual distinction between constituting activity and constituted passivity. (...) I contend that rather than pre-existing its own development ideally, in a genetic or developmental blueprint, or environmentally, in given causes, that instead form emerges expressively and dynamically. To develop the concept of generative form I turn to Merleau-Ponty’s lecture courses Institution and Nature, while drawing from examples in animal motorperceptual development and inter-bodily communication. In doing so, I contend that this idea of generativity requires for us to think of organisms as passive, though not as passively constituted by a nature in-itself, but rather as passively instituted by a natural sense that orients the possibilities of organic development without itself existing asan already realized form of life. I argue that the notion of generative form offers an approach to thinking of species differences not as essential differences in kind, but as elaborations of a natural generativity that precedes and grounds individual animate forms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DHARMA AND DESTRUCTION: BUDDHIST INSTITUTIONS AND VIOLENCE Christopher Ives Stonehill College Photographs ofgentle monks in saffron, the cottageindustry ofbooks on mindfulness, and the Dalai Lama's response to the Chinese invasion of Tibet have all helped portray Buddhism as the "religion of nonviolence." This representation ofBuddhism finds support in Buddhist texts, doctrines, and ritual practices, which often advocate ahimsa, nonharming or non-violence. The historical record, however, belies the portrayal of (...) Buddhism as a "religion of nonviolence." By reinterpreting early doctrines of ahimsa, Buddhist thinkers have legitimated violence in particular situations, practitioners have committed acts of violence, and Buddhist institutions have lent support to other institutions—social, political, and governmental —engaged in violence. In this paper I will examine Buddhist perpetration andjustifications ofviolence,1 with particularfocus on Japan, arguing that, historically, Buddhists' desire for institutional security has taken precedence over total rejection of violence. 1 I have restricted my discussion to the killing of other human beings. I do not consider suicide andthe killing ofnon-human animals. For a discussion ofBuddhism, (self-)sacrifice, and suicide in relation to Girard's theory, see Charles D. Orzech, '"Provoked Suicide' and the Victim's Behavior." 152Christopher Ives Non-violence The doctrine of ahimsa figures prominently in early and Theravadan Buddhism. The first ofthe five moral precepts (panca silani) in Buddhism is ahimsa, and in the Dhammapada the historical Buddha purportedly states, All are afraid of the rod. Of death all are afraid. Having made oneself the example, One should neither slay nor cause to slay. (Ross 202) The Buddhaalso sketches the consequences ofhurting orharming (himsa): Who with a rod does hurt Beings who desire ease [of nibbana], While himself looking for ease— He, having departed, ease does not get. Theravadan monastic codes and practices, such as the uposatha biweekly confession of moral transgressions and recitation of the 227 rules in the Patimokkha (Skt. Pratimoksa), are closely tiedto ahimsa. One ofthe Patimokkha's four "offenses of defeat" (parajika dharmas), for which the punishment is immediate expulsion of the monk or nun from the order, is killing another human being (Prebish 11). Mahayana texts continue this exhortation against violence. For example, in the Dasabhimika-sutra we read that a Buddhist "must not hate any being and cannot kill a living creature even in thought."2 Early Buddhist texts include depictions ofthe ideal Buddhist king, the cakravartin-raja or "monarch who turns the wheel [of the Dharma],"3 as an exemplar of nonviolence. Contemporary Buddhist activist Sulak Sivaraksa expresses it, this king is a "an ideal ruler, a world-conquering monarch, who subdued the earth through righteousness rather than war" (Sulak 129), and whose ten main duties include striving for peace and ruling with nonviolent benevolence (129). For well over 2000 years 2 Cited in Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine, p. 199; quoted by Kraft, 5. In much ofthe first section of this paper I am indebted to Ken Kraft's introduction to his volume. 3 The metaphor ofturning the wheel refers to the historical Buddha's teaching ofthe Dharma and the later propagation of it by others. Dharma and Deconstruction153 Buddhists have lifted up Indian king Ashoka (c. 272-236) as an instantiation of this ideal. The early Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa should not, however, be construed as compassionate altruism. Luis Gómez and other scholars have delineated how ahimsa at first did not express some sort of underlying altruistic concern for the well-being of others. Vegetarianism and other ways of avoiding himsa, harming or violence, derived from ancient Indian ritual taboos againstblood and otherbodily liquids (Gómez 36). Buddhists ethicized and psychologized earlier notions of physical pollution, and advocated abstention fromviolenceprimarily as ameans ofself-cultivation, as a way to keep the mind pure, like an unstained cloth (36). (Scholars have even argued that the positive expression oíahimsa, the practice ofdirecting metta (loving-kindness) to others, originally had as much or more to do with the spiritual benefits accrued by the person directing the metta as it did with the well-being of the person receiving it. Only later was ahimsa furtherreinterpreted as positive regard forothers, as seen in the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Violence in Buddhist History At numerous times over... (shrink)

In this article, I will explore how the underlying research values of ‘openness’ and ‘mutual responsiveness’, which are central to open science practices, can be integrated into a new ethos of science. Firstly, I will revisit Robert Merton's early contribution to this issue, examining whether the ethos of science should be understood as a set of norms for scientists to practice ‘good’ science or as a set of research values as a functional requirement of the scientific system to produce knowledge, (...) irrespective of individual adherence to these norms. Secondly, I will analyse the recent codification of scientific practice in terms of ‘scientific integrity’, a framework that Merton did not pursue. Based on this analysis, and illustrated on the case of COVID-19 as a case in which the institution of science was challenged to deliver urgently on societal desirable outcomes, I will argue that promoting open science and its core norms of collaboration and openness requires broader governance of the institution of science in its relationship with society at large, rather than relying solely on self-governance within the scientific community through a new ethos of science. This conclusion has implications for re-evaluating research assessments, suggesting that the evaluation of the scientific system should take precedence over evaluating individual researchers, and that incentives should be provided to encourage specific research behaviour rather than solely focusing on individual research outputs. This article is followed up by Commentaries of Carl Mitcham, Alfred Nordmann, Sabina Leonelli, Lukas Fuchs, Monica Edwards-Schachter. (shrink)

Until recently, Australia had little installed wind capacity, although there had been many investigations into its potential during the preceding decades. Formerly, state-owned monopoly utilities showed only token interest in wind power and could dictate the terms of energy debates. This situation changed in the late 1990s: Installed wind capacity began growing rapidly following the introduction of supportive renewable energy policies and the restructuring of the electricity industry. However, wind farms still provide only 1% of Australia's electricity, the future of (...) supportive policies is uncertain, and industry momentum is yet to become self-sustaining. Wind power, the authors argue, faces significant technological and institutional barriers, which need to be overcome if wind power is to play a significant role in Australia's electricity supply. The current window of opportunity is providing—for the first time—a significant space in which these barriers can be better understood and addressed and the requirements for wind power institutionally embedded. (shrink)

It is important that from a wider scientific perspective the basics of the conceptual comprehension of impeachment entrenched in the 1992 Lithuanian Constitution be related not only to (a) the nine explicit provisions whereby impeachment relations are regulated directly (Item 5 of Article 63, Article 74, Paragraph 2 of Article 86, Item 5 of Article 88, the first sentence of Paragraph 1 of Article 89, Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105, Paragraph 3 of Article 107, Item 5 of (...) Article 108, Article 116), but also to (b) the general constitutional principles (especially, the principle of protection of the rights and freedoms of a person), as well as to (c) the precedents of preparation, arrangement, suspension or continuation of impeachment proceedings (in cases of A. Butkevičius, R. Paksas or L. Karalius) and to (d) comparative international aspects, which are perceived not only in the US Constitution, but also in the European Convention on Human Rights which is no longer compatible (and clashing as regards the issue of consequences of impeachment) with the former. According to the European Court of Human Rights (judgment of 6 January 2011 in the case Paksas v. Lithuania), the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits irreversible (termless) limitation (grounded on impeachment) of the passive electoral right to be a Member of Parliament. It is also important to perceive (three) abstract procedural grounds of application of this institute to a certain official—a gross violation of the Constitution, breach of the oath and in case it transpires that a crime has been committed (Article 74 of the Constitution), and the factual (“concrete actions”—see Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105) grounds qualified according to the former, while due to the factual grounds the “impeachment case” is instituted. The notion “impeachment case” used in Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105 of the Constitution deserves special scientific attention. This notion indirectly means that: (a) prior to the application to the Constitutional Court by the Seimas, an impeachment case is (must be) instituted, which in itself means that impeachment and initiation and consideration thereof are distinguished by peculiarity in substantive procedure; (b) the Constitutional Court neither institutes this case nor “takes it over” (considers it), but in “its own” case of constitutional justice verifies those factual and procedural grounds, which are necessary in “the other” (impeachment) case instituted in the Seimas. The essence of the institute of impeachment cannot be properly perceived in the constitutional notions of “impeachment”, “case”, “proceedings“, if these notions are assessed only in the explicit provisions of Article 74 of the Constitution, i.e. they are not related to the logic of substantive and procedural arrangement and “intertwining” of the three provisions of the Constitution (Article 74, Item 4 of Paragraph 3 of Article 105 and Paragraph 3 of Article 107) as well as to the purpose of these provisions. On the grounds of the said three provisions of the Constitution, it is possible to assume that the essence of the institute of impeachment lies in a specific official accusation (of violations of special law) against the officials who have acquired (or who hold) certain constitutional powers and of bringing such officials to constitutional liability under the procedure for specific parliamentary impeachment proceedings and constitutional justice proceedings, i.e. deprivation (discontinuation) of constitutional powers under multi-level procedure for conditionally dual proceedings, in which the parliamentary proceedings and the constitutional justice proceedings are inter-connected and supplementeach other. (shrink)

Radical “Westernizing” transformations in extra-European countries, from Peter I’s Russia to Meiji Japan, are traditionally presented as a response to pressures from the more militarily and technologically advanced European powers. This corresponds to the general tendency to view war as the driving force behind early modern state-building. However, the question remains: how exactly did such transformations happen, and what explains their timing? Why did some countries, such as Russia, embark on radical institutional restructuring that threatened large sections of the (...) traditional military classes in the absence of any obvious existential threat, while in others even clear and immediate dangers failed to ignite a full-scale “Westernization”? This article seeks to complicate the “bellicist” narrative of “Westernizing” transformations and to generalize about the role of elite conflict in propelling “self-strengthening” reforms. It argues that “Westernizations” in extra-European polities were enabled by breakdown of domestic political balance and driven by “challengers” emerging in the course of these conflicts, as they strove to maximize their power. Factional struggles accompanying “Westernizations” are interpreted here not as a conservative reaction against reforms, but as a process that preceded and enabled institutional restructuring. (shrink)

Organisational culture is assumed to be a key factor in large-scale and avoidable institutional failures. Whilst models such as “ethical culture” and “safety culture” have been used to explain such failures, minimal research has investigated their ability to do so, and a single and unified model of the role of culture in institutional failures is lacking. To address this, we systematically identified case study articles investigating the relationship between culture and institutional failures relating to ethics and risk (...) management. A content analysis of the cultural factors leading to failures found 23 common factors and a common sequential pattern. First, culture is described as causing practices that develop into institutional failure. Second, and usually sequentially related to causal culture, culture is also used to describe the problems of correction: how people, in most cases, had the opportunity to correct a problem and avert failure, but did not take appropriate action. It was established that most of the cultural factors identified in the case studies were consistent with survey-based models of safety culture and ethical culture. Failures of safety and ethics also largely involve the same causal and corrective factors of culture, although some aspects of culture more frequently precede certain outcome types. We propose that the distinction between causal and corrective culture can form the basis of a unified and generalisable model of organisational failure. (shrink)

ArgumentRevising the diffusionist view of current scholarship on the Pasteur Institutes in China, this paper demonstrates the ways in which local networks and circumstances informed the circulation and construction of knowledge and practices relating to smallpox prophylaxis in the Southwest of China during the early twentieth century. I argue that the Pasteur Institute of Chengdu did not operate in a natural continuity with the preceding local French medical institutions, but rather presented an intentional break from them. This Institute, as the (...) first established by the French in China, strove for political and administrative independence both from the Chinese authority and from the Catholic Church. Yet, its operation realized political independence only partially. The founding of this Institute was also an attempt to satisfy the medical demand for local vaccine production. However, even though the Institute succeeded at producing the Jennerian vaccine locally, its production needed to accommodate local conditions pertaining to the climate, vaccine strains, and animals. Furthermore, vaccination had to conform to Chinese variolation, including its social and medical practices, in order to achieve the collaboration of local Chinese traditional practitioners with French colonial physicians, who were Pastorian-trained and worked at the Pasteur Institute of Chengdu. Thus the nature of the Pastorian work in Chengdu was not an imposition of foreign standards and practices, but rather a mutual compromise and collaboration between the French and the Chinese. (shrink)

This concluding comment draws upon the common themes articulated by the preceding contributors about how Sociology of Religion and Religious Studies can influence each other, as well as considering some of the obstacles to that. It concludes with some intellectual suggestions for furthering some of our common interests.

This paper seeks to provide a broad overview of the historical, contemporary, and future roles of the rural social sciences. This overview is preceded by a brief elaboration of a model of the social, political, and economic structure of experiment station research organizations which is helpful in identifying the particular types of agricultural and social sciences research that have tended to be conducted in land-grant institutions. Agricultural economics and rural sociology are given particular emphasis in the next section of the (...) paper which discusses the history and current state of the rural social sciences as disciplines. The prospective roles of five “nontraditional” rural social sciences—history, anthropology, political science, geography, and philosophy—in land-grant research programs are also discussed. The final sections of the paper assess major problems in, and recommended solutions for bolstering, the role of the social sciences in the land-grant system. (shrink)

As literally every East European nation struggles to reformits agricultural sector, land reform in its many forms figures preeminently in strategic thinking on the problem. Estonia's historic program, instituted during the first republican period, was a highly successful reform from many perspectives. With political as well as economic goals, the reform had an important social dimension as well in that it reinvigorated entire rural regions and established a vital family farming system. The land reform's achievements owe as much to the (...) social and human infrastructure created in Estonia as it did to changes in land tenure, land assembly, and land use. This may be one of its most important lessons for those attempting to craft a new agricultural structure for this and other nations in the region. (shrink)

El presente ensayo justifica históricamente la elección de un sitio que alguna vez se conoció como "Barranca blanca", como el lugar donde la Universidad Adventista del Plata (UAP) levan-tará un monumento conmemorativo. Allí en casa de Reinhardt Hetze y su familia se realizó la primera actividad misi..

Humility holds a modest but important place among the judicial virtues. But in spite of its growing popularity, it does not yet have a place on the ‘central judicial virtues’ lists. This paper provides an argument that judicial humility, especially institutional judicial humility, should be considered a necessary judicial virtue at least in common-law jurisdictions. This is because it is a necessary ingredient in precedent-based decisions that are fully justified from the point of view of the law and of (...) political morality. Further, while it is sufficient that individual judges make decisions that a humble judge would have made, the judicial community must in fact be humble in order to produce fully justified common-law decisions – humility is therefore necessary as a community-virtue. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that historical boundary precedents play a central role in the outbreak, character, and long-term consequences of territorial disputes. The institutional theory of borders holds promise in explaining why leaders find old borders to be attractive as new borders. However, the mechanisms that link historical precedents to territorial claims and their consequences are not fully specified in the extant literature. I argue that there are three key arguments that can explain why boundary precedents are (...) associated with subsequent disputes: ease of justification, perpetual conflict over territories of particular value, and persistent coordination around old borders. I argue that the coordination mechanism is essential to understanding the connections between historical boundary precedents and territorial disputes. (shrink)

The preceding chapter listed the measures Ch'in Shih-huang took to consolidate the unification. Before all this, the state of Ch'in, through Shang Yang's reforms, had eliminated the hereditary privileges of the aristocracy, dealt a severe blow to the power of the slave-owning aristocracy, instituted the system of landownership by the landlords, established the system of commanderies, unified weights and measures, and carried out the policy of "emphasizing agriculture and restricting commerce," so as to enable the landlord economy to achieve greater (...) expansion in the state of Ch'in. Now Ch'in Shih-huang went a step further to propagate Shang Yang's Legalist policies, liquidated the aristocracy in the six states to the east, abolished the system of installing hereditary nobles to rule their domains throughout the country, and universally implemented the system of commanderies and prefectures. He also abolished the old aristocratic political structures maintained by the six states, established a centralized feudal system of dictatorship, and thus dealt a blow to the landownership system of the remnant slave-owning aristocracy. By means of laws and regulations, he established throughout the country the system of landownership by landlords and continued to adhere to the policy of "emphasizing agriculture and restricting commerce," promoted the development of the landlord economy, abolished the divergent laws and regulations of the six states, and put into effect throughout the country new laws and regulations representing the interests of the newly rising landlord class. He also standardized weights and measures, unified the written language, and fixed the length of axles of all carts. Generally speaking, during the first stage of the establishment of a unified, centralized feudal state, Ch'in Shih-huang, as the general representative of the newly rising landlord class, carried out a series of measures that "emphasized the present while slighting the past" and initiated a series of important political, economic, and cultural reforms. The "present" he "emphasized" was the newly rising landlord class, and the "past" he "slighted" was the declining old aristocracy. As a result, the Ch'in dynasty was able to exert a definite stimulating influence in the process of monumental historical transformation, to put an end to the prolonged period of division and rivalry among the feudal states, to unify our great multinational country, and to set up the largest centralized feudal state up to that time. To be sure, the Ch'in dynasty was after all a political regime of the landlord class. It was a machine of the landlord class to exploit and oppress the peasant masses. This is something we must recognize. (shrink)

The place of the written Constitution in our constitutional practice is defined secondarily, from outside the text, not commanded by the text. Like moral readers of our constitutional practice, originalists of all stripes have to argue from outside the text. This makes the new originalist turn to the theory of language come too early; the place of such theory is necessarily subordinate to a convincing moral account of our practice as a whole. To lament the existence of constitutional provisions that (...) do not provide legible descriptions of encompassing states of affairs —as the new originalists implicitly do— is to badly misunderstand a morally salient element of our constitutional practice. The non-encompassing provisions of the Constitution are not incomplete, and hence failed instructions; rather they are complete, successful delegations of authority to constitutionally responsible officials. A delegatory constitutional instruction hands off responsibility and authority; in order to do that, it must be non-encompassing. This is a virtue, not a liability of the written Constitution. The purpose of our constitutional practice is justice-seeking. It aims at better aligning our institutions, policies, laws and the political community as a whole, with the requirements of justice. It aims, that is, at our making moral progress as a political community. Delegations of constitutional authority and responsibility invite the partnership of contemporary constitutional actors, in the justice-seeking enterprise, including and especially courts. Our constitutional courts are common law courts; they are, that is, reason-giving and precedent- drawn, features that make them worthy partners in that enterprise. (shrink)

The current economic and preceding financial crises seem to provide evidence in favour of the self-destruction thesis of capitalism. Responses to the crisis have been polarised. Some suggest that regulatory changes are all that is needed. Others suggest the need to change the economic system by developing a new global economic ethic. The first is too limited, the second too utopian. This article suggests that a MacIntyrean virtue ethics approach provides both a more convincing diagnosis of the problem and leads (...) to a more workable prescription. First, we need to understand the internal contradictions of the tradition that has developed of how to ‘do’ business. Then we need the virtues to be exercised inside practices and institutions. But virtue itself needs to be institutionalised; we need an appropriate governance of virtue in organizations. Even though governance is usually taken to ‘crowd out’ virtue, this article proposes an approach to governance that ‘crowds in’ virtue. (shrink)

In order to establish and outline the current state of Ukrainian philosophy of education as a scientific philosophical direction and at the same time a social institutional system that has emerged in Ukraine during the last three decades, a “controversial” approach is used, a method of studying controversies or disputed points, contradictions and tensions between representations and discourses regarding education A working definition of controversy is formulated as an intermediate category that contributes to overcoming gaps between the object of (...) research and the research position in a situation of contradiction and tension between representations and discourses around a certain object, which is expressed in open or hidden debates, disputes, etc. and which characterized by zones of uncertainty regarding the “trajectory“ of this object. An attempt is made to catalog the controversies of the philosophy of education. The controversies of the hypostases of the philosophy of education, reforms of Ukrainian education are considered; interaction between education and philosophy of education in the system of “dirty systems”; toxic spaces in education and the action of the Lucifer effect (F. Zimbardo) in them as the metamorphosis of good into evil. The precedent of the loss of reputation by a group of scientists representing the field of philosophy of education is discussed. The progress of the Ukrainian philosophy of education is noted and its tasks are outlined in the research of social relations in education, the sphere of relations between subjects of education, toxic spaces in education. The “controversial” approach provides an opportunity to bring the philosophy of education closer to the subjects of education, involving them in the study of tensions between discourses and representations that they create and formulate. (shrink)

Individual questions of the institutional reforms of the representative-democratic parliamentary system, such as issues of electoral law, party law, and parliamentary law, are frequently discussed. But all these reflections - and this is the principal thesis of this article - must eventually remain without success, if they do not address the preceding basic problem concerning the democratically indispensable conditions of the mental constitution of the active citizen, the „civis“. There, a key role, consciously experienced like a paradox, falls upon (...) the renunciation of the claim to absolute truth of one’s own political convictions with regard to equally „relative-absolute“ claims for validity of others. On this base the psychological presuppositions of a modern pluralistic democracy are discussed, which thereupon are to be institutionalized: e. g. the capacity to compromise, the obligation of state neutrality in religious matters, the renunciation of hate speech, the rejection of „denial of reality“, and of allegedly „finalizing“ ideologies of history. (shrink)

Responding to the preceding four articles, this piece presents a theologically-informed ‘institutionalist’ perspective on the debate within political liberalism over religion and public reason. Institutionalism calls for greater attention to the normative purpose and structural design of political institutions in order better to frame what political deliberation in a liberal democracy should look like. Eschewing any ‘idealization’ of citizens, and favouring an ‘argumentative’ account of democratic deliberation, it explores what public reasoning should consist in when viewed as an empirical practice (...) occurring within actual political institutions. Five features of my account of institutionalism are outlined, followed by three implications of that account for the religion and public reason debate. (shrink)

As the economy has grown increasingly financialized, the relationship between financial innovation and instability has attracted more attention. Previous research finds that the proliferation of complex financial innovations, like asset securitization and new financial derivatives, helped to erode the market governance arrangements that kept excessive bank risk-taking in check, inviting instability. This article presents an alternative way of understanding how financial innovations and market governance arrangements combine to shape instability. Market governance arrangements also shape how financial firmsreceiveinnovations, leading to greater (...) or lesser instability at particular times and places. I illustrate this argument by tracing the effects of changing corporate governance arrangements at large US banks in the 1990s and 2000s. Like non-financial firms in the preceding decade, banks adopted reforms associated with the shareholder value model of corporate governance. These changes to internal bank governance arrangements affected the agendas of bank executives in ways that encouraged expanded use of securitization and derivatives. Drawing from this case, I argue that a full understanding of instability in the financialized era requires closer attention to the (institutionally-structured) interests of financial innovationusers—not just to features of financial innovations themselves. (shrink)

Many ethnographic researchers have raised concerns over the potential impacts that the institutionalization of ethics review boards can have on social science research, especially within healthcare settings. However, few articles to-date have documented how these norms and practices play out in actuality. This paper, therefore, uses autoethnography to provide an account of three ethical challenges that arose during my process of seeking ethics approval through institutional review boards to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in a healthcare setting. In doing so, I (...) demonstrate how bureaucratic accountability took precedence over my research expertise, making the research that I initially set out to do inaccessible, questionable, and ‘unethical’, despite being carried out in accordance with the current standards governing research involving human participants and their data. I conclude with ways to move beyond this existing ethics structure towards a more collaborative approach between ethics boards, researchers, and research participants grounded within the realities of the field. (shrink)

There is a phenomenology of the body worked out implicitly in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in which the full implications of a rejection of a dualistic conception of self and body are articulated. A concept of body can be derived from Hegel's analysis of life, according to which the body is the phusis, hexis and logos of the self, that is, it is the qualitatively determinate conditions--hexis--of un-self-conscious comportment to the world in and by which a situation is constituted which (...) allows immediate satisfaction for the self-conscious will--phusis--and which expresses the pre-reflective commitments of the self--logos. This is a dynamic concept, and its dialectic is one side of the dialectic of selfhood which is the explicit theme of the Phenomenology of Spirit. In its dialectic, the body develops through stages in which each one of these moments in turn takes precedence. The three stages are the natural body, the institutional body, and the self-communicative body. ;Chapters 1 and 2 develop the adequate concept of self-conscious selfhood by analyzing, respectively, Chapter IV, Section B, "Freedom of Self-Consciousness," and Chapter V, "Reason." Chapter 3 develops the concept of body in relation to self-consciousness based on an analysis of the sections of Chapter IV, "Self-Consciousness" which deal with "Desire," "Life" and "Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness," and considers natural embodiment. Chapter 4 analyzes Chapter VI, "Spirit," to develop the notion of institutional embodiment. Chapter 5 analyzes Chapter VIII, "Absolute Knowing," to develop the concept of self-communicative embodiment. ;The conclusion of the Hegelian phenomenology of the body is that self-conscious selfhood can only be adequately embodied by a situation in which the totality of its otherness constitutes a living system of signs, the very life of which is the process of coming to self-understanding as such a system. The dialectic of body is the process of the body's overcoming of its own naturalness, and the bringing of itself to self-consciousness as mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whiteness and the General WillDiversity Work as Willful WorkSara AhmedIn this essay I explore whiteness in relation to the general will. My starting point is that the idea of “the general will” offers us a vocabulary for thinking through the materiality of race. In his keynote address to the 40th Annual Philosophy Symposium in 2010, Charles Mills argues that race is material: it becomes part of the living human (...) body. Mills draws on recent theories of whiteness as habit, including the work of Linda Alcoff (2006) and Shannon Sullivan (2006). Quoting from Sullivan, he suggests that whiteness is in “the nose that smells, the back, neck and other muscles that imperceptibly tighten with anxiety, and the eyes that see some but not all physical differences as significant” (Sullivan 2006, 188). Whiteness is embodied; it is in bodily matter as well as affecting how bodies matter. Mills then suggests that the materiality of whiteness is its “resistance to will.” One definition of materiality could be this: resistance to will.This essay takes up the theme of the materiality of race by thinking of whiteness in relation to the will. There are clearly risks in such an undertaking: after all, the idea of whiteness as willed might seem to imply that whiteness is volitional: and can be simply “willed away.”1 I want to suggest that if whiteness is resistant to will, as that which cannot be simply willed away, then whiteness can also be understood as willed: in other words, what cannot be willed away is a willing way. Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as “willed human work,” which as a definition has yet to be rigorously understood, could be considered an important precedent to my argument (1978, 140). The suggestion is not [End Page 1] simply that the Orient is brought into existence, or made to exist over time, but that the very labor of creating the Orient, the land of the stranger, the land far away, is what establishes a direction. Once the Orient has come to exist, there is a willing of its existence; to keep going that way is to keep that way going. Willed work is work that in willing that way creates a way that can be willed. It is not as the old English cliché says—where there’s a will there’s a way—but rather to will is to way. I think it is useful to think of whiteness in this way, as a willing way, which is of course only one way of thinking about whiteness.I pose the generality of the will as a way of reflecting on “institutional whiteness.” Whiteness becomes “the material” of an institutional body, whether that body is the nation, an organization, a neighborhood, or a street. We can consider an institution as a body with parts: it too has noses, mouths, muscles that register anxiety, as well as ears and eyes. Just think of how Neighborhood Watch, as a national or even global technology, uses the injunction that citizens should become the “eyes and ears of the police.” A good citizen is the one who accepts this injunction: the one who is willing to watch out for strangers, those who are loitering, who seem suspicious, or out of place. Institutions have “detection systems”: they have parts that register the approach of strangers. A collective body in registering those who are out of place, both creates strangers and establishes a direction toward them, as those who threaten the place of the “in place,” as those who generate anxiety.A key event in my own life was of becoming a stranger in a white neighborhood in Adelaide, Australia, in a place I called home. I was fourteen years old. I was stopped by two policemen in a car who asked me, “Are you Aboriginal?” It turned out that there had been some burglaries in the area. It was an extremely hostile address, and it was an unsettling experience at the time. It was an experience of being made into a stranger, the one who is recognized as “out of place,” as the one who does not belong, whose proximity is registered... (shrink)

IRBs in action -- Everyone's an expert? Warrants for expertise -- Local precedents -- Documents and deliberations: an anticipatory perspective -- Setting IRBs in motion in Cold War America -- An ethics of place -- The many forms of consent -- Deflecting responsibility -- Conclusion: the making of ethical research.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Politics Is a Mushroom: Worldly Sources of Rule and Exception in Carl Schmitt and Walter BenjaminKam Shapiro (bio)Life is not a mushroom growing out of death.—Carl Schmitt, The Visibility of the ChurchTo isolate death from life, not leaving the one intimately woven in the other, and each one entering into the other’s midst—this is what one must never do.—Jean-Luc Nancy, L’intrus1Carl Schmitt’s theory of the exception was bound up (...) with a thoroughgoing critique of philosophies of immanence, materialism, and “atheism,” which he treated as interchangeable. In his early writings, he adopted the Christian perspective according to which postlapsarian nature cannot by itself yield a juridical order, or in his poetic phrase, “life is not a mushroom growing out of death.” Yet—in accord with Catholic doctrine—he also found sources of life, or law, in this world. While he repudiated theories of collective self-legislation, he embraced a popular sovereign empowered to impose form on a chaotic society. In Political Theology (1922), he compared the form-giving power of the sovereign to an act of divine intervention. Law, he argued, can only function in a lawful or “normal” situation that precedes formalization, and the sovereign “produces and guarantees the situation in its totality” [13]. In The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923) Schmitt retained his theological terms: “A scientific study of democracy must begin with a particular aspect that I have called political theology” [32]. In the modern age, democratic constituent power (pouvoir constituant) replaces the will of God as the transcendent source of a substantial order, namely democratic homogeneity. Democratic will-formation thereby becomes an act prior to its subject, or as Schmitt wrote, “[...] only political power, which should come from the people’s will, can form the people’s will in the first place” [Crisis 28]. A variety of democratic theorists dwell on the paradoxical character of democratic sovereignty, sometimes tracing it back to Rousseau’s well-known formulations [see esp. Connolly and Honig]. They highlight the gap between a transcendent (ideal or fictive) will in whose name political power acts, and the bounded, material consensus it forms, ostensibly rendering the latter vulnerable to challenge. As I argue, however, a closer look at Rousseau’s discussion of democratic founding in On the Social Contract reveals instead a dynamic relay between dispersed substantial or immanent sources of affiliation, on the one hand, and various agents and techniques of political power that draw on and combine them in a collective will, on the other, or what I call the virtual and the virtuosic.2 After briefly exploring this dynamic in Rousseau’s [End Page 121] On the Social Contract, I will highlight similar dynamics at work in Schmitt’s Weimar writings, examining three instances: the complexio oppositorum (1923), national myth (1923), and the polemical opposition of friend and enemy (1927), focusing especially on the first. Contrary to familiar readings of Schmitt’s metaphysical “exceptionalism,” I argue that for Schmitt, as for Rousseau, political power does not create a normative order from a vacuum, and the apparent transcendence of sovereign authority has a variety of worldly sources.3 Finally, I consider what I call “democratic virtuosity,” or virtuosity from below, focusing on Walter Benjamin’s repudiation of sovereign acts of lawmaking or law preserving in favor of ongoing collective habit-formation. As I argue, Benjamin returns spiritual force to the material world not only to shatter human authorities, but also to democratize creation.Rousseau—Anticipating the PeopleIn the Social Contract, Rousseau formulated the paradox of democratic founding to which so many, including Schmitt, would return. “In order for an emerging people to appreciate the healthy maxims of politics, and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which should be the result of the institution, would have to preside over the founding of the institution itself; and men would have to be prior to laws what they ought to become by means of laws” [Rousseau 69]. As Rousseau argues, a constitution can form a general will only if it commands the loyalty of the people, that is, if there is... (shrink)

We live in a world of technical systems, designed in accordance with technical disciplines and operated by a personnel trained in those disciplines. This is a unique form of social organization without historical precedent. It overshadows traditional democratic institutions and largely determines our way of life. Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason reconstructs the idea of democracy for this brave new world. The author draws on the tradition of radical social criticism represented by Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School as (...) well as contemporary Science and Technology Studies. The social critics recognized the role of instrumental rationality in modern societies, but they did not analyze any actual technologies in detail, nor did they develop a convincing theory of democratic resistance to the new forms of domination by rational systems. STS has developed methods of analysis for a fine-grained study of technology. Technosystem brings these methods to bear on the resistances emerging in the world described by the radical social critics of the Frankfurt School.--. (shrink)

The Marxian visions of the post-capitalist future evolved with significant changes over three decades. From the outset Marx and Engels divided the future into stages, economically and philosophically, a final communist or socialist stage, and a transitional stage or stages preceding it. The final stage remained largely constant throughout, the actualization of the ideal of Feuerbach's anthropological philosophy, supplemented by Fourier's ideas for the abolition of the division of labor and its transformation into pleasurable activity. The original institutional conception (...) was pastoral, adopted from Owen's communal plans and materialistic determinism, with socialized means of production and comprehensive communal control of social and economic life. They substituted for Owen's equal labor-time exchange principle Cabet's principle of from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, and estimated the duration of the transition at one to two years. Interpreting history according to Hegel's dialectic they conceived this future as the inevitable result of a revolution dialectically effecting the complete rehumanization of a totally dehumanized proletariat, whose consciousness accomplishes the revolution and recovers its theretofore alienated nature. ;With the subsequent formulation of the theory of historical materialism and its conception of all history as class conflict their published descriptions of the final stage became brief and vague and it was relegated to an increasingly remote future, based on varying material and social requirements which would transform human nature sometime during these increasingly lengthy transitional stages. To preserve the material accomplishments of capitalism they substituted state centralization for Owen's communalism, but began to misrepresent this for tactical political reasons, defining the state and classes solely in terms of property, state expropriation thereby abolishing the state. Retaining Cabet's principle for the final stage, they formulated a succession of contradictory principles of production and distribution within a varying number of transitional stages. These principles ranged from the equal exchange of labor time, through unequal distribution for equal labor time based on results, and finally to equal distribution for unequal labor time and results. The most egalitarian plans were the most widely publicized, the least egalitarian restricted in circulation. (shrink)

This article has two purposes. First, it aims to present a detailed analysis of the argument of “recognition” or even of the “fight for recognition”, which Hegel uses in his fragments from Jena treating of the system of philosophy, especially of the philosophy of spirit. It will be necessary to determine precedently by means of an exact interpretation the content of that expressions, in order to criticize and to compare, his original significance in Hegel with the theoretical application made by (...) Honneth. The special aim hereby is to correct and to explain the function of the “fight for recognition”, even in its sharpening significance as a “fight for life and death”, with relation to the genesis of the state of right. Second, the figure of “recognition” is related to Hegel’s Philosophy of right in the version of 1820. In this work, recognition participates in the theory of “institutions” which is analyzed by Honneth as well. Apart from the merits gained through the endeavour to introduce a classic philosophical theory into a conception of justice in society, we feel obliged to state an error in Honneth‘s interpretation in so far as he understands an institution as a simple social community of communication. For that reason, a conclusion based on a critical commentary can only include a negative recommendation, that means, not to follow those traces of interpretation but rather to defend and to consult the texts originally composed by Hegel. (shrink)

The article is a continuation of a paper published in “Etyka”, vol. 21, Concepts of Man in the Náhuatlan Culture and contains an overview of the fundamental types of education provided by the Aztecs, with special emphasis on moral ideals. The investigation of Indian education not only furthers historical knowledge but also plays a role in the search of the origins of the specific religious, moral and behavioural expression of contemporary Mexico, due to the fact that some elements of the (...) education preceding the Spanish conquest became an integral part of the culture of that country. The analysis to which this article bears a testimony permits the author to say that before the conquest, the Aztecs had an integral educational system, an ideal to be put into practice, adequate institutions, competent teachers, didactic material elaborated by specialists. Skill formation practised at all levels of education, was complemented by moral instruction and intellectual, religious and aesthetic guidance. The norms inculcated through training had been worked out through the ages in the náhuatl tribes and served to protect the principal values of the family and social life. They had the function of elementary moral rules and emerged from the conditions of the perennial culture of Mexican Indians. Aside from setting models of behaviour and values, the norms that the author finds in all forms of education display some differentiation which is a reflection of the multi-layered, complex structure of that culture. It embraced two different lifestyles and two ideals. Beneath the dominant religious and military habits of the Aztecs survived the old morality of the Toltecs, preserved most conspicuously in the traditional norms of family life. It has also been expressed in the poetry of the 16th and early 17th centuries. (shrink)

Labor market deregulation has been at the core of the changes in the political economy during the last decades. The pervasive neoliberal wisdom has depoliticized the nature and effects of this process, a bias that has also affected the scholarship, which often overlooks its power dimension. This article aims to explore the role of power in the labor market to offer some theoretical insights for empirical research and public debate. Departing from the worker–employer “contested exchange” at the workplace, the article (...) pivots on the concept of “decommodification” to grasp the institutional arrangements that shape this relationship at the institutional level of power. Furthermore, the article addresses the symbolic dimension of power and how epistemic reflexivity enables us to examine whether social research ideologically depicts or conceals the role of power in the study of labor relations, as illustrated by two subjects in vogue: the insiders–outsiders divide and the activation policy. The article concludes with a discussion of the normative implications of the preceding argument about freedom as nondomination for workers. (shrink)

In the Thirties, European personalism was an inspirational philosophical movement, with its birthplace in France, but with proponents and sympathizers in many other countries as well. Following the Second World War, Christian-Democratic politicians translated personalistic ideas into a political doctrine. Sometimes they still refer to personalism, but most often this reference is little more than a nostalgic salute. In the mainstream of Anglo-Saxon political philosophy, there are practically no references to personalistic philosophers. Is personalism exhausted as a philosophy or political (...) ideology? Yes and no. Paul Ricoeur, writing in Esprit , summed up the situation like this: “personalism is dead”, but he was careful to mention a “return of the person”. Indeed, no tradition or movement can simply perpetuate itself. It must, in order to continue making history, always abolish itself as a `system' so as to make room for the unsaid and the unthought in its tradition, an idea that Mounier also fervently believed in.To better situate the current discussion of personalism, however, it is necessary to look back to the original characteristics of personalism in the Thirties. As a response to the crisis provoked by the economic depression, failing democracy and existential uncertainty, there arose in France a number of `non-conformist movements' who labelled themselves personalistic. They did not constitute a unified movement with a commonly shared theory. It was rather a collection of `personalisms'. The article by the historian Christian Roy about the ecological personalism of Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul sheds interesting light on the multiple origins of French personalism, which is all too easily identified with the work of Maritain and Mounier alone. The work of Jacques Maritain, and the network of writers and artists surrounding him, undoubtedly remains a significant historical reference point when speaking of personalism.Another group was formed around Alexandre Marc who, along with Raymond Aron, Arnaud Dandieu, Daniel-Rops and Denis de Rougemont, kept the journal Ordre Nouveau alive for five years . They elaborated the idea of federalism as a way out of liberalism and totalitarianism. The most important and durable group, however, was formed by the movement and journal Esprit, founded in 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier and George Izard. In order to stress the historical importance of Esprit, we are including here a testimony from 1982, written by Paulette Mounier, the founder's wife, in which she looks back on 50 years of Esprit. After the war, some new and related groups formed, such as Economy and Humanism around Louis-Joseph Lebret. An historical survey of the dissemination of personalistic centres and movements, not only in France but over all of Europe, would be material for a stimulating historical research project. In this issue, there will also be mention of, among others, the Prague personalism of Jan Patocka and Vaclav Havel, the Leuven personalism of Louis Janssens, and the Polish personalism of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and others. But this list is far from exhaustive.What unites these various branches of the personalistic tree? It is a certain conception — or better perhaps: a certain attitude to the human person. Personalists were not seeking in the first instance a new academic theory about the person, but rather a practical philosophy of engagement. In the Thirties, quite a few personalists finished their university studies and chose not for an academic career but for non-conformist, demanding and vulnerable commitments with limited financial means. What motivated them? Primarily a strong sense that the time in which they were living was a turning point, one which was being ignored by the academic world. They interpreted the diverse economic, political and cultural crisis phenomena as symptoms of a more global crisis of civilization which demanded a response through radical change.Hence a certain rhetoric of a `new order', `spiritual revolution', `radical reform' and `rebirth'. But the rhetoric was supported by innovative ideas regarding political federalism, the third way economy and human alienation. The motivation for all this derived from a strong commitment to defend the concrete human person against the arrogance of systems, bureaucracies and ideologies, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of individualism — the reason why some personalists always qualified personalism as `communitarian'.In fact, much of what presents itself as communitarian philosophy today is a retrieval of personalistic themes from the Thirties applied to the current situation, a situation which is also interpreted by communitarians as a global cultural crisis. One should not forget, however, that alongside and sometimes opposed to the communitarian theme with its call to bring people back to their communitarian roots, personalists underscored the priority of metaphysics over politics, a theme that can likewise be found in the writings of personalistic dissidents in Eastern Europe. In the words of Mounier in Qu'est-ce que le personnalisme : “personalism combines faith in a certain human absolute with a progressive historical experience”.To what extent is personalistic thinking still relevant today? Its current relevance will be examined in three ways. In the first section, a number of articles are presented which illustrate the active presence of personalistic thought in the domains of politics and applied ethics. Vaclav Havel sent one of his recent addresses in which he links the theme of human rights with that of a world spirituality. His article is preceded by an introduction by Guido Van Heeswijck, situating Prague personalism.The need for an orientational philosophy of the person is not only manifest today in the political arena. Developments in economics, ecology, health care, the media, technology and in the world of the professions have had an extraordinarily large impact on the human person's lifeworld. The whole area of applied ethics requires a dynamic and orientational concept of the person. The contributions by Paul Schotsmans and Luk Bouckaert are seeking a personalistic point of departure for applied ethics. The more historical article by Christian Roy on ecological personalism has been included in the first section because it can be inspiring for an environmental ethics.The second section is more philosophical. To what extent does the `personalistic' conception of the person put forward in the Thirties still have any relevance today, following the waves of structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism? Paul Ricoeur's article, Approaching the Human Person — originally published in Esprit in 1990 and now translated for the first time — can be seen as a reference text. Ricoeur shows in what sense the concept of the person must be broadened in order to continue functioning. The person as `narrative identity' can only write history through the medium of language and institutions. Starting from very different assumptions, the articles by Louis Janssens & Joseph Selling and the analysis of Roland Breeur also explore the idea that a person is what he is only when his identity is opened up, touched by an exteriority or conceived as a focal point . It is this radical openness and vulnerability that gives the person its historical and transcendent dynamic, and prevents us from encapsulating it in existing systems, theories and power relations. The connection with Emmanuel Levinas and his hermeneutic of the idea of the infinite is an obvious one to draw.The third section contains a historical survey in which a number of active `personalistic' centres and journals are presented.Various European centres that appeal explicitly to some form of personalistic thinking were posed the following questions: What is the main historical reference to personalism at your centre? and How do you implement, today, a personalist credo in your work? John Dick organized the responses to these questions under a number of headings. This survey aims to provide not so much an exhaustive but a representative picture of the ways in which European personalism lives on as a mosaic of centres engaged in everyday history. (shrink)