With the advent of social media and increase in networked publics, context collapse has emerged as a critical topic in the discussion of imagined audiences and blurring of the private and the public. The meshing of social contexts portends problematic issues as messages inadvertently reach unimagined audiences causing shame and leading to loss of ‘face’. In this article, we specifically study the impact of context collapse on some celebrities ‘who had it all’ yet, lost ‘it some’ to the world (...) of networked public. The article examines celebrities sharing identity information across multiple contexts and explores situations of lost fame when ‘face’ is threatened, usage falters and breaks some of the well-established norms of interactivity. It concludes that lack of prudence in separating social contexts, loss of ‘face’ and social approval can dampen online celebrity presence. It proposes the use of ‘polysemy’ to simultaneously appeal to audiences from different contexts. (shrink)

This article examines specific celebration rituals of two groups of Russian émigrés during the period of the mid-1950s to early 1960s. The groups, comprised of former officers of the Russian imperial army and of graduates of schools for noble girls, often situated their festivities within a Russian Orthodox Church building located at Madison Avenue and 121st Street in Manhattan. The celebrations, spatially enclosed and separated from the outside world within this structure,suggest their privileged and exclusive nature. The staging and performance (...) of the celebration, while acknowledging displacement and exile, re-inscribed the spatial enclosure with the Russian past through the reenactment of Russian cultural traditions and social hierarchies, thereby validating the lives and identities of the celebrants. (shrink)

Many cultural commentators and philosophers are highly critical of the pursuit of fame. We argue that pursuing fame does not always deserve this negative appraisal, and can in some circumstances be virtuous. We begin our argument by outlining three positive functions that fame can serve, providing role models, spokespersons, and hermeneutic resources. These functions are particularly valuable for those from marginalized groups, providing empowering ways to respond to and subvert social discrimination. marginalized groups, providing empowering ways to respond to and (...) subvert social discrimination. Next, we explain the ways in which certain groups are under-represented in the public eye, resulting in a lack of recognition and respect. We argue that this under-representation ought to be mitigated. The pursuit of fame is valuable insofar as it acts a corrective to the injustice that arises because of the marginalization of certain groups from the public eye and celebrity culture. We then discuss four problems with the idea that the pursuit of fame and celebrity by members of marginalized groups may function to combat social injustice. First, celebrities from marginalized groups who are viewed as role models, spokespersons or hermeneutic resources, are especially likely to find themselves subject to judgmental and moralistic criticism from the public. Second, the pursuit of fame from members of marginalized groups runs significant risks of elite capture. Third, they are also likely to be subjected to demeaning forms of representation. Fourth, and more generally, the role of being famous can be severely psychologically damaging, causing significant personal burdens for those who pursue fame and ultimately achieve celebrity status. Taking these points together shows that while the pursuit of fame may be useful in mitigating certain forms of social injustice, there are also important reasons to worry about how effective a tool it is, and the costs that arise for those who pursue fame and become celebrities. We conclude our argument in by noting how the domain of fame and intersectionality influences the extent to which the pursuit of fame is valuable and burdensome. -/- . (shrink)

A phenomenological account of the forms of life characteristic of late capitalism--including television, celebrity culture, and personal electronics--culminating in an ontology of the gadget-commodity that brings together Marxist theories of commodity fetishism and ideology with Heidegger's attempt to think truth as unconcealment.

2020 marks 100 years of women’s suffrage in the U.S. Considering this anniversary and the Christian presumption in favor of democracy, this essay invites readers to honor all those who worked for women’s suffrage in two specific ways. First, it invites them to tell the whole truth about the movement, both its many moments of grace and its moral failures. Second, it encourages readers to make the connection between this ambiguous legacy and ongoing forms of voter suppression in the U.S. (...) and then to celebrate suffrage by finishing the fight for it. (shrink)

Ian Fraser assesses the human qualities of the three saints who are celebrated for their contribution to Christianity in Britain. He also examines some contemporary issues related to their struggle to live faith fully.

The study examined the effect of celebrity attractiveness, celebrity trustworthiness, and celebrity cause fit on the attitude toward green cosmetics. This was followed by the effect of brand awareness, brand associations, brand loyalty, perceived quality, brand credibility on brand equity, including the impact of attitude toward green cosmetics and brand equity on the willingness to purchase green cosmetics among of young Chinese consumers. This study adopted a cross-sectional design and collected quantitative data from 301 respondents using a structured questionnaire, which (...) was distributed online using various social media platforms. It was found that celebrity attractiveness, celebrity trustworthiness, and celebrity cause-fit had a significant impact on the attitudes toward green cosmetic, while brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand credibility substantially affected brand equity. Moreover, the attitudes toward green cosmetics and brand equity had a strong impact on the willingness to purchase green cosmetics. To increase the sales for green cosmetics, the advertisements for it should have appeal, trustworthiness, and cause-fit celebrities to improve consumers’ attitudes and willingness to purchase green cosmetics. Finding of this study provide a guideline for green cosmetic manufacturers, to direct their resources to enhance brand loyalty, credibility, and perceived quality of the product they produce by highlighting the difference between conventional and green cosmetics. (shrink)

What, if anything, is problematic about the involvement of celebrities in democratic politics? While a number of theorists have criticized celebrity involvement in politics (Meyer 2002; Mills 1957; Postman 1987) none so far have examined this issue using the tools of social epistemology, the study of the effects of social interactions, practices and institutions on knowledge and belief acquisition. This paper will draw on these resources to investigate the issue of celebrity involvement in politics, specifically as this involvement relates (...) to democratic theory and its implications for democratic practice. We will argue that an important and underexplored form of power, which we will call epistemic power, can explain one important way in which celebrity involvement in politics is problematic. This is because unchecked uses and unwarranted allocations of epistemic power, which celebrities tend to enjoy, threaten the legitimacy of existing democracies and raise important questions regarding core commitments of deliberative, epistemic, and plebiscitary models of democratic theory. We will finish by suggesting directions that democratic theorists could pursue when attempting to address some of these problems. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, celebrations of historical anniversaries abounded. There was the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the 150th anniversary of photography, Bach's 300th anniversary, and the 200th anniversary of the American Constitution, to name just a few. Every year hundreds of anniversaries still attract media attention and government investment in ever greater degrees. Deploying an astonishing array of insights, Celebrations explores the causes and consequences of this major phenomenon of our time. As Johnston shows, anniversaries fulfill a number of (...) needs. They provide the kind of experience of regularity across a lifetime that the weekly cycle supplies in daily life. The use of anniversaries for political ends emerged during the French Revolution and expanded to promote nationalism during the nineteenth century, although there are differences in how they are used. Europeans tend to celebrate cultural heroes, while Americans tend to celebrate events. Entire nations exploit anniversaries of founding events in order to promote national identity. Commercially, there are whole industries built around commemoration, and they provide intellectuals an opportunity to take center stage. Using methods of cultural history, sociology, and religious studies, Johnston shows how the cult of anniversaries reflects postmodern concerns. It fills a void left by the disappearance of ideologies and avant-gardes. In an era when there is little consensus about styles or methods, anniversaries allow intellectuals, businesses, and governments to acknowledge and celebrate every nuance of opinion. By suggesting ways to use anniversaries more creatively, this book offers a broad range of insights. (shrink)

The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture investigates the emergence and meaning of the cult of death. Over the last three decades, Halloween has grown to rival Christmas in its popularity and profitability; dark tourism has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry; and funerals have become less traditional. "Corpse chic" and "skull style" have entered mainstream fashion, while elements of gothic, horror, torture porn, and slasher movies have streamed into more conventional genres. Monsters have become pop culture heroes: vampires, zombies, (...) and serial killers now appeal broadly to audiences of all ages. This book considers, for the first time, these phenomena as aspects of a single movement, documenting its development in contemporary Western culture. Previous considerations of our fixation on death have not developed a convincing theory linking the mounting demand for images of violent death and the dramatic changes in death-related social rituals and practices. This book offers a conceptual framework that connects the observations of the simulated world of fiction and movies--including The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, Night Watch, Hannibal, and the Harry Potter series--to social and cultural practices, providing an analysis of the specific aesthetics and the intellectual and historical conditions that triggered the cult of death. It also considers the celebration of death in the context of a longstanding critique of humanism and investigates the role played by 20th-century French theory, as well as by posthumanism, transhumanism, and the animal rights movement, in the formation of the current antihumanist atmosphere. With its critique of movie and book blockbusters and the death-related social rituals, festivals, and fashions that have coalesced into the cult of death, this timely volume will appeal to anyone hoping to better understand a defining phenomenon of our age. Scholars and general readers of cultural studies, film and literary studies, anthropology, and American and Russian studies will find this book thought-provoking. (shrink)

Fan culture has grown immensely over the past few years. People are constantly looking up to celebrities and personalities as role models for their fashion, identity, and success. During the stage of adolescence, it is normal for teenagers to admire well- known people and form fan attachments as part of their identity formation. However, this admiration of a specific media figure can be associated with one's personality, cognitive processes, and psychological well-being. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the (...) correlation between celebrity admiration and the self-esteem of 238 Filipino male teenagers. The research instruments, namely Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS) and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were both utilized through google forms. Results have shown high scores on celebrity admiration and the normal range of self-esteem of the participants. Using Pearson’s r correlation coefficient, it was found that celebrity admiration and self-esteem of Filipino male teenagers have a significant relationship that exists in a negative direction. (shrink)

The celebrity effect is the well-documented phenomenon in which people ascribe an enhanced worth to artefacts owned by famous individuals. This effect has been attributed to a belief in psychological contagion, the transmission of a person’s essence to an object via contact. We examined people’s judgments of the persisting worth of celebrity-owned artefacts following transformations of their parts/material and found that the celebrity effect was evident only for post-transformation artefacts that were composed of parts/material that had direct physical contact with (...) the celebrity. Insofar as the celebrity effect arises from psychological contagion, the findings suggest that the essence imparted to a celebrity-owned artefact is conceived as akin to a residue deposited in/on the object rather than a germ capable of spreading in an indirect manner to new parts/material added to the object. The results illuminate the nature of psychological contagion and offer insight into how best to preserve the value of historically important artefacts. (shrink)

Is there good reason to worry about celebrity involvement in democratic politics? The rise of celebrity politicians such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky has led political theorists and commentators to worry that the role of expertise in democratic politics has been undermined. According to one recent critique, celebrities possess a significant degree of epistemic power that is unconnected to appropriate expertise. This presents a problem both for deliberative and epistemic theories of democratic legitimacy, which ignore this form of (...) power, and for real existing democracies attempting to meet the standards of legitimacy set out by these theories. But do these critiques apply to democratic elitism? In this paper, we argue that recognition of celebrity epistemic power in fact represents a valuable resource for supporting the legitimacy and practice of democratic elitism, though these benefits do come with certain risks to which elite theories are particularly vulnerable. (shrink)

The 150th Birth Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda (12 January, 2013) celebrated by CPPIS Pehowa and Milestone Education Society jointly. Several initiatives taken on this occasion.

A central feature of being a celebrity is experiencing a divide between one's public image and private life. By appealing to the phenomenology of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, we analyze this experience as paradoxically involving both a disconnection and alienation from one's public persona and a sense of close connection with it. This ‘uncanny’ experience presents a psychological conflict for celebrities: they may have a public persona they feel alienated from and that is at the same time closely connected to (...) them and shapes many of their personal interactions. We offer three ways in which a celebrity might approach this conflict: (i) eradicating the divide between their public and private selves, (ii) splitting or separating their private and public selves, or (iii) embracing the arising tension. We argue that it is only this third approach that successfully mitigates the negative effects of the alienation felt by many celebrities. (shrink)

In this paper we present two compatible hypotheses to explain interest in celebrity gossip. The Learning Hypothesis explains interest in celebrity gossip as a by-product of an evolved mechanism useful for acquiring fitness-relevant survival information. The Parasocial Hypothesis sees celebrity gossip as a diversion of this mechanism, which leads individuals to misperceive celebrities as people who are part of their social network. Using two preliminary studies, we tested our predictions. In a survey with 838 respondents and in-depth interviews with (...) 103 individuals, we investigated how interest in celebrity gossip was related to several dimensions of the participants’ social lives. In support of the Learning Hypothesis, age proved to be a strong predictor of interest in celebrities. In partial support of the Parasocial Hypothesis, media exposure, but not social isolation, was a strong predictor of interest in celebrities. The preliminary results support both theories, indicate that across our life span celebrities move from being teachers to being friends, and open up a list of future research opportunities. (shrink)

This editorial celebrates the completion of the 20th volume of this journal, and brings an homage to Paul Griseri.

The Czechoslovak-Soviet exhibition ‘Atoms for Peace’ was held in Prague and Bratislava in 1956. This exhibition became a symbol of Czechoslovak-Soviet ‘friendship’ and Soviet influence on the Czechoslovak nuclear programme. At the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958 (Expo 58), one of the most popular Czechoslovak exhibits was the betatron, which would become a symbol of Czechoslovak nuclear pride. The article analyzes the planning, creation and reception of these two exhibitions, as well as the popular image of the Czechoslovak betatron in (...) the Czechoslovak press and literature of that time. It shows how, in Czechoslovakia, the paradigm of Czechoslovak-Soviet friendship and Soviet dominance converged and became entangled with the effort to present Czechoslovakia as an industrially developed country capable of building the nation’s nuclear industry (partly) on its own. One of the results of this entanglement was the betatron – a highly successful and celebrated Czechoslovak nuclear exhibit that captivated both domestic and international audiences. (shrink)

The article presents the results of research activities which were undertaken in Volgograd Medical University to celebrate the World Bioethics Day. The theme of scientific events organized on the basis of the Department of Bioethics, Philosophy and Medical Law with a course of the sociology of medicine with the participation of the Department of Ethical, Legal and Sociological Expertise in Medicine of Volgograd Medical Scientific Center is “Benefit and Harm”. The article presents the Program of holding a scientific online conference (...) with international participation and the results of the essay competition among students and young scientists. (shrink)

Celebrity Manufacture Theory postulates that both the emergence of celebrities and our fascination with them are shaped by the media. Another premise of the theory is that a person’s fame does not necessarily correlate with the talent or achievements of that person. Rather, it often depends on the way the media manufacture that person as a celebrity. Today’s celebrity culture extols a particular type of fame ‐ one created and sustained by media production. Hence, there is a painstaking method (...) of personification and commodification at work. The pursuit for authenticity is not the objective of Celebrity Manufacture Theory. For this reason, the theory is an example of a ‘manipulation theory’. It describes how media industries manipulate audiences through mass-mediated celebrity production. To best understand Celebrity Manufacture Theory, four major tenets are thoroughly described in this article: media mirage, democratization of spotlight, commodity and cultural mutation. (shrink)

The Centre for Positive Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies (CPPIS) Pehowa (Kurukshetra) celebrated 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Several events were organised and some work also published.

The article focuses on the Baltic Song and Dance Celebration, which is analysed in the context of the nation branding concept. It is possible to conditionally distinguish between two kinds of methods how to increase international recognition – special strategies created by professionals, and spontaneous or natural branding, based on marking of significant cultural and symbolic aspects of a particular nation. A strategic process of nation branding in the Baltics became particularly active in the beginning of the 21st century, when (...) the governments of all three nations started a purposeful, state-financed development of nation brands, but generally neglecting the informal brand of the Baltic states as the “singing nations”. Nevertheless, the latter, having been developed alongside with the statehood ideas and particularly manifesting itself in the Song and Dance Celebration phenomena, is still very strong in the Baltic states. Based on the sociological survey data, the authors compare the attitude of the residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania towards the Song and Dance Celebrations and discuss their role in the nation brand development. (shrink)

As described elsewhere on this journal’s website, The Journal of Evolution and Technology was founded in 1998 as The Journal of Transhumanism, and was originally published by the World Transhumanist Association. In November 2004, JET moved under the umbrella of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies , an organization that seeks to contribute to our understanding of the impact of emerging technologies on individuals and societies. Prior to my appointment, in January 2008, as JET’s editor-in-chief, I’d had four distinguished (...) predecessors – Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, Mark Walker, and James Hughes – who had established the journal as a leading forum for discussion of the future of the human species and whatever might come after it. Articles that they'd published in JET were – and are – frequently cited in discussions of the human or posthuman future. With a decade of history behind the journal as I commenced my watch this year, and with JET’s fifth year with IEET now underway, we have much to celebrate. I'm personally delighted to have taken up my position with a journal of ideas that has such a rich history and so much promise. JET is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. The material that it publishes may or may not be submitted by scholars and scientists currently working within the academy, but it must certainly meet the standards of well-established academic journals. Most submissions received are rejected because they don’t reach the required standard, but we are always looking for appropriate articles and reviews. We require only that they be relevant to the human or posthuman future and that they meet our high standards of scholarship, originality, and intellectual rigor. We welcome submissions on a wide range of relevant topics and from almost any academic discipline or interdisciplinary standpoint. Central to our thinking at JET is the idea – increasingly familiar and plausible – that the human species is about to commence, or has already commenced, a new form of evolution. This is something quite different from the slow Darwinian processes of survival, reproduction, and adaptation. It is powered, rather, by new technologies that increasingly work their way inwards, transforming human bodies and minds. According to this idea, technology can do more than merely giving us tools to manipulate the world around us; it can alter us far more comprehensively than by shaping our neurological pathways when we learn to handle new tools. This idea of a technologically-mediated process of evolution remains controversial, of course, and even if we grant it broad acceptance there is still much to debate. Just how the process might be manifested in the years to come, and just where it might take us or our successors, are both unclear. Nonetheless, the idea merits careful study from many viewpoints, whether scientific, philosophical, historical, sociological, anthropological, legal, artistic … or even theological. (shrink)

Celebrating science Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9545-1 Authors Robert P. Crease, Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, 213 Harriman Hall, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3750, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Karl Marx, in full Karl Heinrich Marx (born May 5, 1818, Trier and died March 14, 1883, London, England) was a philosopher, revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. Marx and Freud have influenced life and literature in the twentieth century more deeply and extensively than the earlier great thinkers and scientists like Copernicus and Darwin influenced the life and literature in their own respective eras.. He published The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, anticapitalist works that form the basis of Marxism. It (...) was Capital’s 150th anniversary in autumn 2017, the 170th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto will be in February 2018, and it would have been Karl Marx’s 200th birthday in May 2018. The Communist Party of the Philippines calls on all Filipino workers to start a year-long commemoration and celebration of Marx’s 200th birthday on May 5, 2018. The whole revolutionary movement must salute Karl Marx’ and Marxism’s great role in history and in the continuing world struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat and the entire humanity. This celebration is of great relevance to the working class, from politics to philosophy to academics as Karl Marx made a lasting imprint on the face of history. The Centre for Positive Philosophy and Interdisciplinary Studies (CPPIS) has also an intention to commemorate the 200 years of Karl Marx by various activities including essay competition, seminar, special issues and books on this great thinker. (shrink)

Organization and management theory as a field faces criticisms from several scholars that it has an unhealthy obsession with ‘theory’, while at the same time seeing very little cumulative theoretical progress. Some have even accused the field of being mired in the 1970s. Lounsbury and Beckman counter with an expansive review of several thriving domains of contemporary organizational research that demonstrate the theoretical vibrancy of the field. This article responds by seeking to define ‘theoretical progress’ in ways that extend beyond (...) just the volume of articles produced. It finds that 1970s‐era classics have seen a surge of citations since the turn of the twenty‐first century, consistent with a view of limited progress. It concludes by outlining three areas of problem‐driven research eminently worthy of attention from organizational researchers. (shrink)

Moffat, Sue Review of: Celebrating with children: Volume 1 resources, volume 2 readings, by Robert Borg, Gerard Kelly, Brian Lucas,, pp.302 + 188, $29.95, $24.95.

A synodal church makes assumptions about our basic ecclesial experience which takes place when we assemble liturgically, especially when we act eucharistically. The basic assumption is that we are a genuine human community knowing and relating to one another as brothers and sisters in baptism. Only real communities can authentically image the church's nature. This is a ‘bottom – up’ activity. If we wish this, then we must rediscover our liturgy and celebrate it in a new way as flowing out (...) from a community and helping it to discover its own nature. This, in turn, makes demands on our understanding of ministry and its structures. While many Catholics endorse synodality, their willingness to change the shape of the presbyterate is uncertain. (shrink)

ArgumentSeveral recent works in sociology examine the manufacture of public identities through the notion of celebrity. This paper explores the imagery of Charles Darwin as a nineteenth-century scientific celebrity by comparing the public character deliberately manufactured by Darwin and his friends with images constructed by the public as represented here by caricatures in humorous magazines of the era. It is argued that Darwin’s outward persona drew on a subtle tension between public and private. The boundaries between public and private were (...) blurred by the ritual of Darwin “showing” himself in the flesh, either at home to visitors or, more rarely, on public occasions. The reputation for privacy and illness that he built up added materially to this public face. By contrast, caricatures tended to depict him as an ape. These apish representations played a significant role in associating Darwin, rather than any other thinker, with the notion of evolution, and in creating an alternative public persona over which he had no direct control. (shrink)

This article proposes to redefine celebrity as a kind of capital, thereby extending Bourdieu’s field theory. This redefinition is necessary, it is argued, because one of the main limitations shared by current definitions of celebrity is their lack of explanatory power of the convertibility of celebrity into other resources, such as economic or political capital. Celebrity capital, or broadly recognizability, is conceptualized as accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media representations. In that sense, it is a substantial kind of (...) capital and not a subset or special category of social or symbolic capital, the latter being defined as legitimate recognition by other agents in a social field. Rather than adding another definition of celebrity next to many others, the notion of celebrity capital proposed here should be seen as an attempt to integrate the existing approaches of celebrity into a single comprehensive conceptualization that can enable us to grasp this societal and cultural phenomenon better. (shrink)

The result is a one-dimensional, economistic and bleakly utilitarian conception of the educational task.In Mindfulness and Learning: Celebrating the Affective Dimension of Education, Terry Hyland advances the thesis that education stands in ...

However, strange though it may seem, personal celebrity (as well as fame, popularity etc.) is hardly included in the list of those resources. This happens despite the increasing role of this phenome-non in modern life and the fact that the aspiration for it affects value aims of a growing number of people. What is more, it begins to influence the changes of social relations and stratification. The subject of the present article is the investigation of the influence of the personal (...) celebrity factor on the social life of modern society, the analysis of characteristics of celebrities as a special stratum, and reasons for the rapid increase in the importance of social role of personal celebrity in the last century. (shrink)

This article looks at how imaginaries of land and climate play a role in farmland investment discourses and practices. Foreign farmland investors in the fertile black earth region of Russia and Ukraine have ‘celebrated’ soil fertility while largely ignoring climatic factors. The article shows a centuries-long history of outsiders coming to the region lured by the fertile soils, while grossly underestimating climate which has had disastrous implications for farm viability and the environment. Comparisons with historical and contemporary literature on other (...) regions suggest that the underestimation of climatic risks by newcomers is remarkably prevalent in resource frontiers. (shrink)

In the postmodern world, the value of knowledge itself is questioned, and by extension those who claim to be authorities on that knowledge. As a result, Arnold Schwarzenegger as action hero is just as credible as Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor, thus redefining the meaning of an informed citizen. If Arnold Schwarzenegger can rescue entire planets, then why can voters not assume that he will be able to save California? The blame for this theoretical shift belongs not with the broader entertainment (...) industry, but instead with the news industry itself. Such celebrities-in-politics issues are not limited to California or even the United States. This article explores the difficulties of obtaining a consensus on the central interpretation of credibility and truth in a postmodern society. (shrink)

The influence of celebrities in the 21st century extends far beyond the traditional domain of the entertainment sector of society. During the recent Palestinian presidential elections, the Hollywood actor Richard Gere broadcast a televised message to voters in the region and stated, “Hi, I’m Richard Gere, and I’m speaking for the entire world”. Celebrities in the 21st century have expanded from simple product endorsements to global political and international diplomacy. The celebrities industry is undergoing, “mission creep”, or (...) the expansion of an enterprise beyond its original goals (Hyde, 2009 ). The global internet is one of the major drivers of this phenomenon. The contribution of this paper is to analyse this global phenomenon and the potential implications for business ethics research. (shrink)

This page is a dedication to Aristotle on his 2400th Birth Anniversary by Centre for Positive Philosophy and Interdiscipliary Studies (CPPIS) Pehowa (Kurukshetra) .

The experience of being famous was investigated through interviews with 15 well-known American celebrities. The interviews detail the existential parameters of being famous in contemporary culture. Research participants were celebrities in various societal categories: government, law, business, publishing, sports, music, film, television news and entertainment. Phenomenological analysis was used to examine textural and structural relationship-to-world themes of fame and celebrity. The study found that in relation to self, being famous leads to loss of privacy, entitization, demanding expectations, gratification (...) of ego needs, and symbolic immortality. In relation to other, or world, being famous leads to wealth, access, temptations, and concerns about family impact. Areas of psychological concern for celebrity mental health include character-splitting, mistrust, isolation, and an unwillingness to give up fame. Being-in-the-world of celebrity is a process involving four temporal phases: love/hate, addiction, acceptance, and adaptation. Findings are presented in the form of a Composite Textural Description and two Individual Structural Descriptions. (shrink)

The position of the philosophy of education in theoretical or practical philosophy was the main subject of debate between Paul Hirst and Wilfred Carr. In his support for practical philosophy, Carr argues that in order to bridge the theory/practice gap and deconstruct the illusory intactness of philosophy of education from developments in the practical realm, philosophy of education should be assumed as a branch of practical philosophy. Opposed to this argument, Hirst holds that philosophy of education is a second-order activity (...) and a theoretical matter. Even though both viewpoints seem to be reductive, it is argued here that the controversy of Hirst and Carr on theoretical/practical philosophy of education is more a pseudo-problem than a real one. This is because Hirst does not dismiss the reflection on action as a source of philosophical knowledge, nor does Carr in fact avoid a second-order activity in his endeavour in philosophy of education. Nonetheless, it is argued that we should celebrate a moderate dualism in the case of theoretical and practical reason. (shrink)

Through the seasons, you are attentive to God's inherent timing and intended purpose at every stage and episode in life. Obstacles give way to opportunities and hindrances to heights, as you surrender to a life of completion with a realization that it is the journey that matters at the finish.