Ethical or ‘socially sustainable’ sourcing mechanisms mandating labour standards among the suppliers and subcontractors that organisations source goods and services from are becoming more common. The issue of how labour activist groups such as trade unions can encourage organisations to adopt and strengthen these mechanisms within domestic production networks is largely unexplored. Using three cases of domestic sustainable sourcing campaigns developed by unions in Britain, the strategies used by labour activists, the characteristics of the organisations targeted and the motivations of (...) lead firms for improving sourcing practices are analysed. The article makes a significant contribution by demonstrating that organisational susceptibility to reputational risk is a key factor influencing the capacity of activist groups to convince and compel their targets to improve sourcing practices. It argues that different types of organisations are susceptible to reputational damage in different ways, that risk events provide opportunities for unions to strengthen their leverage against target organisations, and that the multidimensional nature of corporate reputation needs to be better considered for understanding how campaigns are framed and executed. (shrink)

While recognising the power and fundamental importance of Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages, this essay explores some of the problems associated with the relative silence within the text about the issue of the forces of production and their development. By contrast, Harman suggests that Wickham’s most important contribution to our understanding of the period, his concept of a peasant-mode of production, is best understood against the backdrop of prior developments of the forces of production. Moreover, the peasant-mode’s temporality is (...) itself best understood against the background of further developments of the forces of production. (shrink)

We review Potts’ influential book on the semantics of conventional implicature (CI), offering an explication of his technical apparatus and drawing out the proposal’s implications, focusing on the class of CIs he calls supplements. While we applaud many facets of this work, we argue that careful considerations of the pragmatics of CIs will be required in order to yield an empirically and explanatorily adequate account.

Recent neo-Humean theories of laws of nature have placed substantial emphasis on the characteristic epistemic roles played by laws in scientific practice. In particular, these theories seek to understand laws in terms of their optimal predictive utility to creatures in our epistemic situation. In contrast to other approaches, this view has the distinct advantage that it is able to account for a number of pervasive features possessed by putative actual laws of nature. However, it also faces some unique challenges. First, (...) since the view tries to characterize the laws in terms of their predictive utility, any respects in which putative actual laws are sub-optimally predictively useful are inherently problematic. Such "predictive infelicities" can easily be found among our best physical theories. Second, in tying the laws to our epistemic situation, neo-Humeanism raises the possibility that by changing our epistemic situation, we can change the laws themselves, though it is hard to believe that we have such influence over the laws. This paper aims to address both of these challenges, first by presenting a variety of strategies for explaining away predictive infelicities, and then by developing a version of Lewis's "rigidification" strategy to preclude the possibility of our changing the laws. (shrink)

_ The Subject of Human Being_ discusses the basic powers of human kind arising from the foundation of the biological brain and manifesting in extraordinary psychological and social capacities and developments. The book consolidates theoretical insights into social ontology from several thinkers, whose profound advances toward understanding the relationship between individuals and society ought to revolutionize social theory as understood and practiced in the social sciences and humanities. Drawing from critical realist social theory developed by Bhaskar and Margaret Archer, John (...) Searle’s philosophy of mind and social ontology, Husserlean and Sartrean phenomenology of consciousness, and Lacanian and existential psychoanalytic theory, the book seeks to portray a unified social ontology that is materialist, emergent, realist, dialectical, processual, and liberatory. Offering a dialectical and progressive view of human being to counter the forces of exploitation and division inflicted on human kind and the ecosystems in which we reside, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of critical realism, philosophy and sociology. (shrink)

On August 29, 2005, the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States devastated the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. Like many others in America and around the world, Chris McLaughlin watched the tragedy of Katrina unfold on a television screen from the comfort of her living room on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In the devastation afterwards, almost 2,000 people and an estimated 250,000 animals had perished. Miraculously, many pets did (...) manage to survive. But in the months that followed the hurricane, thousands of them were fending for themselves in the ruins of devastated neighborhoods. They roamed the streets in feral packs or struck out alone. Their plight triggered a grassroots rescue effort unlike any this country had ever seen, and while relief organizations such as the Red Cross were tending to the human survivors, and movie stars and celebrities were airlifting food and endorsing seven-figure checks, a much smaller and meagerly funded effort was underway to save the four-legged victims. With no prior experience in disaster response and no real grasp of the hell that awaited them, scores of animal lovers, including McLaughlin, made their way to the Gulf Coast to help in any way they could. Including photos from four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Carol Guzy, Mississippi Barking spans the course of two years as McLaughlin and others ventured into the wreckage of the Gulf Coast to rescue the animals left behind. McLaughlin tells the moving stories of the people she met along the way, both those who lost everything to the hurricane and those working beside her rescuing and transporting animals away from the neglected, derelict conditions in which they barely survived. Within this story of tragedy and cruelty, suffering and ignorance, Mississippi Barking also bears witness to selfless acts of bravery and compassion, and the beauty and heroics of those who risked everything to save the animals that could not save themselves. (shrink)

John Searle’s “thesis of the Background” is an attempt to articulate the role of nonintentional capacities---know-how, skills, and abilities---in constituting intentional phenomena. This essay applies Searle’s notion of the Background to shed light on the Daoist notion of w’u-w’ei---“non-action” or non-intentional action---and to help clarify the sort of activity that might originally have inspired the w’u-w’ei ideal. I draw on Searle’s work and the original Chinese sources to develop a defensible conception of a w’u-w’ei-like state that may play an intrinsically (...) and instrumentally valuable role in the exercise of agency. At the same time, however, I argue that Searle’s view that “Intentionality rises to the level of the Background abilities” convincingly explains why the conception of w’u-w’ei presented in ancient texts is untenable. W’u-w’ei-like states can generally occur only as components of an intentional flow of activity, and thus they are not fundamentally nonintentional. (shrink)

Observers who note the increasing popularity of bioethics discussions often complain that the social sciences are poorly represented in discussions about things like abortion and stem-cell research. Critics say that bioethicists should be incorporating the methods and findings of social scientists, and should move towards making the discipline more empirically oriented. This way, critics argue, bioethics will remain relevant, and truly reflect the needs of actual people. Such recommendations ignore the diversity of viewpoints in bioethics, however. Bioethics can gain much (...) from the methods and findings from ethnographies and similar research. But it is misleading to suggest that bioethicists are unaware of this potential benefit. Not only that, bioethicists are justified in having doubts about the utility of the social science approach in some cases. This is not because there is some inherent superiority in non-empirical approaches to moral argument. Rather, the doubts concern the nature of the facts that the sciences would provide. Perhaps the larger point is that disagreements about the relationship between facts and normative arguments should be seen as part of the normal inquiry in bioethics, not evidence that reform is needed. (shrink)

This is a book about how social sciences can be improved in ways that its relevance is expanded, the applicability of its knowledge is enlarged and increased, and the commitment to questioning the status quo is strengthened.

This paper explores the conditions under which scientists are warranted in adding the one-dimensional heat equation to their theories and then using the equation to describe particular physical situations. Summarizing these derivation and application conditions motivates an account of idealized scientific representation that relates the use of mathematics in science to interpretative questions about scientific theories.

Drawing from my previous experiences as an Approved Social Worker and my current experiences as a social work educator, this paper will explore the issues that mental health professionals, and specifically social workers, will face when confronted with the requirement to make decisions that are contrary to the emancipatory values that may have been inculcated in them during their period of training. The controlling nature of statutory social work in particular will be investigated and an assessment of its impact will (...) be offered. The legislative system in the United Kingdom dictates that one piece of legislation can override another in certain instances. In applying this phenomenon, the argument will be made that social workers are increasingly required to override certain values to accomplish the desired outcomes of their position. Ethical issues and the concept of care versus control will be assessed in an attempt to rationalize the problems faced by many of today's mental health social workers. (shrink)

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre counted among his friends and associates some of the most esteemed intellectuals, writers, and artists of the twentieth century. In _Portraits_, Sartre collected his impressions and accounts of many of his notable acquaintances, in addition to some of his most important writings on art and literature during the early 1950s. _Portraits_ includes Sartre’s preface to Nathalie Sarraute’s _Portrait of a Man Unknown_ and his homages to André Gide, Albert Camus, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The essay on Merleau-Ponty casts (...) considerable light on the recent history of French philosophy, particularly with regard to dominant post-war political conceptions. Featured as well are lengthy studies of Sartre’s close friend Paul Nizan and of the young André Gorz that are no less revealing, as well as Sartre’s “Reply to Albert Camus,” which sealed the ideological and personal break between the two writers on its publication in 1952. Alongside these major writings are fascinating articles on Tintoretto and a number of contemporary artists, including Giacometti and Masson. Finally, _Portraits _concludes with two travelogue-style accounts of Sartre’s time in Italy. This new translation by Chris Turner presents these essays in their complete form as originally intended by Sartre when he first published _Situations IV_ in France and is thus essential reading for anyone interested in the artistic and intellectual history of the time. (shrink)

While more conventional art can be tucked neatly away on gallery walls, houses have a much larger footprint. And when a home outlives its most basic function of providing shelter, a decision has to be made as to whether it is ultimately worth saving. Modernist homes like those designed by Paul Rudolph face an additional challenge as products of a stark, concrete-laden brutalist style now seen by many to be cold and uninviting. Photographer Chris Mottalini visited three abandoned Rudolph (...) homes awaiting demolition. His photos present these onetime symbols of opulence and power at their most vulnerable and defeated. Rich, full-color photos show sunlight playing across shattered windows, dusty stairs, and ruined living rooms, presenting a view of modernism that few have seen before. The photos speak to the ephemeral nature of contemporary taste, and its uneasy relationship with history, as well as the consequences of modernism on our visual lexicon. And in a final coda, the pictures themselves serve to preserve these masterpieces long after time and tastes move on. (shrink)

Introduction to reprint edition of A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science.

Open-minded people should endorse dogmatism because of its explanatory power. Dogmatism holds that, in the absence of defeaters, a seeming that P necessarily provides non-inferential justification for P. I show that dogmatism provides an intuitive explanation of four issues concerning non-inferential justification. It is particularly impressive that dogmatism can explain these issues because prominent epistemologists have argued that it can’t address at least two of them. Prominent epistemologists also object that dogmatism is absurdly permissive because it allows a seeming to (...) provide justification even if the seeming was caused in some apparently inappropriate way. I conclude by disarming this objection. (shrink)

Hay's Political Analysis raises foundational issues for all social scientists, not least in its outline for a via media, or middle way, between positivist and interpretivist social science. In this view, social science should be firmly grounded in empirical study but take seriously the notion that there is no privileged vantage point from which to generate dispassionate knowledge claims about the social world. This article asks whether this apparent via media is coherent and meaningfully captures what it means to be (...) doing positivist and interpretivist social science without, so to speak, conceding too much ground to the other approach. (shrink)

"The book version of the legendary science fiction film "--Publisher description.

A timely, well-grounded analysis that reveals an inconvenient truth: we can't save capitalism and save the planet.

Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ‘I’ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ‘ego dissolution’ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which representations are bound. (...) Combining recent work on the ‘integrative self' and the phenomenon of self-binding with predictive processing principles yields an explanation of ego dissolution according to which self-representation is a useful Cartesian fiction: an ultimately false representation of a simple and enduring substance to which attributes are bound which serves to integrate and unify cognitive processing across levels and domains. The self-model is not a mere narrative posit, as some have suggested; it has a more robust and ubiquitous cognitive function than that. But this does not mean, as others have claimed, that the self-model has the right attributes to qualify as a self. It performs some of the right kinds of functions, but it is not the right kind of entity. Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but the self does not exist. (shrink)