Abstract: The systemic role of corruption and its link to low human development is explored. The extractive resource industry is presented as an arena where conditions for corruption—monopoly and discretion without accountability—are especially intense. Corruption is maintained by a self-reinforcing cycle. Multiple stakeholders are involved in the maintenance of and/or opposition to the cycle: investing corporations, host country regimes and officials, inter-governmental bodies like the OECD, industry associations, non-governmental organization (NGO) watchdogs like Transparency International, and international agencies facilitating global investment (...) like the World Bank. Complementarity of interests between the demand and supply sides provides strong incentives for entrenched players to maintain corruptive relationships, to protect past gains and sustain current ones. Compulsory international regulation, maximum transparency, effective detection, and enforcement are recommended to enhance accountability, thereby reversing the cycle. It is also necessary to create a corporate culture built on integrity, if regulation itself is to succeed. (shrink)

This article presents a descriptive conceptual framework comprising four different company configurations with respect to orientations toward corporate social responsibility (CSR). The four types are Skeptical, Pragmatic, Engaged, and Idealistic. The framework is grounded in instrumental and normative stakeholder theory, and a company's configuration is based on its instrumental and/or normative stance toward stakeholders. Its configuration indicates what position a company adopts in relation to CSR. This article argues that there is no one formula to fit all companies, descriptively or (...) prescriptively, but the potential variety in approaches to CSR is not infinite, as it can be distilled logically into a few fundamental approaches, embodied in the four organizational configurations presented in the conceptual framework. Each configuration constitutes a middlerange theory of interlocking characteristics in terms of CSR, and so each type of company will assume responsibilities to civil society in ways consistent with its configurational characteristics. The framework incorporates previous empirical findings and theoretical explanations. It is intuitively clear and reasonable to managers, and thus, has practical value in organizational management. (shrink)

Dispositional forgiveness is positively associated with many facets of wellbeing and has protective implications against depression and anxiety in adolescents. However, little work has been done to examine neurobiological aspects of forgiveness as they relate to clinical symptoms. In order to better understand the neural mechanisms supporting the protective role of forgiveness in adolescents, the current study examined the middle frontal gyrus, which comprises the majority of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and is associated with cognitive regulation, and its relationship to (...) forgiveness and clinical symptoms in a sample of healthy adolescents. In this cross-sectional study, larger MFG volume was significantly associated with higher self-reported dispositional forgiveness scores and lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms. Forgiveness mediated the relationship between MFG volume and both depressive and anxiety symptom levels. The mediating role of forgiveness in the relationship between MFG volume and clinical symptoms suggests that one way that cognitive regulation strategies supported by this brain region may improve adolescent mental health is via increasing a capacity for forgiveness. The present study highlights the relevance of forgiveness to neurobiology and their relevance to emotional health in adolescents. Future longitudinal studies should focus on the predictive quality of the relationship between forgiveness, brain volume and clinical symptoms and the effects of forgiveness interventions on these relationships. (shrink)

This paper is going to explore the adverse effects of exposure to combat death on medics’ holistic well-being, which, if ignored could decrease individual readiness and negatively impact the mission. We rely on the experience of United States Air Force Special Operation Surgical Teams (AF SOST) whose exposure to mass casualty scenarios in austere environments could serve as approximations of conditions of future battlefields. Over the past two decades, the ability to deliver advanced medical care on and off the battlefield (...) along with a rapid casualty evacuation platform has allowed for unprecedented survival rates exceeding 90%. While laudable, these medical achievements have also set up a casualty management paradigm in which medical decision-making singularly focuses on life-saving care. Confronting peer-peer adversaries in large scale combat operations (LSCO) on a multi-domain battlefield will make casualty management frighteningly more complex by introducing major infrastructural, personnel, and resource constraints. When considering the high number of casualties expected in LSCO alongside enormous limitations in medical resource and resupply capability, the current casualty management paradigm will not be sustainable. The resource constrained environment in LSCO will shift medical decision-making away from a singular focus on life-saving care to triage, which hinges on the ability to determine futile medical interventions—a skill that has been lost in the past two generation of combat medics. As such, a broad ethical challenge that arises in preparation for LSCO is the need to set new expectations concerning dying and death. However, medical decision-making focused on death and dying has not been explicitly addressed in military medical training, research, or policy. Relying on a body of literature known as terror management theory (TMT) and ethnographic data from our study with AF SOST medics, we are going to argue that it is important to expose medics to death in mass casualty and triage training. (shrink)

Paul Grobstein, Eleanor A. Bliss Professor of Biology at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA passed away Tuesday, June 28, 2011. Since Paul came to Bryn Mawr in 1986, he taught courses ranging from "Introductory Biology" and "Philosophy of Science" to "Evolution of Stories" and "The Brain and Education." Paul founded the Summer Institutes for K-12 Teachers, which brought hundreds of local educators to campus to consider new ways of teaching science and math. He served as chair of the Biology (...) Department and was instrumental in the establishment and success of the Center for Science in Society at Bryn Mawr College. (shrink)

Abstract1915 ist Ernst Troeltsch nach Berlin gezogen, wo er Professor für Philosophie wurde. Sein Wechsel aus der Heidelberger Theologischen Fakultät in die Philosophische Fakultät der Berliner Universität und sein zunehmendes Interesse am Historismus hat ihn nicht daran gehindert, theologische Studien fortzuführen. Ein Ergebnis dieser Studien war eine noch in Heidelberg geschriebene detaillierte Untersuchung über Augustins Theologie und im besonderen über De Civitate Dei. Troeltsch hat diese Studie unternommen, um zum einen eine Lücke in seinen Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (...) zu füllen und zum anderen wegen seinem zunehmenden Interesse an Augustins Philosophie. Das Ergebnis dieser Untersuchung ist Troeltschs Buch Augustin, die christliche Antike und das Mittelalter. Dieses Buch ist aus vielen Gründen ein bemerkenswertes Werk, unter anderem, weil es eine objektive und eine prägnante Untersuchung über Ethik und Naturgesetz darstellt. Troeltschs Buch über Augustin ist sehr wichtig zu untersuchen, aber genauso wichtig ist der Prozess, der ihn dazu geführt, es zu schreiben. Dabei handelt es sich um mehrere Rezensionen, die Troeltsch über Bücher zu Augustins Theologie, Ethik und politischer Philosophie geschrieben hat. Indem wir Troeltschs Rezensionen und sein Buch Augustin studieren, lernen wir nicht nur, was in seiner Sicht besonders wertvoll sei in den Schriften des großen Kirchenvaters, sondern wir lernen auch Troeltschs eigenes Denken zu Ethik, Geschichte und sogar Politik besser kennen.By 1915 Ernst Troeltsch had moved to Berlin where he became professor of philosophy. His move from the Faculty of Theology to philosophy and his increasing concern with historicism did not hinder him from continuing with his theological studies. One of the results of these studies was his detailed investigation of Augustine’s theology and he focused specifically on de Civitate Dei. Troeltsch undertook this study partially to rectify an omission in his Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen and partially because of his increasing interest in Augustine’s philosophy. The result of this study was Troeltsch’s book Augustin, die christliche Antike und das Mittelalter. This is a remarkable work for many reasons, including that it was an objective and appreciative investigations on ethics and natural law – and it was written by a prominent Protestant theologian. However, this book has been mostly neglected which is unfortunate. Troeltsch’s book on Augustine is well-worth exploring but so is the process which led him to write it. That entails consulting the numerous reviews that Troeltsch wrote about a number of books devoted to certain aspects of Augustine’s theology, ethics, and political philosophy. By studying Troeltsch’s book reviews and his Augustin, we not only learn what Troeltsch regarded as so valuable in the writings of this particular Church Father, but we also learn about Troeltsch’s own thinking about ethics, history, and even politics. (shrink)

Global fatalities related to COVID-19 are expected to be high in 2020–2021. Developing and delivering a vaccine may be the most likely way to end the pandemic. If it were possible to shorten this development time by weeks or months, this may have a significant effect on reducing deaths. Phase II and phase III trials could take less long to conduct if they used human challenge methods—that is, deliberately infecting participants with COVID-19 following inoculation. This article analyses arguments for and (...) against such methods and provides suggested broad guidelines for regulators, researchers and ethics committees when considering these matters. It concludes that it may be possible to maintain current ethical standards yet still permit human challenge trials in a context where delay is critical. The implications are that regulators and researchers need to work together now to design robust but short trials and streamline ethics approval processes so that they are in place when applications for trials are made. (shrink)

Pretense is generally thought to constitutively involve imagination. We argue that this is a mistake. Although pretense often involves imagination, it need not; nor is it a kind of imagination. The core nature of pretense is closer to imitation than it is to imagination, and likely shares some of its motivation with the former. Three main strands of argument are presented. One is from the best explanation of cross‐cultural data. Another is from task‐analysis of instances of pretend play. And the (...) third concerns the different ways in which pretense (especially childhood pretense) and imagination impact one's evaluative/affective systems. (shrink)

In the third Critique Kant details an aesthetic operation of judgment that is surprising considering how judgment functioned in the first Critique. In this book, I defend an understanding of Kant’s theory of Geschmacksurteil as detailing an operation of the faculties that does not violate the cognitive structure laid out in the first Critique. My orientation is primarily epistemological, elaborating the determinations that govern the activity of pure aesthetic judging that specify it as a "bestimmte" type of judgment without transforming (...) it into "ein bestimmendes Urteil". I focus on identifying how the logical functions from the table of judgments operate in the pure aesthetic judgment of taste to reveal "the moments to which this power of judgment attends in its reflection". In the course of doing so, a picture emerges of how the world is not just cognizable in a Kantian framework but also charged with human feeling, acquiring the inexhaustible, inchoate meaningfulness that incites "much thinking". The universal communicability of aesthetic pleasure serves as the foundation that grounds robust intersubjective relations, enabling genuine connection to others through a shared a priori feeling. (shrink)

Most accounts of Weber’s notion of charisma follow his own explicit comments and seek its origins in the writings of Rudolf Sohm. While I acknowledge the validity of this, I follow Weber’s suggestions and locate the charismatic forces in the political and ethical conduct and beliefs of certain Old Testament prophets, specifically Amos, Jeremiah and Isaiah. Their emphasis on political justice and ethical fairness, coupled with their unwavering belief in the power of prophecy, infuse Weber’s conception of charisma and in (...) crucial ways contribute to the formation of his notion of the modern political leader. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, the paradox of fiction has sparked considerable debate among philosophers. Unfortunately, the most promising solution to this puzzle, thought theory, currently earns its plausibility by way of intuition rather than evidence. I aim to address this by updating thought theory in light of recent empirical findings on affect. I will draw upon a wide range of scientific research—on the cognitive mechanisms driving emotion, the role of affect in counterfactual mind wandering and prospection, and the evolutionary (...) function of affect—to substantiate the claim that fictions can give rise to both real and rational emotional states. (shrink)

The present paper examines the arguments and data presented by Nisbett and Wilson relevant to their thesis that subjects do not have access to their own cognitive processes. It is concluded that their review of previous research is selective and incomplete and that the data they present in behalf of their thesis does not withstand a demand characteristics analysis. Furthermore, their use of observer-subject similarity as evidence of subjects' inability to access cognitive processes makes tests of their hypothesis confounded and, (...) at the same time, reveals limitations in the application of the pre-inquiry quasi-control to research on social behavior. Problems with postexperiment questionnaires, such as the demand characteristics of the inquiry procedure are also considered. Although there are difficulties in assessing subjects' cognitive processes, many of these may be overcome through the application of novel techniques and research conducted on more traditional methods. In contrast to the view that subjects have limited access to cognitive processes and that their verbal reports are not valid, it is concluded that subjects' verbalizations are a rich source of psychological data which must be pursued if we are to tap their cognitive processes and are to gain an adequate understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 235 Vivyan Adair Stigmata: A Memoir of Pain and Resistance For some of us poverty is not experienced from a distance or from the position of an audience member or critic, but as the most pressing truth of our existence, past or present and our core sense of identity. —Roxanne Rimstead, Remnants of Nation: On Poverty Narratives (...) by Women Shame My own mother—with four children under the age of seven by the time she was twenty five—taught, nurtured, and loved us ferociously but struggled and utterly failed to keep us fed, sheltered, and safe. We clung desperately to her fragile dignity, grace, and laughter, against all the forces of a cruel and indifferent world. Yet, in the end she was crushed by the weight of our shame and our raw, unrelenting pain as my brothers and sister and I were bent and broken and taken from her; with scars that never faded; injuries, infections, and ailments for which we found neither respite nor repair; with feet mangled by cheap, used Salvation Army shoes; the gnawing void of hunger and insecurity clawing at our tender backs; public indignities and humiliations for which I still can find no words. With access to neither medical insurance nor care, when my already fragile, toddling sister’s forehead was split open by a car door slammed in frustration, my brother and I had to pin her tiny body to the ground as 236 Vivyan Adair my mother sewed the angry gash together with needle and thread, practicing the meticulous dressmaker’s stitches for which she had received a modicum of acclaim, but so little reward. My sister somehow endured, but registered the pain, the terror, and the trauma with a brand, a stigmata, an angry and frightening scar as an indelible sign of our poverty, visually cleaving her very forehead in two, for the remainder of her life. In our school cafeteria “free lunchers” were reminded with a large and colorful sign to “line up last.” In that auditorium each fall we were coerced up onto a makeshift stage, with the promise of first dibs on free milk. There, our pristine school nurse sat upright and sucked air through her teeth as she donned surgical gloves to cautiously check only the hair of poor hungry children, one by one, for lice. I burned and choked and raged with shame, as our far more decent working-class colleagues and friends, in color-coordinated Sears sweater sets and matching tartan knee high socks, averted their eyes from our reluctant genuflections, while silently spooning their mac and cheese and sipping their Tree Top from tiny Dixie cups. In dilapidated and unsafe housing often without heat, hot water, or lights and with access to only public bathrooms, I developed a stubborn case of ringworm, scabies, and a series of painful urinary tract infections. When my second grade teacher would not excuse me every hour or so—because, as she said I was “willful”—I could not help but wet my pants in class. My schoolmates guffawed at my flea bitten legs, my ducttaped shoes, my crooked and ill-serviced teeth, and the way my siblings and I stank. Kids, teachers, and strangers stepped away from us intuitively and then, with great shows of distress, feigned concern and then outrage and disgust. Regularly our teachers excoriated us for our inability to concentrate in school and our refusal to come to class with proper school supplies, calling us out as greedy when we tried to take more than our share of free lunch. Whenever backpacks or library books came up missing, we were publicly interrogated and sent home to think about our offenses, often accompanied by notes that reminded my bewildered mother that she should be working twice as hard to make up for the discipline and order that had supposedly walked out the door with my father. And when occasionally we cried foul and lashed out, our behavior was used to justify even more elaborate punishment that exacerbated the effect of our growing anomie. Vivyan Adair 237 Guilt As children, our disheveled and unkempt bodies were produced as... (shrink)

Readers of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism recognize that Weber attempts to provide an ideal account of development of modern rational capitalism. What readers apparently do not realize is that Weber believes that there is a political development that is parallel to this economic development. Weber believed that Luther’s passive theology and doctrine of two kingdoms lead to quiet resignation in earthly matters. Luther advises shunning politics and avoiding political confrontation. In contrast, Weber held that Calvin’s theology (...) of awe and his doctrine of predestination lead to active political stances and even imply a duty to resist tyranny. However, Weber rejects both Luther’s and Calvin’s political stances because both believed in a divinely ordered world and held that the consequences of their actions were ultimately left to God. Weber contends that only those people who have the proper understanding of the nature of power and have a real appreciation for the ‘diabolic’ nature of politics are suitable to be political actors. Thus, Weber insists that only those people who will take responsibility for their own political actions have the right to ‘stick their hands in the wheels of history’. (shrink)

Among the founders of classical German sociology, Ferdinand Tonnies is still relatively neglected. Many reasons are given, but the most widespread and the most damning is that Tonnies is a pessimist who wished, in the face of modernity, to return to the supposed Golden Age of rural Germany, when the community, ruled by patriarchs, gathered on the land. This interpretation is fundamentally flawed: although Tonnies wanted to describe the rootless, ruthless, calculating individuals of modern society, he wished to recall the (...) past primarily in order to develop a blueprint for the future, in which the so-called feminine traits of conscience, empathy, and care would govern the community. Rather than yearning for the past, Tonnies was a utopian who had a vision of the future and tried to make it a reality. (shrink)

Summary Recent research has highlighted the risk of HIV infection for married teenage women compared with their unmarried counterparts (Clark, 2004). This study assesses whether a relationship exists, for women who have completed their adolescence (age 20–29 years), between HIV status with age at first marriage and the length of time between first sex and first marriage. Multivariate analysis utilizing the nationally representative 2004 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey shows that late-marrying women and those with a longer period of pre-marital (...) sex have the highest risk of HIV. Although women in urban areas overall marry later than their rural counterparts, the positive relationship between age at marriage and HIV risk is stronger in rural areas. The higher wealth status and greater number of lifetime sexual partners of late-marrying women contribute to their higher HIV risk. Given that the age at first marriage and the gap between first marriage and first sex have increased in recent years, focusing preventive efforts on late-marrying women will be of much importance in reducing HIV prevalence among females. (shrink)

This paper looks at the relationship between spacetime functionalism and Harvey Brown’s dynamical relativity. One popular way of reading and extending Brown’s programme in the literature rests on viewing his position as a version of relationism. But a kind of spacetime functionalism extends the project in a different way, by focussing on the account Brown gives of the role of spacetime in relativistic theories. It is then possible to see this as giving a functional account of the concept of spacetime (...) which may be applied to theories that go beyond relativity. This paper explores the way in which both the relationist project and the functionalist project relate to Brown’s work, despite being incompatible. Ultimately, these should not be seen as two conflicting readings of Brown, but two different directions in which to take his project. (shrink)

In conversation with Emmett Harsin Drager and Andrea Long Chu's “After Trans Studies,” this collaborative essay also turns to questions of field formation and the ethos of trans studies. Situating the growth of the field in the material conditions of precarity under which trans knowledge-workers work, the authors argue that trans studies can't be “over” because, in fact, it isn't yet here. Rather than viewing this as only a dismal proposition, however, they insist that the tenuousness of trans studies provides (...) us with the opportunity to envision and enact more sustaining ways of being “in the field.”. (shrink)

Reviewed work: Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Teilband 3, Recht, ed. Werner Gephart and Siegfried Hermes. Tu¨bingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 2010. ISBN 978-3-16-150358-0, xxix þ 811 pp. € 299.00. Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, I/22–3.

This review essay focuses on the recent two-volume Nietzsche-Kommentar which is devoted to Also Sprach Zarathustra but it utilizes the slightly earlier one on Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. This essay is centred upon four key Nietzschean themes: the death of God, the Übermensch, Zarathustra's animals, and the eternal return of the same. The works by Grätz and Kaufmann are detailed and massive commentaries on two of Nietzsche's greatest books and are recommended for all who are intent on understanding Nietzsche's philosophy.