The article discusses the Kenyan post-2007 elections political crisis within the framework of 'libertarian communitarianism' that integrates individualistic self-interest with traditional collectivist solidarity in the era of globalization in Africa. The author argues that behind the Kenyan post-election anarchy can be analyzed as a type of 'prisoner's dilemma' framework in which self-interested rationality is placed in a collectivist social contract setting. In Kenya, this has allowed political manipulation of ethnicity as well as bad governance, both of which have prevented the (...) building of a strong, impartial state. In Kenya, socio-economic disparities and historical injustices due to corruption, nepotism, cronyism and other forms of favoritism have maintained ethnic and other internal tensions, which exploded into open conflict after the disputed December 2007 elections. The author shows how the 'libertarian communitarist' politico-economic context lacks shared values and precludes forward-looking solutions for social justice that promote public good and national unity. Instead, a nation remains divided with its people set up in competitive positions, because there is public trust neither in partisan and self-interested governments nor in inefficient state structures with often (ethnically and/or regionally) biased (re)distribution of resources and unequal service delivery. The greed of the political elites and grievances of the ordinary citizenry maintain distrust across the nation and focus on past injustices rather than finding a shared agenda for future unity. The author suggests that in order to build up public trust, to strengthen the state structures and to gain national unity, it is necessary to focus on shared values and a forward-looking concept of justice, acceptable to all. (shrink)

The article discusses the Kenyan post-2007 elections political crisis within the framework of ‘libertarian communitarianism’ that integrates individualistic self-interest with traditional collectivist solidarity in the era of globalization in Africa. The author argues that behind the Kenyan post-election anarchy can be analyzed as a type of ‘prisoner's dilemma’ framework in which self-interested rationality is placed in a collectivist social contract setting. In Kenya, this has allowed political manipulation of ethnicity as well as bad governance, both of which have prevented the (...) building of a strong, impartial state. In Kenya, socio-economic disparities and historical injustices due to corruption, nepotism, cronyism and other forms of favoritism have maintained ethnic and other internal tensions, which exploded into open conflict after the disputed December 2007 elections.The author shows how the ‘libertarian communitarist’ politico-economic context lacks shared values and precludes forward-looking solutions for social justice that promote public good and national unity. Instead, a nation remains divided with its people set up in competitive positions, because there is public trust neither in partisan and self-interested governments nor in inefficient state structures with often (ethnically and/or regionally) biased (re)distribution of resources and unequal service delivery. The greed of the political elites and grievances of the ordinary citizenry maintain distrust across the nation and focus on past injustices rather than finding a shared agenda for future unity.The author suggests that in order to build up public trust, to strengthen the state structures and to gain national unity, it is necessary to focus on shared values and a forward-looking concept of justice, acceptable to all. (shrink)

This paper discusses the work of Noam Chomsky in the context of democracy, the media, and education. Through the analysis of selected works, a critical perspective emerges. This view demands that educators at all levels understand and confront the often deleterious effects the media can have on students' social and political views and further how the media can undermine democratic action in schools and society.

In the political context, the tenet of subsidiarity states that societal tasks should be solved by subordinate entities in society if these entities have the competencies to solve such problems wit...

Nowadays Kant's practical philosophy is as highly regarded as his theoretical philosophy. This is an important development since the more constructive side of Kant's philosophy is to be found in his moral and political works. The main task of the Critique of Pure Reason is to clarify its concepts and to get rid of basic errors, and thus only ‘negative’. The moral and political writings, on the other hand, try to expand the scope of reason ‘for practical purposes’ . Establishing (...) principles of moral and political conduct, their main objective is not negative, but constructive. (shrink)

It is important to stress the "government," because the population, not surprisingly, does not agree. That brings up a fourth issue that should deeply concern Americans, and the world: the sharp divide between public opinion and public policy, one of the reasons for the fear, which cannot casually be put aside, that "the American ‘system’ as a whole is in real trouble — that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its historic values (of) equality, liberty (...) and meaningful democracy," as Gar Alperovitz observes in America Beyond Capitalism. (shrink)

When considering the possibility of intervening in nature to aid suffering nonhuman animals, we can ask about moral philosophy, which concerns the actions of individuals, or about political philosophy, which concerns the apparatus of the state. My focus in this paper is on the latter, and, in particular, the proposal from Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka that nonhuman animals should be offered sovereignty rights over their territories. Such rights, among other things, seriously limit the occasions on which we might intervene (...) in the affairs of the sovereign “community” in question, even if such intervention is in the interests of some of its members. In this paper, I first outline Donaldson and Kymlicka’s proposal as well as (what I call) the failed state objection – the suggestion that, if nonhuman animals are to be considered sovereign, then their “communities” are failed states. I then critically examine Donaldson and Kymlicka’s responses to the failed state objection, arguing that they fail. However, I claim that the failed state objection, even if successful, is not fatal for Donaldson and Kymlicka’s account of nonhuman sovereignty, and that the objection could be read as an internal critique of their project. There are at least two ways that this could be so: First, we could retain a sovereignty account but nonetheless argue for day-to-day intervention to alleviate suffering in nature, or, second, we could argue that though nonhuman animals live in failed states, there are other good reasons to oppose day-to-day intervention. In closing, I compare Donaldson and Kymlicka’s claims about sovereignty to another recent proposal, namely, John Hadley’s account of nonhuman animals as property holders. I suggest that the two proposals are not so far apart, but suggest that neither is appropriate for immediate implementation. Instead, the focus of activists keen to deploy political tools to aid those nonhuman animals suffering in nature should be on changing the ways that nonhuman animals are perceived and treated more generally. On the simplest level, this means adopting veganism and encouraging those around us to do the same. (shrink)

This paper examines the importance of reconciliation in post-conflict state-building. We argue that while the economic and political aspects are vital components of the state-building tool-kit, states can hardly be reconstructed without the support of the society. Individuals and communities are central to the re-establishment of peace and democracy. We will conduct a case study analysis focusing on Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter Bosnia). After more than 10 years of international supervision, Bosnia remains fragmented by ethnic tension, and continues to (...) need the guidance of the United Nation’s Office of the High Representative and European Union Special Representative. The Dayton Accord provided little direction for how to proceed with reconciliation beyond a state-centered peace-agreement and constitution. This study suggests that the peacebuilding process that has taken place in Bosnia over the past decade has been unable to foster reconciliation and re-create social trust, two necessary elements for ensuring lasting peace in the aftermath of conflict. (shrink)

"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades."--John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as "a magisterial critique of top-down social planning" by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail--sometimes catastrophically--in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. "Beautifully written, this book calls into (...) sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit."--New Yorker "A tour de force."-- Charles Tilly, Columbia University. (shrink)

Anna Stilz claims that citizens of democratic states bear “task responsibility” to repair unjust harms done by their states. I will argue that the only situation in which Stilz’s argument for such “task responsibility” is not redundant, given her own premises, is a situation where the state leaves it up to the citizens whether to indemnify others for the harms done by the state. I will also show that Stilz’s “authorization view” rests on an unwarranted and implausible assumption (...) (which I call “the authorization principle”) about authorization and political obligation, and that this problem cannot be remedied by limiting the account to democratic states. I will then briefly turn to Pasternak’s account of citizen responsibility for state action and argue that it suffers from two deficiencies: first, she equates group membership with collective action, and second, she does not provide any explanation as to why citizens should incur liability for the acts of their state under the four conditions she highlights. I conclude that neither Stilz nor Pasternak succeed in showing that at least citizens of democratic states are liable (barring very special circumstances) for the acts of their states. (shrink)

Why you have the right to resist unjust government The economist Albert O. Hirschman famously argued that citizens of democracies have only three possible responses to injustice or wrongdoing by their governments: we may leave, complain, or comply. But in When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues that there is a fourth option. When governments violate our rights, we may resist. We may even have a moral duty to do so. For centuries, almost everyone has believed that we must allow (...) the government and its representatives to act without interference, no matter how they behave. We may complain, protest, sue, or vote officials out, but we can’t fight back. But Brennan makes the case that we have no duty to allow the state or its agents to commit injustice. We have every right to react with acts of “uncivil disobedience.” We may resist arrest for violation of unjust laws. We may disobey orders, sabotage government property, or reveal classified information. We may deceive ignorant, irrational, or malicious voters. We may even use force in self-defense or to defend others. The result is a provocative challenge to long-held beliefs about how citizens may respond when government officials behave unjustly or abuse their power. (shrink)

This essay aims to examine whether the Welfare State project has failed and how this apparent failure is intrinsically connected to the rise of citizen discontent. By tracing the historical roots of the Rechtsstaat and its development into the Welfare State, we highlight how the increasing gap between grand promises and their limited fulfillment has fueled widespread discontent. The much-acclaimed Welfare State seems to have transformed itself into a Malaise State, marked by a dual institutional failure: the inability to universalize (...) its promises and the lack of political responses to the social discontent caused by that first incapacity. In this context, what was once considered a collective social desire has become (hyper)individualized within a “turboglobalized” world, inverting the traditional relation in which public improvement had the capacity to positively impact private life. Despite this, the responsibility of governments remains justified, as the transfer of power through democratic elections inherently carries the condition of accountability. However, democracy by itself seems unable to resolve these crises, especially when it comes to the well know populisms that carry out the so-called policies of disconcertment. Traditional institutional structures and power divisions also fall short, as the crisis of liberal democracy transcends national borders, becoming a shared Western dilemma. This scenario presents a paradox: while liberal democracy struggles with its self-created problems, abandoning its core values risks descent into tyranny. How, then, can we bridge the democracy gap while remaining democratic? We identify that a forward-thinking State philosophy, rooted in institutional (re)imagination and a reconstruction of the political and conceptual foundations of power, offers a viable pathway for addressing these impasses and envisioning effective solutions. (shrink)

The debate over the political power of business has witnessed a revival after the global financial crisis of 2007—2009. We begin by arguing that business political fragmentation or unity has important consequences for policy outcomes. The structure of the U.S. government is conducive to incremental policy changes, often in response to business pressures. In turn, these changes shape the political interests and alliances of business. We illustrate this dynamic through an analysis of the political processes leading to the enactment of (...) the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, which repealed Depression-era regulations and allowed commercial banks to enter the securities and insurance business and vice versa. The FMA condoned the emergence of largely unregulated diversified financial institutions, which proved “too big to fail” during the crisis. Several factors contributed to the FMA: political institutions, international competition, the ideological convergence of the Republican and Democratic parties, and the political interests of financial industry actors. (shrink)

The traditional assumption of the state sovereignty norm has been that an international society of states will structure the international order to safeguard the interests of the state. The end of the Cold War era transformed international relations and led to a discussion on how states interacted with their populations. From the early 1990s, research on international relations, war and peace, and security studies identified the growing problem of failing states. Such states are increasingly unable (...) to implement the core functions that define the sovereignty norms. This article explores the state-building process of Kosovo with a focus on the political road taken from independence in February 2008 to the challenges Kosovo faces today. Kosovo still has substantial issues to address regarding core state functions in the development of prosperity, popular representation and security. (shrink)

For human interaction, it is important to understand what emotional state others are in. Especially the observation of faces aids us in putting behaviours into context and gives insight into emotions and mental states of others. Detecting whether someone is nervous, a form of state anxiety, is such an example as it reveals a person’s familiarity and contentment with the circumstances. With recent developments in computer vision we developed behavioural nervousness models to show which time-varying facial cues reveal whether (...) someone is nervous in an interview setting. The facial changes, reflecting a state of anxiety, led to more visual exposure and less chemosensory (taste and olfaction) exposure. However, experienced observers had difficulty picking up these changes and failed to detect nervousness levels accurately therewith. This study highlights humans’ limited capacity in determining complex emotional states but at the same time provides an automated model that can assist us in achieving fair assessments of so far unexplored emotional states. (shrink)

“Complexity sciences” are an interdisciplinary and transnational domain of study that aims at modeling natural and social “complex systems.” They appeared in the 1970s in Europe and the United States, but were boosted in the mid-1980s by the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) under the formula of “science of complexity.” This small but famous institution is the object of the present article. According to their promissory ambitions and to the enthusiastic claims of some scientific journalists, complexity sciences were going to (...) revolutionize all of knowledge and even private and public actors who had learned to master them. In the light of this, one would expect to observe a well-established and autonomous research and educational field, capable of reproducing itself through professional institutions. Yet this is not the case. To explain the paradox, I propose to combine different models of history and sociology of emergent and declining domains, in order to give account of the rise and failure of complexity sciences. (shrink)

Over the last decade, cities, counties, and states across the United States have enacted higher minimum wages, paid sick leave and family leave, domestic worker protections, wage theft laws, “Ban the Box” removal of questions about conviction history from job applications, and fair scheduling laws. Nevertheless, vulnerable workers still do not trust government to come forward and report labor law violations. The article argues that while increasing the size of the labor inspectorate and engaging in strategic enforcement are (...) necessary, they are not sufficient. It argues that co-enforcement, in which government partners with organizations that have industry expertise and relationships with vulnerable workers, has the potential to manage the shifting and decentralized structures of twenty-first-century production, which were explicitly designed to evade twentieth-century laws and enforcement capabilities. The article aims to contribute to a broader understanding of the role of organizations in enforcement and the circumstances in which their effectiveness can be maximized. It sets forth a set of scope conditions and mechanisms and examines empirical cases of co-enforcement in Austin, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The main findings are that co-enforcement is most enduring when government agencies and worker organizations recognize each other’s unique capacities, rather than attempt to substitute for one another ; the effort focuses on a specific industry; and the collaboration receives strong political support. Sustaining the impacts of co-enforcement is found to require greater formalization of the partnership and funding streams. (shrink)

In Zoopolis, Donaldson and Kymlicka argue that intervention in nature to aid animals is sometimes permissible, and in some cases obligatory, to save them from the harms they commonly face. But they claim these interventions must have some limits, since they could otherwise disrupt the structure of the communities wild animals form, which should be respected as sovereign ones. These claims are based on the widespread assumption that ecosystemic processes ensure that animals have good lives in nature. However, this assumption (...) is, unfortunately, totally unrealistic. Most animals are r-strategists who die in pain shortly after coming into existence, and those who make it to maturity commonly suffer terrible harms too. In addition, most animals do not form the political communities Zoopolis describes. The situation of animals in the wild can therefore be considered analogous to one of humanitarian catastrophe, or to that of irretrievably failed states. It matches closely what a Hobbesian state of nature would be like. This means that intervention in nature to aid nonhuman animals should not be limited as Donaldson and Kymlicka argue. (shrink)

Corporate carbon footprint data has become ubiquitous. This data is also highly promissory. But as this paper argues, such data fails both consumers and citizens. The governance of climate change seemingly requires a strong foundation of data on emission sources. Economists approach climate change as a market failure, where the optimisation of the atmosphere is to be evidence based and data driven. Citizens or consumers, state or private agents of control, all require deep access to information to judge emission realities. (...) Whether we are interested in state-led or in neoliberal ‘solutions’ for either democratic participatory decision-making or for preventing market failure, companies’ emissions need to be known. This paper draws on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Fortune 50 company’s environmental accounting unit to show how carbon reporting interferes with information symmetry requirements, which further troubles possibilities for contesting data. A material-semiotic analysis of the data practices and infrastructures employed in the context of corporate emissions disclosure details the situated political economies of data labour along the data processing chain. The explicit consideration of how information asymmetries are socially and computationally shaped, how contexts are shifted and how data is systematically straightened out informs a reflexive engagement with Big Data. The paper argues that attempts to automatise environmental accounting’s veracity management by means of computing metadata or to ensure that data quality meets requirements through third-party control are not satisfactory. The crossover of Big Data with corporate environmental governance does not promise to trouble the political economy that hitherto sustained unsustainability. (shrink)

I develop new paths to the existence of a concrete necessary being. These paths assume a metaphysical framework in which there are abstract states of affairs that can obtain or fail to obtain. One path begins with the following causal principle: necessarily, any contingent concrete object possibly has a cause. I mark out steps from that principle to a more complex causal principle and from there to the existence of a concrete necessary being. I offer a couple alternative causal (...) principles and paths, too. The paths marked out rely on relatively modest causal principles and avoid many obstacles that traditional cosmological arguments face. (shrink)

Forced to Fail traces the long legal history of first racial segregation, and then racial desegregation in America. The authors explain how rapidly changing demographics and family structure in the United States have greatly complicated the project of top-down government efforts to achieve an "ideal" racial balance in schools. It describes how social capital—a positive outcome of social interaction between and among parents, children, and teachers—creates strong bonds that lead to high academic achievement.

The United States has rejected climate reparations requests from other nations by claiming historical ignorance of the global effects of anthropogenic climate change. This objection to climate reparations, called the epistemic objection in this paper, appeals to a concept of fairness concerning moral responsibility which can be traced back to Aristotle's distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions. However, on closer examination, the epistemic objection fails to fulfill Aristotle's criteria for excusable involuntary actions, and therefore the authors of this paper (...) conclude that claims of ignorance concerning climate change do not provide a substantial objection to climate reparation requests. (shrink)

Consciousness in experimental subjects is typically inferred from reports and other forms of voluntary behaviour. A wealth of everyday experience confirms that healthy subjects do not ordinarily behave in these ways unless they are conscious. Investigation of consciousness in vegetative state patients has been based on the search for neural evidence that such broad functional capacities are preserved in some vegetative state patients. We call this the standard approach. To date, the results of the standard approach have suggested that some (...) vegetative state patients might indeed be conscious, although they fall short of being demonstrative. The fact that some vegetative state patients show evidence of consciousness according to the standard approach is remarkable, for the standard approach to consciousness is rather conservative, and leaves open the pressing question of how to ascertain whether patients who fail such tests are conscious or not. We argue for a cluster-based ‘natural kind’ methodology that is adequate to that task, both as a replacement for the approach that currently informs research into the presence or absence of consciousness in vegetative state patients and as a methodology for the science of consciousness more generally. 1. Introduction2. The Vegetative State3. The Standard Approach4. The Natural Kind Methodology5. Is Consciousness a Special Case? 5.1 Is consciousness a natural kind?5.2 A special obstacle?6. Conclusion. (shrink)

In Who Sings the Nation-State?, co-written with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Judith Butler identifies the paradox between the seemingly global decline of the nation-state and the steadfast strength of its genealogical force. According to Butler, “Arendt allows us to realise that this may also be because the nation-state as a form was faulty from the start.” In the first section of the article, I focus on Butler’s analysis of Israel/Palestine as a failed nation-state and seek to identify its faulty start. I (...) propose that the nation has been masked by the race-religion constellation in the creation of the Westphalian race-state and identify this as the “faulty start” of the nation-state in European history. The term “race-religion constellation” refers to the connection or co-constitution of the categories of race and “religion” and the practice of classifying people into races according to categories we now associate with the term “religion.” I contend that it is this genealogical force of the nation that frames Israel/Palestine, which was, and is, Europe’s offspring, and at times its prodigal son. In the third and final section I discuss alternatives to the nation-state by means of the notion of diasporic political communities, as taken up by Butler and Paul Gilroy respectively, to assess what such communities can provide instead of the exclusionary racist binary that is the faulty start and driving force of the race-state. (shrink)

It has recently been pointed out that perceptual nonconceptualism admits of two different and logically independent interpretations. On the first (content) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the kind of content perceptual experiences have. On the second (state) view, perceptual nonconceptualism is a thesis about the relation that holds between a subject undergoing a perceptual experience and its content. For the state nonconceptualist, it thus seems consistent to hold that both perceptual experiences and beliefs share the same (conceptual) content, (...) but that for a subject to undergo a perceptual experience, the subject need not possess the concepts involved in a correct characterization of such content. I argue that the consistency of this position requires a non-Fregean notion of content that fails to capture the way the subject grasps the world as being. Hence state nonconceptualism leaves perceptual content attribution unsupported. Yet, on a characterization of content along the relevant (neo-Fregean) lines, this position would become incoherent, as it would entail that a subject could exercise cognitive abilities she doesn’t possess. I conclude that, given the notion of content demanded by the debate, the state view does entail the content view after all. (shrink)

I respond to the frequent objection that structural realism fails to sharply state an alternative to the standard predicate-logic, object / property / relation, way of doing metaphysics. The approach I propose is based on what I call a ‘math-first’ approach to physical theories (close to the so-called ‘semantic view of theories') where the content of a physical theory is to be understood primarily in terms of its mathematical structure and the representational relations it bears to physical systems, rather than (...) as a collection of sentences that attempt to make true claims about those systems (a ‘language-first’ approach). I argue that adopting the math-first approach already amounts to a form of structural realism, and that the choice between epistemic and ontic versions of structural realism is then a choice between a language-first and math-first view of metaphysics; I then explore the status of objects (and properties and relations) in fundamental and non-fundamental physics for both versions of math-first structural realism. (shrink)

Jessica Wilson has recently offered a more sophisticated version of the self-defeat objection to Cartesian scepicism. She argues that the assertion of Cartesian scepticism results in an unstable vicious regress. The way out of the regress is to not engage with the Cartesian sceptic at all, to stop the regress before it starts, at the warranted assertion that the external world exists. We offer three reasons why this objection fails: first, the sceptic need not accept Wilson’s characterization of the sceptical (...) thesis and thus need not start her regress; second, even if she did commit to the regress, it would not undermine scepticism in the way Wilson envisages; and third, the appeal to mental state scepticism which is necessary to generate the second and subsequent steps in the regress is not justified. (shrink)

Product take-back (also called extended producer responsibility) has become a trend for dealing with the garbage resulting from categories of problematic products. Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is one such category with computer equipment being of particular significance. This article provides a description of the European Union’s program to require the take-back of WEEE as well as the status of similar programs in Canada and the United States. It is concluded that although these programs meet the goal of (...) reducing the quantity of hazardous materials going to landfills, they do not go to the root of the problem by means of preventive approaches that create more circular materials flows. Plastics used in WEEE pose a serious problem, as they are generally not recycled. (shrink)

This article seeks to re-examine two major assumptions in mainstream anti-racist thought of the post-war era. These are culturalism, on the one hand, and human rights on the other, both of which have been offered as potential solutions to the ongoing problem of racism. I argue that both fail to cope with racism as it has been institutionalized in the political and social structures of European societies because they inaccurately theorize ‘race’. Racism is treated as an individual attitude born of (...) prejudice and ignorance and not as a political project that emerged under specific conditions within the context of the European nation-state. A re-examination of this legacy of modernity and a questioning of the structuring principles of anti-racism is necessary in the current context of racism against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. (shrink)

As the sustained and devastating extent of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic becomes apparent, a key focus of public scrutiny in the UK has centred on the novel legal and regulatory measures introduced in response to the virus. When those measures were first implemented in March 2020 by the UK Government, it was thought that human rights obligations would limit excesses of governmental action and that the public had more to fear from unwarranted intrusion into civil liberties. However, within the (...) first year of the pandemic’s devastation in the UK, a different picture has emerged: rather than through action, it is governmentalinactionthat has given rise to greater human rights concerns. The UK Government has been roundly criticized for its inadequate response, including missteps in decision-making, delayed implementation and poor enforcement of lockdown measures, abandonment of testing, shortages of critical resources and inadequate test and trace methods. In this article, we analyse the UK Government’s missteps and compare them with published international guidance; we also contrast the UK’s decisions with those taken by several other countries to understand how its actions and inactions have contributed to unfavourable outcomes. Using an analytical perspective that demonstrates how human rights are both a protection from the power of the state and a requirement that governmental powers are used to protect the lives, health and wellbeing of citizens, we argue that the UK Government’s failure to exercise their powers competently allowed the virus to spread without ensuring the country had the means to manage a high case load. This abject failure has led to one of the highest rates of deaths per capita worldwide. We offer several lessons that can be learnt from this unfortunate, but preventable, situation. (shrink)

The Blackwell Companion and Blackwell Guide to the philosophy of education, edited respectively by Randall Curren and by Nigel Blake, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith and Paul Standish, are potentially field-defining volumes. The present essay moves back and forth between the two books to assess the overall impression they provide of the ‘state of the art’. Whilst both texts can be criticised for failing to engage sufficiently with non-philosophical work on education, these are otherwise estimable volumes, containing many fine essays (...) that can be read with profit. (shrink)

This article addresses two questions: First, how does the value of human dignity distinctively bear on a state’s responsibilities in relation to migrants; and, secondly, how serious a wrong is it when a state fails to respect the dignity of migrants? In response to these questions, a view is presented about the distinction between wrongs that violate cosmopolitan standards and wrongs that violate the standards that are distinctive to a particular community; about when and how the contested concept of human (...) dignity might be engaged; and, elaborating a three-tiered and lexically ordered scheme of state responsibilities, about how we should assess the seriousness of a state’s failure to respect the dignity of migrants. (shrink)

This article analyzes Giorgio Agamben’s state of exception and evaluates its implications for understanding the crisis in Nicaragua in 2018. The lens of exception fails to encourage critical questions about the complicated social and historical dynamics of Nicaragua’s contentious politics. Conflict transformation and global civil society could open a space for the social forces struggling to redefine state power and resolve the crisis.

Kuttner and Rosenblum's presentation of the "only objective evidence for consciousness" is criticized for not adequately defining consciousness , not providing at the outset an explanation of the philosophical-theoretical interpretation of quantum theory that would lead to a direct rationale for their "impossible" quantum experiments, and suggesting that data from their impossible experiments could be treated as non-theoretical "facts." It is concluded that Kuttner and Rosenblum fail to objectify consciousness.

The concept of solidarity has been receiving growing attention from scholars in a wide range of disciplines. While this trend coincides with widespread unsuccessful attempts to achieve solidarity in the real world, the failure of solidarity as such remains a relatively unexplored topic. In the case of the so-called European Union refugee crisis, the fact that EU member states failed to fulfil their commitment to solidarity is now regarded as established wisdom. But as we try to come to terms (...) with failing solidarity in the EU we are faced with a number of important questions: are all instances of failing solidarity equally morally reprehensible? Are some motivations for resorting to unsolidaristic measures more valid than others? What claims have an effective countervailing force against the commitment to act in solidarity? (shrink)