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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates
First published in 1997, this volume responds to attention in recent years which has been belatedly directed towards reviving World War II issues involving Japan. This study deals first with the manner in which such issues so long fell into abeyance under Cold War conditions, while tracing the vast and varied writing on the war which meanwhile appeared within Japan. Evolving Japanese views on the war are largely focused on debate over the revision of the postwar constitution, especially its renunciation of "war potential". The book also contains the first overview of the decades-long litigation within Japan on the screening of textbooks, especially on the war.
India has one of the highest numbers of HIV carriers in the world. HIV has remained associated with sex work, and large sums of money provided to fund public health interventions have come from global institutions such as UNAIDS, the World Bank and USAID. In the midst of these processes, however, sex workers and their everyday lives have been hidden behind the rhetorics of control and prevention. This book offers a detailed analysis of the experiences of sex workers in Chennai. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it draws out themes of agency; notions of gender and sexuality; and the HIV prevention industry. While the women's experiences are closely knit into the medical discourse regarding sex workers, sex work emerges as a complicated knot of poverty, desire, women's oppression, love, co-option, and motherhood. The author examines how the sex workers actively negotiate the risks of their industry and suggests alternative discourses on women's sexuality, sexual behaviour and desire, arguing that unless the power imbalances affecting women are addressed, such policies and activities will have little impact. She brings attention to the problems of current policies, discourses and attitudes regarding HIV, sexuality and sex work, and shows how new policies could help to reduce vulnerabilities not only for sex workers, but perhaps for all women in India.
Perhaps the most explosive issue in South Africa today is the question of land ownership. The central theme in this country’s colonial history is the dispossession of indigenous African societies by white settlers, and current calls for land restitution are based on this loss. Yet popular knowledge of the actual process by which Africans were deprived of their land is remarkably sketchy. This book recounts an important part of this history, describing how the Khoisan and Xhosa people were dispossessed and subjugated from the time that Europeans first arrived until the end of the Cape Frontier Wars (1779–1878). The Land Wars traces the unfolding hostilities involving Dutch and British colonial authorities, trekboers and settlers, and the San, Khoikhoin, Xhosa, Mfengu and Thembu people – as well as conflicts within these groups. In the process it describes the loss of land by Africans to successive waves of white settlers as the colonial frontier inexorably advanced. The book does not shy away from controversial issues such as war atrocities on both sides, or the expedient decision of some of the indigenous peoples to fight alongside the colonisers rather than against them. The Land Wars is an epic story, featuring well-known figures such as Ngqika, Lord Charles Somerset and his son, Henry, Andries Stockenström, Hintsa, Harry Smith, Sandile, Maqoma, Bartle Frere and Sarhili, and events such as the arrival of the 1820 Settlers and the Xhosa cattlekilling. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand South Africa’s past and present.
Illustrated by in-depth empirical research from Kenya - one of the most popular country destinations in Africa for sex tourism - this book gathers much-needed statistics and data, and then critically examines the features of tourism and the sex trade, contextualizing this in relation to tourism development. It addresses the conditions which generate this 'social problem' and, while not taking a potentially problematic moralistic stance it questions whether this trade is exploitative in nature, particularly in cases of child sex tourism. It then critically evaluates the current policies in place to regulate the sex tourism industry and provides suggestions for future direction.
One of the genuinely remarkable but relatively unnoticed developments of the last half-century is the blossoming of an international humanitarian order - a complex of norms, informal institutions, laws, and discourses that legitimate and compel various kinds of interventions by state and nonstate actors with the explicit goal of preserving and protecting human life. For those who have sacrificed to build this order, and for those who have come to rely on it, the international humanitarian represents a towering achievement cause for sobriety. What kind of international humanitarian order is being imagined, created and practiced? To what extent are the international agents of this order deliverers of progress or disappointment? Featuring previously published and original essays, this collection offers a critical assessment of the practices and politics of global ethical interventions in the context of the post-cold war transformation of the international humanitarian order. After an introduction that introduces the reader to the concept and the significance of the international humanitarian order, Section I explores the braided relationship between international order and the UN, whiles Section II critically examines international ethics in practice. The Conclusion reflects on these and other themes, asking why the international humanitarian order retains such a loyal following despite its flaws, what is the relationship of this order to power and politics, how such relationships implicate our understanding of moral progress, and how the international humanitarian order challenges both practitioners and scholars to rethink the meaning of their vocations.
Key selling points: Issues surrounding euthanasia and assisted dying continue to hit the headlines with strong feelings on both sides Makes a significant and controversial contribution to an important and current debate Endorsements from Mary Warnock, Hans Kung and John Polkinghorne Paul Badham is a Patron of Dignity in Dying and Vice-President of the Modern Churchpeople's Union and often speaks to the media on this topic.
Autonomous weapons systems, often referred to as 'killer robots', have been a hallmark of popular imagination for decades. However, with the inexorable advance of artificial intelligence systems (AI) and robotics, killer robots are quickly becoming a reality. These lethal technologies can learn, adapt, and potentially make life and death decisions on the battlefield with little-to-no human involvement. This naturally leads to not only legal but ethical concerns as to whether we can meaningful control such machines, and if so, then how. Such concerns are made even more poignant by the ever-present fear that something may go wrong, and the machine may carry out some action(s) violating the ethics or laws of war. Researchers, policymakers, and designers are caught in the quagmire of how to approach these highly controversial systems and to figure out what exactly it means to have meaningful human control over them, if at all. In Designed for Death, Dr Steven Umbrello aims to not only produce a realistic but also an optimistic guide for how, with human values in mind, we can begin to design killer robots. Drawing on the value sensitive design (VSD) approach to technology innovation, Umbrello argues that context is king and that a middle path for designing killer robots is possible if we consider both ethics and design as fundamentally linked. Umbrello moves beyond the binary debates of whether or not to prohibit killer robots and instead offers a more nuanced perspective of which types of killer robots may be both legally and ethically acceptable, when they would be acceptable, and how to design for them.
This book offers a unique focus on the everyday ethics of community development practice in the context of local and global struggles for equity and social justice. Contributors from around the world (from India to the Netherlands and USA) grapple with ethical dilemmas and tensions, including how to: respect and learn from Indigenous values and philosophies; challenge environmental destruction; gain consent in divided communities; maintain or breach professional boundaries; and develop new paradigms for transformative community organising, sustainable development and ethically-sensitive practice. Offering theoretical frameworks, philosophical perspectives and practical case examples (from sex worker collectives to tree action groups and Australian Indigenous communities) this book is essential reading for community-based practitioners, students and academics.
'Work hard, have fun, make history' proclaims the slogan on the walls of Amazon's warehouses. This cheerful message hides a reality of digital surveillance, aggressive anti-union tactics and disciplinary layoffs. Reminiscent of the tumult of early industrial capitalism, the hundreds of thousands of workers who help Amazon fulfil consumers' desire are part of an experiment in changing the way we all work. In this book, Alessandro Delfanti takes readers inside Amazon's warehouses to show how technological advancements and managerial techniques subdue the workers rather than empower them, as seen in the sensors that track workers' every movement around the floor and algorithmic systems that re-route orders to circumvent worker sabotage. He looks at new technologies including robotic arms trained by humans and augmented reality goggles, showing that their aim is to standardise, measure and discipline human work rather than replace it. Despite its innovation, Amazon will always need living labour's flexibility and low cost. And as the warehouse is increasingly automated, worker discontent increases. Striking under the banner 'we are not robots', employees have shown that they are acutely aware of such contradictions. The only question remains: how long will it be until Amazon's empire collapses?
My mother was a prostitute. My grandmother and great-grandmother were prostitutes. Maybe I should have given the family business a chance... BBC RADIO 4 PICK OF THE WEEK, Katie Puckrik 'Eliska's story is an extraordinary and powerful read. It's the ultimate book about survival and an against-all-odds fight to make it in life. Highly recommend.' Clover Stroud 'A scintillating, devastating memoir, and a fiercely witty and unabashed tribute to the toughness of the human spirit.' Damian Le Bas __________________________________________________ To westerners, being Gypsy means being wild, romantic and free. To Eliska Tanzer, it means being rented out to dance for older men. It means living without running water. It means not being allowed a job or an education. It means being stuffed into a bare room with all your aunts and cousins, fighting over the thin, stained blanket the way you fight over the last piece of half-mouldy bread. It means joining the family prostitution ring when you're still a child. But Eliska was given a way out. Slung out of Hoe School and shipped to England in a washing machine box, she thought she had made it. But her dream soon turned into a nightmare. A moving and timely memoir from a powerful new voice in literature.
Since ratification of the First Amendment in the late eighteenth century, there has been a sea change in American life. When the amendment was ratified, individuals were almost completely free of unwanted speech; but today they are besieged by it. Indeed, the First Amendment has, for all practical purposes, been commandeered by the media to justify intrusions of offensive speech into private life. In its application, the First Amendment has become one-sided. Even though America is virtually drowning in speech, the First Amendment only applies to the speaker's delivery of speech. Left out of consideration is the one participant in the communications process who is the most vulnerable and least protected--the helpless recipient of offensive speech. In "Rediscovering a Lost Freedom," Patrick Garry addresses what he sees as the most pressing speech problem of the twenty-first century: an often irresponsible media using the First Amendment as a shield behind which to hide its socially corrosive speech. To Garry, the First Amendment should protect the communicative process as a whole. And for this process to be free and open, listeners should have as much right to be free from unwanted speech as speakers do of not being thrown in jail for uttering unpopular ideas. "Rediscovering a Lost Freedom" seeks to modernize the First Amendment. With other constitutional rights, changed circumstances have prompted changes in the law. Restrictions on political advertising seek to combat the perceived influences of big money; the Second Amendment right to bear arms, due to the prevalence of violence in America, has been curtailed; and the Equal Protection clause has been altered to permit affirmative action programs aimed at certain racial and ethnic groups. But when it comes to the flood of violent and vulgar media speech, there has been no change in First Amendment doctrines. This work proposes a government-facilitated private right to censor. "Rediscovering a Lost Freedom" will be of interest to students of American law, history, and the U.S. Constitution.
Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution is about sex work and prostitution third sector organizations (TSOs): non-governmental and non-profit organizations that provide support services to, and advocate for the well-being of people operating in the sex industries. With a focus on three vast and extremely diverse regions, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, this book provides a unique vantage point that shows how interlinked these organizations' histories and configurations are. TSOs are fascinating research sites because they operate as zones of contestation which translate their understandings of sex work and prostitution into different support practices and advocacy initiatives. This book reveals that these organizations are not external to normative power but participate in it and are subject to it, conditioning how they can exist, who they can reach out to, where, and what they can achieve. Third Sector Organizations in Sex Work and Prostitution is a resource for scholars, policymakers, and activists involved in research on, and work with third sector organizations in the fields of sex work and prostitution, gender and sexuality, and human rights among others.
Chinese artists, activists, and netizens are pioneering a new order of pornographic representation that is in critical dialogue with global entertainment media. Jacobs examines the role of sex-positive feminists and queer communities to investigate pornography's "afterglow" (a state of crisis and decay within digital culture).
An indispensable resource for students, scholars, and activists concerned about current attacks on abortion rights, this book offers an unmatched account of the emergence, consolidation, and consequences of the antiabortion movement's paternalistic abortion regret narrative. Abortion Regret explores the emergence and consolidation of the antiabortion movement's paternalistic efforts to "protect" women from abortion regret. It begins by examining the 19th-century physician's campaign to criminalize abortion and traces the contours of the women-protective abortion regret narrative through to the 21st century. Based on interviews, textual analysis of primary sources, and a content analysis of state antiabortion policy from 2010-2015, the authors argue that the contemporary rise of the abortion regret narrative has armed the antiabortion movement with a unifying and compelling strategy to oppose abortion through a woman-centered approach. In addition to covering the historical origins of our nation's criminal abortion laws, the book covers topics that include the origins and growth of crisis pregnancy centers, including recent efforts provide perinatal hospice services; an analysis of leading Supreme Court decisions on abortion; the emergence of the "pro-woman/pro-life" antiabortion platform, including its deeply religious roots; the infiltration of this position into the political and legal spheres in the guise of a secular rationale for limiting access to abortion; and an evidence-based rejoinder to the position that abortion harms women. Examines the historical continuity of the abortion regret narrative as a political strategy used to limit women's access to abortion Asserts that the abortion regret narrative is intimately tied to a gendered and paternalistic construction of women's divine role as mothers Examines the antiabortion movement's strategy to place the "grieving" mother at the center of its oppositional narrative Uses interviews, textual analysis of primary sources, and content analysis of state antiabortion policies to trace the growing impact of the abortion regret narrative Examines and reveals the antiabortion movement's calculated political motivation for using the abortion regret narrative as its primary strategy to oppose abortion rights
This edited volume brings together leading scholars on the death penalty within international, regional and municipal law. It considers the intrinsic elements of both the promotion and demise of the punishment around the world, and provides analysis which contributes to the evolving abolitionist discourse. The contributors consider the current developments within the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the African Commission and the Commonwealth Caribbean, and engage with the emergence of regional norms promoting collective restriction and renunciation of the punishment. They investigate perspectives and questions for retentionist countries, focusing on the United States, China, Korea and Taiwan, and reveal the iniquities of contemporary capital judicial systems. Emphasis is placed on the issues of transparency of municipal jurisdictions, the jurisprudence on the 'death row phenomenon' and the changing nature of public opinion. The volume surveys and critiques the arguments used to scrutinize the death penalty to then offer a detailed analysis of possible replacement sanctions.
In this hard-hitting timely book Judith Orr, leading pro-choice campaigner, argues that it's time women had the right to control their fertility without the practical, legal and ideological barriers they have faced for generations. Donald Trump's presidency threatens abortion rights within the US and his global gag affects women worldwide today - 47,000 women die annually from illegal abortions. In Britain, anti-abortion campaigners attack women's rights under existing law. Elsewhere, women cross borders or buy pills online. In the US, Ireland, Poland and Latin America restrictions on abortion have provoked mass resistance, Combining analysis of statistics, popular culture and social attitudes with powerful first-hand accounts of women's experiences and a history of women's attempts to control their bodies, the author shows that despite the 1967 Abortion Act full reproductive rights in Britain are yet to be won. The book also highlights current debates over decriminalisation and argues for abortion provision fit for the 21st century.
The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform traces case studies of four European Union countries to reveal the way anxieties over globalization translates into policies to recognize sex workers in some countries, punish prostitutes' clients in others, and protect victims of human trafficking in them all.
It seems like every day society faces a new ethical challenge
raised by a scientific innovation. Human genetic engineering, stem
cell research, face transplantation, synthetic biology - all were
science fiction only a few decades ago, but now are all reality.
How do we as a society decide whether these technologies are
ethical? For decades professional bioethicists have served as
mediators between a busy public and its decision-makers, helping
people understand their own ethical concerns, framing arguments,
discrediting illogical claims, and supporting promising ones. These
bioethicists play an instrumental role in guiding governments'
ethical policy decisions, consulting for hospitals faced with vital
decisions, and advising institutions that conduct research on
humans.
Interrogating supply/demand from an inter- and multi-disciplinary perspective, this collection broadens engagement beyond the routine analysis of the locus of violence in prostitution and the validity of the prostitute's consent. A focus on the supply/demand dynamic brings into play a range of other societal, economic and psychological factors such as the social construction of sexuality, the viability of alternative choices for prostitutes and clients, and the impact of regulatory regimes on the provision of sexual services. The factors which underlie each component of the supply/demand dyad are also studied and an examination is made of their dynamic interrelation. The collection emphasizes the importance of rendering policy makers alert to the evidence emerging from empirical studies conducted in different fields of enquiry, in the hope of moving beyond polarity and politics at the local, national and international level.
Sex Working and the Bible interprets stories of biblical prostitution with activist sex workers and incorporates their social theory of prostitution to engage existing liberation and feminist readings. By reading with sex worker rights activists, unique and challenging interpretations were produced. The Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP-USA) conducted group readings of four biblical narratives: the story of Rahab in Joshua 2 and 6, the story of Solomon and the two prostitutes of 1 Kings 3: 16-28, the anointing woman traditions (Jn 12: 1-8/Mk 14: 3-9/Mt 26: 6-13/Lk 7: 36-50) and the apocalyptic vision of the whore Babylon in Revelation 17-19. Rahab is read as a rebellious police snitch who sides with the revolutionaries. The story of Solomon's riddle is interpreted as a parody according to sex worker experiences of a corrupt justice system. Anointing woman is explored as a prostitute avatar of the Goddess of love who performs an act of erotic worship with Jesus. The whore Babylon is examined in light of violence experienced by sex workers. This study also demonstrates and challenges interpretive trends that make sex workers invisible in feminist and liberation readings of biblical prostitution. The book concludes with recommendations for an inclusive liberation hermeneutic that engages sex worker standpoints.
This book traces issues surrounding abortion and abortion practices in the United States through the lens of multiple disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, community health, theology, and political science. In so doing, it parallels the interdisciplinary nature of feminist and women's studies, situating the issue of abortion within a wider understanding of the impact of reproduction on women's lives and their health. The contributing authors provide an accessible summary of the issues surrounding the topic of abortion, and the essays reflect both original research and scholarly discourse on existing research and literature. The first three essays set forth theoretical issues from sociological, medical, and political points of view, discussing the evolution of the abortion debate in the United States along with a summary of various abortion methods from a health and medical perspective. The next essay, an anthropological case study of women's views on abortion and family planning in rural Illinois, serves as a bridge to the remaining essays - providing a turn from theory to academic practices. The remaining essays examine a number of topics, including a study of the popular novel and film ""The Cider House Rules"" as a litmus for social opinion and normative beliefs on modern abortion; the biological and theological concerns related to abortion within the context of the mind/body dualism of Western thought; a case study of an abortion that was psychologically problematic for one woman and the role of counseling in healing such problems; and, the plausibility of a feminist Kantian perspective in addressing quality of life issues and other moral considerations of abortion.
The elephant is a much-admired animal, but it is also endangered. The ivory from its tusks has been in great demand across the centuries and throughout all cultures. What sort of material is it? How has it been used in the past and the present? And what can we do today to protect the world's largest mammals from poachers? This lavishly illustrated volume embarks on a journey through cultural history and takes up a contemporary position. Ivory fascinates. As long as 40,000 years ago people carved mammoth tusks into artful figures and musical instruments, and it remains popular as a material to this day. Ivory polarises, because the animal's tusks also stand for injustice and violence. The exploitation of man and nature, the threatened extinction of the elephant, poaching and organised crime are phenomena which we associate with ivory. The publication approaches the subject critically and poses the question as to our responsibility in our dealings with both animal and material. |
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