This volume for the first time brings the scholarly discipline of comparative religious ethics into constructive collaboration with the community of interreligious dialogue. Its design is premised on two important insights. First, interreligious dialogue offers to comparative religious ethics a new, more persuasive rationale, agenda of issues, and practical orientation. Second, comparative religious ethics offers to interreligious dialogue an arsenal of critical tools and methods which will enhance the sophistication of its practical work. In this way, both theory (a dominant concern and strength of comparative religious ethics) and praxis (a dominant concern and strength of interreligious moral dialogue) are joined together in mutual effort, each contributing to the benefit of the other.The volume's contributors share this vision of collaboration, drawing explicitly from both communities of discourse in a manner that crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries to deal creatively and constructively with important methodological and global moral issue. Although theory and practice cannot easily be separated in such a collaborative project, for the purpose of clarity, the volume is divided into two main parts. The first specifically engages questions of method, theory, and the social role of the public intellectual; the second, on substantive moral themes and issues, many of which were raised at the 1993 Parliament. Taken together, the volume's essays articulate and illustrate new ways of approaching contemporary moral concerns cross-culturally yet with a rigor appropriate to our complex and pluralistic world.

Most people in the United States believe that our environment is getting dirtier, we are running out of natural resources, and population growth in the world is a burden and a threat. These beliefs, according to Simon, are entirely wrong. Why do the media report so much false bad news about the environment, resources, and population? And why do we believe it? Those are the questions distinguished scholar Julian L. Simon set out to answer in Hoodwinking the Nation. His purpose is not to preach but to examine. Most importantly, it aims to consider whether institutional structures can be changed in a way that would allow sanctions against undesirable practices and unethical behavior.

This is the first full-length study of prostitution in London during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is a compelling account, exposing the real lives of the capital's prostitutes, and also shedding light on London society as a whole, its policing systems and its attitudes towards the female urban poor. Drawing on the archives of London's parishes, jury records, reports from Southwark gaol as well as other sources which have been overlooked by historians, it provides a fascinating study for all those interested in Georgian society.

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.

"Sexuality & Culture" serves as a compelling forum for the analysis of ethical, cultural, psychological, social, and political issues related to sexual relationships and sexual behavior. These issues include, but are not limited to: sexual consent and sexual responsibility; sexual harassment and freedom of speech and association; sexual privacy; censorship and pornography; impact of film/literature on sexual relationships; and university and governmental regulation of intimate relationships. In this volume, theoretical essays, research reports, and book reviews examine the topics of prostitution, pornography, and other forms of commercialization of sexuality. Contributions include: "Twelve Step Feminism Makes Sex Workers Sick" by Kari Kerum; "Sex, Beach Boys and Female Tourists in the Caribbean" by Klaus de Albuquerque; "Reframing 'Eve' in the AIDS Era: The Pursuit of Legitimacy by New Zealand Sex Workers" by Bronwen Lichtenstein; "Long-Term Consumption of X-Rated Materials and Attitudes toward Women among Australian Consumers of X-Rated Videos" by Roberto Hugh Potter; "Invisible Man: A Queer Critique of Feminist Anti-Pornography Theory" by Jody Norton; and "Theorizing Prostitution: The Question of Agency" by Melanie Simmons. Also included are reviews of "Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor" by Wendy Chapkis; "New Sexual Agendas" edited by Lynne Segal. In addition, Daphne Patai reviews "Real Live New Girl: Chronicles of a Sex-Positive Culture" by Carol Queen; Nina Hartley reviews "Three in Love"; Jo Doezema reviews "Trafficking in Women;" Valerie Jenness reviews "Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment" by Jane Gallop; and Warren Farrell reviews the film "In the Company of Men." This volume will be of interest to sociologists, psychologists, legal analysts, and policymakers.

This title aims to guide the reader through the maze of statutory and other potential funding sources such as government departments, local education authorities or organizations with a specific interest or remit to help schools pursue avenues towards achieving their goals.

This is a pioneering work on "karayuki-san", impoverished Japanese women sent abroad to work as prostitutes from the 1860s to the 1920s. The narrative follows the life of one such prostitute, Osaki, who is persuaded as a child of ten to accept cleaning work in Sandakan, North Borneo, and then forced to work as a prostitute in a Japanese brothel, one of the many such brothels that were established throughout Asia in conjunction with the expansion of Japanese business interests. Yamazaki views Osaki as the embodiment of the suffering experienced by all Japanese women, who have long been oppressed under the dual yoke of class and gender. This tale provides the historical and anthropological context for understanding the sexual exploitation of Asian women before and during the Pacific War and for the growing flesh trade in Southeast Asia and Japan today. Young women are being brought to Japan with the same false promises that enticed Osaki to Borneo 80 years ago. Yamazaki Tomoko, who herself endured many economic and social hardships during and after the war, has devoted her life to documenting the history of the exchange of women between Japan and other Asian countries since 1868. She has worked directly with "karayuki-san", military comfort women, war orphans, repatriates, women sent as picture brides to China and Manchuria, Asian women who have wed into Japanese farming communities, and Japanese women married to other Asians in Japan.

Men Who Sell Sex is the first comprehensive international account of male prostitution and AIDS. While much is known about female prostitution and sex work, relatively little is known about men who sell sex - either to women or other men. This book brings together an authoritative collection of essays from different countries and examines sexual behaviour, the reasons men sell sex, the meanings involved, and implications for HIV prevention. The authors are all experts in their fields and individual chapters offer a compelling description of the reasons men sell sex and the pleasures and risks involved.

The first book-length study to examine the re-writing of school textbooks by the Japanese Education Ministry in an attempt to play down atrocities in China during World War II. The famous textbook crisis in 1982 was at the centre of a diplomatic storm extending through the 1980s as Sino-Japanese relations were beset by a series of political controversies. This fascinating account of the period reveals that Chinese and Japanese policy-makers were more concerned with changes taking place in international and domestic politics than with adopting a correct view of history.

'Clear, helpful and very readable...This book breaks new ground and does indeed 'expand the debate' .' - Mortality

'This substantial academic volume, which seeks to expand the debate on physician-assisted suicide, is a significant addition to the growing number of edited works on one of the most important issues in contemporary bioethics ... an interesting, readable and topical collection of essays' - Journal of Medical Ethics

'The summaries in this review cannot convey the subtelties of argument and refreshing lack of cant in these essays. This excellent collection ... succeeds in expanding the debate ... well beyond its current narrow framework.' - New England Journal of Medicine

Presents the personal experiences of sex workers in Asia, Australia, the Americas, the Caribbean, West Africa and Western Europe. In exploring the individual narratives of people involved in the sex trade around the world, this book seeks to undermine the crude stereotypes often employed to characterize those involved in this expanding industry. It documents national and international sex workers' movements organized to uphold their legal and human rights as they struggle to resist marginalization and exploitative working conditions around the world.

Series Information:
Religion in the First Christian Centuries

This guide presents and compares the various different approaches that have been adopted in studies of moral panics and integrates concepts such as "risk" which have been developed in related fields. With the increasing number of moral panics in recent years triggered by incidents such as the Bulger case and the spread of AIDS, this book examines their wider significance particularly in terms of the functioning of the mass media. In this book, Kenneth Thompson traces the developments in moral panic studies and also re-introduces some of the initial broader relevance of this field by treating moral panics not simply as separate episodes but in relation to systems of representation and regulation, and as symptoms of wider social and cultural tensions.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415915546

In Industry Unbound, Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech industry conducts its ongoing crusade to undermine our privacy. With research based on interviews with scores of tech employees and internal documents outlining corporate strategies, Waldman reveals that companies don't just lobby against privacy law; they also manipulate how we think about privacy, how their employees approach their work, and how they weaken the law to make data-extractive products the norm. In contrast to those who claim that privacy law is getting stronger, Waldman shows why recent shifts in privacy law are precisely the kinds of changes that corporations want and how even those who think of themselves as privacy advocates often unwittingly facilitate corporate malfeasance. This powerful account should be read by anyone who wants to understand why privacy laws are not working and how corporations trap us into giving up our personal information.

It is widely acknowledged that this is the age of the moral panic. Newspaper headlines continually warn of some new danger resulting from moral laxity, and television programmes echo the theme with sensational documentaries. This concise guide presents and compares the various different approaches that have been adopted in studies of moral panics and integrates concepts such as 'risk' which have been developed in related fields. With the increasing number of moral panics in recent years triggered by incidents such as the Bulger case and the spread of AIDS, this book examines their wider significance particularly in terms of the functioning of the mass media.
In this book, Kenneth Thompson traces the developments in moral panic studies and also re-introduces some of the initial broader relevance of this field by treating moral panics not simply as separate episodes but in relation to systems of representation and regulation, and as symptoms of wider social and cultural tensions.

In the past several years, hundreds of challenges a year to books used in public schools have been reported across the nation. Most of these have come from the Religious Right. This book confronts the attacks on public education and commonly used literature books by challenging the religious assumptions, the biblical interpretations, and the intimidation tactics of the Religious Right. Part I counters the claims of these censors by presenting opposing views on democracy, secular humanism, religion, the Bible, morality, and the purposes of literature. In Part II, six books frequently taught in high school classes are analyzed. Edwards shows why they have been challenged by the Religious Right, and presents a case for their moral and religious virtues as well as their literary worth. The book differs from other anti-censorship works because it deals primarily and directly with the religious and moral aspects that educators often tend to avoid. This book offers teachers and school administrators scholarly conterarguments that can help confront with literature challenges from the Religious Right.

First published in 1998. No other issue has divided the feminist movement in the past two decades quite like pornography. By providing the first book to engage in an empirical investigation of the pornography industry itself, the authors--each grounded in the radical feminist anti-pornography movement--move beyond the rhetorical bomb-tossing of an often polarized debate. The authors engage in a systematic examination of the politics, production, content, and consumption of contemporary mass-market heterosexual pornography, thereby contributing to a fuller understanding of pornography's role in the cultural construction of gender, racial and sexual identities, and relations. They begin with an overview of the social and political history of the feminist anti-pornography movement and the debate over pornography within feminism. Then they address the various rhetorical dodges--definitional, legal, and causal--used to distort the fact that institutionalized pornography helps maintain the sexual and social oppression of women within a patriarchal system. Exploring the beginnings of the commercial pornography industry, the book focuses in part on the history of Playboy magazine. It also analyzes the content of contemporary mass-market videos. Dines, Jensen, and Russo argue that the sexual ideology of patriarchy eroticizes domination and submission, with pornography playing a significant role in how these values are mediated and normalized in American society. They discuss the effects of pornography on the lives of those who use it and those against whom it is used. In so doing, the authors hope to contribute to creating a world in which sex is not a site of oppression but of liberation.

One of the most widely known and seemingly well-established aspects of the Nazi Holocaust is that the Allies did little or nothing to rescue Europe's Jews, allegedly denying refuge to those fleeing Hitler's death machine, turning their backs on pleas for help, and refusing to bomb Auschwitz and other concentration camps. In The Myth of Rescue William D Rubinstein presents the highly controversial argument that all the schemes for rescuing Jews during the Holocaust were incapable of succeeding.

If you've had an abortion and are feeling isolated and vulnerable, Experiencing Abortion will remind you that you are not alone and that you must feel your emotions in order to accept your choice and heal. Each woman responds to abortion in her own way, yet, as this sensitive, insightful book shows, there are many similarities among women's post-abortion emotions. Sharing in the firsthand, personal experiences of other women who speak for themselves in this book will help you come to terms with anguish, stress, grief, anger, or any other overwhelming emotions you might be feeling. Don't go on ignoring or blocking out your feelings. Learn to incorporate your experience into your sense of self in a healthy way.By reading Experiencing Abortion, you will learn about the multiple feelings and reactions abortion can trigger, the process of accepting an abortion, and the struggle to control fertility without treating your body as an enemy. Offering you a safe, honest, and supportive environment in which to explore your feelings about your abortion, this book discusses many important topics, including: the way moods can overtake you after abortion how avoiding your experience can defer acceptance, which in turn leads to denial and guilt how pregnancy, abortion, and subsequent bleeding can affect your perception of your body the struggle to enjoy sex after your abortion your heightened awareness of gender after an abortion how your intimate relationships may change after an abortion the psychological reasons you may sometimes forgo birth control accepting yourself after a second abortionExperiencing Abortion will help women who have had an abortion understand that it is a complex physical and emotional experience that doesn't necessarily end after a week or a month or a year. It will also help professionals in abortion facilities and therapists who offer pre- and post-abortion counseling understand how abortion affects each individual differently and how they might help women work through their feelings both before and after abortion. Partners, friends, and families will find this book helpful and informative as they try to help their loved one get through this sometimes difficult, even traumatic, experience.

This is a dynamic book that successfully combines global and local thinking with regard to an emerging technology that will contribute to the expansion of proteomics and pharmacogenomics, the science of tailored healthcare and treatments. Genetic testing and screening will change the way people understand health, diagnostic knowledge, illness but also crime, databases and private information, paternity, and self-knowledge. In addition to giving individuals the opportunity to think differently about their well-being, it installs a new taxonomy in terms of illness, because its probabilistic effects will introduce a new narrative in the health discourse of 21st century society. While in the past people could be classified as being healthy or sick, now, through genetic testing and screening, adults can be classified as being healthy, predisposed to an illness, probably at risk, at risk, or carriers of certain risks.

A first-hand account of how public officials and other well-connected individuals have been compromised or blackmailed by their sexual improprieties, Confessions of a DC Madame relates the authors time running the largest gay escort service in Washington, DC, and his interactions with VIPs from government, business, and the media who solicited the escorts he employed. The book details the federal governments pernicious campaign waged against the author to ensure his silence and how he withstood relentless, fabricated attacks by the government, which included incarceration rooted in trumped up charges and outright lies. This fascinating and shocking facet of government malfeasance reveals the integral role blackmail plays in American politics and the unbelievable lengths the government perpetrates to silence those in the know.

The Right to Life in Japan is a study that brings new perspectives to bear on an extremely important topic for all those facing the moral dilemmas of such issues as abortion and the death penalty. It also helps to fill a gap in life, in social science and law studies of contemporary Japan.
Noel Williams approaches the right to life in Japan from a legal viewpoint via a broad range of issues such as abortion, suicide, capital punishment and death from overwork. Following a discussion of law and rights in Japan from an historical perspective, the author examines the question of what life is in contemporary Japan and focuses on problematic areas which have arisen in life issues, including infringements of the right to life within the modern company organization, and by the state, as well as the question of the equality of the right to life.