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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates
This book offers a holistic account of the problems posed by freedom of expression in our current times and offers corrective measures to allow for a more genuine exchange of ideas within the global society. The topic of free speech is rarely addressed from a historical, philosophical, or theological perspective. In The Collapse of Freedom of Expression, Jordi Pujol explores the modern concept of the freedom of expression based on the European Enlightenment, and the deficiencies inherent in this framework. Modernity has disregarded the traditional roots of the freedom of expression drawn from Christianity, Greek philosophy, and Roman law, which has left the door open to the various forms of abuse, censorship, and restrictions seen in contemporary public discourse. Pujol proposes that we rebuild the foundations of the freedom of expression by returning to older traditions and incorporating both the field of pragmatics of language and theological and ethical concepts on human intentionality as new, complementary disciplines. Pujol examines emblematic cases such as Charlie Hebdo, free speech on campus, and online content moderation to elaborate on the tensions that arise within the modern concept of freedom of expression. The book explores the main criticisms of the contemporary liberal tradition by communitarians, libertarians, feminists, and critical race theorists, and analyzes the gaps and contradictions within these traditions. Pujol ultimately offers a reconstruction project that involves bridging the chasm between the secular and the sacred and recognizing that religion is a font of meaning for millions of people, and as such has an inescapable place in the construction of a pluralist public sphere.
A thorough treatment of a central part of the moral issue concerning abortion. The book is confined to certain cases of abortion, namely those which involve (a) an unmistakable lethal attack on (b) a creature which would naively be supposed a young human being. A consideration of our problem must take up the "liberal" arguments, that despite appearances, it is not a grave wrong to destroy such an individual, even though it is somehow of value. The book is constructed around the work of Ronald Dworkin and kindred writers.
In the 400 years since the first known execution was carried out for treason in Virginia, American jurisdictions have debated both the appropriateness and methods of capital punishment. Over that time, courts have placed varying restrictions on its application, excluding categories of citizens (for example the insane or the underaged) and evaluating and excluding methods of execution by the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment." Critics have highlighted controversial issues, including race and class, to argue against capital punishment's perceived uneven application. Others have argued that capital punishment is "cruel and unusual" in any form and should be outlawed altogether. Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, in a 5-4 bare majority, that capital punishment is not cruel and unusual for the crime of murder, provided certain factors are also present. In the same decision it held that infliction of pain of during an execution did not bar its application. States remain free to employ the death penalty or not, and if so, choose freely the method each state deems most appropriate. In Capital Punishment in American Courts, distinguished political scientists James B. Whisker and Kevin R. Spiker survey this history from a penetrating new perspective.
The research for this book was prompted by a combination of events, in particular the election of Mary Robinson to the Presidency and the X Case which rocked Irish society. The book is an exploration of the dynamics between the courts, the legislators and the Irish citizens in relation to certain socio-sexual questions: divorce, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. Spanning 73 years since the creation of the Irish State, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland questions the nature of the moral order regulating Irish society and the concept of democracy underlying it. It examines the fragile balance struck between tradition and modernity.
This collection of original pieces brings together critical perspectives on the intersection of ethnic and gender identities as spatialized forms of embodied social practice, tackling important recent themes such as whiteness, masculinity, the body, sexuality, diaspora and globalization. Designed to bring these debates to students in a way that bridges contemporary theory with vivid case material, this is a lively and wide-ranging text of relevance to a range of social sciences.
Hotbeds of Licentiousness is the first substantial critical engagement with British pornography on film across the 1970s, including the "Summer of Love," the rise and fall of the Permissive Society, the arrival of Margaret Thatcher, and beyond. By focusing on a series of colorful filmmakers whose work, while omnipresent during the 1970s, now remains critically ignored, author Benjamin Halligan discusses pornography in terms of lifestyle aspirations and opportunities which point to radical changes in British society. In this way, pornography is approached as a crucial optic with which to consider recent cultural and social history.
Abortion is arguably the most controversial and divisive moral issue of modern times, but up until now the debate has taken place almost exclusively within a Western cultural, religious and philosophical context. For the past three decades in the West arguments both for and against abortion have been mounted by groups of all kinds, from religious fundamentalists to radical feminists and every shade of opinion in between. Rather than mutual understanding, however, the result has been the polarisation of opinion and the deepening of entrenched positions. In the face of this deadlock a new perspective is urgently required. Buddhism is an ancient tradition which over the centuries has refined its distinctive beliefs and values in the course of a long interaction with the major cultures of Asia. As Buddhism continues to engage the attention of the West, the time is now opportune for its views on abortion to be heard. This is the first book to explore the abortion question from a range of Buddhist cultural and ethical perspectives. The approach is interdisciplinary and will be of relevance to those working in fields such as law, ethics, medicine, philosophy, religion, the social sciences and women's studies.
This study of prostitution addresses issues of female agency and experience, as well as contemporary fears about sexual coercion and the forced movement of girls/women, and police surveillance. Rather than treating prostitutes solely as victims or problems to be solved, as so often has been the case in much of the literature, Nancy M. Wingfield seeks to find the historical subjects behind fin-de-siecle constructions of prostitutes, to restore agency to the women who participated in commercial sex, illuminate their quotidian experiences, and to place these women, some of whom made a rational economic decision to sell their bodies, in the larger social context of late imperial Austria. Wingfield investigates the interactions of both registered and clandestine prostitutes with the vice police and other supervisory agents, including physicians and court officials, as well as with the inhabitants of these women's world, including brothel clients and madams, and pimps, rather than focusing top-down on the state-constructed apparatus of surveillance. Close reading of a broad range of primary and secondary sources shows that some prostitutes in late imperial Austria took control over their own fates, at least as much as other working-class women, in the last decades before the end of the Monarchy. And after 1918, bureaucratic transition did not necessarily parallel political transition. Thus, there was no dramatic change in the regulation of prostitution in the successor states. Legislation, which changed regulation only piecemeal after the war, often continued to incorporate forms of control, reflecting continuity in attitudes about women's sexuality.
Traditionally, our society has broadly agreed that the "good university" should teach the intellectual skills students need to become citizens who are intelligently critical of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented politicians, society, the media, and, indeed, universities themselves. The freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is increasingly restricted for fear of causing "offense." In this daring and intrepid book, which was originally withdrawn from publication by another publisher but is now proudly presented by Academica Press, the famous intelligence researcher James R. Flynn presents the underlying factors that have circumscribed the range of ideas now tolerated in our institutions of learning. Flynn studiously examines how universities effectively censor teaching, how social and political activism effectively censors its opponents, and how academics censor themselves and each other. A Book Too Risky To Publish concludes that few universities are now living up to their original mission to promote free inquiry and unfettered critical thought. In an age marred by fake news and ever increasing social and political polarization, this book makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought in our institutions of higher education.
In his first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Polio: An American Story, renowned historian David Oshinsky takes a new and closer look at the Supreme Court's controversial and much-debated stances on capital punishment-in the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia. Career criminal William Furman shot and killed a homeowner during a 1967 burglary in Savannah, Georgia. Because it was a "black-on-white" crime in the racially troubled South, it also was an open-and-shut case. The trial took less than a day, and the nearly all-white jury rendered a death sentence. Aided by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, Furman's African-American attorney, Bobby Mayfield, doggedly appealed the verdict all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1972 overturned Furman's sentence by a narrow 5-4 vote, ruling that Georgia's capital punishment statute, and by implication all other state death-penalty laws, was so arbitrary and capricious as to violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." Furman effectively, if temporarily, halted capital punishment in the United States. Every death row inmate across the nation was resentenced to life in prison. The decision, however, did not rule the death penalty per se to be unconstitutional; rather, it struck down the laws that currently governed its application, leaving the states free to devise new ones that the Court might find acceptable. And this is exactly what happened. In the coming years, the Supreme Court would uphold an avalanche of state legislation endorsing the death penalty. Capital punishment would return stronger than ever, with many more defendants sentenced to death and eventually executed. Oshinsky demonstrates the troubling roles played by race and class and region in capital punishment. And he concludes by considering the most recent Supreme Court death-penalty cases involving minors and the mentally ill, as well as the impact of international opinion. Compact and engaging, Oshinsky's masterful study reflects a gift for empathy, an eye for the telling anecdote and portrait, and a talent for clarifying the complex and often confusing legal issues surrounding capital punishment.
The Tudor and Stuart eras have been described as England's golden age, in large part because of the flowering of its literary and dramatic culture. Ironically, repressive government controls over freedom of expression existed side-by-side with some of the greatest literary accomplishments of the age, and many of the same issues we wrestle with today were being hotly debated in Renaissance England. This reference book provides a means for students and scholars to combine the highly popular topics of censorship and Renaissance studies. The 92 entries in this book highlight the major issues which could provoke the wrath of the censor, the ways in which works were modified in response to censorship, and the fate of the authors who roused the censor's ire. Entries are arranged alphabetically by title of the censored work. Each provides basic factual information, including the name of the author, the publication date, the date of censorship, the type of work, and the offending issue; a discussion of the work's historical context; a synopsis of the contents; an examination of how the work was censored; and a brief bibliography. Although there is a wealth of information on censorship in the twentieth century, this is one of the few reference books to address censorship during the Renaissance.
The Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Second Edition addresses both the physiological and the psychological aspects of human behavior. Carefully crafted, well written, and thoroughly indexed, the encyclopedia helps users-whether they are students just beginning formal study of the broad field or specialists in a branch of psychology-understand the field and how and why humans behave as we do. The work is an all-encompassing reference providing a comprehensive and definitive review of the field. A broad and inclusive table of contents ensures detailed investigation of historical and theoretical material as well as in-depth analysis of current issues. Several disciplines may be involved in applied ethics: one branch of applied ethics, for example, bioethics, is commonly explicated in terms of ethical, legal, social, and philosophical issues. Editor-in-Chief Ruth Chadwick has put together a group of leading contributors ranging from philosophers to practitioners in the particular fields in question, to academics from disciplines such as law and economics. The 376 chapters are divided into 4 volumes, each chapter
falling into a subject category including Applied Ethics;
Bioethics; Computers and Information Management;
Economics/Business; Environmental Ethics; Ethics and Politics;
Legal; Medical Ethics; Philosophy/Theories; Social; and
Social/Media.
View the Table of Contents aAt a troubling time in history when a conservative majority on
the US Supreme Court has called into question the constitutional
protection of women's health and equality, this book comes none too
soon. The Reproductive Rights Reader gives us a uniquely
comprehensive and useful collection of the major court decisions,
legal briefs and scholarly commentaries on the searing debates
about reproductive politics in US public discourse over the past 40
years. And it does so not only through the lenses of the law,
science and public health but also with a clear focus on the
critical dimensions of gender, race, class, sexuality, poverty,
social exclusion and social justice. It is an absolutely
indispensable resource.a aPowerful and provocative, The Reproductive Rights Reader
explodes the stale debate over the constitutional legitimacy of
"Roe v. Wade" by bringing critical perspectives of race, gender and
class to the question of women's control over their reproductive
lives. Taking seriously issues of substantive equality, this volume
is essential reading for all those interested in human rights and
social justice.a aThis type of anthology bridges the sciences and humanities and
narrows the divide between these two broad areas of study.a Since the passage of "Roe v. Wade," the debate over reproductive rights has dominated Americaas courts, legislatures, and streets. The contributors to TheReproductive Rights Reader embrace reproductive justice for all women, but challenge mainstream legal and political solutions based on protecting free choice via neutral governmental policies, which frequently ignore or jeopardize the interests of women of color and the poor. Instead, the pieces in this interdisciplinary book -- including both legal cases and articles by legal scholars, historians, sociologists, political scientists and others -- favor a critical analysis that addresses the concrete material conditions that limit choices, the role of law and social policy in creating those conditions, and the gendered power dynamics that inform and are reinforced by the regulation of human reproduction. The selections demonstrate that the right to choice isnat an automatic guarantee of reproductive justice and gender equality; to truly achieve this ideal it is essential to recognize the complexity of womenas reproductive experiences and needs. Divided into four sections, the book examines feminist critiques of medical knowledge and practice; and the legal regulation of pregnancy termination, conception and child-bearing, and behavior during pregnancy.
Abortion in Popular Culture: A Call to Action brings together scholars who examine depictions of abortion in film, television, literature, and social media. By examining texts ranging from medical dramas of the 1960s and recent films such as Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Unpregnant to dystopian novels and social-media campaigns, the essays analyze a range of narrative styles, rhetorical strategies, and cinematic techniques, all of which shape cultural attitudes toward abortion. They also analyze cultural shifts, including the willingness or reluctance of networks and cable channels to acknowledge medication abortion and the role that abortion plays in family planning. As a whole, however, the essays argue that popular culture can play a significant role in destigmatizing abortion by including a wider range of narratives and doing so with nuance and empathy. With reproductive rights under attack in the United States, each essay is a call to action for writers, producers, directors, showrunners, authors, and musicians to use their platforms to tell more positive and accurate stories about abortion.
Prostitution bears the unique title of being both the "world's oldest profession" and one of the least understood occupations. Unlike most of the crime and family literature, prostitution appears to be have all the features of traditional markets: prices, supply and demand considerations, variety in the organizational structure, and policy relevance. Despite this, economists have largely ignored prostitution in their research and writings. This has been changing, however, over the last twenty years as greater access to data has enabled economists to build better theories and gain a better understanding of the organization of sex market. The Oxford Hanbook of the Economics of Prostitution fills the gap in our understanding. It brings together many of the top researchers in the field who explain how the prostitution markets are organized across space and time, the role of technology in shaping labor supply and demand, the intersection of prostitution with trafficking, and the optimal use of law enforcement. What makes the material unique is its explicit focus on economics as the primary methodology for organizing our understanding of prostitution. The Handbook brings to scholars' attention for the first time a collection of original writings on prostitution that provides an overview of what is known and what is not known in this area. Researchers with an interest in underground markets, labor economics, risky behaviors, marriage, and gender will find the book's contents illuminating and path breaking.
Privacy is gravely endangered in the digital age, and we, the digital citizens, are its principal threat, willingly surrendering it to avail ourselves of new technology, and granting the government and corporations immense power over us. In this highly original work, Firmin DeBrabander begins with this premise and asks how we can ensure and protect our freedom in the absence of privacy. Can-and should-we rally anew to support this institution? Is privacy so important to political liberty after all? DeBrabander makes the case that privacy is a poor foundation for democracy, that it is a relatively new value that has been rarely enjoyed throughout history-but constantly persecuted-and politically and philosophically suspect. The vitality of the public realm, he argues, is far more significant to the health of our democracy, but is equally endangered-and often overlooked-in the digital age.
Abortion remains one of the most politicized issues globally and whilst some countries such as the USA continue to experience restrictions to access to abortion, Northern Ireland stands out as having enacted historical positive change in abortion law, from an almost complete ban throughout the Twentieth Century to decriminalization achieved in 2019. This book documents and analyzes how this historical change was achieved. This, the second of two volumes, places emphasis on allies and support for abortion provision, illustrating how the movement has relied upon an intersectional network of social movement actors, NGOs and fundraisers to maintain momentum and inclusivity. It also focuses on the reality of abortion provision. Each chapter is written by those directly involved in the long-fought battle to change abortion law - including those with personal experience of seeking abortions, activists, academics, legal experts, political actors, NGOs, and volunteers. This interdisciplinary text will be of relevance to academics and students in the disciplines of law, policy, political science, and sociology, but also to organizers and policy makers in other global contexts and across other social justice campaigns.
Providing a comparison the most important instances of public engagement with biotechnology in Europe in recent years, this book provides a theoretically reflected and empirically grounded study of the opportunities and obstacles for a thorough democratization of technological development through processes of public engagement.
The Citizenship Experiment explores the fate of citizenship ideals in the Age of Revolutions. While in the early 1790s citizenship ideals in the Atlantic world converged, the twin shocks of the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolutionary Terror led the American, French, and Dutch publics to abandon the notion of a shared, Atlantic, revolutionary vision of citizenship. Instead, they forged conceptions of citizenship that were limited to national contexts, restricted categories of voters, and 'advanced' stages of civilization. Weaving together the convergence and divergence of an Atlantic revolutionary discourse, debates on citizenship, and the intellectual repercussions of the Terror and the Haitian Revolution, Koekkoek offers a fresh perspective on the revolutionary 1790s as a turning point in the history of citizenship.
"Dangerous Pregnancies" tells the largely forgotten story of the German measles epidemic of the early 1960s and how it created national anxiety about dying, disabled, and "dangerous" babies. This epidemic would ultimately transform abortion politics, produce new science, and help build two of the most enduring social movements of the late twentieth century - the reproductive rights and the disability rights movements. At most a minor rash and fever for women, German measles (also known as rubella), if contracted during pregnancy, could result in miscarriages, infant deaths, and serious birth defects in the newborn. Award-winning writer Leslie J. Reagan chronicles for the first time the discoveries and dilemmas of this disease in a book full of intimate stories -including riveting courtroom testimony, secret investigations of women and doctors for abortion, and startling media portraits of children with disabilities. In exploring a disease that changed America, Dangerous Pregnancies powerfully illuminates social movements that still shape individual lives, pregnancy, medicine, law, and politics.
Sex shaped the Internet as it exists today.
Medical Humanities may be broadly conceptualized as a discipline wherein medicine and its specialties intersect with those of the humanities and social sciences. As such it is a hybrid area of study where the impact of disease and healing science on culture is assessed and expressed in the particular language of the disciplines concerned with the human experience. However, as much as at first sight this definition appears to be clear, it does not reflect how the interaction of medicine with the humanities has evolved to become a separate field of study. In this publication we have explored, through the analysis of a group of selected multidisciplinary essays, the dynamics of this process. The essays predominantly address the interaction of literature, philosophy, art, art history, ethics, and education with medicine and its specialties from the classical period to the present. Particular attention has been given to the Medieval, Early Modern, and Enlightenment periods. To avoid a rigid compartmentalization of the book based on individual fields of study we opted for a fluid division into multidisciplinary sections, reflective of the complex interactions of the included works with medicine.
" Against Management" argues that management is increasingly being
seen as a problem, and not a solution. Martin Parker argues that
managing is not the only way to organize and that managerialism is
a global form of ideology, which is being used to justify
considerable cruelty and inequality. He also suggests that, in a
variety of places, an odd collection of people seem to be coming to
similar conclusions. It is possible to identify cracks in the religion of
managerialism as some of its converts begin to lapse and others
intensify their protest. In order to illustrate his argument,
Parker draws from a wide variety of sources - anti-corporate
activism; books and films which use management as their backdrop;
the movement for business ethics and corporate social
responsibility; as well as critical management studies and general
social theories of the present. Parker's overall argument is that we can see the beginnings of a
cultural shift in the image of management and that this is a
significant historical change. Perhaps most importantly, it opens
up the possibility of exploring non-managerial alternatives to
contemporary assumptions about organizing. "Against Management"
deliberately attempts to blur the boundaries between academic and
popular writing, and encourages some radical questioning of the
common sense that tells us that we need management, managers and
management schools. This will be essential reading for second-year undergraduates and above in business and management studies (including MBA), sociology and cultural studies.
Who are the vulnerable, and what makes them so? Through an innovative application of English School theory, this book suggests that people are vulnerable not only to natural risks, but also to the workings of international society. This replicates the approach of those studies of natural disasters that now commonly present a social vulnerability analysis, showing how people are differentially exposed by their social location. Could international society have similar effects? This question is explored through the cases of political violence, climate change, human movement, and global health. These cases provide rich detail on how, through its social practices of the vulnerable, international society constructs the vulnerable in its own terms, and sets up regimes of protection that prioritize some forms at the expense of others. What this demonstrates above all is that, even if only a 'practical' association, international society inevitably has moral consequences in the way it influences the relative distribution of harm. As a result, these four pressing policy issues now present themselves as fundamentally moral problems. Revising the arguments of E. H. Carr, the author points out the essentially contested normative nature of international order. However, instead of as a moral clash between revisionist and status quo powers, as Carr had suggested, the problem is instead one about the contested nature of vulnerability, insofar as vulnerability is an expression of power relations, but also gives rise to a moral claim. By providing a holistic treatment in this way, the book makes practical sense of the vulnerable, while also seeking to make moral sense of international society. |
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