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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates
There is almost unanimous agreement that civilians should be protected from the direct effects of violent conflict, and that the distinction between combatant and non-combatant should be respected. But what are the fundamental ethical questions about civilian immunity? Are new styles of conflict making this distinction redundant? Eloquently combining theory and practice, leading scholars from the fields of political science, law and philosophy have been brought together to provide an essential overview of some of the major ethical, legal and political issues with regard to protecting civilians caught up in modern inter- and intra-state conflicts. In doing so, they examine what is being done, and what can be done, to make soldiers more aware of their responsibilities in this area under international law and the ethics of war, and more able to respond appropriately to the challenges that will confront them in the field. 'Protecting Civilians During Violent Conflict' presents a clear-eyed look at the dilemmas facing regular combatants as they confront enemies in the modern battlespace, and especially the complications arising from the new styles of conflict where enemy and civilian populations merge.
Over the last decade there has been dramatically increased interest in the ways that technology has been used in the abuse and exploitation of children, due in part to increasing numbers of convictions for child pornography-related offenses. Opinion swings between those who feel that there is a danger of distorting the threat posed to children by technology, and those for whom it appears that the threat has been grossly underestimated. Current literature surrounding the debate at times seems to create more questions than answers and what quickly becomes apparent is that the data we have to inform our understanding is partial, potentially context specific, and at times seemingly contradictory. This book broadens our understanding of the complex nature of online sexual exploitation of children and considers the risk that those engaged in Internet-related offences pose to children in both the online and offline environments. It focuses on cutting-edge research and conceptual thinking that views perpetrators within context, examines those impacted by such offending, describes emerging legal and policy issues, and proposes innovative strategies for prevention within a dynamic global environment. Understanding and Preventing Online Sexual Exploitation of Children responds to the growing call for help across all practice areas, from judicial to therapeutic, and will provide an invaluable resource for practitioners and policy makers working in the field, as well as students and academics studying sexual exploitation and cyber crime.
Over the last decade there has been dramatically increased interest in the ways that technology has been used in the abuse and exploitation of children, due in part to increasing numbers of convictions for child pornography-related offenses. Opinion swings between those who feel that there is a danger of distorting the threat posed to children by technology, and those for whom it appears that the threat has been grossly underestimated. Current literature surrounding the debate at times seems to create more questions than answers and what quickly becomes apparent is that the data we have to inform our understanding is partial, potentially context specific, and at times seemingly contradictory. This book broadens our understanding of the complex nature of online sexual exploitation of children and considers the risk that those engaged in Internet-related offences pose to children in both the online and offline environments. It focuses on cutting-edge research and conceptual thinking that views perpetrators within context, examines those impacted by such offending, describes emerging legal and policy issues, and proposes innovative strategies for prevention within a dynamic global environment. Understanding and Preventing Online Sexual Exploitation of Children responds to the growing call for help across all practice areas, from judicial to therapeutic, and will provide an invaluable resource for practitioners and policy makers working in the field, as well as students and academics studying sexual exploitation and cyber crime.
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.
During the nineteenth century, the American temperance movement underwent a visible, gendered shift in its leadership as it evolved from a male-led movement to one dominated by the women. However, this transition of leadership masked the complexity and diversity of the temperance movement. Through an examination of the two icons of the movement -- the self-made man and the crusading woman -- Fletcher demonstrates the evolving meaning and context of temperance and gender. Temperance becomes a story of how the debate on racial and gender equality became submerged in service to a corporate, political enterprise and how men's and women's identities and functions were reconfigured in relationship to each other and within this shifting political and cultural landscape.
Mandatory sterilization laws enacted in dozens of states coast-to-coast and approved by the U.S. Supreme Court formed the initial pillar for what became the Final Solution. Following WWII, there was renewed interest in a more inclusive view of social worth and the autonomy of the individual. Social movements were launched to secure broad-based revisions in civil and human rights. This book is based on a hugely popular undergraduate course taught at the University of Texas, and is ideal for those interested in science-based policy, the social construction of social worth, social problems, and social movements. This book is an excerpt from a larger text, Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?, http://www.routledge.com/9780415892476/
A small collection of well-honed tools has been employed for some time by media practitioners and the public to help maintain and improve the credibility of journalism and the mass media. These media accountability tools have included ethics codes, media critics, news councils, ombudsmen, journalism reviews and pubic/civic journalism initiatives. Now, in the 21st Century, the mass media are increasingly being buffeted by a perfect storm of declining subscribers and audience share, dwindling advertising revenue, changing corporate demands, unpredictable audiences and new-media competition. If journalism and the mass media are to stay afloat and be credible, the media accountability toolbox needs to contain suitable tools for the job, which begs the question: Who will Watch the Watchdog in the Twitter Age? This book contains answers to this question from the perspective of 17 media ethics experts from around the globe. Their answers will help shape and define for years to come the tools in the media ethics toolbox. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Mass Media Ethics.
This book provides a critical overview of the policy frameworks underpinning the contemporary practices of non-conviction information disclosure during pre-employment 'screening'. It questions how a man can walk free from a criminal court as an innocent person only to have all the court details of his acquittal passed to any potential employer.Despite several million 'enhanced' criminal background checks being performed each year, there has been little discussion of these issues within academic literature. Non-conviction information, also known as 'police intelligence', is a less well-known check provided alongside the criminal record check. This book seeks to define what is meant by non-conviction information and to provide a clear and simple explanation of how this decision making process of police disclosure to employers is made. It also considers the extent to which these practices have been subjected to legal challenges within the UK and explores how public protection is balanced against individual rights.
Southeast Asian sex workers are stereotypically understood as passive victims of the political economy, and submissive to western men. The advent of HIV/AIDS only compounds this image. Sex Work in Southeast Asia is a cultural critique of HIV/AIDS prevention programmes targetting sex tourism industries in Southeast Asia.
Since the Chinese were officially plugged into the virtual community in 1994, the usage of the internet in the country has developed at an incredible rate. By the end of 2008, there were approximately 298 million netizens in China, a number which surpasses that of the U.S. and ranks China the highest user in the world. The rapid development of the online Chinese community has not only boosted the information flow among citizens across the territory, but has also created a new form of social interaction between the state, the media, various professionals and intellectuals, as well as China's ordinary citizens. Although the subject of this book is online Chinese nationalism, which to a certain extent is seen as a pro-regime phenomenon, the emergence of an online civil society in China intrinsically provides some form of supervision of state power-perhaps even a check on it. The fact that the party-state has made use of this social interaction, while at the same time remaining worried about the negative impact of the same netizens, is a fundamental characteristic of the nature of the relationship between the state and the internet community. Many questions arise when considering the internet and Chinese nationalism. Which are the most important internet sites carrying online discussion of nationalism related to the author's particular area of study? What are the differences between online nationalism and the conventional form of nationalism, and why do these differences exist? Has nationalist online expression influenced actual foreign policy making? Has nationalist online expression influenced discourse in the mainstream mass media in China? Have there been any counter reactions towards online nationalism? Where do they come from? Online Chinese Nationalism and China's Bilateral Relations seeks to address these questions.
By examining the highly contested legal debate about the regulation of pornography through an epistemic lens, this book analyzes competing claims about the proper role of speech in our society, pornography's harm, the relationship between speech and equality, and whether law should regulate and, if so, upon what grounds. In maintaining that inegalitarian pornography generates discursive effects, the book contends that law cannot simply adopt a libertarian approach to free speech. While inegalitarian pornography may not be determinative of gender inequality, it does contribute, reinforce, reflect and help maintain such unfairness. As a result, we can place reasonable gender-based regulations on inegalitarian pornography while upholding our most treasured commitments to dissident speech just as other liberal democracies with strong free speech traditions have done.
This book is a critical feminist analysis of sex trafficking. Arguing that trafficking in girls and women is a product of the social construction of gender and other dimensions of power and status within a particular culture and at a particular historical moment, this book offers the necessary locally grounded analysis. Focusing on the case of Nepal, from where 5,000 to 7,000 thousands of Nepali girls and women are trafficked each year primarily to India, Mary Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking - the concept and its representation in discourse - are influenced by the dynamics of gender, caste, and the development establishment. The defining figure is an innocent, naive young girl being lured or duped into leaving the safety of her village. The trafficking victim is portrayed as "backward"; however, she is "backward" in specific ways that resonate with Nepal's struggle to resist and yet encompass Western influence. This view may lead to paradoxical effects in which efforts to protect girls and women instead restrict their human rights. Rather than seeing women as universalized victims, Crawford assesses how the social construction of trafficking in a particular society affects girls and women who live in that society. In this book, the author's voice as a woman, a feminist, and a social scientist immersed in a "foreign" way of life, illuminates aspects of this process and highlights the subjectivity of urban women. It makes the connection between Nepali subjectivities and a problem of international significance, the trafficking of girls and women. The book provides a model for other locally grounded accounts of sex trafficking to counter the universalizing rhetoric of the mass media and some anti-trafficking activists, filling a niche in South Asian Studies and Women's Studies.
First published in 1980, Pornography, Psychedelics and Technology: Essays on the Limits to Freedom focuses on the crucial connections between technological growth and the more salient features of social malaise in the latter part of the twentieth century. Professor Mishan is one of the few economists absorbed by the larger social questions, and does not believe that the growth in state intervention and the decline of social liberty are simply the result of intellectual confusion and bureaucratic momentum. He sees them as unavoidable consequences of scientific and technical progress. While agreeing with many of his fellow economists in acknowledging the virtues of a competitive market economy, Professor Mishan is acutely aware of its limitations. Following the growth of self-styled liberation movements, seen as manifestations of a move towards a world of greater individual emancipation and fulfilment, the author nevertheless groups such movements together with the rising indices of violence, suicide, family breakdown and hooliganism, which have become indicative of a growing disorientation and social disintegration. These developments and the hazards they entail, however, are bound up with the rapid scientific and technological progress of the post-war world.
Designers of technology have a major responsibility in the current age. Their designs can have tremendous effects on society, in both the short and the long term. In fact, sustainable development itself has all the characteristics of a design project, albeit a vast one. But a failed product design here will be not just be unsuccessful in the market - it will have far-reaching consequences. It is our common responsibility to make the project successful. Technology has played an important role in creating the problems that we now face; but it will also play an important role in solving them. But this does not mean the technological fix will be easy. How do we allocate resources and attention when there are myriad issues under the umbrella of "sustainable development" currently in competition with one another? How do we arrive at precise specifications for the sustainable technologies that are to be developed and, furthermore, reach consensus on these specifications? What if our sustainable technological solutions aggravate other problems or create new ones? And, because sustainable development is all about the long-term consequences of our actions, how do we assess the effects of modifying existing landscapes, infrastructures and patterns of life?How could we be sure in advance that the changes that new technologies bring will make our society more sustainable? These dilemmas and paradoxes are the subject of this provocative book. Sometimes the claim that a technology is sustainable is made in order to make the technology acceptable in the political process, as in the case of nuclear energy production, where the claims of "sustainability" refer to the absence of CO2 emissions. In the case of biofuels, claims of sustainability have led to a "fuel or food" debate, showing that sustainability has counteracting articulations. And the well-known rebound effect is observed when increased resource efficiency can create a stimulus for consumption. What is Sustainable Technology? illustrates that the sustainability impact of a technology is often much more complicated and ambivalent than one might expect. Making improvements to existing designs is not the technological challenge that will lead to real solutions. We mustn't look to change a part of a machine, but rather the machine as a whole - or even the whole system in which it functions. It is these system innovations that have the potential to make a genuine contribution to sustainable development. What is Sustainable Technology? will help all those involved in designing more sustainable technologies in determining their strategies. It does so by presenting case studies of different technologies in contrasting contexts. Each case asks: 1. What articulations of sustainability played a role in the design process? 2. What sustainability effects did this technology lead to? 3. Who was affected, where, and when? 4. Could the designer have foreseen these consequences? 5. How did the designer anticipate them? 6. How was societal interaction dealt with during the design process? Finally, the authors reflect on future options for the sustainable technology designer. They argue that an important first step is an awareness of the multitude of sustainable development challenges that play a role in production, use, recycling and end-of-life disposal. What is Sustainable Technology? will be essential reading for product designers, engineers, material scientists and others involved in the development of sustainable technologies, as well as a wide academic audience interested in the complexities of the sustainable design process.
"Regulating Sex/Work"" From Crime Control to Neo-liberalism?" addresses the rise in sexual commerce and consumption by challenging traditional responses and offering a fresh approach to sex industry regulation Examines different forms of sex regulation by utilizing examples from a range of sex markets in the UK, France, USA, Australia, and IndiaTheorizes the apparent paradox that the increase in punitive approaches to regulating the sex industry is fueling a rise in supply, demand, and diversification of the sex industry
Why Are We Yelling is Buster Benson’s essential guide to having more
honest and constructive arguments.
Why Are We Yelling will shatter your assumptions about what makes arguments productive. You'll find yourself having fewer repetitive, predictable fights once you're empowered to identify your biases, listen with an open mind, and communicate well.
For too long historians have imposed on the literature a homogeneous, pre-determined narrative of Victorian attitudes to prostitution. Attwood argues for a multi-faceted, many-layered representation amongst contemporary Victorian observers, demonstrated using political, medical, feminist, literary and pornographic sources.
This book focuses on the relationship between public morality and personal action in the American political community. It emphasizes the responsibilities of citizens and government to find and confirm truth, looking to specific sources: religious scripture and empirical events. Recognizing that we have a natural preference for distraction and distance from both sources of truth, Slack uses qualitative, open-ended interviews and direct observation to uncover the intimate consequences of life-taking in open societies. Abortion and murder/capital punishment are instances in which there is a sequence of events that result in life-taking. The act of murder denies the sanctity of life of someone else. Abortion and capital punishment also deny the sanctity of the lives of others. The intimacy of life-taking is not typically acknowledged or remains hidden. This makes it difficult to assess the consequences for victims, survivors, and the political community as a whole. As a result, there is only a tenuous link between public actions that question the sanctity of human life and the moral compass professed by the American democracy. The volume presumes a theocentric foundation envisioned by the American Founders. It explores the model's first source of truth, biblical scripture, as it applies to the public actions of murder, abortion, and capital punishment. Then it investigates the intimate reality of these acts. These realities are examined in a variety of settings, resulting in a mosaic pattern of public action about capital punishment and abortion. Slack underscores the importance of government's role of providing outward justice, as well as the citizen's responsibility to be supportive of government tasks in order to reconcile the reality of life-taking with the moral compass professed in the American political community.
Does extinction have to be forever? As the global extinction crisis accelerates, conservationists and policy-makers increasingly use advanced biotechnologies such as reproductive cloning, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and bioinformatics in the urgent effort to save species. Mendel's Ark considers the ethical, cultural and social implications of using these tools for wildlife conservation. Drawing upon sources ranging from science to science fiction, it focuses on the stories we tell about extinction and the meanings we ascribe to nature and technology. The use of biotechnology in conservation is redrawing the boundaries between animals and machines, nature and artifacts, and life and death. The new rhetoric and practice of de-extinction will thus have significant repercussions for wilderness and for society. The degree to which we engage collectively with both the prosaic and the fantastic aspects of biotechnological conservation will shape the boundaries and ethics of our desire to restore lost worlds.
This is an authoritative study on the role of mass media in Third World development. Using broad historical, economic, and political perspectives, Gunilla L. Faringer details the obstacles to a genuinely free, mass circulation press in Black Africa and offers a thorough analysis of the African press. The volume's six chapters meticulously catalog all pertinent data on press development, performance, and goals in English-speaking, sub-Saharan Africa, with primary focus on Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, countries that represent three different courses of political development. Faringer critically analyzes widely held attitudes among scholars and international organizations as to the role of mass media in Third World development. Her findings challenge the prevalent belief that the primary task of Third World media is to function as a tool for economic development. Outlining both present and future responsibilities of Third World mass media, Press Freedom in Africa stresses the need for deeper understandings by mass media policy makers of the importance that history, macroeconomic structure, and political traditions hold in the Third World. The detailed introduction considers the philosophical issues that underlie the crucial role of mass media in political change and national development. Faringer surveys the unique obstacles confronting African nations as they have attempted to develop their own comprehensive media structures. Subsequent chapters trace the history of newspapers in Black Africa before World War II; survey the role of the press in the independence movement; and examine the changing relations between government and press. Two final chapters offer a critical perspective on press freedoms and functions and lay the groundwork for a more realistic concept of the press in the Third World. This up-to-the-minute resource will find broad acceptance for courses in international journalism, African studies, Third World development, communications and mass media, government and politics of Africa, area studies, political science, political economy, and civil rights.
The topic of moral courage is typically missing from business ethics instruction and management training. But moral courage is what we need when workplace pressures threaten to compromise our values and principles. Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work, edited by Debra Comer and Gina Vega, underscores for readers the ethical pitfalls they can expect to encounter at work and enhances their ability do what they know is right, despite these organizational pressures. The book highlights the effects of organizational factors on ethical behavior; illustrates exemplary moral courage and lapses of moral courage; explores the skills and information that support those who act with moral courage; and considers how to change organizations to promote moral courage, as well as how to exercise moral courage to change organizations. By giving readers who want to do the right thing guidelines for going about it, Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work is a potent tool to foster more ethical organizational behavior.
The topic of moral courage is typically missing from business ethics instruction and management training. But moral courage is what we need when workplace pressures threaten to compromise our values and principles. Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work, edited by Debra Comer and Gina Vega, underscores for readers the ethical pitfalls they can expect to encounter at work and enhances their ability do what they know is right, despite these organizational pressures. The book highlights the effects of organizational factors on ethical behavior; illustrates exemplary moral courage and lapses of moral courage; explores the skills and information that support those who act with moral courage; and considers how to change organizations to promote moral courage, as well as how to exercise moral courage to change organizations. By giving readers who want to do the right thing guidelines for going about it, Moral Courage in Organizations: Doing the Right Thing at Work is a potent tool to foster more ethical organizational behavior.
Sex work studies have seen an expansion in publications over the past decade, drawing together disciplines from across the social sciences, namely sociology, criminology and social policy. There has, however, been a tendency for research and writing to focus on the more obvious aspect of the sex industry - the visible elements of female street prostitution and those features which attract media attention such as the criminalised aspects of the sex trade. The sex industry is diverse in terms of its organisation, presentation, participants and how it is located in the broader context of globalisation and regulation; there is a need for publications which demonstrate this breadth. This book makes an outstanding contribution to the sociology of sex work through advancing theoretical, policy, methodological and empirical ideas as each chapter pushes the boundaries of a specific area by offering new and critical research as well as commentary.
The recent increased attention given to qualitative research, and especially research involving vulnerable persons, has not yet been adequately translated into corresponding research on the methodological and ethical challenges researchers face. The relative scarcity of such scholarship reflects the dilemma of the multidisciplinary nature of the study of migration. ... The aim of this book is to present the difficulties that researchers working with migrants in precarious situations have to contend with, and to contribute to the development of methodological and ethical discussions relevant to the topic of migration as an interdisciplinary field of research. The contributors to the volume do this through a threefold approach: Discussion of methods and ethics in institutional settings; a rethinking of basic research methods; and defining the role of the researcher. ... Earlier research - focusing on document analysis (police files and court cases), expert interviews and narrative interviews with smuggled migrants - indicated that there is a strong need for a deepened debate on methodology when researching human smuggling, trafficking and other forms of irregularity. Subsequent workshops (in Geneva and Toronto) on the topic of interviewing vulnerable migrants confirmed the necessity of finding solutions for the methodological challenges encountered. This book is essential reading for all persons and organizations dealing with vulnerable migrants |
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