Mass Insanity explores the subjects of insane communities, the clash of identities, and how societies indoctrinate their members and shape their way of thinking. It uses theories of social, clinical and forensic psychology to analyse Islam. It explores Islamic invasions, piracy, slavery, terrorism, female genital mutilation, rape, suppression of human rights and critical thinking. It also discusses the decay of Western civilisation and the arising psychological difficulties. Why do millions of supposedly sane people endorse the assassination of writers, cartoonist, and journalists, the suppression of women, the killing of children, the destruction of art, culture and heritage? Can a society that includes millions of people lose its mind and how? In contrast, why would any country allow a group of people to immigrate, legally and illegally, to its territories to kill its children, rape its daughters, take its wealth, and destroy its identity? Why would a community lose the will to defend itself against an enemy seeking its demise? How could a society stand idly by and watch its own offspring being slain and raped? Again, are these healthy societies?

Speaking from and to the growing movement among academics to become involved with 'socially-engaged' work, this volume presents first-person case studies of attempts to fix serious ethical problems in medical practice and research. It highlights the critical difference between the pundit approach to bioethics and the interventional approach - the talkers and the doers - and points to how abused and damaged the doers often end up. Chapters cover a diverse set of topics, including the troubling influence of for-profit businesses on public health policy, the politics of exposing histories of unjust medical research, the challenges of patient rights' work in sexuality and reproduction, collaborations between NGOs and academics, methods for changing entrenched yet harmful medical practices, engaging public policy through educating governmental leaders, and whistleblowing. The trending interest in the interplay of academia and advocacy and the growing importance of 'socially-engaged' work by academics make this a timely and much-needed resource.

A remarkable look at an understudied feature of the Iranian justice system, where forgiveness is as much a right of victims as retribution Iran's criminal courts are notorious for meting out severe sentences-according to Amnesty International, the country has the world's highest rate of capital punishment per capita. Less known to outside observers, however, is the Iranian criminal code's recognition of forgiveness, where victims of violent crimes, or the families of murder victims, can request the state to forgo punishing the criminal. Forgiveness Work shows that in the Iranian justice system, forbearance is as much a right of victims as retribution. Drawing on extended interviews and first-hand observations of more than eighty murder trials, Arzoo Osanloo explores why some families of victims forgive perpetrators and how a wide array of individuals contribute to the fraught business of negotiating reconciliation. Based on Qur'anic principles, Iran's criminal codes encourage mercy and compel judicial officials to help parties reach a settlement. As no formal regulations exist to guide those involved, an informal cottage industry has grown around forgiveness advocacy. Interested parties-including attorneys, judges, social workers, the families of victims and perpetrators, and even performing artists-intervene in cases, drawing from such sources as scripture, ritual, and art to stir feelings of forgiveness. These actors forge new and sometimes conflicting strategies to secure forbearance, and some aim to reform social attitudes and laws on capital punishment. Forgiveness Work examines how an Islamic victim-centered approach to justice sheds light on the conditions of mercy.

Capital cases involving foreigners as defendants are a serious source of contention between the United States and foreign governments. By treaty, foreigner defendants must be informed upon arrest that they may contact a consul of their home country for assistance, yet police and judges in the United States are lax in complying. Foreigners on America's Death Row investigates the arbitrary way United States police departments, courts, and the Department of State implement well-established rights of foreigners arrested in the US. Foreign governments have taken the United States into international courts, which have ruled that the US must enforce the treaty. The United States has ignored these rulings. As a result, foreigners continue to be executed after a legal process that their home governments justifiably find to be flawed. When one country ignores the treaty rights of another as well as the decisions of international courts, the established order of international relations is threatened.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring We regularly encounter appalling wrongdoing, with the media offering a depressing parade of violent assault, rape, and murder. Yet sometimes even the cynical and world-weary amongst us are taken aback. Sometimes we confront a crime so terrible, so horrendous, so deeply wrong, that we reach for the word 'evil'. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were not merely wrong, but evil. A serial killer who tortures his victims is not merely a bad person. He is evil. And as the Holocaust showed us, we must remain vigilant against the threat of evil. But what exactly is evil? If we use the word 'evil', are we buying into a naive Manichean worldview, in which two cosmic forces of good and evil are pitted against one another? Are we guilty of demonizing our enemies? How does 'evil' go beyond what is merely bad or wrong? This Very Short Introduction explores the answers that philosophers have offered to these questions. Luke Russell discusses why some philosophers think that evil is a myth or a fantasy, while others think that evil is real, and is a concept which plays an important role in contemporary secular morality. Along the way he asks whether evil is always horrific and incomprehensible, or if it can be banal. Considering if there is a special psychological hallmark that sets the evildoers apart from the rest of us, Russell also engages with ongoing discussions over psychopathy and empathy, analysing the psychology behind evildoing. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The contemporary psychiatric approach to trauma, encapsulated in the diagnostic category of PTSD, has been criticized for its neglect of the political dimensions involved in the etiology and treatment of trauma. By means of a philosophical and psychoanalytical analysis, the depoliticizing potential of the biomedical approach is tied to a more general 'ethical crisis' in post-traditional societies. Via the work of Lacan, Zizek and Badiou on the act and the event, this book constructs a conceptual framework that revives the ethical and political dimensions of trauma recovery.

If we are going to promote creativity as an ideal to strive toward, shouldn't we make sure we also instil ethical anticipation so our creative contributions produce a better world rather than chaos and waste? Creativity drives cultural development. We all, directly or indirectly, collaborate in the creation of culture, and we are jointly responsible for the way that culture develops. The goals and decisions we make as both creators and adopters pave pathways into the future for us all. Instead of merely reflecting on past events, Ethical Ripples of Creativity and Innovation educates for 'proflection'-through cases that present what-might-be scenarios for creative contributions that are emerging into mainstream culture, stimulating real-time thinking about creativity-in-action.. This book offers the opportunity to strengthen ethical anticipation by considering the possibilities streaming from current creative offerings that affect our bodies, emotions, selves, and social interactions.

Traditional Jewish family law has persevered for hundreds of years and rules covering marriage, the raising of children, and divorce are well established; yet pressures from modern society are causing long held views to be re-examined. The Jewish Family: Between Family Law and Contract Law examines the tenets of Jewish family law in the light of new attitudes concerning the role of women, assisted reproduction technologies, and prenuptial agreements. Through interdisciplinary research combining the legal aspects of family law and contract law, it explores how the Jewish family can cope with both old and modern obstacles and challenges. Focusing on the nexus of Jewish family law and contract law to propose how 'freedom of contract' can be part of how family law can be interpreted, The Jewish Family will appeal to practitioners, activists, academic researchers, and laymen readers who are interested in the fields of law, theology, and social science.

Making a Good Life takes a timely look at the ideas and values that inform how people think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. In an era of heightened scrutiny about parenting and reproduction, fears about environmental degradation, and the rise of the biotechnology industry, Katharine Dow delves into the reproductive ethics of those who do not have a personal stake in assisted reproductive technologies, but who are building lives inspired and influenced by environmentalism and concerns about the natural world's future. Moving away from experiences of infertility treatments tied to the clinic and laboratory, Dow instead explores reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies as topics of public concern and debate, and she examines how people living in a coastal village in rural Scotland make ethical decisions and judgments about these matters. In particular, Dow engages with people's ideas about nature and naturalness, and how these relate to views about parenting and building stable environments for future generations. Taking into account the ways daily responsibilities and commitments are balanced with moral values, Dow suggests there is still much to uncover about reproductive ethics. Analyzing how ideas about reproduction intersect with wider ethical struggles, Making a Good Life offers a new approach to researching, thinking, and writing about nature, ethics, and reproduction.

The dream of control over human behaviour is an old dream, shared by many cultures. This fascinating account of the histories of human engineering describes how technologies of managing individuals and groups were developed from the nineteenth century to the present day, ranging from brainwashing and mind control to Dale Carnegie's art of dealing with people. Derksen reveals that common to all of them is the perpetual tension between the desire to control people's behaviour and the resistance this provokes. Thus to influence other people successfully, technology had to be combined with tact: with a personal touch, with a subtle hint, or with outright deception, manipulations are made palatable or invisible. Combining psychological history and theory with insights from science and technology studies and rhetorical scholarship, Derksen offers a fresh perspective on human engineering that will appeal to those interested in the history of psychology and the history of technology.

Fracking is a novel but contested energy technology - so what makes some countries embrace it whilst others reject it? This book argues that the reason for policy divergence lies in procedures and processes, stakeholder inclusion and whether a strong narrative underpins governmental policies. Based on a large set of primary data gathered in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, it explores shale gas policies in Central Eastern Europe (a region strongly dependent on Russian gas imports) to unveil the importance of policy regimes for creating a 'social license' for fracking. Its findings suggest that technology transfer does not happen in a vacuum but is subject to close mutual interaction with political, economic and social forces; and that national energy policy is not a matter of 'objective' policy imperatives, such as Russian import dependence, but a function of complex domestic dynamics pertaining to institutional procedures and processes, and winners and losers.

Rosi Braidotti's nomadic theory outlines a sustainable modern subjectivity as one in flux, never opposed to a dominant hierarchy yet intrinsically other, always in the process of becoming, and perpetually engaged in dynamic power relations both creative and restrictive. Nomadic theory offers an original and powerful alternative for scholars working in cultural and social criticism and has, over the past decade, crept into continental philosophy, queer theory, and feminist, postcolonial, techno-science, media, and race studies, as well as into architecture, history, and anthropology. This collection provides a core introduction to Braidotti's nomadic theory and its innovative formulations, which playfully engage with Deleuze, Foucault, Irigaray, and a host of political and cultural issues.

Arranged thematically, essays begin with such concepts as sexual difference and embodied subjectivity and follow with explorations in technoscience, feminism, postsecular citizenship, and the politics of affirmation. Braidotti develops a distinctly positive critical theory that rejuvenates the experience of political scholarship. Inspired yet not confined by Deleuzian vitalism, with its commitment to the ontology of flows, networks, and dynamic transformations, she emphasizes affects, imagination, and creativity and the politics of radical immanence. Incorporating ideas from Nietzsche and Spinoza as well, Braidotti establishes a critical-theoretical framework equal parts critique and creation. Ever mindful of the perils of defining difference in terms of denigration and the related tendency to subordinate sexualized, racialized, and naturalized others, she explores the eco-philosophical implications of nomadic theory, feminism, and the irreducibility of sexual difference and sexuality. Her dialogue with technoscience is crucial to nomadic theory, which deterritorializes the established understanding of what counts as human, along with our relationship to animals, the environment, and changing notions of materialism. Keeping her distance from the near-obsessive focus on vulnerability, trauma, and melancholia in contemporary political thought, Braidotti promotes a politics of affirmation that has the potential to become its own generative life force.

As discrete fields of inquiry, rhetoric and mathematics have long been considered antithetical to each other. That is, if mathematics explains or describes the phenomena it studies with certainty, persuasion is not needed. This volume calls into question the view that mathematics is free of rhetoric. Through nine studies of the intersections between these two disciplines, Arguing with Numbers shows that mathematics is in fact deeply rhetorical. Using rhetoric as a lens to analyze mathematically based arguments in public policy, political and economic theory, and even literature, the essays in this volume reveal how mathematics influences the values and beliefs with which we assess the world and make decisions and how our worldviews influence the kinds of mathematical instruments we construct and accept. In addition, contributors examine how concepts of rhetoric-such as analogy and visuality-have been employed in mathematical and scientific reasoning, including in the theorems of mathematical physicists and the geometrical diagramming of natural scientists. Challenging academic orthodoxy, these scholars reject a math-equals-truth reduction in favor of a more constructivist theory of mathematics as dynamic, evolving, and powerfully persuasive. By bringing these disparate lines of inquiry into conversation with one another, Arguing with Numbers provides inspiration to students, established scholars, and anyone inside or outside rhetorical studies who might be interested in exploring the intersections between the two disciplines. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Catherine Chaput, Crystal Broch Colombini, Nathan Crick, Michael Dreher, Jeanne Fahnestock, Andrew C. Jones, Joseph Little, and Edward Schiappa.

This book explores the nature of moral responsibilities of affluent individuals in the developed world, addressing global poverty and arguments that philosophers have offered for having these responsibilities. The first type of argument grounds responsibilities in the ability to avert serious suffering by taking on some cost. The second argument seeks to ground responsibilities in the fact that the affluent are contributing to such poverty. The authors criticise many of the claims advanced by those who seek to ground stringent responsibilities to the poor by invoking these two types of arguments. It does not follow from this that the affluent are meeting responsibilities to the poor. The book argues that while people are not ordinarily required to make large sacrifices in assisting others in severe need, they are required to incur moderate costs to do so. If the affluent fail consistently to meet standards, this fact can substantially increase the costs they are required to bear in order to address it.

This book presents a case study of human trafficking from Nigeria to the UK, with a focus on practical measures for ending this trafficking. The study addresses the many aspects of human trafficking, including sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, labor exploitation, benefit fraud, and organ harvesting. Despite the huge investment of the international community to eradicate it, this form of modern day slavery continues, and the author urges stakeholders to focus not only on criminals but also on attitudes, cultures, laws and policies that hinder the eradication of modern slavery.

Today's digital revolution is a worldwide phenomenon, with profound and often differential implications for communities around the world and their relationships to one another. This book presents a new, explicitly international theory of media ethics, incorporating non-Western perspectives and drawing deeply on both moral philosophy and the philosophy of technology. Clifford Christians develops an ethics grounded in three principles - truth, human dignity, and non-violence - and shows how these principles can be applied across a wide range of cases and domains. The book is a guide for media professionals, scholars, and educators who are concerned with the global ramifications of new technologies and with creating a more just world.

Dialogue has become a central theoretical concept in human and social sciences as well as in professions such as education, health, and psychotherapy. This 'dialogical turn' emphasises the importance of social relations and interaction to our behaviour and how we make sense of the world; hence the dialogical mind is the mind in interaction with others - with individuals, groups, institutions, and cultures in historical perspectives. Through a combination of rigorous theoretical work and empirical investigation, Markova presents an ethics of dialogicality as an alternative to the narrow perspective of individualism and cognitivism that has traditionally dominated the field of social psychology. The dialogical perspective, which focuses on interdependencies among the self and others, offers a powerful theoretical basis to comprehend, analyse, and discuss complex social issues. Markova considers the implications of dialogical epistemology both in daily life and in professional practices involving problems of communication, care, and therapy.

Modern statesmen and political theorists have long struggled to design institutions that will simultaneously respect individual freedom of religion, nurture religion's capacity to be a force for civic good and human rights, and tame religion's illiberal tendencies. Moving past the usual focus on personal free expression of religion, this illuminating book - written by renowned scholars of law and religion from the United States, England, and Israel - considers how the institutional design of both religions and political regimes influences the relationship between religious practice and activity and human rights. The authors examine how the organization of religious communities affects human rights, and investigate the scope of a just state's authority with respect to organized religion in the name of human rights. They explore the institutional challenges posed by, and possible responses to, the fraught relationship between religion and rights in the world today.

Immigration is a key concern in British society; however, the ethical implications of the issue are often overlooked. Produced by Theos, a leading Christian think tank, this collection of short essays explores the ethical issues surrounding immigration in a post-Brexit Britain with contributions from across the Christian and political spectrums. This timely collection considers the many issues surrounding immigration including economics, community, nationhood, sovereignty, and internationalism, and demonstrates the range of conclusions that can be drawn on this topic, with possible interventions from the Christian perspective. Insightful for policy-makers and politicians, as well as anyone looking for orientation on a complex subject, this book is also full of ethical questions and considerations for readers from any faith or background.

Human rights violations occurring as a consequence of drug control and enforcement are a growing concern, and raise questions of treaty interpretation and of the appropriate balancing of concomitant obligations within the drug control and human rights treaty regimes. Tracing the evolution of international drug control law since 1909, this book explores the tensions between the regime's self-described humanitarian aspirations and its suppression of a common human behaviour as a form of 'evil'. Drawing on domestic, regional and international examples and case law, it posits the development of a dynamic, human rights-based interpretative approach to resolve tensions and conflicts between the regimes in a manner that safeguards human rights. Highlighting an important and emerging area of human rights inquiry from an international legal perspective, this book is a key resource for those working and studying in this field.

The global climate crisis and other pressures on planetary ecology cause profound anxieties for humanity. Climate change threatens to trap hundreds of millions of people in dire poverty-widening the gap in an already deeply divided economy. However, a new generation of activists is offering inspiration, raising hopes in a seemingly hopeless situation. In Mobilizing Hope: Climate Change and Global Poverty, Darrel Moellendorf discusses climate change, global poverty, justice, and the importance of political responses, both internationally and domestically, that offer hope. While there are reasons to worry that the era of pervasive human planetary impact, the Anthropocene, could produce terrible global injustices and massive environmental destruction, that need not be so. Moellendorf contends that the work of bringing about a world united in creating sustainable solutions to environmental crises, that values the Earth's natural wonders, and actualizes a vision of economic justice, is the work of mobilizing hope.

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WORLD IS FLAT We all sense it: something big is going on. Life is speeding up, and it is dizzying. Here Thomas L. Friedman reveals the tectonic movements that are reshaping our world, how to adapt to this new age and why, sometimes, we all need to be late. 'A master class ... As a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat ... an honest, cohesive explanation for why the world is the way it is, without miracle cures or scapegoats' John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review 'Wonderful ... admirably honest ... injects a badly needed dose of optimism into the modern debate' Gillian Tett, Financial Times 'His main piece of advice for individuals, corporations, and countries is clear: Take a deep breath and adapt. This world isn't going to wait for you' Fortune 'A humane and empathetic book' David Henkin, The Washington Post

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), also known as Children of the 90s, is a world-leading birth cohort study that uniquely enrolled participants in utero and obtained genetic material from a geographic population. It instigated the innovative but controversial ALSPAC Ethics and Law Committee. This book describes in detail the early work of this Committee, from establishing the core ethical principles necessary to protect participants, to the evolution of policies concerning confidentiality and anonymity, consent, non-intervention and disclosure of individual results, data access and security. Quotes from interviews with early members of the Committee reflect not only on its pioneering work but also on the unusual style and inspirational leadership of the first Chair, Professor Michael Furmston. This will be of interest to those involved in other cohort studies in understanding the evolution of ethical policies as ALSPAC developed.

Many philosophers have sought to distinguish moral obligation from moral responsibility. In this book, author Ishtiyaque Haji argues that these concepts, though still distinct, are more similar than many think. First, conceptual ties between obligation and responsibility speak largely in favor of responsibility's requiring alternatives, challenging the view that responsibility does not require freedom to do otherwise. Second, many philosophers champion responsibility semicompatibilism, which mean that even if determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise, it is compatible with responsibility. Essential relations between obligation and responsibility are deployed against this thesis, and the parallel thesis of obligation semicompatibilism is also rejected. An upshot of forsaking these two species of semicompatibilism is that determinism threatens both obligation and responsibility by eliminating alternate possibilities. Third, many concur that whereas you may now no longer have an obligation that you previously had, you cannot now fail to be blameworthy for something for which you were formerly to blame. Haji rejects this immutability thesis about blameworthiness. Haji does find one legitimate difference between obligation and responsibility: while how one acquires one's values may significantly influence whether one is responsible for much of their conduct, obligation is not "historical" in this way.