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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > General
A history of drugs is a study of cultures in competition, argues
editor William O. Walker III. Eminently adaptive, drug cultures
have competed with proscriptive cultures to create a legitimate
place for themselves, although one that the dominant society may
recognize only tacitly. Professor Walker brings together forty-six
essays that examine the complex negotiations and changing rhetoric
revolving around issues of drugs and their control between the
United States and its Latin American neighbors. Drugs in the
Western Hemisphere is divided into six parts. Articles are arranged
chronologically, offering the reader a compre-hensive overview of
the evolution of U.S.-Latin American drug policy from the turn of
the century to the Clinton administration. Part I, Cultures in
Conflict suggests that clashes between members of drug cultures and
proponents of drug control traditionally have occurred within the
context of the forma-tion of the modern nation. Part II, Drugs in
Latin America, 1920-1940 takes a closer look at inter-American
policies revolving around drugs in the 1920s and 1940s. Part III,
Wartime Experience and Part IV, Confrontation and Controversy
examine how World War II both affected U.S.-Latin American drug
policy and set the tone for many years to come. Part V, Drugs and
Security and Part VI, Drugs in the Americas: An Assessment takes
the reader through to the Clinton administration. Writers here note
the concerted efforts of the United States to establish hegemony
over drug control throughout the Western Hemisphere.
In 2004, Michael Burawoy challenged sociologists to move beyond the
ivory tower and into the realm of activism, to engage in public
discourses about what society could or should be. His call to arms
sparked debate among sociologists. Which side would sociologists
take? Would "public sociology" speak for all sociologists? In this
volume, leading Canadian experts continue the debate by discussing
their discipline's mission and practice and the role that ethics
plays in research, theory, and teaching. In doing so, they offer
insights as to where their discipline is heading and why it matters
to people inside and outside the university.
The recent explosion of neuroscience techniques has proved to be
game changing in terms of understanding the healthy brain, and in
the development of neuropsychiatric treatments. One of the key
techniques available to us is functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), which allows us to examine the human brain non-invasively,
and observe brain activity in real time. Through fMRI, we are
beginning to build a deeper understanding of our thoughts,
motivations, and behaviours. Recent reports that some patients who
have all indications of being in a persistent vegetative state
actually show conscious awareness, and were able to communicate
with researchers, demonstrate perhaps the most remarkable and
dramatic use of fMRI. But this is just the most striking of a
number of areas in which fMRI is being used to 'read minds', albeit
in a very limited way. As neuroscientists unravel the regions of
the brain involved in reward and motivation, and in romantic love,
we are likely to develop the capacity to influence responses such
as love using drugs. fMRI studies have also been used to indicate
that many people who would not regard themselves as racist show a
racial bias in their emotional responses to faces of another racial
group. Meanwhile, the reliability of fMRI as a lie detector in
murder cases is being debated - what if the individual simply
believes, falsely, that he or she committed a murder? Sex, Lies,
and Brain Scans takes readers beyond the media headlines. Barbara
J. Sahakian and Julia Gottwald consider what the technique of fMRI
entails, and what information it can give us, showing which
applications are possible today, and which ones are science
fiction. They also consider the important ethical questions these
techniques raise. Should individuals applying for jobs as teachers
or judges be screened for unconscious racial bias? What if the
manipulation of love using 'love potions' was misused for economic
or military ends? How far will we allow neuroscience to go? It is
time to make up our minds.
Humanitarians are required to be impartial, independent,
professionally competent and focused only on preventing and
alleviating human suffering. It can be hard living up to these
principles when others do not share them, while persuading
political and military authorities and non-state actors to let an
agency assist on the ground requires savvy ethical skills. Getting
first to a conflict or natural catastrophe is only the beginning,
as aid workers are usually and immediately presented with practical
and moral questions about what to do next. For example, when does
working closely with a warring party or an immoral regime move from
practical cooperation to complicity in human rights violations?
Should one operate in camps for displaced people and refugees if
they are effectively places of internment? Do humanitarian agencies
inadvertently encourage ethnic cleansing by always being ready to
'mop-up' the consequences of scorched earth warfare? This book has
been written to help humanitarians assess and respond to these and
other ethical dilemmas.
This important book was the first serious work of philosophy to
address the question: Do adults have a moral right to use drugs for
recreational purposes? Many critics of the 'war on drugs' denounce
law enforcement as counterproductive and ineffective. Douglas Husak
argues that the 'war on drugs' violates the moral rights of adults
who want to use drugs for pleasure, and that criminal laws against
such use are incompatible with moral rights. This is not a
polemical tract but a scrupulously argued work of philosophy that
takes full account of all available data concerning drug use in the
United States today. The author is careful to describe the
properties a recreational drug would have to possess before the
state would be justified in prohibiting it. Since criminal laws
against the use of recreational drugs are justified neither by the
harm users cause to themselves nor by the harm users cause to each
other, Professor Husak concludes that such laws are, in almost all
cases, unjustified.
Have you ever stopped and wondered where your jeans came from? Who
made them and where? Ever wondered where they end up after you
donate them for recycling? Following a pair of jeans, Clothing
Poverty takes the reader on a vivid around-the-world tour to reveal
how clothes are manufactured and retailed, bringing to light how
fast fashion and recycling are interconnected. Andrew Brooks shows
how recycled clothes are traded across continents, uncovers how
retailers and international charities are embroiled in commodity
chains which perpetuate poverty, and exposes the hidden trade
networks which transect the globe. In this new and updated edition,
Brooks retraces his steps to look at the fashion industry today,
and considers how, if at all, the industry has changed in response
to mounting consumer pressure for more ethical clothing. Stitching
together rich narratives, from Mozambican markets, Nigerian
smugglers and Chinese factories to London's vintage clothing scene,
TOMS shoes and Vivienne Westwood's ethical fashion lines, Brooks
uncovers the many hidden sides of fashion.
Enhancing Human Capacities is the first to review the very latest
scientific developments in human enhancement. It is unique in its
examination of the ethical and policy implications of these
technologies from a broad range of perspectives. * Presents a rich
range of perspectives on enhancement from world leading ethicists
and scientists from Europe and North America * The most
comprehensive volume yet on the science and ethics of human
enhancement * Unique in providing a detailed overview of current
and expected scientific advances in this area * Discusses both
general conceptual and ethical issues and concrete questions of
policy * Includes sections covering all major forms of enhancement:
cognitive, affective, physical, and life extension
Before 1850, all legal executions in the South were performed
before crowds that could number in the thousands; the last legal
public execution was in 1936. This study focuses on the shift from
public executions to ones behind barriers, situating that change
within our understandings of lynching and competing visions of
justice and religion. Intended to shame and intimidate, public
executions after the Civil War had quite a different effect on
southern Black communities. Crowds typically consisting of as many
Black people as white behaved like congregations before a macabre
pulpit, led in prayer and song by a Black minister on the scaffold.
Black criminals often proclaimed their innocence and almost always
their salvation. This turned the proceedings into public,
mixed-race and mixed-gender celebrations of Black religious
authority and devotion. In response, southern states rewrote their
laws to eliminate these crowds and this Black authority, ultimately
turning to electrocutions in the bowels of state penitentiaries. In
just the same era when a wave of lynchings crested around the turn
of the twentieth century, states transformed the ways that the
South's white-dominated governments controlled legal capital
punishment, making executions into private affairs witnessed only
by white people.
In an era of corporate surveillance, artificial intelligence, deep
fakes, genetic modification, automation, and more, law often seems
to take a back seat to rampant technological change. To listen to
Silicon Valley barons, there's nothing any of us can do about it.
In this riveting work, Joshua A. T. Fairfield calls their bluff. He
provides a fresh look at law, at what it actually is, how it works,
and how we can create the kind of laws that help humans thrive in
the face of technological change. He shows that law can keep up
with technology because law is a kind of technology - a social
technology built by humans out of cooperative fictions like firms,
nations, and money. However, to secure the benefits of changing
technology for all of us, we need a new kind of law, one that
reflects our evolving understanding of how humans use language to
cooperate.
This volume offers new insights into the role of women in ancient
China, their important contributions to society, and their pursuit
of personal growth and fulfillment. The position that Confucianism
may actually foster gender equity is particularly interesting in
discussions of whether the Confucian worldview is degrading or
repressive toward women.
To what extent can animals be regarded as part of the moral
community? To what extent, if at all, do they have moral rights?
Are we wrong to eat them or to hunt them? Is the use of animals for
scientific research justified? And can the ideas behind animal
liberation be squared with those of the environmental movement? It
is Taylor's strong belief that, whatever our own views on these
contentious issues may be, we benefit by exploring them more
thoroughly, and by understanding and evaluating arguments of those
who may disagree with us. He traces the background of these debates
from Aristotle to Darwin, and he provides fair-minded commentaries
on the positions of contemporary philosophers Peter Singer, Tom
Regan, Nel Noddings, Mary Anne Warren, J. Baird Callicott, and
numerous others, with ethical theories ranging from utilitarianism
to eco-feminism. A precious edition of this book appeared under the
title
Depictions of the Holocaust in history, literature, and film became
a focus of intense academic debate in the 1980s and 1990s. Today,
with the passing of the eyewitness generation and the rise of
comparative genocide studies, the Holocaust's privileged place not
only in scholarly discourse but across Western society has been
called into question. Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture is a
searching reappraisal of the debates and controversies that have
shaped Holocaust studies over a quarter century. This landmark
volume brings international scholars of the founding generation of
Holocaust studies into conversation with a new generation of
historians, artists, and writers who have challenged the limits of
representation through their scholarly and cultural practices.
Focusing on the public memorial cultures, testimonial narratives,
and artifacts of cultural memory and history generated by Holocaust
remembrance, the volume examines how Holocaust culture has become
institutionalized, globalized, and variously contested. Organized
around three interlocking themes-the stakes of narrative, the
remediation of the archive, and the politics of exceptionality-the
essays in this volume explore the complex ethics surrounding the
discourses, artifacts, and institutions of Holocaust remembrance.
From contrasting viewpoints and, in particular, from the multiple
perspectives of genocide studies, the authors question if and why
the Holocaust should remain the ultimate test case for ethics and a
unique reference point for how we understand genocide and crimes
against humanity.
The traditional definition of development ethics considers the
'ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning
and practice' (Goulet 1977: 5). The field parallels the traditional
question of ethics 'How ought one to live as an individual?' by
asking in addition 'How ought a society exist and move into the
future?' This interdisciplinary field is well represented by a
substantial collection of previously-published articles and papers.
The volume illustrates a wide range of academic and practitioner
writings on the theories and concepts of development ethics as well
as ethical development policy and practice.
This book explores the profound effect that our upbringing has on
our adult lives. Friedman skilfully explores the way that
lifestyles choices reflect our interactions with our parents during
childhood. He attempts to show how parents are behind many of the
decisions we make, ranging from the work we do and the leisure
activities we enjoy to our choice of partner and our sexual
interest. He makes a strong case that a better understanding of the
way we were brought up can give us the tools to avoid antisocial
behaviour. He shows how this knowledge can help us to avoid the
mistakes our parents made with us, and stop us from passing them on
to our children. An Unsolicited Gift sums up the views of an author
with wide experience of the psychology on parenting and its
influences.
Moral reform movements claiming to protect children began to
emerge in the United States over a century ago, most notably when
Anthony Comstock and his supporters crusaded to restrict the
circulation of contraception, information on the sexual rights of
women, and "obscene" art and literature. Much of their rhetoric
influences debates on issues surrounding children and sexuality
today. Drawing on Victorian accounts of pregnant girls,
prostitutes, Free Lovers, and others deemed "immoral," Nicola
Beisel argues that rhetoric about the moral corruption of children
speaks to an ongoing parental concern: that children will fail to
replicate or exceed their parents' social position. The rhetoric of
morality, she maintains, is more than symbolic and goes beyond
efforts to control mass behavior. For the Victorians, it tapped
into the fear that their own children could fall prey to vice and
ultimately live in disgrace.
In a rare analysis of Anthony Comstock's crusade with the New
York and New England Societies for the Suppression of Vice, Beisel
examines how the reformer worked on the anxieties of the upper
classes. One tactic was to link moral corruption with the flood of
immigrants, which succeeded in New York and Boston, where
minorities posed a political threat to the upper classes. Showing
how a moral crusade can bring a society's diffuse anxieties to
focus on specific sources, Beisel offers a fresh theoretical
approach to moral reform movements.
Before 1850, all legal executions in the South were performed
before crowds that could number in the thousands; the last legal
public execution was in 1936. This study focuses on the shift from
public executions to ones behind barriers, situating that change
within our understandings of lynching and competing visions of
justice and religion. Intended to shame and intimidate, public
executions after the Civil War had quite a different effect on
southern Black communities. Crowds typically consisting of as many
Black people as white behaved like congregations before a macabre
pulpit, led in prayer and song by a Black minister on the scaffold.
Black criminals often proclaimed their innocence and almost always
their salvation. This turned the proceedings into public,
mixed-race and mixed-gender celebrations of Black religious
authority and devotion. In response, southern states rewrote their
laws to eliminate these crowds and this Black authority, ultimately
turning to electrocutions in the bowels of state penitentiaries. In
just the same era when a wave of lynchings crested around the turn
of the twentieth century, states transformed the ways that the
South's white-dominated governments controlled legal capital
punishment, making executions into private affairs witnessed only
by white people.
Contemporary liberal thinkers commonly suppose that there is something in principle unjust about the legal prohibition of putatively victimless immoralities. Against the prevailing liberal view, Robert P. George defends the proposition that `moral laws' can play a legitimate, if subsidiary, role in preserving the `moral ecology' of the cultural environment in which people make the morally significant choices by which they form their characters and influence, for good or ill, the moral lives of others. George shows that a defence of morals legislation is fully compatible with a `pluralistic perfectionist' political theory of civil liberties and public morality.
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