![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > General
This volume provides in a single source a thorough grounding in the origin, development, and current controversies surrounding the free practice of religion. The first boatloads of European settlers did not come to America advocating religious tolerance. They came seeking the freedom to practice their own religion. Other sects, they believed, were wrong at best and, at worst, not to be tolerated. The question of what constitutes "legitimate," constitutionally protected religious practice has been debated ever since. Does it include the use of peyote? Polygamy? Refusing medical care for a sick child? Freedom of Religion follows the evolving understanding of the concept of religious freedom from Great Britain to the New World, through hundreds of U.S. courtrooms, to the volatile modern-day issues of school prayer and faith-based initiatives. The thorough, responsible, and cool-headed analysis presented here offers readers a solid grounding in the constitutional issues behind the headlines. Four chapters discuss the development of religious freedom from its roots in tribal societies through key court decisions of the 1990s A chronology outlines significant events and court decisions from 1776 to 2001, and a table lists all of the pertinent cases alphabetically
This book provides a detailed introduction to the cloning of both plants and animals and discusses the important social, ethical, political, technical, and other issues related to the practice. The history of cloning experiments dates back more than a century, but advances in technology in recent decades have multiplied the potential applications of cloning-and expanded the controversies surrounding these possibilities. Cloning: A Reference Handbook provides an accessible description of the development of plant and animal cloning from the early stages of human civilization to the present day and coherently covers the science and technology involved. It reviews the essential controversies that have arisen about cloning-particularly applications involving human DNA-as researchers have advanced and extended the tools for cloning organisms. Additionally, the book discusses public opinion about cloning and the legislative and administration actions that have been taken with regard to the practice. This single-volume work provides a broad treatment of the subject, going back further in history than is the case with most texts, covering plant cloning and providing a thorough overview of the nature of animal cloning and related issues. Examples of the topics covered include the natural "cloning" processes of regeneration in plants and animals; crucial research breakthroughs on animal cloning by Robert Briggs and Thomas King, John Gurdon, Gail Martin, James Till and Earnest McCulloch, and others; and the laws that regulate which types of cloning are allowed and prohibited in the United States and in other countries. Offers an informed perspective on cloning and its potential applications in everyday life and elsewhere Includes profiles of key individuals and organizations related to the field of cloning, a Perspectives chapter, a chronology of important events in the history of cloning, and a glossary of key terms that strengthen the reader's undersatanding of the topic Supplies the necessary historical background and context for readers to understand why cloning of both plants and animals is of great importance-and why cloning technology is even more critical when it involves human beings
This open access book offers insights in short- and long-term experiences from families with bone marrow transplantations between minor siblings. It is based on the first extended qualitative study with 17 families about experiences with recent transplants and experiences with transplants up to 20 years in the past. It covers reflections of donors, recipients and other family members, as well as family interactions. Transplantation of bone marrow from one sibling to another who is ill with a blood cancer (such as Leukemia) is a life-saving therapy. Young children however are not in a position to give consent themselves. How should they be adequately included, depending to their age? Which ethical questions are raised for the parents both at the time of treatment and afterwards, and for the medical professionals in clinical and regulatory contexts? For an in-depth discussion of the findings the books brings together a group of leading scholars from the fields of bioethics, family sociology and philosophy of medicine.
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.
Peter Conrad's exhilarating book exposes the absurdity and occasional insanity of our godforsaken, demon-haunted contemporary culture. Conrad casts his brilliant beam upon subjects from the Queen to the Kardashians, via Banksy, Nando's, vaping, the vogue of the cronut, the mushroom-like rise of Dubai, the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, the growth of the Pacific garbage patch... In Judge Judy, he shows us a matronly Roman goddess dispensing justice with a fly swatter. In the metamorphosis of Caitlyn Jenner from Olympic athlete and paterfamilias into idealized female form, he sees parallels to the deeds of the residents of Mount Olympus themselves. Finally, after surveying advances in biomedical engineering and artificial intelligence, he asks whether we might be on the brink of a post-human world.
'This book is not just about life, but about discovery itself. It is about error and hubris, but also about wonder and the reach of science. And it is bookended with the ultimate question: How do we define the thing that defines us?' - Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world - from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses - the harder they find it to locate the edges of life, where it begins and ends. What exactly does it mean to be alive? Is a virus alive? Is a foetus? Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can't answer that question here on earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society's most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead. Life's Edge is an utterly fascinating investigation by one of the most celebrated science writers of our time. Zimmer journeys through the strange experiments that have attempted to recreate life. Literally hundreds of definitions of what that should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It's never clear why some items on the list are essential and others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply - have they made life in the lab? Whether he is handling pythons in Alabama or searching for hibernating bats in the Adirondacks, Zimmer revels in astounding examples of life at its most bizarre. He tries his own hand at evolving life in a test tube with unnerving results. Charting the obsession with Dr Frankenstein's monster and how Coleridge came to believe the whole universe was alive, Zimmer leads us all the way into the labs and minds of researchers working on engineering life from the ground up.
Human enhancement has become a major concern in debates about the future of contemporary societies. This interdisciplinary book is devoted to clarifying the underlying ambiguities of these debates, and to proposing novel ways of exploring what human enhancement means and understanding what practices, goals and justifications it entails.
This book offers a vision of politics that govern the womb; from antiquity ('be fertile and replenish the earth'), through the ages (hysterectomy, to extirpate women's 'hysteria'), up to the present time (abortion wars; assisted reproduction), and into the future (reprogenetics; the artificial womb). It explores how the womb has served humanity, either tacitly or explicitly, through the ages and examines how women have accepted and still perceive the rules created by men as natural - including the new anti-abortion laws in the USA - because 'that is the way things are.' The book also explores how the emerging of assisted reproduction technologies and novel genetic tools (reprogenetics) will pose additional challenges to womb bearers, as all women will be made to reproduce with IVF. What is more, the advent of the artificial womb is in sight; the gender and social implications of this development would be enormous. Certainly not just another organ, the womb has been and remains a powerful tool that cannot be left to the decisions of half of the population. This book engages a wide audience, including women and men, professionals and laypersons who are interested in gender, politics, legislation, women's health, and ethics.
Like all other forms of modern media, video games impact society and human behavior in often surprising ways. Understanding the growing effect of digital entertainment on twenty-first century culture is critical to anticipating the future of social interactions. Cases on the Societal Effects of Persuasive Games investigates the connection between multimedia technologies and game-based learning for an improved understanding of the impact and effectiveness of serious games in modern societies. With examples from the fields of education, business, healthcare, and more, this book serves as a crucial reference source for researchers, educators, developers, and students in higher and continuing education.
Some 30 years ago, South Korea began a temporary worker program modeled after Japan, Europe and the U.S. Newly arrived migrants, framed as temporary populations, were expected to return to their countries of origin upon fulfilling their economic roles. However, many overstayed their visas to maximize their earning potential. In Organized Labor and Civil Society for Multiculturalism: A Solidarity Success Story from South Korea Joon K. Kim shows how South Korea's progressive labor unions and labor rights advocates spearheaded the labor rights struggles of new immigrant workers - a one-of-a-kind development. Such consistent advocacy efforts contributed to significant changes in broader immigration and naturalization policies, as the scope of such organizations' advocacy work quickly spread to other similarly situated populations, including marriage migrants, co-ethnic Koreans from China and Russia, North Korean defectors, and new asylum seekers and refugees from South Asia and Africa. Kim demonstrates the huge contribution such work made to the sudden and widespread use of the term damunhwa (literally meaning "multi-culture";) in South Korea over the last ten years in a country that has prided itself on its homogeneity. The relatively few incidents of anti-immigrant movements in South Korea can be attributed to the role of organized labor and civil society in structuring policies and discourses through their advocacy work since the early-1990s-a success story indeed. For its depth of rigorous original research Organized Labor and Civil Society for Multiculturalism is a must-read for researchers and students interested in ethnic studies and labor movements.
Following Oscar Wilde's 1895 trials for committing "acts of gross indecency with men," he lost his freedom, his family, his reputation, his will to create, and even his will to live. This book sets out to examine what it was about late-Victorian society that allowed this to happen, indeed needed it to happen, and what the trials tell us about the taste and morals of late-Victorian England. Michael S. Foldy argues that the prosecution of Wilde was directly linked to many larger social, cultural, and political issues that transcended the legal and moral concerns about his homosexuality. Analyzing the trial testimony and the coverage in the press, Foldy considers the various images and metaphors used to describe the threat that Wilde posed to English society, and he investigates the social and cultural contexts that dictated how those images were perceived. Foldy shows how the public construction of Wilde's identity as "deviant" was both informed and limited by existing heterosexist structures of repression and mechanisms of restraint and by the emergence of a new variant of homophobia. He suggests that Lord Rosebery, the prime minister of the time, may himself have been a homosexual, and that the successful prosecution of Wilde was necessary to prevent a larger and infinitely more damaging revelation. Ultimately, Foldy locates the meaning of the trials within the rhetorical context of the contemporary public debate over the "health" of England-a debate whose terms had been defined largely by moral conservatives-and demonstrates that in a nation that had many reasons to be concerned about its future, Wilde was perceived to represent a constellation of potent threats to the health of British society.
In Identity, Nationalism, and Cultural Heritage under Siege, Fatme Myuhtar-May makes a case for the recognition of Pomak heritage by presenting five stories from the past and present of the Rhodope Muslims in Bulgaria as examples of a distinct Pomak culture. The stories range from the Christianisation during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the forced communist renaming of the Pomaks in the 1970s, to their fascinating wedding rituals and historic figures. Each of the five narratives contains its own storyline and serves as a prominent example of Pomak heritage, from the author's perspective. The stories take place in the context of fervent nationalism and the ongoing censorship of Pomakness based on the claim that it is an "ethnic Bulgarian," not "Pomak" heritage.
Sex, Love, and Gender is the first volume to present a comprehensive philosophical theory that brings together all of Kant's practical philosophy - found across his works on ethics, justice, anthropology, history, and religion - and provide a critique of emotionally healthy and morally permissible sexual, loving, gendered being. By rethinking Kant's work on human nature and making space for sex, love, and gender within his moral accounts of freedom, the book shows how, despite his austere and even anti-sex, cisist, sexist, and heterosexist reputation, Kant's writings on happiness and virtue (Part I) and right (Part II) in fact yield fertile philosophical ground on which we can explore specific contemporary issues such as abortion, sexual orientation, sexual or gendered identity, marriage, trade in sexual services, and sex- or gender-based oppression. Indeed, Kant's philosophy provides us with resources to appreciate and value the diversity of human ways of loving and the existential importance of our embodied, social selves. Structured on a thematic basis, with introductions to assist those new to Kant's philosophy, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone who cares about these issues and wants to make sense of them.
This volume contains the proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Circumcision, Genital Integrity, and Human Rights. Authors are international experts in their fields, and the book contains the most up-to-date information on the issue of genital cutting of infants and children from medical, legal, bioethical, and human rights perspectives.
The Sustainability Debate is the result of a collaboration between academics and members of the Retail Institute predominantly working in retail and packaging industries. It responds to practitioners' frustration with consumers' emotionality and lack of knowledge around sustainability issues, problems often fostered by the media. This fourteenth volume of Critical Studies on Corporate Responsibility, Governance and Sustainability thus puts together a debate that goes beyond the rhetoric of environmental protection and looks at sustainability from several angles. The book is predominantly focused on human and social sustainability and this focus is carried into sections that discuss sustainable policies, media and gender. This volume ultimately moves away from merely discussing environmental protection and shifts to the effect sustainable policies have on people and society. With a scope expanded to include human and social sustainability as well as economic sustainability, this book's original contribution is that is sees sustainability as a dynamic and complex system of human, social and environmental aspects.
What can the Romans teach us about politics? This thematic introduction to Roman political thought shows how the Roman world developed political ideas of lasting significance, from the consequential constitutional notions of the separation of powers, political legitimacy, and individual rights to key concepts in international relations, such as imperialism, just war theory, and cosmopolitanism. Jed W. Atkins relates these and many other important ideas to Roman republicanism, traces their evolution across all major periods of Roman history, and describes Christianity's important contributions to their development. Using the politics and political thought of the United States as a case study, he argues that the relevance of Roman political thought for modern liberal democracies lies in the profound mixture of ideas both familiar and foreign to us that shape and enliven Roman republicanism. Accessible to students and non-specialists, this book provides an invaluable guide to Roman political thought and its enduring legacies.
Developing directly from Fuller's recent book Humanity 2.0, this is the first book to seriously consider what a 'post-' or 'trans'-' human state of being might mean for who we think we are, how we live, what we believe and what we aim to be.
Are recent bank and financial scandals the work of a few `bad apples' or an inevitable result of a financial system rotten to its core? In Barometer of Fear Alexis Stenfors guides us through the shadowy world of modern banking, providing an insider's account of the secret practices - including the manipulation of foreign exchange rates - which have allowed banks to profit from systematic deception. Containing remarkable and often shocking insights derived from his own experiences in the dealing room, as well as his spectacular fall from grace at Merrill Lynch, Barometer of Fear draws back the curtain on a realm that for too long has remained hidden from public view.
For many Europeans, the persistence of America's death penalty is a stark reminder of American otherness. The practice of state killing is an archaic relic, a hollow symbol that accomplishes nothing but reflects a puritanical, punitive culture - bloodthirsty in its pursuit of retribution. In debating capital punishment, the usual rhetoric points to America's deviance from the western norm: civilized abolition and barbaric retention; 'us' and 'them'. This remarkable new study by a leading social thinker sweeps aside the familiar story and offers a compelling interpretation of the culture of American punishment. It shows that the same forces that led to the death penalty's abolition in Europe once made America a pioneer of reform. That democracy and civilization are not the enemies of capital punishment, though liberalism and humanitarianism are. Making sense of today's differences requires a better understanding of American society and its punishments than the standard rhetoric allows. Taking us deep inside the world of capital punishment, the book offers a detailed picture of a peculiar institution - its cultural meaning and symbolic force for supporters and abolitionists, its place in the landscape of American politics and attitudes to crime, its constitutional status and the legal struggles that define it. Understanding the death penalty requires that we understand how American society is put together - the legacy of racial violence, the structures of social power, and the commitment to radical, local majority rule. Shattering current stereotypes, the book forces us to rethink our understanding of the politics of death and of punishment in America and beyond.
This collection gathers a set of seminal papers from the emerging area of ethics and climate change. Topics covered include human rights, international justice, intergenerational ethics, individual responsibility, climate economics, and the ethics of geoengineering. Climate Ethics is intended to serve as a source book for general reference, and for university courses that include a focus on the human dimensions of climate change. It should be of broad interest to all those concerned with global justice, environmental science and policy, and the future of humanity.
There is a deep distrust of experts in America today. Influenced by populist politics, many question or downright ignore the recommendations of scientists, scholars, and others with specialized training. It appears that expertise, a critical component of democratic life, no longer appeals to wide swaths of the body politic. On Expertise is a robust defense of the expert class. Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher examines modern and ancient theories of expertise through the lens of rhetoric and interviews some forty professionals, revealing how they understand their own expertise and how they came to be known as "experts." She shows that expertise requires not only knowledge and skill but also, crucially, an acknowledgment by others-both specialists and laypeople-that one is a credible authority. At its heart, expertise is a rhetorical construct, and to be persuasive, experts must have the ability to apply their knowledge and skills rightly-in the right way, at the right time, to achieve the right end. Ultimately, Mehlenbacher argues that experts apply their technical knowledge effectively and win others' trust through acting prudently and cultivating goodwill. Timely, practical, and sophisticated, On Expertise provides vital scaffolding for our understanding of expertise and its real-world application. This book is essential for beginning the work of rehabilitating the expert class amid a politics of extreme populism and anti-intellectualism.
Dance and Ethics: Moving Towards a More Humane Culture is an introductory study of ethical issues as applied to the history and field of Western theatrical dance. It is the first sustained work of its kind, inspired by the belief that there are serious issues to be illuminated by examining dance in relation to ethics and to the changing values in the dance world itself, especially as faced by young dancers entering the profession. Since the 1960s and gathering momentum with the #metoo movement, scholars and practitioners, especially from the fields of dance education, somatics and the realms of postmodern dance and ballet, have increasingly believed that attitudes and practices involving psychological, physical and sexual mistreatment of students and dancers must be challenged. Dance and Ethics examines key ethical issues related to the dance field, primarily within the United States, and how those directly impact different aspects of the lives of dance artists over the span of their careers. The issues discussed include the basic ethical choices facing a dance artist in terms of whether to care about ethics or separate art from morality; ethical issues involved in student-teacher and dancer-choreographer relationships; how ethical concerns relate to the creation and reception of choreographic work; ethical aspects of the critical assessment of dance and dancers; and ethical issues related to presenting systems and institutional infrastructures within the dance field. While there is a clear bias towards greater humanism within the dance field, Naomi Jackson is sensitive to the variety of moral stances available in any given situation. Readers are invited to consider that ethical options exist other than those that are usually promoted, that while sometimes there are no clear right and wrong answers, there are better and worse positions to be explored and defended and that it is important for the dance field and broader culture to consciously address ethical issues in relation to dance in a sustained, thoughtful and creative manner. The book focuses on theatrical dance forms of ballet, modern/postmodern dance and theatrical jazz, but also extends to commercial dance, dance for the camera/internet and social/vernacular/folk dance when relevant to the main argument. Dance and Ethics will appeal primarily to educators and students as well as young professional dancers. It is designed for undergraduate and graduate students in dance studies, American studies, performance studies and cultural studies. It will be useful for undergraduate and graduate dance courses focused on pedagogy, choreography, criticism, community engagement, politics and aesthetics.
This book brings a novel approach to issues of connecting social work practice to theory and the personal life narrative. The authors each find their own unique way of integrating the self, theory, and practice, in different social work practice and education settings. Contributors use the methodology of narrative to tell their story about their social work journey, be that in research, teaching, or practice. The backdrop for this book is Sweden. The country's rich heritage of welfare provision but also recent cultural diversity offers a unique Nordic context to the subject matter. The contributors engage with these new conditions for Swedish social work through an intersectional lens. Topics explored include: Digging in the present: A day in the life of a school counsellor We live in a political world: Between needs and money The problematic labour market situation of immigrants to Sweden: Consequences and causes Tackling the contradictory nature of social work Using anti-oppressive practice to promote social inclusion in social work education The result is a book that is personal and reflexive, and positions the contributors' narratives as a window to understand and address social problems. Narratives of Social Work Practice and Education in Sweden should engage those interested in the Swedish welfare state, and who want to learn about how social work is taught and practised in this country. Intended to be a general introduction, the book provides guidance to those considering working in the field and for those newly qualified. It also provides examples for students of social work to connect personal narratives to social work settings. |
You may like...
The Pfizer Papers - Pfizer's Crimes…
Naomi Wolf, Amy Kelly
Hardcover
|