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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Ethical issues & debates > General
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.
Connecting seemingly unrelated instances of essential worker shortages around the world, investment analyst Shamil Ismail builds a compelling and well-researched narrative explaining why aging populations and falling birth rates are leading to a shrinking pool of essential workers in developed countries, which could massively disrupt their societies. Methodically unpacking the factors driving this escalating crisis, he shows why proposed solutions such as automation, AI, and raising the retirement age will not fix the problem. The implications will be widespread, leading to crumbling cities with decaying infrastructure, while economic growth will be stunted by creaking supply chains, declining demand, and a shrinking tax base. Sifting through the data, trends and forecasts, Ismail answers these intriguing questions, allowing us to prepare for the daunting future that lies ahead.
The Age of Decay is a provocative read that will stimulate debate over the impact of the shifting demographics on society. It is an indispensable factor in strategic planning for business leaders, investors and governments. Tautly written with the clever use of occasional fictional narratives, the book distils a wide range of topics into a riveting read. A must-read for anyone interested in how the future could unfold.
This volume includes six varied contributions to the study of visual ethics in organizations. The implications of our visual world for organizational life and personal behaviour have received scant research attention. This volume sets out to address that lack of research. It includes contributions on empirical studies, film, personal portraits, social research using the photovoice method, bureaucracy and critical theory. Contributors show how the application of disciplines developed for the study of films can help us to understand how organizations are perceived, and how visual images can be used in empirical research about organizations, ethics and organizational citizenship behaviour. Some say philosophy has abandoned art, some that humans lack moral vision. A number of contributors show how a careful and informed study of art can enhance our understanding of organizational life. This volume seeks to put the visual back into ethics and organizations.
"Fashion and Ethics "focuses on issues of power, social
positioning, and practices among creators, producers,
practitioners, wearers, and consumers of fashion. With a special
emphasis on the moral fabric of clothing, contributors to the book
offer a critique of some of the fundamental assumptions of ethical
fashion and expose how products are often framed as fair trade in
order to relieve consumers' guilt.
What should individuals and society do when genetic screening becomes widely available and with its impact on current and future generations still uncertain? How can our education systems around the world respond to these developments? Reproductive and genetic technologies (RGTs) are increasingly controversial and political. We are entering an era where we can design future humans, firstly, by genetic screening of "undesirable" traits or indeed embryos, but perhaps later by more radical genetic engineering. This has a profound effect on what we see as normal, acceptable and responsible. This book argues that these urgent and biopolitical issues should be central to how biology is taught as a subject. Debate about life itself has always been at the forefront of connected molecular, genetic and social/personal identity levels, and each of these levels requires processes of communication and debate, what Anthony Giddens called in passing life politics. In this book Padraig Murphy opens the term up, with examples from field research in schools, student responses to educational films exploring the future of RGTs, and science studies of strategic biotechnology and the lab practices of genetic screening. Life political debate is thoroughly examined and is identified as a way of connecting mainstream education of biology with future generations. Biotechnology, Education and Life Politics will appeal to post-graduates and academics involved with science education, science communication, communication studies and the sociology of education.
There is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. This thought-provoking book argues that, ironically, science's credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing and confirmation bias, and data mining is fuelled by the technological advances in Big Data and the development of ever-increasingly powerful computers. Using a wide range of entertaining examples, this fascinating book examines the impacts of society's growing distrust of science, and ultimately provides constructive suggestions for restoring the credibility of the scientific community.
'The idea which I shall present here came to me more or less out of the blue. I was on a train some five years ago, on my way to spend a day at Headingley, and I was reading a book about the death camp Sobibor... The particular, not very appropriate, conjunction involved for me in this train journey...had the effect of fixing my thoughts on one of the more dreadful features of human coexistence, when in the shape of a simple five-word phrase the idea occurred to me.' The contract of mutual indifference In this classic work, newly reissued here with a preface by Oliver Kamm, Norman Geras discusses a central aspect of the experience of the Holocaust with a view to exploring its most important contemporary implications. A bold and powerful synthesis of memorial, literary record, historical reflection and political theory, Geras's argument focuses on the figure of the bystander - the bystander to the destruction of the Jews of Europe and the bystander to more recent atrocity - to consider the moral consequences of looking on without active responses at persecution and great suffering. This book argues that we owe a duty of help to those who are suffering under terrible oppression. Geras contends that the tragedy of European Jewry - so widely pondered by historians, social scientists, psychologists, theologians and others - has not yet found its proper reflection within political philosophy. Attempting to fill the gap, he adapts an old idea from within that tradition of enquiry, the idea of the social contract, to the task of thinking about the triangular relation between perpetrators, victims and bystanders, and draws a sombre conclusion from it. Geras goes on to ask how far this conclusion may be offset by the hypothesis of a universal duty to bring aid. The contract of mutual indifference is an original and challenging work, aimed at the complacent abstraction of much contemporary theory-building. It is supplemented by three shorter essays on the implications of the Jewish catastrophe for conceptions of human nature and progress. -- .
Every arena of science has its own flash-point issues chemistry and poison gas, physics and the atom bomb and genetics has had a troubled history with race. As Jonathan Marks reveals, this dangerous relationship rumbles on to this day, still leaving plenty of leeway for a belief in the basic natural inequality of races. The eugenic science of the early twentieth century and the commodified genomic science of today are unified by the mistaken belief that human races are naturalistic categories. Yet their boundaries are founded neither in biology nor in genetics and, not being a formal scientific concept, race is largely not accessible to the scientist. As Marks argues, race can only be grasped through the humanities: historically, experientially, politically. This wise, witty essay explores the persistence and legacy of scientific racism, which misappropriates the authority of science and undermines it by converting it into a social weapon.
A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access at www.tandfebooks.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. The sequencing of the entire human genome has opened up unprecedented possibilities for healthcare, but also ethical and social dilemmas about how these can be achieved, particularly in developing countries. UNESCO's Bioethics Programme was established to address such issues in 1993. Since then, it has adopted three declarations on human genetics and bioethics (1997, 2003 and 2005), set up numerous training programmes around the world and debated the need for an international convention on human reproductive cloning. Negotiating Bioethics presents Langlois' research on the negotiation and implementation of the three declarations and the human cloning debate, based on fieldwork carried out in Kenya, South Africa, France and the UK, among policy-makers, geneticists, ethicists, civil society representatives and industry professionals. The book examines whether the UNESCO Bioethics Programme is an effective forum for (a) decision-making on bioethics issues and (b) ensuring ethical practice. Considering two different aspects of the UNESCO Bioethics Programme - deliberation and implementation - at international and national levels, Langlois explores: how relations between developed and developing countries can be made more equal who should be involved in global level decision-making and how this should proceed how overlap between initiatives can be avoided what can be done to improve the implementation of international norms by sovereign states how far universal norms can be contextualized what impact the efficacy of national level governance has at international level
The ethic of care has developed to become a body of theory that has expanded from its roots in social psychology to many other disciplines in the social sciences as well as the humanities. This work on care has informed both theory and practice by generating complex accounts of care ethics for multiple and intersecting kinds of relationships, and for a variety of domains and contexts. Its application now extends from the moral to the political realm, from personal to public relationships, from the local to the global, from feminine to feminist virtues and values, and from issues of gender to issues of power and oppression. The developments in the theories and applications of care ethics over the past few decades make this book an appropriate and timely publication. It includes chapters by authors who are developing or expanding theories of care ethics and also by those who work on applying and extending insights from care ethics to practices and policies in personal and institutional settings. Care Ethics provides readers from different disciplines and professional groups with a substantial number of new theories and applications from both new and established authors. This book was originally published as two special issues of Ethics and Social Welfare.
Bea meets Aaron. He's intelligent, handsome, makes her laugh and, most importantly, has a high rating on his genetic profile. What's not to like? Char is on the brink of landing her dream job and has big plans to start a family - but her blood rating threatens it all. In a world where future happiness depends on a single, inescapable blood test - which dictates everything from credit rating to dating prospects - how far will people go to beat the system and let nature take its course? The Phlebotomist questions the value we place on one another, whether knowledge really is power, and if it's truly possible for love to conquer all.
Fashion Ethics provides a comprehensive overview of the ethical issues in the fashion industry, from collection design concept to upcycling and closed loop production. This book answers an urgent need for a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental ethics of the fashion industry. Sue Thomas goes beyond the usual contentious issues of environmental impact and human rights, taking the reader deeper into the endemic issues including sizeism, ageism, animal rights, and the lack of diversity in models and in the media. The book lays out the significant ethical issues within the fashion supply chain by mapping the lifecycle of a garment and exploring key topics such as deep ecology, cultural copyright speciesism, the role of the customer, and technology in future ethics. It also features current international industry information and industry-relevant case studies from brands, media and mobile technology, and NGOs including Oxfam (UK), Redress (Hong Kong), Nimany (US), Labor Link (US), People Tree (UK), and Peppermint (Australia). Fashion Ethics provides much-needed information for fashion students, industry professionals, and customers.
In recent years, popular media have inundated audiences with sensationalised headlines recounting data breaches, new forms of surveillance and other dangers of our digital age. Despite their regularity, such accounts treat each case as unprecedented and unique. This book proposes a radical rethinking of the history, present and future of our relations with the digital, spatial technologies that increasingly mediate our everyday lives. From smartphones to surveillance cameras, to navigational satellites, these new technologies offer visions of integrated, smooth and efficient societies, even as they directly conflict with the ways users experience them. Recognising the potential for both control and liberation, the authors argue against both acquiescence to and rejection of these technologies. Through intentional use of the very systems that monitor them, activists from Charlottesville to Hong Kong are subverting, resisting and repurposing geographic technologies. Using examples as varied as writings on the first telephones to the experiences of a feminist collective for migrant women in Spain, the authors present a revolution of everyday technologies. In the face of the seemingly inevitable dominance of corporate interests, these technologies allow us to create new spaces of affinity, and a new politics of change.
"Speaking Up for Animals" highlights eighteen courageous members of a vibrant and growing international animal advocacy movement that is overwhelmingly powered by women. These remarkable activists take us with them as they lift factory farmed chickens and cows from quagmires of unconscionable filth, free gigantic sea lions caught in the death-grip of fishing gear, and secure undercover footage of dogs crying for mercy on stainless steel vivisection tables. In the process, these dedicated women expose the many ways that most of us are complicit in the suffering and exploitation of nonhuman animals, and creatively suggest a variety of ways that we might help bring change.
How do we know right from wrong, good from bad, help from hindrance, and how can we judge the behaviour of others? Ethics are the rules and guidelines that we use to make such judgements. Often there are no clear answers, which make this subject both interesting and potentially frustrating. In this book, the authors offer readers the opportunity to develop and express their own opinions in relation to ethics in psychology. There are many psychological studies that appear to have been harmful or cruel to the people or animals that took part in them. For example, memory researchers carried out studies on a man who had no memory for over forty years, but because he had no memory he was never able to agree to the studies. Is this a reasonable thing to do to someone? Comparative psychologist Harry Harlow found that he could create severe and lasting distress in monkeys by keeping them in social isolation. Is this a reasonable thing to do even if we find out useful things about human distress? If you were able to use psychological techniques to break someone down so that they revealed information that was useful to your government, would you do it? If so, why? If not, why not? These ethical issues are not easy to resolve and the debates continue as we encounter new dilemmas. This book uses examples from psychological research to look at:
This book is essential reading for undergraduate and pre-undergraduate students of psychology and related subjects such as philosophy and social policy.
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.
In this important book, Jeffrey Reiman responds to recent assaults on liberal theory by proposing a "critical moral liberalism." It is liberal in maintaining the emphasis of classical liberalism on individual freedom, moral in adhering to a distinctive vision of the good life rather than professing neutrality, and critical in taking seriously the objection-raised by feminists and Marxists, among others-that liberal theories often serve as ideological cover for oppression of one group by others. Critical moral liberalism has a conception of ideology, and resources for testing the suspicion that arrangements that look free are really oppressive. Reiman sets forth the basic arguments for the liberal moral obligation to maximize people's ability to govern their own lives, and for the conception of the good life that goes with this. He considers and answers objections to the liberal project, and defends liberal conceptions of privacy, moral virtue, economic justice, and Constitutional interpretation. Reiman then takes up specific policy issues, among them abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, moral education, capital punishment, and threats to privacy from modern information technology. Critical Moral Liberalism will be of interest to scholars and students of ethics, social and political philosophy, political theory, and public policy.
This book examines the impact of coal mining on the lives of former-labour tenant and rural communities in post-apartheid South Africa. No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa is an exploration of the ongoing struggles faced by families in the Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa whose lives have been upended by the relentless expansion of coal mining operations. These regions, burdened with the task of fulfilling the nation's energy needs and boosting the country’s economy, witness daily the harsh realities of dispossession that extend far beyond the mere loss of property. Dineo Skosana presents a compelling argument that dispossession remains a present-day reality and crisis, contradicting the notion that it is merely a relic of the past in the post-apartheid landscape. It challenges the narrow perspective that equates land loss in material and economic terms only. Skosana considers the impact of grave relocations―a common occurrence in these mining-dominated locales― and the profound spiritual anguish and dehumanisation communities endure as their lands are excavated. In African societies, connections to the land extend beyond the material; land has a sacred and ancestral value. Grave relocations disrupt this connection families have with their ancestors. In dispossessing not only the living but also the dead from their lands, the author argues that the act wounds the collective soul of a people, eroding their cultural heritage, and collective identity and belonging. This book offers a rich ethnographic account of the experiences, struggles and resistance of the affected communities as well as a critical analysis of the legal and policy frameworks that enable their exploitation. In relation to the ‘land question’ in South Africa, No Last Place to Rest presents deep insights for communities, activists and government sectors acting in support of social justice and redress.
Even today, many people think of 'social problems' as involving poor and powerless individuals in society. "Research in Social Problems and Public Policy" seeks to improve the balance by adding a focus on important and powerful institutions. Such organizations often play key roles in managing, and mismanaging, the ways in which some of today's most important social problems are handled by the public policy system. The book series are compiled and written by the most highly regarded authors in their fields and are selected from across the globe. The papers discuss policy sciences, public policy analysis and public management. It addresses operations and design issues for government organizations.
This book focuses on human trafficking and the anti-trafficking movement, particularly as it is expressed in Southeast Asia. The study is based on ethnographic research of the emerging anti-trafficking movement in Singapore, and in-depth interviews and observations with victims of human trafficking and others subject to labour exploitation in Singapore. Research in the book adds to the significant amount of work documenting human trafficking in Asia, by offering a critical academic perspective on the rise of the anti-trafficking movement. Readers will gain an understanding of how anti-trafficking operates as a new social movement and state practice, and how anti-trafficking often sits at odds with the experiences of trafficked and exploited persons themselves.
The topic of moral competence is generally neglected in the study of public management and policy, yet it is critical to any hope we might have for strengthening the quality of governance and professional practice. What does moral competence consist in? How is it developed and sustained? These questions are addressed in this book through close examination of selected practitioners in Asian countries making life-defining decisions in their work. The protagonists include a doctor in Singapore, a political activist in India, a mid-level bureaucrat in central Asia, a religious missionary in China, and a journalist in Cambodia-each struggling with ethical challenges that shed light on what it takes to act effectively and well in public life. Together they bear witness to the ideal of public service, exercising their personal gifts for the well-being of others and demonstrating that, even in difficult circumstances, the reflective practitioner can be a force for good.
The editors and contributors to this volume focus on the inherent political nature of archaeology and its impact on the practice of the discipline. Pointing to the discipline's history of advancing imperialist, colonialist, and racist objectives, they insist that archaeology must rethink its muted professional stance and become more overtly active agents of change. The discipline is not about an abstract "archaeological record" but about living individuals and communities, whose lives and heritage suffer from the abuse of power relationships with states and their agents. Only by recognizing this power disparity, and adopting a political ethic for the discipline, can archaeology justify its activities. Chapters range from a critique of traditional ethical codes, to examinations of the capitalist motivations and structures within the discipline, to calls for an engaged, emancipatory archaeology that improves the lives of the people with whom archaeologists work. A direct challenge to the discipline, this volume will provoke discussion, disagreement, and inspiration for many in the field.
How is public morality understood in the twenty-first century, and what effect does this have on legislation and social policy? Public Morality and the Culture Wars is a strictly non-polemical analysis of the intellectual and ideological conflicts at the heart of the 'culture wars'. Taking debates on human nature, sexuality, gender identity, abortion, censorship, and free speech, Bryan Fanning offers an accessible analysis of modern public morality, identifying a 'triple divide' between conservative, liberal and progressive viewpoints. A nuanced analysis of 'culture wars' now dividing Anglophone democracies is badly needed. Public Morality and the Culture Wars makes a vibrant and invigorating contribution to the debate, essential reading for scholars and students in the fields of social policy, law, politics, philosophy, sociology and social justice.
Architectural Design and Ethics offers both professional architects and architecture students a theoretical base and numerous suggestions as to how we might rethink our responsibilities to the natural world and design a more sustainable future for ourselves. As we find ourselves on the steep slope of several exponential growth curves in global population, in heat-trapping atmospheric gases, in the gap between the rich and poor, and in the demand for finite resources, Fisher lays down a theory of architecture based on ethics and explores how buildings can and do provide both social and moral dimensions.The book also has practical goals, demonstrating how architects can make better and more beautiful buildings whilst nurturing more responsible, sustainable development. Architectural Design and Ethics will prove an invaluable text not only to those in the architecture field, but to anyone simply interested in the ethical issues surrounding our built environment. It joins the dots between architectural form, ethics and professional practice. It uses the history of ethics to present relevant lessons for today's practitioners. It provides a wake up call to architects, advocating a greater focus on ethics over aesthetics.
Visions of Invasion: Alien Affects, Cinema, and Citizenship in Settler Colonies explores how the US government mobilizes media and surveillance technologies to operate a highly networked, multidimensional system for controlling migrants. Author Michael Lechuga focuses on three arenas where a citizenship control assemblage manufactures alienhood: Hollywood extraterrestrial invasion film, federal antimigration and border security legislation, and various immigration enforcement protocols implemented along the Mexico-United States border. Building on rhetorical studies, settler colonial studies, and media studies, Visions of Invasion offers a glimpse at how the processes of alien-making contribute to an ongoing settler colonial project in the US. Lechuga demonstrates that popular films-The War of the Worlds, Predator, Men in Black, and more-participate in the production of migrants as subjective terrorists, felons, and other noncitizen personae vilified in public discourse. Beyond just tracing how alien invasion narratives circulate in popular media, Lechuga describes how the logics motivating early US colonists materialize in both the US's citizenship control policy and in some of the country's most popular texts. Beneath each of the film franchises and antimigrant political expressions described in Visions of Invasion lies an anxious colonial logic in which the settler way of life is seemingly threated by false narratives of imminent invasion from abroad. The volume offers a deep dive into how the rhetorical figure of the alien has been manufactured through media and surveillance technologies as a political subjectivity, one that plays out the anxieties, guilts, and fears of colonialism in today's science fiction landscape. |
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