Responsibility for future generations is easily postulated in the abstract but it is much more difficult to set it to work in the concrete. It requires some changes in individual and institutional attitudes that are in opposition to what has been called the "systems variables" of industrial society: individual freedom, consumerism, and equality. The Politics of Sustainability from Philosophical Perspectives seeks to examine the motivational and institutional obstacles standing in the way of a consistent politics of sustainability and to look for strategies to overcome them. It argues that though there have been significant changes in individual and especially collective attitudes to growth, intergenerational solidarity and nature preservation, it is far from certain whether these will be sufficient to encourage politicians into giving sustainable policies priority over other legitimate concerns. Having a philosophical approach as its main focus, the volume is at the same time interdisciplinary in combining political, psychological, ecological and economic analyses. This book will be a contribution to the joint effort to meet the theoretical and practical challenges posed by climate change and other impending global perils and will be of interest to students of environmental studies, applied ethics and environmental psychology.

Responsibility for future generations is easily postulated in the abstract but it is much more difficult to set it to work in the concrete. It requires some changes in individual and institutional attitudes that are in opposition to what has been called the "systems variables" of industrial society: individual freedom, consumerism, and equality. The Politics of Sustainability from Philosophical Perspectives seeks to examine the motivational and institutional obstacles standing in the way of a consistent politics of sustainability and to look for strategies to overcome them. It argues that though there have been significant changes in individual and especially collective attitudes to growth, intergenerational solidarity and nature preservation, it is far from certain whether these will be sufficient to encourage politicians into giving sustainable policies priority over other legitimate concerns. Having a philosophical approach as its main focus, the volume is at the same time interdisciplinary in combining political, psychological, ecological and economic analyses. This book will be a contribution to the joint effort to meet the theoretical and practical challenges posed by climate change and other impending global perils and will be of interest to students of environmental studies, applied ethics and environmental psychology.

Trust is essential to human society and the good life. At the same time, citizens of developed countries spend more and more time in virtual environments. This collection asks how far virtual environments, especially those affiliated with "Web 2.0", challenge and foster trust? The book's early chapters establish historical, linguistic, and philosophical foundations for key concepts of trust, embodiment, virtuality, and virtual worlds. Four philosophers then analyze how trust - historically interwoven with embodied co-presence - may be enhanced through online environments. Final contributions tackle the specific challenges of virtual child pornography and democratic deliberation online. This is the first collection devoted exclusively to the philosophical dimensions of trust and virtual worlds. It helps bring the reader up to date on the relevant concepts and issues, and on ways in which widely ranging insights and approaches may nonetheless cohere into a reasonably comprehensive account of trust.

In this anthology we have gathered seven contributions from scholars undertaking research in the field of information technology. Their main point of departure has been to investigate several aspects of this technology within a multicultural and global context. The topics taken up here cover a broad range of issues, and they are discussed within the frames of different disciplines related to IT. The empirically based examples discussed in this volume are truly global in scope, ranging from the USA, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia to China. We hope that students and scholars from a broad range of disciplines who read this anthology will find topics of interest and relevance to their own field. Another positive effect we hope for is that these articles, both individually and collectively, help bridge some of the gaps between different research fields - fields that may indeed profit from glimpsing into each others' perspectives. Last, but not least, we also hope that this anthology will contribute to the rapidly growing field of applied ethics as related to information technology.