Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Institutional Changes And Discretionary Value For Property Rights In Drylands’ Farming Of The Sudan, Professor Issam A.W. Mohamed

Professor Issam A.W. Mohamed

Research on land tenure and use control and the socioeconomic sets of regulations in the agricultural rainfed sub sector of Sudan, come to focus for many reasons. Anthropogenic pressure, expanding animal population and migration led to accelerated impacts on both the ecological systems and land yields. Conflicts between governmental regulations and indigenous rules contribute to generate inconsistencies on who have the right to till the land and hence own it. With such transformation logically, more intensive commercial farming took place and land intake exponentially increased. Private or collective property rights of land are procured through traditional tenure, prescription, settlement or …

Campaigns Against Gender Violence (1977-1993), Professor Vibhuti Patel

Professor Vibhuti Patel

The women's movement in India launched campaigns against rape, domestic violence, sexism in advertisements as well as against state repression during caste and communal riots in the early eighties. Before that, during the postemergency period of 1977-1980, small groups of women's rights activists in Hyderabad, Bombay, Delhi and Madras had started taking up individual cases of custodial rape, deaths of-housewives under mysterious circumstances and excesses by the state enforcement machinery during caste/communal riots which had increased in number and intensity of violence. The mass of poor women involved in the struggles of the tribal people, the industrial working classes and …

Danger In The Safety Zone: Notes On Race, Resentment, And The Discourse Of Crime, Violence, And Suburban Security, Cameron Mccarthy, A. Rodriguez, E. Buendia, S. Meacham, S. David, Heriberto Godina Phd, K. E. Supriya, C. Wilson-Brown

Heriberto Godina PhD

No abstract provided.

Rising Temperatures: Rising Tides, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Transboundary environmental problems do not distinguish between political boundaries. Global warming is expected to cause thermal expansion of water and melt glaciers. Both are predicted to lead to a rise in sea level. We must enlarge our paradigms to encompass a global reality and reliance upon global participation.

The Last Rational Men: Citizenship, Morality, And The Pursuit Of Human Perfection, C. Mccarthy, E. Buendia, C. Mills, S. Meacham, Heriberto Godina Phd, C. Wilson-Brown, M. Seferian, T. Souchet

Heriberto Godina PhD

No abstract provided.

In Defence Of Exploitation, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

The concept of exploitation is thought to be central to Marx's Critique of capitalism. John Roemer, an analytical (then-) Marxist economist now at Yale, attacked this idea in a series of papers and books in the 1970s-1990s, arguing that Marxists should be concerned with inequality rather than exploitation -- with distribution rather than production, precisely the opposite of what Marx urged in The Critique of the Gotha Progam.

This paper expounds and criticizes Roemer's objections and his alternative inequality based theory of exploitation, while accepting some of his criticisms. It may be viewed as a companion paper to my What's …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

Functional Explanation And Metaphysical Individualism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A number of (present or former) analytical Marxists, such as Jon Elster, have argued that functional explanation has almost no place in the social sciences. (Although the discussion is framed in terms of a debate among analytical Marxists, the point is quite general, and Marxism is used for illustrative purposes.) Functional explanation accounts for what is to be explained by reference to its function; thus, sighted organism have eyes because eyes enable them to see. Elster and other critics of functional explanation argue that this pattern of explanation is inconsistent with "methodological individualism," the idea, as they understand it, that …

From Libertarianism To Egalitarianism, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard natural rights argument for libertarianism is based on the labor theory of property: the idea that I own my self and my labor, and so if I "mix" my own labor with something previously unowned or to which I have a have a right, I come to own the thing with which I have mixed by labor. This initially intuitively attractive idea is at the basis of the theories of property and the role of government of John Locke and Robert Nozick. Locke saw and Nozick agreed that fairness to others requires a proviso: that I leave "enough …

Transforming Science And Technology: Has The Elephant Yet Flicked Its Trunk?, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

No abstract provided.

Dope Is Death, Amilcar Shabazz

Amilcar Shabazz

"Dope is Death" started as a study document for revolutionary nationalist cadres in the 1980s at the height of the Crack Wars and Reaganomics. It was later published in the September/October 1987 issue of "By Any Means Necessary!" newspaper published by the New Afrikan People's Organization. The version seen here is the 1988 pamphlet edition.