Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons^™

Is Multiculturalism Good For Children? The Rights Of The Child And Multiculturalist Policies In Sweden, Pernilla Ouis, Göran Adamson, Aje Carlbom

International Dialogue

In the present paper, the objective is to investigate if multiculturalism is good for children. The method is to use secondary sources, as well as current examples from Swedish society, to show how multiculturalist policies have negative consequences for minority children's rights. The paper, as well as previous research, reveals that parents of immigrant origin often forbid children to attend school activities such as camps, gymnastics, swimming, and lessons in music and religion. Parents motivate their actions with reference to their traditions and religion, and a fear that their children might learn sexual immorality. The wishes of parents are accepted …

The Duty To Rescue And The Duty To Aid The Starving, Per Bauhn

International Dialogue

In this article I intend to argue that while there are certainly important similarities between the duty to rescue and the duty to aid the famine-stricken and starving, there are also important differences between these two duties. Both the duty to rescue and the duty to provide aid need to be qualified by conditions regarding necessity, possibility, and comparable cost, as well as by a principle concerning special relationships of responsibility. However, while the duty to rescue can be fulfilled by individual agents, the duty to aid the famine-stricken and starving requires large-scale interventions to change political and social structures, …

Jerusalem Obscured: The Crescent On The Temple: The Dome Of The Rock As Image Of The Ancient Jewish Sanctuary, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

To begin with, what is it? In order to answer this question one must, of course, qualify it by asking—to whom? Pamela Berger in The Crescent on the Temple: The Dome of the Rock as Image of the Ancient Jewish Sanctuary has done a great service by supplying us with a history of the iconographic representation of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock (the Qubbat al-Sakhrah). While no publication could ever exhaustively summarize the countless visual and literary portrayals of this world heritage site, Berger not only makes a valiant attempt at such but necessarily changes the way that almost all …

The Transgressive Allure Of White Gold In Peruvian Amazonia: Towards A Genealogy Of Coca Capitalisms And Social Dread: Andean Cocaine: The Making Of A Global Drug; Coca's Gone: Of Might And Right In The Huallaga Post-Boom, Bartholomew Dean

International Dialogue

“I have tested this effect of coca, which wards off hunger, sleep, and fatigue and steels one to intellectual effort, some dozen times on myself; I had no opportunity to engage in physical work.”—Sigmund Freud, from ‘Über Coca’, Centralblatt für die ges. Therapie, 2, 1884.

Circulating through multiple regimes of value, the transgressive allure of coca has gripped the Occidental imagination for more than a century and a half, shaping the contours of modernity; first as a magical elixir, then to a demonized underground drug, and eventually being transformed into a lucrative global commodity with grievous effects. Coca and cocaine …

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 3.

Sites Of Contestation: What Apology Debates Tell Us About International Relations: Sorry States: Apologies In International Politics; Troubled Apologies Among Japan, Korea, And The United States, Elizabeth S. Dahl

International Dialogue

Some scholars have stated that an “age of apology” began in the 1990s (Brooks 1999: 3)—that apologies now are considered standard and beneficial practice in business, domestic politics, and international affairs. Some praise this trend, seeing it as a sign that a new space has opened up in the post-Cold War world for moral concerns and “national self-reflexivity” (Barkan 2000: xvii).1 Such scholars and other commentators see a great deal of potential in apology to change relationships for the better.2 While more discussions public apologies occurred in the 1990s,3 however, it is unclear what this change means. After all, despite …

Twilight Of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial Of Slobodan Milosevic, Sabrina P. Ramet

International Dialogue

Judith Armatta, a lawyer and journalist, attended the proceedings of the trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević over a period of nearly three years. During this period, the court was in session for 466 days, interrupted by repeated breaks necessitated by the accused’s increasing health problems. Charged with sixty-six counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, Milošević declined to have counsel appointed, electing instead to defend himself. The court’s willingness to allow Milošević to do so and to do so on his own terms proved to be a huge mistake, as Armatta stresses. The fallen Serbian leader’s …

The Fate Of Greenland— Lessons From Abrupt Climate Change, Ólafur Ingólfsson

International Dialogue

In times of chronic lack of resources for academic research and ever increasing competition for grants it was every scientists dream coming true: a billionaire patron comes along and hands you unlimited resources to pursue the research that lies closest to your heart. In this case, the late Gary Comer (1927–2006), who had in 2001 taken his yacht through the notorious Northwest Passage then free of sea ice, engaged a team of outstanding climate scientists to lead a search for causal links controlling abrupt global climate change: Wallace (Wally) S. Broecker of Columbia University, George H. Denton of the University …

Laws, Outlaws And Terrorists: Lessons From The War On Terrorism, Malin Isaksson

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

Sayyid Qutb And The Origins Of Radical Islamism, Ramazan Kılınç

International Dialogue

In August 2013, the Egyptian military, which deposed the elected president Mohammed Mursi a month earlier, harshly cracked down on the protestors. The protestors, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, aimed to restore the Mursi government through their sit-ins. The military crackdown left hundreds, if not thousands, died and several thousand arrests behind. While scholars are trying to account for what is happening in Egypt and states are searching for relevant policies to respond to these developments, only a few books can offer as nuanced insights as John Calvert’s Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism offers. Based on diligent …

International Human Rights, 4th Ed., Eric A. Heinze

International Dialogue

Jack Donnelly’s most recent edition of his well-known text, International Human Rights, provides an updated discussion of the evolution of international human rights since the end of World War II. Like previous editions, this book provides an accessible, relatively comprehensive, and self-consciously analytical treatment of the broad subject of international human rights. While the book is clearly intended for classroom use, and is indeed accessible enough to be understood by most upper-division undergraduates, it is not a “textbook” in the traditional sense, in that Donnelly is not shy about offering his own arguments and interpretations about a variety of controversial …

Kicking Away The Ladder: Development Strategy In Historical Perspective, Seb Bytyçi

International Dialogue

Although it has been a decade since this book’s publication, it is worth bringing attention to it due to its significance. Many important events have taken place in the world since Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective was published; most notably the global financial crisis, the Eurocrisis, the continued economic growth of the BRICS, the enlargement of the European Union in ex-communist Eastern Europe, and the raw materials-based growth of many developing countries fueled mainly by Chinese demand. All these developments in the global arena make it worthwhile reviewing and rereading this book. Another key reason for …

Queer Activism In India: A Story In The Anthropology Of Ethics, Rahul Rao

International Dialogue

The queer movement in India has been adept at documenting itself. A succession of anthologies compiled by leading voices from within the movement has made available to a wider reading public the lives and longings of many of its diverse participants (Sukthankar 1999; Bhattacharyya and Bose 2005; Narrain and Bhan 2006; Narrain and Gupta 2011). Naisargi Dave’s book on queer activism in India offers something new and valuable. A book-length account of the queer political landscape with a focus on lesbian activism, this study is distinctive both for its longer temporal view and for the productively ambivalent positionality of its …

Michael Oakeshott: Religion, Politics And The Moral Life, Noël K. O'Sullivan

International Dialogue

Although students of Michael Oakeshott have special reason to be grateful to Timothy Fuller for this carefully selected volume of ten of Oakeshott’s early and mid-career essays, as well as for the scholarly introduction Fuller has provided, his book will also appeal to general readers concerned to grapple with the central issues of modern life and thought with which Oakeshott constantly wrestled. Four of the essays have never been previously published and six are now made available in a more accessible form.

U.S. Cultural Diplomacy And Archeology: Soft Power, Hard Heritage, Nicholas J. Cull

International Dialogue

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 generated a maelstrom of images. There were cities lit by the “shock and awe” bombardment, the falling statues, the traumatized civilians and scene after scene of coalition forces vainly searching for weapons of mass destruction. But among the most peculiarly troubling were the images of the looting of Iraq’s national museum. The human suffering was sadly familiar to the TV audience around the world but the looting broke new ground. The images of looting spoke of the depth of the anarchy into which Iraq was tumbling. They represented the destruction of something greater …

Cutting The Fuse: The Explosion Of Global Suicide Terrorism And How To Stop It, Sunil K. Sahu

International Dialogue

Since 9/11 there has been a burgeoning literature on terrorism written by journalists, scholars, policy makers, diplomats, and military professionals. The last decade has also witnessed a dramatic increase in suicide terrorist attacks—violent attacks designed to kill others where the death of the attacker is a necessary part of the action—especially against American interests. There were twenty suicide terrorist attacks worldwide in 2000, one of which was anti-American inspired; the number of such attacks increased ten-fold by 2010, 90% of which were anti-American inspired. Although suicide bombing was used by imperial Japan at the end of World War II, the …

The Power Of Religion In The Public Sphere, Robin Alice Roth

International Dialogue

Of the numerous topics current philosophy is attentive to certainly the issue of religion is central. This anthology starts with Jürgen Habermas’ notion of “the public sphere” and works to connect this notion to the issue of religion. Of course, religion has long been part of the public sphere. For much of human history, people established their various formations of society and state in a manner continuous with religion. Their discourses were compact. Habermas’ early works argue for a differentiation of the religious and political spheres from the public sphere that eventually overcame “representational” culture, with its authoritarianism, particularly with …

Genocide And The Europeans, Kate Ferguson

International Dialogue

Next year the world will commemorate twenty years since the Rwandan genocide and the following year will mark twenty years since the genocide at Srebrenica. As the International Community prepares to honor these grim milestones, somber deliberation of the mistakes of the past must inform the development of a more committed future. Karen Smith’s book, Genocide and the Europeans, provides just such a reflection for Europe, tracing the continent’s policy responses to incidents of genocide since the Holocaust. It is an important text that draws a detailed history of the past sixty years, pairing the careful analysis of an international …

The Foundations Of Deliberative Democracy: Empirical Research And Normative Implications, Lauren Johnston

International Dialogue

As the theory of deliberative democracy developed in the late-1980s and 1990s much of the focus was on its normative foundations. However, for the last decade there has been a greater focus on practice and institutionalization, accompanied by a wealth of empirical evidence on deliberative democracy. Therefore, there is now a need to return to these normative debates in light of this empirical evidence. Jürg Steiner’s book aims to contribute to this endeavour by concentrating on the “interplay between normative and empirical aspects of deliberation” (1). In undertaking this goal he acknowledges that he is not a professional philosopher, but …

Respect For Nature: A Theory Of Environmental Ethics, Edward Abplanalp

International Dialogue

Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature was first published 1986 when environmental ethics was a relatively new field. In it he defended a deontological biocentric environmental ethic predicated on the idea that all living beings have inherent value. It was a groundbreaking work in non-anthropocentric ethics, and since then it has been frequently anthologized and used in ethics and environmental philosophy courses taught around the world. The Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition of Respect for Nature (2011) contains a two-page forward by Dale Jamieson, who notes the continued urgency for intellectuals to consider the meaning of “respect for nature.” When Respect for Nature …