Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, Volume One, Issue One, Shane Willson, Landon S. Bevier, Rachael E. Gabriel, Taylor Krcek, Alaina Elizabeth Smith

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

It is with great pride that we present to you the inaugural issue of Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum. Here we have attempted to create an innovative, peer-reviewed space in which people from numerous disciplines, or even those claiming no discipline, can present research, multimedia, and art aimed at furthering the ideals of social justice, broadly defined. Social justice is not a concept owned by the academy, for attempts to create a more just world can come from many professions, or even from no profession at all. By applying the traditionally academic peer-review process to work done by activists, artists, …

Understanding Controversies And Ill-Structured Problems Through Argument Visualization. Curriculum And Learning Materials For Problem-Based Learning In Small Groups Of Students Who Work Autonomously On Projects With The Interactive Agora Software, Including An Exemplary Reader On Genetically Modified Plants, Michael H.G. Hoffmann

Michael H.G. Hoffmann

No abstract provided.

Including The Excluded: Communitarian Paths To Cosmopolitanism, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Cosmopolitanism is frequently criticised for overlooking the situatedness of morality and the importance of solidarity in their aspiration to global justice. A number of thinkers take these criticisms seriously and pursue ‘a communitarian path to cosmopolitanism’. Four such approaches are considered. All four view morality and justice as grounded in a specific social setting and hold that justice is more likely to result if there is some ‘we-feeling’ among people, but are simultaneously committed to expanding the realm of justice and moral concern to beyond national boundaries. To enable the theorisation of an expanded realm of situated justice and moral …

A Rawlsian Idea Of Deliberative Democracy, Angela D. White

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In my thesis, I develop a framework based on John Rawls's Political Liberalism that addresses the question: how is it possible for democratic institutions and their decisions to be legitimate, given that (i) they are supposed to be governed by the "will of the people", but (ii) the people will disagree with each other about what political institutions ought to do about any given issue? Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson advance a deliberative democratic response to this question, which has served as the basis of governments' attempts to "strengthen democracy". They argue that political decisions are justified insofar as they …

Op-Ed: Occupiers Begin 'To Build A New Democracy', Stephen D'Arcy

Stephen D'Arcy

A defence of the Occupy movement.

Complex Effects Of International A Regime Of Jewish Supremacy From The Jordan River To Mediterranean Sea: This Is Apartheid, Kenneth Christie

International Dialogue

This paper, entitled “A Regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid” is a policy paper put out by B’Tselem, The Israeli information Center for Human Rights and is about eight pages in length.

La Presunción De Inocencia Como Proposición Sintética, Cesar A. Prieto

Cesar A. Prieto

No abstract provided.

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

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

Witness And Testimonies: A Diachronic Perspective On The History Of The Bosnian Muslims, Rusmir Mahmutćehajić

International Dialogue

In his essay, “Witness and Testimonies: A Diachronic Perspective on the History of the Bosnian Muslims,” Rusmir Mahmutćehajić explores and deconstructs ideological abuses of some of the most important terms in the Muslim intellectual tradition. The terms ‘witness’ and ‘witnessing’, ‘opener’ and ‘opening’ are of key significance for understanding and reasoning for Muslim sacred tradition. Distorted, narrowed and reductive forms of these terms have been taken by antimuslim ideologists as material within their own constructions. In deconstructing the ideological abuse of these terms, Mahmutćehajić applies new knowledge from his experience in Scriptural Reasoning. Terms from the cultural history of Bosnia …

The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis: Identity, Violence And Power - Jean-Pierre Chretién And Richard Banégas (Eds), Catherine Bolten

International Dialogue

The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis is an edited volume comprising individual case studies that examine aspects of historical and on-going violence in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Congo-Kinshasa. The purpose of the volume is to “lead to a better understanding of the changes in the perceptions of violence which constitute one of the most serious obstacles to lasting peace” (1). The case studies encompass a diverse array of aspects of each of the conflicts, from the role of the Catholic Church in Rwanda since 1957, to the political and social problems created by the label “disaster victims” in Burundi after the …

Russia On The Edge - Edith Clowes, Thoams Ambrosio

International Dialogue

Edith Clowes’ Russia on the Edge is an engaging and accessible examination of three central questions of post-Soviet Russia: What is Russia? Who are the Russians? Where is Russia? The last question might be odd, given that the physical borders of the Russian Federation are not in doubt, since they are the same as those of the Russian republic borders from the Soviet period. However, when it comes to the creation of a post-Soviet Russian identity, the physical borders are secondary to how they are imagined. As stated in the preface: if Soviet identity was defined largely in terms of …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

No abstract provided.

The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Pursuit Of A New International Politics - Mark Malloch-Brown, Robert Weiner

International Dialogue

Several themes run throughout this book, in which Mark Malloch-Brown melds his personal experience as a British civil servant with his career as an international civil servant, working at various times at the World Bank, as the head of the United Nations Development Program, and UN Secretary-General’s Kofi Annan’s assistant. The central theme of the book revolves around the need for an effective system of global governance to cope with the major challenges which the international community faces in the age of globalization in the 21st century. Some of the problems involve the darker side of globalization, such as terrorism …

Latin American Politics And Development, 7th Ed. - Howard J. Wiarda And Harvey F. Kline (Eds.), Paul C. Sondrol

International Dialogue

The scholarly literature on the government and politics of Latin America continues to flourish, offering interesting research questions and cross-national comparisons touching on a variety of themes that continue trends from the past. Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey Kline’s (eds) Latin American Politics and Development is the most recent edition of the popular text on the government and politics in Latin America, revised and updated on recent developments since 2000. Leading specialists on the region provide an overview of Latin American development, policy processes, and key actors (the military, the Catholic Church, the landed oligarchy, bureaucracies, political parties and elections, …

First As Tragedy, Then As Farce - Slavoj Žižek, Edward Sandowski

International Dialogue

Slavoj Žižek is a prolific, original, and formidable philosopher. His publishing habits are so productive that any discussion of a particular book is bound to be only a very partial consideration of his work and views as a whole. This applies to the present discussion of First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. The title, of course, is taken from Marx. One relevant classical passage is from the Eighteenth Brumaire: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” …

Free The Market. Peter J. Boettke. Spanish Translation, Mario Šilar

Mario Šilar

No abstract provided.

The Morality Of Humanitarian Interventions, Per Bauhn

International Dialogue

In this paper I develop an argument to the effect that humanitarian moral interventions, far from being inconsistent with the normative framework of just war, fit in very well with the justifying conditions of this framework. The argument develops by considering three objections against humanitarian military interventions, emanating from just war criteria. The criteria in question are just authority, just cause, and non-combatant immunity. It will be argued that while just authority logically depends on just cause and has no independent argumentative force of its own, the criterion of just cause should be understood to include a defence of human …

Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, And The Politics Of Dwelling - David J. Gauthier, Joseph Bien

International Dialogue

Books on Heidegger and books on Levinas are plentiful in English, French and German. Books dealing with a comparison of both authors, especially in terms of the politics of dwelling, are not at all common and certainly should demand our attention. This work appears to be a reworked version of a dissertation with all the standard problems that go with such an undertaking. That said, this is a useful introduction to the question of dwelling in the writings of two extremely important philosophers.

Darker Than Blue: On The Moral Economies Of Black Atlantic Culture - Paul Gilroy, Shiera S. El-Malik

International Dialogue

In this work, Paul Gilroy charges academics including scholars of the African and Black Diaspora with inadequately addressing ethical questions of racial hierarchy. He posits that academics apply a uniquely American framework of racial hierarchy to their analyses of places other than the U.S. The result, according to Gilroy, is that American conceptions of blackness (and whiteness) then substitute for social structures regardless of people’s lived experiences. Further, this globalised spectacle of blackness operates in the service of the U.S. imperial war machine. Gilroy argues that the current moment of geo-political restructuring offers opportunities for rethinking the connection between racial …

Archaeologists As Activists - M. Jay Stottman, Curtis Hutt

International Dialogue

Archaeologists as Activists: Can Archaeologists Change the World? is comprised of papers edited by M. Jay Stottman—many of which were initially prepared for a session at the 2004 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in St. Louis. The focus of this volume is “activist archaeology” as theorized and performed by archaeologists working in the last few decades in the United States. While the specific topics addressed are quite local, the questions raised and practices deployed are highly significant for archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians engaged in international settings. First, I must make a few disclaimers. This reviewer is neither …

After Evil: A Politics Of Human Rights - Robert Meister, Debra L. Delaet

International Dialogue

In After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights, Robert Meister puts forth an original, subtle, and provocative critique of mainstream human rights discourse in contemporary global politics. He describes this discourse, which he capitalizes as Human Rights Discourse throughout the text, as “… a new discourse of global power that claims to supersede the cruelties perpetrated by both revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries during the previous two centuries” (3). Meister argues that this discourse creates a false temporal divide between historical periods of “evil” in which gross violations of human rights are committed and post-conflict periods of justice during which parties are …

Determinants Of Democratization: Explaining Regime Change In The World, 1972-2006 - Jan Teorell, Joseph Derdzinski

International Dialogue

Just as the Color Revolutions of the last decade did, the Arab Spring once again brings the concept of democratization to the forefront of public discourse. They remind us yet once again how few countries have made at least the initial transition from authoritarianism, and how many more there are to democratize. Yet, having said this, the pool of countries that have liberalized politically and socially has grown tremendously in the past 40 years, yielding a fertile universe of cases for study and analysis. Jan Teorell at Sweden’s Lund University, in his compact but rich Determinants of Democratization: Explaining Regime …

Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization - Jeffrey S. Juris, Jackie Smith

International Dialogue

Networking Futures represents an important contribution to research on transnational organizing, social networks, and on the effects of technology on social relations. Juris, an anthropologist, draws from several years of field research that is part of his multi-sited, global ethnographic study. His experiences in the field lead him to offer, in addition to insightful analyses of contemporary organization and activism, important insights into the practice of social research in a networked, global age.

Security And Environmental Change - Simon Dalby, Len Broberg

International Dialogue

In Security and Environmental Change, Simon Dalby seeks to reframe national security in terms of environmental change and its threats to human safety and prosperity. Dalby promises a multifaceted examination of the issue, making clear that environmental change encompasses more than climate change but includes all human modifications of the planet: deforestation, water diversion and species extinction to name a few. In addition, the book seeks to deconstruct and rebuild the notion of security, moving out of classically framed Cold War national security focused on nation states toward a more human centered security. This effort succeeds and, in the process, …

Preservation, Passivity, And Pessimism, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Journal Articles

Many committed and passionate environmental thinkers currently champion restoration as an appropriate and positive model for human-nature interaction and interdependence. Recent philosophical defenses of restoration sidestep the issues that have been raised about the possibility of restoring degraded nature to a state that is identical, ontologically or evaluatively, to some pre-degraded state. Informed by feminist theory, I expose and explore some problematic assumptions and associations found in common defenses of restoration and defend the thesis that preservation is the more promising avenue to character remediation and the forging of a harmonious human-nature culture. I allow that many restoration projects will …

Tele-Visioning Terror, Caroline Zekri

Re-visioning Terrorism

This paper is devoted to the relationship between terrorism and media, with a special focus on the theoretical notions of “icon”, “mass” and “distance”. It aims to show how the phenomenon of modern terrorism calls into question the essence of modern democracies and their systems of information, based on the distance between vision and event.

Symbolic Violence As Subtle Virulence: The Philosophy Of Terrorism, Jonathan Beever

Re-visioning Terrorism

Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.

Courageous Peace, Ann Abdoo

Citizens for Peace

Is peace a sign of courage or weakness? This essay addresses the issue. It was published in the Michigan Department of Peace Campaign, Political Action Guide 2009-2010.

The Political Action Guide is published by Citizens for Peace, a grassroots organization from Michigan's 11th Congressional District. The Guide inclues information on the Department of Peace Legislation, historical and current as well as information on ways to become politically active.

Within the Guide, there is also a directory of many Michigan organizations working for a more peaceful world and the websites of national organizations.

To acquire a current edition, contact Colleen …

Why Are Software Patents So Elusive? A Platonic Approach, Odin Kroeger

Odin Kroeger

Software patents are commonly criticised for being fuzzy, context-sensitive, and often granted for trivial inventions. More often than not, these shortcomings are said to be caused by the abstract nature of software—with little further analysis offered. Drawing on Plato’s Parmenides, this paper will argue (1) that the reason why software patents seem to be elusive is that patent law suggests to think about algorithms as paradigmatic examples and (2) that Plato’s distinction between two modes of predication and the role of competence in his account of knowledge are helpful not only for conceptualising knowledge of algorithms, but also for understanding …

The Impact Of Honor Codes And Perceptions Of Cheating On Academic Cheating Behaviors, Especially For Mba Bound Undergraduates, Heather M. O'Neill, Christian A. Pfeiffer

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

Researchers studying academic dishonesty in college often focus on demographic characteristics of cheaters and discuss changes in cheating trends over time. To predict cheating behavior, some researchers examine the costs and benefits of academic cheating, while others view campus culture and the role which honor codes play in affecting behavior. This paper develops a model of academic cheating based on three sets of incentives - moral, social and economic—and how they affect cheating behaviors. An on-line survey comprising 61 questions was administered to students from three liberal arts colleges in the USA in spring 2008, yielding 700 responses, with half …