Many of us have a sense of unease about current trends in global capitalism (GC) and global society. Inequalities and conflict seem endemic; much‐vaunted technological innovations seem unable to ...deliver structural change and development in many parts of the world; and ideological conflicts may be more intense than during the cold war. The central point of debate in this book is to identify and evaluate the moral challenges of what contributors refer to as ’responsible global capitalism (RGC)’. How can we develop a global economic architecture that is economically efficient, morally acceptable, geographically inclusive, and sustainable over time? If global capitalism––arguably the most efficient wealth‐creation system currently known to man––is to be both economically viable and socially acceptable, each of its four constituent institutions (markets, governments, supra‐national agencies and civil society) must not only be technically and administratively competent but also be buttressed and challenged by a strong ethical ethos. In this book, leading thinkers in international business and ethics (including academics, politicians and moralists) identify the pressing economic and moral issues that global capitalism must answer. Recognizing that solutions will not come from any one quarter, and that any serious discussion of a just and equitable system must embrace questions of ethics and faith, the book approaches the issues from a range of different disciplines and forums. It is arranged in three parts. Part I (5 chapters) presents the analytical framework underlying the volume's main themes. Part II (5 chapters) concentrates on the challenges, opportunities, and dilemmas posed by global capitalism. Part III (6 chapters) considers how the global society might better organize itself, and its constituent institutions to respond to the challenges of global capitalism in a way that helps embrace an agreed set of core values, while accepting the need for a degree of cultural diversity and tolerance in respect of the interpretation of these and the identification and practice of non‐core values.
Peacekeeping, peace enforcement and ‘stability operations’ ask soldiers to use violence to create peace, defeat armed threats while having no enemies and uphold human rights without taking sides. The ...challenges that face peacekeepers cannot be easily reduced to traditional just war principles. Built on insights from care ethics, case studies including Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti and Liberia and scores of interviews with peacekeepers, trainers and planners in the field in Africa, India and more, Daniel H. Levine sheds light on the challenges of peacekeeping. And he asserts that the traditional ‘holy trinity’ of peacekeeping principles – consent, impartiality, and minimum use of force – still provide the best moral guide for peacekeepers.
What's wrong with markets in everything? Markets today are widely recognized as the most efficient way in general to organize production and distribution in a complex economy. And with the collapse ...of communism and rise of globalization, it's no surprise that markets and the political theories supporting them have seen a considerable resurgence. For many, markets are an all-purpose remedy for the deadening effects of bureaucracy and state control. But what about those markets we might label noxious-markets in addictive drugs, say, or in sex, weapons, child labor, or human organs? Such markets arouse widespread discomfort and often revulsion. In Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale, philosopher Debra Satz takes a penetrating look at those commodity exchanges that strike most of us as problematic. What considerations, she asks, ought to guide the debates about such markets? What is it about a market involving prostitution or the sale of kidneys that makes it morally objectionable? How is a market in weapons or pollution different than a market in soybeans or automobiles? Are laws and social policies banning the more noxious markets necessarily the best responses to them? Satz contends that categories previously used by philosophers and economists are of limited utility in addressing such questions because they have assumed markets to be homogenous. Accordingly, she offers a broader and more nuanced view of markets-one that goes beyond the usual discussions of efficiency and distributional equality--to show how markets shape our culture, foster or thwart human development, and create and support structures of power. An accessibly written work that will engage not only philosophers but also political scientists, economists, legal scholars, and public policy experts, this book is a significant contribution to ongoing discussions about the place of markets in a democratic society. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/philosophy/9780195311594/toc.html
The phenomenal growth of global pharmaceutical sales and the quest for innovation are driving an unprecedented search for human test subjects, particularly in middle- and low-income countries. Our ...hope for medical progress increasingly depends on the willingness of the world's poor to participate in clinical drug trials. While these experiments often provide those in need with vital and previously unattainable medical resources, the outsourcing and offshoring of trials also create new problems. In this groundbreaking book, anthropologist Adriana Petryna takes us deep into the clinical trials industry as it brings together players separated by vast economic and cultural differences. Moving between corporate and scientific offices in the United States and research and public health sites in Poland and Brazil,When Experiments Traveldocuments the complex ways that commercial medical science, with all its benefits and risks, is being integrated into local health systems and emerging drug markets.
Providing a unique perspective on globalized clinical trials,When Experiments Travelraises central questions: Are such trials exploitative or are they social goods? How are experiments controlled and how is drug safety ensured? And do these experiments help or harm public health in the countries where they are conducted? Empirically rich and theoretically innovative, the book shows that neither the language of coercion nor that of rational choice fully captures the range of situations and value systems at work in medical experiments today.When Experiments Travelchallenges conventional understandings of the ethics and politics of transnational science and changes the way we think about global medicine and the new infrastructures of our lives.
In the face of the world's disorders, moral concerns have provided a powerful ground for developing international as well as local policies. Didier Fassin draws on case materials from France, South ...Africa, Venezuela, and Palestine to explore the meaning of humanitarianism in the contexts of immigration and asylum, disease and poverty, disaster and war. He traces and analyzes recent shifts in moral and political discourse and practices — what he terms "humanitarian reason"— and shows in vivid examples how humanitarianism is confronted by inequality and violence. Deftly illuminating the tensions and contradictions in humanitarian government, he reveals the ambiguities confronting states and organizations as they struggle to deal with the intolerable. His critique of humanitarian reason, respectful of the participants involved but lucid about the stakes they disregard, offers theoretical and empirical foundations for a political and moral anthropology.
Conflicting claims about culture are a familiar refrain of political life in the contemporary world. On one side, majorities seek to fashion the state in their own image, while on the other, cultural ...minorities press for greater recognition and accommodation. Theories of liberal democracy are at odds about the merits of these competing claims. Multicultural liberals hold that particular minority rights are a requirement of justice conceived of in a broadly liberal fashion. Critics, in turn, have questioned the motivations, coherence, and normative validity of such defenses of multiculturalism. InEqual Recognition, Alan Patten reasserts the case in favor of liberal multiculturalism by developing a new ethical defense of minority rights.
Patten seeks to restate the case for liberal multiculturalism in a form that is responsive to the major concerns of critics. He describes a new, nonessentialist account of culture, and he rehabilitates and reconceptualizes the idea of liberal neutrality and uses this idea to develop a distinctive normative argument for minority rights. The book elaborates and applies its core theoretical framework by exploring several important contexts in which minority rights have been considered, including debates about language rights, secession, and immigrant integration.
Demonstrating that traditional, nonmulticultural versions of liberalism are unsatisfactory,Equal Recognitionwill engage readers interested in connections among liberal democracy, nationalism, and current multicultural issues.
This open access textbook offers a practical guide into research ethics for undergraduate students in the social sciences. A step-by-step approach of the most viable issues, in-depth discussions of ...case histories and a variety of didactical tools will aid the student to grasp the issues at hand and help him or her develop strategies to deal with them. This book addresses problems and questions that any bachelor student in the social sciences should be aware of, including plagiarism, data fabrication and other types of fraud, data augmentation, various forms of research bias, but also peer pressure, issues with confidentiality and questions regarding conflicts of interest. Cheating, ‘free riding’, and broader issues that relate to the place of the social sciences in society are also included. The book concludes with a step-by-step approach designed to coach a student through a research application process.
We are causing species to go extinct at extraordinary rates, altering existing species in unprecedented ways and creating entirely new species. More than ever before, we require an ethic of species ...to guide our interactions with them. In this book, Ronald L. Sandler examines the value of species and the ethical significance of species boundaries and discusses what these mean for species preservation in the light of global climate change, species engineering and human enhancement. He argues that species possess several varieties of value, but they are not sacred. It is sometimes permissible to alter species, let them go extinct (even when we are a cause of the extinction) and invent new ones. Philosophically rigorous, accessible and illustrated with examples drawn from contemporary science, this book will be of interest to students of philosophy, bioethics, environmental ethics and conservation biology.
In the face of an uncertain and dangerous world, Americans yearn for a firm moral compass, a clear set of ethical guidelines. But as history shows, by reducing complex situations to simple cases of ...right or wrong we often go astray. InMorality's Muddy Waters, historian George Cotkin offers a clarion call on behalf of moral complexity. Revisiting several defining moments in the twentieth century-the American bombing of civilians during World War II, the My Lai massacre, racism in the South, capital punishment, the invasion of Iraq-Cotkin chronicles how historical figures have grappled with the problem of evil and moral responsibility-sometimes successfully, oftentimes not. In the process, he offers a wide-ranging tour of modern American history. Taken together, Cotkin maintains, these episodes reveal that the central concepts of morality-evil, empathy, and virtue-are both necessary and troubling. Without empathy, for example, we fail to inhabit the world of others; with it, we sometimes elevate individual suffering over political complexities. For Cotkin, close historical analysis may help reenergize these concepts for ethical thinking and acting.Morality's Muddy Watersargues for a moral turn in the way we study and think about history, maintaining that even when answers to ethical dilemmas prove elusive, the act of grappling with them is invaluable.