Justice Within Different Borders: A Review of Caney's Global Political Theory

This essay examines the central claim of Caney's book, viz., that there is no reason to treat the global sphere differently from the domestic sphere. It suggests that there is much that is valuable in having relatively autonomous, differentiated political communities, which both versions of Caney's scope argument ignore. This insight is explored via a critical assessment of both versions of Caney's scope argument; version 1, which is focused on civil and political rights (and argues that that they should be universalized) and version 2, which applies to theories of distributive justice (particularly Caney's global equality of opportunity principle).     

Making Choices: Ethical Decisions in a Global Context

The changing milieu of research—increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative—prompts greater emphasis on cultural context and upon partnership with international scholars and diverse community groups. Ethics training, however, tends to ignore the cross-cultural challenges of making ethical choices. This paper confronts those challenges by presenting a new curricular model developed by an international team. It examines ethics across a very broad range of situations, using case studies and employing the perspectives of social science, humanities and the sciences. The course has been developed and taught in a highly collaborative way, involving researchers and students at Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Brown University. The article presents the curricular modules of the course, learning outcomes, an assessment framework developed for the project, and a discussion of evaluation findings.     

The Nurturing Stance: Making Sense of Responsibility without Blame

Mental health‐care clinicians report that they hold patients responsible for morally objectionable behaviour but at the same time consider blaming attitudes to be inappropriate. These practices present a conundrum for all Strawsonian theories of responsibility. In response to this conundrum, Pickard has proposed severing the Strawsonian connection between being responsible and being an appropriate target of blaming attitudes. In this article I will argue that her solution fails to explain the practices at stake and provide an alternative solution that uncovers an under‐theorized stance we take towards those whose abilities are underdeveloped or compromised.     

Globalization, Population Aging, and Ethics, Part II: Toward a Just Global Society

In Globalization, Population Aging, and Ethics, Part I (2001), we described how globalization, through the neoliberal policies imposed by international financial institutions (the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank) has substantially reduced the capacities of developing countries to meet the educational, economic, and healthcare needs of their growing populations. We also described how these needs will increase over the next several decades with the huge growth of the elderly population across Asia and Latin America. We concluded our analysis with a discussion of the ethical implications of this increasing discrepancy between resource capacity and human needs in the developing world and two perspectives (Rawls's theory of justice and liberation philosophy, 2000) that could help sharpen the debate over the ethics of globalization. In this article, we summarize our analysis and discussion of Part I and include new information from additional sources. We then extend our discussion of the ethical implications of this analysis by describing a range of political and policy options that we think are consistent with the ethical perspective suggested in Part I and that have the potential to help reduce the widening gap between resource capacity and human need in many developing countries.     

The Making of a Sexual Being in Ghana: The State,Religion and the Influence of Society as Agents of Sexual Socialization

With the aim of generating in-depth information on society’s expectations and views on sexual expression in Ghana, we present findings on what was expected of the state, religion, and the influence of society on sexual socialization in Ghana. As a society, our need to break the culture of silence about sex cannot be overemphasized. Our study is important against a background that in Sub-Saharan African, HIV and AIDS is mostly spread through sexual intercourse, and that the region bears a disproportionate large percentage of the world’s HIV and AIDS burden. Although Ghana has a 2009 adult (15+ years) prevalence rate of 1.6% and a prevalence rate of 1.9% for persons 15–49 years old, some regions and sentinel sites show rather high rates, making HIV and AIDS issues of high concern nationally. Respondents from the general public, key informants and special groups across all three ecological zones of Ghana were purposively selected. All the interviewees agreed that in Ghana fidelity in all sexual relationships is highly valued and expected. However, there is gender discrimination in the application of such social norms of fidelity, in favor of males. Amongst the three agents of socialization studied, religion seemed to exert the most influence. Modernity interwoven with Christianity seem to have taken a great toll on such norms of sexual socialization.     

Review of Curren and Dorn,Patriotic Education in a Global Age

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Breaking the Borders/Violating the Norms: An Archaeological Survey of an Intersex in a Traditional Society, Bam (South Eastern Iran)

How does breaking boundaries and passing identity red lines affect social and personal life? How do people with contradictory identities experience life in a traditional society? What will happen if the material and bodily identity of an individual goes against social norms? This research is a narration of some parts of an intersex life, an individual with a vague, unknown identity who contradicts the common norms of the society. In a traditional society, where gender and sexual identity act as a taboo and a powerful source of identity, people with uncommon (gender and sexual) identities suffer from an unstable social status. The story of Setareh/Saman’s life is told based on the archaeological remains from the debris of destroyed layers of a house in Bam. This is the story of transforming from female to male, the story of limitations, social inequalities and pressures on the individuals and the minorities who are condemned because of who they are.     

Functions of the Black Church in a Global Society: A Du Boisian Approach

Globalization's impact on local communities is a topic that religious congregations should address as a means of moral and socioeconomic well-being. This is especially important for the Black Church if it hopes to continue supporting the socioeconomic outcomes of its congregants and community members, as it has in the past. Using Du Boisian assessments of the functions of the Black Church, this study assessed how today's congregations can serve similar functions as the congregations that Du Bois studied, while exploring contemporary concerns. With an explanatory sequential research design, this study surveyed Philadelphia-based congregations (N = 108) to assess their understanding of and engagement with the impact of globalization on future generations, paired with subsequent interviews (N = 15) for deeper analysis. The survey included clergy members and youth leaders of various races and religious traditions. With an eye toward equity and considering Philadelphia's diverse demographics, the in-depth semistructured interviews centered on Black churches in Philadelphia. The core findings highlight that clergy members in Philadelphia recognize the importance of prioritizing global issues as a means of social betterment and that a special lens toward race should be considered when looking to solve socioeconomic global issues.     

Making it without losing it: Type A, achievement motivation, and scientific attainment revisited

In a study by Matthews, Helmreich, Beane, and Lucker (1980), responses by academic psychologists to the Jenkins Activity Survey for Health Prediction (JAS), a measure of the Type A construct, were found to be significantly, positively correlated with two measures of attainment, citations by others to published work and number of publications. In the present study, JAS responses from the Matthews et al. sample were subjected to a factor analysis with oblique rotation and two new subscales were developed on the basis of this analysis. The first, Achievement Strivings (AS) was found to be significantly correlated with both the publication and citation measures. The second scale, Impatience and Irritability (I/I), was uncorrelated with the achievement criteria. Data from other samples indicate that I/I is related to a number of health symptoms. The results suggest that the current formulation of the Type A construct may contain two components, one associated with positive achievement and the other with poor health.