Brock on the justification,content, and application of global justice

Abstract

A review essay of Gillian Brock Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford University Press, 2009)     

Religious agency,identity, and communication: reflections on history and theory of religion

Abstract

This paper discusses the applicability of recent theories of religion to the problem of describing and explaining religious transformation in the period between the final Bronze Age and Late Antiquity. Instead of evolutionist and cognitive approaches, it proposes a model of religion that tries to analyze religion in terms of its making by starting from the individual's appropriation and creation of religious tradition. Religion is understood as a strategy to attribute agency to agents that do not appear immediately plausible. Recent scholarly discussions on human agency suggest categorizing human religious agency into the three subsets, namely: (1) acting religiously with regards to past, present, and future; (2) collective religious identity; and (3) religious communication. These subsets are shown to produce fruitful questions for research on historical sources. Against this backdrop, religion is explained as a precarious cultural resource articulated through the agency of individuals and allowing changed attributions of individual agency.     

Application of Sustainable Habitat: What is the Appropriation and Utilisation of Equipment After Energy‐Saving Renovations in Social Housing?

To reduce energy consumption, technical equipment alone is not sufficient. Adjustment of behaviours so that equipment is used appropriately is also necessary. Numerous studies have shown how difficult it is to change behaviours and how many factors are involved. The aim of this study is to identify the psychosocial factors facilitating or inhibiting energy‐saving behaviours in the appropriation of energy‐saving equipment by residents. Forty‐one semi‐directive interviews were conducted with tenants of terraced houses (12 people) and flats (29 people) located in the same residential area in a French city. The blocks of flats and terraced houses are managed by a proprietor of social housing. The results of a categorical content analysis highlight the importance of the relationship between tenants and proprietor and tenants' low motivation concerning the energy‐saving renovations. Consequently, we argue for the importance of favouring active participation by tenants in order to promote acceptance and appropriation of the new equipment. Furthermore, both the social and physical contexts of residents must be taken into account and energy saving must be integrated into other types of environmental behaviours in the neighbourhood in order to improve coherence and credibility. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Meditation and Appropriation: Best Practices for Counselors Who Utilize Meditation

Support for meditation is found across academic communities and popular culture. Although the application of meditative practices has yielded positive treatment outcomes, larger purposes of the practice are perhaps lost in the empirically driven West, thus driving a risk of appropriation. In response, the authors outline 4 implications for best practice for counselors who aspire to engage in the culturally responsible use of meditative practices.     

FOCUS INTRODUCTION: TOWARD SHARING VALUES ACROSS CULTURES AND RELIGIONS

The contributors to this focus issue participated in a unique gathering of over sixty scholars in Lukenya, Kenya in January 2009, organized by Globethics.net. The three contributions here by Sumner B. Twiss, Shanta Premawardhana, and Ariane Hentsch Cisneros are not the outcome of the deliberations and discussions there; however, they led to the idea of this focus issue. Each essay incorporates major aspects of the general themes discussed in different groups at the Lukenya meeting: (1) defining global ethics; (2) ensuring a successful interreligious dialogue on ethics; (3) integrating means and methods of sharing values in a human to human approach; (4) balancing power relations, inducing a real transformation; and (5) sharing values in the Kenyan and East‐African contexts.     

THE UNIVERSAL VERSUS THE PARTICULAR IN ECOFEMINIST ETHICS

While not a monolithic movement, ecofeminists are united in their conviction that there are important connections between the exploitation of both women and nature. They are internally divided, however, on the propriety of applying their theoretical claims and activist strategies across social contexts. This paper explores three debates within ecofeminism that largely turn on this universalist versus particularist tension: whether ecofeminist theorizing can adequately account for cultural variation; whether its common usage of essentialist rhetoric is productive or troubling; and whether resources for social activism could legitimately be culled from an assembly of heterogeneous and foreign sources. I conclude that the universalism of the women–nature connection can indeed be justified if perceived in multivalent ways, that “earthcare” or “ecomaternalist” discourse can be helpful in some contexts but harmful in others, and that selective retrieval of other cultures for the purposes of advocacy should not be ruled out as necessarily imperialistic or otherwise inappropriate.     

Art, authenticity and appropriation

It is often suggested that artists from one culture (outsiders) cannot successfully employ styles, stories, motifs and other artistic content developed in the context of another culture. I call this suggestion the aesthetic handicap thesis and argue against it. Cultural appropriation can result in works of high aesthetic value. While in China as a visiting scholar in the Department of Philosophy of Beijing Normal University, I gave a series of lectures at leading Chinese universities. This essay is based on a lecture that I gave at Renmin University of China on 17 April 2006.