Noon at 9 to 5: Reflections on a Decade of Organizing

[Excerpt] As manufacturing jobs have been automated, shipped abroad and shut down for good, traditional sources of employment as well as union members have dried up, with severe effects for the labor movement. For the past decade, job growth has been highest in the new service economy, with office jobs becoming both the largest and fastest growing job category for the newest growth sector of the labor force — women. Fully one of every three employed women is an office worker. What effect has this shift had on organizing and on the union movement

Whose problem? Disability narratives and available identities

In this article, the author demonstrates that contemporary cultural disability discourses offer few positive resources for people with impairments to draw upon in constructing positive personal and social identities. Examining the emergence of the Disability Arts Movement in Britain, consideration is given to alternative discourses developed by disabled people who have resisted the passive roles expected of them and developed a disability identity rooted in notions of power, respect and control. It is suggested that these alternative discourses provide an empowering rather than a disabling basis for community development and community arts practice and should be embraced by workers in these fields

Background Paper: How Should We Classify Civil Society?: A Review of Mainstream and Alternative Approaches

This brief analysis reviews mainstream classification schemes before introducing a proposal for classifying civil society actors by their orientation within political theories of civil society

Truthmakers and necessary connections

In this paper I examine the objection to truthmaker theory, forcibly made by David Lewis and endorsed by many, that it violates the Humean denial of necessary connections between distinct existences. In Sect. 1 I present the argument that acceptance of truthmakers commits us to necessary connections. In Sect. 2 I examine Lewis' 'Things-qua-truthmakers' theory which attempts to give truthmakers without such a commitment, and find it wanting. In Sects. 3-5 I discuss various formulations of the denial of necessary connections and argue that each of them is either false or compatible with truthmaker theory. In Sect. 6 I show how the truthmaker theorist can resist the charge that they are committed to necessary exclusions between possible existents. I conclude that there is no good objection to truthmaker theory on the grounds that it violates the Humean dictum