Ecology and trust in mangement and business research 1995-2010. Tentative findings. MULTI-TRUST research paper

Trust’ is considered an important driving factor for the development of ‘green growth’ strategies. An understanding of how ‘trust’ is created and maintained is crucial for those strategies. However, b& m research does neither offer consistent nor conclusive definitions of ‘trust’. Based on the review, a tentative suggestion is that the development of promising practices for the creation and maintenance of ‘trust’ is to be related to the organic complexities located in Denmark that characterize the transformation of the social space of organic agribusiness. Organic complexities are amongst others characterized by the highly fragmented meaning and current restructuring of the content of ‘organic’, diverse sale challenges, interdependences in the accreditation and certification processes, and the limited information value of eco labels. In order to meet related trust challenges, the concept of ‘high-trust relationships’ seems to be useful for this pursuit

The Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma: Revisions of Humean thought, New Empirical Research, and the Limits of Rational Religious Belief

This paper is the product of an interdisciplinary, interreligious dialogue aiming to outline some of the possibilities and rational limits of supernatural religious belief, in the light of a critique of David Hume’s familiar sceptical arguments -- including a rejection of his famous Maxim on miracles -- combined with a range of striking recent empirical research. The Humean nexus leads us to the formulation of a new ”Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma’, which suggests that the contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with new understandings of the cognitive forces that shape their common features, persuasively challenge the rationality of most kinds of supernatural belief. In support of this conclusion, we survey empirical research concerning intercessory prayer, religious experience, near-death experience, and various cognitive biases. But we then go on to consider evidence that supernaturalism -- even when rationally unwarranted -- has significant beneficial individual and social effects, despite others that are far less desirable. This prompts the formulation of a ”Normal/Objective Dilemma’, identifying important trade-offs to be found in the choice between our humanly evolved ”normal’ outlook on the world, and one that is more rational and ”objective’. Can we retain the pragmatic benefits of supernatural belief while avoiding irrationality and intergroup conflict? It may well seem that rationality is incompatible with any wilful sacrifice of objectivity. But in a situation of uncertainty, an attractive compromise may be available by moving from the competing factions and mutual contradictions of ”first-order’ supernaturalism to a more abstract and tolerant ”second-order’ view, which itself can be given some distinctive intellectual support through the increasingly popular Fine Tuning Argument. We end by proposing a ”Maxim of the Moon’ to express the undogmatic spirit of this second-order religiosity, providing a cautionary metaphor to counter the pervasive bias endemic to the human condition, and offering a more cooperation- and humility-enhancing understanding of religious diversity in a tense and precarious globalised age

Arts

For historians of medieval Iberian art and architecture, María Rosa Menocal’s most important legacy lies in her work’s normalization of a culturally decentralized, multidisciplinary frame through which medieval visual objects became part of a broadly shared network of cultural production that was unrestricted by firm boundaries between particular polities or “faith groups.” While Menocal was not the first to advance such an approach, her persuasive promotion of it in works such as The Ornament of the World and the co-authored The Arts of Intimacy dovetailed closely with concurrent trends within the discipline of art history: new attentiveness to the variability of the Iberian cultural economy; a renewed concern with questions of reception and meaning; revived emphasis on close, contextual readings; and an openness to extra-disciplinary methodologies. The conceptual and disciplinary flexibility that Menocal’s work encouraged now lies at the very heart of current work on Iberian visual culture

International Relations Theory and the BRICS Phenomenon

This article examines the BRICS phenomenon through the prism of several International Relations theories. Particularly, power transition theory, soft power and peaceful coexistence concepts, the theory of “global regionalism” and status theories are reviewed. Each of them suggests its own theoretical interpretation of the BRICS phenomenon, as well as its own vision of this group’s role in world politics and economy. It is safe to assume that despite limitations of these theories each of them has some explanatory power. Being used together they can be helpful for studying - in an interdisciplinary way - a complex phenomenon, such as the BRICS. A number of modern theories hold that, along with the pursuit of purely material and pragmatic interests, the BRICS countries actively use this integration association to strengthen their positions in the world arena and elevate their international status. It should be noted that the BRICS was rather successful in presenting itself as a new model of world order which is a serious alternative to the existing one dominated by the West. It is based on the principles of cooperation, mutual respect and balance of interests, rather than dictate, discrimination, hierarchy and balance of power. It is too early to ascertain that a principally new type of an international institution was born within the BRICS format. However, there is no doubt that some positive experience has already been accumulated by this forum, and that this grouping has some good prospects for the future. For this reason, it will remain of considerable interest for International Relations theory. Keywords: BRICS, International Relations Theory, alternative world orde

Decolonizing Climate Discourse and Legitimating Indigenous Wisdom: Toward an Ecosystemic Episteme

Devoted to redefining western capitalist epistemologies through recognition and acceptance of Indigenous wisdom in modern sociopolitical structures, I use this paper to expose theoretical and material flaws in western neoliberal capitalism as an implicitly colonial knowledge system incapable of sufficiently addressing the climate crisis. Here, colonialism is broadly understood as ideological and/or material practices of exploitation and domination within social, cultural, economic, and ecological frameworks. Colonialism, in this paper, is further characterized by having particular philosophical commitments to notions of binarism, individualism, and consumerism which reveal capitalism’s structure and function as neocolonial by nature. Most evidently, today’s global climate crisis reveals such implicitly colonial assumptions and material consequences of western capitalist knowledge which continue to harm human and non-human cultures globally. For this reason, research on- and subsequent collaboration with- nonwestern, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist approaches to climate mitigation is vital to critiquing and transforming systems of social and ecological domination. Holistically, Indigenous resistance offers a theoretical and physical space to actualize such transformations

Russian modernization : a new paradigm

Peer reviewe

Conceptualizing cultures of violence and cultural change

The historiography of violence has undergone a distinct cultural turn as attention has shifted from examining violence as a clearly defined (and countable) social problem to analysing its historically defined 'social meaning'. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the relationship between 'violence' and 'culture' is still being established. How are 'cultures of violence' formed? What impact do they have on violent behaviour? How do they change? This essay examines some of the conceptual aspects of the relationship between culture and violence. It brings together empirical research into nineteenth-century England with recent research results from other European contexts to examine three aspects of the relationship between culture and violence. These are organised under the labels 'seeing violence', 'identifying the violent' and 'changing violence'. Within a particular society, narratives regarding particular kinds of behaviour shape cultural attitudes. The notion 'violence' is thus defined in relation to physically aggressive acts as well as by being connected to other kinds of attitudes and contexts. As a result, the boundaries between physical aggression which is legitimate and that which is illegitimate (and thus 'violence') are set. Once 'violence' is defined, particular cultures form ideas about who is responsible for it: reactions to violence become associated with social arrangements such as class and gender as well as to attitudes toward the self. Finally, cultures of violence make efforts to tame or eradicate illegitimate forms of physical aggression. This process is not only connected to the development of new forms of power (e.g., new policing or punishment strategies) but also to less tangible cultural influences which aim at changing the behaviour defined as violence (in particular among the social groups identified as violent). Even if successful, this three-tiered process of seeing violence, identifying the violent and changing violence continues anew, emphasising the ways that cultures of violence develop through a continuous process of reevaluation and reinvention