Global citizenship as the completion of cosmopolitanism

A conception of global citizenship should not be viewed as separate from, or synonymous with, the cosmopolitan moral orientation, but as a primary component of it. Global citizenship is fundamentally concerned with individual moral requirements in the global frame. Such requirements, framed here as belonging to the category of individual cosmopolitanism, offer guidelines on right action in the context of global human community. They are complementary to the principles of moral cosmopolitanism – those to be used in assessing the justice of global institutions and practices – that have been emphasised by cosmopolitan political theorists. Considering principles of individual and moral cosmopolitanism together can help to provide greater clarity concerning individual duties in the absence of fully global institutions, as well as clarity on individual obligations of justice in relation to emerging and still-developing trans-state institutions

THE ROLE OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR: AN UNRESOLVED PARADOX

Business activity and consumption activities are recognised as impacting, often negatively, on the environment. The challenge of ‘satisfying the needs of the present generation without compromising the chance for future generations to satisfy theirs’ requires, however, contributions by all societal actors. A growing number of firms “overcomply” with environmental regulation for several reasons. Firms satisfy consumer demand and try to shape that demand. In doing so, they may create a taste for environment protection and sustainability. Corporate social responsibility has received considerable attention. The concept of ‘consumer social responsibility’ has received comparatively little attention probably because of the dominance of the notion of consumer sovereignty. If consumers’ perception of corporate social responsibility practices drives their purchase behaviour, firms are motivated to invest in socially responsible practices. However, there exists a wide gap between positive attitudes toward social responsibility and actual purchase behaviours. This paper tries to shed some light on what affects individuals’ perceptions about their responsibilities as citizens/consumers and their consumption behaviour.Environment, Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility, Consumer Sovereignty, Consumer Social Responsibility, Preferences, Social norms

John Dewey\u27s concept of the good : a macro- and meso-application to the U.S. health system

This work stems from the debate about ethically reforming America\u27s health system in response to the enduring scarcity of resources. There are at least three essential components to successfully instituting needed changes: a philosophicallydefensible guideline, effectively-designed programs or legislation, and political willpower. This dissertation represents the first component. Two distributive justice decisions are central to this dissertation. One decision is how to apportion resources among competing governmental programs such as Social Security, education, agriculture, and transportation. This is known as the macro-level. The other decision is how to apportion health-care resources to competing ailment or disease categories such as cancer, eye care, cystic fibrosis, and burns. This is known as the meso-level. An ethical criterion or standard is needed with which to make such important decisions. Some proposals choose a consequentialist criterion in terms of the benefits resulting from health while others use a Kantian-like criterion of right action. Still other proposals focus on the notion of a good human life. The criterion selected for this dissertation comes from the philosophical work of John Dewey, an influential American philosopher in the first half of the 1900s. This criterion precedes the aforementioned criteria: it is the concept of the good itself

Unsatisfying Wars: Degrees of Risk and the \u3ci\u3eJus ex Bello\u3c/i\u3e

Self-defensive war uses violence to transfer risks from one’s own people to others. We argue that central questions in just war theory may fruitfully be analyzed as issues about the morality of risk transfer. That includes the jus ex bello question of when states are required to accept a ceasefire in an otherwise-just war. In particular, a “war on terror” that ups the risks to outsiders cannot continue until the risk of terrorism has been reduced to zero or near zero. Some degree of security risk is inevitable when coexisting with others in the international community, just as citizens within a state must accept some ineradicable degree of crime as a fact of community life. We define a conception of morally legitimate bearable risk by contrasting it with two alternatives, and argue that states must stop fighting when they have achieved that level. We call this requirement the Principle of Just Management of Military Risk. We also argue that states should avoid exaggerated emphasis on security risks over equivalent risks from other sources—the Principle of Minimum Consistency Toward Risks. This latter principle is not a moral requirement. Rather, it is a heuristic intended to correct against well-known fallacies of risk perception that may lead states to overemphasize security risks and wrongly export the costs of their security onto others. In conclusion, we suggest that states must invest in non-violent defensive means as a precondition for legitimately using force externally

Against State Censorship of Thought and Speech: The “Mandate of Philosophy” contra Islamist Ideology

Contemporary Islam presents Europe in particular with a political and moral challenge: Moderate-progressive Muslims and radical fundamentalist Muslims present differing visions of the relation of politics and religion and, consequently, differing interpretations of freedom of expression. There is evident public concern about Western “political correctness,” when law or policy accommodates censorship of speech allegedly violating religious sensibilities. Referring to the thought of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and accounting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, and various empirical studies on the religious convictions of Muslims, it is argued here that: (1) sovereign European state powers should be especially cautious of legal censorship of speech allegedly violating Muslim religious sensibilities; and (2) instead of legal moves to censorship, European states should defer to the principle of separation of religion and state (political authority). Further, a reasonable interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence allows that matters of religious difference may be engaged and resolved by appeal to private conscience and ethical judgment, rather than by appeal to public law per se. In so far as they are 1 representative of contemporary scholarship, the interpretative positions of Ziad Elmarsafy, Jacques Derrida, and Nasr Abū Zayd are presented in illustration of this latter point

Constitutional patriotism and the post-national paradox: an exploration of migration, identity and loyalty at the local level

Theorists of constitutional patriotism argue that the binding sentiment of shared national identity can be replaced with allegiance to universal principles, interpreted into particular constitutions through ongoing deliberative processes. In this thesis, I explore the implications of such an approach for the defensibility of restrictions on migration, a subject which has previously received very little attention. I argue that constitutional patriotism implies a commitment to the free movement of individuals across borders; but that freedom of movement itself creates challenges for the implementation of constitutional patriotism. This is because it may increase anti-immigrant, nationalist sentiment in the host community. I term this phenomenon the ‘post-national paradox’. I then draw on independently collected qualitative data on Eastern European migration to English rural communities to explore this post-national paradox. I analyse the argumentative strategies, as the well as the perceptions of difference, evident in justifications of anti-immigrant and nationalist sentiment in these contexts. I highlight both perceptions of cultural and economic threat, as well as a ‘banal’ sense of national loyalty, underpinning such attitudes; and suggest that discursive practice at the most local level is necessary for the bottom up construction, or growth, of an inclusive form of identity and belonging

Groups, social influences and inequality : a memberships theory perspective on poverty traps

poverty;education;inequality