Growing Environmental Activists: Developing Environmental Agency and Engagement Through Children’s Fiction.

We explore how story has the potential to encourage environmental engagement and a sense of agency provided that critical discussion takes place. We illuminate this with reference to the philosophies of John Macmurray on personal agency and social relations; of John Dewey on the primacy of experience for philosophy; and of Paul Ricoeur on hermeneutics, dialogue, dialectics and narrative. We view the use of fiction for environmental understanding as hermeneutic, a form of conceptualising place which interprets experience and perception. The four writers for young people discussed are Ernest Thompson Seton, Kenneth Grahame, Michelle Paver and Philip Pullman. We develop the concept of critical dialogue, and link this to Crick's demand for active democratic citizenship. We illustrate the educational potential for environmental discussions based on literature leading to deeper understanding of place and environment, encouraging the belief in young people that they can be and become agents for change. We develop from Zimbardo the key concept of heroic resister to encourage young people to overcome peer pressure. We conclude with a call to develop a greater awareness of the potential of fiction for learning, and for writers to produce more focused stories engaging with environmental responsibility and activism

Language in international business: a review and agenda for future research

A fast growing number of studies demonstrates that language diversity influences almost all management decisions in modern multinational corporations. Whereas no doubt remains about the practical importance of language, the empirical investigation and theoretical conceptualization of its complex and multifaceted effects still presents a substantial challenge. To summarize and evaluate the current state of the literature in a coherent picture informing future research, we systematically review 264 articles on language in international business. We scrutinize the geographic distributions of data, evaluate the field’s achievements to date in terms of theories and methodologies, and summarize core findings by individual, group, firm, and country levels of analysis. For each of these dimensions, we then put forward a future research agenda. We encourage scholars to transcend disciplinary boundaries and to draw on, integrate, and test a variety of theories from disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to gain a more profound understanding of language in international business. We advocate more multi-level studies and cross-national research collaborations and suggest greater attention to potential new data sources and means of analysis

Experimental Virtue: Perceptual Responsiveness and the Praxis of Scientific Observation

In this chapter I will develop and defend an account of one particular scientific virtue, one not easily identifiable among traditional lists of the epistemic or the moral virtues, though components or preconditions of this virtue are found in most such accounts. Although my special focus here will be the manifestation of this virtue of scientific character in experimental/observational praxis, I will show how this virtue functions in both experimental and theoretical contexts, and is in fact critical to the excellent function of each as a guide and constraint for the other. While there is no English term that captures precisely the meaning of the virtue I shall emphasize, the nearest approximation would be perceptual responsiveness. The virtue of being perceptually responsive is conceptually complex, and will require precise definition and clarification

On Schutz’s conception of science as one of multiple realities

This article examines Alfred Schutz’s concept of ‘multiple realities’, and in particular, his portrayal of science as one of these realities. It is noted that, while this concept has been widely cited, it has often been interpreted in ways that are at odds with key features of Schutz’s original formulation. A careful assessment is made of the main article he wrote dealing with this topic, focusing on the respects in which the ‘multiple realities’ he discusses are held to differ. Particular attention is given to the relationship between science and what Schutz calls ‘the paramount reality’, that of ‘daily life’. It is suggested that there are some serious problems with the distinctions he makes and that these relate to an ambiguity in his position: that he starts from within phenomenological psychology, drawing on the work of Husserl and James, but moves in a more naturalistic and sociological direction in his account of ‘the world of daily life’. This raises some fundamental questions about the nature of phenomenology and its relationship to social science