Civil society and global governance : the possibilities for global citizenship

In this article we reassert the role of governance as well as of civil society in the analysis of citizenship. We argue that to analyse global civil society and global citizenship it is necessary to focus on global governance. Just as states may facilitate or obstruct the emergence and development of national civil society, so too global governance institutions may facilitate or obstruct an emerging global civil society. Our key contention is that civil society at the global level thrives through its interaction with strong facilitating institutions of global governance. We start with a discussion of civil society and citizenship within the nation-state, and from there develop a model of global civil society and citizenship. Through analysing the impacts of various modes of global governance, we identify strategically appropriate forms of political and social engagement that best advance the prospects for global citizenship. <br /

Contested Religious Differences and the Question of Justice

This chapter addresses the question of religion and difference from a politico- philosophical perspective. Contemporary society challenges the boundaries between the global and the local, internal and external, intimate and public, while tendencies towards universality and the affirmation of differences meet and clash. Religious differences and differences within religions are increasingly coming to the fore on the political and cultural scene. Assuming that religions are specific ways of living the relational experience that characterizes all human beings and that they are complex and non-monolithic phenomena shaping the lifeworld, are they related to the question of justice, and if they are, in what way? What does it mean to be just with respect to religious plurality? Primarily, this question implies the issue of recognition. However, it cannot mean that anything goes, for this would reduce all the differences to indifference. To take religious plurality seriously requires inhabiting the tension between freedom and equality. This implies creating spaces where differences can be met in order to establish forms of living together. My chapter suggests that some ways of sharing experience (discussions, translations, confrontations and narratives) should be possible, and that this shared experience could lead humanity to establish and protect forms of free and just coexistence

Trust and leadership in post-compulsory education: Some snapshots of displaced dissent

While education cannot function without trust, its loss in institutions sometimes goes unspoken, officially unreported, only shared in ways invisible to measurement or control. This article considers issues of trust, power and displaced dissent, providing some snapshots of participant views about questions of trust and leadership recorded in a series of 28 interviews and 242 electronic survey responses from the post-compulsory education or ‘lifelong learning’ sector in 2004‑09. This formed part of an externally funded research project which collected data in three timed data collection phases. Snapshots of displaced dissent from a minority of participants expressed disquiet regarding the level of trust operating in their educational institutions, in response to questions about ‘trust and leadership’. These snapshots are random examples of dissent emerging from those whose power to speak out in their own institutions was limited, for fear of reprisals. They are collected together to provide evidence of otherwise unspoken things that may lie beneath the silences operating in a minority of post-compulsory educational institutions regarding considerations of trust. A theoretical model of the operation of organisational trust is proposed that recommends open and consensual dialogic practices for the development of more trusting situations in post-compulsory education workplaces

The Additive Value of Positive Psychological Capital in Predicting Work Attitudes and Behaviors

Conventional wisdom over the years and recent research findings have supported the importance of positivity in the workplace. However, to date, empirical analysis has not demonstrated potential added value of recently emerging positive state-like constructs such as psychological capital over the more established positive traits in predicting work attitudes and behaviors. This study of a sample of employees (N=336) from a broad cross section of organizations and jobs found that their state-like psychological capital is positively related to desired extra-role organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) and negatively with undesired organizational cynicism, intentions to quit and counterproductive workplace behaviors. Except for individual OCBs, their psychological capital also predicted unique variance in the same attitudinal and behavioral outcomes beyond their demographics, core self-evaluation, and personality traits, and person-organization fit and person-job fit. The article concludes with implications these findings have for future research and practical application

Autonomy in long-term care: a need, a right or a luxury?

Doyal and Gough’s theory of human need highlighted that personal autonomy is a universal need and human right, essential for well‐being. In applying their theory to older disabled people in the UK the author suggests that their ‘minimally autonomous’ threshold would exclude some older people in long‐term care who still have a fundamental need for autonomy or, alternatively, extant autonomy. The disability movement has highlighted that independent living is fundamental to achieving self‐determination for disabled people and debate on equality and caregiving emphasises the autonomy of carers. However, there is a lack of recognition in both academic research and government policy of autonomy as a need and right of older disabled people. The author argues that autonomy is a human right of older people living in long‐term care settings, but that social rights are necessary to facilitate their autonomy