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5622. After the MDGs: Citizen Deliberation and the Post-2015 Development Framework
- Author:
- Scott Wisor
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- For those concerned with and affected by global development and human deprivation 2015 looms large, for this is the date by which the ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the world's biggest promise, are to be achieved. As such, it will be a time to evaluate the successes and failures in meeting the various specific targets articulated by the MDGs, and a time to evaluate the adequacy and efficacy of the MDG framework itself. Perhaps more important, it will be the time to establish a new global framework to address the world's most pressing development problems. Indeed, some advocates, academics, and development practitioners have already turned their attention to designing such a potential successor agreement.
5623. In Defense of Smart Sanctions: A Response to Joy Gordon
- Author:
- George A. Lopez
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- In her recent article in this journal, Joy Gordon provides an astute history and critique of the evolution and application of smart sanctions within the United Nations system since the mid-1990s. Her analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the discrete types of smart sanctions is part of a growing discussion among both academics and practitioners about the future and the utility of these measures. As always, her continued skepticism about the effectiveness and ethical dimensions of economic sanctions deserves serious consideration and evaluation. In particular, Gordon raises three central concerns: (1) smart sanctions are no more successful than traditional trade sanctions; (2) each type of targeted mechanism has serious flaws; and (3) targeted sanctions did not end the humanitarian damage or the related ethical dilemmas that are embedded into sanctions design and implementation.
- Topic:
- Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Aid
- Political Geography:
- United Nations
5624. Morality and War: Can War Be Just in the Twenty-First Century?
- Author:
- Michael L. Gross
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- Morality and War is a timely addition to contemporary just war literature. While advocating the use of just war principles to evaluate modern armed conflict, Fisher takes the innovative step of introducing virtue theory into these debates. Largely neglected by just war theorists, virtue theory has, for example, invigorated bioethics by providing an antidote to the rigidity of principled moral thinking while also offering a useful and versatile educational tool. Fisher uses it to do both as he combines virtue ethics with consequentialism into what he terms "virtuous consequentialism."
- Topic:
- War
5625. Terror, Religion, and Liberal Thought
- Author:
- Andrew F. March
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- Addressing a set of normative questions surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Richard B. Miller takes as his starting point the claim that “9/11 raises moral questions about human rights, respect for persons, and the limits of toleration with vivid clarity . . . [and] puts in stark relief questions about the moral challenges of coexistence in an increasingly pluralistic public culture, questions concerning religious authorizations of violence, human rights, and the basis and limits of tolerating the intolerant” . Further, he tells us that “at stake are two related concerns: first, whether we may evaluate actions justified on terms that invoke religious warrants; second, how and on what terms those aggrieved by Islamic and other forms of terrorism may justifiably feel indignation”
- Topic:
- Human Rights and Terrorism
5626. The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation
- Author:
- Anita L. Allen
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- In this new volume, two distinguished University of Chicago law professors have joined forces to edit a provocatively titled collection of essays about the Internet. As they observe in their coauthored introduction, the Internet “has succeeded in remaking us as inhabitants of a small village”. However, there is little romance in this cozy trope that Levmore and Nussbaum deploy to frame their project. We are indeed close-knit now. The Internet has stitched together geographically, politically, and culturally distant men, women, and children into an intensively interactive community. But it is a Hobbesean village, bereft of decorum and solidarity. Moreover, when one calls to mind the extraordinary stories of Amy Boyer and Tyler Clementi, whose murder and suicide, respectively, were closely tied to commercial and social abuses of the Internet, one quickly understands that Internet communication can be not only offensive but also flat-out dangerous.
- Political Geography:
- Chicago
5627. Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays
- Author:
- William Schweiker
- Publication Date:
- 04-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- The publication of these essays by the philosopher Charles Taylor in a single volume gives readers access to his understanding of late-modern societies. Like his Gifford Lectures, collected in A Secular Age, these essays—addressing social, political, and ethical questions—challenge various theories of modernity made famous by Max Weber and others. In Taylor's terms, the “subtraction theory”—that is, the theory that defines modernity as a form of life with the religious subtracted from it—is a misunderstanding of the current situation. Taylor here provides a compelling response to that account of modernity grouped under three headings: “Allies and Interlocutors,” “Social Theory,” and “Themes from A Secular Age.” Given the range of topics, thinkers, and problems that the book engages, it is impossible to review it as a single argument. That said, the book does present interlocking sub-arguments that are the focus of this review.
5628. Outreach, Impact, Collaboration: Why Academics Should Join to Stand Against Poverty
- Author:
- Luis Cabrera and Thomas Pogge
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- It is a typical late afternoon in the Timarpur neighborhood, lying just across the Mahatma Gandhi Marg ring road from the University of Delhi North Campus. Families gather outside one- and two-room brick living quarters, many of which have only a single draped cloth serving as the front wall. Other homes are made of found materials: cloth or plastic bound over slim wooden poles; a mishmash of blankets, boards, and corrugated metal for walls; metal or blue plastic tarpaulins weighted against the wind with stones and bricks for roofs. A boy of perhaps four fills a bucket at the single communal tap serving a dozen families and wobbles up a set of stairs, sloshing out water with each step. Another child, younger, plays quietly beside a woman sleeping on the pavement under a shelter of plastic and burlap bags
- Topic:
- Poverty
- Political Geography:
- New Delhi
5629. Global Poverty and the Limits of Academic Expertise
- Author:
- Onora O'Neill
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- Academics are not a natural kind. They have varied expertise and aims, and most have no expertise that is particularly relevant to problems of poverty and development. This presumably is why the essay in this issue by Thomas Pogge and Louis Cabrera-a virtual "manifesto" of the newly formed Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP)-shifts to and fro between addressing "academics" and addressing "poverty-focused academics." Even those academics whose work touches on poverty and development-a quite small minority-are mostly expert in some but not in other aspects of these topics. Some are expert in international law, but not in economics; others know about international trade, but not about aid; some study corruption, but know nothing about nutrition-and so on. A few know a lot about normative argument, but their credentials are sketchy when it comes to empirical evidence. Many more are interested in empirical evidence, usually of a specific sort, but are uncritical of or confused about normative argument. (I suspect that many suffer from a lingering positivist hangover, which suggests that there is no intellectually respectable way to support normative claims, and indeed that this fear may lie behind the appeals to the importance of academic neutrality that Pogge and Cabrera discuss.)
- Topic:
- Development and Poverty
5630. Addressing Poverty and Climate Change: The Varieties of Social Engagement
- Author:
- Simon Caney
- Publication Date:
- 07-2012
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Institution:
- Carnegie Council
- Abstract:
- The world is marked by very great poverty and inequality. The lives of many of our fellow inhabitants of this planet are blighted by malnutrition, disease, and destitution. Yet mass suffering is often met by casual indifference or acceptance, and sometimes even by active support of the status quo. While tragedies occur elsewhere in the world, the vast majority of us continue in our daily tasks and, in the words of W. H. Auden, turn away " quite leisurely from the disaster. " It is in response to this reality that Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) asks: What, in light of mass poverty, are the responsibilities of academics?
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Development, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa