In recent years, the concept of social capital (i.e. the presence of networks, trust and reciprocity) has become quite fashionable in social science research. Especially Robert Putnam’s ‘Making Democracy Work’ 2 has provoked an enormous amount of research on this societal resource. It has become customary to make a distinction between network and attitudinal approaches of social capital, focusing on individual network positions and the role of civic attitudes respectively. We argue that these two approaches do not exclude one another: it is just as legitimate to study the larger societal benefits of social capital (Putnam and others) as it is to study the individual benefits of networks positions (Lin and others). The question on how social capital can be generated seems more promising for future research, and here we can distinguish society-based approaches (social capital is generated by day-to-day social interaction) and institutional approaches (political and economic institutions determine social capital levels). The available research demonstrates that day-to-day interaction can have significant effects on democratic attitudes, e.g., by a process of value convergence. There is, however, also considerable evidence to show the effect of institutions, boosting social capital levels by ensuring impartiality and transparency and by promoting income inequality. Both from a political science, as from a social perspective, we urge the scientific community to pay more attention to the question how social capital might be generated by the political system.
{"title":"Conflicting Approaches to the Study of Social Capital","authors":"D. Stolle, M. Hooghe","doi":"10.2143/EP.10.1.503869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.10.1.503869","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, the concept of social capital (i.e. the presence of networks, trust and reciprocity) has become quite fashionable in social science research. Especially Robert Putnam’s ‘Making Democracy Work’ 2 has provoked an enormous amount of research on this societal resource. It has become customary to make a distinction between network and attitudinal approaches of social capital, focusing on individual network positions and the role of civic attitudes respectively. We argue that these two approaches do not exclude one another: it is just as legitimate to study the larger societal benefits of social capital (Putnam and others) as it is to study the individual benefits of networks positions (Lin and others). The question on how social capital can be generated seems more promising for future research, and here we can distinguish society-based approaches (social capital is generated by day-to-day social interaction) and institutional approaches (political and economic institutions determine social capital levels). The available research demonstrates that day-to-day interaction can have significant effects on democratic attitudes, e.g., by a process of value convergence. There is, however, also considerable evidence to show the effect of institutions, boosting social capital levels by ensuring impartiality and transparency and by promoting income inequality. Both from a political science, as from a social perspective, we urge the scientific community to pay more attention to the question how social capital might be generated by the political system.","PeriodicalId":54109,"journal":{"name":"Ethical Perspectives","volume":"24 1","pages":"22-45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2143/EP.10.1.503869","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67956342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on the reality of the ‘glass ceiling’ metaphor, the invisible barrier that women experience in their upward career mobility which prevents them from reaching the top of an organization. The first part describes the origins and development of the concept. Next, the debate concerning the existence of a specific male or female leadership style has been broadened to an analysis of the context of leadership. As part of that, the phenomenon of ‘tokenism’ is analyzed. The few women that succeeded in breaking through the glass ceiling often arrive in a token position. Persons in leadership positions who belong to a minority group, are looked at as representing the whole of (stereotypes ascribed to) the minority group. Specific personal competencies, characteristics and activities are relegated to the background. The presupposed male/female stereotypes dominate the relationships. How can effective leadership be realized if someone functions as a token? Not only women, but also people belonging to ethnic minorities can be confronted with token positions. Diverse factors of influence such as the choices made by women themselves and the organizational structures and cultures are described. An organizational culture is difficult to describe, and so is the impact on the career growth possibilities and upward mobility of women. Some strategies for change are presented. In order to make these strategies operational, a clear distinction between three dimensions has to be made: an analysis of the numerical proportion of male to female employees, an analysis of the organizational culture, and a gender analysis in terms of content (e.g. gender in topics of research, educational programmes, etc.). Different policy instruments can be used: legislation, equal opportunity and positive action programmes, and mainstreaming programmes. The whole debate about gender and leadership is a debate about value options and value preferences.
{"title":"The glass ceiling: Reality or myth? A gender analysis of leadership","authors":"V. Draulans","doi":"10.2143/EP.10.1.503871","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.10.1.503871","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the reality of the ‘glass ceiling’ metaphor, the invisible barrier that women experience in their upward career mobility which prevents them from reaching the top of an organization. The first part describes the origins and development of the concept. Next, the debate concerning the existence of a specific male or female leadership style has been broadened to an analysis of the context of leadership. As part of that, the phenomenon of ‘tokenism’ is analyzed. The few women that succeeded in breaking through the glass ceiling often arrive in a token position. Persons in leadership positions who belong to a minority group, are looked at as representing the whole of (stereotypes ascribed to) the minority group. Specific personal competencies, characteristics and activities are relegated to the background. The presupposed male/female stereotypes dominate the relationships. How can effective leadership be realized if someone functions as a token? Not only women, but also people belonging to ethnic minorities can be confronted with token positions. Diverse factors of influence such as the choices made by women themselves and the organizational structures and cultures are described. An organizational culture is difficult to describe, and so is the impact on the career growth possibilities and upward mobility of women. Some strategies for change are presented. In order to make these strategies operational, a clear distinction between three dimensions has to be made: an analysis of the numerical proportion of male to female employees, an analysis of the organizational culture, and a gender analysis in terms of content (e.g. gender in topics of research, educational programmes, etc.). Different policy instruments can be used: legislation, equal opportunity and positive action programmes, and mainstreaming programmes. The whole debate about gender and leadership is a debate about value options and value preferences.","PeriodicalId":54109,"journal":{"name":"Ethical Perspectives","volume":"10 1","pages":"66-77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2143/EP.10.1.503871","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67956649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The End of Old Certainties","authors":"C. Holtz-Bacha","doi":"10.2143/EP.9.4.503860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.9.4.503860","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54109,"journal":{"name":"Ethical Perspectives","volume":"9 1","pages":"222-229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2002-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2143/EP.9.4.503860","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67985354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It will hardly come as a surprise to anybody even only remotely familiar with the general thrust and orientation of ‘Christian ethics’, that the question of euthanasia has been and still is seen in general as a moral disvalue and/or an evil that should be resisted. The bottom line of this approach is the theological notion that human life is a gift of the Creator and therefore a good to be nurtured, promoted and worth protection. Euthanasia, and especially its depenalization and legalization to different degrees in the current laws of the Netherlands and Belgium, is evaluated as contrary to this requirement of protectability. Both during the (public) debate on euthanasia and in reaction to various attempts to legislate on this matter, Christian churches in the Netherlands and Belgium have raised their voices and addressed the public at large, their own members and politicians in order to influence reflection and deliberation.
{"title":"Christian churches and euthanasia in the Low Countries: background, argumentation and commentary.","authors":"J. Jans","doi":"10.2143/EP.9.2.503851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.9.2.503851","url":null,"abstract":"It will hardly come as a surprise to anybody even only remotely familiar with the general thrust and orientation of ‘Christian ethics’, that the question of euthanasia has been and still is seen in general as a moral disvalue and/or an evil that should be resisted. The bottom line of this approach is the theological notion that human life is a gift of the Creator and therefore a good to be nurtured, promoted and worth protection. Euthanasia, and especially its depenalization and legalization to different degrees in the current laws of the Netherlands and Belgium, is evaluated as contrary to this requirement of protectability. Both during the (public) debate on euthanasia and in reaction to various attempts to legislate on this matter, Christian churches in the Netherlands and Belgium have raised their voices and addressed the public at large, their own members and politicians in order to influence reflection and deliberation.","PeriodicalId":54109,"journal":{"name":"Ethical Perspectives","volume":"9 2-3 1","pages":"119-33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2002-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2143/EP.9.2.503851","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67984570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
First, a remark on the topic of my paper, which contains an 'and' where one would expect an 'or'. It might seem highly questionable to want to establish a relation between the self-proclaimed 'last anti-political German', teacher of self-overcoming and solitude, and a political thinker with an express commitment to political action and citizen equality. Would a genuine concern with both thinkers not precisely preclude any attempt to fabricate an alliance between them? One way of circumventing this difficulty might be to argue that Nietzsche is really a political thinker, and, more problematically, that he is some version of a radical democrat. Conversely, one might try to demonstrate that Arendt is really a closet Nietzschean — provided, of course, that one takes Nietzsche to be amenable to a modicum of democratic theory. However, such an attempt to force their divergent projects into the straitjacket of mutual consistency would lose more in integrity — and ultimately, in relevance — than it would gain in cohesion. It is not my intention, therefore, to try and merge their respective undertakings into either a watered-down Nietzsche or a spiced-up Arendt, or to cobble together a new political theory out of their different philosophies. Instead of aiming at an ultimate synthesis, my concern in this paper is with a particular field of inquiry where Nietzsche’s thinking finds, to some extent, its analogue in that of Arendt. The purpose of this exercise is not to simply show up a few points of similarity, but rather, to illuminate a particular problem from two perspectives that stand in an analogical, rather than dialectical, relationship to one another. This analogical relationship does not resolve itself into an ultimate synthesis, and is not predicated on a seamless fit between two different fields of reference. On the contrary, this relationship, like any analogy, has an inevitable remainder, something held in abeyance that transcends the relationship with the analogon. Moreover, as will become clear, it is the differences as much as the affinities between Nietzsche and Arendt’s thinking that serve to illuminate the question this paper aims to address. This question concerns modernity as a condition of disintegration or loss, and particularly the loss of a coherent cultural complex — that is, an inter-human domain of “structured sense”, to borrow a term from Nancy (1997: 8) — which necessarily circumscribes the meaning of the human. The premise of the paper, then, is that what has been lost in modernity are the cultural conditions for being — or becoming — human, as opposed to enduring only as a form of animal life (which of course we always still are) or, on the other side of the scale, descending into barbarism (which is itself a form of animalization). This premise
{"title":"The Loss of the Human","authors":"V. Roodt","doi":"10.2143/EP.9.1.503842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.9.1.503842","url":null,"abstract":"First, a remark on the topic of my paper, which contains an 'and' where one would expect an 'or'. It might seem highly questionable to want to establish a relation between the self-proclaimed 'last anti-political German', teacher of self-overcoming and solitude, and a political thinker with an express commitment to political action and citizen equality. Would a genuine concern with both thinkers not precisely preclude any attempt to fabricate an alliance between them? One way of circumventing this difficulty might be to argue that Nietzsche is really a political thinker, and, more problematically, that he is some version of a radical democrat. Conversely, one might try to demonstrate that Arendt is really a closet Nietzschean — provided, of course, that one takes Nietzsche to be amenable to a modicum of democratic theory. However, such an attempt to force their divergent projects into the straitjacket of mutual consistency would lose more in integrity — and ultimately, in relevance — than it would gain in cohesion. It is not my intention, therefore, to try and merge their respective undertakings into either a watered-down Nietzsche or a spiced-up Arendt, or to cobble together a new political theory out of their different philosophies. Instead of aiming at an ultimate synthesis, my concern in this paper is with a particular field of inquiry where Nietzsche’s thinking finds, to some extent, its analogue in that of Arendt. The purpose of this exercise is not to simply show up a few points of similarity, but rather, to illuminate a particular problem from two perspectives that stand in an analogical, rather than dialectical, relationship to one another. This analogical relationship does not resolve itself into an ultimate synthesis, and is not predicated on a seamless fit between two different fields of reference. On the contrary, this relationship, like any analogy, has an inevitable remainder, something held in abeyance that transcends the relationship with the analogon. Moreover, as will become clear, it is the differences as much as the affinities between Nietzsche and Arendt’s thinking that serve to illuminate the question this paper aims to address. This question concerns modernity as a condition of disintegration or loss, and particularly the loss of a coherent cultural complex — that is, an inter-human domain of “structured sense”, to borrow a term from Nancy (1997: 8) — which necessarily circumscribes the meaning of the human. The premise of the paper, then, is that what has been lost in modernity are the cultural conditions for being — or becoming — human, as opposed to enduring only as a form of animal life (which of course we always still are) or, on the other side of the scale, descending into barbarism (which is itself a form of animalization). This premise","PeriodicalId":54109,"journal":{"name":"Ethical Perspectives","volume":"9 1","pages":"31-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2143/EP.9.1.503842","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67984689","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gifts and alliances in Java","authors":"Peter Verhezen","doi":"10.2143/EP.9.1.503844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.9.1.503844","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54109,"journal":{"name":"Ethical Perspectives","volume":"15 1","pages":"56-65"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2143/EP.9.1.503844","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"67984335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Caring for a dignified end of life in a Christian health-care institution: the view of Caritas Catholica Vlaanderen.","authors":"Chris Gastmans","doi":"10.2143/ep.9.2.503852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2143/ep.9.2.503852","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54109,"journal":{"name":"Ethical Perspectives","volume":"9 2-3","pages":"134-45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2002-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2143/ep.9.2.503852","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"24958809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：