Community Obligations Research Articles

Individualism as a Discursive Strategy of Action

This paper reconceptualizes “individualism” as a discursive strategy of action through which everyday Americans attempt to manage the cultural dilemma of engaging in externally imposed social obligations within a broader individualistic culture. While classic formulations have treated individualism as a strong cultural force directing actors toward voluntaristic and privatized lives, my analysis—grounded in an inductive analysis of 17 qualitative studies of religious Americans—finds individualism working primarily as a discursive strategy, through which actors frame their participation in activities influenced by external authority and communal obligation in ways that emphasize their own agency and autonomy. This revised conceptualization suggests that American individualism may not be as “deep” or powerful as is often assumed. More generally, it offers a novel approach for conceptualizing and further studying the dynamic relationship between broadly “national” and more local and communal cultures.

Managing the risky humanity of academic workers: Risk and reciprocity in university work–life balance policies

University work–life balance policies increasingly offer academic workers a range of possible options for managing the competing demands of work, family, and community obligations. Flexible work arrangements, family-friendly hours and campus facilities, physical well-being and mental health programs typify strategies for formally acknowledging the need for employees to balance work with other needs and commitments. This paper draws on examples from Australian university work–life balance policies to consider how the incalculable humanity of academic workers is constructed as posing institutional risks because of the potential ill-effects of an imbalance between work and life. We consider how work–life balance policies anticipate and attempt to manage perceived risks to the institution as a consequence of workers’ utilization of such policies for their own benefit. Informed by poststructuralist theoretical and cultural analyses of risk, affect, and governmentality, we argue that work–life balance policies stage a double maneuver. They offer heavily qualified workplace conditions, benefits, and supports predicated on notions of risk and reciprocity, while simultaneously extending the reach of institutional power to include the bodies, minds, families, and lives of academic workers.

Cultural Economics and Intellectual Property: Tensions and Challenges for the Region

AbstractThe Pacific islands region is currently experiencing an intensification of interest in culture as an enabler, rather than an inhibitor, of development. The emerging field of cultural economics seeks to chart ways in which culture can lead to both economic development and also to other goals, such as positive social relationships, community cohesion and maintenance and enjoyment of cultural heritage. However, bringing together these different range of goals at times involves tensions, often manifested in differences between individual autonomy and family and community obligations, generational focus and clashes of cultural logics. This paper investigates these tensions through the lens of intellectual property, an area where competing ideologies and perspectives of entitlement often come head to head. It identifies and reflects upon four areas of tension that will have to be navigated as the region experiments with both global models of intellectual property and national and local regulatory mechanisms.

When ties don't bind: smuggling effects, bazaars and regulatory regimes in postrevolutionary Iran

This paper examines how participation in smuggling restructures existing commercial regulatory systems and subjectivities. It does so through an analysis of the illicit commercial practices that mushroomed in postrevolutionary Iran and the ambivalent participation of established merchants (bazaaris) in the import and export of commodities through these circuits during the 1979–2005 era. Following two independent research projects on the Tehran and Qum bazaars, we adopt a multidisciplinary and relational approach to bazaars and smuggling to decipher the multiple logics. This process is assembled through networks of established bazaaris, new commercial actors, far-flung transnational buyers and diverse state officials, who both regulate trade and facilitate exchanges that are at times interpreted as smuggling by the participants themselves. Building on the growing literature on smuggling in cultural anthropology and political economy, our account demonstrates how commodities travel through channels that ultimately transgress categories such as licit and illicit, state and society, and ‘honorable bazaari’ and ‘smuggler’. The postrevolutionary Iranian regime is a case that challenges us to examine this quasi-formal economy in the context of an institutionalized and centralized state that has adopted both state-led and neoliberal economic policies. It also forces us to situate the phenomenon of smuggling within the context of existing commercial networks and moral orders. We further reveal how bazaaris have been subjects of and subjected to the hybrid commercial order, which has both displaced the social networks that underpin bazaaris' communal obligations and norms and cast doubt on the merchants' claim to ethical standing in the eyes of one another, and left them vulnerable to criticism by leaders of the Islamic Republic.

‘Failed’ or resilient subaltern communities? Pacific indigenous social protection systems in a neoliberal world

The notion of failed state is based on culturally, historically and ideologically slanted lenses and tends to rank post-colonial societies at the lower end of the Failed State Index (FSI). Likewise, the Social Protection Index (SPI) uses neoliberal and Western-based variables and tends to disadvantage subaltern post-colonial communities as in the Pacific. This article reverses this trend by arguing for a re-examination of the factors which shape the resilience and adaptability of local communities, something which has always been ignored by mainstream classificatory schemas such as the FSI and SPI. To this end, the article examines the indigenous and local human security and social protection systems in the Pacific and how these provide support mechanisms for community resilience and adaptation in the face of a predatory neoliberal onslaught and globalisation. It focuses on kinship, reciprocity, communal obligation and communal labour as examples of social protection mechanisms in four case studies—Fiji, Samoa, Kiribati and Vanuatu. Of significance here is the role of critical and progressive journalists and media in deconstructing the ideological and cultural bias embedded in these discourses.

Hand in hand against climate change: cultural human rights and the protection of cultural heritage

Within the debate on climate change and human rights, the field of culture, or cultural heritage in particular, plays a marginal role. At first glance, this seems reasonable, given the range of more concrete challenges people face in the context of climate change. However, the protection of cultural heritage is an important goal in its own right, even against the backdrop of other seemingly more pressing tasks. A human-rights-based approach to the debate on cultural heritage and climate change, it is argued, reinforces the international community's obligations to take necessary mitigation activities. Cultural rights and the corresponding duties, especially those under Article 15(1)(a) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, have the potential to provide an effective additional normative basis for the protection of cultural heritage from the adverse consequences of climate change.

Morality and the Marketplace

Is it right for church leaders to sell an antique bible from the church’s library so they can pay for an advertising campaign to attract new members? Is it OK for a consumer to buy a company’s wonderful new smartphone even if the company’s CEO has made racist comments? And if a company contributes financially to a charity, is it proper for the firm’s managers to make demands regarding how the charity recognizes the donation? Contributors to the Journal of Consumer Research have been asking whether market behaviors are proper, right, or OK since the journal’s inception. In JCR’s first issue, Jacoby, Speller, and Berning (1974) explored how marketers should balance the moral imperative of providing full product information against the psychological effects of information overload. Striking a balance between moral concerns and market considerations is often difficult because the logic of the “moral economy” and that of the “market economy” are each based on different and sometimes conflicting assumptions (Thompson 1993). For example, the market economy privileges the pursuit of profit and self-interest, while the moral economy highlights the value of meeting social obligations and serving the greater good. Consumers and marketers therefore often experience a tension between the two logics, and must often decide whether one or the other should dominate. The factors that prompt, influence, and moderate this decision have consistently captured research interest in the pages of JCR for 40 years, and the five articles in this curation represent the spectrum of current research on these issues. Building on Fiske’s (1991) theory of social relations and taboo trade-offs, McGraw, Schwartz, and Tetlock (2012) examine why organizations with more communal obligations can prompt consumer backlash when they behave in ways that appear to have more commercial aims. Their results shed light on the different psychological mechanics that underlie the logic of the moral economy versus that of the market economy. Bhattacharjee, Berman, and Reed (2013) examine how consumers respond when someone they support (for example, a company CEO or celebrity endorser) behaves immorally. They demonstrate an important difference between two kinds of responses (“moral rationalization” and “moral decoupling”), each of which sheds light on how consumers cope with moral considerations when judging the actions of marketplace participants. In their research on the financial underpinnings of Mardi Gras in post-Katrina New Orleans, Weinberger and Wallendorf (2012) not only demonstrate the strategies people use to keep market economy considerations separate from the moral economy but also illustrate when and how consumers can minimize (at least temporarily) a tension between the two. Tensions between social obligations and self-interest can influence not only how consumers assess the morality and appropriateness of others but also how they themselves behave. Kristofferson, White, and Peloza (2014) explore how and when a consumer’s initial charitable contribution provides an excuse (or “moral licensing”) for not giving again, as well as the factors that might minimize moral licensing. Saatcioglu and Ozanne (2013) show that, despite an unavoidable tension between the moral and market economies, the two nonetheless constantly interact and intermingle. By documenting the moral thinking and behavior (that is, the “moral habitus”) of members of a poor, working-class neighborhood, they demonstrate that performance in the market economy influences perceptions in the moral economy, and

Assembling governance: the role of standards in the Tanzanian tea industry

Governing through standards has gained significant academic traction, particularly through discussions of global value chains and instruments of neoliberal private authority. Drawing from ethnographic work, I utilize examples from the tea industry in Tanzania to characterize the pragmatic nature of how standards govern at a distance in local contexts. These examples are the: 1) use of Fairtrade funds to fulfill community obligations; 2) participation in value chain actors' bids for external technical assistance; and 3) participation in donor-funded projects unrelated to standards schemes, yet enable compliance with certification requirements. The analysis reveals that the nature of these programs is a combination of historically entrenched systems and neoliberal approaches to development. By conceptualizing these standards as agencements, rather than instruments of private regulation, we are able to better capture governmentality in the Foucauldean sense – as the mobilization of standards to provide public goods is a mode of governing that necessarily involves far more actors than the State alone.

Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World, by Matthew Lundin

Paper Memory: A Sixteenth-Century Townsman Writes His World, by Matthew Lundin. Harvard Historical Studies, Volume 179. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2012. 329 pp. $49.95 US (cloth). Hermann Weinsberg was an eccentric. Yet most of his relatives and neighbours in sixteenth-century Cologne may never have realized that. Weinsberg was a little-known lawyer who undertook routine legal work, dabbled in commercial activities, and occupied some minor municipal offices. Day after day be spent hours closeted in his study, where he presumably attended to his legal duties and business affairs. What nobody knew, however, was that most of the time he spent in that little room was obsessively devoted to a secret project: to write an exhaustively thorough account of his family's history and to maintain an even longer, unsparingly detailed record of everything that he, his relatives, his neighbours and his community experienced during his lifetime. By the time Hermann Weinsberg died in 1597, he had generated more than 7,000 pages of densely packed writings. Other German burghers of his day also wrote family histories, diaries or memoirs--but never on a scale like this. And until Weinsberg's death, nobody else had ever read a word of his massive dossier, or even knew it existed. Matthew Lundin, the author of this absorbing study of Hermann Weinsberg's mental world, makes no claim to having discovered this remarkable cache of documents. In fact Weinsberg's writings were discovered in the mid-nineteenth century by a Cologne archivist who immediately recognized their potential value for students of German social and cultural history. Extensive selections of Weinsberg's writings were eventually published, and for over a century German historians have plundered this material for insights about life in sixteenth-century Cologne. Through the work of historians like Steven Ozment and Robert Jutte, observations about Weinsberg's family circumstances and medical history have found their way into English-language scholarship. What Lundin has undertaken, however, is something entirely different. Instead of using Weinsberg's writings chiefly to illuminate the society of his day, Lundin has written a psychological study of the man himself. In doing so, Lundin offers a compelling portrait of a person who was exceptional in his attitudes and intentions yet at the same time highly characteristic of his times. As Lundin notes, it is tempting to compare Hermann Weinsberg to Samuel Pepys, whose London diary of the 1660s was also discovered in the nineteenth century and soon became a classic. But Pepys was an accomplished and gregarious man of affairs, and his diary is the record of an intensively active life. Weinsberg, by contrast, was shy and withdrawn. He married twice and met his familial and communal obligations, but his happiest hours were clearly spent alone in his study recording his findings and observations. Like many people in the Renaissance, Weinsberg freely amplified the genealogical information he was able to gather by inventing more interesting and admirable ancestors for himself. Yet in writing about his own life and contemporary events he was scrupulously, often painfully honest. …

Resilience and Refugees: From Individualised Trauma to Post Traumatic Growth

Resilience and Refugees: From Individualised Trauma to Post Traumatic Growth

Separation, Connection, and the Ambiguous Nature of Émigré Houses in Rural Highland Madagascar

ABSTRACTThe houses that educated migrants from highland Madagascar build in their home villages are generally large in scale and modern in style. They are also usually empty and in a very poor state of repair. This article is about how these houses articulate the ambivalent relationship of migrants to their ancestral land and the family they have left behind there. The argument goes beyond analyses of émigrés' houses that simply see such constructions as ways of maintaining links to their point of origin and suggests that they also act as means of attenuating such connections. In fact, they embody and symbolize a range of contradictions and tensions typical of the migrant experience, such as presence and absence, connection and separation, individual ambition and communal obligation.

Project-based language learning: an activity theory analysis

This paper reports on an investigation of project-based language learning (PBLL) in a university language programme. Learner reflections of project work were analysed through Activity Theory, where tool-mediated activity is understood as the central unit of analysis for human interaction. Data were categorised according to the components of human activity: the subject (or actor), the object (or motive of the activity), the psychological and physical tools used to fulfil the activity, as well as the division of labour, the rules governing the activity, and the community in which the activity takes place. Language learning projects were interpreted as the outcomes that would theoretically align with the object of activity, which was different for each learner. For some subjects, the projects were seen as an effective way to reach the object of the activity, or their true motive. For others, the outcomes did not align with the object of their activity, resulting in negative experiences. Whilst evaluations of PBLL were mostly positive, the analysis revealed contradictions in the activity system, including inequitable divisions of labour, perceived lack of time due to community obligations, or opposition to the rules (e.g. target language use) governing the activity in the modules.

Privacy in the Political System: Perspectives from Political Science and Economics

This is a review that was originally written for a collection that was to have been edited and published by the late Alan F. Westin on the various social science contributions to the study of privacy. This paper was drafted in the late 1990s and funded through the Ethical, Legal and Social Issues (ELSI) component of the Human Genome Project. It was substantially revised in 2001. Obviously the literature in these fields has changed dramatically as the Internet has flourished and personal data is now more widely circulated and traded with enormous political, social and economic consequences. But the kinds of scholarly questions addressed and reviewed in this paper perhaps remain constant. What does the tradition of political theory contribute to the debate about the appropriate balance between privacy interests on the one hand, and wider societal and community obligations on the other? What is the relationship between attitudes toward privacy and political culture and ideology? What can political science tell us about the nature and extent of surveillance? What can political science (and particularly the study of bureaucratic behavior) tell us about the relationship between technology and politics? When privacy is viewed as a regulatory issue, what does the response to it tell us about the way that different states manage technological change? And how can privacy be analyzed on the basis of economics or public choice assumptions?

Does Stakeholder Perception of Firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility Affect Firm Performance?

In the present-day business landscape characterised by global competition, demanding customers and depleting natural resources, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an important strategy for corporations for creating competitive advantage. CSR involves a corporation’s commitment to align performance (revenue growth and profit) motives with fulfillment of social, ethical, community and environmental obligations. Researchers have found a positive correlation between stakeholder perceptions of firm’s CSR performance and financial performance, assuming other factors as constant. This paper, based on analysis of Wal-Mart’s performance from 2001 to 2011, found, seemingly significant negative perceptions of CSR activities of corporations result in lower performance. Once formed, changing negative perceptions is often difficult and the effort involves considerable amount of resources with questionable outcomes. This study has come to the conclusion that being a good ‘Corporate Citizen’ and creating positive stakeholder perceptions is a better strategic approach for firm’s continuing success.

The health and safety implications of socio-cultural context for community construction projects in developing countries

Community participation in construction during rural infrastructure projects in developing countries is encouraged by many non-governmental organizations. The health and safety aspects of this type of development model have not previously been adequately researched, however. The aim is to identify the socio-cultural factors that motivate community members to participate in construction activities which they perceive as hazardous during a case study of a water and sanitation project in rural Ghana. This is a step towards understanding how health and safety can be more effectively managed during community development projects. A qualitative approach has been taken, using interview, observation and reflection. It was found that the communal culture of the local context resulted in community members feeling pressurized to participate in hazardous construction activities. Local customary laws further compelled individuals as they were concerned they could be fined or arrested should they not fulfil their communal obligations. Further work is required to determine the boundaries within which findings apply but it is likely that there are implications for others managing community construction projects both in Ghana and further afield.

Natura 2000 habitat mapping in Kattegat, Denmark: an example from Læsø Trindel

Natura 2000 is a network of nature protection areas established by the European Union under the Habitats Directive (European Union 1992). The aim is to assure long-term survival of the most valuable and endangered species and habitats in Europe. The network comprises special areas of conservation and protection designated by the member states under, respectively, the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive. The establishment of the network of protected areas also fulfils a community obligation under the Convention of Biological Diversity of the United Nations.

Government Intervention in Health Care Markets is Practical, Necessary, and Morally Sound

This essay makes the affirmative case for health reform by expounding on three fundamental points: (1) one moral case for expanding access to coverage and care to all is grounded in scriptural concepts of community and mutual obligation which continue to inform the American pursuit of justice; (2) the structure of PPACA springs from an appreciation of and approach to channeling market forces that was developed and proposed by a coalition of moderate and conservative Republican U.S. senators almost 20 years ago; (3) the most humane path to a better and more sustainable health system lies in implementing (and amending where appropriate) PPACA as fast and fully as we can. The purpose of this essay is to articulate why it is not possible to make our health system better, sustainable and serve us all without government playing specific and limited but absolutely crucial catalytic roles.

“Unapologetic and unafraid”: Immigrant youth come out from the shadows

Young immigrants are challenging the boundaries of citizenship and insisting on their human rights. This chapter examines the civic lives of immigrant youth through the case of Latina/os, exploring the paradox of their apparent low civic education and engagement levels and remarkable participation in recent protests. After an overview of demographics and what we know about immigrant youth civic life, the focus shifts to the undocumented. Many retain a sense of community obligation, yet because of their developmental stage and U.S. education, their engagement differs from that of their parents' generation. Young immigrants are reconfiguring organizing and reenergizing U.S. democracy through their use of new information technologies.

From the Commercial to the Communal: Reframing Taboo Trade-offs in Religious and Pharmaceutical Marketing

Abstract Although consumers typically expect organizations to profit from marketing goods and services, they also believe that certain organizations, like those that focus on religion and health, should prioritize communal obligations. Indeed, consumers may find it morally distressing when communally focused organizations use overtly commercial marketing strategies like rebranding or value-based pricing. We demonstrate how moral distress and consumer backlash result from such taboo trade-offs and investigate when communal-sharing rhetoric for religious and pharmaceutical marketing reduces distress. Communal justifications used by communally focused organizations are particularly effective when consumers are not closely monitoring the motives of the organization or when the product is need-based. However, communal justifications become less effective and market-pricing justifications become more effective when consumers are attuned to the persuasive intentions of the organization. Implications for consumer goals are discussed.

Corporate social responsibility implementation

PurposeCorporate social responsibility (CSR)‐based strategies have become important concepts in dealing with firms' stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the processes of stakeholder legitimacy and interest detection, namely ethical considerations and community obligations, to promote CSR as an intangible strategic asset.Design/methodology/approachThe two relatively large service‐based firms (contrasting not‐for‐profit with for‐profit) that were selected for study were Pittsburgh‐based, namely the largest single employer of the metropolitan area of Pittsburgh (The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)) and WESCO, a distributor of electrical construction products and electrical and industrial maintenance products and the largest domestic provider of integrated supply services.FindingsIt was found that the management teams at UPMC and WESCO approach CSR‐based strategies and its initiative from completely different perspectives. UPMC functions a not‐for‐profit organization while WESCO is a for‐profit entity. They also approach CSR differently as a result from its geographically based service and product offerings, UPMC being more local/regional and WESCO going for global markets. These differences promote differences in the groups and types of CSR that each company is currently engaged in promoting.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates that both not‐for‐profit and for‐profit entities have a reason to be socially responsible, whether they are local or global firms. The overarching fact is that consumers expect firms to be conscience of the social concerns of the community in which they operate and socially responsible to the various stakeholder groups they serve.