Original Critique Research Articles

Cryptocurrency: Still a Cause for Concern

The article presents an original critique of cryptocurrencies, contesting claims made by the originators and many supporters of cryptocurrencies that they are future and that future is liberating, and contesting arguments made by opponents which downplay cryptocurrencies’ significance. While unlikely to simply replace the existing money of leading states, cryptocurrencies are likely to become enduringly important within complex monetary hierarchies, further removing money from critical scrutiny and democratic control. Following a brief summary of the claims of libertarian supporters, the article considers critics’ arguments and warns of too easy a dismissal of the social threat posed by cryptocurrency. Monetary outcomes are ultimately determined by social power not by the requirements of an abstract economic rationality. The shortcomings of monetary forms need not preclude their extension. Powerful backers resource cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies and it is likely that applications will continue to grow within complex, hierarchical and ever-changing monetary systems.

Addressing Consumer Desires for Sustainable Food Systems: Contentions and Compromises.

Consumers and social movement activists have been the driving force to create alternative, sustainable food systems over the past 100 years. Although larger agribusiness market players and the state were at first reluctant to respond to these concerns, as organic food products (the most prominent example of alternative food) became a viable economic market, these market players embraced them. The international trade of organic food has developed into a major agricultural and retail sector, but with this growth many of the varied original critiques of conventional, industrial farming practices have yet to be adequately addressed. Every major advancement in sustainable agriculture has raised new issues of equity and access for producers, laborers, and consumers. Although consumers often believe that they are contributing to a project of larger social change with every market transaction they make, the continued success of the organic food system has spurred calls for more explicit forms of collective behavior to promote the larger goals of the original sustainable agriculture movements.

The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel

The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel

Swimming against the tide: back to single materiality for sustainability reporting

PurposeThis paper aims to critically examine the conceptualisation of the principle of materiality, which is one of the most divisive concepts in current regulatory work on standard setting for sustainability reporting. This paper pays particular attention to the current agenda for standard setting for sustainability reporting and the related discourse, including the International Sustainability Standard Board (ISSB) Exposure Draft IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information. A new conceptualisation of materiality is proposed based on the critique.Design/methodology/approachThe academic and grey literature relating to current regulatory work on sustainability reporting, responses to the ISSB General Requirement Exposure Draft and sustainability reporting frameworks and standards are reviewed. This review also includes the papers in this journal’s special issue on standard setting for sustainability reporting. This review is used to develop original views on how materiality could be conceptualised and interpreted for sustainability reporting. This paper’s viewpoint is built on the criticisms of various definitions of materiality found in the literature and the author’s original critique of the materiality definitions provided in various reports and standards/frameworks on sustainability reporting.FindingsBoth financial materiality and double materiality approaches have drawbacks. A single materiality approach underpinned by accountability for financial and non-financial capitals instead of decision usefulness for any stakeholder is proposed. The proposed conceptualisation is also underpinned by the need to recognise dependencies between the environment, society and organisations when creating long-term enterprise value. The proposed approach is expected to trigger real changes in organisational practices to pursue a purpose beyond profit.Practical implicationsThe proposed approach to defining materiality for sustainability reporting bridges the divide between financial materiality and social and environmental materiality concepts underpinning different standards and regulations.Social implicationsThe approach to materiality proposed in this paper is aimed at enabling organisations to pursue United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to make the planet and societies more sustainable.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a new conceptualisation of and approach to materiality determination for sustainability reporting.

Wakefield's Offspring

Wakefield's Offspring

Argumentum ad populum: A reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio

AbstractOur reply to Bonikowski and DiMaggio (2021) is in three parts. First, we clarify the aim of our research note (Eger & Hjerm, 2021). Our original critique was based on a replication of their inductive analysis, and we evaluated their work using best practices for the methodology that they chose. Our argument is straightforward: If one is going to use inductive methods to say something meaningful about the real world, one needs to make sure that the model being advanced fits the data. We present additional evidence supporting our original critique. Second, we discuss whether their new analyses bolster their original results and conclusions. Third, because their own results actually suggest that different levels of American nationalism exist rather than qualitatively different types, we question their claim of convergent validity. In short, we stand by our original critique.

A Commentary on Ambedkar's Posthumously Published "Philosophy of Hinduism" - Part II

This paper continues the commentary on Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s posthumously published Philosophy of Hinduism. Utilizing resources from various modern continental European philosophers and social theorists, particularly of religion, we elaborate on several key passages within Ambedkar’s overall framework of analysis. The paper continues to explore how Ambedkar conceives relations between philosophy and religion, and how historical shifts in general human consciousness have occurred whereby altering both fields. At the core of his being, Ambedkar is concerned with a methodological justification that will enable him to venture into a penetrating critique of the immoral and amoral nature of Hinduism’s social system of caste. In Part I of the commentary, we followed Ambedkar until he arrived at the criteria of ‘justice’ and ‘utility’ to judge the status of Hinduism. He wanted to test whether this Eastern world religion, which descends from antiquity, meets those criteria, which shape the modern conception of religion. In Part II of this commentary, we expand further on Ambedkar’s thesis as to why Hinduism fails to meet the modern conception when those twin criteria are not met. This thought presupposes various underlying philosophical transformations of the relations of ‘God to man’, ‘Society to man’, and ‘man to man’ within which the Hindu-dominated Indian society forecloses the possibility of individual equality, freedom, and dignity. In making contributions to Ambedkar studies, the philosophy of religion, and political philosophies of justice, this paper sets up Part III of the commentary, which will examine Ambedkar’s actual engagement with the classics of Hinduism’s philosophy and thought in general. Ultimately, Ambedkar is undeterred in his original critique of the social and moral failures of the caste system, thereby intimating ambitious possibilities for its eventual eradication.

The Political Economy of Aging Services in the United States Since the Aging Enterprise

The Aging Enterprise was the first book length analysis of the origins and operations of the aging services system that grew out of the 1963 Older Americans Act and provided the first state system of community-based services. The book also featured an original critique of the aging services system based on an application of the theoretical perspectives that were new to social gerontology. This presentation will use one of these perspectives, the political economy of aging in the U.S., to chart changes in aging services systems since the publication of The Aging Enterprise. The presentation will show that Estes’ pioneering work on the application of the political economy perspective on aging policies and programs in the US, is more relevant to our understanding of these programs than it was 40 years ago, by describing and analyzing the increasing control of for profit corporations over the aging services systems. Part of a symposium sponsored by the Women's Issues Interest Group.

Containing Populism at the Cost of Democracy? Political vs. Economic Responses to Democratic Backsliding in the EU

This paper critically engages the legal and political framework for responding to democracy and rule of law backsliding in the EU. I develop a new and original critique of Article 7 TEU based on it being democratically illegitimate and normatively incoherent qua itself in conflict with EU fundamental values. Other more incremental and scaleable responses are desirable, and the paper moves on to assess the legitimacy of economic sanctions such as tying access to EU funds to performance on democratic and rule of law indicators or imposing fines on backsliding states. I hold such sanctions to be a priori legitimate, and argue that in some cases economic sanctions are even normatively required, given that EU material support of backsliding member states can amount to material complicity in their backsliding. However, an economic conditionality mechanism would need to be designed to minimize unjust and counterproductive effects. One way to pursue this could be to complement sanctions against the backsliding government with investment for prodemocratic actors in that state.

Negative Interest Rate Policy to Fight Secular Stagnation: Unfeasible, Ineffective, Irrelevant, or Inadequate?

ABSTRACT This paper discusses three explanations for Secular Stagnation: Summers’s demand-side Secular Stagnation Theory, Palley’s Investment Saturation Hypothesis, and Gordon’s supply-side Secular Stagnation Theory. All three involve a judgement on the efficacy of a negative interest rate policy (NIRP) in tackling stagnation: according to the first it is unfeasible, according to the second it is ineffective (and even dangerous), and according to the third it is irrelevant. First, we argue that these theories face the fundamental difficulty constituted by the use of a (negative) natural (or equilibrium) rate of interest. We propose an original critique of the negative equilibrium rate of interest determined by the marginal efficiency of capital. Second, we claim that the negative interest rate policy is an inadequate tool to fight stagnation. While monitoring and fostering financial stability should be a fundamental role of monetary authorities, monetary policy is unable to stimulate growth, whereas fiscal policy is better suited to the task.

The KK principle and rotational symmetry

The KK principle and rotational symmetry

In Quest of a Coherent Portrait of Paul: A Rejoinder to Michael Bird

AbstractThis rejoinder to Michael Bird’s critique of our argument in Joel Kaminsky and Mark Reasoner, “The Meaning and Telos of Israel’s Election: An Interfaith Response to N. T. Wright’s Reading of Paul,” HTR 112 (2019) 421–46, acknowledges that Wright recognizes a dimension of intrinsic value in God’s election of Israel, while it shows how Wright’s metanarrative is not only unduly skewed toward an instrumental view of Israel’s election but also, in effect, totally redefines Israel. Our rebuttal first reiterates some of our original claims and also presents new arguments against an exegesis of Second Isaiah that portrays Israel as divinely called to bring light or Torah to the nations. Later Second Temple sources also did not understand Israel as failing to fulfill a divine call to missionize the gentiles. Bird’s own inconsistency on the mission orientation of Israel weakens his defense of Wright here. Wright’s exegesis of Rom 5:20–21 as teaching that God intentionally gave Torah to draw the world’s sins onto Israel and Bird’s defense of this on the basis of Isaiah 53 are anomalous and untenable in the light of other scholars’ readings of Romans and the rest of the New Testament. Finally, against Bird, Wright does indeed read non-Christ-confessing Jews out of Israel in a highly problematic way. Bird’s agreement with us against Wright that “all Israel” in Rom 11:26 refers to corporeal Israel strengthens our original critique of Wright’s redefinition of Israel in Rom 9–11.

The Participatory Paradox: An Egalitarian Critique of Participatory Democracy

ABSTRACT Many democratic theorists assume the value and importance of widespread citizen participation. Many even endorse participatory democracy. I offer an original critique of participatory democracy and the assumptions which underpin it. Models of democracy which rely on widespread citizen participation are characterised by a paradox – the Participatory Paradox – which renders them practically unachievable and philosophically unstable. Establishing a participatory democracy would require a profound egalitarian restructuring of liberal democratic states in order to rectify the entrenched inequalities which have concentrated power in the hands of socioeconomic elites and marginalised the poor. But this is no easy task. It would require a vast, complex, and long term programme of social, economic, and political reform which would need to be justified independently of the democratic process. That is, paradoxically, the more that political philosophers foreground the importance of democracy, the more they have to take out of the province of democratic decision-making and impose on the people irrespective of the people’s views on the matter. Taking the Participatory Paradox seriously should lead us to de-emphasise the importance of citizen participation and strengthen representative institutions in order that they can produce democratic outcomes in the absence of widespread citizen participation.

Public artivism: queering geographies of migration and social inclusivity

ABSTRACTThis article contributes an original critique at the nexus of public art, activism (i.e. public artivism) and migration alongside the promotion of inclusive change. It pushes at transdisciplinary boundaries by integrating geohumanities scholarship on socially engaged public art whilst adopting a queer theory approach to foreground and interrogate the socially marginalised. The focus is on Schellekens & Peleman’s multi-site Inflatable Refugee installation, in response to the topical migration question, and the public performances and discourses that surround the migrant figure. An in-depth critical discourse analysis drawing from an interview with the collective and key documentation critically probes into the uses of public art(ivism) to raise issues particularly around the (mis)represention of this migrant figure. The case study evinces ambiguous modus operandi of public artivist practice. Although it may promote inclusive citizenship through ‘queering’ identity politics and migrant hyper-visibility, the material and socio-spatial affordances (along with limitations) of public artivism do not necessarily develop its full potential.

Attitudes to Excommunication in the Early Insular Church: Returning to Gildas’s Letter to Finnian

This article re-examines Gildas’s attitude to excommunication in surviving fragments of his letter to Finnian, utilized in Irish canon collections of the seventh and eighth centuries. It compares Gildas’s approach to that of Patrick in his open letter excommunicating the followers of Coroticus and, subsequently, to the two synods attributed to Patrick. While Patrick actively relies on excommunication as a disciplinary tool, Gildas offers an exegetically original critique of the abuse of excommunication. These contrary approaches are also reflected in the two ‘Patrician’ synods. Attempts to rehabilitate the opposing positions of Gildas and Patrick on excommunication in seventh- and eighth-century Ireland suggest memories of a connected intergenerational crisis between secular and ecclesiastical authority in the early insular church.

The Rise of the Homme Machine: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Biotechnology and Utopias

This essay argues that Carl Schmitt’s postwar writings offer an original critique of biotechnology and utopian thinking. Examining the classics of utopian literature from Plato to Thomas More and Aldous Huxley, Schmitt illustrates the rise of utopianism that aims to transform human nature and even produce an artificial “human-machine.” Schmitt discovers a counterimage to the emerging era of biotechnology from a katechontic form of Christianity and maintains that human beings must recognize their shared humanity in God, warning us that without a realm of transcendence, the enemy no longer offers an existential mirror but begins to incarnate foreign values, which must be destroyed completely. By comparing Schmitt with Michel Foucault and Donna Haraway, it is also argued that Schmitt’s thinking unlocks a novel path to exploring the meaning and histories of biopolitics and posthumanism. From a Schmittian perspective, Foucault’s depiction of biopolitics appears as a mere prelude to the coming age of biotechnology that will lead us into a posthuman era. Demonstrating interesting contrasts with Haraway’s utopian vision of the cyborg, it is maintained that Schmitt’s thinking offers a distinctively conservative-Christian critique of posthumanism.

Neo-Kantian Cosmopolitanism and International Law: Modest Practicality?

AbstractThis article explores the practical approach to global justice advocated by the cosmopolitan political theorists Pogge, Beitz and Buchanan. Using a comparative exposition it outlines their reliance on international law and on human rights law in particular. The essay explores the neo-Kantian influence on the practical approach and offers an original critique of this trend in contemporary international political theory.

Un viaje a través de la utopía: anarquismo, imaginación geográfica y futuros performativos en la obra de Marie-Louise Berneri

Este articulo aborda los trabajos y archivos de la militante anarquista transnacional Maria Luisa Berneri (1918-1949), autora de un estudio poco conocido pero muy significativo sobre las historias de las utopías y sus espacios. Al ampliar la literatura actual sobre geografías anarquistas, utopismo y sobre la relación entre la geografía y las ‘humanidades’, defiendo que una distinción entre utopías libertarias y utopías autoritarias es esencial para comprender la importancia política del concepto de utopía, que es también un asunto de espacio y de imaginación geográfica. Las críticas de Berneri a la utopía se inspiraron en su anticolonialismo y su antiautoritarismo, centrado especialmente en su original critica de los totalitarismos del siglo XX. Además, propongo una conexión entre abordajes anarquistas, humanistas, culturales e históricos de la geografía para ampliar el campo empírico y teórico de la disciplina y de sus relaciones con las humanidades. Este articulo contribuye también a las investigaciones recientes sobre el anarquismo transnacional, y afirma que la tradición anarquista no puede ser comprendida fuera de sus redes transnacionales, multilingües y cosmopolitas y de sus practicas concretas. Entonces, solo lecturas contextuales, relacionales y sensibles al espacio pueden dar sentido a esta especificidad anarquista.

Microaggressions: Clarification, Evidence, and Impact

In a 2017 article in Perspectives on Psychological Science, Scott Lilienfeld critiqued the conceptual basis for microaggressions as well as the scientific rigor of scholarship on the topic. The current article provides a response that systematically analyzes the arguments and representations made in Lilienfeld’s critique with regard to the concept of microaggressions and the state of the related research. I show that, in contrast to the claim that the concept of microaggressions is vague and inconsistent, the term is well defined and can be decisively linked to individual prejudice in offenders and mental-health outcomes in targets. I explain how the concept of microaggressions is connected to pathological stereotypes, power structures, structural racism, and multiple forms of racial prejudice. Also described are recent research advances that address some of Lilienfeld’s original critiques. Further, this article highlights potentially problematic attitudes, assumptions, and approaches embedded in Lilienfeld’s analysis that are common to the field of psychology as a whole. It is important for all academics to acknowledge and question their own biases and perspectives when conducting scientific research.

Truth-Predicates Still Not like Pronouns: a Reply to Salis

I here respond to Pietro Salis’s objections against my original critique of the Prosentential Theory of Truth (PT). In addition, I clarify some points regarding the relationship between anaphoric relationships and “general semantic notions” like “equivalence”, “consequence”, and “sameness of content”, and make some further points about (PT)’s ability gto explain pragmatic and expressive features of “true”.