Report Definition Research Articles

The UN World Water Development Report 2016, Water and Jobs: A Critical Review

The UN World Water Development Report 2016, <i>Water and Jobs</i>: A Critical Review

Altruism and Reward: Motivational Compatibility in Deceased Organ Donation

Acts of helping others are often based on mixed motivations. Based on this claim, it has been argued that the use of a financial reward to incentivize organ donation is compatible with promoting altruism in organ donation. In its report Human Bodies: Donation for Medicine and Research, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics uses this argument to justify its suggestion to pilot a funeral payment scheme to incentivize people to register for deceased organ donation in the UK. In this article, I cast a sceptical eye on the above Nuffield report's argument that its proposed funeral payment scheme would prompt deceased organ donations that remain altruistic (as defined by and valued the report). Specifically, I illustrate how this scheme may prompt various forms of mixed motivations which would not satisfy the report's definition of altruism. Insofar as the scheme produces an expectation of the reward, it stands diametrical to promoting an 'altruistic perspective'. My minimal goal in this article is to argue that altruism is not motivationally compatible with reward as an incentive for donation. My broader goal is to argue that if a financial reward is used to incentivize organ donation, then we should recognize that the donation system is no longer aiming to promote altruism. Rewarded donation would not be altruistic but it may be ethical given a persistent organ shortage situation.

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Ecology: Sustainability as Disavowal

This is now Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear, Our Supream Foe in time may much remit His anger. John Milton, 1667 DEFINITIONS AND IMPLICATIONS What exactly is sustainability? This question is no mere philosophical exercise. Over the last decade, the word 'sustainability' has become a compulsively used word to get at some unspecified but ubiquitous notion of an environmentally ethical and conscious way of life. Businesses, cities, neighbourhoods, buildings, and lifestyles can all be praised as 'sustainable' or criticised as 'unsustainable'. Moreover, there are substantial resources and interests behind the word. Governments, businesses, and civil organisations on all scales are investing heavily in pursuit of 'sustainability,' perhaps because they genuinely believe that this pursuit will improve the quality of life, but quite evidently too because they believe it will give them a competitive advantage vis-a-vis their peers, or perhaps even function as a brand with which they can effectively market their activities. This is not to say that 'sustainability' is not also a principle widely appealed to by both radical environmental and global justice movements. But what makes 'sustainability' interesting and worthy of analysis is precisely its ability to be simultaneously appropriated by corporate and governmental sectors. My home university, for example, recently elected to make 'sustainability' a central feature of its mission, not least because it had received an extraordinarily large grant from a local foundation to do so. At a recent conference funded by this very grant on 'Sustainability and the Humanities', many scholars proposed that our critical ecological insights, goals or visions are in fact better captured by other words, such as restoration, responsibility, or partnership. Yet one cannot but be struck by the fact that neither the local foundation nor the university would have for a single minute considered funding a program on 'Restoration and the Humanities' or 'Responsibility and the Humanities'. What is it about 'sustainability' that enables the word to mobilise wealth and power so effectively? What does it say that this particular word, as opposed to any other, expresses the ecological hopes and fears of so diverse and typically Thinkers ranging from Friedrich Nietzsche to Raymond Williams remind us that the present value of words--their connotative tensions and hidden resonance--emerges in striking ways when we revisit their lexical histories and etymologies. (1) 'Sustainability' is often traced back by its advocates to the 1987 Brundtland Report's definition of 'sustainable development' as 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. (2) And indeed, if one understands 'sustainability' to designate the quality of 'forms of human economic activity and culture that do not lead to environmental degradation, especially avoiding the long-term depletion of natural resources', then the Oxford English Dictionary can confirm that this meaning does not date much further back than 1980, or perhaps to the 1970s if we consider certain limited references to 'sustainable growth'. (3) However, the verb 'sustain' upon which the contemporary notion of 'sustainability' depends, reaches all the way back to Old English, where one finds several meanings that remain active and relevant. The most expected of these meanings in the OED is to 'cause to continue in a certain state; to keep or maintain at the proper level or standard', a sense that straightforwardly suggests our ecological appropriation of the word. However, to 'sustain' has at least two other clusters of meanings that bear interestingly on what the word has become in the twenty-first century. Firstly, 'sustain' can mean to 'uphold the validity or rightfulness of; to support as valid, sound, correct, true, or just'. (4) We still use this sense of the word when, for example, in juridical contexts we speak of 'sustaining' an argument. …

‘Impartial’ Use of Force in United Nations Peacekeeping

This article explains how the idea of ‘impartial’ use of force by peacekeepers, first proposed in the Brahimi Report of 2000, has been translated into practice. It first links the report's definition of impartiality to mandates of post-Brahimi operations to identify what impartiality has come to mean in peacekeeping mandates. It argues specifically that impartiality has encompassed two different components of robust mandate implementation and humanitarian protection and that the former has been prioritized over the latter. It then evaluates these two components in the light of peacekeeping experiences in Sierra Leone and Haiti.

MEANINGS &amp; MOTIVES Experts Debating Tobacco Addiction

Over the last 50 years, tobacco has been excluded from and then included in the category of addictive substances. We investigated influences on these opposing definitions and their application in expert witness testimony in litigation in the 1990s and 2000s. A scientist with ties to the tobacco industry influenced the selection of a definition of addiction that led to the classification of tobacco as a "habituation" in the 1964 Surgeon General's Advisory Committee report. Tobacco was later defined as addictive in the 1988 surgeon general's report. Expert witnesses for tobacco companies used the 1964 report's definition until Philip Morris Tobacco Company publicly changed its position in 1997 to agree that nicotine was addictive. Expert witnesses for plaintiffs suing the tobacco industry used the 1988 report's definition, arguing that new definitions were superior because of scientific advance. Both sides viewed addiction as an objective entity that could be defined more or less accurately.

Managing Complex Spatial Planning Processes

This article surveys the way in which the idea of sustainable development is integrated into current spatial planning practice by Swedish local authorities. The Brundtland Report's definition of sustainable development calls for all dimensions of sustainability to be considered. Given that today's planning processes deal with large volumes of basic data where epistemological and technical knowledge must be co-ordinated with the actors' values and views of society, this makes spatial planning a very complex process for local planning authorities. The question is whether these ideals of sustainability are manageable in a complex planning situation. Case histories of the implementation process in Sweden indicate that local authorities seek to limit this complexity by dividing the main topics, i.e. ecological, social and economic, into separate planning processes and planning documents. Furthermore, each of the sustainability dimensions seems to be strengthened by social discourses, which can be recognised in the visions of the local plans. The various modes of planning correspond to and are strengthened by these discourses.

PROFESSIONALISM IN PUBLISHING

PROFESSIONALISM IN PUBLISHING

Editorial

Editorial

The State of Research Education in the Public Relations Curriculum

Answering the why question may be the hallmark of the next century's public relations practice. Research, a vital part of the public relations practice to which much lip service has been paid, appears to be an essential element in earning public relations a place on the team as well as advancing as a profession. Increasingly, tomorrow's practitioners are preparing themselves for careers by studying public relations theory and skills in school today. This study's mission was to find out how institutions and those teaching public relations are preparing those practitioners for their projected responsibilities. Literature review In 1951 Stephen Fitzgerald, president of a New York public relations firm, predicted that five or 10 years would pass before public relations practitioners would recognize the importance of public relations and use (Fitzgerald, 1957, p. 145). Consistent with Fitzgerald's comments, the public relations literature contains many references to and its use in professional practice. Nearly 15 years ago, communication researcher James Grunig concluded that research (should advance) the practice and profession (Grunig, 1983, p. 28) and later recommended that undergraduate public relations programs should introduce students to communication theory and (Grunig, 1989, p. 23). Communication theorist John Pavlik identified applied as relevant to practitioners situations and problem-solving (Pavlik, 1987, p. n 30). A number of formal studies document that has gained practitioners' and educators' attention. David Dozier's 1981, 1985 and 1990 practitioner role studies all concluded that use differentiated managers from technicians. Peter Finn's 1982 study of public relations directors at Fortune 1000 companies found more than 80 percent believed would help practice (Finn, 1982, p. 14). Michael Ryan and David Martinson's late 1980s study of practitioners found that two-way communication practice used more than one-way practice (Martinson and Ryan, 1990, p. 383; Martinson and Ryan, 1992, p. 43). Walter Lindenmann's extensive 1988 study of senior practitioners found that 75 percent of practitioners in Fortune 500 companies consider a necessary component of practice (Lindenmann, 1990, p. 7). Hernando Gonzalez and William Adams' 1995 study of senior practitioners concluded that a majority of senior practitioners do use in their work, and Judy VanSlyke Turk and Maria Russell's 1990 study of public relations managers found 62 percent of them said entry-level practitioners should have skills. Educators have joined Grunig in recommending the incorporation of into public relations programs. Gay Wakefield and Laura Perkins Cottone's 1984 study recommended that public relations curricula include courses (Wakefield and Cottone, 1986, p. 2). Three major journalism/mass communication documents have outlined model public relations curriculum: the 1975 Commission on Public Relations Education, the 1981 Commission on Public Relations Education Report, and the 1987 Commission on Undergraduate Public Relations Education. The 1975 report did not specifically include a separate public relations course but did call for some type of introductory survey course. The 1981 report expanded the 1975 report's definition by stating that statistical concepts would be more beneficial if taught in a broader framework of general methodology. The 1987 report was even more concrete in its recommendations about for public relations because it is which provides the raw materials to be evaluated in the planning and policy-formulating stages of public relations management (The Design for Undergraduate Public Relations Education, 1987, p. 15). The recommendation was that public relations be taught as a separate course and include a mixture of theory and application necessary for public relations practice. …