Universalist Theories Research Articles

I Book Review: The Politics of Justice and Human Rights, Southeast Asia and Universalist Theory

I Book Review: The Politics of Justice and Human Rights, Southeast Asia and Universalist Theory

Thinking aloud about trust: a protocol analysis of trust in risk management.

There are two general theories of trust in risk management. One, derived from normative considerations, claims that trust is based on universally applicable factors such as fairness and objectivity. According to the second, social-psychological theory, trust is based on agreement or similarity and is context specific. Although the first theory is normative, it also claims, along with the second, to be a descriptive account of how trust judgments are made. The present study was designed to test the adequacy of these two theories by using a think-aloud procedure to examine the thinking associated with trust judgments in an experimental simulation of a typical risk management context. Contrary to the universalist theory, results supported two hypotheses derived from the social-psychological theory. First, study participants--who read brief policy statements designed to address global climate change--based their trust judgments on specific forms of agreement, ranging from agreement on the importance of the issue to agreement on values inferred from the policy statement. Second, the extent and depth of participants' conscious information processing was negatively related to the level of trust. Disagreement and distrust generated more conscious consideration than agreement and trust. These results provide a more detailed understanding than previously available of how trust in risk management is based on local forms of agreement that vary across people, contexts, and time.

Relexification in a Northern Norwegian dialect?

This paper explores how the process of relexification can contribute to the understanding of the genesis of the new Norwegian dialect of Sappen in Nordreisa. The dialect has emerged in the context of language shift from Finnish to Norwegian, and the dialect syntax has features that might be regarded as products of relexification. One example is declarative main clauses with the finite verb in the third position (V3). The discussion adheres to a more general discussion of approaches to language genesis, where substratist and universalist (and also superstratist) theories often are regarded as contrary to each other. I argue that different theories can contribute to the understanding of different aspects of the same question.

Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale (review)

Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the Evolution of a Fairy Tale. By Catherine Orensiein. New York: Basic Books, 2002. xiii + 289 pp. Catherine Orenstein's book is a delightful venture into the European and North American textual tradition of Little Red Riding Hood. Beginning with Charles Perraults seventeenth-century French text and ending with Matthew Bright's 1996 American movie adaptation, Freeway, Orenstein explores the tales manifestations in jokes, cartoons, post cards, dolls, poetry, short stories, advertising, television, and movies, in addition to academic and popular collections of fairy tales and popularly marketed chapbooks and children's books. Along the way, she draws on eclectic mix of critical and theoretical approaches to the tale (social and historical, psychological, structural, and feminist, as well as the discourse on gender and sexuality) in order to develop a thesis that acknowledges the tale's timeless and qualities, but which ultimately is far more interested in the tale's culturally specific adaptations to time and place. As Orenstein explains, her purpose regarding the figure of Red Riding Hood is to explore some of her multitude of reincarnations, not in search of universal truths, but on the contrary, as evidence of how human truths (5). book is composed of Introduction, Cloaking the Heroine, Epilogue, Under the Cloak, and ten chapters, each focused on a different text or related set of texts and each mapping a cultural change in the representation of Red Riding Hood and the wolf. Each chapter is prefaced with one of the texts (verbal or visual) that will be analyzed in that chapter, a feature of the book that is particularly handy if one is thinking about adopting it for use in a folklore or literary course. first four chapters focus respectively on Charles Perrault's 1697 French text, Little Red Riding Hood, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's 1812 German text, Little Red Cap, Paul Delarue's published version of a French oral tale, The Grandmother's Tale, collected in 1885 by Achille Millien, and a 1590 pamphlet entitled The Trial of Stubbe Peeter, Werewolf. Each text is historically situated. For example, Perrault s text is read in relation to the social history of the French court at Versailles, sexually charged and notorious for its excesses, a playground for seduction in an age of institutionalized chastity (36). Grimms' text is read against the background of German and English, middle-class, Victorian, family values: discipline, piety, primacy of the father in the household and, above all, obedience (55). Set side by side the two texts, Orenstein argues, represent a shift from sexual parable to family fable (56), while also marking a shift in audience from adult to child and from upper to middle class. The Grandmother's provides Orenstein the opportunity to introduce a range of topics: male versus female narrators, printed literary texts versus oral texts, and the representations of Red Riding Hood as passive victim versus active heroine. Also addressed in this chapter are the benefits and detriments of universalist theories and interpretations of the tale (Emile Nourry, Arthur Lang, Erich Fromm, Bruno Bettelheim, Arnold van Gennep, Carl Jung, Otto Rank, Lord Raglan, Joseph Campbell) and of historically situated interpretations (Robert Darnton). At the center of this chapter is a discussion of the significance of the Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index and the historic-geographic method in providing a point from which to critique universalist interpretations that too often have been based solely on a particular text, motif in a particular text or self selected set of texts, as well as to critique methods that treat any given text primarily as historical document, thus losing whatever meaning might exist in its broader folkloric patterns (75). A chapter on The Trial of Stubbe Peeter shifts focus from the figure of Red Riding Hood to the figure of the wolf and its premodern antecedent in the werewolf. …

The Politics of Human Rights in Southeast Asia. By Philip J. Eldridge. London: Routledge, 2002. 240p. $90.00 The Politics of Justice and Human Rights: Southeast Asia and Universalist Theory. By Anthony J. Langlois. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 214p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper

The Politics of Human Rights in Southeast Asia. By Philip J. Eldridge. London: Routledge, 2002. 240p. $90.00 The Politics of Justice and Human Rights: Southeast Asia and Universalist Theory. By Anthony J. Langlois. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 214p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper

Anthony J. Langlois, The Politics of Justice and Human Rights: Southeast Asia and Universalist Theory

Anthony J. Langlois, The Politics of Justice and Human Rights: Southeast Asia and Universalist Theory

Understanding how input matters: verb learning and the footprint of universal grammar

Studies under the heading “syntactic bootstrapping” have demonstrated that syntax guides young children's interpretations during verb learning. We evaluate two hypotheses concerning the origins of syntactic bootstrapping effects. The “universalist” view, holding that syntactic bootstrapping falls out from universal properties of the syntax–semantics mapping, is shown to be superior to the “emergentist” view, which holds that argument structure patterns emerge from a process of categorization and generalization over the input. These theories diverge in their predictions about a language in which syntactic structure is not the most reliable cue to a certain meaning. In Kannada, causative morphology is a better predictor of causative meaning than transitivity is. Hence, the emergentist view predicts that Kannada-speaking children will associate causative morphology (in favor of transitive syntax) with causative meaning. The universalist theory, however, predicts the opposite pattern. Using an act-out task, we found that 3-year-old native speakers of Kannada associate argument number and not morphological form with causativity, supporting the universalist approach.

The politics of justice and human rights: Southeast Asia and universalist theory

This book, first published in 2001, makes a major contribution to the theory and practice of human rights, engaging in particular with the 'Asian values' debates of the 1990s. It is especially concerned with the tension between a universal regime of human rights and its ability to accommodate diversity. Incorporating original fieldwork from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, the book also draws out the significance of Southeast Asian developments for international human rights discourse. The book advances beyond the stalemate that the 'Asian values' debate has reached, developing an intermediary stance between the competing claims of universalism and relativism. Drawing on the work of Cass Sustein and Chantal Mouffe, the theoretical contribution of the book will ensure its interest to readers with an interest in human rights. This book is a definitive account of contemporary political discussions of human rights in Southeast Asia and an important contribution to the development of human rights.

The psychology of emotion and study of the medieval period

‘What I am after is not hard and testable in the narrow empirical ways of a certain style of social science’ warns the legal historian W.I. Miller, a pioneer in the field of the history of emotion. 1 Miller is, in places, dismissive of psychology and the insights it has to offer, yet the psychology of emotion is a growing field and discoveries made in it can be illuminating for medievalists. What follows is an outline of three particular aspects of psychology of emotion and some suggestion of how these might be productive for thinking about emotions in texts of the medieval period. Current psychological theories of emotion fall broadly into two groups: universalist theories or theories of basic emotion, and componential theories. Theories of basic emotion ultimately derive from Darwin. 2 Essentially they argue that the ‘basic emotions’ are common to all members of the human species across different cultures and times and are genetically transmitted. 3 Advocates of componential theories maintain that emotion can be reduced to bundles of different elements. These elements belong to three distinct systems: the physiological or bodily, e.g. turning pale; the cognitive (in effect, thinking and reasoning), e.g. recognising an insult; and the expressive or behavioural, e.g. making a verbal challenge. The ways in which these elements combine to produce recognisable emotions are determined both by social context and by language, and are highly variable. 4 In the 1980s this social constructionist position became dominant, and, in a weak version, remains so in anthropological and historical thinking about emotion. 5

Guidance and justification in particularistic ethics.

This paper argues that, contrary to a common line of criticism followed by scholars such as Helga Kuhse, a particularistic version of virtue ethics properly elaborated, can provide sound moral guidance and a satisfactory account for moral justification of our opinions regarding, for instance, health care practice. In the first part of the paper, three criteria for comparing normative theories with respect to action-guiding power are outlined, and it is argued that the presented particularistic version of virtue ethics actually can provide more guidance than the universalistic theories followed by Kuhse and others. In the second part of the paper it is claimed that universalist normative theories have serious problems accounting for the role that moral principles are supposed to play in the justification, of moral opinions, whereas the present version of virtue ethics accommodates a plausible alternative idea of justification without invoking moral principles or eschewing objectivity.

The Case for Cooperative Territoriality in International Bankruptcy

This manuscript is part of an ongoing debate over the fundamental principles that govern the bankruptcies of multinational companies. Essentially three positions have emerged. Universalists assert that the bankruptcy of a multinational company should take place in the courts of the company's and the law of the home country should govern the distribution. Contractualist Robert K. Rasmussen asserts that the bankruptcy of each constituent entity of the company should take place in the courts of the country selected by that entity in its articles of incorporation and the law of the selected country should govern the distribution. This manuscript argues for a separate bankruptcy proceeding in each country where the multinational has assets. International cooperation should be achieved by agreement among the representatives of the bankruptcy estates, in the shadow of a default rule under which the law of the country where the asset is located would govern the distribution of that asset. Universalism must be rejected because it is not in fact a workable system. Universalist theory depends upon the assumption that each multinational company has an easily recognizable country. But universalists are unable to specify a rule or standard for identification of that home country when the debtor's place of incorporation, headquarters, principal operations, and principal assets are located in different countries, or to specify whether, in the case of a corporate group the home country would be that of the group, or of particular entities within the group. Absent such specification, forum shopping for favorable law would destabilize and destroy the system. Contractualism would be inefficient because (1) the costs of contracting would be huge, (2) debtors would externalize much of their costs by shopping for fora that would deny recovery to tort and other insufficiently adjusting creditors, and (3) the complexity of the system would make it vulnerable to fraud and mistake.

Beyond the Particular and the Universal: D'Alembert's "Discours preliminaire" to the Encyclopedie

Beyond the Particular and the Universal: D’Alembert’s “Discours préliminaire” to the Encyclopédie Claudia Moscovici (bio) In academic circles, the debate between universalists and relativists seems to be as lively today as it was during the Enlightenment, when Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert disagreed about the nature of truth. Although we may be relying upon Enlightenment philosophy to conduct our own current debates about knowledge, the terms of discussion have become more polarized today than they were during the Enlightenment. This essay argues that an important element, namely the middle ground between universalism and relativism, has been left out of contemporary reformulations of Enlightenment thought. Both relativist and universalist theories adopt what I call a “single dialectical” epistemology. 1 According to this paradigm, true knowledge represents the elimination (or negation) of every source of error, social bias, or personal perspective. By contrast, I hope to demonstrate that Enlightenment thought and, particularly, d’Alembert’s “Discours préliminaire” elaborate a more nuanced, “double dialectical” theory of knowledge. 2 As I will explain, a double dialectical process combines the quest for truth with an awareness of human differences and limitations. Let me indicate briefly how contemporary criticism has reduced Enlightenment epistemology to a single dialectical relation between truth and error and, consequently, why we need to reconsider Enlightenment epistemology. On one hand, objectivist theories claim that the producers of knowledge have the cognitive ability to describe the universe as it really is rather than from a personal or anthropocentric perspective. Objectivist epistemologies thus imply that the producers [End Page 383] of knowledge are (or could become) unbiased in their quest for truth. Such theories also assume that rational individuals share a transhistorical, permanent set of standards which enables them to convey knowledge. Objectivist epistemologies are consequently also universalist because they posit one true way of perceiving the world. Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action represents one of the most noteworthy scholarly efforts to defend the universalist legacy of the Enlightenment. To establish the validity of empirical and rational knowldedge, Habermas observes a single dialectical process. In The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas maintains that “a judgment can be objective if it is undertaken on the basis of a transsubjective validity claim that has the same meaning for observers and nonparticipants as it has for the acting subject himself” (emphasis added). 3 I call Habermas’s definition of truth “single dialectical” because the critic represents knowledge as the result of a process of selective negation and incorporation. To reach a transsubjective consensus about the content of truth and the process of acquiring knowledge, a person or community must eliminate all sources of error—such as personal bias, emotional investment, and selfish interests—while concurrently incorporating those methods or facts which have stood the test of time. Universalist scholarship such as that of Habermas not only seeks to preserve the universalist legacy of the Enlightenment, but also reacts against the perceived threat posed by contemporary scholarly movements that attempt to refute universalism and to retrieve the particularist tendencies of Enlightenment thought. 4 Influential critics such as Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard attribute the notions of truth and falsehood to relations of power rather than to objective standards of validity. Relativist theories assert that there are practically an infinite number of acceptable ways of acquiring knowledge. Although some forms of knowledge may gain more cultural value than others, no knowledge is demonstrably superior to others. Foucault has been one of the most thorough critics of universalist Enlightenment epistemology and its contemporary legacy. Nonetheless, I would argue that his theory of knowledge also relies upon a single dialectical model. Like Habermas, Foucault defines truth as the negation of human bias and error. In his famous chapter “Man and His doubles” in The Order of Things, Foucault comments upon the apparent paradox of the human condition. 5 On one hand, he states that humans aspire to objective knowledge. On the other hand, he adds that we remain trapped in a human body and mind that reduce our quest for absolute truth to a limited and fragile knowledge: “Man, in the analytic of finitude, is a strange empirico...

Infancy and Childhood in India: A Critical Review

Empirical studies of childhood in India have been rare. Guided by universalistic theories of child development, developmental psychologists have seldom examined cultural variations in child-rearing patterns with Indian samples. Psychoanalytic studies of Hindu childhood have been influenced by therapeutic observations with segmented middle-class populations that are generally Westernized and educated, inviting a lively debate about the transferability of psychoanalytic individualism to non-Western contexts. Anthropological studies, invariably focused on cultural variation, have not searched for consistent cultural patterns in ethnographic materials on Hindu socialization. Based on fieldwork conducted in a village near Delhi, this article presents one of the first systematic quantitative and ethnographic studies of patterns of child care in Hindu extended families during the preschool years. The findings are discussed in terms of achieving a consensus between developmental, psychoanalytic, and anthropological observations of Indian childhood.

Introduction. Classes grammaticales et créolisation : la syntaxe des langues créoles

Daniel Veronique: Grammatical categories and creolization : creole language syntax Creoles and Pidgins, a source of controversy in linguistic theory, share some properties and, often, analogous sociohistorical circumstances, which, however, do not suffice to assert the existence of a distinct linguistic category. Theories of creole genesis vary in the importance they bestow upon pidginization, creolization, language contact and linguistic creativity. Universalist theories emphasize the role of the bioprogram or of Universal Grammar while other theories insist on the part played by the substratum, the lexifier language or the language acquisition process. The issue of grammatical categories is crucial to various theories of creole genesis, for instance those which favour the substratum or the lexifier. The present issue is devoted to grammatical categories in French Creoles through an analysis of pronouns and adjectives in these languages.

Verse Analysis and the Nature of Creole Discourse

This research applies Verse Analysis to the study of creole languages seeking evidence to support the two principal theories: universalist and sub-stratist theories. Evidence is presented from Hawaii Creole English (HCE), Guyanese Creole, and Japanese. HCE manifests in discourse a possibly universal feature of patterning (i.e., hierarchical grammatico-semantic recurrence), which is shared by Guyanese Creole as well as Chinook Jargon and quite a few Native American languages. On the other hand, HCE also shows an idiosyncratic phenomenon of numbering (i.e., doublets, triplets, quadruplets, etc., in lines and verses), which appears to have been linguistically transferred from Japanese as a substratum. Linguistic data, sociohistorical facts, and a scenario of substratum transfer are presented. This research reinforces a hypothesis that both internal innate properties and external substratal factors need to be taken into account to explain the origin of creole discourse grammar.

Thickening Thin Concepts and Theories: Combining Large N and Small in Comparative Politics

In recent controversies about comparative politics, it often seems as though there are only two approaches: the systematic logical deduction of universalistic theory and the more traditional case studies and small-N comparisons leading more inductively to middle range theory.1 The purpose of this article is to situate large-N quantitative analysis in this controversy. Quantitative analysis has its weaknesses, but they could be counterbalanced by some real strengths in small-N analysis. And quantitative analysis has certain methodological advantages that help compensate for some of the weaknesses of small-N analysis. On the one hand, small-N analysis tends to develop (complex or multidimensional) concepts and theories that are well-suited for description and for making inferences about simple causation on a small scale or in a few cases, but thick concepts and theories are unwieldy in generalizing or rigorously testing complex hypotheses. On the other hand, quantitative analysis is justifiably criticized for its (reductionist or simplistic) concepts and theories, but it is the best method available for testing generalizations, especially generalizations about complex causal relationships. Quantitative analysis has hardly begun to exploit its full potential in assimilating complex concepts and testing complex theories, largely due to data limitations. In order to realize its potential, scholars need to answer two key questions that arise at the intersection of small-N and quantitative analysis. Can thick concepts be translated into the thin format of quantitative data? And can the nuanced, conditional, complex, and contextualized hypotheses of small-N analysis be translated into quantitative models? I argue that the answer to both questions is yes in principle, but that in order to make these approaches complementary in practice we must collect different data and more data and do it more systematically and rigorously.

Communitarianism and Patriotism

The collapse of communism and the transition to a market economy and political democracy in Eastern and Central Europe have been accompanied by an outburst of nationalist and patriotic passions. Most commentators see this as a negative phenomenon, a narrow-minded reaction to the void after a long period in which politics was inspired by ideological excess, or a retreat toward a mythical past when confronted with a highly uncertain future. Others look at it in a more positive way: after all those years of mindless abstractions, should we not welcome this return to concrete, tangible commitments? But of course, especially in the Balkans, nationalism is so tangible that we would rather have a void than this frightening concrete reality. From an ethical point of view, patriotism and nationalism are suspect because most moral philosophers would like authentic ethical rules to be inspired by universalistic schemes of thought. On their view, morality and ethics are rational matters and as such they are threatened by strong emotional attachments. Although I distrust all forms of fanaticism and romanticism, I would like to argue that the communitarian criticism against universalistic ethical and contractarian political theory should be taken seriously. At the same time, I believe that the reference to communitarianism cannot be a permit for irrationalism, the glorification of unquestioned tradition or the creation of scapegoats. In an unmitigated form, neither a strict universalism or contractarianism, nor a myopic communitarianism look very attractive. The former neglects the problem of the motivation of the actors, the latter can be suspected of underestimating or completely ignoring the question of pluralism in contemporary society. Therefore I would plead for an amended communitarianism, and I would like to show that patriotism has some very desirable consequences as well, especially for an individualistic society. But I shall begin with some definitions.

CAN WE SPEAK OF A HIGH COMMITMENT MANAGEMENT ON THE SHOP FLOOR?*

ABSTRACTThe Commitment model à la Walton has been a key element in conceptions of human resource management (HRM). Is there though any evidence of its application to production workers? Drawing on the HRM literature the authors first develop some measures of practices which might be thought to contribute to high commitment management (HCM). Having acquired data on the extent to which organizations adopt these practices the authors then, using latent variable analysis, assess whether there is a common structure underlying it which represents some kind of HCM‐type approach to labour. In so doing they develop a construct to measure HCM relevant to manual workers. Basing the analysis on data from a representative sample of manufacturing plants in the UK, they conclude that HCM is being practised, albeit to a very varying degree.The research also reveals a growth in the use of HCM practices between 1986 and 1990, and that this has been mainly in practices already popular in 1986; hence the increased use of HCM has been more in plants for whom it was relatively insignificant in 1986, rather than a further heightening of its significance in plants for which it was important before. Using multiple regression analysis, the authors are also able to show that organizational factors rather than factors exogenous to the organization are significantly related to both the level of HCM, and its rate of change between 1986 and 1990. of overwhelming importance is the extent of the strategic integration of personnel management. the authors draw out the relevance of the study for the wider debate about HRM. In particular the results add some support for Walton's and Guest's universalistic theories of HCM, as opposed to what have been called matching or contingency theories of HCM, according to which it is only likely to be found in specific contexts where, for example, high quality is important for competitive advantage.

The cultural basis of prosodic modifications to infants and children: a response to Fernald's universalist theory

Fernald and her colleagues have argued for the universality of prosodic modifications in speech addressed to infants (e.g. Fernald, 1987; Fernald, Taeschner, Dunn, Papousek, de Boysson-Bardies & Fukui, 1989). An alternative proposal in Bernstein-Ratner & Pye (1984) and Pye (1986) argues that speech modifications to children are the result of a set of conventions that may vary from culture to culture. This note presents arguments against Fernald and in support of the cultural account of prosodic modifications to infants and children. First, in response to criticisms in Fernald et al., data are presented which defend the conclusion in Bernstein-Ratner & Pye that Quiché mothers show less prosodic modification to children than do mothers in other cultures studied to date. Second, data used to support the universal position in Fernald (1987) on adult identification of infant affective states are reinterpreted and shown to be equally interpretable as the result of a set of culturally transmitted rules.

Reading Asian American Literature: From Necessity to Extravagance

A recent explosion of publishing activity by a wide range of talented writers has placed Asian American literature in the limelight. As the field of Asian American literary studies gains increasing recognition, however, questions of misreading and appropriation inevitably arise. How is the growing body of Asian American works to be read? What holds them together to constitute a tradition? What distinguishes this tradition from the mainstream canon and other minority literatures? In the first comprehensive book on Asian American literature since Elaine Kim's ground- breaking 1982 volume, Sau-ling Wong addresses these issues and explores their implications for the multiculturalist agenda.Wong does so by establishing the intertextuality of Asian American literature through the study of four motifs--food and eating, the Doppelg, nger figure, mobility, and play--in their multiple sociohistorical contexts. Occurring across ethnic subgroup, gender, class, generational, and historical boundaries, these motifs resonate with each other in distinctly Asian American patterns that universalistic theories cannot uncover. Two rhetorical figures from Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Necessity and Extravagance, further unify this original, wide-ranging investigation. Authors studied include Carlos Bulosan, Frank Chin, Ashley Sheun Dunn, David Henry Hwang, Lonny Kaneko, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, David Wong Louie, Darrell Lum, Wing Tek Lum, Toshio Mori, Bharati Mukherjee, Fae Myenne Ng, Bienvenido Santos, Monica Sone, Amy Tan, Yoshiko Uchida, Shawn Wong, Hisaye Yamamoto, and Wakako Yamauchi.