scholarly journals Framing Civil Defence Critique: Swiss Physicians’ Resistance to the Coordinated Medical Services in the 1980s

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-207
Author(s):  
Sibylle Marti
Keyword(s):  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Conscientious Objection ◽  
Medical Services ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Core ◽  
Defence System ◽  
Collective Effort ◽  
Discursive Strategy ◽  
Civil Defence ◽  
National Defence

AbstractThe Coordinated Medical Services, an emblematic organisation of Switzerland’s total national defence system, were operational at the beginning of the 1980s. Through the Coordinated Medical Services, Swiss authorities propagated a sociotechnical imaginary the core of which was that Switzerland was able to survive a nuclear war through a huge collective effort. This vision faced severe criticism, in particular, from members of the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (PSR/IPPNW Switzerland). The chapter sheds light on their resistive actions, including conscientious objection, as well as on their effective discursive strategy of subjectivisation centring around the figure of the conscientious physician. This resistance contributed to a growing civil defence criticism that challenged the Swiss total national defence imaginary.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Ned Dobos
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
The Core ◽  
Defence System ◽  
National Defence

Whether or not the costs of a military establishment are worth bearing will depend on, among other things, the availability of alternative arrangements for national defence. Gene Sharp spent his career advocating for what he called a ‘post-military’ civilian-based defence system. It would perform the core functions currently entrusted to armed forces, including national defence against external aggression, but it would rely on non-violent means and methods—the very same that citizens might employ to depose a local dictator. Sharp envisaged a world in which the energies and resources currently spent on militaries would be redirected into these radically different-looking defence institutions. He called this process ‘trans-armament’, as opposed to disarmament, to emphasize that it would not involve throwing our weapons down, but rather replacing them with other (in Sharp’s estimation, better) ones. The epilogue examines Sharp’s proposal.

scholarly journals Normalising Nuclear War: Narrative Scenarios, Imaginative Geographies and Sites of Leisure in 1950s Britain

2021 ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hogg
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Public Representation ◽  
Sociotechnical Imaginaries ◽  
Imaginative Geographies ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Civil Defence

AbstractThis chapter offers an interpretation of British regional civil defence activities in the 1950s. I argue that the persistent social impact of nationwide sociotechnical imaginaries of nuclear weapons cannot be fully understood without considering the localised social, geographical and discursive contexts in which civil defence was located and enacted. This chapter traces the ways in which a wider (officially maintained) sociotechnical imaginary appears to have been embedded in and intertwined with these localised contexts. After discussing the bespoke narrative scenarios created to frame civil defence exercises and offering analysis of their public representation, I focus on sites of leisure and forms of civic engagement linked to civil defence activity. Lastly, I turn to imaginative geographies to explore how sociotechnical imaginaries became localised in this era.

An Investigation of ISO 26000 and Social Responsibility Practices Applied in IT Companies

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelos Zompras ◽  
Kerstin Siakas
Keyword(s):  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Iso 26000 ◽  
Community Environment ◽  
The Core ◽  
Corporate Websites ◽  
The Social ◽  
Core Subjects ◽  
Demand Information ◽  
Primary Focus

Social Responsibility (SR) concerns the way in which organizations achieve their goals. This paper focuses on the overview of the SR as well as the endpoint of the continuous development of SR, the ISO 26000 standard and its core subjects. The aims are to give Information Technology (IT) professionals a better understanding of how to identify the core subjects of ISO 26000 relevant for their organizations and thus behave more responsible by taking actions towards sustainability. As stakeholders demand information and transparency from companies, it is imperative for companies them to report their environmental, economic, and social impact on the community. This paper examines the social responsibility reports, published from corporate websites of some the top IT companies in order to identify the issues that IT companies deal with, as well as in which issues related to the core subject of ISO 26000, they primary focus. The rest of the paper provides an overview on how IT companies can shift towards social responsibility and how they can integrate practices and technologies that benefit community, environment and stakeholders.

Urban civil defence: imagining, constructing and performing nuclear war in Aarhus

Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Rosanna Farbøl
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Civil Defence ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Catastrophe

Abstract During the Cold War, cities were seen as likely targets of modern total warfare and systems of civil defence were created to protect cities and their inhabitants. Yet existing civil defence histories have focused little on the specifically urban aspect, and urban historians likewise have paid civil defence little attention. Using Aarhus, Denmark, as a case-study, this article examines civil defence through planning, practices and materiality in a specific urban landscape. By analysing how civil defence was organized, performed and built in Denmark, the article sheds light on the mutual imbrication of urban planning, geography and materiality and local civil defence. I argue that through biopolitics, local civil defence authorities imagineered an idealized survivalist community of city dwellers who would pull together to protect and save their city and that this contributed to taming an incomprehensible, global, nuclear catastrophe into a manageable, localized, urban calamity.

Are nurses ready to take social responsibility for nuclear war avoidance?

1986 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin E. Winder ◽  
Mary A. Stanitis
Keyword(s):  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Nuclear War

Corporate social responsibility within the European sectoral social dialogue

2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malene Nordestgaard ◽  
Judith Kirton-Darling
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Social Dialogue ◽  
The Core ◽  
Social Partners ◽  
Specific Activities ◽  
Corporate Social ◽  
Core Issues

This article considers how European sectoral social partners have tackled and promoted the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), and to what extent their common actions have given CSR a tangible and practical form. After reviewing sectoral social dialogue and trade unions’ attitudes to CSR, the authors report on research into the activities of sectoral social dialogue committees. The research shows that many of the sectoral social dialogue committees, whether they consider themselves to be active or not on CSR, have been grappling with the core issues raised by the concept over a number of years. The development of the European institutional debate on CSR has clearly led to the ‘redefinition’ of activities carried out in the framework of the sectoral social dialogue, in some cases offering new impetus to common actions and broadening the scope of debate, while in other cases offering ‘old wine in new bottles'. This article further analyses the specific activities of the sectoral social dialogue committees in the sugar sector.

scholarly journals Visualizing Term Eigenvector Prominence in a Corporate Social Responsibility Context

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Carlos M Parra ◽  
Monica Tremblay ◽  
Arturo Castellanos
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Corporate Social Responsibility ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
General Motors ◽  
Text Data ◽  
Text Data Mining ◽  
Core Business ◽  
The Core ◽  
Exxon Mobil ◽  
Corporate Social

In this study we develop a simplified technique for helping researchers and analysts visualize the alternative prominence of term eigenvectors obtained after exploring term associations (Term Clusters) while conducting Text Data Mining on a collection to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports. The collection analyzed is comprised of CSR reports produced by 7 US firms (Citi, Coca-Cola, Exxon-Mobil, General Motors, Intel, McDonald’s and Microsoft) in 2004, 2008 and 2012. The analysis is performed by year in order to discern how the prominence of term eigenvectors has evolved for each firm and for different CSR topics. Results indicate that term eigenvectors maintain their prominence when CSR topics are related to the core business of the firm in question.

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