Carbon criminals

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Rob White
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Corporate Sector ◽  
Corporate Advertising ◽  
Class Power ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Prevailing View

This chapter focuses on corporate harm. The problem with trying to tackle corporate harm is that virtually every act of the corporate sector is deemed, in some way or another, to be ‘good for the country’. This ideology of corporate virtue, and the benefits of business for the common good, is promulgated through extensive corporate advertising campaigns, capitalist blackmail, and aggressive lobbying of government and against opponents. The prevailing view among government and business is that, with few exceptions, the ‘market’ is the best referee when it comes to preventing or stopping current and potential environmental harm. To address corporate harm, then, requires a political understanding of class power and a rejection of formally legal criteria in assessing criminality and harm. As such, it implies conflict over definitions of conduct and activity, over legitimacy of knowledge claims, and over the role and use of state instruments and citizen participation in putting limits on corporate activity.

scholarly journals Public intellectual as an educational project

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-239
Author(s):  
Victoria Shamrai
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Internal Contradiction ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The Common ◽  
Global World

The article reveals the role of education in ensuring the existence of a contemporary democratic system. Democratic governance is viewed through the prism of the crisis of representative democracy that arises in global world. The focus of the crisis forms a crisis of citizen participation in democratic governance. Among the various scenarios for overcoming this crisis, the emphasis is on a model of deliberative (“discussing”) democracy. Accordingly, a key role in the productive functioning of contemporary democracy belongs to public discourse. Public discourse has an internal contradiction. Its participants are guided by their own interests, but the productivity of the discourse is achieved only if it is subject to the requirements of the common good. Five criteria of the authenticity of the discourse that make it aimed at the common good are highlighted. The medium of discourse that ensures its authenticity is a public intellectual. It is proved that the main vocation of education in the contemporary democratic system is the production of a public intellectual as an effective social character. In this process, a key role belongs to humanitarian education, respectively organized.

scholarly journals Being a ‘citizen’ in the smart city: Up and down the scaffold of smart citizen participation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Cardullo ◽  
Rob Kitchin
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Urban Issues

This paper critically appraises citizens’ participation in the smart city. Reacting to critiques that the smart city is overly technocratic and instrumental, companies and cities have reframed their initiatives as ‘citizen-centric’. However, what ‘citizen-centric’ means in practice is rarely articulated. We draw on and extend Sherry Arnstein’s seminal work on participation in planning and renewal programmes to create the ‘Scaffold of Smart Citizen Participation’ – a conceptual tool to unpack the diverse ways in which the smart city frames citizens. We then use this scaffold to measure smart citizen inclusion, participation, and empowerment in smart city initiatives in Dublin, Ireland. Our analysis illustrates how most ‘citizen-centric’ smart city initiatives are rooted in stewardship, civic paternalism, and a neoliberal conception of citizenship that prioritizes consumption choice and individual autonomy within a framework of state and corporate defined constraints that prioritize market-led solutions to urban issues, rather than being grounded in civil, social and political rights and the common good. We conclude that significant normative work is required to rethink ‘smart citizens’ and ‘smart citizenship’ and to remake smart cities if they are to truly become ‘citizen-centric’.

scholarly journals Integral Citizen Observatory (ICO) Los Cabos: a new citizen participation organization for governing the common good

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-259
Author(s):  
Gloria Ostos Mota
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Agenda 2030 ◽  
The Common

Desde una aproximación neoinstitucionalista presentamos el OCI Los Cabos como una nueva organización para la participación ciudadana; según la clasificación de North, es un nuevo cuerpo político, que enfrentando los mismos retos para su autogobierno que Ostrom define para otras organizaciones en El Gobierno de los Bienes Comunes, propone además una nueva institución, el estándar internacional ISO 18091, para la gestión de calidad de los gobiernos locales, con el objetivo de promover la eficiencia y la participación ciudadana en el gobierno del bien común local, y global, según la Agenda 2030. En esta interacción compleja entre organizaciones (OCI Los Cabos) y organismos (gobierno local) con las viejas y nuevas instituciones se requiere de una participación ciudadana consciente y competente que desarrollando una inteligencia política colectiva contribuirá, sin duda, a un cambio institucional hacia una mejor gobernanza local global.

On everyday academic research

2017 ◽  
pp. 98-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Tirole
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Research Quality ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
The Common ◽  
Verification Of Models ◽  
Science And Research

In the fourth chapter of the book “The economy of the common good”, the nature of economics as a science and research practices in their theoretical and empirical aspects are discussed. The author considers the processes of modeling, empirical verification of models and evaluation of research quality. In addition, the features of economic cognition and the role of mathematics in economic research are analyzed, including the example of relevant research in game theory and information theory.

Vickers Hot Springs

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Common Property ◽  
Hot Springs ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Common Property Resource ◽  
Resource Conflict ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The Common

Vickers Hot Springs is located near the rural Southern California town of Ojai, and local residents have long enjoyed soaking in the sulfuric pools. But as knowledge of the springs spread, the area saw increases in fights, traffic, burglaries, and drug use. In response, two residents purchased the land and committed to restore the property while allowing limited public access, subsequently generating a great deal of controversy within the community. Privatizing Vickers Hot Springs follows the archetypical lesson of Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Hardin stated that the problem for common-pool resources was that a finite amount of services are demanded by a potentially infinite number of users, who have little to gain by sacrificing for the common good. But Hardin's theory does not always apply. Many communities have come together to manage resources, often without government oversight. Thus, the question is not whether or not Hardin's theory is accurate, but rather “under what conditions it is correct and when it makes the wrong predictions.” Case studies provide nuance to the broad brushstrokes of a theory, and whether Hardin's parable is applicable depends on the particularities of the common property resource conflict. Employing the frameworks established by Hardin, Dietz et al., and Ostrom, this paper examines the management of Vickers Hot Springs within its broader social, ecological, and political context, asking whether the particular circumstances of this resource use conflict made privatization the most predictable outcome.

The European Guilds

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Women Migrants ◽  
Work Skills ◽  
The Common ◽  
Economic Reasoning ◽  
European Economies

Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? Analyzing thousands of guilds that dominated European economies from 1000 to 1880, this book uses vivid examples and clear economic reasoning to answer that question. The book features the voices of honourable guild masters, underpaid journeymen, exploited apprentices, shady officials, and outraged customers, and follows the stories of the “vile encroachers”—women, migrants, Jews, gypsies, bastards, and many others—desperate to work but hunted down by the guilds as illicit competitors. It investigates the benefits of guilds but also shines a light on their dark side. Guilds sometimes provided important services, but they also manipulated markets to profit their members. They regulated quality but prevented poor consumers from buying goods cheaply. They fostered work skills but denied apprenticeships to outsiders. They transmitted useful techniques but blocked innovations that posed a threat. Guilds existed widely not because they corrected market failures or served the common good, but because they benefited two powerful groups—guild members and political elites. The book shows how privileged institutions and exclusive networks shape the wider economy—for good or ill.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document