scholarly journals Pressure and Argumentation in Public Controversies

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-227
Author(s):  
Jan Albert Van Laar ◽  
Erik C. W. Krabbe
Keyword(s):  
Public Controversy ◽  
Persuasion Dialogue

When can exerting pressure in a public controversy promote reasonable outcomes, and when is it rather a hindrance? We show how negotiation and persuasion dialogue can be intertwined. Then, we examine in what ways one can in a public controversy exert pressure on others through sanctions or rewards. Finally, we discuss from the viewpoints of persuasion and negotiation whether and, if so, how pressure hinders the achievement of a reasonable outcome.

Religious Freedom in Islam

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Philpott
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The West ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
Muslim Majority

Is Islam hospitable to religious freedom? The question is at the heart of a public controversy over Islam that has raged in the West over the past decade-and-a-half. Religious freedom is important because it promotes democracy and peace and reduces ills like civil war, terrorism, and violence. Religious freedom also is simply a matter of justice—not an exclusively Western principle but rather a universal human right rooted in human nature. The heart of the book confronts the question of Islam and religious freedom through an empirical examination of Muslim-majority countries. From a satellite view, looking at these countries in the aggregate, the book finds that the Muslim world is far less free than the rest of the world. Zooming in more closely on Muslim-majority countries, though, the picture looks more diverse. Some one-fourth of Muslim-majority countries are in fact religiously free. Among the unfree, 40% are repressive because they are governed by a hostile secularism imported from the West, and the other 60% are Islamist. The emergent picture is both honest and hopeful. Amplifying hope are two chapters that identify “seeds of freedom” in the Islamic tradition and that present the Catholic Church’s long road to religious freedom as a promising model for Islam. Another chapter looks at the Arab Uprisings of 2011, arguing that religious freedom explains much about both their broad failure and their isolated success. The book closes with lessons for expanding religious freedom in the Muslim world and the world at large.

The Struggle to Fight a Humane War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sahr Conway-Lanz
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
International Consensus ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Boomerang Effect ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
War Experiences ◽  
War Victims

The Korean War demonstrated the serious problems that the United States had adhering to the new 1949 Geneva Conventions and the severely limited protections that these new treaties provided. The protections for war victims were undermined both by serious gaps in the treaties that failed to provide much safety from bombing to civilians and by US deviations from the agreements in the handling of refugees and prisoners of war. However, Americans did not discard the agreements in the wake of their troubled Korean War experiences. Instead, the war helped to legitimize and lay the foundation for the further internalization of the new laws through their formal implementation, the public controversy they generated, and a boomerang effect of atrocity accusations. Despite failing to provide much protection for Korean War victims, the treaties were part of a broader international consensus-building process that helped to spread humanitarian norms.

The Irish catholic clergy and emigration during the great famine

1947 ◽  
Vol 5 (20) ◽  
pp. 287-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver MacDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
The Catholic Church

The catholic church in Ireland never, as a church, defined for itself an attitude towards emigration. Priests and bishops, when they spoke of emigration, usually spoke as individuals, not as members of their order. The relatively small number who have left any opinions on record were not necessarily the most influential. We cannot be certain that their views represented the feelings of the clergy as a whole. The day to day conversations and advice of ordinary priests, of which we can know little, mere far more influential in this matter than the pastorals or public letters which survive. In the place of a single voice speaking with authority or the steady murmur of unanimity, we can hear only the heterogeneous confusion of a score of voices, some perhaps seriously distorted by the public controversy in which they were raised.

Perception of Traffic Noise Barrier Effectiveness: Public Opinion Survey of Residents Living near I-71

1997 ◽  
Vol 1601 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lloyd A. Herman ◽  
Michael A. Finney ◽  
Craig M. Clum ◽  
E.W. Pinckney
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Department Of Transportation ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Noise Barriers ◽  
Noise Abatement ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Project Area ◽  
Noise Barrier

The completion of the largest Ohio Department of Transportation traffic noise abatement project in 1995 was met with public controversy over the effectiveness of the noise barriers. A public opinion survey was designed to obtain the perceptions of the residents in the project area. In a departure from most surveys of traffic noise barrier effectiveness, the coverage was not limited to the first or second row of houses, but was extended to 800 m on each side of the roadway. It was found that the larger survey area was needed to avoid misleading conclusions. Overall perceptions of noise barrier effectiveness were found to vary with distance from the roadway and with noise barrier configuration.

scholarly journals Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis—An Overview

2005 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Mackie Ogilvie ◽  
Peter R. Braude ◽  
Paul N. Scriven
Keyword(s):  
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis ◽  
Genetic Diagnosis ◽  
Sex Selection ◽  
Hla Typing ◽  
Success Rates ◽  
Aneuploidy Screening ◽  
Reciprocal Translocations ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Polar Bodies ◽  
Monogenic Diseases

Since the early 1990s, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has been expanding in scope and applications. Selection of female embryos to avoid X-linked disease was carried out first by polymerase chain reaction, then by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and an ever-increasing number of tests for monogenic diseases have been developed. Couples with chromosome rearrangements such as Robertsonian and reciprocal translocations form a large referral group for most PGD centers and present a special challenge, due to the large number of genetically unbalanced embryos generated by meiotic segregation. Early protocols used blastomeres biopsied from cleavage-stage embryos; testing of first and second polar bodies is now a routine alternative, and blastocyst biopsy can also be used. More recently, the technology has been harnessed to provide PGD-AS, or aneuploidy screening. FISH probes specific for chromosomes commonly found to be aneuploid in early pregnancy loss are used to test blastomeres for aneuploidy, with the aim of replacing euploid embryos and increasing pregnancy rates in groups of women who have poor IVF success rates. More recent application of PGD to areas such as HLA typing and social sex selection have stoked public controversy and concern, while provoking interesting ethical debates and keeping PGD firmly in the public eye.

Media in crisis: Blowing hot and cold

1982 ◽  
Vol 72 (6B) ◽  
pp. S19-S28
Author(s):  
Ralph H. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
The Other ◽  
World Views ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Earthquake Preparedness ◽  
Scientific World ◽  
Individual Household ◽  
The One ◽  
Organized Interest

abstract A 3-yr content analysis of all items dealing with earthquakes in six major Los Angeles newspapers and a review of television and radio treatment of earthquake topics in the same period, coupled with periodic surveys of popular understanding and attitudes toward the earthquake threat following announcement of the southern California uplift (Palmdale Bulge), lead to the identification of four media problems that contributed to the often erratic treatment of earthquake threat. First is the problem of newsworthiness, determining when and how to feature discussions of the continuing earthquake threat in the absence of either dramatic events or mobilized public controversy. Second is the problem of finding sources to provide a steady flow of material for use in preparing news items, in the absence of well-organized interest groups, especially those concerned with individual, household, and neighborhood earthquake preparedness. Third is the dilemma of how to balance the needs for alarm and reassurance, shocking people out of lethargy into action on the one hand versus trying to minimize unproductive anxiety and community disruption on the other hand. The fourth problem is communicating science when nonscientific world views are prevalent and merged to the point of confusion with scientific world views in popular thinking.

Modeling the Evaluation Process in a Public Controversy

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 651-679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl-Emanuel Dionne ◽  
Chantale Mailhot ◽  
Ann Langley
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Orders Of Worth ◽  
Major Increase ◽  
Over Time

Public controversies have attracted increasing attention in the organization studies literature. They emerge when critical issues are not defined and understood in the same way by different stakeholders, influencing the way they evaluate the worth of other actors, objects, and situations. In this paper, we show how the “orders of worth” perspective of Boltanski and Thévenot may throw light on the evolution of an evaluation process occurring during a public controversy. In particular, we study the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012 that followed a proposed major increase in higher education tuition fees. We conducted an in-depth case study based on media coverage of the actions and discourses of the major actors to examine how objects and actions associated with a controversy are successively defined, redefined, and evaluated over time through a series of tests of worth. Our article contributes to the organizational literature on public controversies by drawing attention to the role of six types of evaluative moves in situations of controversy, and by offering an abductively developed model for understanding the evaluation process as it evolves over time. We suggest that actors, through these evaluative moves, may displace the object of a test, and therefore the foci for evaluation, through actions intended to bolster their positions.

The Surgical Elimination of Violence? Conflicting Attitudes towards Technology and Science during the Psychosurgery Controversy of the 1970s

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian P. Casey
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Violent Behavior ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Community Activists ◽  
Attitudes Towards Technology ◽  
Brain Operations ◽  
The One ◽  
Psychiatric Establishment

ArgumentIn the 1970s a public controversy erupted over the proposed use of brain operations to curtail violent behavior. Civil libertarians, civil rights and community activists, leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement, and some U.S. Congressmen charged psychosurgeons and the National Institute of Mental Health, with furthering a political project: the suppression of dissent. Several government-sponsored investigations into psychosurgery rebutted this charge and led to an official qualified endorsement of the practice while calling attention to the need for more “scientific” understanding and better ethical safeguards. This paper argues that the psychosurgery debate of the 1970s was more than a power struggle between members of the public and the psychiatric establishment. The debate represented a clash between a postmodern skepticism about science and renewed focus on ultimate ends, on the one hand, and a modern faith in standards and procedures, a preoccupation with means, on the other. These diverging commitments made the dispute ultimately irresolvable.

At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930–1947

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Market Liberalism ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTIt is often suggested that the earliest theorists of neo-liberalism first entered public controversy in the 1930s and 1940s to dispel the illusion that the welfare state represented a stable middle way between capitalism and socialism. This article argues that this is an anachronistic account of the origins of neo-liberalism, since the earliest exponents of neo-liberal doctrine focused on socialist central planning rather than the welfare state as their chief adversary and even sought to accommodate certain elements of the welfare state agenda within their market liberalism. In their early work, neo-liberal theorists were suspicious of nineteenth-century liberalism and capitalism; emphasized the value commitments that they shared with progressive liberals and socialists; and endorsed significant state regulation and redistribution as essential to the maintenance of a free society. Neo-liberals of the 1930s and 1940s therefore believed that the legitimation of the market, and the individual liberty best secured by the market, had to be accomplished via an expansion of state capacity and a clear admission that earlier market liberals had been wrong to advocate laissez-faire.

Prodigal Sons and Daughters?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Kselman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Paradoxical Situation ◽  
The Press

This chapter portrays several prominent Jewish converts to Catholicism, whose stories troubled the Jewish community of France in the first half of the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on Alphonse and Théodore Ratisbonne, from a banking family in Strasbourg, who founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a women’s order dedicated to the conversion of Jews. The aggressive proselytism of the Congregation in the 1840s generated public controversy about religious freedom and conversion. Hostile exchanges in the press over the work of the Congregation led to heightened tension between Catholics and Jews and a paradoxical situation in which greater religious liberty was accompanied by a stricter enforcement of religious boundaries.

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