Intolerable Ideologies and the Obligation to Discriminate

In this paper, I argue that businesses bear a pro tanto, negative, moral obligation to refuse to engage in economic relationships with representatives of intolerable ideologies. For example, restaurants should refuse to serve those displaying Nazi symbols. The crux of this argument is the claim that normal economic activity is not a morally neutral activity but rather an exercise of political power. When a business refuses to engage with someone because of their membership in some group, e.g., Black Americans, this is a use of political power to signal that Black Americans are other. Conversely, when businesses engage with someone who is clearly representing an intolerable ideology, this is a use of political power that signals the acceptability of that ideology. Businesses should not do this.

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Post-disaster Development Zones and Dry Ports as Geopolitical Infrastructures in Nepal

Development Zones in Asian Borderlands ◽

10.5117/9789463726238_ch01 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Galen Murton

Keyword(s):

Economic Activity ◽

Political Power ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Economic Expansion ◽

Point Of Departure ◽

Post Disaster ◽

Dry Ports

Economic activity is central to development zones and represents a core dynamic from which a host of other relationships radiate outwards. While economic logics consistently motivate and produce the development of such zones, the resultant activities are always much more than economic. That is, the development of development zones also sets in motion new configurations of political power and socio-spatial domination. Following this line of thinking, this chapter examines the proliferating development of new import-export dry ports in the Nepal-China borderlands to understand how geopolitical relationships are grounded, localised, and reconfigured through infrastructural projects. Taking Nepal’s post-disaster development landscape as both a point of departure and site of inquiry, I show that the making of development zones in post-disaster environments accomplishes interrelated objectives of state-led territorialisation and economic expansion across a range of social and spatial scales.

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Some Common Aspects of the Thought of Seneca and Machiavelli

Renaissance Quarterly ◽

10.2307/2858873 ◽

1968 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 11-23 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Neal Wood

Keyword(s):

Moral Obligation ◽

Political Power ◽

Moral Community ◽

Stoic Philosophy

Seneca's stoic philosophy of the universal moral community of man has little in common with Machiavelli's very practical theory of the ways and means of political power. Ignoring the question of moral obligation, the Florentine often gives to virtù a special prudential meaning apparently quite different in spirit from the Roman's ethical ideal of virtus. That their intellectual perspectives are in opposition is the judgment of modern scholars, who find Seneca's influence on Machiavelli of no great significance. Nevertheless a rereading of Seneca's moral essays and epistles with Machiavelli in mind reveals neglected parallels in their thought almost as striking as the more obvious differences and which suggest the need of a reappraisal of the relation between the two thinkers. What follows, therefore, is an effort to ascertain the nature of the elements common to their respective outlooks.

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Animal Agendas: Conflict over Productive Animals in Twentieth-Century Australian Cities

Society and Animals ◽

10.1163/156853007x169324 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 29-42 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Andrea Gaynor

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Property Values ◽

Urban Spaces ◽

Real Property ◽

Government Regulations ◽

Economic Relationships ◽

Imaginative Geographies ◽

Nonhuman Animals ◽

Imaginative Geography

AbstractOver the course of the twentieth century, the number of productive nonhuman animals (livestock and poultry) in Australian cities declined dramatically. This decline resulted—at least in part—from an imaginative geography, in which productive animals were deemed inappropriate occupants of urban spaces. A class-based prioritization of amenity, privacy, order, and the protection of real property values—as well as a gender order within which animal-keeping was not recognized as a legitimate economic activity for women—shaped this imaginative geography of animals that found its most critical expression in local government regulations. However, there were different imaginative geographies among women and men—mostly those from the working class—whose emotional and economic relationships with productive animals led them to advocate for those animals as legitimate and desirable urban inhabitants.

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Believing Is Seeing: Perspectives on Political Power and Economic Activity in the Malay World 1700–1940

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022463400010535 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 133-146 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Heather Sutherland

Keyword(s):

Social Relationships ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Political Power ◽

European History ◽

Economic Systems ◽

The West ◽

Village Communities ◽

Correct Path ◽

Western Historiography ◽

As If

Western historiography assumes a chronological linear unfolding of progress, and early Western commentators on Asian societies tended to see them as stagnant variants of earlier phases in European history, as feudal despotisms and passive, unchanging village communities. In assessing levels of “development” or “progress” such observers looked for recognizable specialist institutions in politics and the economy; finding few such institutions, they saw only “backwardness”. To most Europeans, trying to make sense of unknown societies and cultures, the alien could only be made comprehensible by identifying it with the familiar. It was then all too easy to proceed as if the unknown was simply a mutant or primitive version of the known. Ideas, social relationships and values which were literally beyond their ken, were often simply not seen at all. In their observations of both political and economic systems, they saw decline, corruption and confusion because they failed to recognize the patterns which structured society. So it seemed natural that the West should dominate such societies and guide them on the correct path.

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“Rollin’ on the River”: what economic and political factors caused restoration of service for the Gee’s Bend public ferry?

Geopolitics under Globalization ◽

10.21511/gg.02(1).2018.06 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 45-54

Author(s):

Terri R. Jett ◽

Paul Gentle

Keyword(s):

African Americans ◽

Economic Activity ◽

Political Power ◽

The Political ◽

Political Factors ◽

Island Type

This article presents a case study on the efforts to reestablish ferry service for an isolated island-type community in Wilcox County, Alabama, known as Gee’s Bend or by the formal name of Boykin. Gee’s Bend, a community of inhabitants who can trace their ancestry to slaves on the antebellum plantation there, depended on the ferry to provide access to the county seat of Camden, the center for social and economic activity. There was no ferry between 1962 and 2006. For forty-four years the ferry did not operate, having had its’ cable deliberately cut so that Gee’s Bend residents could not get to Camden to register to vote. It was an attempt to lessen the political power of the African-Americans in the area. This article explains the key economic and political factors that resulted in restoration of service for the Gee’s Bend ferry.

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