Building on a Long Needed Seminal Contribution

Though flattered by the invitation to comment on Laczniak and Shultz's seminal piece, the author did not feel qualified to evaluate either the specifics of the arguments advanced or the conclusions reached. What they said was essentially accepted as a given though the case was made for an accompanying, more reader friendly version of their material. That being so, and after some minor editorial observations are made, much of the remainder of this Commentary focuses on two related issues that seemed especially relevant:(1) Socially Responsible Marketing's role, along with that of Socially Responsible Consumption and Socially Responsible Public policy, both in and of themselves and within a micromarketing Utopia and (2) the fact that after years of relative neglect the concept of macromarketing management seems finally on its way to being resurrected. Four examples of how the complexities of Socially Responsible Marketing could be highlighted using a controversies approach are then presented.

Ethnographies of Organized Crime

This chapter discusses how the ethnographic method has been used to study organized crime (OC). The first part defines OC, the mafia, and ethnography. The second section reviews early field studies, and the third focuses on the seminal contribution by W.F. Whyte, Street Corner Society (1943/1993). Whyte has set the model for subsequent ethnographies of OC and the mafia as involving (1) extensive periods in the field, (2) a project that is independent of authorities, (3) developing an intimate knowledge of the place or an organization, (4) the observation of interactions, and (5) a concern for the validity and the reliability of the data collected, including the impact of the ethnographer’s position on the information gathered. The fourth section offers a selective review of subsequent ethnographies of OC which are compared and contrasted with Street Corner Society. The final section discusses risk, the use of official data, the issue of anonymity, “rapid ethnographies,” and the limitations of fieldwork.

A probabilistic numerical method for a class of mean field games

The Mean Field Games PDEs system is at the heart of the Mean Field Games theory initiated by [J.-M. Lasry and P.-L. Lions, Jeux à champ moyen. I–le cas stationnaire, C. R. Math. 343 (2006) 619–625; J.-M. Lasry and P.-L. Lions, Jeux à champ moyen. II–horizon fini et contrôle optimal, C. R. Math. 343 (2006) 679–684; J.-M. Lasry and P.-L. Lions, Mean field games, Jpn. J. Math. 2 (2007) 229–260] which constitutes a seminal contribution to the modeling and analysis of games with a large number of players. We propose here a numerical method of resolution of such systems based on the construction of a discrete mean field game where the controlled state-variable is a Markov chain approximating the controlled stochastic differential equation [H. Kushner and P. G. Dupuis, Numerical Methods for Stochastic Control Problems in Continuous Time, Stochastic Modeling and Applied Probability, Vol. 24 (Springer Science & Business Media, 2013)]. In particular, existence and uniqueness properties of the discrete MFG are investigated with convergence results under adequate assumptions.

‘Wang’s Paradox’

This chapter, specially written for the 2007 Schilp volume in his honour, revisits Sir Michael Dummett’s seminal contribution to the debates about vagueness in his ipsonymous 1975 paper. The chapter again rejects both the conception of vagueness as any kind of semantic incompleteness and Epistemicism, and critiques Dummett’s own suggestion of Incoherentism, returning again to the governing view and the question of the sense, if any, in which vague expressions should be thought of as governed by semantic rules. The Sorites for phenomenal predicates, ‘looks red’ and its ilk, receives special focus. It is argued that the correct response is that the competent use of these and other vague expressions is, in a certain sense, unprincipled: their vagueness is a phenomenon of reactive judgement unsupported by reasons. This conception enforces Agnosticism about Bivalence and a consequent repudiation of the validity of double negation elimination.

Talent: A contestable, but not contested, concept?

Our target article on ‘Innate talent’ had two objectives, first to acknowledge the 20th anniversary of the seminal contribution by Howe, Davidson and Sloboda (1998) and second, to update this information as it relates to talent in the domain of sport. Many thanks to all the authors that took the time to provide commentaries on our review. Broadly, our target paper focused on 1) whether the concept of innate talent was reasonable and scientifically sound and 2) whether the concept of innate talent had any utility to those working at the coalface of sport science (e.g., coaches, scouts, etc.). All of the commentaries were complimentary to our review, which suggested continued interest in this area (although this was noted as surprising by Hambrick and Burgoyne). We have tried to respond to all of the interesting points raised by the commentaries, but this was not always possible. That said, we grouped our responses under general themes below. Our impression, based on the commentaries, is that innate talent is not a contested concept; in that there appears to be agreement (for the most part) that, ‘this thing exists’. Rather, the concept of innate talent is contestable (Gallie, 1956); that is, there is debate about exactly what it is, the degree of its influence, and how useful the concept of innate talent is.

Liberal Democracies and the Control of Virtue

Following Neal Tate and Vallinder’s hypothesis on the global expansion of judicial power, this chapter draws on Alessandro Pizzorno’s seminal contribution in the late 1990s to provide a historical account of the aforementioned process. The provided account links the ‘due process revolution’ with the growing social demand for norms, as well as the building of the Sozialstaat with the transformation of parliamentary regimes. The historical method is used to identify different trajectories while emphasis is given to the emergence of political parties and their relations with the consolidation of the public sphere in fin de siècle Western, liberal democracies. A final reflection is proposed which claims that current trends towards the politicization of justice cannot be properly understood without reference to the process of judicialization of politics.

Evolutionary mechanisms of choice: Hayekian perspectives on neurophilosophical foundations of neuroeconomics

Hayek’s seminal contribution to theoretical neurosciences, The Sensory Order (1952) remains neglected in current efforts at integrating the neurosciences, psychology and economics. I defend the view that Hayek presents the case for an evolutionary alternative to leading paradigms in the field and look at two in more detail: the good-based model in neuroeconomics and the dual systems approach in behavioural economics. In both cases, essential Hayekian insights remain valid in the context of modern neuroscience, allow for taking account of recent research, and sketch a dynamic and selectionist model of choice.

International Law, COVID-19 and Feminist Engagement with the United Nations Security Council: The End of the Affair?

The gendered implications of COVID-19, in particular in terms of gender-based violence and the gendered division of care work, have secured some prominence, and ignited discussion about prospects for a ‘feminist recovery’. In international law terms, feminist calls for a response to the pandemic have privileged the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), conditioned—I argue—by two decades of the pursuit of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda through the UNSC. The deficiencies of the UNSC response, as characterised by the Resolution 2532 adopted to address the pandemic, manifest yet again the identified deficiencies of the WPS agenda at the UNSC, namely fragmentation, securitisation, efficacy and legitimacy. What Resolution 2532 does bring, however, is new clarity about the underlying reasons for the repeated and enduring nature of these deficiencies at the UNSC. Specifically, the COVID-19 ‘crisis’ is powerful in exposing the deficiencies of the crisis framework in which the UNSC operates. My reflections draw on insights from Hilary Charlesworth’s seminal contribution ‘International Law: A Discipline of Crisis’ to argue that, instead of conceding the ‘crisis’ framework to the pandemic by prioritising the UNSC, a ‘feminist recovery’ must instead follow Charlesworth’s exhortation to refocus on an international law of the everyday.

Article 7 TEU: From ‘Nuclear Option’ to ‘Sisyphean Procedure’?

In December 2017, the EU’s Art 7 TEU, often informally but mistakenly referred to as the EU’s ‘nuclear option’, was activated for the very first time by the European Commission in respect of Poland. A few months later, the same provision was activated by the European Parliament in respect of Hungary. In both instances, the Council was asked to determine, in accordance with Art 7(1) TEU, whether Polish and Hungarian authorities were at risk of breaching the EU’s foundational values. This contribution offers a critical assessment of the practical workings of the Art 7(1) procedure, which, not unlike Art 50 TEU, few thought would ever be activated. The underlying thread of this contribution is Professor Sadurski’s seminal contribution ‘Adding a Bite to a Bark’ in which he offered the first comprehensive account of the genesis and assessment of Art 7 TEU.

“A distant mirror”: Sensemaking in the era of Trump

Sensemaking is an ongoing act of constructing a reality to be interpreted. While numerous articles have explored the notion of sensemaking in organizations, far fewer have examined it through the empirical prism of an individual case of sensemaking, with the notable exception of Weick’s seminal contribution and formulation, “The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster” (1993). In this article, we seek to build on the literature of sensemaking in organizations by offering an analysis of the actions of former Republican Senator Jeff Flake, whose leadership interventions we interpret as efforts at sensemaking in the era of Trump. In this context, we focus on the US Senate as an organ of sensemaking established by the framers of the Constitution to be relied upon in times of disruption, confusion, and chaos—a check on presidential power established by the framers of the US Constitution to provide prospective sensemaking for uncharted waters. In analyzing the case of Jeff Flake as sense-maker, we rely on certain definitions of leadership embedded in the era of post-truth. We conclude that Flake’s actions may be seen as a distant mirror (to quote Tuchman, 1978) of Weick’s treatment of the storied smokejumper Wag Dodge—a sense-maker whose persuasive powers failed him in the moment, only to be viewed in retrospect as the one who paved the way forward toward survival in the midst of a “cosmological episode.”