EDITORIAL : A research priority for biodiversity conservation

Conservation biology emerged as a scientific discipline in the mid-1980s with the explicit practical goal of conserving species and habitats. The term ‘biodiversity’ was coined soon after, apparently at some time during the organization of the September 1986 National Forum on Biodiversity held by the US National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution. The science of conservation biology was quickly taken up. Journals proliferated and textbooks soon followed. Laboratories within university biology and ecology departments specialized in conservation biology. Along with a great many other young biologists and ecologists, I climbed the moral high ground and set about research to help change the future by discovering how to protect biodiversity.

Humanizing Refugee Research in a Turbulent World

This essay adopts a critical perspective of the idea of humanizing refugee research. It argues that much social scientific research is intrinsically dehumanizing, as it simplifies and reduces human experience to categories and models that are amenable to analysis. Attempts to humanize research may productively challenge and unsettle powerful and dominant hegemonic structures that frame policy and research on forced migration. However, it may replace them with new research frameworks, now imbued authority as representing more authentic or real-life experiences. Rather than claiming the moral high ground of humanizing research, the more limited, and perhaps more honest, ambition should be to recognize the inevitable dehumanization embedded in refugee research and seek to dehumanize differently.

The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder

Beginning in the nineteenth century with Anthony Comstock, America's 'censor in chief,' The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder explores how censors operate and why they wore out their welcome in society at large. This book explains how the same tactics were tried and eventually failed in the twentieth century, with efforts to censor music, comic books, television, and other forms of popular entertainment. The historic examples illustrate not just the mindset and tactics of censors, but why they are the ultimate counterculture warriors and why, in free societies, censors never occupy the moral high ground. This book is for anyone who wants to know more about why freedom of speech is important and how protections for free expression became part of the American identity.

CART NARCS AND THE ENGINEERING OF SOCIAL SHAMING AS ENTERTAINMENT

With around 160 videos, 160,000 subscribers, and 18 million views, Cart Narcs is an “elite” YouTube channel. The typical Cart Narcs YouTube video is framed around the idea of shaming people who do not return their shopping carts. The eponymous Narc, Agent Sebastian, patrols grocery store parking lots looking for miscreants to confront and film. When he spots a target, he runs towards them making siren noises. "Cart Narcs!" he shouts. "That's not where the cart goes!" While seemingly related to established entertainment genres featuring real people in everyday situations and to prank videos, we identify significant features in Cart Narcs videos that distinguish them: the lack of a debrief; the positioning of the Cart Narc as the "nice guy" in the interaction; and the Cart Narc’s claim to the moral high ground. These features each remove a redemptive moment present in analogous types of content, resulting in a communicative interaction engineered to anger people. We ask how Agent Sebastian produces such a powerful emotional response to his seemingly innocent request that people return their shopping cart and what the logic of this form of media content might signify. Cart Narcs is a revealing case study in how the economy-driven logic of participation produces undesirable types of content when it overwhelms or wholly replaces social and aesthetic logics. Cart Narcs videos are a hybrid genre concoction that trade people's anger for monetized views, cloaked by the pretense of a social mission.

Covid 19 and the China Challenge: Interrogating the Domestic International Nexus in Beijing’s Coronavirus Response

This article considers China’s political manoeuvers between February and October 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to devastate many parts of the world. It argues that the pandemic has exacerbated geopolitical tensions between China, the United States and the West. Consequently, Chinese policy-makers perceive the existence of a broad Western front which seeks to contain its global ambitions, as well as to de-legitimise the rule of the Chinese government domestically. In response, the Chinese government has attempted to shore up its territorial claims while embarking on a global diplomatic offensive to cast itself as a responsible power and at the same time call into question the West’s ability to practice global leadership. Taken together, these narratives have emboldened China to attempt and seize the moral high ground while at the same time undermine Western criticism that it was an uncooperative and opportunistic power that had taken advantage of the pandemic to pursue its own selfish agenda.

Is Russia Fascist?

In Is Russia Fascist? This book argues that the charge of “fascism” has become a strategic narrative of the current world order. Vladimir Putin's regime has increasingly been accused of embracing fascism, supposedly evidenced by Russia's annexation of Crimea, its historical revisionism, attacks on liberal democratic values, and its support for far-right movements in Europe. But at the same time Russia has branded itself as the world's preeminent antifascist power because of its sacrifices during the Second World War while it has also emphasized how opponents to the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe collaborated with Nazi Germany. This book closely analyzes accusations of fascism toward Russia, soberly assessing both their origins and their accuracy. By labeling ideological opponents as fascist, regardless of their actual values or actions, geopolitical rivals are able to frame their own vision of the world and claim the moral high ground. Through a detailed examination of the Russian domestic scene and the Kremlin's foreign policy rationales, the book disentangles the foundation for, meaning, and validity of accusations of fascism in and around Russia. It shows that the efforts to label opponents as fascist is ultimately an attempt to determine the role of Russia in Europe's future.

Traversing the Romance of a Liberal International Order: The Democratic Peace Thesis and the Regional Security Problematique in South Asia

The democratic peace hypothesis, which is embedded in the neo-Kantian romance of liberal cosmopolitan idealism, was framed in the spatiotemporal context of the Cold War bipolarity. Michael Doyle, who is one of its proponents, invoked the Kantian philosophical abstraction of ‘the perpetual peace’ by providing an intellectual defence and moral high ground for the values of the Liberal Capitalist world. In the post–Cold War setting, Francis Fukuyama re-casted the hypothesis and portrayed the triumph of liberal international order as ‘the end of history’. He attempted to reframe the democratic peace thesis, not only to celebrate liberal values as the normative exemplar for ordering a post–Cold War international system but also to provide an intellectual defence for the newly emerging space for American leadership in a post-hegemonic international system. This intellectual defence of the ethical supremacy of liberal idealism in the world, shaped by the leadership of the USA, was entrenched in the epistemological Imperialism of the West. Besides, it also reflected an exclusionary idea of the history of international relations that was heavily grounded in the chronology of the post-Westphalia international order. Situating ourselves in this framework, this article is an attempt to critique the epistemic foundations of the democratic peace hypothesis, by deconstructing its assertions in the geostrategic context of the regional security architecture in South Asia. The article criticizes the democratic peace thesis, using an analysis of the Kargil conflict (1999) between India and Pakistan, and by placing ourselves in the epistemological framework of the historical turn in international relations.

The Philosopher and the Rooster

Unlike what is often presumed, scientific internationalism persisted through the First World War and its aftermath. Although many scientists aligned themselves with their belligerent nations after 1914, and although Germany and Austria were excluded from international meetings after 1919, the rhetoric celebrating the universally fraternizing nature of science continued as if no such ruptures existed. In this article I argue that this persistence was rooted in the war itself, and particularly in the massive mobilization of academics in wartime propaganda and diplomacy. In these activities they used internationalist arguments and their own supranational status as scientists to defend their countries’ war causes and defame those of the enemy. I illustrate this by following the diplomatic work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. From the start of the war Bergson presented himself as a neutral scientific arbiter, developing a philosophy of the war (based on his work on life and evolution) as a battle of German barbarity versus universal (not just French) civilization. His government took note and sent Bergson on several diplomatic tasks, most notably a secret mission to the United States, early 1917, where he was to speak to President Wilson to persuade him to enter the war on the French side. Bergson’s universalism and his stature as a philosopher should appeal to Wilson’s dislike of partisanship and craving for the moral high ground. After the war, Bergson-style universalism continued and was institutionalized in the League of Nations and its International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation—with Bergson as its president. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.

Commerce with a bit of ethics or ethics with a bit of commerce? The conundrum of British consumer co-operation 1863-1990

Purpose This paper is concerned with the historical record of one business in the UK, which has long laid claim to the moral high ground in the conduct of its affairs – the amalgam of consumer co-operative business organisations, which eventually merged to become the Co-operative Group at the beginning of the 21st century. This paper aims to offer an assessment of the record of the British consumer co-operative movement’s efforts to abide by and promote its values and principles during the first 137 years of its existence (1863 to 1990). Design/methodology/approach The paper is developed using largely qualitative research methods and a variety of sources. These include archival resources and business-historical materials such as committee minutes and correspondence. These materials have been complemented by several semi-structured recorded interviews with senior members of the Co-operative Group. Findings The authors develop several conclusions. First, where ethical choices were possible and no serious commercial interests were impaired, the co-operative movement could and usually did do its best to adhere to its principles. Second, in several instances, commercial interests did frequently trump ideals. Finally, the organisational structure of the movement made it very difficult to ensure that co-operative principles and values were adhered to. Originality/value This paper presents a unique case-study that examines the inherent tension between commerce and ethics in the co-operative movement.

Marching on to Savannah, September–December 1864

This chapter studies the taking of Savannah in 1864. William T. Sherman, the author of the most famous and reviled of American campaigns, here relied entirely on himself. The scheme had been his, he had persuaded his skeptical chiefs to allow him to carry it out, and in doing so, he had taken a strategic gamble in Tennessee. Yet he had brought it off with aplomb. Moral opprobrium was often lavished, especially on the March to the Sea. Much of it is rooted in “the lies” of Confederate propagandists in the very final struggle for the moral high ground in waging this war. Many southern voices can be found in the sources expressing surprise at how well they were treated. However, Sherman’s style of war was far from novel. If we accept the centrality of plunder as a motive for taking part in war, then it follows that the southern pleading concerning the unique horrors to which they were subjected should be rejected. The criticism directed at Sherman is too personalized, as if he bears personal responsibility for every burning and act of vandalism. He has assumed a wholly false diabolic presence in this self-indulgent and self-serving folklore of victimhood. Indeed, the behavior of Sherman’s soldiers differs little from that of Union and Confederate troops on other fronts.