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Rights Organization (right + organization)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	33%

Selected Abstracts

The Political Activity of Evangelical Clergy in the Election of 2000: A Case Study of Five Denominations

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2003
James L. Guth
This article focuses on the political participation of ministers from five evangelical Protestant denominations that differ in theology, polity, and history. Despite such differences, these clergy respond to political influences in much the same fashion. We find that the standard theories of political participation have varying success in accounting for their political involvement. Sociodemographic explanations provide little help, but psychological engagement with politics has more explanatory power. Professional role orientations are the best predictors of actual participation. And the clergy who see moral reform issues as the most important confronting the country,and who hold conservative views on such issues,are most likely to become engaged. Finally, membership in Christian Right organizations serves to elicit more activity than might occur if ministers were left to internally motivated participation. Despite the emphasis on other contextual variables in some work on clerical politics, we find that communications exposures, congregational influences, and even the support of clerical colleagues have very limited independent effects on political involvement. [source]

Strength in Networks: Employment Rights Organizations and the Problem of Co-Ordination

BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2006
Charles Heckscher
In recent decades, alternative organizations and movements ,,quasi-unions', have emerged to fill gaps in the US system of representation caused by union decline. We examine the record of quasi-unions and find that although they have sometimes helped workers who lack other means of representation, they have significant limitations and are unlikely to replace unions as the primary means of representation. But networks, consisting of sets of diverse actors including unions and quasi-unions, are more promising. They have already shown power in specific campaigns, but they have yet to do so for more sustained strategies. By looking at analogous cases, we identify institutional bases for sustained networks, including shared information platforms, behavioural norms, common mission and governance mechanisms that go well beyond what now exists in labour alliances and campaigns. There are substantial resistances to these network institutions because of the history of fragmentation and autonomy among both unions and quasi-unions; yet we also identify positive potential for network formation. [source]

Sexual Citizenship: Articulating Citizenship, Identity, and the Pursuit of the Good Life in Urban Brazil

POLAR: POLITICAL AND LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW, Issue 1 2008
Tomi Castle
In this article, I examine a citizenship course held by a lesbian rights organization in Campinas, Brazil, and argue that claims for citizenship may go well beyond claims for civil rights and legal recognition and, instead, revolve around full, participatory inclusion in public life. I further argue that social actors who demand full citizenship may at the same time place demands on themselves to become what constitutes, in their view, "ideal citizens," thereby neutralizing, at least in theory, the possibility of exclusion. In probing the understandings of the ideal lesbian citizen that surfaced during the course, including those that connect full citizenship with notions of the "good life," I suggest both that these women are simultaneously capitulating to hegemonic cultural conceptions of propriety, and rewriting those conceptions by refusing the role of marginalized "other" in Brazilian society.[citizenship, identity, sexuality, activism, Brazil] [source]

Cover Picture: Biotechnology Journal 4/2006

BIOTECHNOLOGY JOURNAL, Issue 4 2006
Article first published online: 4 APR 200
Cover illustration: Food is more than a magic word. On this typical market fruit stand we see a fraction of the abundance of food available in the Western world: Apples, apricots, grapefruits, lemons, limes, oranges, pears, pineapples ... In this issue of BTJ you will read how fruit consumption protects against cancer and other diseases, but also about milk production, yoghurt fermentation, potato processing and essential fatty acids. Guest editor Prof. Eisenbrand describes the status and future of Food Biotechnology. In the Forum, a human rights organization writes about Biotech in third world countries. Image copyright: Photodisc Inc./Getty Images. [source]

Rights violations, rumour, and rhetoric: making sense of cannibalism in Mambasa, Ituri (Democratic Republic of Congo)

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 4 2007
Johan Pottier
In January 2003, in the midst of civil war, Mbuti pygmies from Mambasa, Ituri, informed human rights organizations and the media that relatives had been killed, cooked, and eaten by soldiers of the Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo (MLC). Nearly two years later, spectacularly, the accusers withdrew their testimonies. This article tries to make sense of the allegation and subsequent retraction by reviewing how the Congolese print media covered the story. Against the backdrop of turbulent politics and moral crisis, it is argued that ,Cannibalism in Mambasa' needs to be understood first and foremost as a politically driven metaphor of extreme violence and suffering, even though acts of cannibalism cannot be ruled out. Résumé En janvier 2003, en pleine guerre civile dans l'Ituri, des Pygmées Mbuti de Mambasa informèrent les organisations humanitaires et les médias que des membres de leur tribu avaient été tués, cuits et dévorés par les soldats du Mouvement pour la Libération du Congo (MLC). Deux ans plus tard, les accusateurs se rétractaient spectaculairement. Le présent article tente de donner un sens à ces accusations puis aux rétractations, à travers la couverture de cette affaire par la presse congolaise. L'auteur affirme que dans ce contexte de grave crise politique et morale, le « cannibalisme à Mambasa » doit être d'abord, et avant tout, compris comme une métaphore politique de violence et de souffrance extrêmes, bien que l'on ne puisse pas exclure la possibilité que des actes de cannibalisme aient bien été commis. [source]

Dignity in Western Versus in Chinese Cultures: Theoretical Overview and Practical Illustrations

BUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 4 2008
DARYL KOEHN
ABSTRACT Dignity is an important concept in ethics. Human rights organizations justify rights by appealing to human dignity. Prominent politicians have cited the need to protect human dignity and urged the founding of international institutions. The concept of human dignity is often used to evaluate and critique the ethics of select practices. In addition, the idea of dignity is used as a universal principle to ground universalist business ethics. This paper argues that there are substantial differences between the ways in which the West and China construe human dignity. Having documented these major differences, we consider two cases to show how the differences might "cash out" in actual business practice. Instead of relying upon a nonexistent universal concept of human dignity, we suggest that it is respectful and sound to seek to identify the many goods (teamwork, initiative, autonomy, respect for elders) that differing parties see at play in the case at hand and then to try to come up with ways to realize as many of these goods as possible. [source]