University of Cambridge's Books

Halting Degradation of Natural Resources : Is there a Role for Rural Communities?

Is there a Role for Rural Communities?

By: Faculty of Economics University of Namur Jean-Marie Baland Lecturer,Faculty of Economics and CRED University of Namur Jean-Phillipe Platteau Professor

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Halting Degradation of Natural Resources : Is there a Role for Rural Communities?

Is there a Role for Rural Communities?

By: Faculty of Economics University of Namur Jean-Marie Baland Lecturer,Faculty of Economics and CRED University of Namur Jean-Phillipe Platteau Professor

Part I. Rationale and Scope of Local-Level Resource Management: Lessons from Economic Theory Part II. The Feasibility of Local-Level Resource Managament: An Empirical Assessment

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441

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Oxford University Press, USA

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ISBN 10

0191521817

ISBN 13

9780191521812

The World We Want : How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us

How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us

By: Robert B. Louden Professor of Philosophy University of Southern Maine

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The World We Want : How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us

How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us

By: Robert B. Louden Professor of Philosophy University of Southern Maine

The World We Want compares the future world that Enlightenment intellectuals had hoped for with our own world at present. In what respects do the two worlds differ, and why are they so different? To what extent is and isn't our world the world they wanted, and to what extent do we today still want their world? Unlike previous philosophical critiques and defenses of the Enlightenment, the present study focuses extensively on the relevant historical and empirical record first, by examining carefully what kind of future Enlightenment intellectuals actually hoped for; second, by tracking the different legacies of their central ideals over the past two centuries. But in addition to documenting the significant gap that still exists between Enlightenment ideals and current realities, the author also attempts to show why the ideals of the Enlightenment still elude us. What does our own experience tell us about the appropriateness of these ideals? Which Enlightenment ideals do not fit with human nature? Why is meaningful support for these ideals, particularly within the US, so weak at present? Which of the means that Enlightenment intellectuals advocated for realizing their ideals are inefficacious? Which of their ideals have devolved into distorted versions of themselves when attempts have been made to realize them? How and why, after more than two centuries, have we still failed to realize the most significant Enlightenment ideals? In short, what is dead and what is living in these ideals?

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340

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Oxford University Press, USA

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ISBN 10

0198043376

ISBN 13

9780198043379

Theological Incorrectness : Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

By: D. Jason Slone Assistant Professor of Religious Studies University of Findlay

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Theological Incorrectness : Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

By: D. Jason Slone Assistant Professor of Religious Studies University of Findlay

Ask two religious people one question, and you'll get three answers!" Why do religious people believe what they shouldn't--not what others think they shouldn't believe, but things that don't accord with their own avowed religious beliefs? This engaging book explores this puzzling feature of human behavior. D. Jason Slone terms this phenomenon "theological incorrectness." He demonstrates that it exists because the mind is built it such a way that it's natural for us to think divergent thoughts simultaneously. Human minds are great at coming up with innovative ideas that help them make sense of the world, he says, but those ideas do not always jibe with official religious beliefs. From this fact we derive the important lesson that what we learn from our environment--religious ideas, for example--does not necessarily cause us to behave in ways consistent with that knowledge. Slone presents the latest discoveries from the cognitive science of religion and shows how they help us to understand exactly why it is that religious people do and think things that they shouldn't. He then applies these insights to three case studies. First he looks at why Theravada Buddhists profess that Buddha was just a man but actually worship him as a god. Then he explores why the early Puritan Calvinists, who believed in predestination, acted instead as if humans had free will by, for example, conducting witch-hunts and seeking converts. Finally, he explains why both Christians and Buddhists believe in luck even though the doctrines of Divine Providence and karma suggest there's no such thing. In seeking answers to profound questions about why people behave the way they do, this fascinating book sheds new light on the workings of the human mind and on the complex relationship between cognition and culture.

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176

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Oxford University Press, USA

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ISBN 10

0198037848

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9780198037842

Suffering and Moral Responsibility

By: Jamie Mayerfeld Associate Professor of Political Science University of Washington

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Suffering and Moral Responsibility

By: Jamie Mayerfeld Associate Professor of Political Science University of Washington

In this original study, Jamie Mayerfeld undertakes a careful inquiry into the meaning and moral significance of suffering. Understanding suffering in hedonistic terms as an affliction of feeling, he addresses difficulties associated with its identification and measurement. He then turns to an examination of the duty to relieve suffering: its content, its weight relative to other moral considerations, and the role it should play in our lives. Among the claims defended in the book are that suffering needs to be distinguished from both physical pain and the frustration of desire, that interpersonal comparisons of the intensity of happiness and suffering are possible, that several psychological processes hinder our awareness of other people's suffering, and that the prevention of suffering should often be pursued indirectly. Mayerfeld concludes his discussion by arguing that the reduction of suffering is morally more important than the promotion of happiness, and that most of us greatly underestimate the force of the duty to prevent suffering. As the first systematic book-length inquiry into the moral significance of suffering, Suffering and Moral Responsibility makes an important contribution to moral philosophy and political theory, and will interest specialists in each of these areas.

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254

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Oxford University Press, USA

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ISBN 10

0195348214

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9780195348217

Theorising Modernity

Reflexivity, Environment & Identity in Giddens' Social Theory

By: Martin O'Brien,Sue Penna,Colin Hay

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Theorising Modernity

Reflexivity, Environment & Identity in Giddens' Social Theory

By: Martin O'Brien,Sue Penna,Colin Hay

What is modernity? Do we all experience modernity in the same way? How should we understand contemporary social change? This volume explores questions of modernity through critical engagements with the work of Anthony Giddens, focusing in particular on the relationships between his social theory and political sociology. Three substantive areas - reflexivity, environment and identity - are examined theoretically through the relationships between reflexivity and rationality, life politics and institutional power, and universalism and 'difference'. As well as specifically addressing Giddens' reconstruction of sociology, the contributors also explore a wide variety of critical issues currently occupying centre stage in social theory. These include questions about the character of contemporary societies, the periodisation of social change, the processes of change by which societies are constantly made and remade by people, the relationships between the 'social' and the 'natural', the formation and maintenance of identities and matters of epistemology and methodology in social science. Theorising Modernity will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, modern political thought, social geography and social policy and to social scientists trying to make sense of the modernity debate. Martin O'Brien is Research at the University of Derby. Sue Penna is a Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. Colin Hay is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), a Visiting Fellow of the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) and Research Affiliate of the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University (US).

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241

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Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1317884175

ISBN 13

9781317884170

The Great Ice Age

Climate Change and Life

By: J.A. Chapman,S.A. all at The Open University Drury,R.C.L. Wilson

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The Great Ice Age

Climate Change and Life

By: J.A. Chapman,S.A. all at The Open University Drury,R.C.L. Wilson

The Great Ice Age documents and explains the natural climatic and palaeoecologic changes that have occurred during the past 2.6 million years, outlining the emergence and global impact of our species during this period. Exploring a wide range of records of climate change, the authors demonstrate the interconnectivity of the components of the Earths climate system, show how the evidence for such change is obtained, and explain some of the problems in collecting and dating proxy climate data. One of the most dramatic aspects of humanity's rise is that it coincided with the beginnings of major environmental changes and a mass extinction that has the pace, and maybe magnitude, of those in the far-off past that stemmed from climate, geological and occasionally extraterrestrial events. This book reveals that anthropogenic effects on the world are not merely modern matters but date back perhaps a million years or more.

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292

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Routledge

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ISBN 10

1134640323

ISBN 13

9781134640324

Natural Moralities : A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

By: Department of Philosophy Duke University David B. Wong Professor and Chair

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Natural Moralities : A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

By: Department of Philosophy Duke University David B. Wong Professor and Chair

David B. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities, moralities that exist across different traditions and cultures, all of which address facets of the same problem: how we are to live well together. Wong examines a wide array of positions and texts within the Western canon as well as in Chinese philosophy, and draws on philosophy, psychology, evolutionary theory, history, and literature, to make a case for the importance of pluralism in moral life, and to establish the virtues of acceptance and accommodation. Wong's point is that there is no single value or principle or ordering of values and principles that offers a uniquely true path for human living, but variations according to different contexts that carry within them a common core of human values. We should thus be modest about our own morality, learn from other approaches, and accommodate different practices in our pluralistic society.

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313

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Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

019804156X

ISBN 13

9780198041566

Forging Alberta's Constitutional Framework

By: Richard Connors,John M. Law,University of Alberta. Centre for Constitutional Studies

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Forging Alberta's Constitutional Framework

By: Richard Connors,John M. Law,University of Alberta. Centre for Constitutional Studies

Forging Alberta’s Constitutional Framework analyzes the principal events and processes that precipitated the emergence and formation of the law and legal culture of Alberta from the foundation of the Hudson’s Bay in 1670 until the eve of the centenary of the Province in 2005. The formation of Alberta’s constitution and legal institutions was by no means a simple process by which English and Canadian law was imposed upon a receptive and passive population. Challenges to authority, latent lawlessness, interaction between indigenous and settler societies, periods (pre- and post-1905) of jurisdictional confusion, and demands for individual, group, and provincial rights and recognitions are as much part of Alberta’s legal history as the heroic and mythic images of an emergent and orderly Canadian west patrolled from the outset by red coated mounted police and peopled by peaceful and law-abiding subjects of the Crown. Papers focus on the development of criminal law in the Canadian west in the nineteenth century; the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement of 1930; the National Energy Program of the 1980s; Federal-Provincial relations; and the role and responsibilities of the offices of Justices of the Peace and of the Lieutenant-Governor; and the legacies of the Lougheed and Klein governments.

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575

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University of Alberta

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ISBN 10

0888644574

ISBN 13

9780888644572

Language and Literacy in Social Practice

A Reader

By: Open University

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Language and Literacy in Social Practice

A Reader

By: Open University

Compiled for use in the Open University MA course E825. The 15 articles sample the ideas over the past decade on the importance of social factors in language and literacy development. They include theoretical and ethnographic accounts, cross-cultural and historical perspectives, and explorations of the political aspects and the discourses within which language and literacy are discussed. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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292

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Multilingual Matters

Published Date

ISBN 10

1853592153

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9781853592157

Constitutional Democracy

By: Dennis C. Mueller Professor of Economics University of Vienna

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Constitutional Democracy

By: Dennis C. Mueller Professor of Economics University of Vienna

Constitutional Democracy systematically examines how the basic constitutional structure of governments affects what they can accomplish. This relationship is especially important at a time when Americans are increasingly disillusioned about government's fundamental ability to reach solutions for domestic problems, and when countries in the former Soviet block and around the world are rewriting their constitutions. Political economist Mueller illuminates the links between the structure of democratic government and the outcomes it achieves by drawing comparisons between the American system and other government systems around the world. Working from the "public choice" perspective in political science, the book analyzes electoral rules, voting rules, federalism, bicameralism, citizenship, and separation of powers. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of political economy.

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398

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Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195349393

ISBN 13

9780195349399

Perfectionism

By: Thomas Hurka Professor of Philosophy University of Calgary

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Perfectionism

By: Thomas Hurka Professor of Philosophy University of Calgary

Perfectionism is one of the great moralities of the Western tradition. It holds that certain states of humans, such as knowledge, achievement, and friendship, are good apart from any pleasure they may bring, and that the morally right act is always the one that most promotes these states. Defined more narrowly, perfectionism identifies the human good by reference to human nature: if knowledge and achievement are good, it is because they realize aspects of human nature. This book gives an account of perfectionism, first in the narrower sense, analyzing its central concepts and defending a theory of human nature in which rationality plays a central role. It then uses this theory to construct an elaborate account of the intrinsic value of beliefs and actions that embody rationality, and applies this account to political questions about liberty and equality. The book attempts to formulate the most defensible version of perfectionism, using contemporary analytic techniques. It aims both to regain for perfectionism a central place in contemporary moral debate and to shed light on the writings of classical perfectionists such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and T.H. Green.

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238

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Oxford University Press, USA

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ISBN 10

0198024185

ISBN 13

9780198024187

Book's by University of Cambridge

Halting Degradation of Natural Resources : Is there a Role for Rural Communities?

Halting Degradation of Natural Resources : Is there a Role for Rural Communities?

The World We Want : How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us

The World We Want : How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Elude Us

Theological Incorrectness : Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

Theological Incorrectness : Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

Suffering and Moral Responsibility

Suffering and Moral Responsibility

Theorising Modernity

Theorising Modernity

The Great Ice Age

The Great Ice Age

Natural Moralities : A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

Natural Moralities : A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

Forging Alberta's Constitutional Framework

Forging Alberta's Constitutional Framework

Language and Literacy in Social Practice

Language and Literacy in Social Practice

Constitutional Democracy

Constitutional Democracy

Perfectionism

Perfectionism

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