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The hajj has always had far-reaching political ramifications, but today, after a half century of sponsorship and regulation by governments around the world, it is more politicized than ever. In most countries, hajj administration is tainted with favoritism and corruption. All the major pilgrimage programs are explicitly tailored to benefit voting blocks and businesses at home while cultivating prestige and influence abroad. Frequently, pilgrim management is so politicized it subverts the central values of the hajj. Instead of promoting unity and equality, it divides Muslims along every conceivable line–ethnicity, language, class, party, region, sect, gender, and age.

This chapter explores Cicero's handling of two modes of religious self‐promotion by Roman aristocrats in the last centuries of the republic that posed a significant threat to the republican tradition of senatorial government: the ontological elevation of specific humans to divine status; and claims to special divine favouritism. The case studies discuss his eulogy of Pompey in the pro Lege Manilia, as well as his religious self‐promotion in the Catilinarians and his epic poem de Consulatu suo.

One of the more common experiences of the film viewer is that of finding something on the screen funny or humorous. Some of this amusement will be at what I will call transgressive actions, that is, at the kind of events that would, in many other, easily imaginable instances, appropriately bring about very different kinds of responses. This phenomenon is prima facie perplexing, since our default response to wrongdoing does not (nor should it) include amusement. The present paper explores one kind of transgressive comedy – that which invites viewers to laugh with a perpetrator of wrongdoing. My positive claim, developed in Sections 4-6, will be that our favoritism towards certain persons or characters plays a role in some examples of humor at wrongdoings; in particular, I will suggest that it plays a central role in our amusement at the events in the 1940 Howard Hawks film His Girl Friday.

Two Ultimatum Game experiments conducted with the Torguud Mongols and the Kazakhs, people with a traditional pastoral–nomadic culture from Bulgan Sum, Khovd province, Western Mongolia, are reported: the first was an exploratory experiment involving only Torguuds, and the second a full‐fledged study, with ethnicity manipulation in which proposers and responders were of either the same or different ethnicity. On the question of how people from a small, nonindustrialized society perform in the Ultimatum Game (in comparison with western industrialized populations), the results obtained were paradoxical: responders were very reluctant to punish low offers, but proposers were very careful not to offend them, and made offers well above the empirically ascertained Income‐Maximizing Offer. It is argued that this result is consistent with a parallel paradox that Torguuds experience in their daily lives: people are very afraid of reputation loss, but there are no tangible consequences for those perceived to be ‘bad people’. The second result obtained from the study was that the behaviour of proposers and responders was not affected by having the opposing player be a member of a different ethnic group. This result is in conflict with explanations that have been offered for intergroup discrimination by the Social Identity Theory and the Realistic Conflict Theory so the assumptions that have justified explaining in‐group favouritism in ecologically valid groups (such as ethnies) in terms of these theories may need to be revisited.

This chapter addresses how homeless people navigate bureaucracy. It shows how social institutions, in addition to providing needed functions and services, help to construct what it feels like to be homeless. There are six characteristics of a bureaucracy. First, it is courteous but impersonal. The impersonality of the modern bureaucracy was designed in service of fairness and impartiality; it was intended to counter favoritism. Bureaucracy is also run according to written records and it is hierarchical. Another feature of bureaucratic institutions is rules and regulations. Even for those skilled in navigating the bureaucracy, there is something crazy-making about the structures that most homeless must inhabit. So much of one's life circumstances as a homeless person seeking help is a Catch-22, the term coined to describe what bureaucracies do to people. Its formal definition is this: a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.

This chapter indicates how impartialist moral theory can accommodate preferential treatment of friends and loved ones. It initially focuses on the argument of Stephen Toulmin called the “ethics of intimacy” as a counterpart to a particular view of what morality demands in terms of impartiality. “Absolute impartiality” as Toulmin claims, requires “the imposition of uniformity or equality on all relevant cases”, but impartiality in this sense is not a prime ethical demand in all of our relations with others. It also explores issues concerning favoritism or partiality in our treatment of intimates.

A high birth rate among most people meant offspring were spread over a wide age range creating an ‘intermediate generation’ between parents and younger children. Life in middle-class households could be crowded, added to by residential servants, pupils, apprentices, and visitors. Children and young people were expected to share space and possessions. Parents and others used a variety of routines and punishments to manage these large broods. Elder children, particularly girls, helped with and taught the younger. Given the high incidence of serious illness, and high infant and child mortality, religious beliefs were an important source of guidance and solace. Adults favoured some children over others. Youngsters were expected to conform to accepted forms of feminine and masculine behaviour. In the late nineteenth century, middle-class family size gradually declined, fuelling eugenicist fears. By the 1920s large families were looked down on, an attitude that fed class tensions.

This chapter introduces a new approach to measuring bias based on the visual aspects of broadcast news. Unlike the candidates' verbal statements and self-presentation style, the indicators of visual bias employed fall more squarely under the control of editors and producers than candidates and their consultants. In order to explain the persistence of the liberal bias charge against journalism as a political theme, the chapter traces the rise of partisan attacks on the press in recent decades. Accusations aside, questions concerning media favoritism represent a serious challenge to the credibility of the press (and hence the informational basis of democratic decision making) and deserve careful examination. If news workers are skewing coverage, assessments of bias must be able to pinpoint journalistic favoritism and rule out competing explanations, such as campaign orchestration of the news. When the visual packaging of general election news is carefully considered, it becomes clear that the networks have in fact systematically favored one party over another. Contrary to the liberal bias accusation against mainstream media, data shows that visual coverage has consistently favored Republican presidential candidates, while Democrats have endured less favorable treatment in each of the four general election contests examined. The chapter explains how and suggests a few reasons for why this trend exists, including the idea that journalists sometimes unwittingly surrender control over visual portrayals to campaign image handlers.

This chapter builds from the many excellent chapters in this volume to suggest that pathological altruism has its origins in two evolutionarily ancient and adaptive mechanisms: in-group favoritism and self-deception. These two mechanisms have coevolved and can, under the right circumstances, be subjected to Fisherian runaway selection, leading to pathological forms of altruism. But what is pathological and injurious to both the indiscriminate altruist and his victims can be highly beneficial and adaptive to the pathological altruist’s group, as when suicide bombers self-sacrifice in a glorious last act. At this level, our inner pathological altruist is close to the surface, readily triggered by powerful ideologies. Once triggered, pathological altruists sprout like spores, spreading rapidly through the environment, on the path to mass genocides.

Darwinism contributed a theory by which the brutality of nature could be viewed as redemptively generating beneficial outcomes. The significant aspect of inclusive fitness theory is that it not only makes sense of many previously puzzling behaviors but that it also reconceptualizes fitness to entail both progeny and kin. The picture of human nature that thus emerges is one wholly governed by “nepotism and favoritism”. Critics of such conclusions drawn from initial sociobiological applications of kin selection and reciprocal altruism theory have described it as a “slapdash egoism, a natural expression of people's lazy-minded vanity, an armchair game of cops and robbers which saves them the trouble of real inquiry and flatters their self-esteem.”

By examining the Irish context, this chapter presents the favouritism continuum as the system through which racial inequalities, injustices and economic exploitations are proliferated in modern states. It outlines how the system operates through four interrelated structures. First is group favouritism, which ensures some groups are more favoured over others. The second is social acceptance, which determines where groups are placed on the continuum. Third is psychological implicit bias, which operates in racially stratified labour markets in conjunction with the continuum. Here you see how implicit bias produces explicit discrimination and how groups on lower racial strata try to circumvent its negative effect. The last structure comprises human contact – the connectors through which the racial stratification system operates. The chapter concludes by making three key arguments. First, that the favouritism continuum determines the outcome of actors by the position they occupy on the continuum. Secondly, that although racial stratification is restrictive, the outcome is fluid and changeable due to minority agency and individual mobility. Thirdly, the continuum is the machinery which maintains homogeneity in a heterogeneous labour market, thus (re)producing racial inequality.

This concluding chapter argues for a critical race theory in labour market inequality. Racial stratification is a default position ascribed to all citizens, old and new. The way it operates today means that racism will continue to be a permanent fixture in our society unless we deliberately reveal whiteness and white supremacy for what they are: invisible markers and silent affirmative action for Whites. This chapter discusses the limitations of current methods of addressing disparity in outcomes in labour markets across Europe and outlines the benefits, strengths and weaknesses of a CRT approach. It contends that for a deracialised, non-racist analysis and understanding of the labour market, three core elements of CRT become vital: the centrality of race, race consciousness and the voice of colour through counterstorytelling. This chapter reminds readers that racial inequality is not about where people end up but about where they start.

This chapter considers many histories that intersect with and inform that of the eighteenth-century closet. It includes the history of the Turkish hammam, the water closet, the camera obscura, and the museum. It analyzes the multiple strands that make it possible to assemble a lexicon of intimacy that encompasses the evolving connotations and denotations of the word closet along with those of many related terms, such as cabinet, green room, peeping Tom, privy, secretary, seraglio, and vis-à-vis. The chapter also reveals that the histories of the bathing closet and the water closet, though both concerned with cleanliness and plumbing, unfurl across very different timelines and may evoke very different social milieus and cultural associations. It describes the closet prayer's extensive hold over the intimate imagination that is revealed through its depiction as a form of erotic favoritism, as a practice for the privy, and as a source of spiritual insights to be immortalized. It also outlines the recurring international perspectives that situate the rise of British closet culture within larger political dynamics.

Cosmopolitanism has recently been criticized for representing an insufficiently distinctive or insufficiently informative view to make a significant contribution to current debates on global justice. The chapter rejects this argument by analyzing two issues on which cosmopolitanism puts forward a uniquely demanding perspective. The first is the rejection of compatriot favouritism. The second is the idea that cosmopolitan obligations should be understood as obligations of justice, not charity. This entails committing politically to the establishment of a global political authority representing all states and enforcing cosmopolitan obligations in a fair, impartial, and consistent manner. Rejecting this commitment reveals an uneasy philosophical alliance between liberal statists and libertarians. Endorsing it implies favouring a non-concessive view of cosmopoltanism, without IF and without BUT.

This chapter considers the issues of child discipline and favouritism and ‘the rules’ that apply to the relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren. It asks: 1) does the ‘norm of non-interference’ mean that grandparents should hesitate to discipline their grandchildren? 2) do grandparents often ‘spoil’ grandchildren, and do parents object to the grandparents' indulgence and lax discipline? 3) are there rules about reprimanding grandchildren when a parent is present? 4) are grandparents who have been asked to provide regular childcare given free rein to discipline their grandchildren as if they were their own children? 5) do parents feel resentful when they learn that their ex-spouse's parents have reprimanded their child for bad behaviour?

In this chapter the tension between having a free market system and a democratic government is explored. Human flourishing requires ample general prosperity that comes from a free market system and it requires freedom that depends upon democratic institutions. But this produces a dilemma. The democratic system facilitates redistributive and regulatory favoritism that undermines trust in the system generally. This, in turn, weakens many trust-dependent institutions upon which the free market system and democracy depend. This is a dilemma because democracy is needed for freedom, but it can set in motion changes that ultimately reduce freedom. This tension has implications for social, political, and economic development because it suggests that societies can use trust in the system to substitute for low levels of generalized trust.

This chapter examines Eric Williams’ attempts to reorganize his administration’s main arms of civil duty, such as those governing the employment practices of the police, teachers, and firefighters. Although Williams attempted to refashion these departments over the three decades of his reign, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with their inefficiency and unwieldiness owing to their rapid growth in size. The chapter shows how Williams’ idealistic goal of ending governmental “favoritism and discrimination” against West Indians led to his party’s emphasis on state- and public-sector-controlled government as a way to offset foreign involvement in the economy. By reviewing Williams’ service legislation, the chapter offers a cautionary tale to contemporary Trinbagonian officials who favor business management approaches to run their government.

This chapter examines quantitative evidence linking shared economic beliefs to variation in the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) treatment of borrowers. It first discusses the measures of IMF treatment before turning to the (indirect) indicators of policymakers' economic beliefs that are then used to construct the key variable in the analysis: the ideational distance between the IMF and the borrowing country. It also evaluates data related to the generosity, conditionality, and enforcement of nearly 500 IMF programs signed in the 1980s and 1990s. The goal is to determine whether borrowing governments with policymakers who shared beliefs with the IMF received bigger loans, fewer conditions, and easier enforcement of the conditions. The results of quantitative analysis show that there is a pattern of favoritism in a large sample of the Fund programs.