Search Results

The Status Quo

Emilie M. Hafner-Burton

in Making Human Rights a Reality

This chapter considers the status quo—the punishments and rewards used by steward states as part of their foreign policy to advance human rights today. Although they are not the only stewards, the ... More

This chapter considers the status quo—the punishments and rewards used by steward states as part of their foreign policy to advance human rights today. Although they are not the only stewards, the chapter focuses on the United States and the European Union and the ways that they already use their political authority, resources, and reach for human rights promotion. The limits of punishments, such as military intervention and nonmilitary punishments, and rewards are discussed, along with two important lessons about how stewards can be more effective: one concerns localization, and the other is about setting priorities. The chapter argues that a more strategic use of state power has enormous potential to enhance the effectiveness of stewardship.Less

Roles in Public Worship

Karen B. Westerfield Tucker

in American Methodist Worship

The leadership of Methodist worship has always involved men and women, lay and clergy, although there have been limitations placed upon certain categories of people at different times. Unordained ... More

The leadership of Methodist worship has always involved men and women, lay and clergy, although there have been limitations placed upon certain categories of people at different times. Unordained preachers served Methodism from its beginnings, and laity has always had roles as class leaders, exhorters, stewards, stewardesses, and song leaders. Deaconesses assisted or led in worship to the extent that any layperson could. The principal liturgical ministers were the elders and, to a much more limited extent in terms of sacramental presidency, the deacons. The only distinct liturgical role of the general superintendent or bishop came at services of ordination.Less

Humanity's Place in Creation

Norman Wirzba

in The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age

As creatures made in the “image of God,” we have a unique identity and vocation. After showing that the popular models of ourselves as stewards or citizens of creation is inadequate, a case is made ... More

As creatures made in the “image of God,” we have a unique identity and vocation. After showing that the popular models of ourselves as stewards or citizens of creation is inadequate, a case is made for humans as the servants of creation. This account of servanthood is tied to ecological insight and developed in terms of the current design technique called biomimicry.Less

Conclusion: Economics as the Answer to a Sustainable Future

Barbara K. Jones

in Wild Capital: Nature's Economic and Ecological Wealth

The ecosystem services model plays a critical role in explaining how natural resources can be turned into wild or natural capital. The logic of economics relies on weighing the measurable values of ... More

The ecosystem services model plays a critical role in explaining how natural resources can be turned into wild or natural capital. The logic of economics relies on weighing the measurable values of competing choices when making decisions. Through that process, if we value the functions and products of ecosystems that benefit humans or yield welfare to society, we become better stewards of the natural world. For this book’s purposes, ecotourism as a cultural service clearly demonstrates how consumers of outdoor recreation see value in activities like wildlife viewing or hiking in nature. For wild nature to persist, however, it must be part of a larger system that is bound not only by biological ties, but by economic and cultural incentives as well. Since the boundaries that determine human and wild nature’s space are rather fluid and rarely entirely isolated from the other, using ecotourism to help assign nature value is logical. By offering individuals the opportunity to see nature through a variety of lenses, nature can be protected and preserved in different degrees. If nature and wildlife remain outside our human experience, however, inspiring the love and concern necessary for its survival becomes more and more difficult.Less

The Shop Stewards' Movement, 1917–1919

in The Political Trajectory of J. T. Murphy

The wartime shop stewards in Britain were more concerned with industrial tactics than class struggle. Even J. T. Murphy did not, at least during the war years, progress beyond tactical thinking. ... More

The wartime shop stewards in Britain were more concerned with industrial tactics than class struggle. Even J. T. Murphy did not, at least during the war years, progress beyond tactical thinking. Murphy's The Workers' Committee and other writings set out the practice of the shop stewards' movement and its theory of rank-and-file organisation. At first, Murphy attempted to clarify the revolutionary attitude towards the trade unions, arguing that the growing level of class struggle and the dynamic changes of the war period meant unions were increasingly becoming a transitory form of labour organisation. This chapter examines Murphy's theoretical contribution to the Shop Stewards' and Workers Committee Movement. It first looks at his pioneering wartime attempt to advance revolutionary tactics on the shopfloor and within the unions before turning to his political development. It also considers his anti-political stance in relation to World War I.Less

Professor Stewart, the BBC and Tennis 1936

Jonathan Betts

in Time Restored: The Harrison timekeepers and R.T. Gould, the man who knew (almost) everything

This chapter begins with a discussion of the friendship between Rupert and A. W. Stewart, author and Professor of Chemistry at Queen's University, Belfast. It then details how radio broadcasting made ... More

This chapter begins with a discussion of the friendship between Rupert and A. W. Stewart, author and Professor of Chemistry at Queen's University, Belfast. It then details how radio broadcasting made Rupert Gould a truly household name — a ‘media star’ in modern parlance — during the 1930s. Rupert Gould's lifelong interest in the rules and game of tennis was put to good use during the 1930s when he was invited, from about 1930, to umpire at several of the great Championships.Less

The Industrial Front and Trade Unionism

Geoffrey G. Field

in Blood, Sweat, and Toil: Remaking the British Working Class, 1939-1945

The chapter discusses British industrial mobilization and the introduction of a framework of manpower controls by Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour. While limiting the freedom of workers, the controls ... More

The chapter discusses British industrial mobilization and the introduction of a framework of manpower controls by Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour. While limiting the freedom of workers, the controls also constrained the freedom of employers and gave impetus to a rapid spread of trade unionism and structures of joint consultation between the state, labour, and business, which also included plant-level joint production committees. Full employment and the growing power of trade unionism boosted workers' collective power and status within the nation's war effort. Though strikes were officially banned, an increasing number took place; the chapter examines the reasons for this, focusing on the engineering and coal-mining sectors. The war had a profound effect on the trade unions and industrial relations, but it also reinforced the system of voluntaristic wage-bargaining and placed obstacles in the way of trade union reform and more dirigiste forms of state economic planning.Less

Conflicting Narratives and Images

Kathleen M. German

in Promises of Citizenship: Film Recruitment of African Americans in World War II

This chapter reveals the successful adaptation of the conversion narrative in additional Office of War Information films intended to solidify African American support for the war. At the same time, ... More

This chapter reveals the successful adaptation of the conversion narrative in additional Office of War Information films intended to solidify African American support for the war. At the same time, contradictory messages continued to be used in other military training and advocacy films. Summaries and analysis of these films are developed in this chapter.Less

Missionary Emigrationism: Psalm 68:31 and Uplifting the Ethiopians in Africa

Roy Kay

in The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters

This chapter maps the figural readings of Psalm 68:31 that inform narratives of missionary emigrationism, racial fraternity, and Afro-Asiatic mythologies. Starting with Wheatley's letter to Rev. ... More

This chapter maps the figural readings of Psalm 68:31 that inform narratives of missionary emigrationism, racial fraternity, and Afro-Asiatic mythologies. Starting with Wheatley's letter to Rev. Hopkins, Psalm 68:31 is read as a divine obligation to bring Christianity and civilization to Africa. According to this reading, Africans need regeneration because they live in spiritual darkness and cultural barbarity. The agents of this regeneration are not Africans but black American Christians. Some black exegetes also advocate the emigration of free Negroes to Africa. Both articulations of missionary emigrationism are grounded in the modern idea of race. By the second half of the nineteenth century, Delany and Crummell have fully developed missionary and African regeneration plans as well as racial mythologies. Two black exegetes who oppose the notion that Africa's salvation needs to come from America are Steward and Handy. These hermeneuts read Psalm 68:31 as a prophecy that Africa would Christianize and liberate itself.Less

Vision and Causal Understanding

William Child

in Perception, Causation, and Objectivity

Many of the classic writings on the causal theory of vision date from a period when it was taken for granted that the business of philosophy was conceptual analysis, and that philosophical theories ... More

Many of the classic writings on the causal theory of vision date from a period when it was taken for granted that the business of philosophy was conceptual analysis, and that philosophical theories are to be assessed by purely a priori reasoning. Philosophers nowadays tend to reject that conception of philosophy. How (if at all) and in what form does the causal theory of vision survive that change? This chapter is organized as follows. Part 1 responds to an objection raised by Helen Steward against some earlier work by the author of this book; she suggests that an earlier account of the causal theory of vision ‘forsake[s] the idea at the heart of the causal theory that causality is something conceptually (and not merely empirically) central to seeing'. Part 2 considers the objection that the causal thesis cannot be part of the ordinary concept of vision, since it is perfectly possible for someone to grasp the ordinary concept without accepting that seeing something involves being causally affected by it. Part 3 reflects on the causal theory of vision in the light of psychological work on causal understanding. What light does experimental work on the origin and nature of causal thinking cast on the question, whether our ordinary thought about vision is a form of causal thinking?Less

From Capital to Community: Discipleship as Defection in Jesus’ Parable about a ‘manager of injustice’ (Luke 16:1–13)

Ched Myers

in Radical Christian Voices and Practice: Essays in Honour of Christopher Rowland

The current global economic crisis provides a compelling context to revisit a biblical text that addresses wealth and poverty such as Luke 16. Two of Luke’s three ‘rich man’ parables occur here, ... More

The current global economic crisis provides a compelling context to revisit a biblical text that addresses wealth and poverty such as Luke 16. Two of Luke’s three ‘rich man’ parables occur here, bookending Jesus‘ teaching about the Mammon system. This chapter first introduces the notion of ‘Two Economies’ as posited differently by four modern economic philosophers. It then looks at the so-called ‘parable of the unjust steward’ (Luke 16:1–13), reading it as a poignant fable for all who realize that the dominant economic system is failing, and who would try to ‘monkeywrench’ it to provide a modicum of ‘Jubilee justice.’ This story illustrates the contemporary principle of using capital to build social relations, rather than sacrificing social relations to build capital. The chapter then reflects on the meaning of Jesus’ Mammon metaphor and Luke’s theological authorization for wealth redistribution for social justice movements.Less

Worker-Citizens at the Community Bargaining Table: The St. Louis Teamsters' Community Stewards Program in the 1950s

Robert Bussel

in Life and Labor in the New New South

During the 1950s in St. Louis, Missouri, Teamsters Local 688 developed an unusual program that sought to enhance the quality of life for union members in their neighborhoods and influence the ... More

During the 1950s in St. Louis, Missouri, Teamsters Local 688 developed an unusual program that sought to enhance the quality of life for union members in their neighborhoods and influence the direction of urban social policy. Applying their shop floor expertise as workers' representatives to the arena of civic affairs, Local 688's “community stewards” launched ambitious efforts to improve public transit, expand recreational opportunities for youth, increase access to higher education, and upgrade the quality of housing. By focusing their efforts on what they called “the other sixteen hours” that workers spent away from the shop floor, Local 688's community stewards attempted to show that the historic divide in working-class consciousness between the “politics of work” and the “politics of community” was neither inevitable nor intractable. The community stewards also revived notions of working-class citizenship that in earlier periods had fueled labor's ambitions to function as a transformational social force.Less

Steward’s Fork

James K. Agee

in Steward's Fork: A Sustainable Future for the Klamath Mountains

Steward's Fork was the initial name of Stuart Fork, a fork of the Trinity River that ends about five miles upstream of Trinity Lake and about two miles up from the Trinity Alps Resort. Like the many ... More

Steward's Fork was the initial name of Stuart Fork, a fork of the Trinity River that ends about five miles upstream of Trinity Lake and about two miles up from the Trinity Alps Resort. Like the many forks of a river, this book represents the steward's fork as different pathways toward sustainable future for these landscapes. It focuses on the Klamath Mountains and emphasizes that the stewardship of their ecosystems requires special attention. The book proposes the involvement of individuals and communities in the protection and management of natural resources, and the need to make intelligent decisions for the sustainable future of the Klamath Mountains.Less

Proprietors or Priests of Creation?

Metropolitan John

in Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation

The development of ecological awareness and sensitivity in the last years has led to the use of various models of speaking about the relation of man to nature. The prevailing model is that of ... More

The development of ecological awareness and sensitivity in the last years has led to the use of various models of speaking about the relation of man to nature. The prevailing model is that of steward: the human being is the steward of creation. This terminology has become widespread not only among secular ecologists but also among religious ones, and especially among the latter. This chapter examines this notion in great deal and applies it to a theological perspective.Less

Introduction: Women as Sexual Stewards

Jade S. Sasser

in On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women's Rights in the Era of Climate Change

The Introduction lays the groundwork for thinking through the connections between population growth, climate change, and advocacy in the 21st century. It explores the construction of an idealized ... More

The Introduction lays the groundwork for thinking through the connections between population growth, climate change, and advocacy in the 21st century. It explores the construction of an idealized development subject that I refer to as the sexual steward: a woman who engages in reproductive self management as a form of embodied environmental responsibility. Tracing through the literatures in political ecology, women and gender in development, and international development, the chapter grounds sexual stewardship in longstanding Malthusian narratives, and argues that the redeployment of these narratives threatens to restrict the possibilities of justice-based advocacy today.Less

Outsourcing Responsibility: State Stewardship of Behavioral Health Care Services

Cathleen E. Willging and Elise M. Trott

in Unequal Coverage: The Experience of Health Care Reform in the United States

Cathleen E. Willging and Elise M. Trott argue that politically driven processes of the past have shaped the current context of mental health care delivery in New Mexico. Provisions of the ACA, ... More

Cathleen E. Willging and Elise M. Trott argue that politically driven processes of the past have shaped the current context of mental health care delivery in New Mexico. Provisions of the ACA, including the expansion of Medicaid and outreach to underserved populations, offered the possibility of improving access and services for New Mexicans struggling with unmet treatment needs. However, as the authors argue, public stewards manipulated key ACA provisions to propagate unsubstantiated allegations of waste, fraud, and corruption against safety-net service providers. This chapter shows how public-private partnerships in the Medicaid arena, discourses of transparency, and technologies of accountability can engender truthiness claims, obscure vital information, destabilize a behavioral health care safety net, and deny low-income citizens care. They argue that scholars have the responsibility to attend to the “total bureaucratization” of government-funded health care systems that also allows such abuse of authority.Less

Authority and Social Control

Geoff Pearson

in An ethnography of English football fans: Cans, cops and carnivals

This chapter considers the relationship between the carnival fan groups and those responsible for crowd management, control and safety. It looks at how fans viewed the police service and how certain ... More

This chapter considers the relationship between the carnival fan groups and those responsible for crowd management, control and safety. It looks at how fans viewed the police service and how certain policing strategies and tactics affected their behaviour, particularly with regard to cooperation with police requests (for example to join police escorts). It also considers the relationship fan groups had with match-day stewards and security staff. Finally the chapter details instances of where research participants and the author were subjected to abusive, indiscriminate and violent action by those in authority.Less

Reflections on Risk

Michael M. Weinstein and Ralph M. Bradburd

in The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving

This chapter discusses the issue of risk management in Relentless Monetization (RM), the fact that philanthropists cannot know for sure the impact of their interventions. The following broad points ... More

This chapter discusses the issue of risk management in Relentless Monetization (RM), the fact that philanthropists cannot know for sure the impact of their interventions. The following broad points are considered: funders, to best fulfill their missions, need to take account of the risks that their decisions impose on the intended beneficiaries—an obligation known as the “good steward” responsibility; when addressing issues of risk, funders might well resort to simple rules of thumb; for large grants that impose sizeable risks for the funder's intended beneficiaries, RM sets out a more elaborate conceptual framework; the notion of “real options valuation,” a fundamental feature of the literature on managing financial risk, can be usefully applied to philanthropic decisions; the notion of game changers—investments that substantially alter the economic landscape of which they are a part—can be usefully applied to philanthropic decisions.Less

The Early Years in Sheffield, 1888–1917

in The Political Trajectory of J. T. Murphy

John Thomas Murphy was born in 1888 to a poor family in Wincobank, a small village on the outskirts of Sheffield. He received his elementary education at the Wincobank Council School, where he took ... More

John Thomas Murphy was born in 1888 to a poor family in Wincobank, a small village on the outskirts of Sheffield. He received his elementary education at the Wincobank Council School, where he took his studies seriously, but left school at the age of thirteen to work at the Vickers engineering factory in Brightside. Murphy's work as a lathe turner in Vickers would make him one of the British working-class movement's most prominent intellectuals in the twentieth century. This chapter focuses on J. T. Murphy's early years as a militant engineering shop steward in Sheffield during World War I and how he became attracted to militant trade unionism in Britain. It considers the formation of the Independent Labour Party, the rise of the syndicalist movement in Britain, Murphy's attraction towards Tom Mann's syndicalist formula, the nature of the syndicalist politics outlined by James Connolly and his conception of the role of the industrial union in the struggle for socialism, and Murphy's involvement with the shop stewards' movement.Less