Collective Action Theory

Vulnerability and the basis of business ethics: from fiduciary duties to professionalism

by Eric Brown

forthcoming in Journal of Business Ethics

This paper examines the role of vulnerability in the basis of business ethics by criticizing its role in giving a... more This paper examines the role of vulnerability in the basis of business ethics by criticizing its role in giving a morally substantial character to fiduciary duties to shareholders. The target is Alexei Marcoux's (2003) argument for morally substantial fiduciary duties vis-à-vis the multifiduciary stakeholder theory. Rather than proceed to support the stakeholder paradigm, a conception of vulnerability is combined with Joseph Heath's (2004) "market failure" view of the ethical obligations of managers as falling out of their roles as professionals involved in the institution of the market. The
result is the core of a theoretically defensible and managerially motivating and deployable ethic.

Theories of collective goods reexamined

by Jeffrey Hart

(with Peter Cowhey) Western Political Quarterly, 30 (September 1977), 351-62.

Transforming the boundaries of collective identity: From the 'local' anti-road campaign to 'global' resistance?

by John Drury

Drury, J., Reicher, S., & Stott, C. (2003). Transforming the boundaries of collective identity: From the ‘local’ anti-road campaign to ‘global’ resistance? Social Movement Studies, 2, 191-212.

This paper is concerned with how people involved in ‘local’ protest might come to see themselves as part of wider... more This paper is concerned with how people involved in ‘local’ protest might come to see themselves as part of wider social groupings and even global forces of resistance.
An ethnographic study of the No M11 Link Road Campaign in London examines participants’ definitions of their collective identity boundaries at different stages of involvement. Cross-sectional material from the beginning and later in the campaign
shows that there was a transformation in collective identity boundaries towards a more inclusive definition of ‘community’. Analysis of participants’ accounts before and after involvement in the eviction of a tree suggests the role of conflict with the
police in producing an oppositional definition of the collective identity, facilitating links to other groups in resistance to illegitimate authority. Finally, biographical material indicates the implications of transformed identity boundaries for co-action with wider social groups. It is argued that the same intra- and inter-group processes that determine how identity boundaries extend to include a broader community might account for how people come to see themselves as part of a global social movement.

protest event analysis (in Greek)

by Nikos Serdedakis

Paper published in Tsiolis George, Serdedakis Nikos and John Kallas (eds.), Research Infrastructures and Data in Empirical Social Research, Athens, Nisos, 2011.

Socially extended intentions-in-action

by Olle Blomberg

Review of Philosophy and Psychology (2011), 2(2):335–353 (Special Issue on 'Joint Action: What Is Shared?', edited by Stephen Butterfill & Natalie Sebanz.)

According to a widely accepted constraint on the content of intentions, here called the exclusivity constraint, one... more According to a widely accepted constraint on the content of intentions, here called the exclusivity constraint, one cannot intend to perform another agent’s action, even if one might be able to intend that she performs it. For example, while one can intend that one’s guest leaves before midnight, one cannot intend to perform her act of leaving. However, Deborah Tollefsen’s (2005) account of joint activity requires participants to have intentions-in-action (in John Searle’s (1983) sense) that violate this constraint. I argue that the exclusivity constraint should not be accepted as an unconditional constraint on the contents of intentions-in-action: one may intend to perform a basic action that belongs both to oneself and to another agent. Based on the phenomenology of tool use, I first argue that intentions-in-action of one’s basic actions may be technologically extended, meaning that their contents are not restricted to concern the agent’s bodily movements. In analogy with this, I then argue that the phenomenology of some skillful joint activities supports the idea that one’s basic intentions-in-action may be socially extended, in violation of the widely accepted exclusivity constraint. Tollefsen’s account is specifically constructed to account for the joint activities of infants and toddlers who lack the capacity to think of others as planning agents and grasp their plan-like intentions (a capacity required by Michael Bratman’s (1992, 1993, 2009a, 2009b) influential account of joint activity). At the end of the paper, I raise some doubts regarding the extent to which infants and toddlers have socially extended intentions-in-action.

Paved With Good Intentions: Miserly Altruists and the Evolution of Political Cooperation

by Eoghan Stafford

Dissertation submitted to London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Government, MSc in Political Theory

August 2010

Derek Parfit has shown that agent-relative ethical principles can be collectively self-defeating. In particular, they... more Derek Parfit has shown that agent-relative ethical principles can be collectively self-defeating. In particular, they can lead groups to under-provide public goods that would advance their agent-relative goals. Is it possible to identify ethical principles that foster public good provision, while maintaining agent-relative commitments and moral pluralism? I discuss the unsuitability of consequentialist ethics as solutions to the collective action problem. I also discuss Parfit’s moral theory. Parfit’s theory makes problematic assumptions about the content of “Common-Sense Morality” and his proposed ethic would not dependably promote public good provision. Furthermore, achieving widespread compliance with Parfit’s ethic – or any other ethic – entails a second-order collective action problem that Parfit leaves unsolved. How do we get from a situation with a few uncooperative altruists to many cooperative altruists?  I propose a modified version of Parfit’s ethic – which I call committed altruism – that addresses its normative and functionalist shortcomings. Lastly, I present a model showing how such an ethic could spread from an initially small group, eventually enabling a large portion of society to engage in large-scale collective action.

Legal perspective on the issue of lack of mass transit system in the greater Tel Aviv area

by Tomer Valadji

Draft only; Instructed by Dr. Yishai Blank; "The City - leagal, social and environmental aspects" Seminar.

Legal perspective of Israeli land use and transportation development, focused on the greater Tel Aviv Area, examining... more Legal perspective of Israeli land use and transportation development, focused on the greater Tel Aviv Area, examining the changes in Israeli municipal and planning law and the trends in decision-making policies.

Securitized identities and less secure western multi-ethnic states: a critical geopolitics of the east-west discourse - Turkey and beyond

by Tabish Shah

Nationalities Papers, Volume 38, Issue 3 May 2010 , pages 393 - 412

This article explores the implications of monolithic notions of ‘East’ and ‘West’ for security within... more This article explores the implications of monolithic notions of ‘East’ and ‘West’ for security within ethno-religiously diverse nation-states.  It builds on literature within critical geopolitics (Agnew; Dodds; Neumann; O’Tuathail; Pratt; Todorova; Lewis & Wigen; Wolff) by not only recognizing that homogenous notions of the ‘West’ and its ‘Others’ were formed for the purpose of legitimizing ideological and physical contestations of geographical space and continue to operate, but that this has made nation-states substantially less secure at the intra-state level. Travel accounts by Western European and American travelers to Turkey from 1989 onwards are used as a data to explore this. The content of accounts mirrors the wider East-West discourse and together with Turkey’s popularly described position ‘at the crossroads’ of Europe and Asia, texts lend themselves to salient discussion of identity, culture, and difference between the hegemonic ‘West’ and its ‘Others’. The post-1989 decolonized, post-cold war period enables us to work within a contemporary context in which the opening of geographical space has occurred, and allows us to test whether ‘Western’ identity in its hegemonic form of Western Europe and the United States has evolved to accommodate this new context.