Does Citizen Science Biological Recording Tell Us As Much About The Recorders As Biodiversity?

There is growing body of evidence that a connection to nature is important at both an individual emotional level, and for the development of societal attitudes that rank conservation issues as important, however, there is widespread loss of this connection in modern lifestyles. The recruitment of community stakeholders into Citizen Science biodiversity projects is one mechanism that may help to restore that connection, while at the same time providing outcomes of scientific value. However, the narrative describing such projects tends to use a fundamentally Apollonian view of science, which casts the researcher as an impartial observer and operates within a carefully designed methodology to guide the contributions from volunteer stakeholders. While this is a convenient model for formally reporting scientific outcomes, it masks individual immersive engagement.

Practice of relationships between the Prosecutor’s office and the gendarmerie in the investigation of political crimes

The article discusses the practice of the relationships between the Prosecutor’s office and the gendarmerie, which formed during the investigation of political crimes in the Russian Empire after the judicial reform of 1864. It is indicated that the law of May 19, 1871 changed the legal relationships between the gendarmerie and the Prosecutor’s office. The gendarmerie was given the right to conduct an inquiry, and the prosecutor’s office was entrusted with the supervision of this activity. Central agencies targeted the prosecutor’s office and the gendarmerie to coordinate their activities in the investigation of political crimes, which resulted in their gradual rapprochement. In practice, the Prosecutor’s office began to take an active part in the conduct of inquiries on the state crimes. As a result, it gradually lost its original meaning “guardian of the law and an impartial observer for the correctness of the actions of a person who conducted the inquiry”. The actual relationships between the Prosecutor’s office and the gendarmerie was not unambiguous. They largely depended on specific individuals and could be diametrically opposed. Along with the relations of “mutual understanding” there were also facts of direct conflicts between the prosecutor’s office and the gendarmerie. Despite such different relationship, in society, the existing level of political repression “was attributed to the joint and solidary activities of zealous gendarmes with zealous prosecutors”. The career of prosecutors depended largely on the relationship with the gendarmerie. Later, during the inquiry, many prosecutors began to lose their impartiality and gradually turned into agents of gendarmerie goals. According to the figurative expression of the former Chairman of the Council of Ministers S. Witte, the Minister of justice himself “from the Supreme guardian of legality became an assistant to the chief of gendarmes and the chief of secret police”.

Corporate social irresponsibility: review and conceptual boundaries

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to carry out a review of the academic literature about corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) highlighting aspects that help us to define socially irresponsible behaviour and its relationship with socially responsible behaviour. Design/methodology/approach Through a Boolean search of studies related to terms of irresponsibility undertaken from 1956 to October 2016, the authors develop a review of the literature focussing on the main perspectives used for defining the term of CSIR. Findings The paper provides a framework of three main dimensions for understanding the differences in the literature that defines CSIR: who defines irresponsible behaviour, an impartial observer or a specific group of stakeholders, whether it is a firm strategy or a punctual action and which is the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CSIR, continuity vs orthogonal relationship. Originality/value The paper provides and extensive and original review of a key construct, CSIR, and develops some insights about its antecedents and consequences. The authors try to provide light to the contradictory situation where a growing interest in CSR and the increase in voluntary commitments adopted by company leaders incorporating CSR into their strategies are, paradoxically, increasingly associated with CSIR.

Social Evaluation under Risk and Uncertainty

This chapter examines the problem of evaluating policies with either risky or uncertain consequences. Under risk, the probabilities are known and agreed, whereas under uncertainty, probabilities are subjective and subject to disagreement. In the case of risk, Harsanyi’s Social Aggregation Theorem derives a representation of social utility as a weighted sum of individual utilities. But when there is uncertainty, two different and conflicting evaluation criteria, that is, ex ante and ex post, become available. The chapter explores this problem and sketches solutions. Similarly, when equality becomes the guiding question, there is a tension between ex ante and ex post evaluations, each leading to a conceptual loss, and the chapter explores solutions given to this further problem. It also covers Harsanyi’s Impartial Observer Theorem and its recent developments, and discusses the question raised by Sen of whether the weighted sum of individual utilities obtained by Harsanyi makes genuine utilitarian sense.

A Reconsideration of the Harsanyi–Sen–Weymark Debate on Utilitarianism

Harsanyi claimed that his Aggregation and Impartial Observer Theorems provide a justification for utilitarianism. This claim has been strongly resisted, notably by Sen and Weymark, who argue that while Harsanyi has perhaps shown that overall good is a linear sum of individuals’ von Neumann–Morgenstern utilities, he has done nothing to establish any connection between the notion of von Neumann–Morgenstern utility and that of well-being, and hence that utilitarianism does not follow.The present article defends Harsanyi against the Sen–Weymark critique. I argue that, far from being a term with precise and independent quantitative content whose relationship to von Neumann–Morgenstern utility is then a substantive question, terms such as ‘well-being’ suffer (or suffered) from indeterminacy regarding precisely which quantity they refer to. If so, then (on the issue that this article focuses on) Harsanyi has gone as far towards defending ‘utilitarianism in the original sense’ as could coherently be asked.