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This chapter argues that environmental ethicists commit a serious error when they require that people hold a moral realist metaethical belief in the intrinsic value of non-human living things and non-living natural things in order to be able to behave in an ethically acceptable manner toward the environment.

Environmental ethics regard this position as the mandatory non-anthropocentrism one must first hold in order to be in a proper moral relationship to the environment. The main reason for seeing this requirement as an error is that it is politically unrealistic insofar most people most of the time behave in political contexts on the basis of instrumental and not intrinsic reasons. To claim that people can behave in a morally acceptable manner toward the environment if and only if they first believe in its intrinsic value is not only politically unrealistic, but also actually false.

The chapter looks at recent studies measuring the behavior of political and moral philosophers which shows that they do not behave in any markedly way better than non-moral philosophers. Ethicists, whom one can assume believe in some form or another of the mind-independent reality of moral properties, are not more morally well-behaved for holding such a belief.

Ethicists, especially environmental ethicists, are in no position to require of us to believe in the intrinsic value of the environment in order to behave in more beneficial ways toward it.

Purpose – To better understand the relation between Friedrich Hayek's “theoretical psychology” and contemporary connectionist theories of mind.

Methodology/approach – There is much in The Sensory Order that recommends the oft-made claim that Hayek anticipated connectionist theories of mind. To the extent that this is so, contemporary arguments against and for connectionism, as advanced by Jerry Fodor, Zenon Pylyshyn, and John Searle, are shown as applicable to theoretical psychology. However, the final section of this chapter highlights an important disanalogy between theoretical psychology and connectionist theories of mind.

Findings – While Hayek can be construed as a connectionist, it is argued that Hayek's ontological presuppositions are not shared by contemporary theorists of mind. In particular, modern critiques of Hayek's theoretical psychology qua connectionism assume that he attempts to provide an account of the mind within the confines of scientific naturalism. This essay argues that this assumption is false. Hayek's ontological presuppositions are more akin to Kant's, implying that Hayek's question is importantly different from those asked by contemporary theorists of mind.

Originality/value of the chapter – At a certain level of abstraction, a Hayakian machine is not unlike certain versions of a connectionist machine. However, to adequately assess the significance of The Sensory Order on its own terms, Hayek's project must be disentangled from our own ontological preoccupations.

This chapter presents the key results of a research project that explored managing service productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of lived experiences of bank executives employed as ‘knowledge workers’ in the Nigerian banking sector. The study adopted a qualitative phenomenological research design. Data was gathered from 16 Nigerian top bank executives purposively selected using semi-structured face-to-face interviews. Trans Positional Cognition Approach (TPCA), a new phenomenological research method, was used to analyse the data gathered. The study data analysis yielded five themes; micromanagement practices, use of dysfunctional strategies to drive service operations, deposit mobilisation target as a productivity measure, managerial indifference to potential nescience economy issues and master-servant (power culture) strategy, which epitomises fundamental managerial approaches adopted in the sector. The study identified critical service productivity management issues grounded in reality that influence the capability and potentiality of the study knowledge workers. It also contributes the novel, ‘official knowledge worker lived experience of service productivity model’ for use by decision-makers in the banking sector. Thus, it sets an agenda for these ‘knowledge workers’ line managers’ and bank regulators in the research setting. The study extended the viable system model by applying it in this phenomenological enquiry and using it to explain/deepen our understanding of the findings that emerged. The output of this work contributes to scholarly knowledge on service productivity management from the sub-Saharan African banks’ perspective. It can be generalisable in countries with similar financial and economic characteristics like the research setting.

The growing displacement of theory and other forms of wide-ranging knowledge of social phenomena by empirical research methods in economics is widely noted by economists and historians of economic knowledge. Less attention has been devoted, however, to understand the materialization of such changes in the scientific practices. This article studies the recent transformations in the epistemological practices at CEDE, a research center in Colombia. I use a machine learning technique called Topic Modeling, interviews to CEDE researchers, and exegesis of papers to characterize a shift in the production of knowledge in microeconometrics at CEDE during the years 2000 and 2018. I explain this shift by characterizing two sets of epistemological practices that implies a recent tendency to disdain research that cannot make a “strong” causal inference.

This paper presents a theoretical definition of protest that overcomes the bifurcation of politics and culture in mainstream social movement research. The model is grounded in a study of drag performances, which have a long history in same-sex communities as vehicles for expressing gay identity, creating and maintaining solidarity, and staging political resistance. Extending Tilly’s concept of repertoires of contention, we propose the term “tactical repertoires” to refer to protest episodes, and we identify three elements of all tactical repertoires: contestation, intentionality, and collective identity. We combine social constructionist perspectives on gender and sexuality, the social movement literature, and writings in performance studies to understand how drag performances function as tactical repertoires of the gay and lesbian movement. We argue that because they are entertaining, drag shows illuminate gay life for mainstream audiences and provide a space for the construction of collective identities that confront and rework gender and sexual boundaries.

After decades of declining strike rates in the industrialized world, recent years have seen a surge of militant walkouts in the global South, political strikes in Europe, and unconventional strikes in nonunion sectors in the United States. This new diversity of strike action calls for a new theoretical framework. In this paper, we review the historical strengths and limits of traditions of strike theory in the United States. Building on the emerging power resources approach, we propose a model based on a multidimensional view of associational power, power resources, and arenas of conflict in the economy, state, and civil society. We demonstrate the utility of our approach via a case analysis of strikes in the “Fight for $15” campaign in the United States.