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There is an ongoing debate about the purpose of business and profit maximisation. However, contemporary marketing thinking suggests that pro-social behaviour is a critical aspect of marketing strategy, wherein this type of behaviour leads to marketplace advantage. Amongst the many theories and frameworks (such as, creating shared value and subsistence marketplaces) that re-imagine the purpose of business to include pro-social behaviour, a prominent one is the base of the pyramid (BoP) thesis. This thesis challenges firms to simultaneously alleviate poverty and make a profit by targeting the poorest socioeconomic segment. However, it has encountered robust criticism, with some scholars suggesting a lopsided focus on profits to the detriment of poverty alleviation. Specifically, the criticisms centre on the marketers’ narrow focus on income poverty. In order to overcome these criticisms, as well as to envision a pathway to succeed at the BoP, this chapter makes the case to conceptualise poverty beyond an economic focus of income, assets and wealth to capture beyond economic factors such as equality, justice and freedom. The authors employ Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a starting point to reconceptualise poverty to facilitate marketers to genuinely alleviate poverty whilst making profits at the BoP.

To determine the normative philosophical legitimacy of territorial claims to the Arctic high seas.

In this chapter I sketch a philosophical guideline for determining the scope of territorial rights based on established theories of territorial claims.

The scope of territorial rights should be limited to a geographical domain within which a group can establish a site of justice. Because currently a site of justice is not possible in the Arctic high seas, no state can extend a territorial claim to that area.

If adopted, this theory would prohibit the establishment of claims to the Arctic high seas made by countries such as Russia, Denmark (via Greenland) and Canada.

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

Issues of women’s education and empowerment of women have been incorporated in the framing of the role of women in international development from the 1970s, primarily as a response to the liberal feminist movement agenda of the time. This analysis examines the degree to which liberal feminism and liberal feminist theory is reflected in comparative education scholarship in the lead up to and beyond the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The analysis first explores the underpinnings of liberal feminism, which constitutes the ideal embedded in development education for girls and women. It follows up with a reflection on the literature in the field of comparative education that reference liberal feminism framework and feminist theory in exploring educational issues and ways in which the theory is located in the research. Illustration of examples that demonstrate the limits of liberal feminism as a theoretical framework and barriers to the use of liberal feminist theory as an ideological guide are captured in the findings. The search is limited to the six dominant scholarly outlets in the field of comparative education; namely Comparative Education Review (CER), Comparative Education (CE), Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education (Compare), Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education (Prospects), International Review of Education (IRE), and the International Journal of Educational Development (IJED). Only works that explicitly mention liberal feminism/liberal feminist perspectives are included in the analysis. This research contributes to the acknowledgement of the liberal feminist theory in development education and for the field of comparative education. It will also help with understanding the politics of ideology and representation in scholarship and development interventions.

Colleges and universities play a significant role in preparing students to navigate the many issues and challenges that characterize contemporary societies, challenges that are simultaneously local, national, and global in nature. This has led to increased calls within higher education to re-envision educational practices to prioritize global competency. However, ambiguity persists regarding how faculty in transnational higher education contexts, specifically international branch campuses, understand global competency and conceive of their role in shaping students’ sense of self, perspective-taking, and social responsibility. Using a social constructivist lens, this chapter outlines initial case study research, informed by King and Magolda’s (2005) constructive-developmental model of intercultural maturity, Kegan’s (1994) scholarship on self-authorship, as well as Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning theory. This investigative research may be useful in terms of understanding how administrators and educators facilitate the environmental conditions and educational practices that lead to global competency and socially responsible global citizens. The broader implications of such study could potentially inform educational change policy and confirm the important role internationalized institutions, such as branch campus universities play in shaping and transforming societies.

This chapter will now focus on humanity’s response to the seismic contextual changes brought about by globalization at the cusp of the twenty-first century. The signature feature of this response is an enrollment explosion. Other features are four driving policyscapes (that aligned to capabilities theory, neo-liberal economics, the Creed of Human Rights, and social justice), education for sustainable development, managerialism, decentralization, Global, Citizenship Education, Multicultural and Intercultural education, Multilingualism and the rising importance of English as international lingua franca, Human Rights Education, from STEM to STEAM education and a reappreciation of the social sciences and the humanities, the divergent calls for relevance, new ways of production and packaging of knowledge, a shift from teaching to learning, new learning theories, and the rise of international testing regimes. In many ways, these responses are incomplete and still searching for the perfect fit in each context. It is in this regard where the value of Comparative and International Education comes to the fore.

One potential lesson to be learned from the academic “culture wars” of the past few decades, regardless of which position one prefers, is that the humanities as a discipline continue to matter, perhaps more so than ever in a multi-cultural, globalized world. The systematic marginalization, even elimination, of the humanistic disciplines available represents a significant weakness for education in the Gulf; bolstering the study of the humanities – including literature, philosophy, and art history – offers a proven route towards achieving certain goals publicly avowed as priorities for education in the region. This paper proposes that engaging the humanities builds an awareness and appreciation of otherness; encourages abstract (critical) thinking; fosters language development; and, perhaps most importantly, asks students to be inspired by great ideas beautifully rendered. To become a knowledge-based society, a culture of reading deeply and independently needs to be cultivated. To empower students to become lifelong learners requires that they are, by default, lifelong readers. Furthermore, I propose that in an unsettling time of growth, change and challenges in the region, there is a reassuring possibility for humanistic inclusion that transcends the standard categories of identity politics. Students in the Gulf, just as readers everywhere else in this human world, can be shown that there is more to unite us than to divide us.

This chapter offers a critical evaluation of the disability scholarship of Michael Oliver, a leading developer of the British social model of disability, and Peter Singer, a philosopher whose utilitarian ethics excludes some persons with intellectual disabilities from full moral status. Through a critique of the simplified accounts of disability employed by these two very different scholars, this chapter explores the ontology and the moral significance of disability. The importance of the ontology of disability in relation to inclusion is also discussed.

The idea of ‘identity politics’ has become quite prominent in news commentary. It has been referred to in explaining the 2016 US Presidential election result, the 2016 Brexit vote and a variety of other events in contemporary social life. The idea emerged under that title in the late twentieth century, and refers to political conflicts where groups unite and act on the basis of some shared identity. While the term initially referred to action by groups seeking to remedy past oppression, ‘identity politics’ may now refer to a wider range of cases where there is contestation based on recognition of some shared identity. Individuals’ identity is central to resurgent modern virtue ethics, but it has been suggested that virtue ethics is less relevant to political conflict than utilitarian views or theories of justice. However, an important distinction can be made between narrative identity, on the one hand, and social identity that emerges from individuals’ self-perceived group membership, on the other hand. It is narrative identity that figures in major accounts of virtue ethics. In many situations, narrative identity is importantly affected by group identity, but it is still only narrative identity that has intrinsic ethical weight. This suggests that virtue ethics has relevance to identity politics just because it urges attention to individuals’ narrative identity rather than to group identity.

This chapter looks at the discursive dimension of the working environment in research and higher education organizations; more specifically at neoliberal managerial discourse and at how it participates in shaping the way researchers, teachers and support staff perceive themselves and their experiences. It is based on a multiple case study and combines an intersectional and a socio-clinical approach. The empirical data is constituted by in-depth interviews with women conducted in Ireland and Chile, and includes some observations made in France. A thematic analysis of individual narratives of self-ascribed experiences of being bullied enables to look behind the veil drawn by managerial discourse, thus providing insights into power vectors and power domains contributing to workplace violence. It also shows that workplace bullying may reinforce identification to undervalued social categories. This contribution argues that neoliberal managerial discourse, by encouraging social representations of “neutral” individuals at work, or else celebrating their “diversity,” conceals power relations rooting on different social categories. This process influences one’s perception of one’s experience and its verbalization. At the same time, feeling assigned to one or more of undervalued social category can raise the perception of being bullied or discriminated against. While research has shown that only a minority of incidents of bullying and discrimination are reported within organizations, this contribution suggests that acknowledging the multiplicity and superposition of categories and their influence in shaping power relations could help secure a more collective and caring approach, and thus foster a safer work culture and atmosphere in research organizations.