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Political economies evolve institutionally and technologically over time. This means that to understand evolutionary political economy one must understand the nature of the evolutionary process in its full complexity. From the time of Darwin and Spencer natural selection has been seen as the foundation of evolution. This view has remained even as views of how evolution operates more broadly have changed. An issue that some have viewed as an aspect of evolution that natural selection may not fully explain is that of emergence of higher order structures, with this aspect having been associated with the idea of emergence. In recent decades it has been argued that self-organization dynamics may explain such emergence, with this being argued to be constrained, if not overshadowed, by natural selection. Just as the balance between these aspects is debated within organic evolutionary theory, it also arises in the evolution of political economy, as between such examples of self-organizing emergence as the Mengerian analysis of the appearance of commodity money in primitive societies and the natural selection that operates in the competition between firms in markets.

Professional ethics require researchers to disclose all risks to participants in their studies. Changes in the legal climate in the United States and new modes of surveillance and communication call into question the effectiveness of measures used by researchers to protect participants from the risks they now face. This paper explores existing and newly enhanced risks to participants in social movement studies and examines problems with confidentiality agreements and informed consent procedures, two avenues that scholars traditionally use to protect research participants. The utility of Certificates of Confidentiality and researcher privilege also are examined as means to safeguard the privacy and security of research participants. The conclusion raises larger issues about the accountability of scholars to their research participants and the nature of risk in today's changing political climate. These include how to weigh potential risks and benefits to social movements and activists who are studied, the consequences for scholarship if scholars avoid studying movements and activists that pose risks, and the need for scholars to collaborate with research participants to tailor ethical research practices and to use institutional resources to challenge threats to the privacy and integrity of the people and groups they study.

Love and force are thought of as the ultimate antithesis in human relations; the substitution of love for force is the utopian dream, the consummation devoutly to be wished but hardly hoped for, the far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves – perhaps – slowly if at all. It may therefore seem perverse to raise a question as to whether there is any fundamental or real difference between love and force. Yet consideration of that question will show that from a scientific, logical point of view, love is equivalent to force in human relations, and is in fact but a variety of force. It will show too, that force in the world in general, to be given any meaning at all, has to be regarded as a kind of love, as Empedocles contended long ago. This is no mere speculation or word-play; the point is of the most fundamental and practical significance in the field of social science, regarded as a project for improving the quality of social life.

Norberto Bobbio's Birth Centenary was celebrated in Turin in October 2009. This article acknowledges an important 20th century legal philosopher whose work is yet to be fully appreciated in the Anglo-American context. A short introduction is followed by an overview of his works in English, and intellectual profile. Relevant excerpts aim to convey some understanding of his legal scholarship. Three exemplars of his contribution to law: jurisprudence, legal sociology and the general theory of law are discussed. It is argued that a Bobbian lens can be usefully employed to consider some of the pressing 21st century legal-political and social issues.

It is difficult to get an adequate account of human needs but there are known needs which, for hundreds of millions of people, are not met. Can the present economic system meet them? Can any economic system meet them? Is simple economic growth the answer? The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the questions, emphasizing the problems and paradoxes.

The paper looks at India where poverty is rampant despite recent gains, and at Bhutan which ranks low in economic production but quite high on the “happiness scales”. It also looks at questions of the relation of economic inequality to social problems, citing recent studies.

The paper focuses on how well the world's economic systems address, or fail to address, human needs.

This paper is written by a philosopher and writer on social economics (and Editor of International Journal of Social Economics (IJSE )) who works in a variety of fields: metaphysics and its epistemological relations, the theory of the history of philosophy (focusing on the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries), and moral, social, and economic philosophy and their relations to culture and religion. The paper then introduces the papers in this special issue of the IJSE devoted to human needs.

Men make war; women make peace. Men make war; women make children. Men make war because women make children. Because men make war, women make children. Women make peace because they make children.

Presents the full text of the Presidential Address by Stafford Beer to the Triennial Congress of the World Organization of Systems and Cybernetics, New Delhi, India, January 1993. Introduces the components of contemporary change and discusses the diagnostic approach of management cybernetics. Outlines a summary theory of autonomy and considers autonomy at the global level. Offers an account of the cybernetics of chronic societary triage, developing an analysis of triage through category A, B and C partition. Produces a summary theory of team syntegrity and discusses the power and the use of the team syntegrity model. Finally, outlines an action plan for World Syntegration.

Except that there is a more intense international situation the circumstances in which we open our twenty‐first volume differ but little from those in which we commenced the twentieth. The War, which has been the cause of so many hopes and fears for libraries and librarians, still drags its disastrous length across the world, thwarting and stifling all those activities for the advancement of mankind of which libraries are part, but the specific attacks upon educational institutions of all kinds have lost their original force; indeed there has been, as every reader of this magazine knows, a rejuvenesence of educational ideals and energy in spite of the baffling obstacles of the time. In almost every municipality libraries have regained much of their former position, and evidences of development have been many. These have been recorded in our pages regularly month by month, with such criticism from ourselves as the occasions seemed to demand; and in relation to suoh progress THE LIBRARY WORLD has endeavoured to pursue a catholic and progressive policy, examining every new idea frankly, and sympathetically whenever it has been possible to do so. Our pages have been open freely to the expression of all phases of library thought, even in cases where our own views did not coincide with the writers. That policy we shall endeavour to continue, welcoming contributions from all who feel that they have something to say to the profession, in the belief that even impracticable schemes and untenable theories have a value of their own if they cause librarians to think anew in contesting them. It is, at the best, a difficult time for professional journals, and for few more than it is for library journals. Cost of production, the obsession of librarians with definitely war‐work, and the absence of more than half of the permanent workers in libraries, are causes which need no elaboration. The mortality amongst our contributors in the great cause has been considerable, and most painful to us. The fact that in spite of all these difficulties our circulation has steadily increased gives us reason to believe, with all modesty, that THE LIBRARY WORLD plays a definite and useful part on behalf of librarians. In thanking those who have supported us, we can add the assurance that our best efforts shall be expended in promoting and sustaining the interests which the magazine was intended to serve.