… social responsibility (CSR) is a major buzzword within academic circles, politics, activist groups, and the business community. There are many definitions of CSR which emphasize different areas, but the most contemporary and most applicable to the majority cases, is defined by the World Bank Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility Practice, as a department of Foreign Investment …

Tags: corporate social responsibility, economy, globalization, human rights, liberalization, trade

… Canada Pension Plan Disability (CPPD) benefits program. CPPD ostensibly serves to provide income security to pension-contributors who find themselves incapable of work due to chronic health conditions. Rising CPPD caseloads during the 1980s and early 1990s coupled with growing debt aversion in Canada led to predictions that the pension well would soon run dry. Such fears lent credence to …

Comment by ed turon: … cpp,oas,gis at age 60.as i …

… title of my paper contains an assortment of words relevant to current labor studies – networks, struggle, unions – but one word, or more aptly, one concept, will certainly stand out as peculiar: work-well-fare. What is this concept? What does it mean? I argue that work-well-fare is a tendency towards a renewed class compromise for America; a meeting point for capital and labor to …

Comment by Broadband blogger: … you will prosper.

Author: Matthew Lymburner

… founders of the Free Software Movement and lead developer of the GNU Operating System. His book is ‘Free Software, Free Society’.
JP : Can you first of all explain the “Free Software Movement’.
RMS : The basic idea of the Free Software Movement is that the user of software deserves certain freedoms. There are four essential freedoms, which we label freedoms 0 through 3. …

… Financial Times is reporting that the US may lose it’s triple-A credit rating due to the nation’s rising healthcare and social security spending. The change would be the first since 1917.
Of course, FT goes on to contend that the triple-A rating doesn’t mean much these days. Nonetheless, I think the credit rating threat due to increased social spending indicates that something is …

Comment by Matthew Lymburner: … credit rating agencies are engaged …

Comment author: Matthew Lymburner

Tags: credit, economy, social spending, United States, welfare

… is a plethora of views pertaining to various forms of sexual relationships between humans, it is generally held that as long as such interactions occur between consenting adults they are “healthy.” Of course, one could speak of traditional-religious conceptions of heterosexual, monogamous and procreative sexual partnerships as being the only virtuous expression of love; however an …

… is no alternative” – Margaret Thatcher
 
This paper will attempt to provide a more holistic set of criterion necessary for the construction of consent over neoliberalism. This concept refers to methods by which the public buy-into the neoliberal agenda. How were they convinced that neoliberalism was the most suitable method of capital accumulation?
This …

… focus of most scholarship and public attention on fair trade. However, this paper concentrates on fair trade banana production, particularly in St. Vincent (based on fieldwork conducted in November 2006). St. Vincent and the Windward Islands are small island economies that have been dependent on bananas as their main export crop since the middle of the 20th century when they started …

Comment by Jack Reynolds: … a task within the course was to …

… depths of the worldwide economic storm, a wave of worker protests against factory closures is grabbing both public imagination and media attention.
Their story begins with a sign hanging from a factory gate: OUT OF BUSINESS. LOOK FOR WORK ELSEWHERE. Or else it begins with a letter in the mailbox: WILL NOT PAY FINAL MONTH’S SALARY OR PROCESS REQUESTS FOR SEVERANCE PACKAGES.
Or rather, …

… 5 th World Water Forum and the World Water Council Threaten People’s Access to Water
Water is essential to life. Yet 1.6 billion people lack access to clean water. Every 15 seconds, a child dies from drinking unclean water. “Power, poverty and inequality” are root causes to lack of clean water. ( UNDP’s Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis ) Although 70% of …

Tags: global governance, human rights, privatization, the commons, water

… nation is “the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time” (Anderson, 3). The existence of that nation, according to those who belong to it, is unquestionable. The nation is immutable, it has always existed and its members must impede its violation and ensure its future existence by putting it at the top of their priorities. But what is a nation exactly? This …

… global geographies of local marginality
( view abstract )
Michael A. Lithgow, Mass Communication
Travelling third class: regulating the transport of farm animals in Canada
( view abstract )
Michelle Barrett, Political Economy
National Identity Examined: A Study of the Quebec Nation
( view abstract  | view paper )
Rachel Ariey-Jouglard, Political Science
A Prosperous …

… home country and immigrate to France construct ideal images of their new lives in their new country. These ideal images are based on hopes of a better, more plentiful, and freer life which could not be found in Algeria due to poverty, the heritage of French colonialism, and ethnic segregation. In The Suffering of the Immigrant, Abdelmalek Sayad presents a series of interviews with …

… Distribution of Music in the Digital Age
( view abstract )
Jim Dooley, Political Economy
Marxxxist Alienation: Sexual Anthropomorphism of Realdolls™ and Construction of Man
( view paper )
Elizabeth Record, Political Economy
North American Integration and Copyright Policy: The Case of Canada
( view abstract )
Blayne Haggart, Political Science
Discussant: Eliot Che, …

… Toronto Star featured on its editorial page a commentary by Joseph Stiglitz. The former chief economist of the World Bank is vaguely predicting stagflation - stagnation plus inflation - and expressing his concern about how this will affect workers and consumers. He also worries that government and central bank policies will exacerbate the pain experienced by these people. Stiglitz has …

Comment by D. T. Cochrane: … numbers have something to say and …