Institution: Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Location: Prague (Czech Republic)
Date: 16.–18.5.2012
Deadline: 23.12.2011
Living Responsibly: reflecting on the ethical issues of everyday life
Taking their professional responsibilities seriously, practitioners
of a wide variety of professions, including medicine, psychology and
social work; journalism, tourism and the arts; architecture, civil
engineering and the law, engage in reflection about ethical issues as
part of their daily practice. Most professions have an ethical code
with which its members are expected to comply. But ethical issues are
not to be found only in the workplace. Whether we are aware of it or
not, we all face ethical decisions every day. Or at any rate, each
day we make decisions that have ethical significance – about, for
example, what we eat; how we behave towards others, including
strangers as well as family and friends; about the extent to which we
are willing to share what we have with others who have less; about
the energy we use in travelling and in heating our homes, and about
where we should shop for food, clothes and the other essentials of
modern life.
Probably the most talked about problems about the intention to live
responsibly arise in relation to human induced climate change, which
has provoked heated debate at every level, and global summits aimed
at forging agreements about how to tackle the problems of global
warming. As well as local and international regulation, reflection
about the problems of climate change have led also to mountains of
advice about what we can to do to limit our impact on the planet –
from changes in the ways we produce and package goods, to how we
build, heat and insulate our homes; and from the advantages of using
locally produced food and other necessities, to those of recycling
almost everything. Of course, global warming is not the only area of
life in which ethical living has become a major focus for many
people. For example, they are concerned also, about a wide range of
other issues including:
* The ethical realities that surround food production, such as the
use of chemicals in farming and the introduction of genetically
modified crops.
* Corruption in public life.
* The power of multi-national companies and of the media in
changing the ways we think and live.
* Ways of keeping children safe and allowing them to grow to their
full potential, wherever they live.
* Poverty in both developing and developed countries.
* Whether to buy their clothes from cut price shops that source
them from manufacturers that pay their workers such low wages that
they are barely better off than slaves, or from swankier shops that
they hope are more ethical.
* The destruction of the rainforests and the depletion of the
earth’s resources.
Living Responsibly: reflecting on the ethical issues of everyday life
will facilitate dialogue about living more responsibly. It will be of
interest to everyone who cares about living in ways that are
respectful of others and respectful of the planet, whether they are
lay people or, for example, ethicists, sociologists, theologians,
anthropologists or psychologists who are interested in what it means
to behave ethically, and in what motivates ethical behaviour.
Abstracts are invited about any aspect of ethical issues in everyday
life, of which the following suggested topics and questions are
merely exemplars:
FOOD
~ What should we eat and where should we buy our food?
~ Should concerns about animal welfare turn us into vegetarians, or
persuade us only to eat meat from animals that have been reared
humanely?
~ Is it really morally better to eat organic, locally produced food?
~ What's more important – the air miles it takes to bring my mange
tout here from Kenya, or the fact that the Kenyan farmer who grows
them gets at least some money?
~ Do organically fed, free range chickens really enjoy their lives
more than factory made ones?
~ Is eating organically grown beef really more ethical?
CLIMATE CHANGE and GLOBAL WARMING
~ What should we do about the problem of global warming?
~ Will it really make any difference if we recycle; consume less
energy and take fewer foreign holidays?
~ Should I pay the optional carbon offsetting charge every time I fly?
~ What will we do when the oil runs out?
~ Wind farms, nuclear power and the overuse of energy.
RELATING TO AND CARING FOR OTHERS
~ What ethical demands do personal relationships with family or
friends place on us?
~ Does the role of 'parent' or 'spouse' create particular ethical
responsibilities?
~ How responsible are we for those who are less well off than we are?
~ Should we give money to beggars in the street, even if we suspect
they will use it for drugs and alcohol?
~ Do we also have ethical obligations to strangers, whether they are
from our society or more distant ones, that conflict with our
obligations to friends and lovers?
~ Must we donate to every global disaster fund, even if we believe
that our money may not reach those who need our help?
~ Should I feel guilty about the plight of folk in developing
countries that are squandering their GDP on warfare?
~ What special ethical considerations do sexual relationships involve?
BUSINESS
~ What does it take for a business to be ethically sound?
~ Should multinationals rule the world?
~ What's fair about 'fairtrade'?
~ Isn't 'Responsible and sustainable tourism' just another way of
capturing a share of the market from cyncial business people?
~ Should we buy newspapers published by companies that have a track
record of unethical behaviour?
Papers will be considered on any related theme. The Steering Group
particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals.
Papers will also be considered on any related theme.
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 23rd December 2011.
If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper
should be submitted by Friday 23rd March 2012. Abstracts should be
submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be
in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information
and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract,
e) body of abstract, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: RL2 Abstract Submission.
Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using
footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as
bold, italics or underline). Please note that a Book of Abstracts is
planned for the end of the year. All accepted abstracts will be
included in this publication. We acknowledge receipt and answer to
all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us
in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it
might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an
alternative electronic route or resend.
Organising Chairs
Gavin J Fairbairn
Professor of Ethics and Language
Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds
United Kingdom
Email: G.Fairbairn@leedsmet.ac.uk
Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
Email: el2@inter-disciplinary.net
The conference is part of the Persons series of ongoing research and
publications projects conferences, run within the Probing the
Boundaries domain which aims to bring together people from different
areas and interests to share ideas and explore innovative and
challenging routes of intellectual and academic exploration.
For further details of the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/ethics-everyday-life/
For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/ethics-everyday-life/call-for-papers/
