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The core teachings and practices of Buddhism are systematically directed toward developing keen and caring insight into the relational or interdependent nature of all things. Hershock applies Buddhist thought to reflect on the challenges to public good, created by emerging social, economic, and political realities associated with increasingly complex global interdependence. In eight chapters, the key arenas for public policy are addressed: the environment, health, media, trade and development, the interplay of politics and religion, international relations, terror and security, and education. Each chapter explains how a specific issue area has come to be shaped by complex interdependence and offers specific insights into directing the growing interdependence toward greater equity, sustainability, and freedom. Thereby, a sustained meditation on the meaning and means of realizing public good is put forward, which results in a solid Buddhist conception of diversity. Hershock argues that concepts of Karma and emptiness are relevant across the full spectrum of policy domains and that Buddhist concepts become increasingly forceful as concerns shift from the local to the global. A remarkable book on this fascinating religion, Buddhism in the Public Sphere will be of interest to scholars and students in Buddhist studies and Asian religion in general.

This paper critically assesses the globally dominant pattern of complex relationship that obtains among mass media, market economics, and both cultural and environmental change. Making use of Buddhist conceptual resources that link the meaning of development, environmental conservation and attentional enrichment, the effects of consuming mass media commodities are evaluated in ways that are compatible with Bhutan's overarching commitments to enhancing Gross National Happiness (GNH). Contemporary media are a complex result of historical processes shaped by the interplay of wide-ranging social, economic, political, cultural and technological forces and systems. Understanding how media affect public culture and environmental quality requires gaining critical perspective on these processes and the multi-dimensional context of their consolidation. The author wants to focus on a particular pattern of connections obtaining among mass media, communications technology and market economics— a pattern of interdependence that has crossed key thresholds of intensity and scale to begin globally transforming the quality and directional character of attention itself, thereby affecting the very roots of public culture and effecting a systematic erosion of environmental diversity. In spite of its complex texture, the broad outlines of this pattern of connections can be relatively simply formulated. As a result of compounding efficiencies correlated with specific advances in transportation, manufacturing and communication technology, by the mid-20th century there had emerged global markets of sufficient reach and density to bring about a commodification of the entire range of goods and services needed for basic human subsistence, including food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, sensory stimulation and a sense of belonging. In the early phases of this process, mass media played a key role in coupling markets and consumers by transmitting advertising content specifically designed to manufacture consumer need. In later ...

The core teachings and practices of Buddhism are systematically directed toward developing keen and caring insight into the relational or interdependent nature of all things. Hershock applies Buddhist thought to reflect on the challenges to public good, created by emerging social, economic, and political realities associated with increasingly complex global interdependence. In eight chapters, the key arenas for public policy are addressed: the environment, health, media, trade and development, the interplay of politics and religion, international relations, terror and security, and education. Each chapter explains how a specific issue area has come to be shaped by complex interdependence and offers specific insights into directing the growing interdependence toward greater equity, sustainability, and freedom. Thereby, a sustained meditation on the meaning and means of realizing public good is put forward, which results in a solid Buddhist conception of diversity. Hershock argues that concepts of Karma and emptiness are relevant across the full spectrum of policy domains and that Buddhist concepts become increasingly forceful as concerns shift from the local to the global. A remarkable book on this fascinating religion, Buddhism in the Public Sphere will be of interest to scholars and students in Buddhist studies and Asian religion in general.

Bhutan's stated intention of keeping the value of happiness central to the development process is a suitable counter to the values and karma that prevail in most development strategies and ideals. Given present day realities of unprecedented, accelerating changes and paradigmatic shifts in economic, political, and social practices, any successful strategy for integration into global development processes must be creative in nature. It must, in other words, consist of an ongoing improvisation that is at once virtuosic and virtuous and that brings both greater resolution and resolve into the development process. In this essay the author wants to contribute to this effort by considering the broad landscape of development and trade concepts and practices and their implications for the trajectory of innovations needed to insure that development processes and greater economic interdependence are, indeed, liberating. The auhtor starts by reflecting on the context of present day patterns of development, raising some issues related to history and scale in assessing the effects of increasing global interdependence. He suggestes that present day patterns and scales of globalization have both generated and been generated by the extremely rapid and practically irreversible commodification of subsistence needs—a commodification that (paraphrasing Ivan Illich) has the effect of institutionalizing entirely new classes of the poor. Beyond a critical threshold and unless redirected—that is, informed by radically different values—present day patterns of interdependence will continue bringing about the conversion of communities that have been faring well into aggregates of individuals in need of welfare. Unchecked, the promise of globally extended, deep community will be broken.

This work brings together leading thinkers from around the world to deliberate on how best to correlate worth (value) with what is worthwhile (values), pairing human prosperity with personal, environmental, and spiritual flourishing in a world of differing visions of what constitutes a moral life.

"Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China, has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the "idea" of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey's "idea" of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a "Confucian democracy." Just as Dewey's "idea" of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi's Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process "starting here and going there" through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century"--

"Over the past generation, the rise of East Asia and especially China, has brought about a sea change in the economic and political world order. At the same time, global warming, environmental degradation, food and water shortages, population explosion, and income inequities have created a perfect storm that threatens the very survival of humanity. It is clear now that the Westphalian model of individual sovereign states seeking their own self-interest will not be able to respond effectively to this win-win or lose-lose crisis. In this volume, a cadre of distinguished scholars comes together to reflect on Confucianism and Deweyan pragmatism as possible resources for a new geopolitics that begins from an ontology of interdependence and recognizes the irreducibly ecological nature of the human experience at every level. Both Confucian and Deweyan traditions emphasize the primacy of experience, the importance of vital relationality, and the moral roots of good governance. The potential benefits of conceptually blending the two are many. Indeed, the contemporary Chinese philosopher Tang Junyi provides us with a cosmological understanding of the "idea" of Confucianism that, in parallel to Dewey's "idea" of democracy, can enable us to anticipate the core values, if not the specific contours, of a "Confucian democracy." Just as Dewey's "idea" of democracy is his vision of the flourishing communal life made possible by the contributions of the uniquely distinguished persons that constitute it, Tang Junyi's Confucianism is a pragmatic naturalism directed at achieving the most highly integrated cultural, moral, and spiritual growth for the individual-in-community. In both, we find an affirmation of communal harmony as a process "starting here and going there" through which those involved learn together to do ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Just such a cosmological understanding of democracy is one way of describing what will be needed to address the many predicaments characterizing the environmental, cultural, socioeconomic, and political dynamics of the twenty-first century"--

Frontmatter --Contents --Acknowledgments --Introduction /Buchanan, James / Hershock, Peter --1. Technology, History, and the Contested Role of Cultural Difference --Modern Technologies and Perspectives of Civilization /Stiopin, Vyacheslav --Technology, Nature, and the Alleged Duty of Human Survival /Derringh, Frank W. --Knowledge, Science, and Technology and the West-East Transition /Goonatilake, Susantha --Islām and the Challenge of Modernity: Divergence of Worldviews /Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib --2. Biotechnologies --Biomedicine, Bioethics, and Biotechnology: The Impact of Genetic Technologies /Ten Have, Henk A. M. J. --Methodological Considerations in the Development of a Global Bioethic /Khushf, George --Biomedical Technology: A Theological Approach /Cummings Neville, Robert --Buddhist, Shinto, and Modern Japanese Views of Medicine and Terminal Care /Becker, Carl --Philosophy and Fear: Hans Jonas and the Japanese Debate about the Ethics of Organ Transplantation /Lafleur, William R. --Remaking the World or Remaking Ourselves? Buddhist Reflections on Technology /Loy, David R. --Toward a Broader Notion of Causation (and Technology) /Ni, Peimin --3. Technology, Authority, and Dissent --How to Distinguish Friends from Enemies: Human Rights Rhetoric and Western Mass Media /Möller, Hans-Georg --Cultural Integrity, Globalization, and Technical Change: Further Thoughts on GMOs in the Food Supply /Thompson, Paul B. --Women Carrying Water: Homeplace, Technology, and Transformation /Arisaka, Yoko --Radical Catholicism, Popular Resistance, and Material Culture in El Salvador /Lorentzen, Lois Ann --Environmental Justice, Supererogation, and Virtue Ethics: The Case of Chernobyl /Shrader-Frechette, Kristin --Gandhi's Viable Vision of Relating Technology and Religion /Pandikattu, Kuruvilla --Supreme Danger and Saving Power: Toward a Gandhian Response to Heidegger's Analysis of Technology /Srinivasan, Vasanthi --4. Food Technologies and Transgenic Species --From Agriculture to Agribusiness: Transgenic Organisms in the New Millennium /Sentmartí, Ramon --Cultural Values and Diversity of Agro-biodiversity for Food Security and Poverty Alleviation /Opole, Monica --How Wholesome Is That Soup? or, The Political Contents of the Refrigerator /Bray, Francesca --5. Technology and the Home --Of Greed, Gadgets, and Guests: The Future of Human Dwellings /Chakrabarti, Arindam --Dwelling in Humanity or Free and Easy Wandering /Wong, David B. --Losing Place: The Risks of Cosmopolitanism /Kupperman, Joel J. --6. Technology and the Aesthetics of Embodiment --Art and Technology: The Touch of the Human /Margolis, Joseph --Technical Arts and Reality: Status of the Referent in Photography and Cinema /Petrovsky, Helen --Healing: The Body as Site of Medical and Religious Interaction /Kasulis, Thomas P. --Sensory Dimensions in Intercultural Perspective and the Problem of Modern Media and Technology /Elberfeld, Rolf --7. Technology, Communication, and Education --Thinking, Making, and Using: Technology and the Realization of Human Values /Tiles, Mary --Cultural Collisions and Collusions in the Electronic Global Village: From McWorld and Jihad to Intercultural Cosmopolitanism /Ess, Charles --Online Education and the Choices of Modernity /Feenberg, Andrew --The Fate of Creative Solitudes in the Age of Information Technology /Krell, David Farrell --The Emergence of Pure Consciousness: The Theater of Virtual Selves in the Age of the Internet /Heng, H. Jiuan --8. Critical Afterword --Critical Literacies: Technology and Cultural Values (Comparative Philosophy and Philosophy of Technology in Conversation) /Buchanan, James P. --Turning Away from Technotopia: Critical Precedents for Refusing the Colonization of Consciousness /Hershock, Peter D. --Contributors --Name Index --Subject Index

The mosaic and the jigsaw puzzle: how it all fits together / Thomas P. Kasulis -- Value, exchange and beyond: between-ness as starting point / Meera Sushila Viswanathan -- Triple negation: Watsuji Tetsuro on the sustainability of ecosystems, economies, and international peace / James McRae -- Fouling our nest: is (environmental) ethics impotent against (bad) economics? / Heidi M. Hurd -- The visible and the invisible: rethinking values and justice from a Buddhist-postmodern perspective / Jin Y. Park -- "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" / Jim Peterman -- Filial piety and traditional Chinese rural community: an alternative ethical paradigm for modern aging societies / Liuxin Yang, Baoyan Cheng, and Xu Di -- Doing justice to justice: seeking a more capacious conception of justice from Confucian role ethics / Roger T. Ames -- Moral equivalents / Kathleen M. Higgins -- A critique of economic reason: between tradition and post-coloniality / Purushottama Bilimoria -- Economies of scarcity and acquisition, economies of gift and thanksgiving: lessons from cultural anthropology / Kenneth Stikkers -- John Dewey, institutional economics, and Confucian democracies / Larry A. Hickman -- The responsible society as social harmony: Walter G. Muelder's communitarian social ethics as a bridge tradition for Confucian economics / Robert Smid -- Swaraj and Swadeshi: Gandhi and Tagore on ethics, development, and freedom / Jay Garfield and Nalini Bhushan -- Economics and religion or economics vs. religion: the concept of an Islamic economics / Oliver Leaman -- Two challenges to market Daoism / James Behuniak, Jr. -- Buddhist, western, and hybrid perspectives on liberty rights and economic rights / Gordon Davis -- The conversation of justice: Rawls, Sandel, Cavell, and education for political literacy / Naoko Saito -- Social justice and the occident / Paul Standish -- Three-level eco-humanism in Japanese Confucianism: combining environmental with humanist social ethics / T. Yamauchi -- Economic growth, human well-being, and the environment / Workineh Kelbessa -- The moral necessity of socialism / Karsten J. Struhl -- Invaluable justice: Heidegger, Derrida, and Daoism thinking on values and justice / Steven Burik -- What is it like to be a moral being? / Amita Chatterjee -- What is the value of poverty?: a comparative analysis of Aristotle's politics and Dogen's Shobogenzo zuimonki / Steve Bein -- Economic goods, common goods, and the good life / May Sim -- On the justice of caring labor: an alternative theory of liberal egalitarianism to Dworkin's luck egalitarianism / Shiu-Ching Wu -- Aging, equality, and Confucian selves / Steven Geisz -- Institutional power matters: the role of institutional power in international development / Lori Keleher -- The value of diversity: Buddhist reflections on more equitably orienting global interdependence -- Peter D. Hershock.