Can an entire nation be collectively guilty for crimes committed in its name? Focusing on the case of Serbia, this article argues that collective guilt is a morally flawed and untenable concept that should be rejected. It presents various moral and practical objections to both the generic notion of collective guilt and the more specific idea of Serbian collective guilt and contends that the latter is a fundamental impediment to peace-building and reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. On what basis might it be argued that the Serbs are collectively guilty? To claim that they are collectively guilty for having supported Milošević both exaggerates levels of support for the former Serbian leader and does a major injustice to those individuals who bravely fought against the Milošević regime. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, the article concludes by suggesting that perhaps we can speak of Serbian collective responsibility.
Diese Arbeit möchte verstehen, was es bedeutet gleichzeitig eine Gemeinschaft und ein Unternehmen zu sein, und welche Herausforderungen dadurch für die intraorganisationale Koordination entstehen. Wie vereinbaren alternative Betriebe unterschiedliche Menschen und Rationalitäten miteinander, ohne auf formale Hierarchien zurückzugreifen? In einer vergleichende Fallstudie von drei kleinen, direkt-demokratisch organisierten Kollektivbetrieben wird der Beziehung zwischen Koordination, Bewertung und Moralvorstellungen nachgegangen. Die Arbeit nutzt hierfür Laurent Thévenots pragmatischer Soziologie des Engagements. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit liefern einen Beitrag zu drei Forschungsbereichen: Die Arbeit liefert einen Beitrag zum Feld der "valuation studies". Es wird gezeigt, dass die mit Bewertung verbundene Unsicherheit zu Prozessen führen kann, die mehr einer kollektiven Entdeckung, als einem Konflikt entsprechen. Darüber hinaus wird die zentrale Rolle von legitimen Differenzierungs- und Äquivalenzprinzipien für Kommensuration aufgezeigt. Die Arbeit liefert einen Beitrag zur Forschung zum Verhältnis von Koordination, Bewertung und Moralvorstellungen in Organisationen. Sie zeigt, dass ein theoretischer Rahmen, der unterschiedliche Grade der Generalisierung von Koordination beachtet, wichtige Erkenntnisse für das Verständnis intraorganisationaler Koordination liefert. Die Arbeit liefert einen Beitrag zur Forschung über Kollektivbetriebe und Genossenschaften. Indem die eingenommene Perspektive über die Analyse von Governance-Strukturen hinausgeht, wird die Dualität von Kollektivbetrieben als ein Problem der Balance zwischen unterschiedlichen Koordinationsmodi gerahmt. Aus dieser Perspektive ist die zentrale Spannung, die Kollektivbetriebe ausbalancieren müssen, eine zwischen auf Vertrautheit basierender Koordination und Koordination, die auf Generalisierung von Beziehungen beruht. ; This thesis wants to understand how alternative firms deal with the complexity of balancing different rationalities in their intraorganizational coordination, in the absence of formal hierarchies. In a comparative case study of three small, democratically governed collective firms, the relationship between coordination and morality is analyzed. The majority of research on collective firms focuses on democratic governance structures, which risks to underestimate the importance of coordination that is based on intimate knowledge and personal relations. This is especially important to understand collective firms, which are dependent on lateral accountability and cooperation between their members. Consequently, this work is informed by the work of Laurent Thévenot which allows to understand coordination based on different levels of generalization. The results of this thesis contribute to three different areas of research: First, contributions are made to the field of valuation studies, by further developing insights on the notion of the test. The thesis also points out the central role of legitimate principles of difference and equivalence for successful commensuration, and the tension between particularity and generalization in standardizing evaluation devices. Second, the study contributes insights for scholarship on coordination and morality in organizations. It demonstrates that considering coordination based on different degrees of generality yields important insights on intraorganizational coordination. Finally, this study contributes to scholarship on cooperatives and collectivist organizations. The often noted duality of collective firms is reframed as the need to balance and mediate different modes of coordination. The study develops a heuristic concept, the composite relation, which explains how collectives are held together despite their central tension between particular and collective goods.
Analysis of the processes & circumstances by which norms emerge & persist in general & in collective behavior & action is used to clarify & expand emergent norm theory. An interdependency in risk principle is suggested, coupled with triggering conditions, to account for moral sense. The sources of normative content & social structural conditions conducive to normative emergence are considered. 39 References. Adapted from the source document.
Collective memories are memories shared by a group that influence their social identity. The goal of this paper is to focus on two major limitations in current studies on collective memory and show how the hourglass metaphor can overcome those limitations. The first limitation concerns the partial nature of studies devoted to the analysis of collective memory. Studies tend to focus either on the choice of the past (how memory agents mobilise the past) or the weight of the past (how the past affects the individual or the group). The second limitation relates to the temporal dimension of research conducted so far. Most studies only assess memory over a single generation, yet it can have long-term effects. In this paper, we suggest considering memory work as an hourglass, with the collective and the individual at opposite ends and the sand of memories passing from one to the other, filtered through family values and representations. The hourglass metaphor thus provides a helpful tool to explain the formation of collective memories over time and the interactions between the macro, meso and micro levels. We approach the study of collective memory from an interdisciplinary perspective, mainly involving psychology, political science, and history. We conclude by suggesting three challenges that future studies of memory will need to address: 1) the need to combine multiple approaches; 2) the need to consider the role of generations; and 3) the need to bridge discussion across disciplines.
Collective memories are memories shared by a group that influence their social identity. The goal of this paper is to focus on two major limitations in current studies on collective memory and show how the hourglass metaphor can overcome those limitations. The first limitation concerns the partial nature of studies devoted to the analysis of collective memory. Studies tend to focus either on the choice of the past (how memory agents mobilise the past) or the weight of the past (how the past affects the individual or the group). The second limitation relates to the temporal dimension of research conducted so far. Most studies only assess memory over a single generation, yet it can have long-term effects. In this paper, we suggest considering memory work as an hourglass, with the collective and the individual at opposite ends and the sand of memories passing from one to the other, filtered through family values and representations. The hourglass metaphor thus provides a helpful tool to explain the formation of collective memories over time and the interactions between the macro, meso and micro levels. We approach the study of collective memory from an interdisciplinary perspective, mainly involving psychology, political science, and history. We conclude by suggesting three challenges that future studies of memory will need to address: 1) the need to combine multiple approaches; 2) the need to consider the role of generations; and 3) the need to bridge discussion across disciplines.
Understanding Information and Communication Technologies through the networks in which people get connected, communicate and co-operate has been a constant feature in the work of researchers who have not dissociated their view of the meaning of technologies from new social movements. This paper maintains that Information and Communication Technologies are not only networks that people join individually, but they also act as social technologies. Their improvement depends both on the diversity of their functions (social, political, cognitive, etc.) and the flexibility with which they adapt to functional diversity (for example, to life cycles, changing and fluctuating mobility or audiovisual perception thresholds). This idea is supported by the new technological challenge represented by portable devices, such as, personal area networks, high-use user interfaces, and systems designed for home care. These important changes will be explored in this paper in connection with their value for education. ; The research that has resulted in this article is consequence of the author's participation in the research project INREDIS («Interfaces de relación entre el entorno y las personas con discapacidad») for CENIT Program of the Spanish Ministry of Industry, headed by the company Technosite and funded by the CDTI. ; Peer reviewed