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The paper argues that ethical discourse is intimately involved in the research literature of social science, and especially of political science, but is relegated to a subsidiary position. It therefore shares some of the vagueness, flexibility, and potential self-contradiction of the discourse of everyday life, rather than being sharpened by rational criticism. The norms governing scientific discourse provide not only for empirical testing, but also for rational criticism in the formulation of theories; an analogous type of criticism is shared by legal discourse. Some of the norms of scientific communication may be transferred to ethics by the specification of rules for ethical argument, requiring that arguments derive from previously specified, clear and consistent "ethical hypotheses." Within such rules, ethical systems formulated by social scientists and philosophers may be compared critically. Systems amenable to such comparison include those of welfare economics, cost-benefit analysis, and formal democratic theory. The discourse embodying this argument and criticism is particularly appropriate within the normative tradition of political science. Its possible benefits include clarity about our valuations; communication among disciplines that enlarges the perspectives of each discipline; and a more independent, self-conscious examination within the university of the criteria for policy formation.

Informal and public discourse on kinship and land tenure among the Buang (New Guinea) reveals marked variability in speakers' assignments of individuals and garden plots to kin groups. Discrepancies occur not only between speakers, but between assignments made by any one speaker at different times. Despite this, consensus is maintained during public discussion. Variability in claims made about kin group affiliation reflects a number of different verbal strategies in talking about kin groups, superimposed on systematically differing individual cognitive maps.

In our hurried world, we often prove to be poor listeners and shallow observers. This is certainly true of our understanding of the plight, aspirations, and contributions of refugee women living in our midst. Public discourse about refugee women is often limited to pity and sympathy. In reality they remain hidden in the shadows of society. Unless one is invited into the private sanctuaries of their confidence, built to preserve their safety, they appear faceless and the breadth of their reality remains unknown. This, in spite of their fundamental role in society and their importance in the construction of a holistic future.

The Polish dispute over in vitro. The character of public debate The aim of the article is to present the polish discourse on in vitro fertilization (IVF) and law regulation related to this issue. This article investigates the discursive strategies presented in the political discourse as well as in the part of public discourse, where the positions of proponents and opponents of the IVF are articulated. The publication presents the arguments of the Catholic clergy as well as activists and journalists associated with the Church (mainly presented in the press and on the Internet). In addition, the article shows the views of those who are strongly engaged in the promotion of the in vitro fertilization in Poland (their arguments are mostly presented in the press, media as well as on the Internet websites that were established especially for this reason). The article analyses the question of the identity of those who are IVF children and who recently are also taking part in the public debate related to this issue. The method, that has been chosen for the investigation, is the sociological discourse analysis, which enables to understand the social world (and political as well) from within while focusing on sense and reference of communication acts. Consequently, it can be applied to studying N. Luhmann's system theory that assumes the investigation of the social system from within its own functioning.

The concept of social exclusion/inclusion figured prominently in the policy discourse in France in the mid 1970s. The concept was later adopted by the European Union in the late 1980s as a key concept in social policy and in many instances replaced the concept of poverty. This concept which had first appeared in Europe as a response to the crisis of the welfare State has now gained considerable currency over the last five years in both official and development discourses in Nepal. The issue gained considerable leverage when the Nepal Government recognized inclusion as a policy issue as one of the four pillars of 2003 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which is also Nepal's Tenth Plan. The debates surrounding inclusion/exclusion have ascended to conspicuous importance in the present political transition in Nepal with several groups such as Dalit, women, ethnic communities, donor communities, Madhesi communities and region voicing their demands for an inclusive state by virtue of which, the issue has now come to be a part of the popular public discourse. However, what has to be borne in mind is that the concept lacks universality in the way it has been defined and employed. While some claim that social exclusion is more illuminating and holds the promise of understanding disadvantaged groups better, others argue that this concept is so evocative, ambiguous, multidimensional and elastic that it can be defined in many different ways and owing to its ambiguity in definition it may mean all things to all people. Howsoever, the term has been used, defined, conceptualized, the article here makes an effort to review accessible literature on the topic.DOI = 10.3126/dsaj.v2i0.1362Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol.2 pp.161-180

Greed as an excessive desire for wealth returned as a popular catchword after the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Because it was only the beginning of the global financial crisis, the notion of greed has been present in public discourse since that time. A legitimate question arises to what extent it could have really contributed to economic instability. But equally important are the questions of semantics. Of course, the notion of greed has its ancient roots and has been always present in religious writings and philosophical works, but today's use of this notion requires an analysis. What do we mean when we say "greed"? What do we want to achieve (pragmatic aspect), and what are the motives of those writers who include greed into their diagnoses of economic downturns? The major claim of this article is that greed as an individual desire cannot be a proper explanation of the crisis. More important factors are the political and social mechanisms, esp. the role of the regulators of the mortgage industry in the US. Sociological analysis of that industry, which triggered thewhole crisis, shows that the crisis was not an example of the excess of the free market and deregulation but rather something created by the politicians. Paradoxically an analysis of the systemic social and political factors which had led to the crisis allow us to reflect on greed as a notion which is a part of the so-called culture of excess – characterized, among others, by the process of the "democratization of desires".

Public funding of churches and religious associations in Poland: Analysis of political debates on the liquidation of the Church Property Commission and the Church Fund
The paper contains a case study of the political debate concerning public funding for the religious institutions. It deals with the parliamentary discussions in the years 2004‑2015 on the abolishing of two public bodies: Church Property Commission (Komisja Majątkowa) and Church Fund (Fundusz Kościelny). The paper has two main objectives. First of them is providing the description of the debate (most important themes in the discourse, argumentative strategies, rhetorical instruments used by the interlocutors). The characteristics of the discourse let us draw a picture of the social relations and the place of religion in the public sphere. Therefore, the second objective of the paper is to describe the dominant narratives in the public debate on the role of religion in society and the state.

What follows is an attempt to explore the nature of moral discourse as at applies to nation-states and to relate this discussion to some of the policies and purposes of, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. It should be noted that I have not introduced the "moral element" into the NATO debate; moral claims have been made for and by the organization itself during the course of its development.A first assumption about moral discourse, as the term is used here, is that the assessment of the moral element in a policy or an institution is a critical task, not an apologetic one. A second assumption follows from the practice of "public diplomacy": It is morally dubious to engage in the deception of oneself or of one's constituents where goals are concerned.

This article is about visual culture, identity, and women in interwar Egypt and Iran. I use a transnational feminist approach to connect the histories of Egypt and Iran, in their differences and commonalities, during the interwar period. By emphasizing women's education as the source of advancement of the society, the late nineteenth century Egyptian thinkers, Qasim Amin and Mohammad Abduh, and Iranian intellectuals Jamal al-Din Asadabadi (al-Afghani), Abdolhossein Khan Kermani, and Yusef Ashtiyani, invoked a male representation of a "feminist" discourse. During the 1906-1911 Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the 1919 Egyptian anti-British Revolution, the discourse of education was translated into women's first quest for legal and political rights. National modernization policies, as diverse as they were in each country, translated the "woman question," both as a discursive and a practice, into the question of women's appearance in public.

The article shows relational-symbolic aspects of poverty in polish political discourse about flagship Law and Justice's Party social program called "Family 500+". Based on the case study of weekly newspaper Newsweek Polska the author stressed main discursive strategies such as demoralization, humiliation of poor people, lower class and unemployed people as a examples of individual blame explanations of poverty. Moreover article presents efforts of justifying inequalities as a result of neoliberal ideology and the vision of profligacy of public institutions due to social politics expenses.

This paper is focused on the links between reform agendas and their rationales in higher education and in welfare state services across Europe. Lessons learnt from past and ongoing welfare state reforms can be useful in understanding ongoing and future higher education reforms. Research on reforming European welfare states is a missing context in research on reforming European universities. We intend to fill this gap and briefly explore possible links between these two largely isolated policy and research areas. European universities and European welfare states are closely linked today because they are heavily dependent on public funding – and the competition for public funding between the different claimants to it is on the rise. Reforms of both sectors are also closely linked to increasing intergenerational conflicts over public resources in aging societies, and pressures on both sectors are linked to the shrinking tax base, the power of the neoliberal ideology, and changing social attitudes to both welfare and universities. Problems of both sectors and solutions to them are increasingly being defined at a global level through transnational reform discourses.

Ofo na Ogu are Igbo cultural concepts that symbolize righteousness and uprightness. They are used in Igbo Sociocultural and religious discourse to stake claims of innocence hence the aim of this work is to examine the appropriation of these cultural motifs in Igbo literary drama and theatre. How can a creative use of these motifs serve as a unifying force for a nation at the throes of disintegration? Can the invocation of these symbolic objects help in the attempt to ensure high moral standards, especially in public offices? These and some others will be the issues which this paper will be attempting to address.

Over the course of Arab revolutions, many individual and collective phenomena and behaviours emerged, proving the importance of sex and gender in the concretization of the concepts of authority, and the methods of addressing them in both the public and the private spaces. Among such occurrences are the exacerbation of physical and symbolic violence against women, the frequency of violence, rape, trafficking, and child marriages, all of which have increased to the beat of religious fatwas and new laws that oppose women's citizenship and humanity. The rise to power of Islamic movements has nurtured and further fuelled these phenomena, unveiling the extent to which these currents rely on gender and women as a cornerstone for their discourse.

While the Washington Conference of 1921–2 was not the first occasion on which public opinion had exercised an impact upon great power diplomacy, it seems to have provided one of the more dramatic illustrations of a process already well under way. In his Discourses, Machiavelli (p. 248) had already noted the dangers of building policy on the opinion of the people:And if you propose to them anything that, upon its face, seems profitable and courageous though there be really a loss concealed under it which may involve the ruin of the republic, the multitude will ever be most easily persuaded to it. But, if the measure proposed seems doubtful and likely to cause loss, then it will be difficult to persuade the people to it, even though the benefit and welfare of the republic were concealed under it.

The post-independence years have been turbulent and fruitful for North African women in the performing arts: theater, cinema, dance, music, and art performance. In Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, the forces shaping the status of women are dynamic, unstable, productive, and in some cases, violent. They take place within larger, and equally volatile, discourses about the socio-political future of the three nation-states.This atmosphere has a profound effect on the women artists who must operate within it, or from its diaspora, as they agitate to have a voice in the future of the region. When we consider their work from a remove, it is easy to forget that, in addition to facing themselves the social and political issues about which they write, film, and perform, they, like artists everywhere, grapple with the petty politics of publishing, publicity, funding, public taste, and bureaucratic policy.