Because Emmanuel Levinas distanced himself from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's philosophy for a more radical account of the self as primordially oriented by a radical passivity and asymmetrical ethical obligation to the other, few secondary sources have articulated the clear influence Merleau-Ponty had on the trajectory of Levinas's thought. Further, Levinas's more radical account of intersubjectivity raises three primary concerns: (1) Levinas resorts to a form of Platonic dualism when he depicts the other as beyond culture, history, and the physical appearance of the body; (2) there are questions as to whether the phenomena warrant his later view that the self is grounded in a radical passivity and an utter noncoincidence between self and other; (3) his ethics based on an infinite, asymmetrical obligation for the other conflates any kind of self-regard with egoism, thus creating a scenario in which my infinite concern for the singular other stands at odds with concerns of equality and justice. <br> Drawing on the work of Levinas and Merleau-Ponty, I develop a hybrid account of intersubjectivity. Echoing the work of Adriaan Peperzak, I depict the self-other relation as "chiastic asymmetry" that stresses that the asymmetry in Levinas's thought and the mutuality in Merleau-Ponty's must be seen as equiprimordial. Peperzak neither considers Merleau-Ponty's thought, nor does he provide a phenomenological description of chiastic asymmetry. The parent-child relationship provides this explanation by highlighting how ethics is cultivated simultaneously in both the child and the caregiver, and thus, both responsibility and mutuality constitute the self-other relation. In addition, the study of the parent-child relation (1) offers a phenomenological analyses of passivity and sensibility that decenter the autonomous, self-reflective cogito that is prioritized by Descartes, Kant, and Husserl and (2) stands in contrast to the predominant accounts of intersubjectivity that are grounded in self-interest, indifference, or shame, as represented by Hegel, Heidegger, and Sartre. This alternative account seeks to preserve the alterity of the other and unearths an originary posture toward the other that is peaceful and positive. <br> After considering Levinas's and Merleau-Ponty's respective roots in Husserl's thought (chapter 1), I respond to Levinas's criticisms of Merleau-Ponty in the areas of language, history, aesthetics, and embodiment (chapter 2). Then, I turn to their respective accounts of the parent-child relation, supplemented by current empirical research in child development, to establish my account of chiastic asymmetry (chapter 3). After explaining how chiastic asymmetry offers an alternative to the views set forth by Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, and Hobbes (chapter 4), I conclude by considering how intersubjectivity as chiastic asymmetry might serve as a basis for a peaceful politics that reframes the use of violence and suggest its conceptual presence in the thought of Enrique Dussel, Desmond Tutu, and Miroslav Volf. <br> / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Philosophy / PhD; / Dissertation;

The WM sector in Nairobi is a failure. Collection rates are deplorable, regulations go unenforced and the municipal landfill is desecrating the environment and killing neighbouring slum dwellers. This paper focuses on the exclusion and marginalization of the slums adjacent to Nairobi’s landfill, Korogocho and Dandora, and uses a post-structuralist theoretical framework to conceptualize a just response to these exclusions and theorize an inclusive approach to waste policy in Nairobi. Building on the work of Jacques Derrida, I present a ‘deconstructive ethic’ for development that is dedicated to mitigating and overcoming the production of alterity, and reintegrating excluded communities and knowledges into the sites of knowledge and policy creation. This ethic is used to formulate a five-part response to the conditions of exclusion experienced in Korogocho and Dandora, and to engage these populations in finding participatory solutions to the city’s waste problem.

The WM sector in Nairobi is a failure. Collection rates are deplorable, regulations go unenforced and the municipal landfill is desecrating the environment and killing neighbouring slum dwellers. This paper focuses on the exclusion and marginalization of the slums adjacent to Nairobi’s landfill, Korogocho and Dandora, and uses a post-structuralist theoretical framework to conceptualize a just response to these exclusions and theorize an inclusive approach to waste policy in Nairobi. Building on the work of Jacques Derrida, I present a ‘deconstructive ethic’ for development that is dedicated to mitigating and overcoming the production of alterity, and reintegrating excluded communities and knowledges into the sites of knowledge and policy creation. This ethic is used to formulate a five-part response to the conditions of exclusion experienced in Korogocho and Dandora, and to engage these populations in finding participatory solutions to the city’s waste problem.

The WM sector in Nairobi is a failure. Collection rates are deplorable, regulations go unenforced and the municipal landfill is desecrating the environment and killing neighbouring slum dwellers. This paper focuses on the exclusion and marginalization of the slums adjacent to Nairobi’s landfill, Korogocho and Dandora, and uses a post-structuralist theoretical framework to conceptualize a just response to these exclusions and theorize an inclusive approach to waste policy in Nairobi. Building on the work of Jacques Derrida, I present a ‘deconstructive ethic’ for development that is dedicated to mitigating and overcoming the production of alterity, and reintegrating excluded communities and knowledges into the sites of knowledge and policy creation. This ethic is used to formulate a five-part response to the conditions of exclusion experienced in Korogocho and Dandora, and to engage these populations in finding participatory solutions to the city’s waste problem.

This dissertation analyses the contribution that Amartya Sen’s idea of justice can make to inform development policies. Particularly, it examines to what extent Sen succeeds in presenting a useful theoretical framework for orienting political action towards justice-enhancing change. In The Idea of Justice (2009), Sen argues that ideal theories of justice which aim at identifying the nature of a perfectly just society—what he calls ‘transcendental’ theories—are not appropriate either for examining prevalent injustices or for rectifying them. Sen therefore proposes a ‘comparative framework’ of justice capable of providing useful practical guidance to advance justice or reduce injustice, a task for which ‘transcendental’ Rawlsian-like theories are redundant. This dissertation critically assesses these two claims advanced by Sen. Taking John Rawls’ Theory of Justice as an illustration, it argues that ideal theories are indeed essential, even if not sufficient, for the reduction of injustice. Therefore, it advances that it is necessary to complement ideal and nonideal approaches to justice. It then advocates for a ‘dual Rawlsian/Senian framework’. Yet this dissertation argues that, even if coupled with an ideal theory, Sen’s nonideal theory remains insufficient to orient injustice-reduction actions because it fails to take into account the overarching social nature of injustice and its perpetuation. In the light of this shortcoming, this dissertation stresses the need to conceptualise injustice as something different from simply the lack of justice and to understand it in a more dynamic and relational way. Ultimately, this implies further complementing a dual framework with a broader conceptualisation of injustice. The dissertation illustrates this argument with the social policy of Oportunidades in Mexico. It concludes that, in order to create a more just society, injustice-reduction policies need to go beyond the removal of capability-deprivations and address the ways in which injustice is reproduced through social interactions.

In my diploma thesis titled Saint-Exupéry´s Little Prince as a moral challenge and hope I deal with ethical issues and moral principles which are losing their meaning and perhaps also an importance for many fellow citizens in today´s hectic time. A morality of a person depends on morals throughout the society to which an individual belongs. A penetration of philosophical themes about the meaning of life in the Little Prince helps a reader to orient himself and to think about the life itself. In the theoretical part of my thesis I deal with a biography of A. de Saint-Exupéry and an analysis of the work of the Little Prince. Other chapters are devoted to a theoretical introduction of the concepts of ethics and morality. In a subsequent chapter there is dealt with an individual´s moral development according to Piaget and Kohlberg. In the practical part of the diploma thesis I set a goal of the thesis and hypotheses. The goal of the thesis is to characterize a possibility how to use Saint Exupéry´s work as a mean how to educate our young generation directly through its own reading or via their reading parents. It is one of the aspects of a current need to educate the children and youth in ethics and to get it back with a due attention to our primary and secondary schools. The research sample was composed of students from the multi-years´ Gymnasium in Vimperk and Strakonice aged 11 to 19 years. To obtain data for the investigation I chose a method of an own questionnaire, designed to meet research needs. The survey was anonymous. After an evaluation, I summarized the obtained data into tables and graphs. In the discussion I analysed and evaluated the results for individual questions. In a conclusion of the thesis the stated hypotheses were confirmed.

Embedding social and financial goals into investment decisions and organizational missions is an increasing hallmark of social finance, a rapidly growing phenomenon that aims to create sustainable solutions to some of society’s largest challenges such as poverty alleviation (Mosley & Hulme, 1998; Burgess & Pande, 2005; Beck et al. 2007a), wealth inequality (Buera et al. 2014; Lagoarde-Segot, 2017) and environmental preservation (Nicholls & Pharoah, 2008) among others (Benedikter, 2011). In recent years, the concept of social finance has emerged through applications such as venture philanthropy (Moody, 2008; Scarlata & Alemany, 2010), socially responsible investing (Renneboog et al. 2008; Nofsinger & Varma, 2014; Gutiérrez-Nieto et al. 2016), impact investing (Bugg-Levine & Emerson, 2011; Höchstädter & Scheck, 2015), corporate social responsibility (Falck & Heblich, 2007; Jha & Cox, 2015), crowdfunding sites that appeal to the charitable intentions of retail investors (Lehner, 2013; Lehner & Nicholls, 2014) and microfinance (Morduch, 1999; Beck et al. 2007b; Armendáriz & Labie, 2011). The microfinance industry is particularly suited to explore the nuances of social finance due to the wide range of actors present in the sector, including not only public, private and nonprofit actors (D’Espallier et al. 2016) but also a wide range of investor profiles including commercial rate, concessionary and fully donative funders (Dorfleitner et al, 2017). To meet these innovations in social finance, a substantial body of scholarly research has materialized in various areas: corporate finance (Bogan, 2012; Tchuigoua, 2014), investing (Dorfleitner et al. 2012; Brière & Szafarz, 2015), nonprofit finance (Jegers, 2011; Roberts, 2013), banking (Gutiérrez-Nieto et al. 2009; Cornée et al. 2016), entrepreneurship (Nicholls, 2010; Bruton et al. 2015), development economics (Cull et al. 2009; Ahlin et al. 2011; Hermes et al. 2011; Hartarska et al. 2013), business ethics (Sandberg et al. 2009; Arjaliès, 2010; Hudon & Sandberg, 2013), organizational theory (Battilana & Dorado, 2012; Pache & Santos, 2013), legal studies (Henderson & Malani, 2009), public economics (Duncan, 2004; Andreoni & Payne, 2011) and management studies (Cobb et al. 2016). However, these theories are often siloed within a particular domain and used separately. Despite a long research tradition on microfinance, there is still an ongoing debate on how to assess profits in a heterogeneous environment with multiple organizational objectives, the comparative advantages of public and private funders and their associated financial instruments to scale the microfinance sector and the nature of trade-offs between the financial and social objectives of microfinance institutions (MFIs). This dissertation aims to fill these gaps by analyzing social finance from an interdisciplinary perspective. The aim is to further nuance our understanding of the compatibility between financial and social objectives and how the trade-off between these two elements is moderated through financial mechanisms from donors and social investors. By analyzing the dimensions where trade-offs are most acute for social enterprises, this dissertation aims to put forth a conceptual framework to help assess profitability. Our analysis focuses on the microfinance industry, which offers a rich research setting due the wide range of institutional profiles active in the sector, including nonprofit, cooperative, for-profit and government agents and its global contributions to financial inclusion, poverty reduction and female empowerment. This dissertation is structured into three chapters, each of which addresses a different research question using different methods and units of analysis. The first chapter is a meta-analysis that uses statistical analysis of empirical research results to aggregate the existing findings on social and financial performance trade-offs as they pertain to microfinance institutions. The second chapter develops a typology of subsidy and donation instruments and then proposes a conceptual model to identify the crowding-in and crowding-out effects of public and private donors on private, commercial investors. The second chapter is complemented with an empirical analysis of a Mexican MFI, Banco Compartamos, using secondary data to suggest how the evolution of funding instruments attracted private commercial capital. Chapter three constructs a conceptual framework to identify fair profits for social enterprise, focusing on the case of microfinance. We then empirically apply the conceptual framework to an international dataset of microfinance institutions. Starting from the observation that no consensus has emerged regarding performance trade-offs between the financial and social objectives of microfinance institutions, Chapter 1 – A Meta-analysis Examining the Nature of Trade-offs in Microfinance – aggregates existing research findings to determine the dimensions of MFI performance, and study characteristics, that drive the confirmation of trade-offs. Specifically, after an initial screen of 3,299 articles, 623 empirical trade-off findings from 61 studies were coded into a dataset, where each empirical finding consists of a pairwise observation between a single financial performance variable and a single social performance variable. Using a probit model to analyze the direction and statistical significance across categories of social/financial performance and study artifacts, findings suggest that depth of outreach, cost of outreach, and efficiency indicators increase the prevalence of trade-offs, while risk indicators are associated with fewer trade-offs. Profitability indicators and outreach to women are found to have no significant effect on performance trade-offs. Study characteristics suggest that using an economic frontier methodology or publishing in development journals increases the incidence of trade-offs. These results help to understand the moderating factors that drive performance trade-offs and suggest that MFI managers and stakeholders may need to make difficult decisions regarding the social goals that may need to be sacrificed to achieve financial sustainability.Chapter 2 – Crowding-in without Crowding-out: Subsidy Design to Foster Commercialization – investigates the financial mechanisms that public and private donors have at their disposal and how they can use these instruments to attract fully commercial private capital to social enterprises. In this article, we first construct a typology to explain the ways in which private donors are complementing public donors in subsidy design. We argue that specific instruments such as corporate intangibles and credit guarantees can trigger permanent crowding-in effects that attract commercial partners, while preventing perverse effects such as crowding-out and soft budget constraints. Applying the typology and investment logics to the case of Compartamos, we observe that crowding-in and crowding-out effects can be present simultaneously, which allows us to suggest that subsidies and donations do not force path dependency towards commercialization but rather co-exist, for example attracting commercial debt investment while crowding-out commercial equity. Our research could help both private and public donors identify strategies to maximize social impact while reducing perverse mutual externalities. Finally, in the presence of performance trade-offs and donor pressures to commercialize operations and scale-up, Chapter 3 – What is an acceptable level of profit for a social enterprise? Insights from Microfinance – develops a conceptual framework for fair profits in social enterprise and then applies the framework to the microfinance industry. The fair profit framework is constructed on four dimensions: the level of profitability, the extent to which the organization adheres to its social mission, the pricing and the surplus distribution of the organization. Using a global sample of MFIs, our results suggest that satisfying all four dimensions is a difficult, although not impossible task as less than 3% of the sample fulfill all four criteria. Using our framework, we suggest that excessive profits in microfinance can be better understood relative to pricing, the social outreach of an organization, and the commitment to clients over time through reduced interest rates. This dissertation provides solid scientific evidence on the compatibility between financial and social returns in social finance. Our dissertation examines social finance through the lens of microfinance, and investigates the performance trade-offs facing MFIs as well as the moderating role of financing mechanisms to help MFIs fulfill their double-bottom-line mandate. We hope we demonstrate that the unique combination of financing technicalities significantly shape the evolution of recipient organizations. Some practical implications are also identified to help practitioners, regulators and managers navigate the ongoing debate on the compatibility of financial and social returns and the design of financial instruments for social enterprise. We firmly believe that these academic works contribute and bring new perspectives to social finance in development economics, and business ethics. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Ecofeminism perceives an interconnection between the domination of women and poor people, and the domination of nature. This domination is founded on modern, Western, patriarchal, dualised structures, which subordinate all considered as "the other" compared to the superior masculine archetype. Hence, all feminine is seen as inferior and may therefore be exploited. This is presently manifested in the neo-liberal economic development ideal. Its global penetration generates huge economic profits, which are reaped by Northern and Southern elites, while its devastating crises of poverty, violence, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses makes life increasingly unmanageable for Southern women, poor people and nature. Feminism and ecology have therefore come together aiming at liberating women, poor people and nature. They want to change the dualised, reductionist perception of reality into a holistic cosmology. Ecofeminism consequently aims to integrate the concerns of women, poor people and nature into development. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)

Ecofeminism perceives an interconnection between the domination of women and poor people, and the domination of nature. This domination is founded on modern, Western, patriarchal, dualised structures, which subordinate all considered as "the other" compared to the superior masculine archetype. Hence, all feminine is seen as inferior and may therefore be exploited. This is presently manifested in the neo-liberal economic development ideal. Its global penetration generates huge economic profits, which are reaped by Northern and Southern elites, while its devastating crises of poverty, violence, environmental destruction, and human rights abuses makes life increasingly unmanageable for Southern women, poor people and nature. Feminism and ecology have therefore come together aiming at liberating women, poor people and nature. They want to change the dualised, reductionist perception of reality into a holistic cosmology. Ecofeminism consequently aims to integrate the concerns of women, poor people and nature into development. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)

Mozambique is undergoing intensive socio-economic reforms to reconstruct war damages and develop the nation. The reforms consist of economic liberalisation through structural adjustment and monetarist economic stabilisation, e.g. government withdrawal from economic activities, privatisation, deregulation, reduction of tariff levels on imports and tax on investments, cuts of expenditure on social services, restrictive credit system, focus on monetarism, increased taxation on individual income, etc. The nature of these reforms, on the surface, leads to morally questionable conditions. There is social chaos and disintegration, high indices of corruption, subtle recolonisation, decline of civil services, etc. At the bottom lie the market ethics and fundamentalist theological discourse by dint of which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund deny historical consciousness, lack institutional memory, vest themselves with unquestionable international authority, dictate and impose policies without accountability for the social consequences. If there is any hope for Mozambicans, it lies in development ethics which relies heavily on the liberation motif, historical consciousness, and African Heritage. / Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Theological Ethics)