Colombia's protracted civil war between Marxist insurgencies and the state has brought grave consequences for the civilian population and the prospects for constructing a viable political community in the country. With up to 5 million internally displaced people, rampant impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity and human rights and International Humanitarian Law violations, dozens of politicians and countless members of the armed forces linked to paramilitary organizations, along with increasing social injustices and inequalities, Colombia presents a troubling social-political panorama that has led to what is often referred to as a profound social and institutional 'moral crisis'. Much discussion has centred on the question of achieving some degree of minimal moral and political consensus and 'collective conscience' to humanize and slowly transform the conflict at local, regional and national levels. However, the philosophical and political parameters of this discussion have been and continue to be set firmly within variants of the liberal tradition which, it is argued, does not provide the necessary resources for adequately conceptualizing the problem and conceiving the task of addressing conflict, constructing moral consensus, and seeking social and political coexistence. The thesis argues that the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre can provide such resources. MacIntyre provides a convincing account of the philosophical problems that underlie ongoing intractable disagreement and the conflicts it breeds, offering a philosophy that can inform and underpin efforts at social transformation, resistance, and coexistence as well as aiding the necessary task of social scientific research and analysis of the conflict. The thesis analyses the moral dimensions of the conflict in light of MacIntyre's philosophy but also critically explores the adequacy of his politics of local community for the Colombian context. MacIntyre argues that a rational political community can only be constructed through the praxis of local communities engaging in shared moral-political deliberation. Through an empirical case study of a Constituent Assembly process in a rural community that has suffered the impacts of armed conflict for decades, the thesis explores an attempt at constructing peaceful social and political coexistence in light of MacIntyre's moral-sociological framework.

This research looks at how local television news framed the efforts in Iowa in 2010 and 2012 to unseat Iowa Supreme Court Justices whose 2009 ruling in the case Varnum v. Brien made Iowa the third state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. By looking at relevant news packages and interviewing journalists, news directors, and spokespersons, I traced the way the traditionally ignored judicial retention votes became a top political story, and how particular frames entered the news. I found that despite a well-meaning intention to cover the story in a professionally acceptable fashion, these same news values and reporting rituals blinded journalists to how their attempts to provide “balance” ultimately accomplished the opposite. Evidence studied here suggested that morality politics was the dominant frame throughout most of the coverage, with the civil rights aspects of the issue mostly relegated to the day after each election rather than in the weeks prior. Political science literature defines morality politics as a campaign strategy that relies upon arguments based on “morality,” “values,” or even “sin” to motivate supporters. In the Iowa case, this concept gets modified because while the conservative campaign engaged the logics of morality politics, they also felt the need to couch their campaign in issues like “judicial activism.” I conclude the ability to get news coverage of the anti-retention campaign and get this modified morality politics framing as dominant in that coverage reveals the exercise of political and social power in defense of the hegemonic heteronormative cultural matrix.

Human Trafficking involves the various forms of coercion and force against millions of individuals all over the world into situations of unpaid labor, sexual exploitation, and organ sales. Attention to the phenomenon is relatively new and there is complexity both in how to address it and study it. When looking at human trafficking, issues of development, poverty, immigration, gender, international cooperation, social stigma, among others, are considered. The purpose of this research paper is to compare and analyze local law interpretations of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, or just "the Palermo Protocol", in a sample of countries who have ratified the international agreement. The countries selected for analysis vary from each other in how they stand as dominant "origins" or "destinations" of human trafficking and how well they do in eradicating the problem as categorized by the United States Trafficking in Persons Report (US TIP Reports) "Tier" statuses. Through asking a set of questions of each law, trends are revealed. The study found that local law documents used many elements from the Palermo Protocol to frame their documents; there were fewer differences than expected. The major differences were in how laws were integrated into the existing legal framework or if a comprehensive separate act was defined. Implications and the role of morality politics and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are theorized. Many studies in this field are laden with ever changing statistics, very specific case studies, or material that speaks to how the situation is stigmatized. All contribute to deeper understanding, but by objectively looking at how the major international mechanism works at a local level we may inch towards learning more about how the issue continues to pervade globally.

A SURVEY OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ETHICS AND POLITICS WITH AN ARISTOTELIAN APPRAISAL &Ccedil / elik, Sinan Kadir Ph.D., Department of Philosophy Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ahmet &amp / #272 / nam March 2010, 189 pages In the history of philosophy, ethics and politics have either been considered as two unrelated, irreducible realms or as identical to each other. In the thesis the historical transformation of the problematic relation between ethics and politics is critically evaluated. It is argued that from the emergence of the conflict in Ancient Greece following the &ldquo / Socratic ideal&rdquo / to the modern attempt for its resolution by the &ldquo / Machiavellian revolution,&rdquo / the prominent theories developed for dealing with the problem have defined politics as an amoral practice, as a science, a technique or an art. An alternative Aristotelian approach is tried to be developed so as to elucidate the nature of the distinction between ethics and politics. According to this view, ethics and politics can neither be strictly separated from each other nor be reduced into one another. The Aristotelian conception of politike as &ldquo / philosophy of human affairs&rdquo / has ethical, practical and technical dimensions. The thesis tries to clarify at which point ethics and politics should be conceived as two different practices and at which point they cannot be treated as independent from each other. Hence, the present study aims to determine the peculiarities and the strong sides of Aristotelian practical philosophy in order to offer an alternative to resolve the problem under consideration.

This research contributes to understanding the attitudes of Russian politicians towards sex education in schools and the kind of argumentation styles they use to oppose it. The paper is based on a framing analysis of the arguments of two important opponents to sex education: Pavel Astakhov, a Russian politician and former Children’s Rights Commissioner from 2009 to 2016; and Yelena Mizulina, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family Affairs, Women and Children since 2008, using online media sources in a ten-year period (2011-2021). The analysis finds that Astakhov’s most used frames are the disapproval of children’s exposure to new, different attitudes, the interference in Russian traditions by the West and the spread of a gender discourse in Russia. Mizulina focuses mainly on the unfitness of teachers since sex education should only be addressed by parents, and on the “right age” to start talking about it with young people. From the results, both politicians seem to strongly oppose comprehensive sex education (CSE), but Astakhov proposes to adopt a type of abstinence-only curriculum (AO), while Mizulina tries to completely discourage sex education of any kind for school-aged children.