International: Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 167 Document Number: C27925
Notes:
Revised version of a paper prepared for the national workshop on "Strategies for applying information and communication technologies for rural development," in Chennai, Tami Nadu, India, May 17-18, 2001. 15 pages.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C36151
Notes:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/006/y4721e/y4721e00.pdf, Pages 25-43 in Bruce Girard (ed.), The one to watch: radio, new ICTs and interactivity, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy. 243 pages. In collaboration with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Geneva Office and Communication for Development Group, Extension, Education and Communication Service, Research, Extension and Training Division, Sustainable Development Department. 243 pages.
18 pages, Over the past decades, the modernization of agriculture in the Western world has
contributed not only to a rapid increase in food production but also to environmental and societal concerns over issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, soil quality
and biodiversity loss. Many of these concerns, for example those related to animal
welfare or labor conditions, are stuck in controversies and apparently deadlocked
debates. As a result we observe a paradox in which a wide range of corporate social
responsibility (CSR) initiatives, originally seeking to reconnect agriculture and society, frequently provoke debate, conlfict, and protests. In order to make sense of this pattern, the present paper contends that Western agriculture is marked by moral complexity, i.e., the tendency of multiple legitimate moral standpoints to proliferate without the realistic prospect of a consensus. This contention is buttressed by a conceptual framework that draws inspiration the contemporary business ethics and systems-theoretic scholarship. From the systems-theoretic point of view, the evolution of moral complexity is traced back to the processes of agricultural modernization, specialization, and diferentiation, each of which suppresses the responsiveness of the economic and legal institutions to the full range of societal and environmental concerns about agriculture. From the business ethics point of view, moral complexity is shown to prevent the transformation of the ethical responsibilities into the legal and economic responsibilities despite the ongoing institutionalization of CSR. Navigating moral complexity is shown to require moral judgments which are necessarily personal and contestable. These judgments are implicated in those CSR initiatives that require dealing with trade-ofs among the different sustainability issues.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 186 Document Number: D00606
Notes:
Address for the World Summit for the Information Society, Geneva, December 11, 2003, at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Roundtable. 6 pages.
