Innovative Projects, Experiences, and Ideas

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The Law and Cross-cultural Dynamics in Europe par Christoph EBERHARD, 8 March 2010

Meeting of the Cross-cultural Skills in the Social Services workgroup, Division of Research and Development in Social Cohesion, Council of Europe, February 17-18, 2009, Paris. We met: to launch a discussion on the legal frameworks that would: allow our societies to change toward a democratic management of cultural diversity, and help to integrate into the European institutions, (...)

Cross-cultural Listening and Dialog par Christoph EBERHARD, 1 March 2010

Here is a video excerpt of the interview (Montreal, August 10, 2009), “The myth of pluralism. A dialog with Robert Vachon" (former director of the Institut Interculturel de Montréal, founder and director of the magazine Interculture). In his life devoted to cross-cultural dialog and through his explorations in the Institut Interculturel de Montréal of the cultures of the world and the dialog (...)

The Law as a Mirror of Cultures. For Another Globalization. par Christoph EBERHARD, 1 March 2010

The second edition of the Christoph Eberhard’s book, Le droit au miroir des cultures. Pour une autre mondialisation (The Law as a Mirror of Cultures. For Another Globalization) has just been published with a preface by Etienne Le Roy. Presentation In this age of globalization, Law theoreticians and researchers in social sciences are increasingly questioning the adequacy of their tools for (...)

Building One’s Retirement around Human Responsibilities? par Pierre CARO, 16 January 2007

Facing the irreversible changes in our environments – demographic, geopolitical, scientific, and religious – we can no longer consider our retirement period without drawing up for our life a real project, that makes sense to ourselves and to others. Entering the retirement period is no longer the same as entering old age Some are very young and some very old, but above all, today, there (...)

Our Common Responsibility to the Global Environment: The Europeans’ Ecological Debt par Yolanda ZIAKA, 10 December 2005

Everyone knows more or less what the debt Third World countries is: a financial debt. This is not true for the ecological debt, a new concept that was coined by South American NGOs in the early 1990s. In its current conception, as used by South American activists, the ecological debt is a debt that is due by the industrialized countries of the North to the Third World countries, once (...)

Climate Warming and Our Common Responsibility: Becoming Informed So We Can Act par Yolanda ZIAKA, 10 December 2005

The issue of global warming, a major challenge of our time, is a quintessential "entrance" to the initiation of an awareness-raising and education campaign on the question of everyone’s individual responsibility. Following is a brief overview of the issue as it stands today (September 2005) and a few ideas on the educational potential of this issue for an initiation to the concept of human (...)

The Ecological Footprint As a Tool for Awareness-raising on Individual and Collective Responsibility par Yolanda ZIAKA, 10 December 2005

The "ecological footprint" concept could be used to great advantage as an educational tool in the framework of communication and education actions around the concept of responsibility, with a view to becoming aware of our responsibility for the impact of our own lifestyle on the environment. It therefore carries significant potential for the development of a responsible attitude. Following (...)

The "Imperative of Responsibility" According to Hans Jonas par Yolanda ZIAKA, 6 November 2005

In his book "The Imperative of Responsibility," published in 1979, the German philosopher Hans Jonas pleads for the extreme emergency to give ourselves an ethics for technological civilization based on "the imperative of responsibility." His theory starts from the finding that the promise of modern technology has turned into a threat of disaster: science confers to man previously unknown (...)

The Ecological Footprint as a Tool in Environmental Education par Hans HARMS, 7 September 2005

What is the ecological footprint? It is a tool for determining if our lifestyles are sustainable. Categories of human consumption are translated into areas of productive land which is required to provide resources and assimilate waste products. The “footprint” is the total amount of land required to sustain one human or group of humans, say in a family or city, based on their use of energy, (...)

Assuming Responsibilities in Daily Life: Responsible Consumption par Yolanda ZIAKA, 10 July 2005

The responsible-consumption movement aims to raise consumer awareness and bring consumers to change their attitudes and behavior in the direction of committing to products applying social and environmental criteria. Mass consumption and the limits of our planet World War II brought about, in its wake, an explosion of mass domestic consumption that has continued to grow ever since with the (...)

Nevertheless, there are alternatives: the experience of the cooperative of Mondragón par Hans HARMS, 3 September 2005

We are in the year 2005 a.C. neo liberalism became the dominating approach all over Europe. Who does not understand yet or does not want to understand the fact that enterprises have to dismiss thousands of workers and employees although they declare record benefits is stamped as dreamer or a complete idiot. But is this really true all over Europe? No, in a remote valley in the deepest Basque (...)

“To buy is a political act”: pathways towards a responsible consumption par Hans HARMS, 3 September 2005

“To buy is a political act”. Responsible consumption represents an effort to simultaneously reduce pollution and consumption. The choices we make as consumers are perhaps the easiest and most effective methods we have of making our opinions relevant to corporate and government decision-makers. Buying is voting There are 6 billions of us today, half are under 20. Every move we make is (...)