According to ‘global institutionalism,’ individuals who do not share a state have duties of justice to one another, and this is explained, in part, by the institutional connections that obtain between them. In this chapter, I defend this view against two challenges. First, I consider challenges raised by ‘non-institutionalists,’ who deny that facts about global institutional interaction bear on the nature of duties of justice that arise between particular individuals. Second, I address challenges posed by ‘domestic institutionalists,’ who accept the (...) claim that facts about institutional interaction bear upon the scope of justice but deny that the right sort of interaction necessary to ground duties of justice is found in the global domain. (shrink)

The ArgumentDuring the last two decades the debate on the use and abuse of narrative in historiography has taken a new form: ideological instead of methodological. According to poststructuralist critics, the representation of past events and processes in the form of a coherent story turns history into mythology, which is (or serves) conservative ideology. This is so because the fabrication of organic continuity and unity between the past and the present (as well as the future) of society depicts its most (...) fundamental laws and institutions as divine-natural rather than human creations and thereby renders them impervious to any rational or historical refutation. The main aim of this essay is to reclaim some credibility for narrative history against its critics, both ancient and modern, and on both methodological and ideological grounds, by reappraising the role of myth in the constitution of all norms and forms of life. Setting out from the observation that the narratives and other symbolic interpretations of historical reality in which the people believe are as real as the conditions and events in which they actually live, the author calls upon historians not to eliminate, but to illuminate, myths in history, by showing their extension or configuration of historical reality. (shrink)

Biology and the social sciences share an interest in phylogeny. Biologists know that living species are descended from past species, and use the pattern of similarities among living species to reconstruct the history of phylogenetic branching. Social scientists know that the beliefs, values, practices, and artifacts that characterize contemporary societies are descended from past societies, and some social science disciplines, linguistics and cross cultural anthropology for example, have made use of observed similarities to reconstruct cultural histories. Darwin appreciated that his (...) theory of descent with modification had many similarities of pattern and process to the already well developed field of historical linguistics. In many other areas of social science, however, phylogenetic reconstruction has not played a central role. (shrink)