Diversity,civic virtues and ecological austerity

A single global culture and a unique set of world institutional arrangements, based on an ever-increasing consumption of natural resources and environmental pollution is not sustainable nor can be sustained. In this paper some key ideological and moral com­ponents of the urgently required changes towards a culture of sustainability are examined, together with the implications, difficulties and requirements for its embodiment both in individual practices and in social institutions. In particular, it is argued that the values and attitudes which promote the protection and integration of diversity—both cultural and biological—and restrain the current trends in natural resource consumption and environmental pollution are to be developed by the citizenry if global societies are to survive. In the domains of political participation, rational dialogue and civic virtue, sustainability is akin to the inherited republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Sustainability must now become an indispensable fourth moral pillar in the structuration of society and, in particular, in the coming world republican polity, which will necessarily take account of the diversity of cultures and institutions. It is shown that, otherwise, the now developing unsustainable global society would otherwise cease to exist.     

Affiliation motivates children’s prosocial behaviors: Relating helping and comforting to imitation

The current study focuses on the motivation that drives children's prosocial behavior by analyzing the association between prosocial behavior and children's imitative tendencies, which is a well‐established indicator of the motivation to affiliate with others. Therefore, we tested 30‐month‐old children (N = 59) in an imitation task and two domains of prosocial behavior, namely helping and comforting. Using a confirmatory factor analysis, we demonstrated that the two prosocial domains were explained by a common factor, which was in turn significantly related to children's imitation. Overall, our findings suggest that affiliative motives should be considered in order to better understand children's motivations to engage in prosocial behaviors.     

The Politics of Childhood and Asylum in the UK

This article considers the general treatment of asylum‐seeking families with children in the UK, focusing on the government's practices and public reactions to these measures. It first describes both the exclusive asylum framework, based on institutionalised suspicion, welfare restrictions and detention, and the inclusive child policy framework, based on recognising children's rights and protecting all children. The article then investigates the implications for policy‐making that these radically opposed regimes have for those who fall between the two categories, i.e. asylum‐seeking children. To this end, we examine more closely three asylum practices — Section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004, detention of accompanied asylum‐seeking children in immigration removal centres and removals. Our analysis indicates that the government's attempt to fully include families within the restrictive asylum framework has been somewhat frustrated by the mobilisation of a wide range of public actors. As such, despite its supposedly ‘legally unconstrained’ room for action, the government has recently agreed to partly review its policy standards for asylum‐seeking families, apparently aware of the potentially damaging effects of being seen as disregarding children's rights and needs. On the other hand, the government does not seem inclined to question the current asylum framework and the assumptions on which it is based. Consequently, the asylum system for families is likely to remain based on ad hocarrangements conditioned by the scale of the protests.     

A Valuation Based Analysis of the Spanish Accounting Reforms

This paper contrasts the association between security prices and accounting information before and after the Spanish accounting reforms. Spanish regulations were changed during 1989 and 1990 so as to conform with EU requirements, bringing them broadly into line with international standards, although the new system still focuses on compliance with rules rather than reflecting the substance of economic transactions. We model security price as a function of two fundamental accounting variables -- book value of equity per share and earnings per share. The model is estimated using a sample drawn from non-financial companies listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange during the period 1986--1995. Whilst the results demonstrate only a modest improvement in value relevance of accounting information following the reform, they show that the influence of the earnings variable becomes somewhat smaller whilst that on equity is increased. This is consistent with earnings containing a larger proportion of transitory elements following the reform, whilst the equity value appears to have more economic relevance than previously.