Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention : A Fresh Legal Approach Based on Fundamental Ethical Principles in International Law and World Religions

Few foreign policy issues in the past decade have elicited as much controversy as the use of military force for humanitarian purposes. In this book Brian Lepard offers a new method for analyzing humanitarian intervention that seeks to resolve conflicts among legal norms by identifying ethical principles embedded in the UN Charter and international law and relating them to a pivotal principle of "unity in diversity." A special feature of the book, which avoids the charge of ethnocentricity brought against other approaches, is that Lepard shows how passages from the revered texts of seven world religions may be interpreted as supporting these ethical principles. In connecting law with ethics and religion in this way, he takes a major step forward in the effort to formulate a normative basis for international law in our multicultural world. Inspired By Heidegger's Concept Of The Clearing Of Being, And By Wittgenstein's Ideas On Human Practice, Theodore Schatzki Offers A Novel Approach To Understanding The Constitution And Transformation Of Social Life. Key To The Account He Develops Here Is The Context In Which Social Life Unfolds - The Site Of The Social--as A Contingent And Constantly Metamorphosing Mesh Of Practices And Material Orders. Schatzki's Analysis Reveals The Advantages Of This Site Ontology Over The Traditional Individualist, Wholistic, And Structuralist Accounts That Have Dominated Social Theory Since The Mid-nineteenth Century. A Special Feature Of The Book Is Its Development Of The Theoretical Argument By Sustained Reference To Two Historical Examples: The Medicinal Herb Business Of A Shaker Village In The 1850s And Contemporary Day Trading On The Nasdaq Market. First Focusing On The Relative Simplicity Of Shaker Life To Illuminate Basic Ontological Characteristics Of The Social Site, Schatzki Then Uses The Sharp Contrast With The Complex And Dynamic Practice Of Day Trading To Reveal What Makes This Approach Useful As A General Account Of Social Existence. Along The Way He Provides New Insights Into Many Major Issues In Social Theory, Including The Nature Of Social Order, The Significance Of Agency, The Distinction Between Society And Nature, The Forms Of Social Change, And How The Social Present Affects Its Future.--jacket. Social Orders -- Practices -- The Site Of The Social -- Becoming And Change. Theodore R. Schatzki. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 269-281) And Index. "Inspired by Heidegger's concept of the clearing of being, and by Wittgenstein's ideas on human practice, Theodore Schatzki offers a novel approach to understanding the constitution and transformation of social life. Key to the account he develops here is the context in which social life unfolds - the "site of the social" - as a contingent and constantly metamorphosing mesh of practices and material orders. Schatzki's analysis reveals the advantages of this site ontology over the traditional individualist, wholistic, and structuralist accounts that have dominated social theory since the mid-nineteenth century.". "A special feature of the book is its development of the theoretical argument by sustained reference to two historical examples: the medicinal herb business of a Shaker village in the 1850s and contemporary day trading on the Nasdaq market. First focusing on the relative simplicity of Shaker life to illuminate basic ontological characteristics of the social site, Schatzki then uses the sharp contrast with the complex and dynamic practice of day trading to reveal what makes this approach useful as a general account of social existence. Along the way he provides new insights into many major issues in social theory, including the nature of social order, the significance of agency, the distinction between society and nature, the forms of social change, and how the social present affects its future."--BOOK JACKET. [In this text, the author] provides [an] exploration of legal and moral justifications for humanitarian intervention ... He opens new analytic vistas and provides a foundation for resolving conflicts over the content of the law. He [also] applies the framework in masterly examinations of intervention in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Kosovo.-Back cover