Examining the changes in society in the United States, Beth Rubin explains how the current era differs fundamentally from the post-World War Two period; how and why that change has occurred; and what its meaning is to everyday life. She traces the changes from a domestic to a global economy, the transformation of the workplace, and the impact that these changes have had on how other people are experiencing social aspects of their lives: their families and interpersonal relations, their communities and their experience of the culture of mass society.

Written for an interdisciplinary audience, Just Playing offers a panoramic tour through a range of new and disturbing insights that game theory brings to anthropology, biology, economics, philosophy, and psychology.

Very diverse societies pose real problems for Rawlsian models of public reason. This is for two reasons: first, public reason is unable accommodate diverse perspectives in determining a regulative ideal. Second, regulative ideals are unable to respond to social change. While models based on public reason focus on the justification of principles, this book suggests that we need to orient our normative theories more toward discovery and experimentation. The book develops a unique approach to social contract theory that focuses on diverse perspectives. It offers a new moral stance that author Ryan Muldoon calls, "The View From Everywhere," which allows for substantive, fundamental moral disagreement. This stance is used to develop a bargaining model in which agents can cooperate despite seeing different perspectives. Rather than arguing for an ideal contract or particular principles of justice, Muldoon outlines a procedure for iterated revisions to the rules of a social contract. It expands Mill's conception of experiments in living to help form a foundational principle for social contract theory. By embracing this kind of experimentation, we move away from a conception of justice as an end state, and toward a conception of justice as a trajectory. Listen to Robert Talisse interview Ryan Muldoon about Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World on the podcast, New Books in Philosophy: http://tinyurl.com/j9oq324 Also, read Ryan Muldoon’s related Niskanen Center article, "Diversity and Disagreement are the Solution, Not the Problem," published Jan. 10, 2017: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/diversity-disagreement-solution-not-problem/

This open access book is a 2022 Nautilus Gold Medal winner in the category "World Cultures' Transformational Growth & Development". It states that the societal fault lines of our times are deeply intertwined and that they confront us with challenges affecting the security, fairness and sustainability of our societies. The author, Prof. Dr. Patrick Huntjens, argues that overcoming these existential challenges will require a fundamental shift from our current anthropocentric and economic growth-oriented approach to a more ecocentric and regenerative approach. He advocates for a Natural Social Contract that emphasizes long-term sustainability and the general welfare of both humankind and planet Earth. Achieving this crucial balance calls for an end to unlimited economic growth, overconsumption and over-individualisation for the benefit of ourselves, our planet, and future generations. To this end, sustainability, health, and justice in all social-ecological systems will require systemic innovation and prioritizing a collective effort. The Transformative Social-Ecological Innovation (TSEI) framework presented in this book serves that cause. It helps to diagnose and advance innovation and spur change across sectors, disciplines, and at different levels of governance. Altogether, TSEI identifies intervention points and formulates jointly developed and shared solutions to inform policymakers, administrators, concerned citizens, and professionals dedicated towards a more sustainable, healthy and just society. A wide readership of students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in social innovation, transition studies, development studies, social policy, social justice, climate change, environmental studies, political science and economics will find this cutting-edge book particularly useful. “As a sustainability transition researcher, I am truly excited about this book. Two unique aspects of the book are that it considers bigger transformation issues (such as societies’ relationship with nature, purpose and justice) than those studied in transition studies and offers analytical frameworks and methods for taking up the challenge of achieving change on the ground.” - Prof. Dr. René Kemp, United Nations University and Maastricht Sustainability Institute

Bringing together a wide range of theory from social and cognitive psychology, organizational behaviour, organizational learning and the management of change, this text draws useful conclusions about important psychological processes.

In this important and timely book, researchers from different countries compare their experiences and offer contrasting views on the future of social protection. They consider the theoretical aspects of the intergenerational debate, relations between generations within the family, the living standards of elderly people, and the question of social time. For the first time in history, three and sometimes four generations are living at the same time; this book examines the new interactions between family change, labour force participation and population ageing.

This book features new approaches to social contract theory. Whereas traditional social contract theories and their adaptations in the twentieth century were developed for fairly homogeneous societies, societies in the twenty-first century often are characterized by conflicting first-order directives that stem from deep moral, political, religious, and cultural diversity. To address such diversity and the complexities of contemporary societies, new approaches (including formal approaches) to social contract theory have emerged that re-envision the social contract for a fragmented and sometimes polarized, yet interdependent social world. New social contract theory explores how, in a world of continuous disagreement on questions of justice, in particular the ideals of liberty and equality, society can not only progress, but also flourish and become more robust and open in its social fabric. This book brings together, for the first time, defenders and discussants of new social contract theory. It includes contributions by eminent and emerging scholars in this field. The book clarifies the distinct features of new social contract theory and provides a valuable starting point for discussion of this novel movement in social contract theory.

First published in 1987. This study is concerned with the problem of political obligation, the normative question of why one should obey the law, and with social contract thought as an answer to this question. It is entitled a critique, but the critique is not of social contract theory as such, but rather of the "orthodox" treatment of contract that yields so readily to the rough handling and easy rejection that is the normal lot of contractarianism in contemporary treatments. In its place will be suggested a reinterpretation of contract that sees it as making different assumptions and requiring different premises, and that is proof against many of the orthodox refutations of social contract theory; the reinterpretation is thus in the nature of a vindication. First, from an examination of the most commonly cited champions of contractarianism (namely Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) will be derive a reinterpretation of contract in the form of a new model or syllogism, the features of which will be brought out by contrasting it first with the contemporary ideas of John Rawls and then with the orthodox model itself. Democratic consent theory, as the heir to the remnants of the orthodox model, will be examined, and the ideas of T. H. Green will be considered as embodying an important feature of contractarianism omitted or ignored by the orthodox model (and hence by democratic theory.) Finally, the new model of contract will be suggested as a potentially useful approach to the problem of political obligation in the modern context. This title will be of interest to student of politics and philosophy.

In this challenging and original study, Jonathan Wistow positions social policy within political economy and social contract debates. Focusing on individual, intergenerational and societal outcomes related to health, place and social mobility in England, he draws on empirical evidence to show how the social contract produces long-standing, highly patterned and inequitable consequences in these areas. Globalisation and the political economy simultaneously contribute to the extent and nature of social problems and to social policy’s capacity to address them effectively. Applying social contract theory, this book shows that society needs to take ownership of the outcomes it produces and critically interrogates the individualism inherent within the political economy.