Newsletters

null Globethics.net. Newsletter N°12 / 10

December 2010

In this issue

  • Editorial: Christmas for Care and Compassion
    by Christoph Stueckelberger
     
  • The Globethics.net Library
    News about GlobTheoLib and job announcement for e-librarian
  • Find new reference books in your library!
  • Job announcement (submitters/reviewers)
  • Call to University librarians: save and stock electronic versions of theses
  •   
  • News from the International Secretariat
    News feeds up and running in six languages
  • Invitation to join the workgroup on gender, justice and power
  •  
  • News from the Regional Programmes
  • Reflections on caring in the midst of suffering
  • Job vacancy: research assistant at Globethics.net Indonesia
  • Reminder: job vacancy at Globethics.net India
     
Editorial by Christoph Stueckelberger 

Christmas for Care and Compassion

In a few days, over two billion Christians around the world will celebrate Christmas. Also non-Christians share gifts and take their vacations. This holiday is a day to strengthen community life in families and in neighbourhoods. But it is more than that. At Christmas, Christians remember the spiritual roots of core Christian values such as care and compassion. God became a vulnerable child, God lives in solidarity with the poor, homeless and migrant people so that humanity is empowered to become a caring community. 
You will find a good example of action inspired by this attitude of living as a caring community in the reflections of one of our Associate Directors of Globethics.net Indonesia, Dr. Yahya Wijaya at the end of this newsletter. His reflection is inspired by the experiences of his daughter and others helping the victims of the recent volcanic eruptions in Indonesia.
Ethics is deeply rooted in and nurtured by religious stories and epics. Christmas, Good Friday and Easter express the foundation of Christian ethics. Fasting during Ramadan is a profound expression of Islamic devotion and caring. The Jewish Jom Kippur, the festival of purification and reconciliation, renews Jewish ethics. The Hindu festivals, rooted in Sanskrit epics, strengthen the “Art of Dharma”, a life based on the ethics of the eternal law. The Buddhist meditation strengthens the art of Ahimsa and non-violence as another expression of caring for human and non-human beings.
In today’s pluralistic societies, the different religious traditions exist side by side. Some people are tempted to leave religions or become indifferent because they cannot reconcile the different perspectives, e.g. with a Muslim father, a Buddhist mother and a Christian husband. Others take this challenge as a chance to learn from each other and to deepen their own faith and ethical values.
Globethics.net is a global network open to interreligious and non-religious approaches to ethics and values.
Let us take Christmas and the other religious holidays as a chance to invite neighbours from other denominations or religions to participate in the celebrations and to share values. “Engaging in neighbourhood dialogue” is the last of the 25 “Globethics.net Principles on Sharing Values across Cultures and Religions” (downloadable in six languages from www.globethics.net). Christians then become better Christians, Muslims better Muslims, Hindus better Hindus, Buddhists better Buddhists, Jews better Jews. On this path we hope to find common ground and elements of global ethics, with the goal to become better human beings, full of care and compassion.
 

22 December 2010 
Christoph Stueckelberger, Director and Founder of Globethics.net

The Globethics.net Library

News about GlobTheoLib and job announcement (e-librarian 50%-70%)

In our Newsletter N°8 (August 2010) we announced that an international workshop would be held in September 2010 on a new Globethics.net project, GlobTheoLib, the Global Digital Library on Theology and Ecumenism. We are proud to announce that the workshop was a success and that we are currently signing the final agreements to build a strong Consortium of important theological institutions worldwide.

The GlobTheoLib project can be seen as a new wing or faculty of our online library. We plan to add other such 'wings' to the library to include philosophy and other religious traditions over the next months and years, according to the resources available and the partnerships that we establish.

The GlobTheoLib Consortium will be launched in January 2011 and at this point the implementation phase of the project will start. 

Globethics.net is opening a 50%-70% e-librarian position for its GlobTheoLib. You will find the full job announcement here. 

Find new reference books in your library!

The reference titles list has been updated with new titles. Globethics.net offers a list of 100 reference books provided by Credo Reference since last October. New titles have already been published and some of the titles on the list have been replaced with more relevant works. The following books are newly available:

- The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility

- The Essentials of Philosophy and Ethics

- Political Corruption in America: An Encyclopedia of Scandals, Power & Greed

- The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy

- The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook

In order to be able to offer you these titles we have deleted the following titles from the list: The Cambridge Handbook of Sociocultural Psychology; The Devil's Dictionary; Dictionary of Youth Justice; Mexico: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Culture and History; and Guide to Economic Indicators. This choice was made on the basis of the thematic relevance of the works and on the number of times that works are used. If you have any comments or requests related to the availability of reference books please contact your librarian: vallotton@globethics.net.

You can access the new titles after you have logged in, from the menu Ethics Library > Reference Works or from Ethics Library > Search the Library then select the tag "Reference Books". 

Job announcement (submitters/reviewers)

Globethics.net wants to expand its library team. We are constantly updating our library content with open access journals and institutional content that needs to be manually integrated into the library. Our goal is to offer all the major resources needed for research in ethics and for making informed ethical decisions in only one portal. We need your support to achieve this.

Please find the job announcements here.

Call to university librarians: save and stock electronic versions of theses

During his stay in East Africa (Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo) in October Globethics.net's Director, Christoph Stueckelberger had the opportunity to meet and talk with several university librarians. He wanted to encourage them to publish the theses that had been produced in their universities in the Globethics.net library. They shared their experience with him, saying that it was very rare that universities actually stock the electronic versions of theses. 

We would like to call on our colleagues in the global South to be aware of the importance of preserving the electronic versions of theses because this is the first condition for publishing them on the web. Publishing research on the Internet (including in the Globethics.net library when relevant) is a unique chance to gain a global readership, to help scholars to enlarge their network and to be more widely quoted and acknowledged in their field. For readers it is a unique chance to be able to discover what their peers worldwide are researching and to advance in their own thinking. To publish theses electronically and on the Internet presents a real opportunity to develop genuine global research into critical fields of human knowledge, including into our own field of applied ethics.

News from the International Secretariat

News feeds up and running in six languages

You may well have noticed that in the past week or so we have been running news feeds in six languages on the Globethics.net homepage. Not only that but it is now possible to search the news feeds archives, a valuable resource for researchers that will grow over time. 

We hope that you enjoy this new service and welcome any comments or questions that you may have. Please send your feedback to infoweb@globethics.net.   

Invitation to join the workgroup on gender, justice and power

Last month we announced the launch of a new work group on gender, justice and power.

All are invited to participate in this workgroup but space is limited. The deadline for those interested in taking part in the workgroup is 31 December 2010. To make your request, login and go to the workgroup page and click on join.   

News from the Regional Programmes

Reflections on caring in the midst of suffering

Professor Dr. Yahya Wijaya is Associate Director of Globethics.net Indonesia, Professor of Ethics and Director of the Center for Business Ethics and Professionalism in Indonesia. He reflects here on the experiences of his daughter, Agata Filiana as she sought with others to help the victims affected by the eruptions of the Mount Merapi volcano in October and November this year.

"Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions occur more often in Indonesia nowadays. The suffering, loss and pain caused by those disasters are enormous. There is no better response to that tragedy than a strong solidarity between human beings. That is what we witness every time there is a disaster. Our observation of daily life in the areas of politics, the economy and even within the family may lead us to draw the conclusion that human beings are becoming more selfish, greedy and ignorant. This may have made many people worry about the future of human life. However, what we experience when disasters occur demonstrates that there is still hope.

"Solidarity between human beings is still there, not only between people who are well off and unaffected by the disasters and the victims, but also among the victims themselves. The disasters have reminded many people about their essential calling, namely to be fellow human beings for those who are suffering. Those people, leaving aside their normal business, take the opportunity to play their existential role of loving creatures.

"In the midst of a world divided by discrimination based on race, gender, nationalism and religion, we see lots of people, coming from different parts of the world, different positions in the workplace and different ideological affiliations, trying to help those in need regardless of the differences among them. Isn’t that a sign of hope to us who work with ethics and theology, that our concern is still relevant?"

Job vacancy: research assistant on Islamic ethics for Globethics.net Indonesia

Globethics.net Indonesia is opening up the post of research assistant on Islamic ethics.  The deadline for applications is 30 December 2010. 

Job vacancy: Programme Executive Globethics.net India

Please note that the deadline for applications for the post of Programme Executive (50%) in the Globethics.net India office in Bangalore is 31 December 2010. More details are available on the jobs page of this site.

 

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