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ChesterRep is the University of Chester's institutional repository and an online platform designed to collate, store, and aid discoverability of research carried out at the university to the wider research community
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Evaluation of the use of Corporate Social Responsibility to Address the Practices of the UK Banking IndustryThis study is an empirical project utilising case studies and the analysis of corporate material documents as its primary source to consider the philosophy of CSR in the UK Banking Industry. The research asks how CSR has changed according to the economic, legal, social and political background and whether the philosophy of CSR can be used to improve the practices of the UK Banking Industry. The project uses the corporate reports of six UK and three European/Worldwide institutional case studies and conducts both a content and critical discourse analysis of the documents to answer the research questions. The study found a lack of reliability in corporate material, the abandonment of corporate citizenship in practice and a lack of correlation between corporate size and CSR efforts. However, the most significant findings relate to the discourse of CSR. This research found that in times of increased profits, efforts on philanthropic activities soared. Yet, in times of crises and/or scandal, such as the GFC, and exposure of manipulation and mis-selling scandals, or more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, a reduction or abandonment of philanthropic activity occurred. This is because the UK Banking Institutions studied did not have an embedded CSR philosophy. The six UK institutions did not view the practice of CSR as a compulsory, embedded element of the business but as an optional, ancillary extra, used to create or maintain a social licence. This research argues that unless this changes, the philosophy of CSR will not be sufficient to improve the practices of the UK Banking Industry. It is proposed the solution to this is greater governmental control in institutional CSR activities.
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Embodying a Different Word about Fat: The Need for Critical Feminist Theologies of Fat LiberationIn contemporary Western society, fatness speaks for itself, affirming the fat person as an aesthetic and moral failure even before they say a word. Fat bodies, and fat female bodies in particular, are produced and reproduced as sites of excess and obscenity. Christian theology has protected itself from the contaminating touch of fat by ignoring fatness in theological discourse. Especially concerning is the relative absence of ‘fat talk’ from liberation and feminist theologies. It is time for a different word to be offered on fat that does not speak for itself and that emerges from the lived experiences of diverse women as they interpret their own faith and fatness. This essay explores the need for critical feminist theologies on fat liberation and identifies some features they might display. Here, I discuss Feminist Participatory Action Research and ethnography as methodologies that might help feminist theologians researching fat to prioritise the overlooked bodies and stories of fat women, and to continue liberation theology’s longstanding commitment to constructing historical projects oriented towards social change. Fat liberation, as a historical and theological project, calls for a ‘conversion’ to fatness and for a critical questioning of assumed ‘truths’ about fat. It positions the struggle against fat hatred as a pursuit of life and as faithful participation in the liberating activity of the God of Life.
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Candrakīrti on the Use and Misuse of the Chariot ArgumentThe publication in 2015 (ed. Li) of Chapter 6 of the rediscovered Sanskrit text of Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra (MA) allows us to witness more directly Candrakīrti’s careful and deliberate critique of the ‘chariot argument’ for the merely conventional existence of the self in Indian Abhidharmic thought. I argue that in MA 6.140–141, Candrakīrti alludes to the use of the chariot argument in the Milindapañha as negating only the view of a permanent self (compared to an elephant), rather than negating ego-identification (compared to a snake in its hole). In contrast to this misuse of the chariot argument, in MA 6.150–165 Candrakīrti uses the chariot argument as an allegory to enable the meditator to refute the basis of ego-identification in seven ways. Candrakīrti’s use of the chariot argument does not establish any theory about the self or not-self, but acts as a guide to meditation as part of philosophy as a spiritual practice with the goal of liberation.
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Galerkin Finite Element Approximation of a Stochastic Semilinear Fractional Wave Equation Driven by Fractionally Integrated Additive NoiseWe investigate the application of the Galerkin finite element method to approximate a stochastic semilinear space–time fractional wave equation. The equation is driven by integrated additive noise, and the time fractional order α∈(1, 2). The existence of a unique solution of the problem is proved by using the Banach fixed point theorem, and the spatial and temporal regularities of the solution are established. The noise is approximated with the piecewise constant function in time in order to obtain a stochastic regularized semilinear space–time wave equation which is then approximated using the Galerkin finite element method. The optimal error estimates are proved based on the various smoothing properties of the Mittag–Leffler functions. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the consistency between the theoretical findings and the obtained numerical results.
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For a Zemiology of PoliticsA zemiology of politics is required in the face of disastrous historic, contemporary and future social harms. Focusing on state-led politics, the article charts some politically generated or mediated social harms: military; ecological and economic. These can generate justificatory narratives of zemiogenic deceit and ignorance. In a contemporary political moment of authoritarian populism, nativism and racism, each feature as part of wider processes towards the corruption and destruction of politics. The article then suggests some of the potentials of healthy politics and fundamental principles for a zemiology of politics including: subordination of crime-centric criminology to a historically grounded international zemiology, the incorporation of agnotological perspectives, and an orientation that is public, inclusive, reflexive and non-fundamentalist.