Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.6, No.1, 2013 i 
ISSN: 1837-5391;  http://utsescholarship.lib.uts.edu.au/epress/journals/index.php/mcs 
CCS Journal is published under the auspices of UTSePress, Sydney, Australia 

A Common Theme – Ethical Practice 

 
James Goodman 

University of Technology, Sydney 
 
 

 
As with every Open Issue, we aim here at opening up new lines of inquiry, embracing a range 
of themes and topics. Generally some unexpected common themes emerge, and this Open 
Issue is no exception. Across all of these papers there is a shared concern with the dynamics 
of ethical practice. What drives it, how can it be fostered, what does it generate?  
Jenny Onyx takes the ‘social impact’ debate from top-down evaluation or assessment to 
grassroots practice. Instead of beginning with elite-defined program ‘impact’, Onyx starts 
with the actual practices of civil society organisations. Through ‘practice theory’, social 
interactions are seen as constituting the social field. Rather than fixing and monetising impact, 
the approach charts civil society as a ‘developmental process’. The approach then involves 
mapping the multi-faceted social interactions of organizations. The emphasis here is on 
highlighting the dynamic process of social relations, as the immediate manifestation of civil 
society.  
 
The following two papers address issues of ethical practice through the analysis of fields of 
policy. Ying Hooi Khoo offers an in-depth account of the disjunctures between human rights 
practice and national reporting to United Nations Human Rights Council. Khoo’s focus is on 
the Malaysian case, and clearly the tensions she highlights are shown to have wide 
application wherever states fail to embrace the reporting process and instead approach it as a 
diplomatic exercise. For Khoo the UN process offers opportunities for states and NGOs to 
develop human rights practice on the ground. Through it, states can build reputation, and 
NGOs can gain leverage. In the Malaysian case these opportunities remain unrealized, in 
large part due to the defensive stance taken by the Malaysian state.  
 
Wearing, Cunningham, Schweinsberg and Jobberns discuss the ethics of whale watching, as 
an instance in the commercialisation of nature. They stress the ethical boundaries that arise, 
set by an underlying framework of ecological tourism. There are practical limits in terms of 
interference, but there are also ethical concerns in terms of the exploitation of the ecological 
commons for commercial gain. What responsibilities come with exploitation, in terms of 
public education and active conservation? The authors suggest these can be realized in 
practice through the ethics of eco-tourism, and provide both ‘an avenue for economic growth 
and the development of political capital’.  
 
Questions of ethical practice also arise for the remaining two papers, both of which conduct 
ethnographic or participant investigations into fields of practice. Kirpitchenko offers an 
opportunity to reflect on our own practices as students and academics, and thereby ‘bring 
home’ the question of ethical practice, specifically through the analysis of academic 
cosmopolitanism. The phenomenon of academic mobility across international borders and 
between different cultures, both as an intellectual and an experiential exercise, is seen as 



ii   Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, Vol.6, No.1, 2013 

generating the conditions for cosmopolitanism. The paper investigates the practices of 
academic cosmopolitanism, and finds they flourish in the encounters and interactions of 
research subjects. Kirpitchenko argues that intellectual inquiry and mobility dovetails with 
inclusivity and interculturalism, creating fertile ground for cosmopolitanism. 
 
In a final paper for the Open Issue, Chris Khoo, with Schulenkorf and Adair, take us to the 
ethics of sport and development policy in Samoa. The paper investigates the use Australian 
foreign aid to promote cricket for community development. Khoo et al. draw on local 
engagement and in-depth interviews with participants to discuss whether the program had 
benefitted local communities, and to identify any issues needing to be addressed. As is often 
the case with aid programs, a key issue was indigenisation and ‘ownership’, and specifically 
the relationship between a widely-played local version of cricket, ‘kirikiti’, and official 
cricket as an international sport. Khoo et al. stress that respondents saw the need to build on 
local practices rather than supplant them, thereby highlighting a centrally important 
dimension of ethical practice as embedded practice. 


	A Common Theme – Ethical Practice
	James Goodman
	University of Technology, Sydney