A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Yearly Archive: 2017

Economics / Governance / Health / Rights

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Why should housing be fit for human habitation?

There is currently a lot of attention on the UK’s “housing crisis”. One issue here is the quantity of available housing. There are commitments to address the shortage of housing in the 2017 manifestos of both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Another issue is the quality of housing. On this issue, the Labour Party have restated the commitment they made in a 2015 Homes Bill to require that all homes meet the standard of being “fit for human habitation”. In this post, I explore the reasons in favour of this commitment.

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Distribution / Economics

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Justice and the Great Recession: Has the financial crisis increased inequality?

 

 

 

 

Have a few thousand bankers made the world more equal than it had been for a hundred years? In this blog post, I will investigate the distributive impact of the 2008 financial crisis and show that today’s inequalities are more complex than we think: if political philosophers want to understand the repercussions of the crash, they need to team up with economists and track down the hidden divides in post-crisis societies.

It was on 14 September 2007 that the general public first noticed that something was wrong. Hundreds of desperate customers queued in front of the branches of mortgage lender Northern Rock, fearing that their savings were already gone. (more…)

Academia

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Conference call: A Post-liberal World?

The Centre for the Study of Global Ethics at Birmingham is pleased to announce its 4th annual conference, on the theme of A Post-liberal World? 

Conference website: globalethics2018.weebly.com

 

  • Where and when: University of Birmingham, 31 May-1 June 2018
  • Already confirmed keynote speakers: Alison Jaggar (Birmingham & Boulder) and Jonathan Wolff (Oxford)
  • Public lecture: Jonathan Wolff will deliver a public lecture on Social Inequality and Structural Injustice (please visit the event page for more info and registration)


Call for Papers: 

The conference will specifically focus on the question whether we are on our way to a post-liberal world. We welcome abstract submissions addressing this theme as well as abstract submissions on a wide range of topics within global ethics.

Abstracts should be 500 words maximum and include three to five keywords. They should be send to globalethicsevents@contacts.bham.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is 10 February 2018.

For more information on the Call for Papers, please visit the CFP section on the conference website: http://globalethics2018.weebly.com/cfp.html

Education

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Is it immoral to send your children to private school?

The contest for leadership of the Scottish Labour party has re-opened an old debate: is it acceptable for egalitarians to send their children to private school? One candidate, Anas Sarwar, has come under criticism for sending his son to the £8,000 a year Hutchesons’ Grammar school in Glasgow. The row echoes similar controversies around left-wing figures, perhaps most prominently the Labour MP Diane Abbott, who claimed “it is inconsistent for someone who believes in a fairer and more egalitarian society to send their child to a fee-paying school”, and nonetheless opted to educate her son privately.

Much of the philosophical discussion on this point on this point centres around the limits of legitimate parental partiality – that is, to what extent are parents morally permitted to advantage their children over others? However, I want to approach the question from a different angle, and explore the morality of private school from a consequentialist perspective. For a given individual, would rejecting private school in favour of the state sector have a positive impact on the world?  (more…)

Distribution / Migration / Rights

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Ought non-mobile citizens of the EU be compensated for the costs of mobility?

In his kick-off contribution to the latest EUDO-Forum debate, Maurizio Ferrera engages with a challenging question raised by Rainer Bauböck in his State of the Union Address (5 May 2017, Florence): can the integrative functions of EU citizenship be enhanced and how? Ferrera identifies flaws of the EU citizenship construct, focusing on its social dimension, and concludes with “some modest proposals for ‘adding stuff’ to the EU citizenship container”. His proposals include a compensation of non-mobile EU citizens for the negative economic and social externalities of intra-EU mobility, i.e., of the mobility of workers in the EU. While I agree with much of what Ferrera says, I am unconvinced of this particular proposal. The argument presented here is a short version of the one published on the EUDO website. (more…)

General

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Who can speak for/with/about whom? Two metaphors, and why they matter

The question of who can speak about what, about whom, with whom and for whom is at the heart of many recent controversies: Who has the right to speak on behalf of disadvantaged groups, e.g. sexual or racial minorities? Who should be invited to speak, e.g. on college campuses, who should be refused a stage? Have speakers with more extreme political positions, e.g. climate change deniers, a right to be listened to?

These issues are so difficult that I can hardly do justice to even just one aspect in this blogpost.[1] And yet, we cannot ignore them – arguably, they go to the heart of what political philosophy is all about. What I want to do is to reflect on two concepts, or metaphors, which have floated around in the debates: “identity politics” and “standpoint epistemology.” They point to deeper assumptions about who can speak for/with/about whom. Making these explicit might help us to move the discussion forward.

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Democracy / Governance / International

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From the Vault: Good Reads on Democracy and Politicians

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall from our archives some of our memorable posts from 2016-2017.

Here are four good reads in democracy and politicians that you may have missed or be interested to re-read:

Aveek Bhattacharya’s ‘What should voters look for in their politicians?‘

Jesper Pedersen’s ‘Should MPs be subject to mandatory deselection?‘

Miriam Ronzoni’s ‘Germany and European Solidarity‘

Luke Ulas’ ‘Why are you more angry about Trump’s state visit to the UK than about visits from leaders of China and Saudi Arabia?‘

Distribution / Economics / Gender / Liberty / Work

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From the Vault: Good Reads in Economic Ethics

While Justice Everywhere takes a break over the summer, we recall from our archives some of our memorable posts from 2016-2017.

Here are four good reads in economic ethics that you may have missed or be interested to re-read:

Anca Gheaus’ ‘There is too much division of labour‘

Lisa Herzog’s ‘If everything is measured, can we still see one another as equals?‘

James Hickson’s ‘Freedom for Uber Drivers‘

Mirjam Muller’s ‘Are Sweatshops Drivers for Gender Equality?‘