Justice Everywhere

a blog about philosophy in public affairs

Category: Duties Page 5 of 9

Should We Shame Those Who Ignore Social Distancing Guidelines?

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On 13 April, 2020

In Duties, Governance, Health, Liberty, Punishment

In this post, Paul Billingham and Tom Parr apply some of their recent thinking on the morality of public shaming to the case of social distancing guidelines.

Social norms can change astonishingly quickly. Within a matter of days, and in response to the ongoing pandemic, we’ve witnessed the emergence of strong social norms against going out for all but a handful of reasons. All of a sudden, each of us is expected to stay at home, at least for the overwhelming majority of our days. And, when we do venture out, we must be careful to maintain appropriate distance from others.

This turnaround in social norms has been hastened and enforced by the public shaming, often on social media, of those who breach their demands. This involves posting, sharing, commenting on, and liking photos and videos of those who seem to be violating these norms, for example, by taking leisurely strolls in a busy park, sunbathing at the beach, or boarding a packed train. Twitter is currently awash with examples, from all around the world, using the hashtag #COVIDIOTS. Even the authorities have got in on the action, with Derbyshire Police releasing drone footage of people walking in the Peak District. And Italian mayors have been real trailblazers.

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Some Musings On When We Should (Not) Accommodate Injustice

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On 3 April, 2020

In Duties, Moral values, Rights

In this post, Sarah Buss discusses her recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on courage and convictions in times of injustice.

I experienced the 2016 Presidential election as a loss of innocence.   For the first time in my life, the prospect of losing my most basic rights and freedoms did not feel so remote.  In confronting this possibility, I found myself struggling to understand what distinguishes reasonable accommodations to injustice from morally unacceptable accommodations.  Under what conditions, I wondered, is the fact that I can do something to resist injustice a decisive reason to resist?  More particularly, when would I have decisive reason to resist, even though in so doing I would be putting myself at great risk?

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Should we buy from dictatorships?

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On 23 March, 2020

In Democracy, Duties, Economics, Governance, International

This a guest post by Chris Armstrong (Professor of Political Theory at the University of Southampton). He researches matters of global justice. Here he discusses his recent work on dealing with dictators.

Dictators have been responsible for many grievous crimes. They have left behind them a trail of genocides and ill-considered wars. Even when they are not killing innocent people, dictators commit a major wrong by denying a voice to their subjects. They also frequently squander their countries’ wealth on Western luxuries even in the face of grinding poverty at home. There is little doubt, therefore, that a world with fewer dictators would be a far better one in many respects.

This leads naturally to the thought that those of us who are fortunate not to live under tyrants ought to do whatever we can to avoid supporting dictators – and indeed to avoid incentivising the emergence of more of them. But what can we do? One thought is that we should avoid buying goods such as oil from them, because in so doing we provide a stream of income for continued repression, and remove from dictators the need to rely on their own citizens for revenue (a reliance which, many political economists believe, can lead to improvements in governance over time). Another suggestion is that we should deepen our engagement with dictators, trading with them to an even greater extent. While this will strike many readers as deeply controversial, in a recent paper I argue that this is the more persuasive view: we should probably buy more, not less, from dictators.

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Should Parties Be Democratic?

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On 2 March, 2020

In Democracy, Duties, Governance

Should political parties organize their internal affairs in a (more) democratic way? By this, I do not mean merely allowing party members to select candidates for a presidential election or to elect the president of the party. The question is also whether party members should be involved in the writing of political programs and in deciding which policies to pursue.

The answer might seem obvious at first sight: given that parties play an important democratic function (aggregating multiple demands and uniting citizens behind competing political projects), it would seem odd if they were themselves organized undemocratically. And yet we know that parties tend to be very hierarchical – it has even been described as an “iron law”. To what extent is this regrettable?

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "cartoon party discipline"

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Indigenous Immigrant Identities and Epistemic Injustice

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On 27 February, 2020

In Duties, Governance, International, Migration, Rights

In this post, Amy Reed-Sandoval discusses her recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on settler-state borders and indigenous identity.

Indigenous philosophies of the Americas provide epistemic resources that are needed to attend to the widespread marginalization of Latin American Indigenous identity in the United States. In a recent article, I argue that politicians, policy makers, activists, and other members of settler society should carefully engage this work as part of an informed effort to combat the attendant injustices.

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Climate Change, Family Size, and Upbringing

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On 10 February, 2020

In Children, Climate, Duties

In this post, Fay Niker interviews Dr Elizabeth Cripps (University of Edinburgh) about her recent work at the intersection of two themes we write about a lot on Justice Everywhere, namely, climate justice and the ethics and politic of children and upbringing.

Fay Niker [FN]: Recently, you’ve been thinking about a particular dimension of the question about the duties to reduce carbon emissions in the era of (impending) “climate crisis”. Can you tell us about this dimension, and how you came to be interested in it?

Elizabeth Cripps [EC]: Having kids is the biggest contribution most of us make to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so the question naturally arises of whether, as individuals and couples, we should be having small families, or no children at all. I’ve written on individual climate justice duties and on population and global justice – plus I’m a parent myself – so it was natural for me to be drawn to this area.

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Can we solve the dilemma between pursuing personal projects and the demands of morality by limiting the scope of morality?

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On 3 February, 2020

In Duties, Moral values

Morality is hard work. It’s not easy to make sure our actions do not negatively affect other beings in this universe or to do good to them. How can we carve out some space for the pursuit of personal projects without violating the demands of morality? In this post, I discuss strategies that exclude certain areas of life and activities from moral assessment, and find them wanting.*

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Why citizens should choose which refugees to admit to their states

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On 23 January, 2020

In Democracy, Duties, International, Migration

In this post, Patti Lenard discusses her recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the ethics of citizen selection of refugees.

The situation for refugees world-wide is persistently horrendous.  Globally, there is pressing, urgent, need to adopt create ways to support them. In a recent article, I argue that governments should adopt private or community sponsorship of refugee schemes, which permit citizens to select specific refugees for admission, if they are willing to bear the costs of resettlement.  They are one crucial way forward in bleak times.

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UK General Election 2019: Spare a Thought for the Badgers

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On 16 December, 2019

In Animals, Democracy, Duties, General, Governance

Every election has winners and losers, and this one is no different. These are, however, particularly turbulent times, and while the message of “getting Brexit done” appears to have chimed with many voters, the Conservative victory last Thursday does not bode well for the UK’s most vulnerable. After a decade of Conservative austerity measures, the use of food banks continues to rise, child poverty has soared, and changes to the welfare system have left disabled adults four times worse-off financially than non-disabled adults. More of the same is likely to most hurt those for whom life is getting tougher by the day.

It is clear that things are precarious for many of the UK’s citizens but it is important to keep in mind that humans are not the only ones affected by our governments’ decisions. Though it is tempting to think that we already have enough to worry about without extending concern to the nonhuman animals who live with us, we owe it to those creatures to speak up on their behalf. With no voice of their own, other animals are entirely dependent on us to keep their interests on the political agenda and to hold our leaders to account for the harms visited upon them. With that in mind, I’d like you to spare a thought for British badgers who, like many humans, have been made to suffer terribly by recent political decisions and government policies.

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What do we owe the victims of exploitation?

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On 12 December, 2019

In Distribution, Duties, Economics, International, Rights

In this post, Erik Malmqvist and András Szigeti discuss their recent article in Journal of Applied Philosophy on the remedial duties arising from exploitation.

We tend to think that exploiting people is morally wrong. And yet, this kind of wrong is uncomfortably close to home for many of us. Likely, the clothes you wear today or the computer you use to read this piece were produced by workers who received meagre pay for dangerous and exhausting work. Since exploitation is so widespread and not something most of us can wash our hands of, we have to ask what is required to set things straight after exploitation has happened. This is the question we have raised in a recent article.

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