Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Justice, Sustainability, and Security pp 27–51Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Hardest Cases of Global Injustice: The Responsibility to Inquire

  • Chapter

Abstract

Do we have responsibility for injustice when we don’t know of an injustice or whether we are in a position to cause it, exacerbate it, or ameliorate it? Do we have responsibility if the unknown injustice is a global injustice affecting people unknown to us? When those who suffer injustices reach out to us through new or old media and appeal to our sense of justice, they are counting on our answering “yes.” This chapter is about why those privileged with cognitive capacity distanced from certain injustices by geography, socioeconomic status, and time should answer, “yes.” 1 The first section introduces a category of injustice, what I call the “Hardest Cases” of injustice, which are those that are most easily dismissed by those distant from the injustice either because the injustice is not visible or our connections to it are tenuous. Certain forms of gender injustice and climate injustice take this form. The second section reveals the key features of the Hardest Cases, those features that often render the harms invisible to all but their sufferers..

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. For those familiar with the literature on the epistemology of ignorance, it may seem that I am framing my project within that literature. However, as has been made known to me by Stacy Clifford, the critique of political theory from within the literature on “the epistemology of ignorance” is a critique that makes cognitive capacity a measuring stick for humanity. The argument I present here is for a moral philosophy for inquiry, not an attack on ignorance or cognitive capacity. See Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, eds., Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (Suny Series, Philosophy and Race) ( Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007 ).

    Google Scholar 

  2. For an exposition of this theoretical method that is a normative adaptation of a sociological method, see Brooke A. Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 ).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  3. Eric Neumayer and Thomas Plümper, “The Gendered Nature of Natural Disasters: The Impact of Catastrophic Events on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy, 1981–2002,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97, no. 3 (2007): 551–566.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Ahsan Uddin Ahmed et al., Climate Change, Gender and Vulnerable Groups in Bangladesh (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Department of Environment, Ministry of Environment and Forests, 2009 ).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Rasheda Begum, “Women in Environmental Disasters: The 1991 Cyclone in Bangladesh,” Gender & Development 1, no. 1 (1993): 34–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Eric A. Posner and Cass R. Sunstein, “Climate Change Justice” (John M. Olin Law & Economics Working paper no. 354, University of Chicago Law School, August 2007 ).

    Google Scholar 

  7. Geraldine Terry, Climate Change and Gender Justice (Oxfam Working in Gender & Development Series) ( Oxford, UK: Oxfam, 2009 )

    Book  Google Scholar 

  8. Alison Jaggar, “The Philosophical Challenges of Global Gender Justice,” Philosophical Topics 37, no. 2 (2009): 1–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Minu Hemmati Ulrike Röhr, “Engendering the Climate-Change Negotiations: Experiences, Challenges, and Steps Forward,” Gender & Development 17, no. 1 (2009): 19–32

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Stephen Mark Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, Environmental Ethics and Science Policy Series ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 ).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  11. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 ).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 3 (1972): 229–243.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Simon Caney, “Human Rights, Responsibilities, and Climate Change,” in Global Basic Rights, Charles R. Beitz and Robert E. Goodin, eds. ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 ), 227–247

    Google Scholar 

  14. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia ( New York: Basic Books, 1974 ).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Iris Marion Young, “Responsibility and Global Labor Justice,” Journal of Political Philosophy 12, no. 4 (2004): 365–388

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Iris Marion Young, Global Challenges: War, Self Determination and Responsibility for Justice ( Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007 )

    Google Scholar 

  17. Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2010 )

    Google Scholar 

  18. Samantha Power, “ A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide ( New York: Basic Books, 2002 ).

    Google Scholar 

  19. Amartya Sen, “More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing,” The New York Review of Books 37, no. 20 (1990): 61–66.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Michael P. Vandenbergh and Brooke A. Ackerly, “Climate Change: The Equity Problem,” Virginia Environmental Law Journal 26, no. 1 (2008): 53–74

    Google Scholar 

  21. Geraldine Terry, “No Climate Justice Without Gender Justice: An Overview of the Issues,” Gender and Development 17, no. 1 (2009): 5–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Larry Lohmann, “Carbon Trading, Climate Justice and the Production of Ignorance: Ten Examples,” Development 51 (2008): 359–365

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Jethro Pettit, “Climate Justice: A New Social Movement for Atmospheric Rights,” IDS Bulletin 35, no. 3 (2004): 102–106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Hannah Arendt, ed., “Collective Responsibility,” in Responsibility and Judgment (New York: Schocken Books, [1968] 2003). What these responsibilities require is its own investigation and argument.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Charles Mills encourages this perspective in Charles W. Mills, “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology,” Hypatia 20, no. 3 (2005): 165–183.

    Google Scholar 

  26. For another view on responsibility without awareness see George Sher, Who Knew? Responsibility Without Awareness ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 ).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  27. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999 )

    Google Scholar 

  28. Brooke A. Ackerly, “Studying Politics in the Age of Academic Humility,” Politics, Groups and Identities 1, no. 1 (2013): 98–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Martin Parry et al., eds., Climate Change 2007—Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007 ).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Asian Development Bank, People’s Republic of Bangladesh: Strengthening the Resilience of the Water Sector in Khulna to Climate Change, Alterra Institute for Water Modeling, ed. (Manila, The Philippines: Asian Development Bank (ADB), Technical Assistance Report, 2010 ).

    Google Scholar 

  31. Farhana Sultana, “Fluid Lives: Subjectivities, Gender and Water in Rural Bangladesh,” Gender, Place and Culture 16, no. 4 (2009): 427–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Brooke A. Ackerly and Katy Attanasi, “Global Feminisms: Theory and Ethics for Studying Gendered Injustice,” New Political Science 31, no. 4 (2009): 543–555.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. See Sarita Bahl et al., “Women and Health: The Overburdened Ones” (Jacaranda, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi: Centre for Science and the Environment, 2006 )

    Google Scholar 

  34. Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior, 1st ed., Fels Lectures on Public Policy Analysis ( New York: Norton, 1978 ).

    Google Scholar 

  35. See Peter Singer, “Poverty, Facts, and Political Philosophies: A Debate with Andrew Kuper,” in Global Responsibilities: Who Must Deliver on Human Rights?, Andrew Kuper, ed. ( New York: Routledge, 2005 )

    Google Scholar 

  36. Andrew Kuper, “Global Poverty Relief: More Than Charity,” in Global Responsibilities: Who Must Deliver on Human Rights?, Andrew Kuper, ed. ( New York: Routledge, 2005 )

    Google Scholar 

  37. Thomas G. Weiss, “The Sunset of Humanitarian Intervention? The Responsibility to Protect in a Unipolar Era,” Security Dialogue 35, no. 2 (2004): 135–153.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Liam B. Murphy, Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2000 )

    Google Scholar 

  39. Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997 )

    Google Scholar 

  40. John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, [ 1971 ] 1999 )

    Google Scholar 

  41. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” in On Liberty and Other Writings, Stefan Collini ed. ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, [ 1859 ] 1989 )

    Google Scholar 

  42. John Stuart Mill, “The Subjection of Women,” in On Liberty and Other Wrtings, Stefan Collini, ed. ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, [ 1869 ] 1998 )

    Google Scholar 

  43. A. Rossi, John Stuart Mill, and Harriet Taylor, Essays on Sex Equality ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 )

    Google Scholar 

  44. K. Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005 ).

    Google Scholar 

  45. Amartya Sen, “What Do We Want from a Theory of Justice?,” The Journal of Philosophy 103, no. 5 (2006): 226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Christopher Kutz, Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 ).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  47. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism,” Political Theory 20, no. 2 (1992): 202–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Allan Findlay and Alistair Geddes, “Critical Views on the Relationship between Climate Change and Migration: Some Insights from the Experience of Bangladesh,” in Migration and Climate Change, Etienne Piguet, Antoine Pécoud, and P. F. A. de Guchteneire, eds. ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011 )

    Google Scholar 

  49. Charles R. Beitz, “Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice,” The Journal of Ethics 9, nos. 1–2 (2005): 11–27

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Charles R. Beitz, “Justice and International Relations,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 4, no. 4 (1975): 360–389

    Google Scholar 

  51. Onora O’Neill, “Agents of Justice,” in Global Responsibilities: Who Must Deliver on Human Rights?, Andrew Kuper, ed. ( New York: Routledge, 2005 )

    Google Scholar 

  52. Onora O’Neill, “Women’s Rights: Whose Obligations?,” in Bounds of Justice ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000 )

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  53. Thomas Pogge, “Human Rights and Human Responsibilities,” in Global Responsibilities: Who Must Deliver on Human Rights?, Andrew Kuper, ed. ( New York: Routledge, 2005 )

    Google Scholar 

  54. Allen Buchanan, “The Egalitarianism of Human Rights,” Ethics 120, no. 4 (2010): 679– 710

    Article  Google Scholar 

  55. James M. Buchanan, “Equality, Hierarchy, and Global Justice,” Social Philosophy & Policy 23, no. 1 (2006): 255–265

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Thomas Pogge, “Recognized and Violated by International Law: The Human Rights of the Global Poor,” Leiden Journal of International Law 18, no. 4 (2005): 742.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Robert O. Keohane, Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World ( London: Routledge, 2002 ).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  58. Rodwan Abouharb and David L. Cingranelli, Human Rights and Structural Adjustment ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 )

    Google Scholar 

  59. Valentine M. Moghadam, Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks, Themes in Global Social Change ( Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005 )

    Google Scholar 

  60. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence ( London and New York: Verso, 2004 )

    Google Scholar 

  61. Anna M. Agathangelou and L. H. M. Ling, “Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11,” International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2004): 517–538.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Valerie Nelson et al., “Uncertain Predictions, Invisible Impacts, and the Need to Mainstream Gender in Climate Change Adaptations,” Gender and Development 10, no. 2 (2002): 51–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. Pratikshya Bohra-Mishra and Douglas S. Massey, “Environmental Degradation and Out-Migration: Evidence from Nepal,” in Migration and Climate Change , Etienne Piguet, Antoine Pécoud, and P. F. A. de Guchteneire, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2011)

    Google Scholar 

  64. Robert E. Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985 )

    Google Scholar 

  65. Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics ( New York: Routledge, 1998 ).

    Google Scholar 

  66. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity ( New York: Philosophical Library, 1949 )

    Google Scholar 

  67. Arendt, “Collective Responsibility”; Hannah Arendt, “Home to Roost,” in Responsibility and Judgment ( New York: Schocken Books, [ 1975 ] 2003 )

    Google Scholar 

  68. Larry May, Sharing Responsibility ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 )

    Google Scholar 

  69. Larry May and Robert Strikwerda, “Men in Groups: Collective Responsibility for Rape,” Hypatia 9, no. 2 (1994): 134–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  70. Hans Jonas, The Imperative ofResponsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

    Google Scholar 

  71. Lyndi Hewitt, The Politics of Transnational Feminist Discourse: Framing across Differences, Building Solidarities (Doctoral Diss., Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, August 9, 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  72. Andrew Linklater, The Problem of Harm in World Politics: Theoretical Investigations ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011 ).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  73. Julie Mertus, The United Nations and Human Rights: A Guide for a New Era, Global Institutions Series ( London: Routledge, 2005 ).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Brooke Ackerly
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oklahoma, USA

    Eric A. Heinze (associate professor of Political Science and International Studies) (associate professor of Political Science and International Studies)

Copyright information

© 2013 Eric A. Heinze

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Ackerly, B. (2013). The Hardest Cases of Global Injustice: The Responsibility to Inquire. In: Heinze, E.A. (eds) Justice, Sustainability, and Security. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137322944_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation