New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

In this paper I argue that, in addition to having an obligation to resist the oppression of others, people have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression. This obligation to oneself, I argue, is grounded in a Kantian duty of self-respect.

Deeply rooted structures of racism, ableism, misogyny, ageism, and transphobia hurt great numbers of people, exposing them to intolerance, economic exclusion, and physical harm around the globe. Billions of land animals suffer and die annually in concentrated feeding operations and slaughterhouses. Our planet and all who live here are in perilous straights as the climate changes. In the face of such grievous problems, people who want to find positive ways to respond often grapple with difficult questions about how to make (...) a difference. Effective Altruism has arisen as an attempt to help answer these questions, encouraging people to give as much money as they can in the most effective ways to address human and animal suffering. But the Effective Altruists’ answers support some of the very social structures that cause suffering, undermining its efforts to “do the most good.” The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does is the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism. It brings together a diverse group of activists and scholars to explore Effective Altruism’s failure to meaningfully address forms of human and animal suffering. (shrink)

Vulnerability is one of the least examined concepts in research ethics. Vulnerability was linked in the Belmont Report to questions of justice in the selection of subjects. Regulations and policy documents regarding the ethical conduct of research have focused on vulnerability in terms of limitations of the capacity to provide informed consent. Other interpretations of vulnerability have emphasized unequal power relationships between politically and economically disadvantaged groups and investigators or sponsors. So many groups are now considered to be vulnerable in (...) the context of research, particularly international research, that the concept has lost force. In addition, classifying groups as vulnerable not only stereotypes them, but also may not reliably protect many individuals from harm. Certain individuals require ongoing protections of the kind already established in law and regulation, but attention must also be focused on characteristics of the research protocol and environment that present ethical challenges. (shrink)

In just a few years, the book became an underground classic. Neither Man Nor Beast takes Adams' thought one step further.

The concept of solidarity has recently come to prominence in the healthcare literature, addressing the motivation for taking seriously the shared vulnerabilities and medical needs of compatriots and for acting to help them meet these needs. In a recent book, Prainsack and Buyx take solidarity as a commitment to bear costs to assist others regarded as similar, with implications for governing health databases, personalized medicine, and organ donation. More broadly, solidarity has been understood normatively to call for ‘standing with’ or (...) assisting fellow community members and possibly also distant others in regard to their needs, whether for its own sake or in order to realize the demands of justice. I argue here that the understanding of solidarity in the existing bioethics literature is unduly restricted by not sufficiently theorizing the notion of structural (or systemic) injustice and its import for understanding solidarity. Extending traditional conceptions of labor and social movement solidarity, I contrast unitary solidarity within a given group with ‘networking solidarities’ across groups. I analyze the meaning of structural injustice and its significance for solidarity, including countering institutionally entrenched inequalities and economic exploitation. I then apply this broadened conception to healthcare, discussing structural problems with the U.S. insurance system and the solidarity movements addressing its deficiencies. I analyze some natural disasters and global health challenges that were aggravated by structural injustices, along with the solidarity movements they engendered. Finally, I revisit the questions of governing health databases and of personalized medicine with the enlarged conception of solidarity in view. (shrink)

This is a book about the harms of oppression, and about addressing these harms using the resources of liberalism and Kantianism. Its central thesis is that people who are oppressed are bound by the duty of self-respect to resist their own oppression. In it, I defend certain core ideals of the liberal tradition—specifically, the fundamental importance of autonomy and rationality, the intrinsic and inalienable dignity of the individual, and the duty of self-respect—making the case that these ideals are pivotal in (...) both understanding and counteracting oppression. I argue that if we take these ideals seriously then it follows that people who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression. (shrink)

Traditional conceptions of informed consent seem difficult or even impossible to apply to new technologies like biobanks, big data, or GMOs, where vast numbers of people are potentially affected, and where consequences and risks are indeterminate or even unforeseeable. Likewise, the principle has come under strain with the appropriation and monetisation of personal information on digital platforms. Over time, it has largely been reduced to bare assent to formalistic legal agreements. To address the current ineffectiveness of the norm of informed (...) consent, I suggest that we need a notion of structural injustice (on a distinctive interpretation, elaborated here, which takes account of unequal power and property relations). I then argue that in order to protect and enhance people's freedom, we have to go beyond traditional applied ethics and introduce perspectives from democratic theory and social philosophy. I attempt to show how applications of the ‘all‐affected principle’, together with new forms of democratic participation, deliberation, and representation can helpfully frame the narrower principle of informed consent. There is an important role for what we could call collective consent, and informed consent can only succeed in increasing individual agency if it is situated within enhanced forms of democratic decision‐making. (shrink)

In this essay, I will argue that contemporary ecofeminist discourse, while potentially adequate to deal with the issue of animals, is now inadequate because it fails to give consistent conceptual place to the domination of animals as a significant aspect of the domination of nature. I will examine six answers ecofeminists could give for not including animals explicitly in ecofeminist analyses and show how a persistent patriarchal ideology regarding animals as instruments has kept the experience of animals from being fully (...) incorporated within ecofeminism. (shrink)

In this essay, I will argue that contemporary ecofeminist discourse, while potentially adequate to deal with the issue of animals, is now inadequate because it fails to give consistent conceptual place to the domination of animals as a significant aspect of the domination of nature. I will examine six answers ecofeminists could give for not including animals explicitly in ecofeminist analyses and show how a persistent patriarchal ideology regarding animals as instruments has kept the experience of animals from being fully (...) incorporated within ecofeminism.2. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The book reviews the theory and concepts of happiness, explaining how these concepts underpin a line of research which is both an attempt to understand the determinants of happiness and a tool for understanding the effects of a host of phenomena on human well being.

Introduction : first things : two black and blue thoughts -- Author's note I. a sewing needle inside a plastic and rubber suction cup sitting on a watch spring, or, an object for seeing nothing -- Elegy of milk, in black and blue : the bruising of La Chambre claire -- "A" is for Alice, for amnesia, for anamnesis: a fairy tale (almost blue) called La Jetée -- Happiness with a long piece of black leader : Chris Marker's sans soleil (...) -- Author's note II. She wrote me -- "Summer was inside the marble": Alain Resnais and Magurite Duras's Hiroshima mon amour. (shrink)

In this paper several problems are raised concerning Ian Barbour's four ways of interrelating science and religion—Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration—as put forward in such publications as his highly influential Religion in an Age of Science (1990) and widely adopted by other writers in this field. The authors argue that this taxonomy is not very useful or analytically helpful, especially to historians seeking to understand past engagements between science and religion.

Some poststructuralist feminist theorists hold that the body is merely the product of cultural determinants and that gender is a free-floating artifice. I discuss how this "denaturalization" of gender and the body entrenches us yet deeper in the nature/culture dichotomy. The body, I maintain, needs to be "renaturalized" so that its earthy significance is recognized. Through a feminist reappropriation of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the body, I develop a noncausal linkage between gender and the body. I present the body as an (...) indeterminate constancy that is culturally and historically contextualized, on the one hand, yet part of our embodied givenness on the other. Interspersed throughout the paper are passages that describe my own bodily condition as I wrote the paper. (shrink)

Coming more than a decade after I first argued that people who are oppressed have an obligation to resist their oppression, this paper expands the implications of the original account and connects it up to some of the important contemporary work published in oppression studies in the interim. I then move on to respond to two critical objections to my view. The first objection charges that the typical severity of oppressive harms is not sufficiently great to ground a general obligation (...) of resistance. The second objection charges that this project would do better to conceive of resistance in political, rather than moral, terms. (shrink)

In this essay, I connect the sexual victimization of women, children, and pet animals with the violence manifest in a patriarchal culture. After discussing these connections, I demonstrate the importance of taking seriously these connections because of their implications for conceptual analysis, epistemology, and political, environmental, and applied philosophy. My goal is to broaden our understanding of issues relevant to creating peace and to provide some suggestions about what must be included in any adequate feminist peace politics.

Describes what the author sees as a suppression of the feminine in Western culture, technology, and philosophy and opens a feminist postmodern space from which fresh differences may emerge. This title explores underdeveloped themes in American and Canadian feminism. It offers a deconstruction of the phallocentric dichotomies of nature and culture.

Here is the first book to present Karl Marx as one of the great systematic philosophers, a man who went beyond the traditional bounds of the discipline to work out a philosophical system in terms of a concrete social theory and politico-economic critique. Basing her work on the Grundrisse (probably Marx's most systematic work and only translated into English for the first time in 1973), Gould argues that Marx was engaged in a single enterprise throughout his works, specifically the construction (...) of a systematic and philosophical theory of society. Gould examines five basic themes of Marx's social ontology: society, labor, causality, freedom, and justice, in five separate chapters, preceded by an introductory chapter explicating thesis and methods. The book shows how Marx's ontology, or theory of social reality, may be reconstructed from concrete details of his account of the historical stages of social development and from his analyses and critiques of capitalist economy. It clarifies further the value theory underlying Marx's critique of modern society and explores the question of how philosophy can play a major role in understanding and resolving social issues. This book will be of interest to all students of society, since it raises issues of the relationship of technologies to society and of the forms and prospects for socialism as a possible future society. It has deliberately been written in a style that makes the difficult, technical issues accessible to undergraduates just beginning to read Marx, as well as, of course, graduate students of social theory and specialized scholars. The lay reader will also be drawn to the particular content of this book and will enjoy the lucid, straightforward presentation. Marx's Social Ontology proposes a solution to a long-standing problem in interpretations of Marx: the apparent dilemma of his insistence on the ideal of full self-realization of the individual and his equal insistence on the ideal of full self-realization of the community. This is a book of major significance dealing with topics of enduring and current interest. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider the question of whether women have an obligation to confront men who sexually harass them. A reluctance to be guilty of blaming the victims of harassment, coupled with other normative considerations that tell in favor of the unfairness of this sort of obligation, might make us think that women never have an obligation to confront their harassers. But 1 argue that women do have this obligation, and it is not overridden by many of the considerations (...) that can override other obligations to confront wrongdoers. (shrink)

Critical Theory and Animal Liberation is the first collection to look at the human relationship with animals from the critical or 'left' tradition in political and social thought. The contributions in this volume highlight connections between our everyday treatment of animals and other forms of oppression, violence, and domination. Breaking with past treatments that have framed the problem as one of 'animal rights,' the authors instead depict the exploitation and killing of other animals as a political question of the first (...) order. (shrink)

No descriptive material is available for this title.

This paper is an attempt to identify certain consonances between contemporary liberalism and classical pragmatism. I identify four of the most trenchant criticisms of classical liberalism presented by pragmatist figures such as James, Peirce, Dewey, Addams, and Hocking: that liberalism overemphasizes negative liberty, that it is overly individualistic, that its pluralism is suspect, that it is overly abstract. I then argue that these deficits of liberalism in its historical incarnations are being addressed by contemporary liberals. Contemporary liberals, I show, have (...) taken on board a surprising number of classical pragmatist insights and have responded to a surprising number of classical pragmatist criticisms. I thus argue that both contemporary pragmatism and contemporary liberalism have much to gain by joining forces. (shrink)

The book reviews the theory and concepts of happiness, explaining how these concepts underpin a line of research that is both an attempt to understand the determinants of happiness and a tool for understanding the effects of a host of phenomena on human well being.

Abstract: The emergence of cross-border communities and transnational associations requires new ways of thinking about the norms involved in democracy in a globalized world. Given the significance of human rights fulfillment, including social and economic rights, I argue here for giving weight to the claims of political communities while also recognizing the need for input by distant others into the decisions of global governance institutions that affect them. I develop two criteria for addressing the scope of democratization in transnational contexts— (...) common activities and impact on basic human rights —and argue for their compatibility. I then consider some practical implications for institutional transformation and design, including new forms of transnational representation. (shrink)

To contribute more effectively to conservation reform, environmental ethics needs a motivational turn, referenced to the best scientific information about motivation. I address the pivotal questions What actually motivates people to conserve nature? and What ought to motivate people to conserve nature? by proposing a framework for understanding motivations and developing motivationally relevant criteria for environmental ethics. The need for an adequate philosophy of psychology for moral philosophy, identified by Elizabeth Anscombe 50 years ago, remains. Only from a psychologically informed (...) motivational framework for morality can ethicists understand and address the widespread rhetoric behaviors gap plaguing conservation. (shrink)

This essay offers distance and stillness as means by which to access and understand the dynamism of cities. I reflect on stillness as an unexpected aesthetic within artistic projects that represent urban environments, and as a vital approach to engaging with such artworks. Focusing on Lagos, Nigeria, I consider one photographic series by Abraham Oghobase and one sound work by Emeka Ogboh. I read their work in light of philosopher Jeff Malpas’s conceptualization of place as “existential ground.” In considering this (...) relational aspect of place, I ruminate on the way distance facilitates the careful looking and listening that connects artist, object, and viewer/listener through stillness. (shrink)

: Focusing on a textbook controversy that emerged in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1974, Mason explores the discursive production of white ethnicity in the rhetorical, visual, and political strategies used during an organized protest against the new multicultural curriculum adopted by the local school board. What the author finds puzzling is the ways in which these productions of "soul" and "nation" enabled unlikely political alliances between national conservative elites and the local, historically left-leaning working class protesters. The author argues (...) that "soul" is reproduced through racialized discourse signifying the spiritual and ethnic purity of whiteness, the consolidation of white ethnicity, and the spirit of white resistance, articulated through campaigns to save children from future captivity in an "alien" world. Through this on-site theoretical analysis, the author demonstrates how a right-wing narrative of victimhood facilitates the reproduction of ethnic identification among the protesters, whose whiteness apparently can be jeopardized by reading the "wrong" books. (shrink)

Increasingly, research in women's health and healthcare foregrounds women's experience. Despite the contribution that explorations of women's ‘lived life’ makes to our understandings, the concern of these feminist authors is the absence of in‐depth analysis of the complexity of experience and the contexts in which women's experiences of health are constituted. In this paper, authors extend current understandings of the lived life by complicating notions of knowledge, experience, language and ideologies. These ideas challenge taken‐for‐granted assumptions that underlie current women's healthcare (...) practices, disrupting the reinscription of patriarchal ideologies and generating new possibilities for nursing practice. (shrink)