Haslanger, Sally. Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?
2000, Nous 34(1): 31-55.
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Added by: Carl FoxAbstract: This paper proposes social constructionist accounts of gender and race. The focus of the inquiry--inquiry aiming to provide resources for feminist and antiracist projects--are the social positions of those marked for privilege or subordination by observed or imagined features assumed to be relevant to reproductive function, or geographical origins. I develop these ideas and propose that other gendered and racialized phenomena are usefully demarcated and explained by reference to these social positions. In doing so, I address the concern that attempts to define race or gender are misguided because they either assume a false commonality or marginalize some members of the group in question.Comment: Seminal reading for modules on gender or race.
Mac, Juno, Molly Smith. Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights
2018, Verso Books
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Rosa VincePublisher's Note: Do you have to think that prostitution is good to support sex worker rights? How do sex worker rights fit with feminist and anti-capitalist politics? Is criminalising clients progressive—and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.Comment: This text is essential for any course in feminism, philosophy of sex, oppression and resistance, epistemic injustice, which discuss sex work or labour rights movements.
Mich Ciurria. An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility
2019, Routledge
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: AnonymousPublisher’s Note:
This book develops an intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. It accomplisheses four main goals. First, it outlines a concise list of the main principles of intersectional feminism. Second, it uses these principles to critique prevailing philosophical theories of moral responsibility. Third, it offers an account of moral responsibility that is compatible with the ethos of intersectional feminism. And fourth, it uses intersectional feminist principles to critique culturally normative responsibility practices. This is the first book to provide an explicitly intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. After identifying the five principles central to intersectional feminism, the author demonstrates how influential theories of responsibility are incompatible with these principles. She argues that a normatively adequate theory of blame should not be preoccupied with the agency or traits of wrongdoers; it should instead underscore, and seek to ameliorate, oppression and adversity as experienced by the marginalized. Apt blame and praise, according to her intersectional feminist account, is both communicative and functionalist. The book concludes with an extensive discussion of culturally embedded responsibility practices, including asymmetrically structured conversations and gender- and racially biased social spaces. An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Moral Responsibility presents a sophisticated and original philosophical account of moral responsibility. It will be of interest to philosophers working at the crossroads of moral responsibility, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, queer theory, critical disability studies, and intersectionality theory.Comment: This book offers a critique of mainstream theories of moral responsibility and defends an intersectional feminist alternative that holds people responsible for their contributions, whether intentional or not, to intersecting systems of oppression.
Stemplowska, Zofia. The Rhodes Statue: Honour, Shame and Responsibility
2021, The Political Quarterly, 92(4): 629-637
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Added by: Ten-Herng Lai & Chong-Ming LimAbstract:
Oriel College persists in displaying a statue of Cecil Rhodes, despite his role in British colonialism and despite opposition from the Rhodes Must Fall movement. This article considers arguments in support of Oriel's position—including three versions of the charge that removing the statue might distort history—and show that they all fail. I argue that the conclusion that the statue should be removed, despite possible costs and complexity, follows once we realise that the statue makes demands on our attention and once we correctly understand that the descendants of those previously oppressed by Rhodes and who are currently subject to racism have a special insight, standing and claim to shape the environment in which they study, work and live.Comment (from this Blueprint): This paper can be used for discussions on how we should respond to competing demands on our attention in the context of commemorations.
Young, Iris Marion. Responsibility for Justice
2011, Oxford Universiy Press
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Added by: Olivia Maegaard NielsenAbstract:
When the noted political philosopher Iris Marion Young died in 2006, her death was mourned as the passing of “one of the most important political philosophers of the past quarter-century” (Cass Sunstein) and as an important and innovative thinker working at the conjunction of a number of important topics: global justice; democracy and difference; continental political theory; ethics and international affairs; and gender, race and public policy. This book discusses our responsibilities to address “structural” injustices in which we among many are implicated (but for which we are not to blame), often by virtue of participating in a market, such as buying goods produced in sweatshops, or participating in booming housing markets that leave many homeless. The book argues that addressing these structural injustices requires a new model of responsibility, which it calls the “social connection” model. The book develops this idea by clarifying the nature of structural injustice; developing the notion of political responsibility for injustice and how it differs from older ideas of blame and guilt; and finally how we can then use this model to describe our responsibilities to others no matter who we are and where we live.
Comment: This book is very suitable for teaching classes on justice, structures, or metaethics, since it at once covers various important ethical theories and theories of justice, while also asking a question that is still relevant to this day: what responsibility do we carry in the face of structural injustices? The book could be read in length, but the chapters can also be read individually.
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