Diversity Reading List

Publisher's Note: Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism — and certain minority group rights in particular — make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equity and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world’s leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate.

Okin opens by arguing that some group rights can, in fact, endanger women. She points, for example, to the French government’s giving thousands of male immigrants special permission to bring multiple wives into the country, despite French laws against polygamy and the wives’ own bitter opposition to the practice. Okin argues that if we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices on the grounds that they are fundamental to minority cultures whose existence may otherwise be threatened.

In reply, some respondents reject Okin’s position outright, contending that her views are rooted in a moral universalism that is blind to cultural difference. Others quarrel with Okin’s focus on gender, or argue that we should be careful about which group rights we permit, but not reject the category of group rights altogether. Okin concludes with a rebuttal, clarifying, adjusting, and extending her original position. These incisive and accessible essays — expanded from their original publication in Boston Review and including four new contributions — are indispensable reading for anyone interested in one of the most contentious social and political issues today.

The diverse contributors, in addition to Okin, are Azizah al-Hibri, Abdullahi An-Na’im, Homi Bhabha, Sander Gilman, Janet Halley, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, Bhikhu Parekh, Katha Pollitt, Robert Post, Joseph Raz, Saskia Sassen, Cass Sunstein, and Yael Tamir.

Abstract: This article assesses the development of Rawls's thinking in response to a generation of feminist critique. Two principle criticisms are sustainable throughout his work: first, that the family, as a basic institution of society, must be subject to the principles of justice if its members are to be free and equal members of society; and, second, that without such social and political equality, justice as fairness is as meaningful to women as the unrealized promise of 'Forty acres and a mule' was to the newly freed slaves.

Content: Olsaretti is interested in the question of whether nonparents in a just society have a duty to share some of the costs of raising children with those people who choose to be parents. She considers the main argument in favour of that claim, that children are public goods. Although she sees some merit in the public goods approach, she develops an alternative socialised goods argument, which she holds to be ultimately stronger.

Introduction: This paper argues that a moralised definition of voluntariness, alongside the more familiar moralised definition of freedom, underlies libertarian justifications of the unbridled market. Through an analysis of Nozick's account of voluntary choice, I intend to reveal some fatal mistakes, and to put forward some suggestions regarding what a satisfactory account of voluntary choice requires.

Summary: In this paper, Oshana argues that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to affirm the Partial-Birth Abortion Act was mistaken. She claims that the Partial-Birth Abortion Act cannot withstand the test of strict scrutiny, that the Act fails to respect the privacy rights of individuals, and that there are compelling reasons (based in autonomy) to allow partial-birth abortion up until the point of fetal viability. As such, she claims, the Act violates the integrity of law.

Summary: In this article, Palmer provides a clear survey of positions on killing domestic animals (cats and dogs) in animal shelters. She argues that there are three ways of understanding the killing that occurs in animal shelters: consequentialism, rights based, and relation based. She considers the relationship of humans and domesticated animals that leads to their killing in animal shelters as well as providing an ethical assessment of the practice.

Abstract:
Avia Pasternak offers a moral assessment of political rioting, focusing on cases like the riots over the police killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 and the 2005 French Banlieu riots. As she notes, there are two common responses to such cases: that rioters are just the same as common criminals, or that rioters are morally worse than common criminals. In response, Pasternak develops an analysis of political rioting as a form of "spontaneous, disorganized, public collective violence in order to protest against and to defy [the] political order" (2). In her view, political rioting ought to be understood as a form of defensive harm--harm inflicted in order to avert an attack, as in justified cases of self-defence or just wars. Those who engage in political rioting, Pasternak argues, "do so in order to bring an end, or at least to ameliorate their on-going unjust treatment at the hands of their state. It follows then that in determining the appropriate moral response to rioters, we ought to examine their actions in light of the various constraints offered by just war theorists" (3). Pasternak focuses on three such constraints: necessity, success, and proportionality. And she argues that, objections to the contrary notwithstanding, "under circumstances that are not far from those we find in some real-world democracies, the resort to political rioting can comply with the criteria of permissible defensive harm" (4).

Abstract:

If the focus of interest is democratization, including women’s freedom, a basic income is preferable to stakeholding. Prevailing theoretical approaches and conceptions of individual freedom, free-riding seen as a problem of men’s employment, and neglect of feminist insights obscure the democratic potential of a basic income. An argument in terms of individual freedom as self-government, a basic income as a democratic right, and the importance of the opportunity not to be employed shows how a basic income can help break both the link between income and employment and the mutual reinforcement of the institutions of marriage, employment, and citizenship.

Content: Patridge discusses and rejects some of the main arguments for the exclusivist thesis that no pornography can be art: Levinson’s, Mag Uidhir’s, and one based on Rea’s definition of pornography. In doing so, she offers a useful overview of some other arguments already used against those authors. This leads her to conclude that at least some pornography can be art. A normative question follows: should we treat pornography as art? Given the high cultural status of art, and the often unethical nature of pornography, doing so might lead us to promoting unethical attitudes. She finds such treatment too unselective: at least some pornography isn’t morally problematic (and some of it can actually be morally laudable), while much of art, including erotic art, definitely is. But consumption of pornography cannot be taken out of our paternalistic and sexist cultural context. As most pornography is inegalitarian and expresses (and possibly promotes) harmful attitudes towards women, enjoying it constitutes a moral flaw. This is true even if the consumer is never inspired to actually harm women – in those cases enjoyment of pornography constitutes moral obliviousness, a ‘failure of sensitivity and solidarity with the victims of such imagery’ (54) similar to taking enjoyment in racist jokes.

Abstract:
Moral distress has been written about extensively in nursing and other fields. Often, however, it has not been used with much theoretical depth. This paper focuses on theorizing moral distress using feminist ethics, particularly the work of Margaret Urban Walker and Hilde Lindemann. Incorporating empirical findings, we argue that moral distress is the response to constraints experienced by nurses to their moral identities, responsibilities, and relationships. We recommend that health professionals get assistance in accounting for and communicating their values and responsibilities in situations of moral distress. We also discuss the importance of nurses creating “counterstories” of their work as knowledgeable and trustworthy professionals to repair their damaged moral identities, and, finally, we recommend that efforts toward shifting the goal of health care away from the prolongation of life at all costs to the relief of suffering to diminish the moral distress that is a common response to aggressive care at end-of-life.