Diversity Reading List

Abstract: Ideas, knowledge, and cognitive claims we have about “the other” or “the different” traditionally stems from what can be referred to as mainstream Cartesianism of epistemic duality, an orientation that has primary consideration for subject-object dichotomy; the knower and the known; the I and the thou; and the center and the periphery. In such considerations, what is of the center perceives what is not as an “other.” This disposition about the other constitutes a gap in cognition resulting in poverty of knowledge – knowledge of the other attained from a distance. Furthermore, this condition presents some rigid boundary between episteme (the knowledge) and doxa (the opinions), between the “self” and the “other,” between reality and appearance, between noumena and the phenomena, or between space and time. The present work attempts an alternative epistemology that avoids the impossibility of obtaining genuine knowledge beyond the self, proposing an epistemology of intercourse which alone, I believe, is capable of re-presenting a robust understanding of the entirety of reality (a holistic cognition of reality that is a continuum). According to this proposal, “knowledge” is “intercourse.” The knower is subsumed in the known and vice versa. Only then can the knower know the other for what it is and appreciates the non-difference between the knower and the known. This way, a just relationship between the self and the other would evolve.

Publisher’s Note:
Uqalurait presents a comprehensive account of Inuit life on land and sea ice in the area now called Nunavut, before extensive contact with southerners. Drawing on a broad range of oral history sources - from nineteenth-century exploration accounts to contemporary community-based projects - the book uses quotes from over three hundred Inuit elders to provide an 'inside' view of family life, social relations, hunting, the land, shamanism, health, and material culture. For the first time, the reader encounters Inuit culture and traditional knowledge through the voices of people who lived the life being described. Based on a larger research project developed under the guidance of six Inuit from across Nunavut, Uqalurait consists of thousands of quotations organised thematically into cohesive chapters. The book describes the seasonal rounds of four different groups, capturing the fact that while Inuit across Nunavut had much in common, there was also much to distinguish them from each other, living as they did in many small groups of people, each with its own territory and identity. Given the recent creation of Nunavut and the current focus of attention on the Arctic due to climate change, Uqalurait is a timely source of insight from a people whose values of sharing and respect for the environment have helped them to live contentedly for centuries at the northern limit of the inhabitable world.

Publisher’s Note:
This book examines the importance of work in human well-being, addressing several related philosophical questions about work and arguing on the whole that meaningful work is central in human flourishing. Work impacts flourishing not only in developing and exercising human capabilities but also in instilling and reflecting virtues such as honor, pride, dignity, self-discipline, and self-respect. Work also attaches to a sense of purposefulness and personal identity, and meaningful work can promote both personal autonomy and a sense of personal satisfaction that issues from making oneself useful. Further still, work bears a formative influence on character and intelligence and provides a primary avenue for exercising complex skills and garnering esteem and recognition from others. The author defends a pluralistic account of meaningful work, identifying four primary dimension of meaningful work: (1) developing or exercising the worker’s capabilities, especially insofar as this expression meets with recognition and esteem; (2) supporting virtues; (3) providing a purpose, and especially producing something of enduring value; and (4) integrating elements of a worker’s life. In light of the impact that work has on flourishing, the author argues that well-ordered societies provide opportunities for meaningful work and that the philosophical view of value pluralism, which casts work as having no special significance in an individual’s life, is false. The book also addresses oppressive work that undermines human flourishing, examining potential solutions to minimize the impact of bad work on those who perform it.

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In light of the impact of work on human flourishing, an intractable problem for political theorists concerns the distribution of meaningful work in a community of moral equals. This article reviews a number of partial solutions that a well-ordered society could draw upon to provide equality of opportunity for eudemonistically meaningful work and to minimize the impact of bad work upon those who perform it. Even in view of these solutions, however, it is not likely that opportunities for meaningful work can be guaranteed for all people, which carries an implication that, even in well-ordered societies, it is likely that not all people will flourish. The author argues that the limitedness of meaningful work is not a reason to reject the normative claim that meaningful work is integral in flourishing, nor is it a reason against working to transform social and political institutions to increase opportunities for meaningful work.

Summary: Social factors have a powerful influence on human health and longevity. Yet the social dimensions of health are often obscured in public discussions due to the overwhelming focus in health policy on medical care, individual-level risk factor research, and changing individual behaviours. Likewise, in philosophical approaches to health and social justice, the debates have largely focused on rationing problems in health care and on personal responsibility. However, a range of events over the past two decades such as the study of modern famines, the global experience of HIV/AIDS, the international women’s health movement, and the flourishing of social epidemiological research have drawn attention to the robust relationship between health and broad social arrangements.

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This article argues for a right to explanation, on the basis of its necessity to protect the interest in what I call informed self- advocacy from the serious threat of opacity. The argument for the right to explanation proceeds along the lines set out by an interest- based account of rights (Section II). Section III presents and motivates the moral importance of informed self- advocacy in hierarchical, non- voluntary institutions. Section IV argues for a right to so- called rule- based normative and causal explanations, on the basis of their necessity to protect that interest. Section V argues that this protection comes at a tolerable cost.

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This paper explores a neglected normative dimension of algorithmic opacity in the workplace and the labor market. It argues that explanations of algorithms and algorithmic decisions are of noninstrumental value. That is because explanations of the structure and function of parts of the social world form the basis for reflective clarification of our practical orientation toward the institutions that play a central role in our life. Using this account of the noninstrumental value of explanations, the paper diagnoses distinctive normative defects in the workplace and economic institutions which a reliance on AI can encourage, and which lead to alienation.

Report Summary: Rarely has a Māori river claim been so persistently maintained as that of the Whanganui people. Uniquely in the annals of Māori settlement, the country’s longest navigable river is home to just one iwi, the Atihau-a-Paparangi. It has been described as the aortic artery, the central bloodline of that one heart. The Atihau-a-Paparangi claim to the authority of the river has continued unabated from when it was first put into question. The tribal concern is evidenced by numerous petitions to Parliament from 1887. In addition, legal proceedings were commenced as early as 1938, in the Māori Land Court, on an application for the investigation of the title to the riverbed. From there the action passed to the Māori Appellate Court in 1944, the Māori Land Court again in 1945, the Supreme Court in 1949, to a further petition and the appointment of a Royal Commission in 1950, to a reference to the Court of Appeal in 1953, to a reference to the Māori Appellate Court in 1958 and to a decision of the Court of Appeal in 1962. This may represent one of the longest set of legal proceedings in Māori claims history, yet in all those proceedings, it is claimed, the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi had no direct bearing. Nor did the matter rest there for the court hearings were followed by further petitions and investigations, and in more recent times, Atihau-a-Paparangi were again involved in the Catchment Board inquiry on minimum river flows in 1988 and in the Planning Tribunal and High Court hearings on the same matter in 1989, 1990 and 1992.

Summary: Walsh and Lopes argue that some appropriation can be beneficial and productive: in particular, the appropriation of elements of dominant culture by members of culturally marginalized groups. They explore this idea through discussion of such appropriative artwork by a number of contemporary First Nations artists, which they argue challenges "the assumed alignment of appropriator with oppressor and appropriatee with victim"(227).