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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: Because it embraces a domain that is invincibly pluralistic and dynamic, aesthetic theory can serve as a model for feminist theory. Feminist theory, which takes gender as a constituted point of departure, pluralizes theory, thereby challenging its unicity. This anomalous approach to theory is also implicit in conventional aesthetics, which has for that reason been spurned by centrist philosophy. Whilst aesthetics therefore merits attention from feminists, there is reason to be wary of such classic aesthetic doctrines as the the thesis that art is "autonomous" and properly percevied "disinterestedly". That belief has roots in somatophobic dualism which ultimately leads to consequences as negative for art and the aesthetic as for women. Feminists rightly join with other critics of traditional dominative dualisms; yet they can learn from the expansive tendency in aesthetics toward openness and self-reflexive innovation.Henry Odera Oruka. Sage Philosophy: Indigenous Thinkers and Modern Debate on African Philosophy1990, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill-
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Added by: Sara Peppe, Contributed by: Jonathan EgidPublisher’s Note:
Sage Philosophy is an anthology of three main parts: Part one contains papers by Odera Oruka clearing the way and arguing about his research over the last decade on indigenous sages in Kenya. Part Two introduces verbatim interviews with a given number of those sages, while Part Three consists of published papers by scholars who are critics or commentators on the Oruka project. The author has spent the last decade in Kenya carrying out his research. It is the general stand of the book that the sages turn out to be thinkers or philosophers in no trivial sense, despite their lack of modern formal education. This study is a critique for all those scholars who hitherto have found no practice of critical philosophy in traditional Africa.
Comment: A great anthology broken down in three parts, including sages about Kenyan culture and cognate interviews with a final academic, in-depth, analysis. Great book for building knowledge about the Kenyan culture to be used as an overview on the theme.
Herzog, Lisa. Reclaiming the System: Moral Responsibility, Divided Labour, and the Role of Organizations in Society2018, Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasPublisher’s Note:
The world of wage labour seems to have become a soulless machine, an engine of social and environmental destruction. Employees seem to be nothing but ‘cogs’ in this system—but is this true? Located at the intersection of political theory, moral philosophy, and business ethics, this book questions the picture of the world of work as a ‘system’. Hierarchical organizations, both in the public and in the private sphere, have specific features of their own. This does not mean, however, that they cannot leave room for moral responsibility, and maybe even human flourishing. Drawing on detailed empirical case studies, Lisa Herzog analyses the nature of organizations from a normative perspective: their rule-bound character, the ways in which they deal with divided knowledge, and organizational cultures and their relation to morality. She asks how individual agency and organizational structures would have to mesh to avoid common moral pitfalls. She develops the notion of ‘transformational agency’, which refers to a critical, creative way of engaging with one’s organizational role while remaining committed to basic moral norms. The last part zooms out to the political and institutional changes that would be required to re-embed organizations into a just society. Whether we submit to ‘the system’ or try to reclaim it, Herzog argues, is a question of eminent political importance in our globalized world.Comment (from this Blueprint): This text, an introduction to a longer work on organisational ethics, proposes and discusses novel arguments about the nature of organisations, and organisational spaces, as moral entities. By challenging long held common sense assumptions that corporate organisations are 'amoral' or outside the scope of human morality, Herzog offers an alternate view. It is therefore useful as a way to examine and discuss alternate visions of organisational structure and the role that human beings play as moral agents within those structures.
Herzog, Lisa, Frauke Schmode. ‘But it’s your job!’ The moral status of jobs and the dilemma of occupational duties2022, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, (Available Online)-
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Added by: Deryn Mair ThomasAbstract:
Do individuals have moral duties to fulfil all the demands of their jobs? In this paper, we discuss how to understand such ‘occupational duties’ and their normative bases, with a specific focus on duties that go beyond contractually agreed upon duties. Against views that reduce occupational duties to contractual duties, we argue that they often have greater moral weight, based on skills, roles, and the duty of social cooperation. We discuss what it would take to make sure that individuals are not unfairly overburdened by such occupational duties, distinguishing between choice conditions (voluntariness, availability of alternatives, full information) and conditions concerning the role and the social structures within which such duties are embedded (feasible role design, existence of support structures, employee voice). These conditions, however, are not fulfilled for many existing jobs, especially for jobs typically occupied by structurally disadvantaged groups such as women or ethnic minorities. This leads to a dilemma between the claims of those who depend on the occupational duties to be fulfilled, and the rights of those who hold these occupations and are unfairly overburdened. We conclude by arguing for the need for structural reform to dissolve this dilemma.
Comment: This paper explores important questions relating to duties within employment and has a wide range of implications for workplace justice. It offers an interesting discussion on the moral weight of such duties and connects the obligation to perform duties to the requirements of social cooperation, drawing on Kim Brownlee's 'moral roles thesis' and her work on conscience and conviction. It would therefore be useful in the context of philosophical courses on a handful of broader subjects, including but not limited to social justice, feminist ethics, applied ethics, and philosophy of work, as well as some introductory contexts studying more traditional political philosophy on obligation and duty. (The article contains some technical language, and is an intermediate to advanced level of difficulty, so if used in intro contexts, might be limited to advanced students or suggested as further reading for students who are working on specific projects/papers.)
Hewitt Suchocki, Marjorie. The Idea of God in Feminist Philosophy1994, Hypatia 9(4): 57-68.-
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Added by: Emily Paul
Abstract: The marginal position of women within the Western tradition provides a critical vantage point for feminist redevelopment of the notion of God. Feminists tend to replace the classical categories of substance philosophies traditionally used for God with relational categories often drawn from organic philosophies. They also project the dynamic character of language itself into the discussion of God. This essay focuses on these issues as they are developed by Mary Daly and Rebecca ChoppComment: A good overview and development of some key feminist philosophies of religion that seek to redevelop the notion of God. If being used in a standard philosophy of religion course, it would be good to set this reading after covering the 'traditional' conceptions of God, and then to have a debate to find out the views of students regarding how we ought to conceive of God.
Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought2000, 2nd Edition. Routledge.-
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Added by: Anne-Marie McCallionPublisher’s Note:
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon.
Comment: Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Maryland. She was the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman to hold this position. Collins's work primarily concerns issues involving race, gender, and social inequality within the African-American community. In Black Feminist Thought, Collins sets out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. In this chapter, Collins outlines and illuminates the framework for a black feminist epistemology by juxtaposing it against Western epistemologies that have dominated and hindered thought. In doing so, Collins also underlines the necessity of alternative epistemologies to render the lives of black women intelligible.
Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment2008, Routledge-
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Added by: Tomasz Zyglewicz, Shannon Brick, Michael GreerAbstract:
In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, originally published in 1990, Patricia Hill Collins set out to explore the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals and writers, both within the academy and without. Here Collins provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Drawing from fiction, poetry, music and oral history, the result is a superbly crafted and revolutionary book that provided the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought and its canon.Comment (from this Blueprint): An excerpt from her landmark 1991 text, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, this text sees Patricia Hill Collins outline four “controlling images” that contribute to black women’s oppression, appealing to cultural and literary devices, as well as social science literature. In the parts of this chapter not excerpted Hill Collins argues that stereotypical images and symbols of Black womanhood manipulate society’s perception and ideas about Black womanhood and, by extension, Black women which contributes to justifying their oppression.
Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. Denying Relationality: Epistemology and Ethics and Ignorance2007,-
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Added by: Giada Fratantonio
Summary: In this chapter, the author argues that epistemological and ethical practices of ignorance are strategic and involve a strategic denial of relationality, namely, of the way in which subjects are formed through relation with each other.Comment: Good as a further reading for a course on epistemology of ignorance.
Hoffmann, Nimi. Involuntary experiments in former colonies: The case for a moratorium2020, World Development 127, 104805-104808-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Anonymous
Abstract: There is a rich literature on the use of medical trials as a model for designing and evaluating the outcomes of social policy interventions in former colonies. Yet social experimentalists have not engaged in a correspondingly vibrant discussion of medical ethics. A systematic review of social experiments shows that few studies explicitly discuss informed consent, or the serious constraints on securing informed consent from impoverished or child participants, particularly in the context of cluster randomization. The silence on informed consent, and in some cases active denial thereof, suggests that it is often considered less important than other elements of experimental design. This matters since involuntary experimentation on vulnerable people violates their personhood, increases the risk of unintended harm, and establishes continuities with colonial experimentation. There is a need to develop more effective mechanisms for regulating social experiments in former colonies. In the interim, scholars in the South have a responsibility to call for a moratorium on experiments.
Comment: Are useful counterweight to the literature on the randomise control trial is in development economics, shows that they are much more ethically controversial than they're willing to admit, also good for bringing out of the colonial aspect of even contemporary economics.
2017, Philosophy Compass 12(10).-
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Added by: Emily Paul
Abstract: Research programs in empirical psychology over the past few decades have led scholars to posit implicit biases. This is due to the development of innovative behavioural measures that have revealed aspects of our cognitions which may not be identified on self?report measures requiring individuals to reflect on and report their attitudes and beliefs. But what does it mean to characterise such biases as implicit? Can we satisfactorily articulate the grounds for identifying them as bias? And crucially, what sorts of cognitions are in fact being measured; what mental states or processes underpin such behavioural responses? In this paper, we outline some of the philosophical and empirical issues engaged when attempting to address these three questions. Our aim is to provide a constructive taxonomy of the issues, and how they interrelate. As we will see, any view about what implicit bias is may depend on a range of prior theoretical choices.Comment: Perfect for the start of a unit/course on implicit bias, as this paper provides a clear overview of the phenomenon of implicit bias, the evidence for it, and ways to interpret it.
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Hein, Hilde. Refining Feminist Theory: Lessons from Aesthetics
2010, In Hilde Hein and Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective. Indiana University Press.
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