Most weeks we will give you some questions in advance that will figure directly or indirectly in our classroom discussion (in addition to the material you work up for the response papers you send us Tuesday mornings). Here are some questions to think about as you review Miller's introductory chapter before class Tuesday.
1. Miller begins by sketching three cases from the media—a suicide bombing in Baghdad, a famine in Niger, and Africans trying to cross illegally from Morocco into Mellila, Spain. His reflections on these cases lead him eventually to three “guidelines” for thinking about the issues of national responsibility and global ethics. What are these three guidelines and how well do they help with the three cases?
2.What does Miller mean by ‘social justice’? What does he assume about the character of the distributive justice aspect of social justice? (Hint: see middle of p. 15).
3. Miller makes clear that he thinks that a large part of a theory of global justice will be a theory about just institutional arrangements. But he does not really discuss any actual international institutions that might help carry out the demands of justice in this introductory chapter. How many such institutions can you name? As far as you know, do any of these currently behave particularly justly or unjustly? (Throughout our reading of Miller's text we will be asking ourself about the implications of his theory of global justice for actual international institutions...)
3 comments:
Here is why I found it hard to take gender roles within certain culture as a global justice issue. I think the worlds cultures are too heterogeneous to permit some uniform understanding of sexual equality. And the same thing can be said about many other human rights, if one believes that different cultures are all valid and legitimate in their own ways. However, people tend to assume that their own culture is the most superior, then disregard the perspectives of other cultures, and make subjective moral judgments on things outside their cultural domain. In my opinion, this runs the risk of chauvinism. And I've seen it quite frequently in some of the criticisms on western media against alleged human rights violations by my home state, which clearly stems from misunderstanding and lack of knowledge. And in some worst cases, they just feel like horrible deja vu that reminds people of the colonialist "civilizing missions", or the desperate Christian attempts to convert the "godless indigenous people". (e.g. the Gadfly project http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV-U3H-6Rvw)
It is sometimes hard for me to explain this view to my American friends. And I will probably sound like a moral relativist to you. But here is an example I used to illustrate my point when talking to Leon about this after class. Many Chinese with conservative views think the "American way" of treating old people is appalling. That's because shipping elderly parents off to retirement homes goes completely against the Confucian notion of filial piety, which, together with loyalty, is considered as the principal virtue of men in east Asia, and is legally enforces by the governments in countries like China, Korea, and Singapore. Now suppose one day, the Chinese declared human rights for senior citizens of the world, on the basis of this filial piety, and started to spread filial piety around the globe just as zealously as the US spreads "freedom and democracy". And they condemn America's "human rights violations" against the elderly, and urges to shut down all senior centers in the US, and to reform the economically unsustainable social security system into some Asian-style family system. How would the American public take such hypothetical criticism? And would such criticism even be valid, given the context of American culture and social structure? What if the Chinese wants to put some pressure on the US government by, say, boycotting the 2016 Chicago olympics, or sending in some marines to promote filial piety?
I also want to say a little further about human rights and interventionism. When we were coming up with cases of global justice issues in class today, the list just kept growing. And for a moment it I got the impression that if we are willing to push the theory to its limits, almost any harm done by anybody to anyone else anywhere in the world could qualify as a human rights violation. Perhaps because human rights are so conceived to be universal, it naturally suggests or invites foreign interventions. And in reality, it does seem that human rights are often used as justifications or excuses for controversial international interventions. The examples are just too many (just think about most of the wars in recent years). But I think the question remains whether foreign intervention necessarily follows human rights violations as a logical moral response.
I would not be surprised if you find my opinions unconventional or even radical. But I'd like last clarify a few things: I do not dismiss all criticisms against China's human rights record. Some of them are indeed candid and constructive. I maybe an advocate of some sort of cultural relativism, but I do not think that human rights are meaningless. They are simply too often ill-defined, and misused.
(A reply from Allen Buchanan)
Thank you for your very thoughtful comments. I think we are not as far apart as you believe.
First, we were only making a list of issues that could be seen as involving some issues of justice--we weren't assuming they were all human rights issues.
I myself was a little worried that even as a list of that could be seen as involving justice issues, some items on the list were problematic; that is why
I asked what sorts of JUSTICE questions might be raised with respect to environmental issues. You are quite right to point out that not every case in
which someone is harmed is a case of a human rights violation (or of an injustice, for that matter).
One of the key questions we'll explore in the course is whether or to what extent issues of global justice are human rights issues.
Second, so far as gender issues go. No one was suggesting that every issue about gender roles is a justice issue, much less a human rights issue. The point
was only that SOME issues concerning gender roles could be seen as involving justice issues (e.g., when there is no legal recourse for the brutal killing of
women in so-called "honor killings").
Also, I don't think anyone was suggesting that there is only one "correct" way for men and women to relate to one another, much less that all differences in
the roles of men and women are cases of injustices or human rights violations. I also don't think that human rights conventions say that all gender role differences are human rights violations.
Third, we weren't at all suggesting that whenever there is an injustice or whenever there is a violation of human rights, intervention is appropriate. On the contrary, I tried to make it very clear that these are separate issues!
If you look over the OVERVIEW of the course, you will see that there as well we distinguish very carefully between questions about whether something is unjust
or is a human rights violation and whether anyone would be justified in intervening (and if so, who would be justified, under what conditions).
Let me make one comment about your remark about how Americans treat old people. I agree entirely that there are big cultural differences here. I, myself, am an admirer of the Confucian tradition's emphasis on filial piety and on the
importance of the family. I also agree that sometimes the elderly in the U.S. are treated badly by their children, even sometimes treated abusively (I have written about this in DECIDING FOR OTHERS: THE ETHICS OF SURROGATE DECISION-MAKING, a book I co-authored with Dan W. Brock).
However, one must be careful not to make sweeping judgments about another culture on the basis of exaggerated stereotypes. Would you care to guess what
percentage of elderly Americans are in nursing homes? The last time I checked it was well under 10%--I think somewhere around 7%. Also, it is important to keep in mind that there are, apparently, many Americans who choose to go to
nursing homes because they do not wish to burden their children. Nevertheless, I think there is much to criticize in the way SOME Americans treat the elderly.
Having said all that, I commend you for being so candid and articulate about your concerns. Your main concern--that there is (sometimes) a tendency for (some) people to project their own moral views on others under the banner of
human rights is a valid one. We will be considering it continually, throughout the course.
But we must also be careful to distinguish two quite different claims: (1) that there are no human rights (or that most putative human rights are not really
human rights) and (2) that human rights discourse is sometimes abused--that is, that false claims are made about human rights and sometimes these false claims
are made in order to oppress people or to wrongly criticize states (such as China). I think (2) is clearly true, but its truth does not show that (1) is true.
It might also be noted that just as some states (e.g., the U.S.) sometimes accuse other states of violating human rights and do so for political reasons,
sometimes some states appeal uncritically to the idea of sovereignty (without
being clear about what the limits of sovereignty are) in criticizing those states. It is my belief that Chinese leaders (among many others!) do the latter
routinely. In this course we will try to be equally critical about claims about human rights and claims about sovereignty.
My view is that every state violates human rights, but some do so more regularly than others. I think that the U.S. has a relatively good human rights record
INTERNALLY in recent years, but that its violations of the rights of foreigners is quite another matter, especially during the Bush Presidency.
Also, it might be worth pointing out that the way in which states use (and abuse) human rights language may be different from the way some NGOs use it. For example, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are very critical of
China, but they are also very critical of the U.S. So it would be a mistake to make the generalization that human rights discourse is just a matter of hypocritical discourse by Western states.
Keep up the good work!
Allen
Thanks a lot, Prof Buchanan.
Sorry for my failure to differentiate human rights issues from justice issues. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention in class.
I definitely wasn't trying to make any serious judgment on the way some elderly people are treated in this country. It was all hypothetical, and I knew it would be absurd to anyone who does not share the strong opinions of some sinocentric Chinese wingnuts. And that was precisely my point: stereotyping, exaggeration, overreacting, and cultural intolerance are not helpful to protect human rights. And I admit that there are problems with Confucianism just as there are problems with many other schools of moral philosophy.
I totally agree that human rights are not about the hypocrisy of western powers. Many non-western countries, including China, use it as wartime propaganda as well. And I, too, believe there are impartial human rights commentators out there, although I have some reservations about certain NGOs.
Thanks again for responding to my comments.
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