The Discussion on Global Justice: A Missing Premise

Global Rectificatory Justice is part of a series on global ethics seeking to address normative issues through an empirically informed lens. The series as a whole casts a skeptical eye on mainstream liberal cosmopolitan approaches to political justice. It views these mainstream approaches as undeservedly depoliticized. The series attempts to disrupt this de facto liberal cosmopolitan standard by examining the emerging challenges posed by multiculturalism and globalization. Offering what it sees as a more nuanced examination of the social contexts and cultural structures that underlie multiculturalism and globalization, the series tries to correct perceived omissions in mainstream accounts of global ethics. Göran Collste's volume is an exercise in applied ethics and it concerns itself with the legacy of colonialism, focusing primarily on the epistemic aftereffects of colonial rule. Collste argues that we should think of colonialism as an ongoing historical process and not as a vestige of the past. Colonialism involves more than just prior economic exploitation, on his view. Because of its ongoing structural and institutional influence, colonialism for Collste also constitutes an ongoing epistemic injustice. Collste's grounds his contention on historical sources, official state documents, and in-person interviews. He also draws on a wide-ranging academic literature, with sources ranging from normative ethics to developmental economics and international relations. His goal is to illustrate how each disciplinary matrix influences and colors our understanding of past and present colonial injustices. Part of this influence is inchoate and part involves actively forgetting the advantages colonialism provided the West. As the book progresses, Collste accumulates telling omissions that underscore his main point. The various omissions he unearths show the lasting and underappreciated cultural damage done by Western powers. Many of the official documents that Collste examines either minimize or reject factual cases of Western colonial misconduct. Collste is concerned with the way that liberal cosmopolitan accounts of justice underemphasize (or ignore) these purposeful omissions.

in: Lukas Meyer (ed.), Legitimacy, Justice and Public International Law, Cambrdige University Press 2009, pp. 207-231.

In this paper I take a closer look at the controversy between cosmopolitans and the proponents of a political conception of justice. I will defend a political conception of justice, though I suggest some revisions. A cosmopolitan approach is often connected with monism, i.e., the claim that the same sort of normative principles should apply to institutions and to individual choices. A political conception of justice presupposes dualism, namely a separation between the principles of justice guiding the design of institutions and the moral principles applying to individual choices. In section 2 of the paper I discuss Thomas Pogge’s cosmopolitan position and try to show that Pogge shifts from a dualistic account of justice to a monistic account when it comes to the problem of world poverty; therefore Pogge’s treatment of world poverty is vulnerable to the objections which he himself raised against monism. Moreover, in section 3, I argue that Pogge’s exclusive focus on negative duties is implausible and creates excessively heavy burdens on the side of better-off individuals. In section 4 I argue that there is no need to consider the nation-state as a hindrance to the realization of a more global justice. I end with some suggestions as to how a political conception of justice can be modified to meet some of the criticisms cosmopolitans have rightly raised.

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (2nd ed.), 2022

Global justice (GJ) is a term that lies at the heart of the question of fair distribution of benefits and burdens across the world. While it has been, to date, mostly political philosophers who examined the normative underpinnings of the obligations to the globally disadvantaged and left behind, the deep-seated processes of globalization continue to have a real and tangible impact on the lives and fortunes of people all around the world. After painting in broad strokes the two approaches (minimalist and cosmopolitan) on GJ, the article points to the possible ways through which sociological inquiry can be informed by this rich conversation, and can in turn inspire new directions in the debate. [First published: 23 April 2021 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosg054.pub2]

Global Policy, 2014

For liberalism, values such as respect, reciprocity, and tolerance should frame cultural encounters in multicultural societies. However, it is easy to disregard that power differences and political domination also influence the cultural sphere and the relations between cultural groups. In this essay, I focus on some challenges for cultural pluralism. In relation to Indian political theorist Rajeev Bhargava, I discuss the meaning of cultural domination and epistemic injustice and their historical and moral implications. Bhargava argued that as a consequence of colonialism, "indigenous cultures" were inferiorized, marginalized, and anonymized. Although cultures are often changing due to external influences, I argue that epistemic injustice implies that a culture is forced to subjection, disrespected, and considered as inferior and that it threatens the dominated people's epistemic framework, collective identity, and existential security. Finally, I refer to John Rawls's theory of political liberalism as a constructive approach to avoid parochialism and Western cultural domination.

Ethic@: an International Journal for Moral Philosophy, 2011

Global Justice is a fascinating and powerful work about what can and ought to be done to achieve a better future for our species. Built on a Rawlsian styled thought experiment and supported by empirical reporting, the book presents a "basic framework of governing the world's inhabitants" (p. 50).Brock invites her readers to imagine a situation in which delegates from the peoples of the world meet to agree on principles of international justice but are impartial because they remain ignorant of their initial social position and interests. That is, they operate behind a "veil of ignorance" that induces impartiality. Global Justice extends the Rawlsian framework to the entire global community in innovative ways and applies it to important policy questions. Brock advocates a trans-boundary, trans-cultural moral concern for others (referred to as "global cosmopolitanism") against a more traditional notion that our moral obligations are primarily to those in our own group, community, or country (referred to as "liberal nationalism"). As in Rawls's Justice as Fairness, there are two sorts of implications reached from the impartial reasoning within the original position: one concerns rights and liberties, the other concerns the distribution of economic welfare. In this review I will touch upon three aspects of her analysis: distributive justice, rights and liberties, and the role of nationalism in moral theorizing about global justice.

Journal of Global Ethics, 2013

Third World Quarterly, 2009

This paper takes issue with global justice theory seeing it a 'global-local' in which the perspectives and demands of post-Kantian western liberalism silences ways of being in the world that move beyond a narrowly circumscribed definition of 'reasonableness'. Taking its cue from critics of dominant liberal conceptions of the self, such as Spivak, Deleuze and Freire this paper examines the impact of epistemological diversity and the radical 'otherness' of indigenous, peasant and marginal epistemologies on how western intellectuals might think about global justice. We look at a number of examples of indigenous and marginal resistance to injustice in the global system, including the West Papuan and Zapatista movements, and conclude that the goals of such movements cannot be encapsulated in distributive or juridical terms. An alternative theorization of global justice might, contra global justice theory, insist on a dialogical, contingent basis for discussing justice, whether local or global.

The discussion of global justice has mainly focused on global distributive justice. This article argues for global rectificatory justice, mainly by former colonial states in favor of former colonized peoples. The argument depends on the following premises: (1) there is a moral obligation to rectify the consequences of wrongful acts; (2) colonialism was on the whole harmful for the colonies; (3) the present unjust global structure was constituted by colonialism; and (4) the obligation of rectificatory justice is trans-generational so long as there are at present identifiable beneficiaries and victims of past injustice. Although it is too demanding to ask for full compensation for 450 years of colonialism, the former colonial powers can in different ways and to the best of their efforts contribute to change the present inequalities that are the legacy of history. A theory of global rectificatory justice is complementary to a theory of global distributive justice and enables us to develop a fuller understanding of the meaning of global justice.

Do we owe more to our fellow-citizens than to others? 'The right to enjoy our freedoms comes with the obligation to support the human rights of others'. (Robin Cook, 1997) Questions surrounding the significance of national citizenship and duties to the " other " have constantly arisen in the last few decades, mainly in response to globalization and 'multiculturalism'. To rephrase the question, should our duties towards other human beings stretch across national borders? In this essay I will set forth the arguments on both sides of the debate, hoping to show why I find the argument for cross border duties more compelling than the counter argument, and will evaluate the credibility of nationalism. In furthering my arguments, I will examine the existing literature on the topic. According to Rawls, our duty to redistribute wealth to our fellow citizens is stronger than our duties to send aid abroad, and he explains this as in the following. He argues that there is a fundamental unique significance of redistributing resources at the domestic level, wherein our lives are regulated by the structure of the social scheme which we take part in. It is the political culture that determines the wealth of a state, and so each state is unique and responsible for their own wealth (Rawls, 1993: 228). This last point is hard to sympathize with, as we cannot simply treat individual people as parts of a whole entity such as a state, and therefore accountable for the decisions that the particular state has made in the past. Rawls' view is reflected also by Nagel, who refers to justice as an 'associative obligation' (Nagel, 2005:121) – in that we owe duties to each other because we are citizens living and deliberating together1. Similarly, Samuel Freeman argues that while a society exists at the global level, it is not a political society in which people deliberate about a common good; international society has yet reached the level of generating associative obligations. Nations retain sovereign rights in a way citizens in civil society do not (Freeman, 2006: 318). However, this citizenship-based argument of justice-which states that we owe more to our compatriots than to others-has been widely refuted by political philosophers such as Thomas Pogge and Charles Beitz. The strongest argument for justice and obligation between nations, is the discussion of the impact of the international economic system on poorer countries. In the view of Beitz, justice, and not merely mutual aid, requires us to transfer wealth across borders (Beitz, 1979: 128). There are a number of grounds on which to refute the counter argument of those such as Nagel and Rawls, i.e. that justice is based on sovereignty and self-sustaining domestic societies. Firstly, nations are joined together in a network of interdependence with arguably, the same effect as a shared scheme of social cooperation. This phenomenon, known as globalization, has intensified in previous decades, lending more validity to this argument. The global economic order is a recurring theme in Pogge's writings on global justice (Pogge, 2001), as is the idea of natural resources as undeserved. These natural resources have a crucial input in the material advancement of societies, generating benefits for the selective few. We would do well to remember that these natural resources may have been historically obtained in an unjust manner: historical processes (such as colonialism, slavery and foreign intervention) carried out by developed states, who used violence and repression to land themselves in an economically beneficial position, have undoubtedly contributed to current global inequalities. In particular, the example of Western European powers dividing Africa into inconvenient blocs of territory could be given, which subsequently has contributed to ethnic division and conflict. Ironically, Justice, Democracy and Citizenship assessed assignment 1615127 1 The 'fellow citizenship' based argument discussed does not hold sway when we think of stateless nations, such as Palestine.

Philosophical Papers, 2017

Global justice is one of the areas in contemporary political philosophy where one can guarantee almost without error that interesting conferences and new publications will jostle for the attention of scholars every new month. The diversity and widespread interest in this topic notwithstanding, an important issue that is hardly scrutinized is the way the story unfolds. In most cases, the texts on global justice begin with a narrative about how John Rawls classic, A Theory of Justice (1971) and the responses to it, most especially by Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge, led Rawls to restate his views in another book, The Law of Peoples (1999). The narrative would then continue by making clear that the issue at stake is the contention regarding the possibility of extending Rawls' notion of distributive justice beyond the context he envisaged-within nations. Depending on the dispositions and perspicacity of the author, the story of global justice then fragments at this point into distinct positions, with some authors professing to be cosmopolitans, others statists and, a few, the faithful proponents of all the in-betweens of the two divide. Understood this way, the idea of global justice would seem to have developed and progressed without any meaningful disjunction, the implication being that the provenance of the field is apparent and settled. In other words, the impression given is that there is an 'official' narrative regarding the idea of global justice we can harness when we 1 Over the years, my engagement with the idea of global justice and the broader field of political philosophy has profited from discussions with many colleagues. I thank Philipp