Partiality Based on Relational Responsibilities: Another Approach to Global Ethics

Abstract

Universalistic claims about the nature of justice are presumed to require larger commitments from a global perspective than partialist claims. This essay departs from standard partialist accounts by anchoring partialist claims in a different account of the nature of responsibility. In contrast to substantive responsibility, which is akin to an obligation and derived from principles, relational responsibilities grow out of relationships and their complex intertwining. While such accounts of responsibility are less clear cut, they will prove in the long run to be more valuable in thinking about global ethics. I illustrate this point by considering the moral issue surrounding abandoned relationships. The approach offered here—partiality that rests upon relational responsibilities—makes the responsibilities owed by those in higher income countries towards lower income countries much richer and more complex than is usually presumed.

Keywords:

• Relational Responsibility
• Global Ethics
• Partiality
• Abandonment

Notes

¹To fill in aspects of this substantive account, see, for example, Leib's view of the ‘four central grounds’ of responsibility: what an agent causes, what she chooses, what she identifies with, and what sort of character she has (2006). Reader's account might fall into category three, but not all of Reader's identifications are voluntary (2003).

²It would require a separate paper to catalog the various useful ways in which responsibility has been subdivided and to explain how this account of relational responsibility differs from all of them. Among works that have been especially useful to me in thinking about this question are Feinberg (1980); Haskell (1998); Scheffler (1997, 2001); Smiley (1992); Walker (2007); Young (2006).

³In one of Reader's examples a stranger falls down in front of another person on the street. In this case, presence creates a relationship. Now, whether presence does create a relationship here is actually a political question. Consider places where the ‘street’ is an expected site of danger and the reaction might be different.

⁴At first glance, Young's model may seem to be different from Reader's account that assumes the agent will recognize the connection with the relata and, indeed, that the connection constitutes both the relationship and the obligation. This seems far removed from an engagement with notions of ‘structural injustice’. But perhaps a better way to read Young's account is to see the ‘social connection’ as a challenge about what ‘matters’—what connects us—in our lives. The sweatshop example allows Young to expand the notion of fashion and the kinds of connections and meanings it creates. For fashionistas, having a sophisticated sense of style may be a central part of one's identity. Even people who do not care about fashion are still concerned with it; to show up inappropriately clothed for class, work, or social engagements disrupts social interactions. A person poorly attired might be ashamed, embarrassed, or disregarded. Even if we may not want to acknowledge this connection, we are tied to the person who makes our clothing. Unlike the somewhat clearer accounts of our responsibilities that flow from a more fixed account of justice, these accounts of relational responsibility provide greater room for digging down into the concrete details of interrelationship.

⁵A related argument is Fiona Robinson's (1999) globalizing care ethics. She directly criticizes the idea that our relationships and responsibilities are contained within the sovereign nation-state. She argues that the nation-state and its containment of obligations of citizenship do not exhaust our morally relevant relationships.

⁶For a different argument about the problem of holding nations accountable over time, see Miller (2004).

⁷Stephen Esquith describes responsibility that arises from the benefits of others’ past action as ‘bystander responsibility’ (2010).

⁸An important theory of international relations, dependencia, promoted prominently by scholars in Latin America, used this argument to point to the large burden that Europeans and Americans from the United States owed to Latin Americans (Duvall 1978). While it is beyond the scope of this essay, this argument shows why that view was important.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joan C. Tronto

Joan C. Tronto is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her groundbreaking book Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care challenges the common assumption that physical and emotional nurturing are private, domestic matters unrelated to politics