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Abstract
Conventional global justice theory expresses a concern for the suffering of individuals around the world, yet very often the experience of those individuals plays little role in the work of theorising global justice. In this paper I argue that global justice has tended to take an architectonic approach in which the theorist orders the world by offering idealised principles of justice that serve as guides to necessary global reforms. This approach draws on a flawed geography of injustice, in which the world is divided into just and orderly regions that must save unjust and disordered regions, while also misunderstanding the causes of injustice. In place of this architectonic approach, I offer a consummatory approach that conceives of justice as a quality of social relationships and which draws on the experience of individuals suffering injustice, using the Grenfell Tower fire as an example. This consummatory approach is then further developed by outlining a situationist global justice theory drawing on the philosophy of John Dewey.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Prof Michael Goodhart and Dr Lasse Thomassen for helpful discussions and feedback during the process of writing this paper. I would also like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and special issue editors for their insightful comments. Funding for the research that formed the basis this article came from the Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, where I was a visiting fellow from May 2017–January 2018. A very early version of this paper was presented at the University of Pittsburgh’s Global Studies Center on 22 February 2018.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Faku quoted in Kerry Ryan Chance, “‘Where There Is Fire, There Is Politics’: Ungovernability and Material Life in Urban South Africa”, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 3 (10 August 2015), p. 394
.2 Natasha Elcock, “I Escaped from the Grenfell Tower Fire—but Now We Face a New Trauma | Natasha Elcock”, The Guardian, 27 December 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/27/grenfell-tower-new-trauma-theresa-may-panel-inquiry-justice.
3 Grenfell Action Group, “KCTMO—Playing with Fire!”, Grenfell Action Group (blog), 20 November 2016, https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/kctmo-playing-with-fire/.
4 “Grenfell Tower, June, 2017: A Poem by Ben Okri”, Financial Times, 23 June 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/39022f72-5742-11e7-80b6-9bfa4c1f83d2.
5 Matt Birkinshaw, “A Big Devil in the Shacks: The Politics of Fire”, Pambazuka News, 17 September 2008, https://www.pambazuka.org/governance/big-devil-shacks.
6 Abahlali BaseMjondolo, “The Plague of Fires Takes Another Life in Kennedy Road”, Abahlali BaseMjondolo, 1 November 2007, http://abahlali.org/node/2822/.
7 Colin Crouch, The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), chap. 4
.8 David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (London: Verso, 2013), chap. 2
.9 Stephen Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2010)
.10 Jonathan Charteris-Black, Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016) and Kerry Ryan Chance, “Where there is fire, there is politics”: Ungovernability and Material Life in Urban South Africa”, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2015), pp. 394–423
.11 Meera Sabaratnam and Joe Hoover, “Reading Violence: What’s Political about the London Riots(?)”, The Disorder Of Things (blog), 9 August 2011, https://thedisorderofthings.com/2011/08/09/reading-violence-whats-political/.
12 Nigel C. Gibson, “Zabalaza, Unfinished Struggles against Apartheid: The Shackdwellers’ Movement in Durban”, Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2007), pp. 60–96
.13 Michael Goodhart, Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), chaps. 1 & 2. Goodhart demonstrates the tendency of conventional justice theory to obscure the politics at stake.
14 Iris Marion Young, “Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model”, Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2006), pp. 102–130
.15 See further, Pol Bargués-Pedreny, “From Critique to Affirmation in International Relations”, Global Society, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2019), pp. 1–11
.16 For an approach to such questions that is situationist in different but resonate terms, see Doerthe Rosenow, “Decolonising the decolonisers? Of Ontological Encounters in the GMO Controversy and Beyond”, Global Society, 33, no. 1 (2019)
.17 Plato, The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee, 3rd edition (London: Penguin Classics, 2007)
.18 Kimberly Hutchings, “Thinking Ethically about the Global in ‘Global Ethics’”, Journal of Global Ethics, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2 January 2014), pp. 26–29
.19 Kimberly Hutchings, “What Is Orientation in Thinking? On the Question of Time and Timeliness in Cosmopolitical Thought”, Constellations, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2011), pp. 190–204
.20 Kimberly Hutchings, “A Place of Greater Safety? Securing Judgment in International Ethics”, in Amanda Russell Beattie and Kate Schick (ed.), The Vulnerable Subject: Beyond Rationalism in International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 25–42
.21 Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1972): 229–243
.22 Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, 229–230.
23 David Bergman, “The Politics of Bangladesh’s Genocide Debate”, The New York Times, 5 April 2016, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/opinion/the-politics-of-bangladeshs-genocide-debate.html.
24 Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, pp. 230–233.
25 Charles Beitz, “Justice and International Relations”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1975): 374–377
; Allen Buchanan, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 14, pp. 443–444 ; Martha Nussbaum, “Beyond the Social Contract: Capabilities and Global Justice”, Oxford Development Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2004), pp. 3–4 ; Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), pp. 2–5, 103–106 .26 Beitz, “Justice and International Relations”; See also Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)
.27 Beitz, “Justice and International Relations”, pp. 360–362.
28 The retreat to an ideal and ordered world is indicative of a latent nihilism in much justice theory. See further, Gideon Baker, “Critique, Use and World in Giorgio Agamben’s Genealogy of Government”, Global Society, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2019)
.29 Charles Jones, Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
; Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2005), pp. 113–147 ; Richard Shapcott, Justice, Community, and Dialogue in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) .30 Jürgen Habermas, “The Constitutionalization of International Law and the Legitimation Problems of a Constitution for World Society”, Constellations, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2008): 444–455
; P. Lawler, “The Good State: In Praise of ‘Classical’ Internationalism”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 03 (2005), pp. 427–449 ; John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) .31 Saladin Meckled-Garcia, “On the Very Idea of Cosmopolitan Justice: Constructivism and International Agency”, Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2008), pp. 245–271
; Andrea Sangiovanni, “Justice and the Priority of Politics to Morality”, Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2008), pp. 137–164 ; Luke Ulaş, “Doing Things by Halves: On Intermediary Global Institutional Proposals”, Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1 January 2016), p. 30223 ; Laura Valentini, Justice in a Globalized World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) ; Lea Ypi, Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) .32 This utopian non-place can be seen in Rawls’ use of the fictional state of Kazanistan as an example of a decent hierarchical people that must be tolerated by liberal states; more recently, Laura Valentini dramatises the question of global justice by considering two imagined island states, Brightland and Gloomyland, to show that some obligations of global justice do exist. Rawls, The Law of Peoples; Valentini, Justice in a Globalized World.
33 Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, The Contract and Domination (Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007)
.34 Toni Erskine, ed., Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
.35 Rainer Forst, Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), p. 24
; Also see Rainer Forst, The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012) .36 Forst, Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics, pp. 38–70.
37 Seyla Benhabib, “The Uses and Abuses of Kantian Rigorism. On Rainer Forst’s Moral and Political Philosophy”, Political Theory, Vol. 43, No. 6 (2015), p. 789
.38 Benhabib, “The Uses and Abuses of Kantian Rigorism”, p. 789.
39 Forst, Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics, pp. 177–190.
40 Forst, The Right to Justification, pp. 241–250.
41 John McGuire, “Two Rawls Don’t Make a Right: On Rainer Forst and the New Normativity”, Constellations, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2016), pp. 110–121
.42 This reflects the wider tendency in the global justice literature noted above. Some, like Benhabib try to resolve the tension through cosmopolitan orders that attend to the diversity of responses to global injustices, see Şeyla Benhabib et al., Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Others, such as Walker have focused on exploring the roots of our difficulty in understanding and overcoming our current condition R. B. J. Walker, After the Globe, Before the World (London: Routledge, 2010)
. There is an emerging consensus on the difficulty, but also the importance, of overcoming this framing. See, Miriam Ronzoni, “Justice, Injustice, and Critical Potential Beyond Borders: A Multi-Dimensional Affair”, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2018), pp. 90–111 .43 Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008)
.44 Nancy Fraser, Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition (New York and London: Routledge, 1997)
.45 Fraser, Scales of Justice, pp. 48–75.
46 Paul Muldoon, “The Injustice of Territoriality”, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 15, No. 5 (2012), p. 636
.47 Fraser embraces an “all subjected” rather than “all effected” principles for both logical and practical reasons, Fraser, Scales of Justice, pp. 64–67.
48 Fraser, Scales of Justice, 72–73.
49 Ibid., p. 99.
50 Muldoon, “The Injustice of Territoriality”, p. 641.
51 Ibid., p. 639.
52 Jodi Dean, “Book Review, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, by Nancy Fraser”, Political Theory, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2010), p. 301
.53 From Edward Daffarn’s speech in Grenfell Speaks, My Grenfell Year: Reflections From The Community, available: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&reload=9&v=quVdh5qZKBs> (accessed 14 August 2018).
54 Grenfell Speaks.
55 This is most clearly seen in the extensive documentation of failures at Grenfell Tower and in the surrounding area by the Grenfell Action Group, see “Grenfell Action Group”, Grenfell Action Group, available: <https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/> (accessed 4 September 2018).
56 redfish, Failed By The State: The Struggle in the Shadow of Grenfell (Part 1), available: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tFPCUgjbfA> (accessed 4 September 2018).
57 Here I am borrowing from Young’s “five faces of oppression”. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), chap. 2
.58 Grenfell Speaks, My Grenfell Year.
59 Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 5
.60 redfish, Failed By The State: The Struggle in the Shadow of Grenfell (Part 3), available: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnBrvCTlayA> (accessed 4 September 2018).
61 redfish; Grenfell Speaks, My Grenfell Year.
62 redfish, Failed By The State: The Struggle in the Shadow of Grenfell (Part 2), available: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxggXo-4UEU> (accessed 4 September 2018).
63 These phrases are from Lowkey in Grenfell Speaks, My Grenfell Year.
64 A fuller account of the creative quality of political struggle can be found in Joe Hoover, “Performative Rights and Situationist Ethics”, Contemporary Pragmatism, Forthcoming (n.d.).
65 Peter T. Manicas, “John Dewey and the Problem of Justice”, Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1981), p. 286
.66 John Dewey and James H. Tufts, Ethics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909), 415–16
. Emphasis in the original.67 John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2004), p. 109
.68 Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 93.
69 John Dewey, quoted in Manicas, “John Dewey and the Problem of Justice”, 290.