Solidarism and the Struggle Against Environmental Racism

Margaret Kohn has argued that fin-de-siècle French Solidarists such as Alfred Fouillée developed a “third way” between capitalism and socialism which still provides a powerful justification for “welfare state” institutions and public-goods provision. But how does Solidarism respond to the demands for environmental justice, and against environmental racism, which have emerged in the past 50 years, mostly in Women of Color-led social movements. Distinguishing three elements of environmental justice, and also pinpointing the logic of expendability at the core of environmental racism, the current article shows that Solidarism has more resources than liberal egalitarianism to challenge environmental injustice, but that, in the white supremacist state, environmental racism in particular poses an especially difficult challenge. After discussing the Solidarists’ divergent responses to feminism and Social Darwinism, the paper shows that, provided Solidarists are also in solidarity with social movements of the oppressed, their doctrine can aid the struggle for equal status

A Latin American Perspective to Agricultural Ethics

The mixture of political, social, cultural and economic environments in Latin America, together with the enormous diversity in climates, natural habitats and biological resources the continent offers, make the ethical assessment of agricultural policies extremely difficult. Yet the experience gained while addressing the contemporary challenges the region faces, such as rapid urbanization, loss of culinary and crop diversity, extreme inequality, disappearing farming styles, water and land grabs, malnutrition and the restoration of the rule of law and social peace, can be of great value to other regions in similar latitudes, development processes and social problems. This chapter will provide a brief overview of these challenges from the perspective of a continent that is exposed to the consequences of extreme inequality in multiple dimensions and conclude by arguing for the need to have a continuous South-South dialogue on the challenges of establishing socially and environmentally sustainable food systems

Grounds of global justice

Currently available political theories all fail to explain the nature or justification of territorial claims. My dissertation fills these gaps. In chapter one I distinguish between property and territory, explaining the inapplicability of property theories to territorial claims. Chapter two raises a challenge to egalitarian and cosmopolitan theories of global justice. The central claim of the chapter is that local democracy is an essential part of global justice, but that cosmopolitan theories cannot give due weight to local democracy. In addition, cosmopolitan theories are not entitled to the conception of equality or distributive justice to which they appeal; their failure in this respect is due to their failure to consider the distribution of land, which scuttles comparability and, with it cosmopolitan distribution principles. In contrast, there is good reason to think that a turn toward effective localized governance would promote democracy and the quality of life of all people. Chapters three, four, and five constitute the core of the dissertation. Chapter three isolates the particular sort of claim I hope to elucidate: prima facie primary rights to territory. Chapter three also defines what I call the "problem of relevance": the problem of finding political principles that could even speak to the issue of connecting peoples to places. Such principles are not forthcoming from mainstream political philosophy. Chapter four solves this problem with a geographically influenced conception of cultures. Chapter five defends the value of cultures so conceived, by arguing that stable cultural membership is an important component of individual freedom, and so merits protection and promotion through political and economic institutions. Finally, chapter six aims to situate the theory of prima facie primary rights to territory within the context of an "internationalist" theory of global justice. Such a theory takes from cosmopolitan theories a sophistication about global institutions and their effects on distributive schemes and power relations. But the theory also takes from culture-based theories an appreciation for the value of communal life and local, grassroots control of the institutions under which we live

Latin America in Theories of Territorial Rights / América Latina en las teorías de los derechos territoriales

“Who owns it?” is a surprisingly confusing question when applied to territory. Each word opens up puzzles: who can “own” territory? What is “ownership” in this context? How can it be justified in a way that could convince an outsider? These questions are particularly salient in the Latin American context, where multiple distinct kinds of land disputes converge. This paper canvasses two familiar approaches to these questions: the Kantian autochthony view, and the Lockean efficiency view. Neither view answers the question as to “who owns it” in all its complexity. The paper then defends an alternative approach grounded in recognition of diverse conceptions of land and the ways that distinct groups achieve plenitude in particular places. La pregunta “¿quién es el propietario?” es sorprendentemente confusa cuando se la aplica a la cuestión del territorio. Cada palabra abre una nueva interrogante: ¿quién puede ser “propietario” del territorio?, ¿en qué consiste esta “propiedad”?, ¿qué justificación hay para este tipo de “propiedad” que tenga valor para otros agentes? Estas preguntas son especialmente importantes en el contexto latinoamericano, donde convergen distintas clases de disputas territoriales. El artículo indaga dos conocidas aproximaciones a estas preguntas: la perspectiva kantiana de la autoctonía y la visión lockeana de la eficiencia. Se argumenta que ninguno de estos aspectos responde, en toda su complejidad, la pregunta de la propiedad del territorio. Este trabajo defiende un enfoque alternativo, que se funda en el reconocimiento de otras concepciones de la tierra y las formas en las que grupos diversos alcanzan la plenitud en lugares particulares

Collective political capabilities

ABSTRACTMonique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-led Social Movements makes a significant contribution to contemporary capability theories by challenging their individualism. Mainline versions of the Capabilities Approach (CA), including those developed by Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, and Ingrid Robeyns, insist on a methodological and normative individualism. And with good reason: communitarianism most often reinscribes patriarchal power, especially within the family. Deveaux, however, argues that this individualism yields a depoliticized account of poverty as capability deprivation, thereby downplaying or even denying the agency of the poor. But poor-led social movements politicize poverty, understanding it as a social and political relation between individuals and institutions. These movements build collective political capabilities: capabilities that can be exercised only by groups or that promote collective goods. The current paper explicates, extends, and defends this powerful challenge to mainline capability theories

Plenitude

NO PURPORTED SOLUTION to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or any other territorial conflict will be worth the name unless it recognizes each group’s link to that place, and honors this link either by granting them territorial rights there, or failing that, by recognizing that the loss is a significant concession that must be dearly compensated. In contrast, the Irish have no claim to Palestine. What do these obvious facts tell us about territorial rights? I suggest that they reveal a basic de..