Expanding individualism : moral responsibility for social structural harms

The central concern of this thesis is the examination of individual agents’ moral responsibilities in large-scale social structures. I begin with a discussion of the emergence of social structural harm and the history of the collective responsibility debate. I suggest that previous attempts to make accurate responsibility ascriptions in cases of social structural harm have fallen short, leaving responsibility for the harm caused underdetermined. Arguing that collectivist approaches to large-scale harms are inadequate, because those participating in social structures cannot satisfy the criteria for responsibility-bearing groups required by these accounts, I turn to an attempt to provide an individualist account of responsibility in these cases presented by Young. I argue that there are many interesting ideas in her work that support an account of collective responsibility for social structures, but that her specific attempt to develop a new kind of non-moral responsibility ultimately fails. I therefore examine an alternative account of joint responsibility based on agent motivation and attitude presented by Bjornsson, who focusses on the reasons why agents become involved and complicit in collective harms. Through the further development of Bjornsson’s discussion of the importance of agent motivation and participation in harmful practices, and Young’s analysis of the relationship between individual agents and social structures, I suggest an alternative approach to analysing social structural harm: expanded individualism. To support this account, I analyse the ways in which agents come to be involved in these harms in a blameworthy manner, and the reasons why participation makes individuals responsible for addressing the harms caused by the social structures in which they participate

Franchises lost and gained: post-coloniality and the development of women’s rights in Canada

The Canadian constitution is to some extent characterised by its focus on equality, and in particular gender equality. This development of women’s rights in Canada and the greater engagement of women as political actors is often presented as a steady linear process, moving forwards from post-enlightenment modernity. This article seeks to disturb this ‘discourse of the continuous,’ by using an analysis of the pre-confederation history of suffrage in Canada to both refute a simplistic linear view of women’s rights development and to argue for recognition of the Indigenous contribution to the history of women’s rights in Canada. The gain of franchise and suffrage movements in Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are, rightly, the focus of considerable study (Pauker 2015), This article takes an alternative perspective. Instead, it examines the exercise of earlier franchises in pre-confederation Canada. In particular it analyses why franchise was exercised more widely in Lower Canada and relates this to the context of the removal of franchises from women prior to confederation