Lawford-Smith, Holly

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BOOK REVIEWJuha Räikkä, Social Justice in PracticeSwitzerland: Springer, 2014. ISBN 978-3-319-04633-4 £72.00 pb.Holly Lawford-Smith Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014Imagine yourself standing on the edge of a canyon, marveling at the terrain below,wondering about all the sights currently obscured from your view, and lamentingthat you just don’t have time to commit to the steep descent in and long trek across,which would give you a perspective from right up close. Being handed JuhaRäikkä’s new book Social Justice in Practice is like being told there’s a flying foxyou can take: the canyon is applied political theory, and the flying fox allows thereader to see many different issues, at some speed, and always with the widercontext in view. Tuck your loose items of clothing away in your bags, and hop on.The book is loosely organized into six sections, with twelve chapters overall. Thefirst two sections (‘‘Theory and Practice’’ and ‘‘Action and Uncertainty’’) introducereaders to the issues around the methodology of contemporary political theory, fromwhether the arguments of political theory should be more sensitive to what isfeasible, through the correct weight to assign to citizens’ political expectations thatthings will remain more or less the same, the bases of political reasoning about whatis second-best when ideally preferred alternatives prove to be unavailable, and towhat is taken as presumed (i.e. which side has the burden of proof) when it comes topolitical argumentation and political obligation. The third and sixth sections(‘‘Unmasking Injustices’’ and ‘‘Self-Deception as Explanation’’) concern epistemicissues, including the acceptability of conspiracy theories, and self-deception forboth religious and cultural reasons. The fourth section (‘‘Privacy and Justice’’)concerns information broadly construed, in particular privacy and secrets, and thefifth section (‘‘Morality and Inner Life’’) is about forgiveness and alien beliefs. Thechapters are self-contained, so readers can feel free to either read the book fromcover to cover, or to dip into different chapters as suits their interests.H. Lawford-Smith (&)University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UKe-mail: h.lawford-smith@sheffield.ac.uk123J Value InquiryDOI 10.1007/s10790-014-9453-xIt would be impossible in a review-length piece to engage deeply with all twelveof the topics contained in Räikkä’s book. I’ve chosen to focus in what follows on theparts of the book that I know best, to maximize the chance of saying somethinguseful. So I’ll restrict my attention to just two of the chapters, which are,respectively, ‘‘Social Justice in Practice’’, and ‘‘How to Find the Second-BestOption’’ (noting, for the record, that I found ‘‘The Dilemma of ConservativeJustice’’—wedged between these two—especially interesting and useful). Readersinterested in, or more familiar with, the book’s later topics are encouraged to consultthe book directly.In recent years there has been some backlash against the utopianism of muchcontemporary political theory, which has taken the form of increased discussionabout the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory and the proper place ofeach within political theory as a discipline. Some think ideal theory has no place atall, because we should be solving the problems we actually have rather thanconstructing perfect theoretical worlds in which those problems are abstracted awayfrom; some think non-ideal theory has no place at all, because it involvesunacceptable concessions to the status quo. The claim that political theory needs agreater proportion of feasibility-constrained arguments weighs in on the non-idealside of this debate. It doesn’t entail that this is the right kind or the only kind ofpolitical theorizing; just that it’s important, both for evaluating the current politicalorder, and for shifting to a better one, that we take certain constraints as fixed andthink about the improvements we can make in spite of them.In Chapter 1, ‘‘Social Justice in Practice’’, Räikkä argues that feasibilityarguments are of most benefit to those who in fact cannot make use of them, and thatgiven his view of the role of political theory, it’s just not true that political theoryneeds a greater proportion of feasibility-constrained arguments. Let me explain eachof these claims, before commenting on what I think is mistaken about them.The first claim, about benefit, is that in political life, a claim that some outcome isinfeasible and therefore we should pursue an alternative course of action will oftenbe beneficial to those who, by their actions, actually make the outcome infeasible.Räikkä gives many examples, including: the people of a country who claim that thegovernment’s improving public health by prohibiting the consumption of alcoholwould result in a black market for liquor; the talented, who claim that withoutsufficient economic rewards they would not be motivated to exercise those talentsfor the benefit of the greater society; nurses, who claim that without increased wagesthey’ll emigrate to countries where the pay is better; religious groups, claiming thatif ritual slaughter of animals is prohibited it will simply be outsourced to the blackmarket where it will likely involve even more suffering for the animals; and parentsof sick children, who claim that if the government decreases its subsidies of therequired medicines they’ll turn to less safe but cheaper alternatives online.In each case, the people making the claims about what outcomes would follow ifcertain measures were implemented are themselves responsible for producing thoseoutcomes. People could obey a law prohibiting alcohol, the talented could taketalent as its own reward, nurses could work for comparatively low wages, religiousgroups could stop slaughtering animals, and parents could simply spend more onmedicines. But feasibility arguments are agent-relative; they explicitly excludeH. Lawford-Smith123‘self-prediction’. I can’t say ‘‘it’s infeasible that I write this review of Räikkä’sbook, because I’m going to watch another episode of The Killing instead’’ (thehidden premise being that I ought to write the review only if it’s sufficiently feasiblethat I do). Many analyses of feasibility assume the trying of the relevant agent, sothey would say my writing the review is feasible if I would be sufficiently likely towrite it, so long as I tried. But of course, if I tried I’d likely succeed, so writing thereview is not infeasible for me after all. But the citizens, the talented, the nurses, thereligious, and the parents in Räikkä’s examples are all in that position, so whilethey’d do well out of having their claims about infeasibility accepted (in gainingconcessions by government), they’re in fact not in a position to make those claims.Infeasibility is no excuse for those whose actions cause it. Those arguments, then,are really just threats in disguise: the nurses are saying that if the governmentdoesn’t raise their wages, they’ll leave the country.Räikkä’s second claim relies on the role of political theory being to inform publicdebate over political issues. Accepting for the moment that this is its role (I do notthink it is and will soon explain why), his claim is that the overall message politicaltheorists give the public should be ‘‘be better’’, rather than ‘‘give into threats’’. Anice example of this choice is featuring in the news and across social media at themoment: nail polish that detects rape drugs in beverages. The nail polish is clearly anon-ideal solution, because it takes the prevalence of attempted drugging forgranted, and it looks to protect potential victims by giving them a way to detect thepresence of the drugs in their drinks. Many commentators are angry about theinvention, because they think it sends the wrong message, namely that it’s theresponsibility of the potential victim to ensure she isn’t raped (to wear the nailpolish, to check her drinks) rather than the responsibility of the would-be rapists notto rape. If political theorists were to have the opportunity to weigh in on this debate,they should be giving ‘‘ideal’’ argumentation, namely about the wrongness of rape,the importance of enthusiastic consent, about gender-egalitarianism, and aboutmutual respect; not ‘‘feasibility-constrained’’ argumentation, conceding that theworld is a place with rape in it, and advising women to protect themselves as bestthey can (or others to protect potential victims as best they can, including by comingup with these kinds of inventions). In Räikkä’s view, the role of political theory is toinform public debate, and this should be done by sending the clear, ‘‘ideal’’message: which in this case would be that it is the responsibility of men not to rape.So much for the main claims of the chapter; now to the problems with them,taking the latter claim first. While one role of political theory may well be to weighin on public political debate, that is surely not its only role. Political Theory is a sub-area of Philosophy, and philosophical inquiry is broadly-speaking the pursuit oftruth. It determines both evaluative truths (truths about what is good, whether or notit can ever be actual) and normative truths (truths about what we should attempt tobring about). Setting aside the evaluative truths, the normative truths may beunconditional (ought p) or conditional (given that not-p, ought q). The followingtwo claims are not mutually exclusive: would-be rapists ought not to rape, and,given that at least some would-be rapists will in fact rape, victims ought to beprotected as much as possible from potential attack. We can lament the fact that ourcircumstances are such that the latter is true—I’m sure we would all agree that we’dBook Review123much rather be in a world in which anti- rape drug nail polish were not a usefulinvention. (Whether the nail polish is an effective and not overly demanding meansof protection is an empirical question). Whether a political theorist wants to make anunconditional, ‘‘ideal’’ claim, or a conditional, ‘‘feasibility-constrained’’ claim,depends on the kind of project she is interested in, and wanting to weigh in on publicdebate does not determine that she make only the former types of claims.Taking Räikkä’s side in this debate has the advantage of avoiding any accusationof victim-blaming, because it avoids giving any responsibilities at all to those whomight either use the nail polish, or who might create the nail polish or other similarinventions, and therefore avoids blaming them if they fail to act on thoseresponsibilities (which would indeed be a despicable implication in the case of thevictim: we certainly do not want to say that a person who fails to wear the nailpolish is in any sense at all responsible for her situation if she is attacked). But goingin for feasibility-constrained recommendations has the advantage of not restrictingmoral advice to contexts in which there is no wrongdoing. Even if the readerdisagrees over the diagnosis of the nail polish case, there are many other cases inwhich we want to know what the good worlds look like given that certain wrongswill remain in place, or at least not be completely eradicated).Returning to the first claim, this makes a serious mistake in understanding agent-relativity. Feasibility assessments do not permit of self-prediction, but in none of theexamples Räikkä used was there something resembling a ‘‘self’’—either anindividual self or collective agent—whose actions were being predicted. Heacknowledges this, to some extent, when he says ‘‘to assume that nurses coulddecide not to emigrate… is not to assume that there is a strictly organized collectiveagent’’, but it’s not merely that there is no ‘‘strictly organized’’ collective. There areonly uncoordinated aggregates of persons: citizens of a country, those with talent,nurses, those in a certain religious group, parents. Perhaps there are cases, such aswhen nurses are represented by strong and cohesive labour unions, or whenreligious groups are coordinated within one church, where the groups can act on (thefunctional equivalents of) intentions, and thereby count as a single unit for thepurposes of assessing feasibility. Parents, those with talent, and most likely citizens,do not count in this way. Thus the claim that those who would most benefit frominfeasibility arguments cannot make use of them falls down.Assessments of what is feasible, and how our normative recommendations oughtto be adjusted in light of what is feasible and what isn’t, are usually made bypolitical theorists, political analysts and commentators, policy advisors, those ingovernment. Those people can all make predictions about what will happen ifcertain measures are implemented, such as making the consumption of alcoholillegal, or refusing to raise nurses’ wages. They might well reason that on balance, afuture in which nurses simply accept low pay without being incentivized to emigrateby neighbouring countries’ higher wages is infeasible, and give a feasibility-constrained argument (holding this fact fixed) that it is better to swallow the costs ofraising wages than the costs of large-scale emigration of nurses. Räikkä does notdeny that this is possible, but he greatly understates the extent to which this is theprimary use of feasibility-constrained argumentation, and the use to which manyworking on feasibility envisage it being put to.H. Lawford-Smith123In Chapter 3, ‘‘How to Find the Second-Best Option’’, Räikkä makes a helpfuldistinction between three different ways in which we might approximate when ourpolitical ‘‘bests’’ are out of reach. He calls these ‘‘condition’’, ‘‘degree’’ and‘‘denial’’. Condition-based approximation tells us to get as many of the things thatmatter as we can. Degree-based approximation tells us to get as much of each of thethings that matter as we can. And denial-based approximation tells us to go for theideal even when we know it won’t quite be realized, because what we’ll get willprobably be close enough to be an adequate approximation What’s great about thischapter is that it doesn’t make the same mistake as quite a bit of the discussion ofsecond-bests in political theory by following the economic results and assuming theinterdependence of the desirable elements of the ‘‘best’’. Values are independent:it’s just not true that finding one to be out of reach we should revise our wholeconception of what we’re aiming for. To put these different methods ofapproximation in terms of a political case, imagine that the case for ScottishIndependence is strong on the grounds of community, security, and self-determination. And now imagine that our best empirical predictions tell us thatwe just cannot get an independent Scotland that is fully self-determining, while alsofully secure and fully embodying community. Assuming these three values to haveequal weight, the condition-based approach would tell us to take whichever two weliked (3/3 conditions is best, but 2/3 conditions beats 1/3); the degree-basedapproach would tell us to get as much self-determination, security and communityas we can (any configuration with some of each value instantiated beats anyconfiguration in which one value remains entirely uninstantiated); and the denial-based approach tells us to just go ahead with whatever the original plan was,assuming things will work out as ‘‘close enough’’.There are two problems with the discussion in this chapter. The first is that theexample Räikkä uses (about where to take a holiday) is unhelpfully apolitical, andmisleading in the case of the degree-based conception. The problems with getting‘‘more rather than less’’ of a value are put in geographical terms, and give the wrongresults for that reason, because getting closer to a holiday destination (and ending upsomewhere in the ocean) is quite obviously not better than going somewhere elseentirely. But a more sophisticated understanding of the metric of degrees—which isto say, what counts as more or less of something—will avoid this problem.Approximating a relaxing holiday in the sunshine might take you geographically farafield from the original destination, just as approximating comprehensive security,community, and self-determination in an independent Scotland might take youpolitically far afield from the utopian vision of independence. If the scale isspecified well, the imperative to get more rather than less doesn’t look nearly asproblematic.Räikkä’s argument in the chapter is that real people when making decisions aboutapproximation don’t actually rely on any of these three theoretical versions ofapproximating, and therefore those versions can’t be criticized on the grounds thatthey cause poor decision-making. Even if the outcomes of their decisions often alignwith the outcomes any one such procedure would yield, that is not a reason to becritical of that procedure. He takes this to make the three theoretical versions ofapproximation immune from empirical rejection.Book Review123However, what he doesn’t comment on is which of the three is in facttheoretically the most well-motivated, or has the greatest advantages over the others.The denial-based approach looks obviously inappropriate, yet little is made of this.Perhaps his aim was only to insulate practice from theory (and vice versa), buthaving made these useful distinctions between the ways in which approximatingmight be done, it was somewhat unsatisfying that more was not said about howsecond-best theorizing ought to go, and what the right relationship between suchtheory and practice might look like.H. Lawford-Smith123

Juha Räikkä, Social Justice in Practice

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