1st Edition

Global Justice Critical Perspectives

Edited By Sebastiano Maffettone, Aakash Singh Rathore Copyright 2012
    216 Pages
    by Routledge India

    216 Pages
    by Routledge India

    The global justice debate has been raging for forty years. Not merely the terms and conditions, but, more deeply, the epistemic, existential and ethical grounds of the international relations of persons, states and institutions are being determined, debated and negotiated. Yet the debate remains essentially a parochial one, confined largely to Western intellectuals and institutional spaces. An Introduction to the field is therefore still urgently required, because it remains necessary to include more ‘global’ voices into this debate of worldwide reach and significance.

    The book addresses this need in two closely related ways. In Part I, it introduces the main contours of the debate by reproducing three of the most fundamental and influential essays that have been composed on the topic — essays by Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge and Thomas Nagel. In Part II, it makes a decisive critical intervention in the main stream of the debate through exposing the participation deficit afflicting the theorization of global justice. This part begins with a well-known essay by Amartya Sen, who famously referred to the ‘parochialism’ of the global justice debate in making a break with the Rawlsian paradigm that has dominated the field until now. Finally, a series of lively essays newly composed for this volume reflect on the possibilities for deparochializing global justice opened up by Sen’s work in this area.

    The book will be useful for students of international relations, postcolonial studies, political theory, and social and political philosophy, as well as for those engaged in studies of globalization or global studies.

    Acknowledgements. Introduction: The Rawlsian Provenance of the Global Justice Debate. Part I. Introducing the Debate 1. Famine, Affluence, and Morality Peter Singer 2. ‘Assisting’ the Global Poor Thomas W. Pogge 3. The Problem of Global Justice Thomas Nagel 4. Beneficence, Justice and Demandingness: A Criticism of the Main Mitigation Strategies Gianfranco Pellegrino Part II. Deparochializing the Debate 5. Global Justice Amartya Sen 6. Who Owes Whom, Why, and To What Effect? Neera Chandhoke 7. The Romance of Global Justice: Sen’s Deparochialization and the Quandary of Dalit Marxism Aakash Singh Rathore 8. Postmodern Postcolonial Theory versus Political Liberalism: Avoiding the Liason Dangeureuse in Global Justice and IR Theory Sebastiano Maffettone. About the Editors. Notes on Contributors. Index.

    Biography

    Sebastiano Maffettone is Dean of the Faculty of Political Science; Professor of Political Philosophy; and Director of the Centre for Ethics and Global Politics, at Luiss University, Rome.

    Aakash Singh Rathore is Research Fellow, Centre for Ethics and Global Politics, Luiss University, Rome; and Visiting Fellow, Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi.