Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

In Just Responsibility, Brooke Ackerly provides a human rights theory of global justice that guides how we, each and in political community together, can take up responsibility for injustices wherever they are. Using an empirical approach that is attentive to marginalization and aware of privilege, Just Responsibility offers a theory of global injustice and political responsibility grounded in the lived experience of injustice, using feminist critical methodology to argue that what to do about injustice is not just an ethical or moral question, but a political question about assuming responsibility for injustice, regardless of our causal responsibility or even our knowledge of the injustice.

To illustrate her theory and guide for action, Ackerly draws on fieldwork on the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, the food crisis of 2008, and strategies from 125 activist organizations working on women's and labor rights across 26 countries. Just Responsibility integrates these ways of taking political responsibility into a rich theory of political community, accountability, and leadership in which taking responsibility for injustice itself transforms the fabric of political life. Ackerly will illustrate these points with a discussion of new work in progress that extends the argument of the book through a detailed consideration of its application to climate justice.

This panel should be considered for a theme panel as well. There is a recent trend, among both scholars and journalists, toward conflating “popular” with “populism” and dismissing the latter as a dangerous or dumbed-down form of group think. In Just Responsibility, Ackerly shows that grassroots activism grounded in people’s everyday struggles is highly reflective and a rich source for insights about how to take on injustice in a way that strengthens social and political networks for thoughtfully transformative politics toward greater enjoyment of human rights.

Just Responsibility is a major work of political theory, one both timely and important. This panel of distinguished scholars will discuss the book from a variety of perspectives, generating a lively critical conversation located at the intersection of justice, human rights, and feminist political theory. Participants include: Joan Tronto, University of Minnesota; Ian Shapiro, Yale University; Clarissa Hayward, Washington University; and, Shatema Threadcraft, Dartmouth College. Michael Goodhart, University of Pittsburgh, will introduce the book and moderate the panel, and Ackerly will reply.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 45: Human Rights

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Chair

• Michael Goodhart University of Pittsburgh

Presenters

• Joan C. Tronto University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

• Ian Shapiro Yale University

• Clarissa Rile Hayward Washington University in St. Louis

• Shatema Threadcraft Dartmouth College

• Brooke A. Ackerly Vanderbilt University