Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Ethics and Political Philosophy
When Microcredit Doesn’T Empower Poor Women: Recognition Theory’S Contribution To The Debate Over Adaptive Preferences, David Ingram
When Microcredit Doesn’T Empower Poor Women: Recognition Theory’S Contribution To The Debate Over Adaptive Preferences, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
This essay proposes recognition theory as a preferred approach to explaining poor women’s puzzling preference for patriarchal subordination even after they have accessed an ostensibly empowering asset: microfinance. Neither the standard account of adaptive preference offered by Martha Nussbaum nor the competing account of constrained rational choice offered by Harriet Baber satisfactorily explains an important variation of what Serene Khader, in discussing microfinance, dubs the self-subordination social recognition paradox. The variation in question involves women who, refusing to reject the combined socio-economic benefits of patriarchal recognition and empowering microfinance, dissemble their subordination to men. In this situation, women experience …
Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram
Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram
Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works
In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike …