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Chater 5- Distance: The Scope of Beneficience (Smith 2000) (Extending the…
Chater 5- Distance: The Scope of Beneficience (Smith 2000)
Life could be better if we could extend the notion of community associated with those in close proximity to actively caring for those at a distance
Globalisation of modernity and market forces carries no guarantee the benefits will be widely distributed
Reconstituting Community
Economy could be reconstituted to take advantage of its moral strenght
Etzoni's (1999) appeal to the spirit of community- people help themselves followed by family members, however become indifferent to the fate of outsiders. Should expand moral claims and duties to communities unable to help themselves. However values Western, doesn't find traction in different cultural contexts
Selznick (1992)- communitarian democracy. Reconstitution of community- looks outwards rather than inwards. Recognition of human sameness and the ideal of community as both particularist and universalist
Young (1990)- Social life structured by spatial and temporal networks, everyone depended on the activities of the seen and unseen, different groups overlap and intermingle- notions of exclusion and inclusion, should be equality equality of groups
Significant shift towards community without propinquity. Place as a space of encounter and container
Place as increasingly open and creating hybrid identities. Intimate, exclusive sense of community giving way to a less defensive and more outwards looking sense of place
The importance of proximity to community remains an open question- still some things best achieved locally
Extending the scope of care
natural to care for those closest to us, can we extend this to care for outsiders
Problem of translating this ideal into practice
Tronto (1987)- Advocates of the ethics of car need to consider how to spin their web of relationships widely enough so that some people are not beyond its reac
Processes under globalisation have changed the spatial organisation of human life, understanding how we in the affluent part of the world, impact on the lives and environment of distant others can lead to an extension of a sense of responsibility
Empathising with people whose suffering is seen can motivate practical care but might also induce numbness and indifference
Virtual communities, cyberspace- distant others, no face to face contact, confined to others with similar resources
Rorty (1989)- expand our sense of us as far as we can, including ever more distant and different others, looking for marginalised people and similarities with them. However we can miss out people
Humans can and do care , and are capable of caring far more than at present - challenge to give substance to such sentiments in the form of feasible political practice. Benevolence- the inclination to care is not enough
Sterba (1981)- for distant people to have such rights we must be capable of acting across a distance that separates us. Argues basic rights in some parts of the world is restricted by the property rights who have possessions surplus of their needs
People would endorse limitations to the right to accumulate goods and services until everyone satisfies their basic needs
Combining the ethics of care and justice
Justice refers to the masculine practice of approaching moral issues with general principles and rules , spatial convention- justice for the public
Collapse of the dualism
Friedman (1991) - partiality essential to integrety and the good life. The moral value of patriarchy depends on the actual relationships it helps to sustain. Required in a relationship to the extent it helps the most vulnerable
Persons spatial location is likely t reflect good or bad fortune . Spatial inequalities in the capacity to care will need to perpetuate patterns of uneven development
O'Neill (1996) argues against the separation of justice and virtue, indiference to and neglect of others cannot be universalised , some form of care and concern follows
Solidarity and rescue can extend obligation but not universal obligation
Mulhall and Smith (1996) once the demands of justice have been met, we are entitled to use our resources partially if we wish, combination of universalising notions and empathy is requires
Care and justice should not be seen as competitors but as allies. A care obligation helps us to recognise our jsutice obligations to them
Problem of meta ethics: of self identity and moral motivation
The contextual experience of moral learnng
The question of how people learn morality and a care for distant others
two approaches to moral development- one, the inoculation of social norms viasociation , genuine values emerge from experience, they are discovered not imposed. Social interaction is the forcing house of moral development to overcome parochial perspectives
There is an early, localised process of moral learning
Interacting regularly with particular local others, experiencing mutiality and reciprocity might encourage wider application of such sentiments
Sypnowich (1993)- Injustice in social relations limit the extent to which empathy is possible. Capitalism constrains the extension of human solidarity
A moral geography of genocide and rescue: The Holocaust
Familiar testing ground for moral theories
Fabric of moral interactions are destroyed, life dissapears from the consciousness of individuals, whilst others show unimaginable courage in helping those at risk
Moral inhibitions tend to be eroded when violence is authorised officially, victims dehumanised
Bauman (1989)- responsibility arises out of proximity to others, moral urge replaces this with physical seperation
Genocide accomplished by their separastion from everyday life the spatial concentration and separation in the ghetto
Moral capacity is developed through living with others, responsibility is not pre-social but created
Geras (1995) showed how people who rescued jews were motivated by universalist sentiments and well as familiarity with specific jews
Some investigations found those who saved jews were characterised by social marginality, separateness, or individuality which enabled them to stand up for their beliefs
Values that had been instilled since childhood, led to tolerance for people who were different and experience of care and caring