In 2008, Dutch anti-Islam Member of Parliament Geert Wilders produced a short video called Fitna to visualize his argument that Islam is a dangerous religion. Thousands of men and women across the globe uploaded their own videos to YouTube to criticize or support the film. In this article, we look at these alternative videos from a feminist perspective, contrasting the gender portrayal and narratives in Fitna with those in the alternative videos. We contend that Fitna expressed an extremist Orientalist discourse, (...) in which women are presented as the current and future victims of the oppression of Muslim men and Islam. In contrast, the YouTube videos give voice to women themselves who come from across the globe, are relatively young and often active Muslims. Second, they express different view points in generically new ways, criticizing and ridiculing Wilders or producing serious and committed explanations of their own understanding of Islam. Third, although relatively few women appeared in the videos, those that did speak for themselves, not only take on Wilders, but also claim their right to speak within Islam. We propose to understand these videos as acts of citizenships through which women constitute themselves as global citizens, in some cases by engaging in ‘deliberation’ as it is understood in feminist political theory, in other cases by taking a ‘voice’ that can be responded to. (shrink)

This Thesis reconsiders the prospects for an approach to global justice centring on the proposal that every human being should possess a certain bundle of goods, which would include certain members of a distinctive category: the category of capabilities. My overall aim is to present a clarified and well-developed framework, within which such claims can be made. To do this, I visit a number of regions of normative and metanormative theorising. I begin by introducing the motivations for the capability approach, (...) and clarifying some of its most distinctive features. Next, I focus on Martha Nussbaum's version of the approach, and identify several problems therein. The most important concerns epistemology, and especially the challenges that constructivist theories pose. The middle part of the Thesis presents an alternative, based on the work of John McDowell, which I argue has superior prospects. Then, I turn to two further problems: that of making sense of the universalistic aspirations of cosmopolitanism, and that of integrating the microscopic prescriptions of ethics with the macroscopic analyses of political philosophy. Using the Aristotelian interpretation of its core framework that I have developed, I conclude that the capability approach can provide compelling answers to important questions about global justice. (shrink)

The traditional blackface character Black Pete has been at the center of an intense controversy in the Netherlands, with most black citizens denouncing the tradition as racist and most white citizens endorsing it as harmless fun. I analyze the controversy as an utter failure, on the part of white citizens, of what Alison Jaggar has called multicultural literacy. This article aims to identify both the causes of this failure of multicultural literacy and the conditions required for multicultural literacy to be (...) possible. I argue that this failure of multicultural literacy is due to hermeneutical injustice and to white ignorance. I close by considering possible avenues for fostering multicultural literacy. (shrink)

Schumpeter took a dim view of the deliberative capacities of the average voter who, he believed, could not be relied upon to make responsible judgements about distant and rather abstract matters of...

In this article we examine the hundreds of videos that were posted to YouTube in response to the fierce anti-Islam video Fitna. We use this case to analyse whether and how the participatory opportunities of the digital technologies invite performances of citizenship, especially with respect to the articulation of religious and/or political identity. The sheer numbers of YouTube activities demonstrated that this was not at all a marginal phenomenon within the wider Fitna and Wilders controversy, making the question as to (...) what these videos mean, or – to be more precise – for which contexts the posters make them meaningful, all the more pressing. We used the concepts of ‘voice’, ‘performance’ and ‘citizenship’ to approach this issue and found that the video genres unique to visual digital culture each invited their own kinds of political and religious performances, and assumed particular traits and interests of their audience. The most common YouTube reaction for Muslims was to upload copies of videos that expressed their own understanding of Islam as a peaceful religion in contrast to the picture drawn by Wilders. The jamming videos saying sorry were unique digital means of activism, enabling a particular participation in the controversy around Fitna that assumed a global audience open to apology. The cut-and-mix videos appeared to be especially welcome means for satire and parody, and appealing to audience emotions, but also for the deconstruction of Fitna, which addressed audience cognitive competence. Vlogging about Fitna was often part of a more regular practice of video production that was individually or institutionally maintained. We conclude that the particular articulations of religious and political identities, with different modes of audience address assume a connectedness between dispersed people in which new forms of citizenship emerge. (shrink)

Energy justice is often conceived of as consisting of distributive, procedural, and recognitional justice. This article adds epistemic justice, which engages with the question of how the exchange of knowledge can be shaped fairly. Energy issues ramify across social worlds, connecting to multiple knowledge systems. The conventional elements of energy justice place specific demands on how different knowledge systems must be accommodated. Epistemic work must be done to bridge epistemological differences and pay due respect to different forms of knowledge. Energy (...) justice should not neglect this epistemic work, and it cannot be assumed that it is sufficient to invite stakeholders to the discussion arena. I argue that fair ways of dealing with knowledge and fair opportunities for citizens to contribute knowledge to energy affairs are crucial to achieving energy justice of any general form. Also, this epistemic justice is not to be seen as yet another pillar of energy justice but a concern that runs through all pillars of energy justice. (shrink)

This paper argues that, because Science and Technology Studies lost contact with political philosophy, its defense of public participation in policy-making involving technical claims is normatively unsatisfactory. Current penchants for political under-laboring and normative individualism are critiqued, and the connections between STS and theorists of deliberative democracy are explored. A conservative normativity is proposed, and STS positions on public participation are discussed in relation to current questions about individual and group rights in a liberal democracy. The result is avenues to (...) normatively defend public participation, by analogy with identity politics and Habermas, while also theorizing its limits.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------. (shrink)