(Conference proceedings 2014) This presentation (International Development Ethics Association, July 2014) considers economic vulnerability, exploring the risk of deprivation of necessary resources due to a complex and rarely discussed vulnerability that arises from hope. Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological account of French petit-bourgeois aspiration in The Social Structures of the Economy has recently inspired Wendy Olsen to introduce the term “aspiration paradox” to characterize cases wherein “a borrower's status aspirations may contribute to a situation in which their borrowings exceed their capacity to (...) repay,” leaving the individual much the worse, due to an aspiration to betterment. If such financial opportunities were not made available to these people – if some were denied loans due to a careful assessment of their vulnerability – would they be better off? We should seriously consider that they might be. I will hazard the straightforwardly paternalistic suggestion that limiting access to lending to those who are vulnerable to their aspirations can be a just policy. Because aspiration paradox is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and because lending frequently involves asymmetries in mathematical education between borrowers and lenders, I hope to elude at least some of the charges of colonialism that have gained a stronger purchase on adaptive preference arguments. (shrink)

For more than three decades, business ethics has suggested and evaluated strategies for multinationals to address abject deprivations and weak regulatory institutions in developing countries. Critical appraisals, internal and external, have observed these concerns being severely constrained by the overwhelming prioritization of economic values, i.e., economism. Recent contributions to business ethics stress a re-imagination of the field wherein economic goals are downgraded and more attention given to redistribution of wealth and well-being of the weaker individuals and groups. Development ethics, a (...) lesser known field of normative enquiry, already offers nuanced justifications against economism which business ethicists can use in their current attempts to wean the field from old habits. (shrink)

Three themes in the work of Louis-Joseph Lebret (1897–1966) have especial relevance for current development ethics: first, the importance of counterbalancing a disciplinary philosophical or theological orientation with strong bases in empirical life-experience, practical learning and social sciences; second, the necessity to study capitalism not only ‘development’, and concrete life-needs not only a generalised notion of ‘freedom’; and third, the imperative to employ global and cosmopolitan frames besides national and ‘community’ ones. These themes came to distinguish Lebret as a development (...) ethicist. He began with the first and second from the 1930s, under his banner of ‘Économie et Humanisme’. The third emerged later in consequence of his studies across an interconnected world. The paper elucidates and discusses the three themes in turn. The subsequent sections then briefly consider Lebret’s legacies, influence and continuing relevance: directly, within the Catholic Church’s perspectives since the 1960s on human and global development; and indirectly, for secular work on ‘human development’ and in Anglophone development ethics. (shrink)

Peter Singer’s groundbreaking call to action in 1972, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” drew philosophical attention to the topic of famine and the associated suffering or preventable death of many throughout the world. Yet despite the volume of philosophical work Singer’s paper inspired, it would still be easy to suppose that global poverty is not a problem for philosophers to take seriously in itself but is rather a particularly stark illustration or instance of a more general problem, whether in ethics or (...) in political philosophy. The aim of this paper is to argue that the philosophical landscape of global poverty is both sui generis and sufficiently complex that the topic should be considered not as an instance of a more general philosophical problem but as a distinct area of normative inquiry. (shrink)

Periurban bypasses are enclaves that appear to be left behind of conventional spatial and technological processes. With the focus on cities and their development, the hinterland serves as a resource that barely makes its appearance in mainstream policy debates. Hidden even further in the periurban are areas whose inhabitants are marginalised in many ways. Developing an ethical framework for assessing periurban bypasses is rendered difficult by the complexity of attribution of harm to particular agents. Nevertheless, by using multiple modes of (...) interpretation and assessment of periurban bypasses, it is possible to create ethical profiles that identify social agents and elite networks for generating these harms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article provides a Global South perspective on marginalised migrant youth and higher educational aspirations, with a specific focus on South Africa. We use data from a case study in Johannesburg to illustrate how marginalised migrant youth experience particular forms of disadvantage in their endeavours to realise their educational aspirations. Yet, educational opportunities and the achievement of educational aspirations may enhance dimensions important for individual wellbeing. Through education, marginalised migrant youth become better positioned to pursue what they have reason to (...) value, including escaping poverty in both their home and host countries. Using the human development and capability lens, the paper also presents what the disadvantages experienced by marginalised migrant youth may mean for human development. We argue that constrained educational aspirations can result in corrosive disadvantage and ultimately systemic poverty. We conclude the paper by highlighting how the capability approach could be used to inform social and educational policies in contexts of marginalisation. (shrink)