Where society is viewed as an association of equal and autonomous persons, the work of caring for dependents, "love's labors", figure neither in political ...

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the “Role-Ideal Model” is (...) that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles as parents, colleagues, employers, citizens, etc., because roles are the site where structure meets agency. In short, the Role-Ideal Model explains how individual action contributes to structural change, justifies demands for action from each particular agent, specifies what kinds of acts should be undertaken, moderates between demanding too much and too little of individual agents, and provides an account of the critical responses appropriate for holding individuals accountable for structural injustice. (shrink)

In the United States, there has been a continuous debate between those who favour collective bargaining for nurses and those who believe it is not professional. Likewise, the controversy over whether nurses should strike has been longstanding and continues today. Those who oppose the idea of nurses striking often state that they are abandoning their patients, and that it is not ethical, even though federal legislation requires a 10- day strike notice so that management can make patient care arrangements. The (...) American Nurses Association (ANA) has supported the right of nurses to strike, as a last resort and after careful consideration of every factor. This support has divided the membership of ANA and the nursing profession, even though the strikes have been used sparingly and effectively by nurses in this country; and so the debate continues. (shrink)