Numéro 4 (1): 2006
Articles
Jos PHILIPS
“The Money Question and the Good Life”
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes a theory of the good life for use in answering the question how much money the rich should spend on fighting poverty. The paper moves from the abstract to the concrete. To begin with, it investigates various ways to get an answer to the question what is good, and finds itself drawn to objective theories of the good. It then develops, taking Bernard Williams and Martha Nussbaum as its guides, a broad outline of a theory of the good. It holds that something evil happens to people if they do not have a real choice from a reasonable number of projects that realize most of their key capacities to a certain degree, and in connection to this it points to the great importance of money. The paper goes on specifically to consider what criticisms of Nussbaum’s version of the capability approach are implied in this outline of a theory of the good. Next, it gets more specific and asks how much money the rich can give -and how they can be restricted in spending their money- without suffering any evil. It does three suggestions: the tithe suggestion, the ecological (or footprint) suggestion, and the fair trade suggestion. To conclude, the paper returns to the question how much money the rich should spend on fighting poverty.
Marie MORELLE
« Une approche géographique du « travail » des enfants des rues »
ABSTRACT
This article proposes a description of the everyday life of street children in Yaounde (Cameroon) and Antananarivo (Madagascar), with special focus on the activities which generate money. Which working spaces do exist in the city, according to which logics? This questioning allows us to draw the hesitant limits of the street universe. We open up the reflection about the children’ destiny and their capacity to integrate the urban society. We take into account the actions of the State and of the NGO and the representations from city dwellers.
KEYWORDS
enfants des rues, ville, travail, Cameroun, Madagascar
Marten P. van den BERGE
“Working Children: their Agency and self-organization”
ABSTRACT
In recent years, ‘agency’ has appeared in academic writings as a new way of referring to active involvement from below in development interventions. The concept of ‘agency’ starts from the assumption that people are actually agents themselves, continuously acting in and reacting to circumstances. In child labour activism, this concept has been applied to working children in the understanding that, in order to improve their working conditions, children should be organised in organizations that are exclusively for and (ideally) run by working children. This paper aims to evaluate the extent to which child labourers can become agents of change through their own organizations. The paper will draw on two studies carried out by the IREWOC foundation. In 2002 a study was undertaken in Bolivia to give practical meaning to the concept of child agency. Secondly, in 2004/2005 an investigation was carried out on the functioning and impact of children’s organizations in Peru, Bolivia and Brazil. The applied research methods were mainly anthropological and used participant observation, (semi-) informal interviews and group interviewing with working children, their parents and adult representatives of the working children’s organizations. Both investigations show that in focussing on children as active participants, the structural constraints under which children have to live also need to be highlighted. One needs to understand how material poverty, mental deprivation and disempowerment help to shape resilience and defiance, but also anger, distrust and marginalisation.
KEYWORDS
Child labour, child agency, child labour union, Latin America
Interviews / Entrevue
Comptes Rendus / Book Reviews
Numéro 4 (2): 2006
Articles
Patrick GIDDY
“Character and professionalism in the context of developing countries – the example of mercenaries”
ABSTRACT
It is often thought that modern professionalism means putting aside one’s particular ethical tradition – which might affirm particular family and clan relations – in favour of the rules pertaining to that profession in the context of the promotion of universal ethical principles. In an increasingly commercialized and individualistic society, however, such ethical traditions and identity-forming narratives may be the key motivating framework for the ethical integrity of the professions. In South Africa this promotion of an overarching narrative is termed nation-building. I take as example the military profession and in particular the use of mercenaries. Distinguishing between skills and virtues I ask whether or not there is a necessary connection between good soldiering and being a citizen – this being understood here as a moral category entailing a certain ideal of character and particular virtues. I conclude that the action of a privately contracted soldier is not in general morally praiseworthy and should not be encouraged in an ethically oriented society.
KEYWORDS
mercenary, professionalism, South Africa, virtue, citizen
Namawu ALOLO
ABSTRACT
This paper employs empirical data from Ghana to examine how gender, as a social system, generates moral dilemmas in the public sector. Female and male officials feel forced to choose private (family/social) requirements of morality over public sector ethics. The paper demonstrates that the very same gender which delineates behavioural personalities and is used to justify women’s higher ethical standards could potentially be a source of corruption, as women attempt to fulfil expectations of femaleness in the conduct of public duties. Fundamentally, the paper argues that gendered ethics -which require women and men to exude an ethic of care and an ethic of justice respectively- could perpetuate behaviours that negate public sector ethics (corrupt behaviours), but conform well to social ethics. Employing as its theoretical base, Carol Gilligan’s (1982) moral development theory, it concludes, inter alia, that injecting women into the public sector should be promoted as a right, rather than on grounds of women’s presumed superior probity. Premising women’s inclusion in the public realm on assumptions of their higher ethical standards risks being counterproductive in achieving equal representation, if such assumptions are later disconfirmed.
KEYWORDS
Corruption- Gender- Ethic of Care – Ethic of Justice – Ghana
Des GASPER
“Introduction: Working in Development Ethics – a tribute to Denis Goulet”
ABSTRACT
Denis Goulet (1931-2006) was probably the main founder of work on ‘development ethics’ as a self-conscious field that treats the ethical and value questions posed by development theory, planning and practice. This overview of a selection of papers presented at a conference of the International Development Ethics Association (Uganda, 2006) surveys Goulet’s work and compares it with issues and approaches in the selected papers. Ideas raised by Goulet provide a framework for discussing the set of papers, which especially consider corruption, professional ethics and the rights to water and essential drugs. The papers in turn provide a basis for comparing Goulet’s ideas with actual directions of work on development ethics. Rather than as a separate sub-discipline, development ethics takes shape as an interdisciplinary meeting place, aided though by the profile and intellectual space that Goulet strikingly strove to build for it.
KEYWORDS
development ethics; Denis Goulet; corruption; professional ethics; corporate responsibility
Sirkku K. HELLSTEN
“Leadership ethics and the problem of Dirty Hands in the political economy of contemporary Africa”
ABSTRACT
The article discusses problems of poor governance and corruption in Africa within the framework of wider philosophical and political debates between universalism and relativism, idealism and realism, as well as individualism and communitarianism. Firstly, the author claims that the realist approach to political and leadership ethics fails to differentiate between descriptive and prescriptive elements of governance and can thus easily be used to justify ‘Dirty Hands’ of the leaders in the name of the greater national good, even in cases in which self-interest is the only motivational force for actions that undermine ordinary codes of social and personal ethics by public officers. Secondly, the article shows how the failing of public trust in government and the weakness of the state further enforce sub-national communitarian politics that tend to be ethnically based and exclusive, and thus, violate the core of public ethics, that is, the requirement for impartiality. Finally, the article suggests idealistic universal principles for public (service) ethics to be introduced as complementary rather than competing with local, socially and culturally bound ‘private’ ethics. This requires that, on the one hand, we need to understand better the complex historical, economic and social circumstances and transitional political arrangements in African countries. On the other hand, we need to invest more in reflective civic and professional ethics education that adopts a balanced view between political realism and idealism as the starting point for institutional reforms as well as for long term attitude- and behavior- change.
KEYWORDS
development ethics; corruption; professional ethics.
Luis CAMACHO
ABSTRACT
In this case study of an ethics seminar, taught as the final module in a graduate program for public employees of a water works agency, we explore the results of several strategies used to emphasize the need for changes in personal and institutional behavior in order to improve service to customers. In particular, we explore some ways to openly discuss corrupt practices in a non-trivial manner without offending sensibilities or provoking indifference. As a starting point, participants are asked to point out institutional problems which they characterize as ethical, although some of them are seen later to belong in other categories. To avoid a purely theoretical approach to duties and obligations towards customers, these are derived from the mission of the agency as stated by the law which created it.
KEYWORDS
professional ethics, ethics teaching, corruption, institutional change, customers’ rights, waterworks.
Barbara BLEISCH
“The human right to water – normative foundations and ethical implications”
ABSTRACT
This paper looks into the normative foundations and the ethical implications of a human right to water, endorsed as recently as 2002 by the UN Committee on Human Rights. The paper argues that a human right to drinking water is justifiable as fundamental moral right guaranteeing basic conditions for mere survival. This is less clear in the case of a right to productive water, which verges on a much broader concept of social and economic rights. There are ongoing controversies about the allocation problem of these rights: Who has to deliver on them? To avoid the allocation problem, the paper will examine whether lack of access to water can be deemed a violation of other moral rights. But although there are cases where transnational corporations harm the poor by polluting their water resources or by sustaining or initiating harmful forms of privatisation, the water crisis cannot be solely traced back to a problem of harmful forms of globalisation alone. There is, thus, need for positive efforts from the developed countries to make safe water for all a reality.
KEYWORDS
human rights, privatisation of water, property rights, right to water, welfare rights.
Regina KREIDE
ABSTRACT
This article argues that our prevailing notion of obligations is inadequate for regulating large-scale problems. Collective actors, especially corporations, should be recognized as having obligations in human rights issues as they are much better prepared to deal with complex problems than individuals. Secondly, it is argued that ascribing such obligations is not loftily idealistic, but has its roots in current political phenomena. Contemporary international law and non-legal arrangements create an institutional framework that pressures collectives to justify their actions. Nevertheless, some of these new modes of governance lack legitimacy because they neglect the participation of the individual.
KEYWORDS
Corporate obligation, individual obligation, human rights, private self regulation, global governance
Des GASPER
“What Is the Point of Development Ethics?»
ABSTRACT
Research and teaching in societal development ethics face potentially four fundamental types of objection: first, that ethics is obvious already; second, that it is instead impossible, on epistemological grounds; third, that it is theoretically possible but in practice fruitless; and fourth, that it is in any case politically insignificant. The paper presents qualified rebuttals of the four objections. In the process of doing so, it builds up a picture of this field of thought and practice: its modes, methods and alternative forms of organization, and some of its pitfalls and potentials, exemplars and achievements.
KEYWORDS
development ethics; methodology of ethics; impact of ethics
Amitava BANERJEE
“Who has responsibility for access to essential medical drugs in the developing world?”
ABSTRACT Access to basic medical treatments emerges as cause and effect of health, poverty and development. Where the responsibility for improving access to essential medicines lies is, therefore, a crucial question. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number 8, states, «In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries» (UN 1). The key stakeholders who may take responsibility for access to drugs are (1) the pharmaceutical industry, (2) governments, (3) society at large, and (4) individuals (both with and without disease). Four lenses through which responsibility can be viewed are: (a) deontological; (b) utilitarian; (c) egalitarian; and (d) human rights-based approaches. All four arguments can be used to assign responsibility for improving access to drugs to the governments, especially utilitarian and human-rights approaches. The paper concludes that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the four ethical approaches and that a “sliding-scale” of responsibility is the most useful way to view the roles of the four main players in access to essential drugs, depending on the country or region and its internal environment. Mots-clefs : enfants des rues, ville, travail, Cameroun, Madagascar.
KEYWORDS
essential drugs (access to), responsibilities (corporate, State, personal)
Interviews / Entrevue
Comptes Rendus / Book Reviews
POLÍTICA DE CONFIABILIDAD
ETHICS, ECONOMICS & COMMON GOODS, vol. 19, No. 1, enero-junio 2022, es una publicación semestral editada por la Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla A.C., calle 21 Sur 1103, Col. Santiago, C.P. 72410, Puebla, Puebla. Tel. (222) 2299400, https://ethicsand-economics.
Editor responsable: Manuel Alejandro Gutiérrez González. Reserva de Derechos al Uso Exclusivo No. 04-2022071213543400-102, ISSN en trámite, ambos otorgados por el Instituto Nacional del Derecho de Autor. Responsable de la última actualización de este número, Universidad Tecnológica de Querétaro, TSU María Guadalupe García Guerrero, Av. Pie de la Cuesta 2501, col. Nacional, fecha de última modificación, 30 de julio de 2022.
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