Climate risks,climate economics,and the foundations of rights-based risk ethics

In this article, I argue that climate ethics must basically be risk ethics. But risk ethics is still an underdeveloped field of normative ethics. For example, rights-based ethical theories, the attractive features of which are outlined in this article, tend to prohibit all risk impositions. Such inability of rights-based theories to deal convincingly with risks could be a reason why the standard approach of climate economics, which as I try to show is based on questionable normative presuppositions, is still as influential as it is. I propose a solution to the problems rights-based moral theories have with risks and outline the basic criteria of permissible and impermissible risk impositions. Finally, I indicate that this will enable us to tackle climate risks in a promising way. The main aim of the article, however, is not to contribute to concrete questions of climate ethics but to the improvement of its normative foundations.     

How practices do not matter

Abstract

In his most recent work, Sangiovanni has retreated from his stronger claims about practice-dependence. Instead of claiming that principles of justice must be practice-dependent, he now expresses his claim in a modal form, arguing that there are several ways in which practices may matter. While merely mapping out the logical space of possibilities seems to look like a modest ambition, the conditions for when practices do matter according to Sangiovanni’s analysis are easily met in actuality. Consequently, if he is right, the practice-dependent approach covers a significant number of political theories. Sangiovanni’s main claim is that higher-level principles with an open texture, which include most higher-level principles in political philosophy, justify a practice-dependent method in the form of a mode of application called ‘mediated deduction,’ according to which a thoroughgoing investigation is made of the nature of the target practice. Our task in this paper is to reject this claim. This is done in two steps. First, we question Sangiovanni’s distinction between instrumental application and mediated deduction, arguing that it remains unclear whether it marks out two sufficiently distinct ‘modes’ to do any theoretical work. Second, we argue that the practice-dependent method is not required even if two such modes are established.     

From Aftermath to Peace: Reflections on a Photography of Peace

International Relations (IR) literature on the visual construction of the international does not systematically engage with the visualisation of peace. In this article, I make photographic discourses available to IR scholars interested in the visual construction of the international and invite IR scholars to substantialise these discourses based on their specialist knowledge on war, violence, conflict and peace. I engage with aftermath photography by challenging its almost exclusive focus on war and the legacy of violence. Furthermore, I engage with Fred Ritchin's notion of peace photography and Cynthia Weber's attempts at visualising peace. Problematising claims to universality, generalisability and causality, I emphasise that the relation between images and peace is episodic, not causal; that visions of peace, reflecting specific cultural configurations, cannot claim universal validity; and that peace photography has to move beyond aftermath photography's focus on the legacies of the past. Finally, I briefly look at the work of Joel Meyerowitz and Rineke Dijkstra, the one displaying aftermath as a beginning sustaining power, the other photographically accompanying a person's adaptation to a new, more peaceful environment.     

Violence in the city that belongs to no one: urban distinctiveness and interconnected insecurities in Nairobi (Kenya)

ABSTRACT

Rapid urbanisation in the global South has prompted attention to the causes and dynamics of urban violence. Yet, much research tends to either analyse urban violence without attention to the broader conflict complexes of which it forms a part, neglecting linkages between different forms of urban violence and between urban and rural dynamics, or conversely study violence in cities without acknowledging the particularities of the urban context. In this article, we conceptualise urban violence, theorise how it is shaped by urban dynamics and explore its manifestations in Nairobi, Kenya. We find that while Nairobi is not uniquely violent inside Kenya, violence takes on distinct urban forms given city-level processes, and also that urban violence has led to policies that increase securitisation and militarisation of the city. Our analysis thus improves knowledge of how criminal and political violence is shaped by and shapes the stability of developing cities.