Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment

Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment PDF Author: Serene J. Khader
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019977787X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Serene Khader's book on adaptive preference is a book that should be read by anyone interested in oppression and how to struggle against and overcome it. According to many feminist theories of oppression, a primary problem for overcoming oppression is that the victims become accustomed to their circumstances and even come to prefer them. Their preference for their oppressive conditions then form practical and moral obstacles to changing them, since the oppressed act in ways to further those conditions and it seems cruel or unfair to take from the oppressed what they claim to prefer. Such preferences are called adaptive preferences, and transforming them seems to be an important goal of institutions that aim to improve the lives of the oppressed. This book is about how and why public institutions should intervene in the lives and societies of oppressed persons with adaptive preferences to encourage their flourishing. Although Khader explicitly targets impoverished and oppressed women in the global South, her arguments should apply equally to other contexts of oppression and deprivation.

Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment

Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment PDF Author: Serene J. Khader
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 019977787X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
Serene Khader's book on adaptive preference is a book that should be read by anyone interested in oppression and how to struggle against and overcome it. According to many feminist theories of oppression, a primary problem for overcoming oppression is that the victims become accustomed to their circumstances and even come to prefer them. Their preference for their oppressive conditions then form practical and moral obstacles to changing them, since the oppressed act in ways to further those conditions and it seems cruel or unfair to take from the oppressed what they claim to prefer. Such preferences are called adaptive preferences, and transforming them seems to be an important goal of institutions that aim to improve the lives of the oppressed. This book is about how and why public institutions should intervene in the lives and societies of oppressed persons with adaptive preferences to encourage their flourishing. Although Khader explicitly targets impoverished and oppressed women in the global South, her arguments should apply equally to other contexts of oppression and deprivation.

Adaptive Preferences and Womens Empowerment

Adaptive Preferences and Womens Empowerment PDF Author: Serene J. Khader
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199777993
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Women and other oppressed and deprived people sometimes collude with the forces that perpetuate injustice against them. Womens acceptance of their lesser claim on household resources like food, their positive attitudes toward clitoridectemy and infibulations, their acquiescence to violence at the hands of their husbands, and their sometimes fatalistic attitudes toward their own poverty or suffering are all examples of adaptive preferences, wherein women participate in their own deprivation. Adaptive Preferences and Womens Empowerment offers a definition of adaptive preference and a moral framework for responding to adaptive preferences in development practice. Khader defines adaptive preferences as deficits in the capacity to lead a flourishing human life that are causally related to deprivation and argues that public institutions should conduct deliberative interventions to transform the adaptive preferences of deprived people. She insists that people with adaptive preferences can experience value distortion, but she explains how this fact does not undermine those peoples claim to participate in designing development interventions that determine the course of their lives. Khader claims that adaptive preference identification requires a commitment to moral universalism, but this commitment need not be incompatible with a respect for culturally variant conceptions of the good. She illustrates her arguments with examples from real-world development practice. Khaders deliberative perfectionist approach moves us beyond apparent impasses in the debates about internalized oppression and autonomous agency, relativism and universalism, and feminism and multiculturalism.

Decolonizing Universalism

Decolonizing Universalism PDF Author: Serene J. Khader
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190664193
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Decolonizing Universalism argues that feminism can respect cultural and religious differences and acknowledge the legacy of imperialism without surrendering its core ethical commitments. Transcending relativism/ universalism debates that reduce feminism to a Western notion, Serene J. Khader proposes a feminist vision that is sensitive to postcolonial and antiracist concerns. Khader criticizes the false universalism of what she calls 'Enlightenment liberalism, ' a worldview according to which the West is the one true exemplar of gender justice and moral progress is best achieved through economic independence and the abandonment of tradition. She argues that anti-imperialist feminists must rediscover the normative core of feminism and rethink the role of moral ideals in transnational feminist praxis. What emerges is a nonideal universalism that rejects missionary feminisms that treat Western intervention and the spread of Enlightenment liberalism as the path to global gender injustice. The book draws on evidence from transnational women's movements and development practice in addition to arguments from political philosophy and postcolonial and decolonial theory, offering a rich moral vision for twenty-first century feminism.

Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender

Autonomy, Oppression, and Gender PDF Author: Andrea Veltman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199969108
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
This collection of new essays examines philosophical issues at the intersection of feminism and autonomy studies. Are autonomy and independence useful goals for women and subordinate persons? Is autonomy possible in contexts of social subordination? Is the pursuit of desires that issue from patriarchal norms consistent with autonomous agency? How do emotions and caring relate to autonomous deliberation? Contributors to this collection answer these questions and others, advancing central debates in autonomy theory by examining basic components, normative commitments, and applications of conceptions of autonomy. Several chapters look at the conditions necessary for autonomous agency and at the role that values and norms - such as independence, equality, inclusivity, self-respect, care and femininity - play in feminist theories of autonomy. Whereas some contributing authors focus on dimensions of autonomy that are internal to the mind - such as deliberative reflection, desires, cares, emotions, self-identities and feelings of self-worth - several authors address social conditions and practices that support or stifle autonomous agency, often answering questions of practical import. These include such questions as: What type of gender socialization best supports autonomous agency and feminist goals? When does adapting to severely oppressive circumstances, such as those in human trafficking, turn into a loss of autonomy? How are ideals of autonomy affected by capitalism? and How do conceptions of autonomy inform issues in bioethics, such as end-of-life decisions, or rights to bodily self-determination?

Feminist Philosophy

Feminist Philosophy PDF Author: Elinor Mason
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315406608
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Feminist Philosophy: An Introduction provides a comprehensive coverage of the core elements of feminist philosophy in the analytical tradition. Part 1 examines the feminist issues and practical problems that confront us as ordinary people. Part 2 examines the recent and historical arguments surrounding the subject area, looking into the theoretical frameworks we use to discuss these issues and applying them to everyday life. With contemporary and lively debates throughout, Elinor Mason provides a rigorous and yet accessible overview of a rich array of topics including: feminism in a global context work and care reproductive rights sex work sexual violence and harassment sexism, oppression, and misogyny intersectionality objectification consent ideology, false consciousness, and adaptive preferences. An outstanding introduction which will equip the reader with a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of feminism, Feminist Philosophy is essential reading for those approaching the subject for the first time.

Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics

Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics PDF Author: Jay Drydyk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317236106
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Development Ethics provides readers with insight into the central questions of development ethics, the main approaches to answering them, and areas for future research. Over the past seventy years, it has been argued and increasingly accepted that worthwhile development cannot be reduced to economic growth. Rather, a number of other goals must be realised: Enhancement of people's well-being Equitable sharing in benefits of development Empowerment to participate freely in development Environmental sustainability Promotion of human rights Promotion of cultural freedom, consistent with human rights Responsible conduct, including integrity over corruption Agreement that these are essential goals has also been accompanied by disagreements about how to conceptualize or apply them in different cases or contexts. Using these seven goals as an organizing principle, this handbook presents different approaches to achieving each one, drawing on academic literature, policy documents and practitioner experience. This international and multi-disciplinary handbook will be of great interest to development policy makers and program workers, students and scholars in development studies, public policy, international studies, applied ethics and other related disciplines.

Personal Autonomy in Plural Societies

Personal Autonomy in Plural Societies PDF Author: Marie-Claire Foblets
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315413590
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
This volume addresses the exercise of personal autonomy in contemporary situations of normative pluralism. In the Western liberal tradition, from a strictly legal and theoretical perspective the social individual has the right to exercise the autonomy of his or her will. In a context of legal plurality, however, personal autonomy becomes more complicated. Can and should personal autonomy be recognized as a legal foundation for protecting a person’s freedom to renounce what others view as his or her fundamental ‘human rights’? This collection develops an interdisciplinary conceptual framework to address these questions and presents empirical studies examining the gap between the principle of personal autonomy and its implementation. In a context of cultural diversity, this gap manifests itself in two particular ways. First, not every culture gives the same pre-eminence to personal autonomy when examining the legal effects of an individual’s acts. Second, in a society characterized by ‘weak pluralism’, the legal assessment of personal autonomy often favours the views of the dominant majority. In highlighting these diverse perspectives and problematizing the so-called ‘guardian function’ of human rights, i.e., purporting to protect weaker parties by limiting their personal autonomy in the name of gender equality, fair trial, etc., this book offers a nuanced approach to the principle of autonomy and addresses the questions of whether it can effectively be deployed in situations of internormativity and what conditions must be met in order to ensure that it is not rendered devoid of all meaning.

Women's Activism, Feminism, and Social Justice

Women's Activism, Feminism, and Social Justice PDF Author: Margaret A. McLaren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019094773X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A wide range of issues besieges women globally, including economic exploitation, sexist oppression, racial, ethnic, and caste oppression, and cultural imperialism. This book builds a feminist social justice framework from practices of women's activism in India to understand and work to overcome these injustices. The feminist social justice framework provides an alternative to mainstream philosophical frameworks that promote global gender justice: for example, universal human rights, economic projects such as microfinance, and cosmopolitanism. McLaren demonstrates that these frameworks are bound by a commitment to individualism and an abstract sense of universalism that belies their root neo-liberalism. Arguing that these frameworks emphasize individualism over interdependence, similarity over diversity, and individual success over collective capacity, McLaren draws on the work of Rabindranath Tagore to develop the concept of relational cosmopolitanism. Relational cosmopolitanism prioritizes our connections while, crucially, acknowledging the reality of power differences. Extending Iris Young's theory of political responsibility, McLaren shows how Fair Trade connects to the economic solidarity movement. The Self-Employed Women's Association and MarketPlace India empower women through access to livelihoods as well as fostering leadership capabilities that allow them to challenge structural injustice through political and social activism. Their struggles to resist economic exploitation and gender oppression through collective action show the vital importance of challenging individualist approaches to achieving gender justice. The book is a rallying call for a shift in our thinking and practice towards re-imagining the possibilities for justice from a relational framework, from independence to interdependence, from identity to intersectionality, and from interest to socio-political imagination.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism PDF Author: Martin Kusch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351052284
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 735

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Book Description
Relativism can be found in all philosophical traditions and subfields of philosophy. It is also a central idea in the social sciences, the humanities, religion and politics. This is the first volume to map relativistic motifs in all areas of philosophy, synchronically and diachronically. It thereby provides essential intellectual tools for thinking about contemporary issues like cultural diversity, the plurality of the sciences, or the scope of moral values. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism is an outstanding major reference source on this fundamental topic. The 57 chapters by a team of international contributors are divided into nine parts: Relativism in non-Western philosophical traditions Relativism in Western philosophical traditions Relativism in ethics Relativism in political and legal philosophy Relativism in epistemology Relativism in metaphysics Relativism in philosophy of science Relativism in philosophy of language and mind Relativism in other areas of philosophy. Essential reading for students and researchers in all branches of philosophy, this handbook will also be of interest to those in related subjects such as politics, religion, sociology, cultural studies and literature.

Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy

Religion, Secularism, and Constitutional Democracy PDF Author: Jean L. Cohen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540736
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Polarization between political religionists and militant secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise. Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It identifies which connections between religion and the state are compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism. They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy when it violates international human rights agreements or liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.