Category Archives: justice

a color image of mountains in the American West superimposed with a gold foil dollar sign

Book recommendation: Billionaire Wilderness, by Justin Farrell

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Yale sociologist Justin Farrell’s new book, Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West, is an amazing piece of scholarship that provides detailed insight into how wealth concentration is shaping the human (and more-than-human) communities in Teton County, Wyoming, which is both the richest county in the United States and the county with the highest wealth inequality (on various measures).

Farrell’s research, both qualitative and quantitative, is meticulous and presented in clear and accessible prose. The excerpted interviews provide candid (and sometimes stomach-churning) insight into the hearts and minds of both the ultra-wealthy and the working poor whose labor makes their lifestyles possible in Teton County and thereabouts. For various reasons that Farrell thoughtfully articulates, rural communities are under-researched, and accessing the ultra-wealthy for research purposes is challenging. But we can no longer afford to neglect such research and this book provides a model for much work that is yet to be done.

I strongly recommend this valuable book to anyone who is working on or simply interested in issues relating to climate change, conservation, wealth inequality, and/or social justice more broadly.

Video of My Recent Lecture

justice, philosophy

If you want to check out the lecture that I gave to the Conceptual Engineering Network back in May, that video is now posted on YouTube!

The talk is called “Conceptual Engineering as Taking Responsibility for Concepts.” It builds on a pair of papers I published in the European Journal of Philosophy a few years back, in which I argued that we can be (backwards-looking) morally responsible for the concepts that we possess and use. In this lecture (a work in progress!), I argue that sometimes, doing conceptual engineering projects involves taking forwards-looking moral responsibility for concepts.

The key example that I talk about in the latter portion of the talk is the concept EMPLOYMENT, and the possible replacement concept HUMAN RENTALS. There, I draw on some fascinating work about workplace democracy by David Ellerman – you can download the whole book here!

Composting in Chicago

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The Climate Reality Project’s Chicago Metro Chapter recently asked me to step up and be the co-leader (with my new pal, Florita) for the new Chicago (as opposed to suburban) Team. Our team has two main areas of activism for the near term – I’ll be taking point on composting, and Florita will be taking point on building decarbonization.

So, if you have any questions, thoughts, or concerns relating to how we can reduce the barriers to composting in Chicago and support a culture of composting, I’d love to hear from you!

Advocacy Groundwork: Manageable Steps Toward Climate-Friendly Investment/Divestment

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Many students and teachers interested in sustainability advocate divestment from fossil fuels as a way to defund unsustainable energy practices, take a symbolic stand, and help train new organizers. October’s Philosophers for Sustainability forum, which I’ll be co-leading, will involve thinking through some possibilities and strategies for divestment advocacy:

What strategies are in reach for overworked academics who endorse financial activism but work in settings where most people in power are (currently) indifferent or hostile to institutional divestment? In this forum, I’ll share some ideas from a recent mini-campaign and invite discussion about organizing. We’ll also have time to discuss other sustainability advocacy projects that may feel daunting in scope or low in likelihood of success.

The forum will be held by Zoom on Friday, October 7, 11am-noon ET (eastern USA and Canada time). Email me for the link. We look forward to seeing some of you there!

Philosophers for Sustainability

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In my book, philosophy isn’t something you have, but something you do. So philosophers aren’t just thinkers. We are doers.

And there is a lot that we can do, individually and collectively, by strategically using our particular skills, knowledge, and social locations, to help move humanity toward doing a better job of sustaining all the people, other living things, and ecosystems that can be found on this amazing and beautiful planet.

If you’ve already made a habit of choosing the relatively sustainable options in your personal life, one way to level up on your sustainability activism is to join the Philosophers for Sustainability. We’ve got various advocacy teams, workshops, and resources, and we welcome all comers, from casual participants to gung-ho experts and leaders.

Right now, our biggest area of momentum is the APA 2+1 campaign, a plan to shift 1 or 2 of the 3 divisional meetings of the American Philosophical Association each year to an entirely online format, with the in-person meeting(s) rotating between divisions. Implementing this plan would dramatically cut our profession’s greenhouse gas emissions, save money, and make the meetings accessible to a wider range of philosophers.

Please consider signing and sharing the petition, if you aren’t already one of the 689 signatories so far!

I voted! Will you join me?

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To me, voting feels good. It feels good to have a voice and to use it. It feels good to try to get the future that I want for all of us. It feels good to engage with literally millions of other people in the big and important conversation about our shared values that is a national election.

I would love for you to vote, too! Will you make the time to vote in this year’s election?

Book Recommendation: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

book recommendations, justice, philosophy

Oh, wow – it is great to end the summer with a really spectacular novel. Everyone should go out and read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler (and that goes double for any budding scholars interested in philosophy of mind and/or cognitive science).

Don’t read any blurbs or reviews first, just get straight into it!

Why? There is a significant surprise reveal midway through it, and it would be a real shame if you didn’t get the chance to figure things out on your own. This sometimes funny, often thought-provoking, and consistently well-written book starts out as just a regular story about growing up in a family of flawed people, but I’ll leave it for you to decide whether we can say that it ends that way …

Book recommendation: Bird Flu, by Michael Greger

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I started reading Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching for reasons that had nothing to do with COVID-19. But may I say that it could not be any more relevant to our lives at this particular time?

Dr. Michael Greger does a wonderful job of explaining the science of viruses in general, the history of pandemics (and our political/economic/public health/media responses to them), and the steps that we would need to take to reduce the terrible dangers that pandemic influenza poses to human life, health, economics, national security, and so on. His writing is clear, engaging, and accessible, while being grounded in meticulous research and including copious citations from all sorts of relevant experts around the world.

No joke: this is not good bedtime reading, but it is a great read!

It looks like the full text was available for free on the internet for some time, but that it is temporarily unavailable because Dr. Greger is updating it with new findings about COVID-19 for a new edition, so try checking back to http://www.birdflubook.org/ or https://drgreger.org/pages/selected-writings later to see more about that.

Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington: Digital Justice Gathering

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There are 140 million poor and low income people in America. But the interlocking, systemic injustices that create and perpetuate poverty negatively impact us all (in different ways).

It’s gone on far too long. We must ALL unite to fight poverty, not poor people.

The growing awareness of the disproportionate impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic on poor communities and communities of color, as well as the ongoing patterns of police brutality against people of color that have been getting so much more widespread attention recently, are motivating people of conscience to stand up and take action in a variety of ways. Please join us.

Due to the pandemic, the the massive slate of events known as the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington that have long been planned by The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival for June 20-21, 2020 have gone digital. There will be live-streamed speeches (in English, Spanish, and ASL) by all sorts of folks, opportunities to contact elected officials, a virtual rally, voter registration information, and merchandise.

Check out June2020.org for more information about how to get involved. (And be sure to note the impressive, inspiring list of mobilizing partners.)

Juneteenth!

justice, philosophy

In celebration of Juneteenth (today, 6/19, the day on which we who continue to work toward justice celebrate the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans), the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia has put together a two-part curated collection of previously published work by Black feminist scholars and made it freely available without subscription.

I encourage you to start by checking out Hypatia co-editor Camisha Russell’s introduction, then take a look at the article collections themselves. As Dr. Russell writes there, “Black thought matters.”