Category Archives: justice

Book recommendation: Zoopolis, by Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka

book recommendations, food, justice, philosophy

I’ve always loved animals, but I don’t always see myself in other people’s vision of what it means to be an animal lover. For instance, I don’t keep pets, and lots of people would expect an animal lover to do so. However, I am a vegan, which might be (and I think should be, but often isn’t) expected of people who self-identify as animal lovers. Plus, I generally love learning about animals more than I love interacting with them, but I do find it deeply painful when I witness harm to animals, even in fiction. And I’m seriously committed to environmentalism, which many people think means choosing what is good for whole species and ecosystems, even if and when that means killing or otherwise harming various individual animals.

I suspect there are a lot of other people out there who love animals in some sense, but that maybe don’t fit into stereotypical ideas about what it means to be an animal lover.

For an awesome book that challenges all of us to rethink what it means to stand in an ethically good relationship to non-human animals, I strongly recommend Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis. They don’t frame their book in terms of being by or for animal lovers, (though their work clearly expresses love for animals, along with many more intellectual virtues). Instead, they make a powerful, extended argument that existing academic and activist work regarding animal ethics is limited in key ways that can be overcome by shifting to a political model of human/non-human animal engagement. Here’s some high praise from any philosopher: their insights and arguments really changed my mind about a lot of things!

And (bonus!) this is among the most engaging and accessible books in academic philosophy that I’ve had the pleasure to read. It is one of those unicorns that falls into both the “for fun” and “for work” categories that I often use to mentally sort books. Seriously, check it out.

Fridays for Future

justice

This semester, I’m joining with students and community members at noon every Friday under Ball State’s bell tower as part of the Fridays for Future climate strike movement.

Please join us! The students who are organizing and participating in these events are welcoming, thoughtful, and passionate young people who deserve our support and solidarity.

And thank you to all the passers-by who honk, wave, smile, or otherwise show us their encouragement!

Forward STEPS Sustainability Challenge 2019

justice

Being a part of the Forward STEPS community is one of the best parts of my life in Muncie! Forward STEPS is a relationship-based poverty alleviation initiative of Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana; together we (people from all walks of life) work on all sorts of projects that empower people as they move from merely surviving to thriving.

Our “Big View” programming focuses on dismantling the systemic barriers that keep many people under-resourced. One such barrier is the decreasing stability of the climate and other natural systems. We all have a role to play in ensuring that essential resources will be available to future generations, but participating in environmental stewardship activities often takes resources, like time and money, that are in short supply for folks who are struggling just to get by.

We were fortunate to receive some financial support from a few donors who want to support all the members of our community who are interested in developing more sustainable habits. So with their support, I was able to organize and facilitate a whole bunch of activities around the theme of sustainability this fall, and I’ve been just thrilled with what we are able to accomplish together. Trees were planted, resource usage was reduced, lessons were shared, and it felt good to do it all together!

So, if you want to see a poster I made with a more detailed report of what we accomplished together during our Forward STEPS Sustainability Challenge 2019, please click here.

Climate Strike!

justice, philosophy

Today millions of people around the world acted in solidarity to bring attention to the climate catastrophe and demand climate action now. Want to learn more about the Global Climate Strike? Start here.

I was pleased to be able to support the approximately 10% of my students who engaged in climate activism today instead of coming to class. They wrote me justifications for their choice, so they were doing some philosophy, too!

In addition to participating in a local rally organized by Muncie Resists this afternoon, I’ve been working for the past few weeks to organize a Sustainability Challenge for the members of my favorite community poverty-alleviation group (Forward STEPS) during the month of October. We’re doing some educational programs (including a couple of vegan cooking classes led by yours truly) and making commitments to do various sustainability-promoting activities. If you want to play along with us (for a chance to earn prizes!), just send me an email about how to get involved.

Book recommendation: Climate Matters, by John Broome

book recommendations, justice, philosophy

I’m so pleased that news media outlets are increasingly engaging with the climate crisis. It is hard, and maybe impossible, to overstate the need for us all to work together in taking action that will help stabilize the climate that we, and all living things, rely on.

For folks who are looking for an introduction to many of the key issues regarding climate change ethics, politics, and economics, might I suggest Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, by John Broome? Broome has been writing about climate change through the lens of his economic expertise for decades, but this book focuses on ethics in a way that his previous work did not. I don’t agree with everything that Broome says, but it is a well-informed, accessible place to start that will give you plenty to think over, whether you are new to the climate debates or not.

Book recommendation: Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

justice, philosophy

Praising doesn’t always come naturally to pessimists like me, but oh my goodness, is Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny a brilliant book!

Manne’s writing is a wonder to behold: she guides the reader through a lot of rough territory (I mean rough in the sense of depressing and rough in the sense of grappling with lots of challenging philosophical issues) without sacrificing clarity or rigor, and her insight into important contemporary cases makes this a great read for general audiences and academics alike. Down Girl has already had such a powerful effect on my thinking that I may just immediately start re-reading it from the beginning now that I’ve finished it.

On her excellent account, misogyny is (roughly) the enforcement wing of the patriarchy, which means that it serves to threaten and punish women who do not provide the services that men have come to expect under patriarchy. This distinguishes misogyny from sexism, which is (roughly) the propaganda wing of the patriarchy, which serves to buttress patriarchy by explaining and justifying it.

I can only speak for myself, but as someone who share a lot of identity categories with Manne, her analysis of current events was revelatory. She helped me make sense of many frustrating, terrifying, and otherwise awful patterns that, though I see evidence of them all around me, I had been struggling to fully wrap my mind around before.

Kudos to Kate Manne for really getting to heart of an under-theorized but essential subject of feminist inquiry!

Book Recommendation: Palaces for the People by Eric Klinenberg

book recommendations, justice

Looking for a fast, fun read that gets your brain juices flowing about how to make a flourishing community? Well, look no further than Eric Klinenberg’s Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life. 

That full title is pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll give my own gloss: in that book, Klinenberg introduces the idea of social infrastructure – all the places and stuff and systems that can help us develop and thrive as social beings (or get in the way of social flourishing). With chapters about libraries, residential neighborhoods, schools, green spaces, and more, this book really gets you thinking about how those things (or lack thereof) impact quality of life for everyone in a community, whether they realize it or not.

I have very fond memories of my family walking to the local Carnegie library on Friday nights with an old, half-broken picnic basket to fill with kids books. I remember the “ka-thunk” sound of the librarian putting cards into the slot on the top of a machine that would stamp on the due date and then tucking them into the special envelopes at the back of the books. I remember the majestic-seeming stuffed bison head that hung at the top of the stairway, and the smooth glide of the drawers in the adults’ rooms card catalog. Everything about the public library was, to me, a source of wonder and delight – may we all, together, take the necessary steps to ensure that our public libraries, parks, and other elements of our social infrastructure do as much to support the flourishing of the new generation as they did for me when I was young.

Gender & Sexualities Working Group Research Colloquium

justice, philosophy

Please join Ball State’s Gender and Sexualities Working Group for our first research colloquium of the year.

Thursday, October 4, 2018
2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Bracken Library 2014

Dr. Rachel Fredericks, an Assistant Professor in Philosophy, will present her paper “(How) Should We Use the Concept of a Daughter?”

About half the people in the world are described as daughters immediately after birth, if not before, and being classified as a daughter has a huge impact on the material conditions of one’s life, one’s social position, and one’s self-identity. During this talk, we’ll think critically about the concept of a daughter and whether we have moral reasons to stop using it or to use it differently than we tend to do now. The work under consideration is part of a larger project that explores why we should see ourselves as morally responsible for the concepts (that is, the basic mental representations) that we use to think about the world that we inhabit.

We hope you can join us.

Book recommendation: The Mechanical by Ian Tregilis

book recommendations, justice, philosophy
Let the summer reading commence!

The Mechanical, by Ian Tregilis, is an adventure story set within an alternate history in which Christiaan Huygens used alchemy to create and enslave thousands of mechanical people, which allowed the Dutch to maintain a worldwide empire for over 250 years. The story puts you inside the perspective of a range of characters, including a mechanical named Jax, a noblewoman at the head of a French spy network, a Dutch pastor, and many more. It is a fun read that can be taken at a galloping pace, but if you slow to a walk, there is a lot to think about regarding free will, sectarian religious disagreements, colonialism and slavery, human reliance on technology, and other substantial philosophical issues.

You can read a sample at https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-mechanical/ and the good news is that once you get sucked in (like I did) there are two more books in the series: The Rising and The Liberation.

Book recommendation: Teeth by Mary Otto

book recommendations, justice

Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America is a great book, one that I strongly recommend.

Whether you are interested in health care justice; the history of dental practices, education, and policy in America; ways to use public and private resources more efficiently; the biology of the human mouth; or ways to alleviate the significant suffering of your neighbors, this book by Mary Otto has something for you.

Painful toothache, oral disease, and tooth loss are chronic, widespread, devastating problems in our society. Huge numbers of our fellow citizens have no access to dental services, whether because of lack of money to pay for insurance or dental services on the private market, shortages of dental providers in many geographical areas, or a number of other reasons. These dental problems often make it difficult or impossible to get or keep various types of jobs. These problems are easy to ignore IF you are a relatively well-off person with access to dental care on the private market. Such people often blame dental problems on the individual choices of those who suffer them, without a full understanding of the facts about access to dental care in the US. Otto’s book shines a brilliant light on that bigger picture.

The good news is that these dental problems are largely preventable. All we need is the will to devote some of our existing resources to the solutions that have already met with significant success in places where people have fought hard to implement them.