In progress:
a paper on justifying protest in autocratic settings
a paper on Fanon and moral transformation through resistance
a paper on intellectual property and indigenous knowledge appropriation
an introductory book on anticolonial political thought, as part of the Cambridge Elements in Political Philosophy series
Drafts available upon request.
Recent critics of relational equality as an ideal of justice have questioned whether the ideal has any implications for justice between non-overlapping generations. In this paper, I argue that relational equality does have something important to say about what we owe to future generations, which is not captured by an exclusive focus on distributive equality: we owe future generations the capacity to relate to each other as equals. This capacity is undermined not only when resources or savings are significantly depleted by the present generation, but also when the present generation fails to transform the oppressive social categories by which we relate to others. While these categories were not set up by the present generation, I argue that we still have a duty to contribute to changing them, and failing to do so can result in a double wrong: a wrong against our fellow contemporaries, as well as future persons who are ascribed membership in these categories.
With some recent exceptions, demands for global reparations have largely been ignored by former colonial countries. While the past two decades has seen renewed interest in colonial reparations in normative political theory and philosophy, this work has focused on determining responsibility for redress. By contrast, relatively little has been said on the further question of how redress might be sought in face of persistent colonial amnesia and apologia. This paper defends expropriation—unilateral public takeovers of ownership and/or control of foreign assets—as a justified response to overdue colonial reparations. In making this case, the paper (1) moves our focus beyond questions of responsibility for reparative justice to consider what victims of past injustice (and/or their descendants) are justified in doing to obtain their due, and (2) explores distinctive issues that arise for political resistance at the global level.
Unequal patterns of cultural exchange between the Global South and North are sometimes labelled “neo-colonial.” But what, if anything, is wrong with these patterns? Debates surrounding cultural globalization have traditionally divided proponents of free trade and of cultural preservation. The paper develops an alternative account grounded in a global application of the ideal of social equality. Citizens of privileged societies ought to regard and relate to citizens of disadvantaged societies as social equals. Patterns of cultural exchange play an important role in promoting these relationships. Historically, colonized peoples were often regarded as inferior based on perceived failures to produce cultural achievements. To the extent that unequal global cultural production and exchange persists, the colonial pattern remains. The duty to relate to foreigners as equals implies that Global North countries should stop pressing for cultural trade concessions and instead favor the import of cultural goods from the Global South.
The international investment regime has come under increasing scrutiny, with several developing countries withdrawing from bilateral investment treaties in recent years. A central worry raised by critics is that investment treaties undermine national self-determination. Proposed reforms to the regime have focused on rebalancing the distribution of power between states and investors to restore “enlarged regulatory space” for the former. Contra this critique from national self-determination, in this paper I argue that infringements on national self- determination cannot alone explain why the investment regime is morally problematic. Instead, on my egalitarian view, the regime is objectionable because it empowers a class of agents, whose interests are reliably opposed to egalitarian economic policy, to constrain national self-determination. In effect, the investment regime contributes to entrenching inequality between and within states, and is unjust for that reason. The moral and practical upshot is that reforms to the regime ought to empower disadvantaged groups to exert disproportionate leverage over the terms and practice of international investment, and to appeal to global institutions to do so. In other words, our moral assessment of a given global institution or practice should not depend on whether it constrains national self-determination, but on who it empowers to do so.