PANEL 10 /// ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY: DISCUSSING POVERTY
CONVENORS: LEONARDO MENEZES AND MARIA CLARA OLIVEIRA
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected]
What is fundamentally wrong with poverty? Few would deny that poverty is a social evil and that there are circumstances in which action should be taken to reduce or eliminate it. But how can we understand poverty? The most basic notion of poverty is relatively uncontroversial: not having enough money. But enough money for what, exactly? And is money the only relevant factor? Since a variety of answers can be given to these questions, the understanding of poverty is contested, for both conceptual and political reasons.
The first questions listed at the start is ‘what is wrong with poverty?’. A life that faces the diminished capability sets associated with poverty is a diminished life. It is commonly argued that people in poverty will have difficulty salvaging their basic humanity, their dignity, or their self-respect (Jones 1990). As Narayan et al. (2009, 4) point out, people in poverty find themselves without voice or power. Hennie Lotter (2011, 22) makes the interesting observation that only human beings are ever described as living in poverty. Animals can suffer but are not described as living in poverty, which indicates that poverty is some sort of degraded humanity. All these charges are plausible and go some way to explaining why poverty is morally challenging. Poverty, understood as a form of degraded humanity, is a serious injustice from a wide range of moral positions, not only those based in the egalitarian tradition. On most philosophical views, it is clear that governments have an obligation to try to prevent people falling into poverty, as well as to help those who find themselves in this situation escape it, where possible. Few governments have ever shirked that responsibility entirely, but it is clear that many could do more and some are currently moving in the wrong direction (i.e. policy drift).
In this panel, we seek to focus greater attention on the ethics of anti-poverty policies. We ask, in short: What should governments do to eliminate poverty? What anti-poverty policies can governments design and implement? What must be guaranteed by the State and what responsibilities can be attributed to private and/or non-governmental actors? And, critically, what ethical issues arise in the monitoring and/or evaluation of such policies? We welcome paper proposals on any of these topics or in related ones.
All inquiries about the panel should be sent to [email protected] and [email protected]
What is fundamentally wrong with poverty? Few would deny that poverty is a social evil and that there are circumstances in which action should be taken to reduce or eliminate it. But how can we understand poverty? The most basic notion of poverty is relatively uncontroversial: not having enough money. But enough money for what, exactly? And is money the only relevant factor? Since a variety of answers can be given to these questions, the understanding of poverty is contested, for both conceptual and political reasons.
The first questions listed at the start is ‘what is wrong with poverty?’. A life that faces the diminished capability sets associated with poverty is a diminished life. It is commonly argued that people in poverty will have difficulty salvaging their basic humanity, their dignity, or their self-respect (Jones 1990). As Narayan et al. (2009, 4) point out, people in poverty find themselves without voice or power. Hennie Lotter (2011, 22) makes the interesting observation that only human beings are ever described as living in poverty. Animals can suffer but are not described as living in poverty, which indicates that poverty is some sort of degraded humanity. All these charges are plausible and go some way to explaining why poverty is morally challenging. Poverty, understood as a form of degraded humanity, is a serious injustice from a wide range of moral positions, not only those based in the egalitarian tradition. On most philosophical views, it is clear that governments have an obligation to try to prevent people falling into poverty, as well as to help those who find themselves in this situation escape it, where possible. Few governments have ever shirked that responsibility entirely, but it is clear that many could do more and some are currently moving in the wrong direction (i.e. policy drift).
In this panel, we seek to focus greater attention on the ethics of anti-poverty policies. We ask, in short: What should governments do to eliminate poverty? What anti-poverty policies can governments design and implement? What must be guaranteed by the State and what responsibilities can be attributed to private and/or non-governmental actors? And, critically, what ethical issues arise in the monitoring and/or evaluation of such policies? We welcome paper proposals on any of these topics or in related ones.
