Feminism and global justice : a case for cosmopolitanism

• Main Author: Pepper, Angie
• Other Authors: Saul, Jenny ; Brown, Garrett
• Published: University of Sheffield 2013
• Subjects: 306
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.577417

Cosmopolitanism and statism represent the two dominant theoretical standpoints in the current debate on global distributive justice. Cosmopolitans take individuals to be the primary units of equal moral concern and they advocate the application of principles of distributive justice that are global in scope. By contrast, statists take states to be the primary units of equal moral concern and hold that there can be no principles of distributive global justice, recommending instead weaker duties of assistance. The central claim of this thesis is that feminists should reject statism and be cosmopolitans about global justice. This thesis is divided into four parts. Part I situates this project in the global justice debate and the feminist literature. I begin by introducing some distinctions pertinent to discussions of cosmopolitanism and outlining several approaches to cosmopolitan justice. Following this I sketch the key aims of the feminist agenda being pursued here and argue that my central thesis should appeal to feminists of different theoretical backgrounds. In Part II I offer a feminist critique of statist accounts. This critique involves a critical evaluation of the statist position formulated by John Rawls in The Law of Peoples and a more general argument against statist positions that is based on the work of Susan Moller Okin. Having demonstrated that statism is defective from a feminist perspective, and suggested that cosmopolitanism is better placed to address feminist concerns, in Part III I anticipate two feminist objections to cosmopolitanism: (1) cosmopolitan approaches necessarily rely on inaccurate general claims about women; and (2) cosmopolitan approaches represent a form of Western cultural imperialism. I argue that the feminist cosmopolitan can be sensitive to these concerns without abandoning either their feminist or cosmopolitan commitments. Finally, in Part IV, I make some tentative suggestions about the types of cosmopolitanism best equipped to meet the feminist aims outlined in Part I.