Brooke A. Ackerly - Böcker

It has been well-established that many of the injustices that people around the world experience every day, from food insecurity to unsafe labor conditions and natural disasters, are the result of wide-scale structural problems of politics and economics. These are not merely random personal problems or consequences of bad luck or bad planning. Confronted by this fact, it is natural to ask what should or can we do to mitigate everyday injustices? In one sense, we answer this question when we buy the local homeless street newspaper, decide where to buy our clothes, remember our reusable bags when we shop, donate to disaster relief, or send letters to corporations about labor rights. But given the global scale of injustices related to poverty, environmental change, gender, and labor, can these individual acts really impact the seemingly intractable global social, political, and economic structures that perpetuate and exacerbate them? Moreover, can we respond to injustices in the world in ways that do more than just address their consequences?In this book, Brooke A. Ackerly both answers the question of what should we do, and shows that it's the wrong question to ask. To ask the right question, we need to ground our normative theory of global justice in the lived experience of injustice. Using a feminist critical methodology, she argues that what to do about injustice is not just an ethical or moral question, but a political question about assuming responsibility for injustice, regardless of our causal responsibility and extent of our knowledge of the injustice. Furthermore, it is a matter that needs to be guided by principles of human rights. As she argues, while many understand human rights as political goals or entitlements, they can also guide political strategy. Her aims are twofold: to present a theory of what it means to take responsibility for injustice and for ensuring human rights, as well as to develop a guide for how to take responsibility in ways that support local and global movements for transformative politics. In order to illustrate her theory and guide for action, Ackerly draws on fieldwork on the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, the food crisis of 2008, and strategies from 125 activist organizations working on women's and labor rights across 26 countries. Just Responsibility integrates these ways of taking political responsibility into a rich theory of political community, accountability, and leadership in which taking responsibility for injustice itself transforms the fabric of political life.

It has been well-established that many of the injustices that people around the world experience every day, from food insecurity to unsafe labor conditions and natural disasters, are the result of wide-scale structural problems of politics and economics. These are not merely random personal problems or consequences of bad luck or bad planning. Confronted by this fact, it is natural to ask what should or can we do to mitigate everyday injustices? In one sense, we answer this question when we buy the local homeless street newspaper, decide where to buy our clothes, remember our reusable bags when we shop, donate to disaster relief, or send letters to corporations about labor rights. But given the global scale of injustices related to poverty, environmental change, gender, and labor, can these individual acts really impact the seemingly intractable global social, political, and economic structures that perpetuate and exacerbate them? Moreover, can we respond to injustices in the world in ways that do more than just address their consequences?In this book, Brooke A. Ackerly both answers the question of what should we do, and shows that it's the wrong question to ask. To ask the right question, we need to ground our normative theory of global justice in the lived experience of injustice. Using a feminist critical methodology, she argues that what to do about injustice is not just an ethical or moral question, but a political question about assuming responsibility for injustice, regardless of our causal responsibility and extent of our knowledge of the injustice. Furthermore, it is a matter that needs to be guided by principles of human rights. As she argues, while many understand human rights as political goals or entitlements, they can also guide political strategy. Her aims are twofold: to present a theory of what it means to take responsibility for injustice and for ensuring human rights, as well as to develop a guide for how to take responsibility in ways that support local and global movements for transformative politics. In order to illustrate her theory and guide for action, Ackerly draws on fieldwork on the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, the food crisis of 2008, and strategies from 125 activist organizations working on women's and labor rights across 26 countries. Just Responsibility integrates these ways of taking political responsibility into a rich theory of political community, accountability, and leadership in which taking responsibility for injustice itself transforms the fabric of political life.

Pandemics have quickly become one of the most important subjects of the twenty-first century. This edited volume provides a comparative analysis of the ways in which pandemics are theorized and studied across several disciplines. A Multidisciplinary Approach to Pandemics has two objectives: first, to explore the growing diversity of theories and paradigms developed to study pandemics; and second, to initiate a multidisciplinary dialogue about the ontological, epistemological, paradigmatic, and normative aspects of studying pandemics across disciplines. The study of pandemics is not new. Yet despite the volume of research interest in a host of academic fields, scholars rarely talk across the disciplines. This study seeks to fill that gap by attempting to bridge disciplinary canyons. Eager to encourage this arena of conversation, this book brings together in a single volume essays by political scientists, environmental scholars, legal scholars, clinical pharmacists, economists, scholars of urban planning, scholars in health and medicine schools, and researchers in business and management.

The Oxford Handbook of Grounded and Engaged Normative Theory introduces readers to this burgeoning field of theory and methodology by exploring a range of empirical research practices that center lived experience to develop normative arguments. Theorists who work in this way demonstrate a commitment to expanding thinking about political theory to include those who have a stake in the concepts being studied. They consider the meanings that people make of their own experiences, political context, and histories in the struggle to be recognized by oppressors with epistemic authority. Undoing these histories depends on a commitment to epistemic inclusion, that is, a commitment to look for and attend to modes of knowing and sources of knowledge that are otherwise marginalized by the politics of knowledge or the norms of the discipline.In the last decade, grounded and engaged normative theory has coalesced into a distinctive approach in political science. This Handbook offers a cohesive overview of the field's principles, origins, methodologies, substantive lines of inquiry, and applications. Contributors to the volume enrich theoretical and methodological discussions with chapters full of examples of how the authors themselves have done the work. By laying out multiple theoretical starting points and demonstrating diverse methodological approaches, this volume helps both practitioners and students to better understand what they can learn from and do in this dynamic field.

In Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism Brooke Ackerly demonstrates the shortcomings of contemporary deliberative democratic theory, relativism and essentialism for guiding the practice of social criticism in the real, imperfect world. Drawing theoretical implications from the activism of Third World feminists who help bring to public audiences the voices of women silenced by coercion, Brooke Ackerly provides a practicable model of social criticism. She argues that feminist critics have managed to achieve in practice what other theorists do only incompletely in theory. Complemented by Third World feminist social criticism, deliberative democratic theory becomes critical theory - actionable, coherent, and self-reflective. While a complement to democratic theory, Third World feminist social criticism also addresses the problem in feminist theory associated with attempts to deal with identity politics. Third World feminist social criticism thus takes feminist theory beyond the critical impasse of the tension between anti-relativist and anti-essentialist feminist theory.

In Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism Brooke Ackerly demonstrates the shortcomings of contemporary deliberative democratic theory, relativism and essentialism for guiding the practice of social criticism in the real, imperfect world. Drawing theoretical implications from the activism of Third World feminists who help bring to public audiences the voices of women silenced by coercion, Brooke Ackerly provides a practicable model of social criticism. She argues that feminist critics have managed to achieve in practice what other theorists do only incompletely in theory. Complemented by Third World feminist social criticism, deliberative democratic theory becomes critical theory - actionable, coherent, and self-reflective. While a complement to democratic theory, Third World feminist social criticism also addresses the problem in feminist theory associated with attempts to deal with identity politics. Third World feminist social criticism thus takes feminist theory beyond the critical impasse of the tension between anti-relativist and anti-essentialist feminist theory.

Why is feminist research carried out in international relations (IR)? What are the methodologies and methods that have been developed in order to carry out this research? Feminist Methodologies for International Relations offers students and scholars of IR, feminism, and global politics practical insight into the innovative methodologies and methods that have been developed - or adapted from other disciplinary contexts - in order to do feminist research for IR. Both timely and timeless, this volume makes a diverse range of feminist methodological reflections wholly accessible. Each of the twelve contributors discusses aspects of the relationships between ontology, epistemology, methodology, and method, and how they inform and shape their research. This important and original contribution to the field will both guide and stimulate new thinking.

From the diverse work and often competing insights of women's human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists' concerns about universalizing from particulars and the activists' commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an 'enlightened' way of reasoning, Ackerly's theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights as at once a research ethic, a tool for criticism of injustice and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars and researchers of social movements.

Why is feminist research carried out in international relations (IR)? What are the methodologies and methods that have been developed in order to carry out this research? Feminist Methodologies for International Relations offers students and scholars of IR, feminism, and global politics practical insight into the innovative methodologies and methods that have been developed - or adapted from other disciplinary contexts - in order to do feminist research for IR. Both timely and timeless, this volume makes a diverse range of feminist methodological reflections wholly accessible. Each of the twelve contributors discusses aspects of the relationships between ontology, epistemology, methodology, and method, and how they inform and shape their research. This important and original contribution to the field will both guide and stimulate new thinking.

From the diverse work and often competing insights of women's human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists' concerns about universalizing from particulars and the activists' commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an 'enlightened' way of reasoning, Ackerly's theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights as at once a research ethic, a tool for criticism of injustice and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars and researchers of social movements.

Guiding students step-by-step through the research process while simultaneously introducing a range of debates, challenges and tools that feminist scholars use, the second edition of this popular textbook provides a vital resource to those students and researchers approaching their studies from a feminist perspective. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book covers everything from research design, analysis and presentation, to formulating research questions, data collection and publishing research. Offering the most comprehensive and practical guide to the subject available, the text is now also fully updated to take account of recent developments in the field, including participatory action research, new technologies and methods for working with big data and social media.Doing Feminist Research is required reading for undergraduate and postgraduate courses taking a feminist approach to social science methodology, research design and methods. It is the ideal guide for all students and scholars carrying out feminist research, whether in the fields of international relations, political science, interdisciplinary international and global studies, development studies or gender and women’s studies.New to this Edition:- New discussions of contemporary research methods, including participatory action research, survey research and technology, and methods for big data and social media.- Updated to reflect recent developments in feminist and gender theory, with references to the latest research examples and new boxes considering recent shifts in the social and political sciences.- Brand new boxed examples throughout covering topics including collaborations, femicide, negotiating changing research environments and the pros and cons of feminist participatory action research.- The text is now written in the first (authors) and second (readers) person making the text clearer, more consistent and inclusive from the reader point of view.