Michael Neu – författare

Questions of complicity emerge within a range of academic disciplines and everyday practices. Using a wide range of case studies, this book explores the concept of and cases of complicity in an interdisciplinary context. It expands orthodox understandings of the concept by including the notion of structural complicity, revealing seemingly inconsequential, everyday forms of complicity; examining different kinds and degrees of individual and collective complicity; and introducing complicity as a lens through which to analyse and critically reflect upon social structures and relations. It also explores complicity through a series of cases emerging from a variety of academic disciplines and professional practices. Its various chapters reflect on, amongst other things, the complicity of politicians, self-proclaimed feminists, health care workers, fictional characters, social movement activists and academic defenders of torture.

Questions of complicity emerge within a range of academic disciplines and everyday practices. Using a wide range of case studies, this book explores the concept of and cases of complicity in an interdisciplinary context. It expands orthodox understandings of the concept by including the notion of structural complicity, revealing seemingly inconsequential, everyday forms of complicity; examining different kinds and degrees of individual and collective complicity; and introducing complicity as a lens through which to analyse and critically reflect upon social structures and relations. It also explores complicity through a series of cases emerging from a variety of academic disciplines and professional practices. Its various chapters reflect on, amongst other things, the complicity of politicians, self-proclaimed feminists, health care workers, fictional characters, social movement activists and academic defenders of torture.

This book critically examines "just liberal violence": forms of direct and structural violence that others may be "justly" subjected to. Michael Neu focusses on liberal defences of torture, war and sweatshop labour, respectively, and argues that each of these defences fails and that all of them fail for similar reasons. Liberal defences of violence share several blind spots, and it is the task of this book to reveal them. Neu offers a unifying perspective that reveals the three kinds of defence of violence under investigation as being essentially one of a kind. He demonstrates that each of these defences suffers from serious and irreparable intellectual defects and articulates these defects in a synthesised critique. The book goes on to accuse liberal defenders of being complicit in contemporary structures and practices of violence, and highlights the implications of this argument for moral and political philosophers who spend their professional lives thinking about morality and politics.

This book critically examines "just liberal violence": forms of direct and structural violence that others may be "justly" subjected to. Michael Neu focusses on liberal defences of torture, war and sweatshop labour, respectively, and argues that each of these defences fails and that all of them fail for similar reasons. Liberal defences of violence share several blind spots, and it is the task of this book to reveal them. Neu offers a unifying perspective that reveals the three kinds of defence of violence under investigation as being essentially one of a kind. He demonstrates that each of these defences suffers from serious and irreparable intellectual defects and articulates these defects in a synthesised critique. The book goes on to accuse liberal defenders of being complicit in contemporary structures and practices of violence, and highlights the implications of this argument for moral and political philosophers who spend their professional lives thinking about morality and politics.

Despite the disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and ever more visible evidence of the horrors of war, the concepts of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’ and ‘Just War’ enjoy widespread legitimacy and continue to exercise an unshakeable grip on our imaginations.Robin Dunford and Michael Neu provide a clear and comprehensive critique of both Just War Theory and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, deconstructing the philosophical, moral and political arguments that underpin them. In doing so, they show how proponents of Just War and R2P have tended to treat killing in a way which obscures the complex and often messy reality of war, and pays little heed to the human impact of such conflicts. Going further, they provide answers to such difficult questions as ‘Surely it would have been just for us to intervene in the Rwandan genocide?’An essential guide to one of the most difficult moral and political issues of our age.