The Bounds of Responsibility [1 ed.] 9781848883154, 9789004374324

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The Bounds of Responsibility

Probing the Boundaries Series Editors Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard Dr Ken Monteith Advisory Board Karl Spracklen Katarzyna Bronk Jo Chipperfield Ann-Marie Cook Peter Mario Kreuter S Ram Vemuri

Simon Bacon Stephen Morris John Parry Ana Borlescu Peter Twohig Kenneth Wilson John Hochheimer

A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/ The Persons Hub ‘Living Responsibly: Reflecting on the Ethical Issues of Everyday Life’

2014

The Bounds of Responsibility

Edited by

Tadeusz Lewandowski and Elisabeta Gabriela Ilie

Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford, United Kingdom

© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2014 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom. +44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-315-4 First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2014. First Edition.

Table of Contents Introduction Tadeusz Lewandowski and Elisabeta Gabriela Ilie Suicide and Responsibility Gavin Fairbairn Shaping Imaginary Geographies into Inclusive Cities: Approaching Design for the Homeless Elisabeta Gabriela Ilie ‘I Dream to Live on My Own Away from Family’: From Dependence to Freedom, a Shared Dream by Teens and Young Adults with Cognitive Disabilities Laurence Emmanuelle Hadjas

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Acting Respectfully towards Adults with Learning Disabilities Gavin Fairbairn and Susan Fairbairn

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Unethical Brotherly Love: Zell Kravinsky and Maximum Human Utility Tadeusz Lewandowski

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What Should We Consume? Virginia Gichuru Markets that Disappoint: The Need for Responsible Consumption Steven Hinson Responsibility and Restricted Economies Domenico Cortese

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Introduction Tadeusz Lewandowski and Elisabeta Gabriela Ilie This volume touches on a diverse array of topics pertinent our fundamental obligations toward others. The chapters are based on papers presented at the 4th Global Conference on Responsible Living, organised by Inter-Disciplinary.Net in May of 2014, and held in Lisbon, Portugal. The delegates – a group of academics representing four continents and nine counties from the USA and Kenya to the UK, Italy, and Romania – offered highly innovative models and philosophies for responsible living, covering the areas of consumption, bioethics, community inclusion, disability, the EU debt crisis, and the body. Each presenter, nevertheless, grappled with the central question of what we owe others, whether on the personal, societal, industrial, governmental, or international level. Naturally we all have, or likely should have, responsibilities to others. The problem is how far these responsibilities are realised and extended, so as not to result in a paternalism that creates dependence (which can harm both those who give and those who receive), or conversely, ignore others’ vital needs (which can lead to social breakdown and even the deaths of our fellow humans). All of the following chapters examine the issue of responsibility’s limits in some way, coming to conclusions of differing degrees, but agreeing on the imperative to integrate some substantial philosophy of responsible living into both social structures and everyday human behaviour. This book’s title, The Bounds of Responsibility, is meant to suggest both how responsibilities should in some cases be limited, and can often be limiting. For while we cannot take full responsibility for all those we encounter, in whatever capacity, we can neither break away, in good conscience, from the obligations that define humans and the social sphere in which we live. This need for boundaries is reflected in the many questions the following chapters ask, beginning with whether we, as (perhaps) the sole owners of our bodies, may do with them what we will. In the first chapter, Gavin Fairbairn confronts the question of where responsibility lies when ‘attempted suicide’ fails. He examines the case of Claire Burchell, who won £2.8 million in damages from the UK health service because the ambulance service took too long to reach her after she had deliberately swallowed a lethal concoction of pain killers and alcohol. Left an invalid, Fairbairn suggests that responsibility for Burchell’s state falls not only on others, but Burchell herself. This issue of whether those who commit suicide are responsible for their actions opens the door to further questions concerning suicide being a potentially responsible act (in some circumstances), or an act whose causes can sometimes be found in the (irresponsible) actions of others. The second chapter, authored by Elisabeta Gabriela Ilie, provides an excellent example of how responsibility to others can be translated not only into public policy, but public design. Her chapter pioneers a new, inclusive solution to an often

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__________________________________________________________________ excluded portion of the urban population, the homeless. In challenging conventional notions of urban planning, Ilie proposes a conceptual framework of ‘imaginary geographies,’ in which ‘homelessness narratives’ inform an inclusive urban design theory that empowers the marginalised and facilitates self-expression. Laurence Emmanuelle Hadjas’s chapter presents both the story of her daughter with a cognitive disability, adopted from Cambodia, combined with data from interviews with youths with a similar disability in Los Angeles, California. Here the issue of responsibility takes a differing cast, as she illustrates that support for those with cognitive disabilities must be offered. Yet this involves, perhaps more than anything, the need for caregivers to ‘let go,’ and allow those with disabilities to assume responsibility in leading their own lives, and engaging in social life with their own, unique voices. The dual solution of inclusion and independence, then, constitutes the best manner in which to enable a person with a disability. Continuing on the issue of the disabled, in chapter four Gavin and Susan Fairbain provide another model of acting responsibly towards adults with learning disabilities. They focus on the case of a close friend, ‘Jan,’ who uses children’s songs with adults, and the criticism she received for their supposedly demeaning or infantilising nature. The matter of ‘age-appropriateness,’ they argue, is muddled by such simplistic reasoning, as judgments about whether such songs are irresponsible or ethically dubious ignore the greater context in which the songs are utilised, and the individual purposes and approaches of those who work with the disabled. The theme of acting responsibly towards those who face more difficult lives continues in Tadeusz Lewandowski’s chapter, which offers an examination of a man who cannot stop claiming responsibility for others, Zell Kravinsky. In 2003 Kravinsky donated a kidney to a complete stranger and became a brief media sensation through preaching his philosophy of ‘maximum human utility.’ With it, Kravinsky justifies the death of healthier, well-off persons through lethal organ donation to save the lives of others who may do more good in the world, or others of greater number. However ostensibly altruistic, what Kravinsky ultimately advocates the complete devaluation of the individual and the proliferation of selfabnegation for the purpose of utilitarian calculations, in the name of an ethical model for taking responsibility for others gone dangerously wrong. The need for functioning, rational ethical models in our social structures is taken up in Virginia Gichuru’s chapter on the ethically acceptability of GM foods in Kenya, viewed through Aristotelian principles. In assessing the Kenyan government’s efforts to maintain bio-safety in a world increasingly awash with genetic modification, she focuses on what measures can be taken to achieve the common good, namely food security and human dignity, and the possible pitfalls of embracing modification. What is needed, argues Gichuru, is both scientific and ethical education on the advantages and disadvantages of GM crops, coupled with competent governance, before any far-reaching programme can be considered.

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__________________________________________________________________ The above ethical considerations of how to use the world’s resources and achieve the common good is taken up in Steven Hinson subsequent chapter on responsible consumption. Hinson presents an original model of consumption with two good types, necessity and premium, and two generations, present and future, as well as three proposed forms of ethical consumption: sympathetic, constrained, and radically limited, designed to increase utility, decrease exploitation, and manage the environment. In contrasting and comparing these models, a route to decreasing the burning issues of geographical and generational economic inequality appears, and does an implicit assessment of the boundaries and obligations that come with consuming within the global economy. As Domenico Cortese’s final chapter shows, Hinson’s interest in acting responsibly within the often corrupt and exploitative global financial system features dimensions beyond responsible consumption, reaching to the manner in which governments handle the vicissitudes of the markets. Cortese’s chapter on the ethics of the EU debt crisis and bailout argues that the path that causes least human suffering is the most responsible, much different to the culture of austerity that has developed within the discourses of capitalism. This discourse has become a cultural attitude of responsibility in which repaying a debt outweighs considerations of increasing human happiness, leading to suffering rather than renewal and original thinking. Perhaps the above reference to the importance of human well-being is a good note on which to conclude, for the bounds of responsibility to ourselves and others, as explored in all of these chapters, should obviously facilitate rather than deny this fundamental aspiration. After all, encouraging others to be responsible for themselves and others, living responsibly within the ethical boundaries we set for ourselves, and adhering to those limits that ensure the common good, all seek to diminish the harm our existence inevitably implies.

Suicide and Responsibility Gavin Fairbairn Abstract In the paper I presented at Inter-Disciplinary.Net’s first conference on suicide in 2010, I discussed the question of where responsibility lies when ‘attempted suicide’ goes wrong. My interest in that question was sparked by the story of Claire Burchell, who in 2005 was awarded damages of £2.8 million when a UK ambulance service admitted having taken too long to reach her after an emergency call by her husband when he discovered that she had taken an overdose. I was intrigued by the idea that responsibility for the devastatingly poor state in which Mrs Burchell ended up could be laid solely at the door of those who had failed to reach her in time. It seems to me that in Mrs Burchell’s case there was good reason to consider that responsibility for that outcome might justifiably be shared more widely. In particular it seemed (and seems) to me that in any suicidal or apparently suicidal act, the protagonist, and in that instance Claire Burchell, must carry a significant degree of responsibility for their fate, whether they live or die. In this chapter I continue my exploration of responsibility in suicide, but expand my area of interest to include successful as well as unsuccessful suicides. In doing so I focus mainly on two questions: 1) Who is responsible for the results of a suicidal or apparently suicidal act? 2) Can others be responsible for the suicidal act of one who kills or tries to kill himself? Key Words: Suicide, ‘attempted suicide,’ responsibility, Claire Burchell, self destruction, self killing. ***** Who is responsible when one person kills another in cold blood, having set out to do so, because he wants the other person dead? In most countries, the answer would be the same: the person who, for example, pulls the trigger of the gun, poisons the drink or wields the knife that inflicts the fatal wound. Where the person who does the killing does so with malicious or evil intent, he is guilty of murder, because he is both causally and morally responsible for bringing about another’s death, and did so with bad intentions. He is also responsible for other results of his crime, including the distress experienced by the victim’s family and friends, and by anyone else who is somehow touched by her death. Suicide is like murder, because in each a person is killed, but it differs from murder, because in suicide the person who dies also does the killing, or arranges that his death occurs. Suicide is also akin to murder in the matter of responsibility, because as in murder, in suicide the person who does the killing is causally and

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__________________________________________________________________ morally responsible both for the death he brings about, and for the distress that it causes. The suicidal and apparently suicidal acts in which people engage, raise questions about the meaning of life and about the motivations that might underpin a person’s act in ending or trying to end his life, or intentionally acting in such a way that others believe that he tried to kill himself. They also raise a range of interesting and important questions about responsibility, including the question of whether suicide can sometimes be, not just a legitimate choice for an individual, but a responsible one. Those who think that it can clearly believe that killing oneself can be a valid choice in responsible living. They might argue, for example, that someone who had reason to believe that she was a physical, emotional and financial burden on her family, could both live and die responsibly by killing herself, in order to relieve them of the worry for which her living was responsible. More plausible examples of responsible suicide, to my mind, might be provided by the stories of individual who arrange their deaths in order to draw attention to matters of social and political importance. One well known example is the death in Wenceslas Square in Prague, of Jan Palach, the Czech student who, in August 1968, suicided by setting fire to himself, to protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. 1 In this chapter I want to devote most of my space to two other questions:  

Who is responsible for the results of a suicidal or apparently suicidal act? Can others be responsible for the suicidal act of one who kills or tries to kill himself?

1. Who Is Responsible for the Results of a Suicidal or Apparently Suicidal Act? In 2010 I presented a paper at another Inter-Disciplinary.Net conference, on Making Sense of Suicide, in which, drawing on earlier work about the motivations and intentions that can underpin acts that seem to have been motivated by a protagonist’s intention to end his life, I began to raise some new questions about responsibility in relation to suicidal acts, 2 focussing especially on the question of where responsibility lies when ‘attempted suicide’ goes wrong. I am interested in the differences between suicidal acts that are intended to end in death, and apparently suicidal acts by which the protagonist does not intend to die. Such acts include ‘suicide gestures’ in which the protagonist, ‘like an actor in a one man play...stages, directs and performs in an enactment of his death’ 3 and acts of a kind that I refer to as ‘cosmic roulette,’ in which a person gambles with his life in a way that could bring his death. Neither the suicide gesturer nor the cosmic gambler aims to achieve his death. Rather the gesturer intends to change his life, by

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__________________________________________________________________ changing the ways in which others think about him, and act towards him, while the cosmic gambler invites god or the cosmos to decide whether he lives or dies. There is a sense in which both the suicide gesturer and the cosmic gambler abdicate (or attempt to abdicate) responsibility for themselves and their lives. The suicide gesturer tries to offload responsibility for changing his life, onto those for whose benefit he performs his gesture, and whose thinking and behaviour towards him he hopes to change, while the cosmic gambler tries to offload responsibility onto God or the cosmos, in this case, for his future or lack of a future. Distinguishing between suicidal acts of different kinds is important, because although someone for whom life is bad, who is unable or unwilling to use rational means to change it, and who gestures suicide to draw attention to his distress, undoubtedly needs help, it is likely to be unhelpful to treat him as if he has survived an unequivocal attempt to kill hmself. And something similar is true of those who puts their life into the balance by taking a cosmic gamble, My interest in the question of where responsibility lies when suicide goes wrong was sparked by the story of Claire Burchell, a British woman who, in 2005, was awarded damages of £2.8 million when an overdose of painkillers combined with alcohol, left her severely disabled. 4 Despite the fact that she intentionally ingested the painkillers and alcohol that made hospital treatment necessary, with the intention of ending her life, it was claimed that others were responsible for the poor state in which she ended up – confined to a wheelchair; with severe memory loss; weakness in her limbs and with rigid and simplistic thinking; that is why the payment of £2.8 million was awarded. I was intrigued by the idea that responsibility for Mrs Burchell’s devastatingly poor state, could be laid solely at the door of those who had failed to reach her in time, despite the fact that they admitted having taken longer than they should have done in reaching her. After all, had Mrs Burchell not ingested the painkillers or drunk the alcohol that damaged her, the ambulance crew would never have been involved. In any suicidal or apparently suicidal act, the protagonist must carry a significant degree of responsibility for her fate, whether she lives or dies. Of course, surrounding most people who act suicidally or apparently suicidally, there will be a network of others to whom some degree of responsibility might be apportioned, because of things they have done or left undone. In Mrs Burchell’s case these others might have included her doctor as well as her husband and other family members. Nonetheless, anyone who acts in what seems like a suicidal fashion is undoubtedly causally responsible for the results of his actions. And unless for some reason he is incapable of acting responsibly, it is clear that he must also carry the major share of moral responsibility for the results of his actions, including any negative effects that they have on others. Another take on the idea that others might somehow be responsible for the acts of those who kill themselves or try to do so, lies at the centre of a number of stories in Bateson’s book The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge. 5 However,

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__________________________________________________________________ rather than focussing as I have so far, on acts that do not lead to death, but to a greatly reduced life, Bateson’s focuses on claims that the authorities who have charge of the Golden Gate Bridge can be held responsible for the suicidal deaths of those who jump from this iconic landmark, as if their failure to prevent such individuals leaping from the bridge was the major factor in bringing about their deaths. Sometimes those making such claims in the stories he discusses, go even further, alleging that the authorities somehow encouraged the suicider to jump, by failing to provide a suicide barrier to prevent prospective suiciders leaping to their deaths. Bateson paints a picture of the place that the Golden Gate Bridge occupies in the imagination of the American people, as well of the part that it has played in the lives of more than 1500 people who have jumped from it since it was built almost 80 years ago, most of whom have died. In doing so, he draws on stories about families who have taken legal action against the authorities for failing to prevent their loved one from jumping to their death. Among these is the story of the parents of Kenneth Pattison, a nineteen year old who died after jumping from the bridge in May 1977. 6 On May 27 that year, the fortieth anniversary of the bridge’s opening, Pattison’s parents made a claim against the Bridge District, in which they argued that ‘...the board was negligent in not providing a suicide barrier.’ 7 Their claim, which was the first of its kind, did not seek financial redress; all they wanted was a safe bridge. More than 20 years later Renee Milligan, whose 14 year old daughter Marissa had jumped to her death, filed a lawsuit against the Golden Gate Bridge District for ‘wrongful-death’ in December 2001. 8 She claimed that ‘Through their acts and omissions,’ the defendants had ‘authorized, encouraged, and condoned government-assisted suicide.’ 9 Like the Pattisons, she wanted, not financial compensation, but to force the authorities to make the bridge safe by erecting a ‘suicide barrier.’ In their response to Milligan’s claims, the lawyers representing the Bridge Authority pointed out that she could not show that her daughter had used the bridge ‘with due care for the purpose for which it was designed.’ 10 Their point was that since the bridge was not made for jumping from, but for travelling across, anyone jumping from it was not using it for the purpose for which it was intended. By implication, we might assume, responsibility for the results of using the bridge for a purpose other than the one for which it was intended, must lie with those who do so, and with no-one else. Finally, Bateson discusses the case of Maria Martinez, 11 whose 32 year old son Leonard’s body was never found after he jumped in June 1993. Her claim against the Bridge District cited their ‘“failure to protect the public from access to dangerous and unprotected bridge rails” and “failure to provide suicide protection barriers.”’ 12 Disputing Martinez’s claim that the Bridge District was responsible for her son’s death, an attorney argued that, ‘There’s no question that deliberately jumping off a bridge that’s over 200 feet from the water is not exercising due care.’ 13

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__________________________________________________________________ So far, in addressing the question of who is responsible for the results of a suicidal or apparently suicidal act, I have focussed mainly on their effects on the person who takes the suicidal or apparently suicidal action. I want now, to turn to the effects those suicidal acts can have on others, because the results of suicide and other apparently suicidal acts clearly include much more than the presence or absence of a corpse in the mortuary. In most, though not all instances of suicide, the families and friends of a person who takes suicidal or apparently suicidal action will be traumatised, whether or not he dies. The aftermath of suicide for families can be terrible. Consider, for example, how Paula’s family must have suffered when one day, having eaten lunch with them, she walked calmly to the garden shed, poured a gallon of petrol over herself and set light to it, or how John’s parents felt when, following an apparently irresolvable quarrel with them, he set fire to himself at the side of a major road. The harm suffered by family and friends following less dramatic suicides than these is, of course, just as real. The harm that comes to those who love or care about a person who suicides needs to be made public,to make it more likely that anyone who is contemplating ending his life is aware of the harm he might cause to those he loves. Less obviously, perhaps, we also need publicly to recognise the harm that can come to people outside his family and close circle of friends. This group is quite large and includes anyone who has had contact with him in the past, however fleeting, as well as those whose contact with him comes after he is already dead, and especially those who have to deal with the aftermath – with cleaning up psychologically as well as physically, the mess he has left behind. Consider, for example, the harm that came to Charlie Mansfield, a young policeman sent to investigate complaints by residents in a block of flats, about a terrible smell in the block, who discovered the decomposing body of a man who had killed himself some weeks earlier, or to the young man, who in a causal sense at least, was responsible for the death of Orlane Reaper when she threw herself in front of his car, dying horribly as a result. 2. Can Others Be Responsible for the Suicidal Act of One Who Kills or Tries to Kill Himself? Earlier I addressed the question of whether another person can be held responsible, because, for example, he did not prevent another person acting so as to end his life, or did not act in ways that saved his life after he had taken such action. I want, finally, to turn to situations in which we might be inclined to consider another or others responsible for pushing a person towards suicidal action. There are many instances of this kind in history and in literature. For example, in Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, 14 Juliet, in an effort to avoid a marriage she does not want, drinks a potion that allows her to feign death by sending her to sleep in a way that conveys to others the impression of death.

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__________________________________________________________________ Her ruse is so successful that when Romeo hears the tragic news of her ‘death,’ he goes to the crypt, drinks the poison he has bought to kill himself and dies beside her. Finding him dead when she wakes up a short time later, Juliet kisses him in the hope that enough poison remains on his lips to kill her, and then finishes the job by stabbing herself with a dagger. Juliet was responsible for Romeo’s death and he was responsible for hers, though neither intended to drive the other to suicide. There are, however, situations in which individuals are deliberately driven to suicide by others. In German the term ‘Jemanden selbstmorden,’ literally to self-kill or suicide somebody, describes the kind of situation I have in mind here. 15 A recently broadcast Belgian crime drama, entitled Salamander 16 in English, featured several examples of the kind of thing I have in mind, in which public figures, faced with the prospect of a life ruined by exposure for serious and/or embarrassing misdemeanours, often of a personal kind, suicide, rather than living with the results of such exposure. And in history one situation in which it is claimed that an individual was ‘suicided’ by others is found in the death of the composer Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky, who some people, including Holden, 17 believe was driven to suicide by a so called ‘court of honour’ convened by a group of friends from the school he had attended. These friends, it is alleged, were so affronted by his homosexual inclinations and behaviour, and by the disgrace that they believed it brought on the school they all attended and on them as former students, that they drove him to suicide. So far the situations I have examined, in which one person has responsibility for another’s suicide, because he induces or even drives the other to kill himself, have come either from fiction or from history. However, there are a great many examples in real life and in the present day, of situations in which people of all ages, kill themselves because of the ways they are treated by others, and in drawing to a close I want, briefly, to draw attention to some examples. The first concerns Ania, a 14 year old girl in Gdańsk, Poland, who killed herself following an incident at school on October 20, 2006, when she was hideously attacked by a group of boys. Reporting the incident, Domańska writes: A teacher leaves her classroom at Junior High School No. 2 in Gdańsk. Five boys surround Ania, a beautiful, shy girl. They pull her out from behind the desk and pull down her pants. Laughing and swearing, they grope her and pretend to rape her. The 20minute incident is recorded on a mobile phone. 18 It was on the day after this incident that Ania used a skipping rope to hang herself in her home. Bullying, such as that suffered by Ania occurs everywhere and it is more and more common for mobile phones and the internet to be involved, as in her story and that of Holly Grogan, a 15 year old pupil at an English public school. On 16

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__________________________________________________________________ September 2009, Holly, who was said to have had a ‘zest for life,’ was killed by oncoming traffic after jumping 30ft from a bridge onto a dual-carriageway, to escape from the bullying she had suffered via her Facebook page. 19 Finally, and moving to the US, in September 2010, is the story of Tyler Clementi, an 18-yearold student at Rutgers University, who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, when he found that his roommate had secretly streamed over the internet, a romantic encounter he had had with another man. 20 Romeo and Juliet were each responsible for the suicide of the other, though neither acted from bad intentions. By contrast, from the account I have shared, Tchaikovsky may have been the victim of a so-called ‘court of honour,’ who pushed him into killing himself to satisfy their sense of what is right, and were thus responsible for his death. The three present day stories about young people who killed themselves after being bullied mercilessly by peers, are all, like the story of Tchaikovsky, examples of situations in which it seems clear that the bullies who drove them to suicide are responsible for the fact that they died. I think this is the case, regardless of how many people were involved in the bullying and regardless of their part in it, or how a court of law would assess their part in driving another person to suicide.

Notes 1

Charles University Multimedia project, Jan Palach, accessed 7 June 2014, http://www.janpalach.cz/en. 2 Gavin Fairbairn, ‘Who Is Responsible When “Attempted Suicide” Goes Wrong?’, in Making Sense of Suicide, eds. Kathy Mackay and Jann E. Schlimme (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2014); Gavin Fairbairn, ‘Suicide, Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: When People Choose to Die, Does It Matter What We Call It?’, Roczniki Psychologiczne [The Annals of Psychology] 12 (2009): 97-120; Gavin Fairbairn, Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethics of Self Harm (London: Routledge, 1995). 3 Fairbairn, ‘Suicide, Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia’, 93. 4 W. Pavia, ‘Mother Wins £2.8 After Suicide Bid’, Times Online, 6 June 2005, accessed 17 September 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article746142.ece. 5 John Bateson, The Final Leap; Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012). 6 Ibid., 40-41. 7 Ibid., 40. 8 Ibid., 55-57. 9 Ibid., 57. 10 Ibid.

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Ibid., 67-70. Ibid., 69. 13 Ibid. 14 Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). 15 David Daube, ‘The Linguistics of Suicide’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 387-437. 16 Ward Hulselmans, Salamander (Skyline Entertainment, 2012). 17 Anthony Holden, Tchaikovsky: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1995). 18 Anna Domańska, ‘The Shadow in Our Schools’, Warsaw Voice, 20 December 2006, accessed 28 October 2009, http://www.warsawvoice.pl/view/13372/. 19 Daily Telegraph, ‘Pupil, 15, Fell to Death after Accusation She Slept with Girl’s Brother’, accessed 7 June 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7369402/Pupil-15-fell-to-dea th-after-accusation-she-slept-with-girls-brother.html. 20 Ed Pilkington, ‘Tyler Clementi, Student Outed as Gay on Internet, Jumps to His Death’, accessed 4 June 2014, http://www.theguardian.co,/world/2010/sep/30/tyler-clementi-gay-student-suicide. 12

Bibliography Bate, Jonathan, and Eric Rasmussen. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. Bateson, John. The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012. Charles University Multimedia Project. Jan Palach. Accessed 7 June 2014, http://www.janpalach.cz/en. Daily Telegraph. ‘Pupil, 15, Fell to Death after Accusation She Slept with Girl’s Brother’. Accessed 7 June 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7369402/Pupil-15-fell-to-de ath-after-accusation-she-slept-with-girls-brother.html. Daube, David. ‘The Linguistics of Suicide’. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 387–437. Domańska, Anna. ‘The Shadow in Our Schools’. Warsaw Voice, 20 December, 2006. Accessed 28 October 2009. http://www.warsawvoice.pl/view/13372/.

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__________________________________________________________________ Fairbairn, Gavin. Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethics of Self Harm. London: Routledge, 1995. ———. ‘Suicide, Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: When People Choose to Die, Does It Matter What We Call It?’ Roczniki Psychologiczne [The Annals of Psychology] 12 (2009): 97–120. ———. ‘Who Is Responsible When “Attempted Suicide” Goes Wrong?’. In Making Sense of Suicide, edited by Kathy Mackay and Jann E. Schlimme. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2014. Holden, Anthony. Tchaikovsky: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1995. Hulselmans, Ward. Salamander. Skyline Entertainment, 2012. Pavia, W. ‘Mother Wins £2.8 after Suicide Bid’. Times Online, June 2005. Accessed 17 September 2009. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article746142.ece. Pilkington, Ed. ‘Tyler Clementi, Student Outed as Gay on Internet, Jumps to His Death’. Accessed 4 June 2014. http://www.theguardian.co,/world/2010/sep/30/tyler-clementi-gay-student-suicide. Gavin Fairbairn is an applied philosopher whose publications on, for example, education, disability, suicide, reconciliation, and academic writing are underpinned by interests in storytelling, empathy and respect for persons. Since 2012 he has been Professor Emeritus of Ethics and Language at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Shaping Imaginary Geographies into Inclusive Cities: Approaching Design for the Homeless Elisabeta Gabriela Ilie Abstract Within the inclusive urban design debate, the mainstream research steps away from traditional urban design ideals of place-making and deals predominantly with the physical accessibility and free use of the built environment. This research challenges commonly accepted notions of city-making, particularly urban inclusivity by design, and the actual extent of this inclusion in the case of marginalised groups. The chapter builds on sociological theories of socio-cultural production of space/place and of the body in space in order to explore an alternative to traditional approaches to inclusive urban design. The proposed conceptual framework assumes the knowledge sprung from the in-place, lived-in experiences of individuals to be invaluable to an inclusive urban design process. The intent is to introduce imaginary geographies, personal embedded constructions of the urban reality and one’s place in it, as potential disciplinary working concepts. To probe this, the research uses the case of the homeless as an example of urban marginalised groups. The underlining aim is to introduce the adopted sociological toolset into the urban design discipline. The research starts from fieldcollected urban narratives surrounding the urban homeless, which are subsequently translated into a specific visual urban design language characterised by tracing and mapping uses, significations, and appropriations of (public) space. Homeless narratives constitute, as a result, the prime material to inform inclusive urban design theory towards practices that are more empowering and involving of contemporary excluded social groups at all stages of the urban design process. The aim is to create a conceptual framework aware of a diversity of urban users, a framework that supports and facilitates self-expressions of marginalised individuals at different times in different places in the city. Key Words: Inclusive urban design, the homeless, imaginary geographies. ***** 1. Rethinking Inclusive Urban Design The city in its complexity is raw material for design disciplines’ theory and practice foci. The present chapter is developed within the working framework of one of these disciplines, namely urban design. Within the discipline itself, a mounting concern for the quality of urban life for those living and using the city has led to an on-going debate on equal access to public space, under the umbrella concept of inclusive urban design. 1 However, mainstream inclusive design research steps away from traditional urban design

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__________________________________________________________________ ideals of place-making, and deals predominantly with the physical accessibility and free use of the built environment. 2 As a result, although inclusive urban design theory promotes free, undifferentiated use of public space for all users alike, it has its limitations in practice. The present chapter starts by anchoring the inclusive urban design (InUD) debate in the discipline’s specifically-established concerns of place-making. Consequently, the inquiry goes forward by challenging commonly accepted notions of urban inclusivity by design, and raises a multi-faceted discussion. On the one hand, at a conceptual level, arguments of ‘inclusive urban design’ appear to be vague and incomplete. On the other hand, urban design theory suggests a narrow understanding of vulnerable city users as products and producers of (public) space. Here, an alternative way of understanding and reading the city by means of lived-in user experiences is proposed. This results in a switch in theorising urban design place-making and InUD, a switch that draws with it a study of little explored methods and tools with the potential to ultimately facilitate documenting and producing the urban. The increasing role of urban design at a societal level is clear in policy making and has become an instrument for good governance. 3 Mainstream urban design practices present themselves as beyond aesthetic concerns; they are commonly regarded as facilitators of social cohesion. 4 Nevertheless, having the concept of inclusion linked predominantly to fragmented communities is an indication of a loose end in decision making processes. Concepts of place-making remain at the core of urban design research, 5 as approaches to understanding the urban experience are continuously re-evaluated. 6 In order for a debate on inclusive urban design practices to be valid within current place-making concerns, alternative tools and methods are to be explored with the aim of gaining knowledge about urban users’ reality, and consequently integrating this into the urban design process. This study argues for an alternative to previously laid out approaches to InUD. This alternative takes the form of a proposed conceptual framework, that of imaginary geographies, which assumes the experience-based gathered knowledge of individuals living/using specific spaces to be invaluable to an inclusive urban design process within those particular spaces. By means of imaginary geographies, the aim is to document the everyday livedin experiences of the urban user in order to account for the diversity of lifeworlds at the base of co-producing the city. 7 In this way, collected journey-narratives, personal views of the world, of space, and one’s place in it, are meant to contribute to unexplored understandings of the urban (experience) and city-making processes. In the specific case of inclusive urban design inquiry, by learning from marginalised groups, the city as a concept is subject to re-interpretation, with implications for both urban design theory and practices.

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__________________________________________________________________ The argument here is not for public spaces to be equally inclusive at all times for all users, but rather for facilitating the creation of spaces sensitive to vulnerable groups, which allow for difference. The focus in this particular chapter is rooted in the context of recent world economic dynamics, where levels of unemployment and poverty have increased substantially, adding to a major societal problem: homelessness. 8 Mainstream research anchors homelessness in the socio-economic arena, dependent on overlapping issues such as housing policies or employment. Rather than discussing ‘homelessness’ as a mere outcome of external causes, this chapter chooses to approach the homeless themselves, as individuals, by placing them in a more socio-spatial context and aiming to understand them and their lived-in experiences within the city. Framing relationships between the homeless and the city is relevant for the urban design discipline, as ‘urban homelessness…is coconstituted with the urban fabric; sidewalks, shelters…street…dust…trees.’ 9 The homeless are an inherent part of the city, a constitutive element of the prime matter with which urban designers work. As such, overlooking this specific group in design decision making is an indication of an insubstantial understanding of the city and a fragmented urban design process. Secondly, in the context of a broader intra-disciplinary debate, the homeless represent a challenging example of underachieved urban inclusion. Furthermore, the homeless as a social group represents an extreme case of urban marginalisation given the long-time persistence of this urban issue and the group’s severe living conditions. Exploring tools and methods to counteract urban exclusion in the case of the homeless could therefore be the first attempt to engage differently with marginalisation processes from an urban design perspective. 2. The Homeless City With an estimated 100 million homeless people worldwide, 10 the homeless are often dealt with as passive space users in design and decision-making processes alike. National welfare systems form structures that are more likely to institutionalise homelessness 11 rather than fighting it, leading to what M. Lancione calls ‘the Foucauldian ‘economy of homelessness.’ 12 Night shelters and day centres run on standardised working hours and cannot provide for the number of incomers, kitchen soup barely gives enough nutrition to survive, social workers and volunteers offer advice and training, but cannot guarantee the success or even the opportunity of a job. 13 Seldom are people helped back into employment, even when provided with affordable housing, as they lack the necessary support to fully reintegrate back into society and perform successfully in their jobs. Too often, the success stories come to account for a vicious circle of in-and-out-of homelessness. 14 In recent years, homelessness as an urban (social) problem has become a subject of frequent discussions in an attempt to tackle growing social problems.

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Shaping Imaginary Geographies into Inclusive Cities

__________________________________________________________________ However, most policy strategies have a top-down character, which contributes all the more in perpetuating social differentiation and stigma. Moreover, such policies regard the homeless as a homogenous group, in which needs and capabilities are undifferentiated. In consequence, solutions are rarely tailored so as to meet demands. Mainstream literature suggests that in many cases solutions for tackling homelessness fail to act in the best interest of those living homeless, while in-place policies and definitions of being homeless reinforce related discourses and practices. 15 As a result, social inequalities and group vulnerabilities are enhanced and (re)produced continuously. 16 Arguments for the human right to (a dignified) life, 17 for local capital saving by investing in effective homeless care, 18 along with concerns of public health and an overall better quality living environment, are indicative of a need for alternative approaches to the spreading issue of homelessness. The homeless experience of the city adds new perspectives to current understandings of place-making. Empirical knowledge suggests that homeless individuals often use public space differently than the general public – a space that allows for leisure and passing through versus a space that allows for the unfolding of basic human life needs. Moreover, homeless spaces are at times different than the mainstream ones – niches, corners, entrances, while other times they overlap – public squares, parks, supermarket parking. When studied, these marginal public spaces, 19 which embody being homeless in the city, raise questions on conventional place-making categories such as transient places, or ‘non-places’ 20 of transition elsewhere. 21 The mechanisms the homeless employ to interpret public space, to inhabit and appropriate it, indicate this diversity, as they may well be different, at times, to the mechanisms used by the general public. Negotiations of the city often produce spaces of exclusion. Fenced in public spaces (i.e. parks), regulated facilities (i.e. public toilets), or so-called antihomeless urban furniture (i.e. public seating with intermediary arm-rests) aim to encourage the use of space for certain public users, while purposefully excluding others. The exclusion is never unilateral, at times excluding other members of vulnerable groups such as elderly users. 22 By documenting diverse experiences of the urban everyday, the proposed conceptual framework of imaginary geographies aims to explore ways of co-producing and living in the city, adding in this way to more inclusive urban design practices. For the most part, studies on the homeless are often performed from an outsider’s point of view. The homeless themselves are too rarely given a voice, so to say, and most significantly, they are seldom placed in the context of the city/space they occupy. A number of case studies are recorded in the form of retold stories. 23 Nevertheless, the knowledge on the subject remains conspicuously insufficient, particularly in the field of urban design. 24 Although organisations such as FEANTSA and CRISIS document homelessness in the city, there is a visible absence of accounts of homelessness as a way of being in the city, of co-producing

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__________________________________________________________________ (public) space and, most significantly, of the heterogeneous homeless as part of place-making processes. It is this particular knowledge gap that needs to be addressed in order for debates on city-making to account for this marginalised group and in order to gain the necessary knowledge to provide increasingly tailored solutions for homeless individuals. By proposing imaginary geographies as part of designing the urban an overall more empowering process is encouraged, in which the city is designed with those marginalised instead of for them. In the example of homeless individuals, the purpose is not to create public spaces more equipped to accommodate them. Far from it, the aim is to incorporate in-place experiences and knowledge into innovative solutions to effectively provide for their needs. 3. Reflecting on Imaginary Geographies Homeless imaginary geographies in particular add to understandings of citymaking due to the group’s extreme living conditions. Given the specificities of their situation and potential lifestyles, homeless sensory and emotional geographies are likely to present particular concepts of aesthetics, comfort, and multi-sensorial experience, concepts distinct from the mainstream ones that are commonly assumed in design processes. Moreover, the image associated with the homeless by the mainstream public – particular odours, surfaces, and visuals, build into specific notions of an urban space. These in-place devices of socio-culturally constructing the urban reality are fundamental to the concept of imaginary geographies, drawing on H. Lefebvre’s theory on producing space, 25 where personal and collective imaginaries alike contribute in shaping urban space in a continuous process of co-creating the city. In other words, the meaning of a place is encoded not so much in the character of the place itself, but in the user-embedded significance, which comes with use of the space and lived-in experience. From a post-structuralist perspective, the concept of constructing realities by means of cultural signification extends beyond abstract notions of space on to feelings of identity and the body itself, 26 where the latter is the one performing the act of place-making, thus embodying the social world. 27 Understood from this point of view, the homeless urban reality is culturally produced by the general public as much as by the homeless themselves. An in-depth understanding of the homeless in public space has highly theoretical and practical values for urban design, with implications for other areas as well, such as social sciences and policy-making. The urban as such is, arguably, another socio-cultural construction, assuming that places are not simply passive stages on which everyday life unfolds, but they are the medium that structures and allows for the embodiment of the everyday. 28 Therefore, what is understood here by imaginary geographies is an elaborated image of the city and the urban experience resulting from the mental constructions of the other, space, and the socially performative self. In other words, imaginary

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Shaping Imaginary Geographies into Inclusive Cities

__________________________________________________________________ geographies reflect individual lifeworlds, 29 the way in which one thinks the world and brings it into being, along with one’s being in the world. These imaginaries are translated by means of narratives into discourses that lay the basis for one’s constructed (urban) reality. In this context, imaginary geographies act as a gathering concept that documents lived-in (everyday) experiences, an ‘essential part of the way cities are produced, reproduced and especially lived.’ 30 Tracing imaginary geographies poses a methodological challenge in how to capture the everyday, the lived-in experiences of the urban space users. An appropriate methodology aimed at accounting for lived-in experiences of the everyday is possibly phenomenological, ‘for understanding subjective experience, gaining insights into people’s motivations and actions, and cutting through the clutter of taken-for-granted assumptions and conventional wisdom.’ 31 Contemporary urban design research is explorative of unconventional methods to capture the experience of the continuously re-shaped space of the city. Walking is increasingly used to represent time-space relations, as well as space and people in motion. 32 As a scene for conducting unstructured interviews, but also for a nonstatic observation of space, walking is an engaging method of talking about place while being in place, 33 a ‘practice of our everyday lifeworld’ 34 as well as a ‘mode of experiencing place and the city.’ 35 Tracing journeys in this way is bound to reveal characteristics of the homeless urban reality that have escaped previous understandings of place and city-making. Photovoice is another relatively new method, reoccurring particularly in work with vulnerable groups, 36 where space users photo-document space. In an attempt to support public participation throughout decision-making processes, the above methods allows for the recordings of city journeys taken through the eyes of space users, and they have real potential for tracing the proposed imaginary geographies. Engaging with these two methods in working with homeless individuals might be a first step in re-assessing understandings and readings of the city, as well as a potential epistemological re-evaluation of the homeless. Such a re-evaluation has the potential to lead to more effective solutions in tackling homelessness, and overall, more inclusive urban design practices, and perhaps more cohesive cities. Homeless groups are increasingly more often subject to empowering projects, whether in shelter design, 37 the policy making arena, 38 or entrepreneurial initiatives such as the Big Issue magazine sellers, the Cardboard Citizens theatre group, the Unseen Tours guide by former homeless, or the Café Art gallery artists. This list is not exhaustive and it is a mere indicator of the creative resourcefulness behind effective solutions for the homeless. As such, they hold value for the inclusive urban design debate and open the path for exploring alternatives to engaging with this specific group. What part is urban design likely to play is a subject of further research. Given the conceptual malleability of the discipline, InUD has great potential in acting as an agent of change, whether in creating

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__________________________________________________________________ spaces that encourage resource-knowledge exchange, in supporting the formation of community ties that may shield the more vulnerable members, or perhaps even in facilitating the development of niche economies for the currently marginalised. 4. Discussion The urban design discipline, in its present theoretic-methodological framework, provides little account of how place is created by those living outside the established social norms and mainstream cultural representations; moreover, the city as a multi-layered discursive construction of marginalised groups appears to be little understood and integrated into urban design processes. Such gaps in urban knowledge need to be addressed in order to account for a diversity and plurality of urban users and to actively design for urban inclusivity. For inclusive urban design to be successful it implies not merely a change in the physical form of the city, but a change in urban discourses, in popularised images of the city and, ultimately, a change in societal attitudes. Turning on to understandings and experiences of the city formed outside of mainstream society, carries an unexplored ideological resource outside the designer’s frame of thought. The urban reality is a cultural product constructed from within, as well as from without, by means of in-place imaginaries; the urban individual, as both result and co-producer of the city – image and materiality. In order to document the knowledge along with lived-in experiences of the urban and consequently translate them in a language familiar to the (inclusive) urban design discipline, there is a need for an appropriate and coherent conceptual research framework. The present research places the concept of imaginary geographies at the core of discussions on urban marginalisation/inclusion and, consequently, at the foundation of urban design as the city/place-making debate. In the particular case of the urban homeless, the unsuccessful outcomes of projects and policies indicate an insufficient knowledge of the subject group and a faulty set of tools adopted by decision makers. Therefore, more effective and empowering modes to tackle homelessness are yet to be explored. Laying the ground for a different approach requires a better understanding of those facing homelessness, what constructs their reality, and how this reality takes form and what characterises it. Engaging with the homeless from an urban design perspective is to a certain extent an act of empowerment and has the potential to lead to a higher quality inclusive urban environment, as far as this particular group is concerned.

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Notes 1

CABE, The Principles of Inclusive Design (They Include You) (London: Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment / CABE, 2006), accessed 10 March 2013, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118095356/http:/www.cabe.org.u k/files/the-principles-of-inclusive-design.pdf. 2 Ibid. 3 Ali Madanipour, ‘Roles and Challenges of Urban Design’, Journal of Urban Design 11, No. 2 (2006): 173-193, accessed 9 November 2011, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13574800600644035. 4 DCLG, Statutory Homelessness (London: Department for Communities and Local Government – Homeless Pages, 2011), accessed 10 December 2013, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/264 836/Statutory_Homelessness_3rd_Quarter__Jul_-Sep__2013_England__2_.pdf. 5 Michael Savage, Gaynor Bagnal and Brian J. Longhurst, Globalization and Belonging (London: SAGE, 2005), accessed 19 October 2013, http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hjxLAU2YjzsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1 &dq=Globalization+and+belonging&ots=JagUuRJCed&sig=2zF-Xyz68jSlrXdEu y-1q-sUezA#v=onepage&q=Globalization%20and%20belonging&f=false. 6 Paola Jiron, ‘Mobility on the Move: Examining Urban Daily Mobility Practices in Santiago de Chile’ (PhD Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2008), accessed 5 March 2014, http://vivienda.uchilefau.cl/extension/pdfs/PHD_Thesis_Jiron_Paola.pdf. 7 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason Volume 2, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989). 8 OECD, Oslo Manual: Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development: Statistical Office of the European Communities, 2005), accessed 5 January 2013, http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/OECDOsloManual05_en.pdf. 9 Michele Lancione, ‘How Is Homelessness?’, European Journal of Homelessness (FEANTSA 2013): 239, accessed 14 November 2013, http://www.feantsaresearch.org/IMG/pdf/ml_tp.pdf. 10 Gustavo Capdevila, Human Rights: More Than 100 Million Homeless Worldwide (Geneva: Inter Press Service News Agency, 2005), accessed 7 February 2013, http://www.ipsnews.net/2005/03/human-rights-more-than-100-million-homelesswo rldwide/.

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__________________________________________________________________ 11

Teresa Gowan, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco (London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 12 Lancione, ‘How Is Homelessness?’, 237. 13 Paul Cloke et al., ‘Ethics, Reflexivity and Research: Encounters with Homeless People’, Ethics, Place and Environment 3, No. 2 (2000): 133-154, accessed 8 November 2011, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/713665889; Gowan, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders. 14 Cloke, et al., ‘Ethics, Reflexivity and Research’. 15 Lancione, ‘How Is Homelessness?’, 238. 16 Dragana Avramov, ed. Coping with Homelessness: Issues to Be Tackled and Best Practices in Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1999); Gowan, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders; Samira Kawash, ‘The Homeless Body’, Public Culture 10, No. 2 (1998): 319-339, accessed 21 January 2013, http://publicculture.dukejournals.org/content/10/2/319.full.pdf. 17 Catarina de Albuquerque and Virginia Roaf, On the Right Track: Good Practices in Realising the Rights to Water and Sanitation (Lisbon: United Nations, 2012), accessed 7 April 2013, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Water/BookonGoodPractices_en.pdf. 18 Alexandra Zavis, ‘Housing Project for Hard-Core Homeless Pays Off’, Los Angeles Times (2012), accessed 23 May 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/08/local/la-me-0608-homeless-savings201206 08. 19 Ali Madanipour, ‘Marginal Public Spaces in European Cities’, Journal of Urban Design 9, No. 3 (2004): 267-286, accessed 9 December 2013, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1357480042000283869. 20 Marc Auge, ‘From Places to Non-Places’, in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe (New York: Verso Books, 1995), 75-115. 21 Jiron, ‘Mobility on the Move’. 22 Elizabeth Burton and Lynne Mitchell, Inclusive Urban Design: Streets for Life (London: Routledge, 2013). 23 Cloke, et al., ‘Ethics, Reflexivity and Research’; Paul Koegel, ‘Through a Different Lens: An Anthropological Perspective on the Homeless Mentally Ill’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 16, No. 1 (1992): 1-22, accessed 29 October 2011, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00054437. 24 Cloke, et al., ‘Ethics, Reflexivity and Research’; Kawash, ‘The Homeless Body’. 25 Henri Lefebvre, ‘The Right to the City’, in Writings on Cities, trans. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 63-181.

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__________________________________________________________________ 26

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Tenth Anniversary Edition (New York: Routledge, 1999). 27 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life: Living and Cooking, trans. Steven Rendall (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). 28 Jon Anderson, ‘Talking Whilst Walking: A Geographical Archaeology of Knowledge’, Area 36, No. 3 (2004): 254-261, accessed 1 November 2013, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0004-0894.2004.00222.x/pdf; Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action. 29 Jiron, ‘Mobility on the Move’. 30 Stan Lester, ‘An Introduction to Phenomenological Research’, Stan Lester Developments (1999): 1, accessed 15 August 2013, http://www.psyking.net/HTMLobj-3825/Introduction_to_Phenomenological_Rese arch-Lester.pdf. 31 Jiron, ‘Mobility on the Move’. 32 Anderson, ‘Talking Whilst Walking’. 33 Ibid. 34 Filipa Matos Wunderlich, ‘Walking and Rhythmicity: Sensing Urban Space’, Journal of Urban Design 13, No. 1 (2008): 126, accessed 28 March 2014, http://www.walk21.com/papers/Zurich%2005%20Matos%20Walking%20and%20r hythmicity%20sensing%20urban%20space.pdf. 35 Ibid. 36 Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris, ‘Photovoice: Concept, Methodology, and Use for Participatory Needs Assessment’, Health Education and Behavior 24, No. 3 (1997): 369-387, accessed 7 September 2013, http://heb.sagepub.com/content/24/3/369.full.pdf+html. 37 Caroline C. Wang, Jennifer L. Cash and Lisa S. Powers, ‘Who Knows the Streets as Well as the Homeless? Promoting Personal and Community Action through Photovoice’, Health Promotion Practice 1, No. 1 (2000): 81-89, accessed 7 September 2013, http://hpp.sagepub.com/content/1/1/81.full.pdf+html. 38 Emily Paradis and Janet Mosher, DO Something (Toronto: The Canadian Homelessness Research Network Press, 2012), accessed 2 October 2013, http://homeless.samhsa.gov/ResourceFiles/CBPRwomenhomeless_report.pdf.

Bibliography Anderson, Jon. ‘Talking Whilst Walking: A Geographical Archaeology of Knowledge’. Area 36, No. 3 (2004): 254–261.

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__________________________________________________________________ Auge, Marc. ‘From Places to Non-Places’. In Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, 75–115. Translated by John Howe. New York: Verso Books, 1995. Avramov, Dragana, ed. Coping with Homelessness: Issues to Be Tackled and Best Practices in Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1999. Burton, Elizabeth, and Lynne Mitchell. Inclusive Urban Design: Streets for Life. London: Routledge, 2013. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Tenth Anniversary Edition. New York: Routledge, 1999. CABE. The Principles of Inclusive Design (They Include You). London: Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment / CABE, 2006. Accessed 10 March 2013. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110118095356/http:/www.cabe.org.u k/files/the-principles-of-inclusive-design.pdf. Capdevila, Gustavo. Human Rights: More Than 100 Million Homeless Worldwide. Geneva: Inter Press Service News Agency, 2005. Accessed 7 February 2013. http://www.ipsnews.net/2005/03/human-rights-more-than-100-million-homelesswo rldwide/. Cloke, Paul, Phil Cooke, Jerry Cursons, Paul Milbourne, and Rebekah Widdowfield. ‘Ethics, Reflexivity and Research: Encounters with Homeless People’. Ethics, Place and Environment 3, No. 2 (2000): 133–154. Accessed 8 November 2011. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/713665889. DCLG. Statutory Homelessness. London: Department for Communities and local Government – Homeless Pages, 2011. Accessed 10 December 2013. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/26 4836/Statutory_Homelessness_3rd_Quarter__Jul__Sep__2013_England__2_.pdf. De Albuquerque, Catarina, and Virginia Roaf. On the Right Track: Good Practices in Realising the Rights to Water and Sanitation. Lisbon: United Nations, 2012. Accessed 7 April 2013. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Water/BookonGoodPractices_en.pdf.

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__________________________________________________________________ De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life: Living and Cooking. Translated by Steven Rendall. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988. Gowan, Teresa. Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco. London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Volume 2. Translated by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. Jiron, Paola. ‘Mobility on the Move: Examining Urban Daily Mobility Practices in Santiago de Chile’. PhD Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2008. Accessed 5 April 2014. http://vivienda.uchilefau.cl/extension/pdfs/PHD_Thesis_Jiron_Paola.pdf. Kawash, Samira. ‘The Homeless Body’. Public Culture 10, No. 2 (1998): 319– 339. Koegel, Paul. ‘Through a Different Lens: An Anthropological Perspective on the Homeless Mentally Ill’. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 16, No. 1 (1992): 1–22. Accessed 29 October 2011. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00054437. Lancione, Michele. ‘How Is Homelessness?’. European Journal of Homelessness 8, No. 2 (2013): 237–248. Lefebvre, Henri. ‘The Right to the City’. In Writings on Cities, 63–181. Translated by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Lester, Stan. ‘An Introduction to Phenomenological Research’. Stan Lester Developments (1999): 1–4. Accessed 15 August 2013. http://www.psyking.net/HTMLobj-3825/Introduction_to_Phenomenological_Rese arch-Lester.pdf. Madanipour, Ali. ‘Marginal Public Spaces in European Cities’. Journal of Urban Design 9, No. 3 (2004): 267–286. ———. ‘Roles and Challenges of Urban Design’. Journal of Urban Design 11, No. 2 (2006): 173–193.

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__________________________________________________________________ Matos Wunderlich, Filipa. ‘Walking and Rhythmicity: Sensing Urban Space’. Journal of Urban Design 13, No. 1 (2008): 125–139. Accessed 28 March 2014. http://www.walk21.com/papers/Zurich%2005%20Matos%20Walking%20and%2 0rhythmicity%20sensing%20urban%20space.pdf. OECD. Oslo Manual: Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development: Statistical Office of the European Communities, 2005. Accessed 5 January 2013. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Library/Documents/OECDOsloManual05_en.pdf. Paradis, Emily, and Janet Mosher. DO Something. Toronto: The Canadian Homelessness Research Network Press, 2012. Accessed 2 October 2013. http://homeless.samhsa.gov/ResourceFiles/CBPRwomenhomeless_report.pdf. Savage, Michael, Gaynor Bagnall, and Brian J. Longhurst. Globalization and Belonging. London: Sage, 2005. Zavis, Alexandra, ‘Housing Project for Hard-Core Homeless Pays Off’. Los Angeles Times, 8 June, 2012. Accessed 23 May 2013. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/08/local/la-me-0608-homeless-savings201206 08. Wang, Caroline, and Mary Ann Burris. ‘Photovoice: Concept, Methodology, and Use for Participatory Needs Assessment’. Health Education and Behavior 24, No. 3 (1997): 369–387. Accessed 7 September 2013. http://heb.sagepub.com/content/24/3/369.full.pdf+html. Wang, Caroline C., Jennifer L. Cash, and Lisa S. Powers. ‘Who Knows the Streets as Well as the Homeless? Promoting Personal and Community Action through Photovoice’. Health Promotion Practice 1, No. 1 (2000): 81–89. Accessed 7 September 2013. http://hpp.sagepub.com/content/1/1/81.full.pdf+html. Elisabeta Gabriela Ilie is an urban design researcher with UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning. Her current interests focus on place-making processes and negotiations of socio-culturally produced identities in the urban context. Her PhD dissertation deals with the inclusive urban design debate.

‘I Dream to Live on My Own Away from Family’: From Dependence to Freedom, a Shared Dream by Teens and Young Adults with Cognitive Disabilities Laurence Emmanuelle Hadjas Abstract This study describes the experiences of teens and young adults with cognitive disabilities, whose dreams often scream words of FREEDOM. While, non-disabled teens enjoy a greater sense of freedom as they age, their peers with cognitive disabilities tend to remain sheltered. The primary data sources are a set of openended interviews with youths (18 to 22 years old) with cognitive disabilities in the greater Los Angeles Area, and a collection of writings from these young adults. Most of the data gathering is in the form of storytelling, which allows the participant and the researcher to retell experience as-is, away from too much convoluted academic analyses. Three major themes emerge from these stories: the first one is: labeling as a door stopper (stigmatisation), the second one is about families (caregivers) who are often over-protective, and the third one about society at large, which seems to view young adults with cognitive disabilities as incapable, asexual, and in much need of support. In sum, this chapter illustrates that while supporting young adults with cognitive disabilities is very important, there is a real need to learn to let go, and allow their voices to be part of the larger conversation about freedom, love, social justice, access, and citizenship. In the end, many of the stories tell a tale of similarities rather than of differences between and among nonlabeled peers. Key Words: Cognitive disability, freedom, youth, stigmatisation, sexuality, social justice, citizenship. ***** 1. The Night Thavory Moved Midnight, December 31, 2011, in front of a door, a small red toy truck was waiting for us. In one voice we hollered, ‘Move that truck!’ and just like the show Extreme Makeover, Thavory moved the toy truck, the door opened, and there was Dad inside, holding a camera, with light on. Thavory bounced while screaming: ‘My place!’ She inspected every single nook and cranny. We wore our New Year’s hats along with 2012 plastic glasses and blew whistles, cheering for what would be a life-changing event. Our Cambodian princess with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, left in an orphanage, was on board the flight to freedom. 1 A silent drive back home. A shift had happened. Life as we knew it had changed. We opened the door of our house, not a

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__________________________________________________________________ sound, just silence, and darkness. We embraced with tears in our eyes. We had let go… We looked at our phones and turned them off. Twenty-two years later, what had been a fear, ‘letting go,’ has been put to rest. Thavory has mastered the bus system, and found her routine, a life filled with acting classes, martial arts, and volunteering. Her one bedroom flat is kept clean, fresh, and always reflects a sense of pride. This major event in our lives reminded me of how much deeper the issues of disability and freedom are. Why are many young adults with disabilities often denied the freedom to live as they wish? I pondered over this. I started to rethink my position as a mother, as an educator, and as an advocate. Whose voice matters? 2. Whose Voice Matters? We are here today, … but on behalf of millions of Americans with disabilities. My book represents, not just my work, but the work that we all want to do and could do. The burning of a copy of my book symbolizes what the government does to us and our talents and our efforts. … turns our dreams to ashes. 2 Longmore added fuel to my process. Over time, I became my daughter’s advocate, her voice, her iron fist in the face of years of despair and rage over everything from the looks to comments from others in public, in schools, and sadly, from family members and friends. I sensed how sorry many felt about her condition. She had difficulties mastering academic content, but she could name any car, and she had an enormous capacity for love. I still feel her tiny arms around my neck… In becoming her voice, I silenced her! I loved her so much that my fear became a silencer. I wondered how many people with disabilities had been silenced. The project got off casually. I wanted to meet some youths with cognitive disabilities, and understand how they see the world around them, using their words, and sense of being. 3 A group between the ages 18 and 22 spent time with me. We talked, we wrote, laughed, cried, and created a list including: -

Being independent Choosing a partner Feeling disabled

A. Being Independent Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worst. 4

 

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_______________________________________________________ ‘I can be free’: Who would disagree? A sense of self seems keenly entangled with a sense of freedom. As we sat around the table brainstorming about the meaning of freedom, voices around the table started to shout: ‘I want to be independent!’ The words seemed clear and the meaning understood. Concepts of freedom and independence are complex notions intertwining cultural differences and personal values. Listening to the debate about independence and freedom was enlightening. I stopped myself from intruding to avoid any cross-thought invading the space. Then silence. I asked if they would be willing to write. Desperate looks, ‘I am no good speller’ I replied: ‘What we are doing here is thinking not spelling, your thoughts are powerful, go for it!’ The fear in their voices reminded me of the pressure we put on spelling. In the process we shun the true inner voice. All bent over the table, writing tools in hand, brainstorming about those concepts. No sounds could be heard, words dancing above their heads. As we shared, Sophie read: ‘You can prove them wrong!’ All eyes were on Sophie. She went on, saying how she felt that everyone, including her family, felt that she would always need help in everyday tasks. This realisation weighing on her shoulders and soul drove her to cry. As her tears rolled down her cheeks, she explained how her mother kept on taking care of her, and how desperately Sophie wanted to be her own. She relayed her experiences in which often well-meaning teachers would pair her with able students when she felt all she needed was time, not help. As Sophie shared, many other voices relayed similar stories that started with good intentions but hindered the growth process. Eric knew that he was in special education but did not feel it was a problem until he realised: ‘I’be special all my life.’ All around, most of the group felt that they were stopped from making their own choices, and being true to themselves. I was admiring of how articulate and clear they were. The feeling of trust we had established created a space for what I deemed to be a true, candid, and honest conversation. B. Making a Living The issue of finding a job and making money kept on coming up in our conversations. In the US, people with disabilities are entitled to Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which is around $850 a month. The group as a whole, including my daughter, comes from middle-class families and had thus enjoyed the better side of life, without economic struggles. Access to college is precarious for students with disabilities. Some colleges around the country offer programmes that include students with cognitive disabilities. The types of jobs open to people with cognitive disabilities are usually at the lower end of the salary scale. Without hesitation, all wanted to find a well-paid job. During our discussion, I realised many did not quite grasp the meaning of money’s value well enough. Most of them were still under parental supervision and seemed to get cash as needed. However, Eric told us that he would like to take an aptitude test. He wanted to further his education. He said: ‘Go to school and take classes plus learn about what

 

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__________________________________________________________________ the requirements are to know about having a certain job.’ He added: ‘I need to make sure that this job makes a good amount of money to pay off the bills.’ This realisation furthered my thoughts on the fact that we as a society still hinder their growth. Based on our experience with Thavory, while she is not paying all her bills at this point, she is mastering the concept of bills and how much to spend per week in order to live. This learning has happened mostly because she lives on her own. She has had to learn about being overdraft and how to deal with the situation. When she got an overdraft, she was in tears – ‘I am so ashamed of myself.’ While I consoled her, telling her that this is the learning curve as we grow up, remembering that in my youth, I had been overdraft once or twice. There is much work to do on this specific domain to support independence in money management and locating a job. C. Making Friends A few months ago, when Thavory came to do a presentation about her life, her last slide read: -

I do not have many friends; I wish I could have more.

As soon as she read this sentence, a voice rose: ‘I feel you!’ The group started to talk about the feeling of loneliness and wanting to make more friends. The discussion was painful to follow, as many expressed the fear of being alone and having to rely on their families as a social network. I started to think about all the dinners that I had at my house, filled with different people sharing laughter, stories, and heated discussions that came up randomly around the table. I realised that Thavory spends many evenings alone watching TV, using Facebook, and longing for someone to share her physical and emotional space. As many young adults in the group, most of her social-life is still very much linked to ours. The group felt that making friends was a difficult task. I suspect that they have low self-esteem, which seems to be the lot for many within the group. How do we support the growth of self-esteem and love of self, regardless of abilities? D. Choosing a Partner Many would like to find a life-partner and some would rather stay alone, for a while at least. While most state that they are straight, one is lesbian who happens to be labelled as having autistic tendencies, which presents its own challenge as described by Emily Brooks. In this specific case, finding a girlfriend is a huge challenge. It seems that one possible option would be online dating. The challenge is still on, not to mention the difficulty in talking about sexuality with people with cognitive disabilities. A very important subject to tackle, which is not just about safe sex, is getting a better grasp of the meaning of long or short term

 

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_______________________________________________________ relationships. Marc is keen on finding a woman without a disability. When I asked him why, he replied: I know it is hard to have a disability, people look at you different even if they do not say a word, you can feel, it makes me feel dumb and useless, I do not want my girlfriend to feel the same pain I feel! Reflecting on Marc’s comment, I realise how looks and unsaid words can be as powerful as mean words. Another issue to ponder in a more critical way is how stigmatisation operates despite some of our best collective efforts to eliminate it. Eric and Vanessa favoured partners with similar interests, who would be good friends. Vanessa shared with the group: I want to be with someone who can be my friend, if I cry or if I am upset to be there and give me a hug. I want to be careful with my partner because I want my partner to be careful with me! I was surprised by what was not said, such as: ‘I would like a partner that could please my family.’ I could feel the distance between their aspirations and their families’ expectations, revealed by this new, open conversation, in which each of the young adults was there to think and wonder about themselves as a single unit. E. Getting Married It all started with a laugh and a question: ‘Hey, Laurence, are you married?’ My ‘Yes’ made the whole group giggles. Due to the laughs and such, we pulled out our writing tablets and pens to start writing about marriage. Marc started the conversation: ‘Having a family is a big responsibility and a lot of stress, and while we are on the subject, I am not sure I want to have children, I don’t really like to deal with kids!’ Eric replied to him: I know I want to get married to have a normal life, a lovely life. I am sure if you find the right person then you can love each other very, very much and I am sure I want to have children and I will learn to be patient not like some people with me. We all paused and looked at Eric. His voice was soft and calm, but we could all feel his desire to live a ‘normal’ life. Sophie jumped in and added: I would get married so you have someone to keep you company, I don’t want to live my life all alone, I want somebody that will love me so I want to get married.

 

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__________________________________________________________________ Vanessa shook her head and made a little shrieking noise. We all turned to her. She lifted her head and said in one breath: ‘I am not getting a partner I don’t think that is the best for me I am choosing for what is best for me.’ For a moment, we all turned to her and I could feel that we were not feeling at ease. Eric asked why she really did not want to get married. She started to cry. We could barely hear her voice. Slowly, I could make out the words coming out of her. I look different, I know nobody will love me, I don’t want to have sex, so I don’t want to think that maybe I could have a husband and children even though I love children and I want to work in a day-care. Coupled with a cognitive disability, Vanessa has a congenital disorder that is visible. It seems that she is very self-conscious about her appearance. Much discussion is needed to figure out how to truly include all, not simply with our words, as we seem to do well, but also in everyday practice. My heart is heavy thinking that the road is long and what missed opportunities we all have had to be truly inclusive. Please Don’t Stare (excerpt) By Ebb Please don’t stare when you see me walking by I can’t help being born differently When people look at me like I’ve committed many crimes Nobody is perfect and fault cannot be seen But mine is on show to everyone because of an undeveloped gene But please don’t stare and leer at me cos inside my heart does cry 5 F. Children Naturally, our conversation went from marriage to children. I shared with the group that I am the mother of three girls and being a mom was my favourite job. They asked me multiple questions about birth, taking care of babies, and what to do with school and homework. The nature of their questions was as enlightening as the answers they gave about the subject: the desire to have children and parenting. Aside from Vanessa, most seemed keen to have a family that would include children. Eric explained that having children would be a good experience. He also added: ‘I will love my kids no matter what, and would let them make their own decisions.’ Eric’s comment made me think about parenting in general. It would be nice if all of us were able to love our children as they are, and let them make their

 

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_______________________________________________________ own decisions without any reservations. Sophie wanted to have a boy and girl because she felt it would give her an opportunity to do what she likes: being girly with a girl and doing sports with a boy. Gender lines are clear for Sophie. It is also crucial to point out that mainstream America has clear gender lines for the most part! Overall, our conversation about having a family brought us to the topic of our families, and it how was growing up. G. Family as a Tool to Become Independent Each one of us shared his or her own experiences with their families as young children and teenagers. As they were writing before sharing with the group, I started to reminisce about how I raised Thavory, how many hours of pushing her, and telling her how she would be able to do what she wanted later – while not sure at all of what would happen, realising that my demands did not seem to match her abilities. Secretly, I dreamt of protecting her forever; a dream that shattered when thinking about my own mortality. A head went up. Vanessa: ‘My parents are trying to force me to get married, so I will never be alone.’ Hearing her comments, Marc said: My parents help me find part-time job so I can learn some stuff, but I can feel that they are afraid for me to live on my own. Ok, their house is great, but I do not want to live with them all my life! One can start thinking: What to do? One side wants freedom; the other side wants to make sure that their grown-up children are safe. Based on my experience, letting go is a hard venture, but it also comes with great rewards for all! Overall, the group agreed that their families could become a tool toward independence. They all felt loved by their parents, but they were too present in their lives, which in turn kept on infantilising them and discouraging them from making choices pertinent to their aspirations, dreams, and sense of being. H. Feeling Disabled We will all be disabled at some point. However, being born with a cognitive disability is a life condition. When asked what kind of disabilities were represented in the group, most were able to say that they learned differently, but had no clear explanation about their disability. The consensus seemed to cover learning differences, which is true, but lacks clarity. Without knowing exactly what their disabilities are about, they cannot teach others about their needs. Knowing about themselves would help others better support them in their process towards freedom.

 

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__________________________________________________________________ I had made sure my daughter would be able to articulate notions about her disability in order to empower her. Another idea to get to the road of independent living is having the ability to name, and not point out! 3. The Invisible Pain, the Visible Disability I realise much authentic work is needed to TRULY include ALL voices. The pain shared via tone of voice and sense of fear has made me rethink much of what is not done in the world of disability. We have come a long way in terms of inclusion legally. However, inclusion as we know it now should be eradicated, and we should support people, regardless of abilities, in finding their unique path within our society. 6

  Notes 1

Laurence E. Hadjas, ‘What Will My Child and I Learn Today?’ The Struggle of a Parent of a Disabled Child (PhD diss. University of Illinois at Chicago, 2005). 2 Paul K. Longmore, Why I Burn My Book and Other Essays on Disability (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), 258. 3 Max Van Mannen, Researching Lived Experiences. Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990). 4 Albert Camus, Resistance Rebellion and Death: Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage Press 1995 [1960]), 103. 5 Ebb, Please Don’t Stare, accessed 12 November 2013, http://www.disabledworld.com/communication/poetry/, 2011. 6 Margret A. Winzer, The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1993).

Bibliography Camus, Albert. Resistance Rebellion and Death: Essays. Translated by Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Press, 1995 [1960]. Ebb. Please Don’t Stare. Accessed 12 November 2013. http://www.disabledworld.com/communication/poetry/, 2011. Hadjas, Laurence E. ‘What Will My Child and I Learn Today?’ The Struggle of a Parent of a Disabled Child. PhD diss. University of Illinois at Chicago, 2005. Kaufman, Sandra Z. Retarded Isn’t Stupid, Mom! Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Co., 1988.

 

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_______________________________________________________   Leavy, Patricia. Fiction as Research Practice Short Stories, Novellas, and Novels. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2013 Longmore, Paul K. Why I Burn My Book and Other Essays on Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. Radziewicz, Sheila. I Am Not. Accessed 15 September 2012. http://www.disaheilabledworld.com/communication/poetry/, 2011. Smith, J. David. In Search of Better Angels: Stories of Disability in the Human Family. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003. Smith, Robin, M., and Nirmala Erevelles. ‘Towards Enabling Education: The Difference that Disability Makes’. Educational Researcher 33, No. 8 (November, 2004). Taylor, George R. Parental Involvement. A Practical Guide for Collaboration and Teamwork for Students with Disabilities. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas Pub, 2000. Van Mannen, Max. Researching Lived Experiences. Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990. Winzer, Margret A. The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration. Washngton, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1993. Laurence Emmanuelle Hadjas, PhD, is a lecturer at UCLA Extension in the Pathway Program. She recently decided to leave traditional academia to focus on writing about issues surrounding disability.

 

Acting Respectfully towards Adults with Learning Disabilities Gavin Fairbairn and Susan Fairbairn Abstract Adults with learning difficulties are often treated as if they are children, just because they find certain everyday tasks more difficult than other people. As a result, those who spend time with such adults typically take very seriously the need to find ways of relating to them respectfully, while offering support aimed at meeting their special needs. In this chapter, beginning with a story about a dear friend, we want to raise some issues that can arise from the attempt to balance these two aims, when it is underpinned by blind adherence to a questionable ideal. Our friend Jan spends most of her time working in a vegetable garden with a group of disabled adults. Recently, she was severely criticised by some colleagues for using ‘children’s songs’ as a ‘warm-up’ activity during one of the singing groups she leads as part of her job. Among other things, her colleagues told her that to use such songs was wrong, because they were not ‘age appropriate.’ We were surprised by Jan’s story. She loves her work and is well thought of by her colleagues. However, those who admonished her clearly hold the view that to use what they think of as ‘children’s songs’ with disabled adults is necessarily to demean or infantilise them. We believe that Jan’s colleagues jumped too hastily to their negative conclusion. In this chapter, we will explain why we believe this; say a little about some problems that arise for those who work with adults who have learning disabilities, in caring for and supporting them in ways that enable them to flourish as people, and critique the unthinking application of the concept of ‘age appropriateness.’ Finally we will say a little about the way in which Jan’s colleagues shared their views of her use of children’s songs. Key Words: Learning disability/learning difficulties, children’s songs, respect, demeaning behaviour. ***** 1. Jan’s Story A few months ago we received a phone call from a young friend who wanted to talk about an upsetting incident in her workplace. Jan works with adults who have learning disabilities. She loves her work and is well thought of by her colleagues, so we were surprised when she told us about having been criticised by two colleagues for using children’s’ songs in the singing groups she runs as part of her work. Their criticism had been so unexpected, so direct, and delivered in such an authoritative way that she had felt unable to question what they had said, even though she has significantly more knowledge and experience than they have in the area on which their criticism was focused.

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__________________________________________________________________ Since graduating a couple of years ago, Jan has worked in a non-residential community that provides support for adult participants with learning disabilities. Depending on their interests and abilities, participants engage in a range of activities including gardening, craft work, the small scale production of preserves for sale, and collecting garden waste from the local neighbourhood, which they turn into compost, for sale. Jan spends most of her time working alongside a group of participants in the vegetable garden, for which she is responsible in the sense, both that its organisation and productivity depend upon her decisions, and in the sense that she has professional responsibility for the welfare of the participants who work with her. Her role involves the attempt to manage their work in ways that enable them to be the best they can be, taking account of their interests, abilities and enthusiasms; their relationships with one another, and anything else that might impact on their participation in the group’s activities, including their individual needs and preferences and any unhelpful and difficult behaviours. In addition to her role with the vegetable gardening group, Jan’s other duties include acting as key worker for several participants, and taking the lead role in weekly singing groups for the whole community. Her approach to the singing groups is rather different from that of her predecessor who seems to have had a less nuanced view of the part they could play in the life of the community as a whole, seeing them more as a recreational activity than, for example, one in which positive learning could take place. Jan is a skilled musician and singer. She is a thoughtful and empathic person with highly developed communication skills, and finely tuned awareness of the ethical values that underpin her work, which is evident whenever she speaks about what she does. Importantly, though her university education had no direct relevance for her work with disabled adults, Jan already had some relevant experience when she started her job, both through a voluntary placement in the year between school and university, and through having had significant contact with disabled adults while accompanying her father on visits to similar settings, in which she had first begun to learn about engaging adults with learning disabilities through music. Before starting work in her present role, she had facilitated singing groups with non-disabled as well as disabled people. It is because we are familiar with Jan’s views of her work and its importance and have observed the ways she relates to people with learning disabilities, that we were surprised about her colleagues’ ill-founded criticism of her use of ‘children’s songs.’ In addition, we have serious misgivings about the clumsy and unhelpful way in which they expressed their criticisms, without first exploring her reasons for using these songs, or whether she saw any problems with doing so. In spite of this, we recognise that they may have been motivated by a genuine wish to help a younger colleague to develop her understanding of the need to treat the adults in her charge respectfully. And we can understand, at least to some extent, the values and beliefs that probably underpin their view that using children’s songs with

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__________________________________________________________________ adults who have learning difficulties is wrong, because it is not ‘age-appropriate.’ After all, adults with learning difficulties are still commonly treated as if they are children, just because they find certain everyday tasks more difficult than other people. This tendency is closely related to the common view of people with learning disabilities as ‘eternal children’ and thus, for example, to the common view that they are both asexual and incapable not only of becoming parents, but of undertaking the tasks of parenthood, about which one of us has written a great deal in the past. 1 2. Treating Adults with Learning Disabilities Respectfully One of the everyday ethical issues faced by those who work with adults with learning disabilities revolves round decisions about how to treat them respectfully, at the same time as offering support aimed at meeting their special needs and helping them to flourish as people. As a result, settings like the one in which Jan works will usually be trying to balance a number of responsibilities towards their participants, including: -

-

the responsibility to care for their physical welfare, ensuring that they are safe; the responsibility to ensure that they are given opportunities to engage in meaningful activities; the responsibility to provide opportunities for participants to learn and grow by developing new knowledge and skills, that will facilitate their participating as fully as possible both in the community setting, and outside it; the responsibility to provide opportunities for them to make meaningful and appropriate choices; the responsibility to offer participants opportunities to form relationships with others, and to feel part of a group; the responsibility to provide opportunities for them to achieve in new areas and to celebrate that achievement in different ways, including feeling happy and proud.

Balancing these and other responsibilities will, of course, create many issues for workers. For example, in an environment that involves the use of potentially dangerous equipment or materials – as in a garden, caring for a person’s welfare could at times, conflict with facilitating them in the development of new skills, such as handling potentially dangerous equipment or materials. Interestingly, singing groups such as those that Jan runs, are a context in which all of the responsibilities we have listed could be met at the same time, with little conflict. And so, apart from planning what she does in an effort to ensure that it has maximum impact, it might seem that Jan’s responsibilities in running the singing

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__________________________________________________________________ group are relatively easy to fulfil. However, it is clear that alongside the responsibilities we have outlined, her colleagues would include the responsibility to treat adult participants with learning disabilities in ‘age-appropriate ways’ and to avoid ‘infantilising’ them. We think it is fair to assume that their use of the term ‘age-appropriate’ is really about the belief that participants should engage in the kinds of activities in which adults in general engage and be discouraged from engaging in what they see as ‘childish’ activities, including the singing of children’s songs. But this begs the question of whether singing children’s songs is necessarily a childish activity. 3. Age Appropriateness as a Guide to Action The notion of ‘age-appropriateness’ is difficult to pin down and there is little professional discussion about what it means. It thus offers only a very vague guide to action, especially in a context such as that in which Jan works, where the age range of participants is very wide – with some in their early twenties and others in their sixties. What is clear is that those who hold to this value, generally believe that it is important that what people with learning disabilities do, are encouraged to do and perhaps most importantly, are seen to do, should be ‘appropriate’ for people of their chronological age. Two things are perhaps uppermost in their minds: -

First, the idea that to engage in ‘age-appropriate,’ that is ‘adult’ activities, with adults with learning difficulties, using ‘age-appropriate’ materials, is to treat them with respect. Secondly, the idea that engaging in ‘age-appropriate,’ that is ‘adult’ activities facilitates adults with learning disabilities in joining and being part of society, which is one reason that in settings such as the one in which Jan works, there is an emphasis on participants having opportunities to work.

Each of these points focuses on a positive value that we share – the first on the belief that adults with learning disabilities should be treated with respect; the second on the idea that since there are benefits to be gained by being part of society, adults with learning disabilities should be facilitated in taking their place there. So the use of the notion of ‘age-appropriateness’ in deciding what adults with learning disabilities should be encouraged and supported in doing and what they should be discouraged from doing, is clearly motivated by positive values. However, it is important to note that there is little research to support its use as a criterion by which to decide whether a given activity is one that should be encouraged and supported in people with learning disabilities. Indeed its popularity seems to hang on a kind of ‘political correctness,’ rather than on evidence that it is helpful.

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__________________________________________________________________ If the worst we could say about adherence to ‘age-appropriateness’ as a guide to decisions about how to work with adults with learning disabilities, was that it is supported, neither by clear arguments in its favour, nor by research evidence, that would be enough to call it into question. However, things are more serious than that, because it is clear that adherence to the demands of ‘age-appropriateness’ can, at least at times, lead to misguided action, which seems actually to dis-respect individuals whose lives are shaped and monitored to ensure that they are ‘ageappropriate’ and at least at times, to neglect their needs, their wishes and their welfare. We are talking, for example, about situations where there is a clear conflict between what might be considered ‘age-appropriate’ and what is ‘developmentally appropriate.’ Ian Bell offers examples of the kind of thing that seems to be demanded by adherence to the principle of age-appropriateness. For example, as he points out, it demands that ‘...a man in his 20s who has poor control over his oral muscles and who cannot safely take liquids from an open cup, should nevertheless drink from the same type of cup as everyone else when they go into the local café,’ 2 which clearly conflicts with respect and care for the welfare of the individual in question, for whom using an ‘age appropriate’ cup could lead to harm. The demands of age-appropriateness can also lead to great conflict for parents of children who have learning disabilities. The mother of Lucas, a seventeen-yearold boy with learning disabilities, tells of an occasion at a Family Fun Day, when she was torn between following age-appropriateness and letting her son have what he wanted. A small train was pulling lots of young children round and turning to her, her son signed ‘Lucas train.’ She explains her dilemma: Lucas is 17 years old and, since he was about 12, I have been actively trying to keep his activities age-appropriate. I talk about it; I read about it; I lecture others about it; and I am very firm in my decision to not allow Lucas to partake in child’s play. I’ve spent many hours introducing age-appropriate events to Lucas over the years: skate parks, basketball, monster trucks, bmx bike racing, skateboarding and talking on the telephone with friends through his communication device. I introduced all of this in hopes that the childish things would just slip away. The end of Lucas’s mother’s story is both poignant and powerful: My mind was whirling and then I looked into Lucas’s shining, gleeful eyes and realized that he had no concept of what is inappropriate and only wanted one thing, to ride the train. So, I ask, what would you do in my shoes? 3

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__________________________________________________________________ Returning to Jan’s colleagues and their criticisms, it is clear that they held to the rather strong view that to sing a children’s song with adults who have learning difficulties is necessarily to infantilise and thus to demean them. We find this difficult to understand, perhaps because we see nothing wrong with teaching children’s songs to adults, whether or not they have learning disabilities. The problem seems to stem, for Jan’s colleagues, from their use of that notion of ‘age appropriateness,’ which we believe is pretty much without foundation. As we have already said, we think that what they were really motivated to do was to discourage the use, with adults who have learning difficulties of ‘childish’ activities, and for good reason, because they want to avoid the possibility of encouraging them to act childishly. Their mistake was to assume that singing a children’s song is necessarily a childish thing to do, which is clearly untrue. In his professional development work, one of us frequently uses so-called ‘children’s songs’ with adults. He has done so in the UK and further afield, as part of workshops on a range of topics, including the ethics of care, with staff who work in education, health and social care; psychology and disability; in museums and art galleries. We find it difficult to understand how anyone could consider it demeaning and infantilising to teach such songs to adults with learning disabilities, if professionals working in such diverse fields – often at a very senior level, do not find the experience demeaning. Of course, we acknowledge that children’s songs could be used with disabled adults in a way that was demeaning, but for that to be the case, it would have to be accompanied by a general attitude in which the adults in question were being treated disrespectfully. This clearly was not true of Jan’s work. 4. Conclusion Telling part of the story about Jan and her critical colleagues allowed us to talk a little about how we should relate to adults with learning disabilities, and especially about whether the notion of ‘age-appropriateness’ is a useful tool for those who work with such adults. It also allowed us to begin to raise some concerns about the way in which Jan’s colleagues related to her and shared their criticisms with her, and in drawing to a close we want to say a little more about these. It is clear that in delivering their criticism Jan’s colleagues underestimated her level of awareness in preparing for and running the singing group, as well as her level of understanding of the kinds of issues they raised with her. This was unsurprising, since they work in a different part of the community and thus know little about her work, her character and the values to which she holds. Not only that, but they clearly had no appreciation of her musical knowledge and her previous experience of engaging adults with learning disabilities through music. As a result, they failed to consider her use of the songs to which they objected in the context of her general approach to the people with whom she works, and of the

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__________________________________________________________________ range of other songs she uses with them. For example, it was a shame that they had not noticed that in addition to the so-called children’s songs to which they objected, she has also taught the same group songs in Latin, Spanish and French, and reflected on why she did that. (It is difficult not to wonder whether they would have considered those songs to be ‘age-appropriate’) In a sense what Jan’s colleagues did was to hit her hard with an ill-thought out criticism of a single element of her professional practice, without thinking how it fitted into the general pattern of her work with the singing group – the place she thinks it occupies and can occupy, in the weekly round of activities; what she hopes to achieve by it – both for the group as a whole, and for individuals within the group. There was little discussion; they did not invite Jan to explain her motivations in using the songs to which they objected. They did not explore these things with her, or invite her to share with them her reasons for using the range of material she uses, which includes both children’s songs and adult songs; celebratory songs; fun songs; action songs and songs with strong story lines, as well as songs in foreign languages. Rather, they fixed their gaze on one element in her work – her use of children’s songs and told her that she should not use such songs, because to do so was wrong. There is a curious dislocation between the sensitivity that Jan’s colleagues seem to be demanding of her in relation to the material she uses with the singing group, and the almost complete lack of sensitivity in the way they chose to offer their critique to her – immediately after the singing group, hurriedly, in an impersonal, cramped room, which was little more than a cupboard. Rather than creating a relaxed atmosphere in which to let Jan know about their misgivings about one aspect of her work with the singing group, they simply delivered their criticism and their verdict in a straightforward way; no questions asked. The fact that both colleagues are significantly older than Jan and that one of them is in a senior position to her, albeit in a different part of the community, made their apparently authoritative criticism in that closed-in setting, rather intimidating. As a result, as we have already said, she felt unable to question their pronouncement on her practice, despite having much more experience and knowledge than they have in relation to music and the use of singing with adults who have learning disabilities. Perhaps Jan’s two colleagues failed to register the importance of their intervention with her, because weaknesses in their own understanding of the nature of the work they do and that Jan does, meant that they had failed to register the significance of the singing groups she leads. Whereas it is self-evident to us, and to Jan, that such groups have the potential to have a major impact on the lives of those who attend them, they might, for example, have viewed them merely as entertainment, as a way of relaxing and having a good time, perhaps even of ‘letting off steam.’

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Notes 1

Gavin Fairbairn, Denis Rowley and Maggie Bowen, Sexuality, Learning Difficulties and Doing What’s Right (London: David Fulton, 1995); Gavin Fairbairn and Denis Rowley, ‘Ludzie z Niepełnosprawnoscią Intelecktualną jako Rodzice’ [‘People with Intellectual Disabilities as Parents: Some Practical and Ethical Considerations’], in Życie Emocjonalne i Rodzinne Osób z Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualną w Aspekcie Seksualności, ed. Anna FirkowskaMankiewicz, XXVIII Sympozjum Naukowe, Warszawa, 2-3 December 2002 (Polish Association for Persons with Mental Handicap, 2003), 73-89. 2 Ian Bell, ‘Age Appropriateness’, 2014, accessed 4 June 2014, http://ianpbell.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/article-211.pdf. 3 Jeannie Doiron, ‘When Is “Age Appropriate” Inappropriate?’, posted on Musings: The Advocacy Centre Blog, 2011, accessed 4 June 2014, http://www.advocacyla.org/index.php/Blog_Reader/items/when-is-age-appropriate -inappropriate.html.

Bibliography Fairbairn, Gavin, and Denis Rowley. ‘Ludzie z Niepełnosprawnością Intelecktualną jako Rodzice’ [‘People with Intellectual Disabilities as Parents: Some Practical and Ethical Considerations’]. In Życie Emocjonalne i Rodzinne Osób z Niepełnosprawnością Intelektualną w Aspekcie Seksualności, ed. Anna Firkowska-Mankiewicz, 73–89. XXVIII Sympozjum Naukowe, Warszawa, 2-3 December 2002. Polish Association for Persons with Mental Handicap, 2003. Fairbairn, Gavin, Denis Rowley, and Maggie Bowen. Sexuality, Learning Difficulties and Doing What’s Right. London: David Fulton, 1995. Bell, Ian. ‘Age Appropriateness’. 2014. Accessed 4 June 2014. http://ianpbell.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/article-211.pdf. Doiron, Jeannie. ‘When Is “Age Appropriate” Inappropriate?’ Posted on Musings: The Advocacy Centre Blog, 2011. Accessed 4 June 2014. http://www.advocacyla.org/index.php/Blog_Reader/items/when-is-age-appropriate -inappropriate.html. Gavin Fairbairn is an applied philosopher whose publications on, for example, education, disability, suicide, reconciliation, and academic writing are underpinned

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__________________________________________________________________ by interests in storytelling, empathy and respect for persons. Since 2012 he has been Professor Emeritus of Ethics and Language at Leeds Metropolitan University. Susan Fairbairn had a career as a teacher in multi-faith/multiracial schools, after researching interviewing skills in doctors and nurses, and teaching social psychology for many years. She has published widely in medical/nurse education and environmental psychology and has co-edited/written five books with Gavin Fairbairn.

Unethical Brotherly Love: Zell Kravinsky and Maximum Human Utility Tadeusz Lewandowski Abstract The case of American investor and philanthropist Zell Kravinsky (1956-) presents numerous ethical challenges regarding our social responsibility to others. In 2003, after disbursing the bulk of his forty-five-million-dollar fortune to various charities, Kravinsky made the decision to donate one of his kidneys to an impoverished African-American woman he had met only once. In doing so he courageously saved a life, but also incurred the wrath of his family, friends, and many observers in the media who questioned his sanity. To Kravinsky, however, refusal to donate would have been tantamount to murder, constituting a violation of his belief in ‘maximum human utility’ – a concept that insists on taking responsibility for all others less well-off, and conflates the value of others with both one’s family and oneself. He has since stated that he would gladly give up more organs, indeed his life, to those who would better serve humanity, and argued publicly that: ‘No one should have a vacation home until everyone has a place to live,…and no one should have two kidneys until everyone has one.’ This chapter offers an examination of Kravinsky’s generous if atypical act and its philosophical moorings, exploring the issue of how his brand of utilitarianism leads to the complete devaluation of the individual. Key Words: Zell Kravinsky, maximum human utility, charity, altruism, kidney donation, ethics, common good, utilitarianism. ***** 1. Introduction In the early morning of July 22, 2003, former real estate mogul and Ivy League professor Zell Kavinsky quietly slipped out of bed while his wife slept, and exited his house. His destination was Philadelphia’s Albert Einstein Medical Center, and his objective was to donate a kidney to a dying woman he had met but once. The voluntary transplant would be the crescendo of a philanthropic spree that had already seen him disburse almost the entirety of his forty-five million dollar fortune to various charities. In giving up his kidney Kravinsky courageously saved a life, but also incurred the wrath of his family, friends, and many observers who questioned his sanity and charged him with a list of offenses from supreme selfishness to gross irresponsibility. To Kravinsky, however, refusal to donate would have been tantamount to murder, and constitute a violation of his belief in ‘maximum human utility’ – a concept of social responsibility that conflates the value of others with both one’s family and oneself, and demands the forgoing of

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__________________________________________________________________ one’s own comfort, security, and even body for those with dimmer life prospects. During the media blitz that followed his donation, Kravinsky further stated that he would gladly give up more organs, and indeed his life, to either relieve others’ suffering or sustain those who would better serve humanity. Such ideological moorings and the unusual act they inspired present numerous ethical challenges regarding ideals of human solidarity and social responsibility, raising the issue of whether an excess of utilitarianism can lead to the devaluation of the individual’s right to life and the proliferation of sacrifice (self-abnegating or imposed), or conversely, the furtherance of the common good. The significance of Kravinsky’s case, however, does not rest solely upon its philosophical implications, but on the potentially pathological aspects of radical altruism. The matter of what motivations lie behind his gestures of renunciation offers a range of explanations from deflated self-esteem to a disposition towards narcissism. The point at which philosophical and psychological aspects of philanthropy meet, and at which ideals and expressions of solidarity become harmful, then, indicate dangers emphasised as far back as Kant’s critique of utilitarianism. 2. Kravinsky and the Donation Kravinsky was born in 1956 to Russian Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he endured a relatively impoverished childhood within a family that offered little parental support. Kravinsky was a bright young man, a fact that earned him a scholarship to Dartmouth in 1971. After university Kravinsky returned to Philadelphia, where he began acquire a taste – and talent – for buying and selling real estate located around the University of Pennsylvania. Despite his high earnings, he lived an exceedingly sparse existence, residing in a tiny, windowless room that lacked both a shower and kitchen, where he meticulously planned his new investments. During this time, Kravinsky also returned to school to earn two doctorates in composition theory and Renaissance literature from U Penn. It was there that he met his wife and started a family that would grow to four children. His academic career, however, soon gave way to his former love of real estate. In the mid-1990s Kravinsky was able to take a loan of two million dollars, which – through what can only be described as mathematical genius – he turned into a forty-five million dollar portfolio of shopping malls and warehouses within a mere five years. Nonetheless, he continued his acetic ways, living with his family in a modest suburban house and dressing in second-hand clothes. As well, thoughts of divesting all his assets in a philanthropic orgy began to seductively tempt him. He convinced his wife that giving donations to various charities would be good in itself, and that abandoning the real estate business would bring him closer to his family. Kravinsky soon reduced his worldly possessions to approximately eighty thousand dollars in savings and stock, his house, and two passenger vehicles. Yet, he still had the longing to give. Inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal on the subject of non-directed kidney

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__________________________________________________________________ donations, Kravinsky became taken with the prospect of giving a kidney as ‘a treat to myself.’ 1 Armed with his undeniable computations concerning the low risk of donating and driven to achieve the ‘greatest good’ by what he termed ‘the mathematical calculus of utilitarianism,’ Kravinsky began to discuss the happy possibility with family and friends, but received a hostile reception. 2 Disregarding their forceful arguments that a commitment to family precluded taking any conscious risk to one’s health, and deeming them a ‘rationalization for all manner of greed and selfishness,’ he contacted Albert Einstein Medical Center about making a rare non-directed donation. 3 Kravinsky’s only stipulation was that the kidney go to an economically disadvantaged African American. 4 His wife learned of the transplant from the morning paper and immediately threatened divorce. 5 The negative reaction of Kravinsky’s wife was not atypical. In subsequent media reports numerous individuals voiced an assortment of criticisms with regard to both Kravinksy’s extreme philanthropy and non-directed kidney donation. Some were convinced he had acted out of secret guilt for a bad deed, or insisted that he was merely expressing a profound selfishness that would ultimately breed resentment in his wife and children. 6 Others characterised him more bluntly as a ‘nut job’ or ‘heartless lunatic’ in search of ‘self-glorification.’ 7 The publicity and interest in the story gave Kravinsky ample opportunity to answer his critics. To explain his kidney donation, he used mathematical formulae mixed with conflation-based utilitarian arguments, pointing out that while he faced a one in four thousand chance of dying, his recipient faced certain death. To value his life at four thousand times hers, he stated, was ‘obscene and unacceptable.’ 8 Soon, however, Kravinsky began to both privately and publicly toy with the idea of further donations of his body parts. He thought of the good he could do through giving a lobe of his lung, or piece of his liver, and even considered giving up his second kidney and going on dialysis. Despite the potential madness of such actions and their devastating consequences for him and his family, Kravinsky insisted that such donations were easily justified by his philosophy of ‘maximum human utility,’ which he controversially expounded in the following months. 9 3. Maximum Human Utility Maximum human utility, as described by Kravinsky in numerous articles and interviews, has as its basis the simple idea that everyone is ‘morally and logically’ obliged to give as much as they can to those who suffer from having less, in order to alleviate that suffering and, above all, save lives. 10 As he further argues, no one should own two houses or two cars, while others lack shelter and, presumably, transport, and we are not entitled to two kidneys until all on Earth have at least one. Therefore, if a person refuses to donate to another in need he or she is committing the moral equivalent of murder, and is unquestionably ‘responsible for their death.’ 11 As radical as such statements seem they still fall within the bounds of rationality. Kravinsky, however, encountered greater skepticism when he began to

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__________________________________________________________________ argue that those who can ‘produce more good for the world’ in terms of increasing joy or saving lives, should be saved at the cost of others – in particular himself. 12 He stated unequivocally that he would give up his life to provide organs for others who would be of better service to humanity. When pressed about the potentiality of his essentially committing suicide to aid strangers, Kravinsky responded: Most parents would give their life for their children. I’m drawing the family circle wider and I am saying that – for instance, the recipient of my kidney, I think she’s my sister even though she was a stranger. And the proof is that the kidney that sustained me is sustaining her. And if we are all genuinely brothers and sisters, in that light, the sacrifice I would make [would seem] normal to any parent or any brother or any sister. 13 Whatever the beauty of such sentiments, many were left unconvinced of the moral and mental foundation Kravinsky’s choices. Even more so when he answered a reporter’s request ‘to calculate the ratio between his love for his children and his love for unknown children.’ His response was, predictably, in lockstep with his philosophy: I don’t know where I’d set it, but I would not let many children die so my kids could live. I don’t think that two kids should die so that one of my kids has comfort, and I don’t know that two children should die so that one of my kids live. 14 The notoriety Kravinsky gained from his press interviews and television appearances quickly drew the attention of a spectrum of professionals and academics from philosophers and psychologists to medical doctors. They posited that Kravinsky was perhaps the victim a pathological benevolence, 15 brought on by either painfully low self-esteem or profound narcissism, or possibly ‘a strong instance of obsessive-compulsive disorder.’ 16 While many attempted to find answers for the causes behind Kravinsky’s giving, he himself remained steadfast and clear in his reasoning. Undeterred by his critics, he cast his actions as the beginning of a quest for a ‘moral life.’ 17 Before the donation, Kravinsky felt unmoored and dissatisfied, as if something of great importance were missing that only the metaphysical could provide. He explained: ‘I used to pray to God to be good. I used to fantasize about a pill that I could take that would make me good. Then I realized it’s putting the cart before the horse. First, you do the good deed.’ 18 This epiphany allowed Kravinsky to find true purpose in achieving a goodness that should, in his opinion, be the aim of every moral agent. In designating goodness as the primary goal in a life devoted of ‘moral advancement,’ Kravinsky claims concerns over the ego’s selfish personal happiness are replaced with the rapture of

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__________________________________________________________________ incorporeal concern for one’s spiritual brothers and sisters. 19 Hence, the road to moral euphoria is paved with dispossession, which propels one along it to greater and greater heights. ‘I feel better for giving everything,’ Kravinsky has stated, ‘whether it is my money or my body. Sometimes I feel that the moral life is so close now, I can almost touch it.’ 20 This burning desire to do more, however, seems to add even greater extremism to his altruistic ambitions. Kravinsky’s yearning to save lives, even at the expense of his own, continues – restrained only by his family and fear: If I didn’t have kids, and I saw a child who was dying for want of a kidney, I would offer mine. …My organs could save several people if I gave my whole body away. …But I don’t think I can do that to my family. Or, at least, I can’t endure the humiliation. I’ve thought about it: my kids would be under a cloud, everybody would pillory me as a showboat or a suicide. I know it’s a thing I ought to do; other lives are equal to my own, and I could save at least three of four. I have fantasized about it. I’ve dreamed about it. But I don’t have the nerve. 21 Having accepted and ultimately surrendered to the fact that more donations would cause such intolerable harm, Kravinsky nonetheless persists in the belief that granting the rest of his organs to save a greater number of people remains the proper moral choice – though rendered impossible by the necessity of domestic tranquility. As a result, he has made a binding pledge: ‘I have promised my wife I will not give away any more organs.’ 22 Regardless of his recommitment to family, Kravinsky’s philosophy appears to feature an overwhelmingly impersonal viewpoint whose logical conclusions lead over a moral and social precipice. Putting any individual motivations for Kravinsky’s actions temporarily to the side, several questions must be addressed concerning whether an excess of utilitarianism in solidarity with those who suffer can lead to the devaluation of the individual and the proliferation of sacrifice (selfabnegating or imposed), or conversely, the furtherance of the common good. Summarising his statements, the clear propositions of Kravinsky’s moral scheme regarding the body are that persons should give up their lives (assuming a lethal organ donation) to other persons for two primary reasons: 1) because some lives are deemed more valuable to society than others, and 2) because one life can provide organs to save several lives. According to Kravinsky such donations are a moral imperative that enhance the common good. As a moral imperative, we may assume it bears grounds for imposition. The only logical conclusion, therefore, is that we as a society should kill some to save others of more value, or others of greater number. In the first case, society’s assigning of value to persons appears riddled with dangers for those disadvantaged in natural assets. Would less

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__________________________________________________________________ intelligent people, or even the mentally and physically handicapped, for instance, be considered less valuable than those more intelligent, and be expected to give up organs in the case of need? And what pre-institutional claim does society have to warrant the erasure of the individual’s right to his or her own body, and of course, life? Also problematic is Kravinsky’s second principle in which, as an illustration, he claims that he would give up his own child’s life to save two others. Firstly, killing a child and harvesting its organs for the benefit of two other children highlights the maximum human utility’s unspoken tenet that humans have no inborn right to their own bodies. Secondly, killing some in society to benefit the majority as policy appears potentially unattractive in light of the result that the individual is stripped of its most basic of natural rights and arguably left devalued in the face of a simple mathematical equation. Ultimately, then, under Kravinsky’s scheme the utilitarian conflation of the importance of every person’s happiness is given a significantly less positive casting, as it mutates into the equal expendability of persons on the one hand, and on the other the simultaneous contradictory judgment that some (who are deemed to have more value to society) are, as Orwell would put it, more equal than others. The above issues beg the question of familial obligations and the widespread higher valuing of loved ones within human societies. Under maximum human utility’s principles such bonds and responsibilities are overridden by society’s claims, as persons are asked to support the ideal of a larger human solidarity at the expense of unified family integrity. Kravinsky, in divesting himself of cash and kidney, chose utilitarian principle over the wishes and security of those closest to him. In doing so he acted in accordance with a philosophical paradigm that potentially offers little in the sense of defining human attachments, other than to ideals of human responsibility for others who are, to a considerable degree, abstract. Maximum human utility, then, evidently lacks a critical human element. Kravinsky, incidentally, does not seem to understand or accept the effect his actions has on his wife, and is seemingly blinded by principle: ‘Why should a spouse approve of the decision that you’ve made with perfect moral clarity?’ he asks, ‘If you’re a bit more morally evolved than your spouse, why should you be dragged down to his or her level?’ 23 Taking into account Kravinsky’s expressed moral certitude and the lengths he has gone to in order to reach his demanding ideals, it becomes evident that the significance of his case does not rest solely upon its philosophical implications, but on the potentially pathological aspects of radical altruism. It is difficult not to link maximum human utility with the excesses, rhetorical or otherwise, of its main practitioner, and the obsessive and compulsive nature of Kravinsky’s giving. ‘With each thing I’ve given away,’ he has stated, ‘I’ve been more certain of the need to give away. …But what are they going to say – that I’m depressed? I am, but it isn’t suicidal. I’m depressed because I haven’t done enough.’ 24 The same can be said of Kravinsky’s declared quest for what he calls ‘ethical ecstasy’ or ‘Ex stasis,’ which takes on a self-abnegating quality that

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__________________________________________________________________ speaks to some inner dissatisfaction. Once achieved, Kravinsky explains, ‘the significant locus would be in the sphere of others,’ where he would finally lose his ‘punishing’ and ‘tremendously burdensome’ ego. 25 This appears a goal linked closely with true self-erasure: ‘It’s a wonderful thing,’ he has asserted, ‘to die performing a moral act.’ 26 The product of any widespread adoption of maximum human utility, therefore, would appear to be a cycle of renunciation without end, in which there is no room for any aspirations other than reaching an ideal of solidarity that levels almost everyone, save those who are extinguished for the greater good. Considering in toto, then, the logical conclusions to which Kravinsky’s philosophical path leads, it is cogent to invoke Kant’s criticisms of utilitarianism, and the moral importance of treating people as ends rather than means, lest they suffer devaluation. Maximum human utility presents a radical justification for treating humans ‘in terms of what good they can be used for,’ inevitably leaving us at the mercy of utilitarian calculations that promise the greater good through a rejection of the human freedom to pursue aims separate from the highest priority of the happiness of others. 27 4. Conclusion Regardless of all the dangers inherent in the application of maximum human utility and its troubling implications as a model of social responsibility, since his donation Kravinsky appears to be at greater peace than during his anguished flurry of giving – though he admits the ethical ecstasy he once sought has eluded him. 28 Kravinsky has gone back to work in real estate and even bought a larger house for his family. 29 However, he remains true to his original mission by running an investment fund whose profits go to charity. He as well offers ten thousand dollars to anyone willing to donate his or her kidney. Using his rhetorical powers to persuade, within a couple hours a reporter sent to interview him signed a contract to donate a kidney to a stranger, but reneged when his mother violently protested. 30 Kravinsky, though is gratified by his own choice: ‘It was a good deed. However I screw up morally in the future, this is something no one can take away.’ 31 It certainly bears mentioning that divorced from either philosophy or pathology, Kravinsky has acted in supreme generosity, even if the mathematical risk of death or encumbrance was minimal. The donation itself stands as good as his philosophy does as perilous. Nevertheless, his saving of a life outraged so many and provoked such suspicion that it reflects a negative strain in a society where altruism is immediately linked to insanity. Kravinsky’s donation obviously makes people deeply uncomfortable because if he is not mentally ill, the rest of us are perhaps unconscionably selfish. In the end, whether to live with two kidneys and a few sporadic tinges of guilt, or one kidney and the satisfaction of saving a life, is something that deserves consideration.

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Notes 1

Jerry Schwartz, ‘Generous to a Fault or Faulty Generosity?’, Los Angeles Times, 30 November 2003, accessed 25 November 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/30/news/adna-giver30. 2 Ian Parker, ‘The Gift’, New Yorker, 2 August 2004, accessed 17 January 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/02/040802fa_fact_parker. 3 Dan Majors, ‘The Gifted Who Keeps on Giving’, Post-Gazette, 23 July 2003, accessed 12 October 2012, http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/firstlight/20030723firstlight0723p1.asp. 4 Ibid. 5 Parker, ‘The Gift’. 6 Terry Lane, ‘Why Is Goodness Just too Good to Be True?’, The Age, 27 July 2003, accessed 14 November 2012, .http://theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/26/1059084254428.html. 7 Schwartz, ‘Generous to a Fault’. 8 Paula Zahn, ‘Interview with Zell Kravinsky’, CNN.com, 18 August 2003, accessed November 14, 2012, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0308/18/se.11.html. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Charles Laurence, ‘I Feel Better for Giving Everything: Whether My Money or My Organs’, The Telegraph, 8 August 2004, accessed 18 October 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1468943/I-feel-bett er-for-giving-everything-whether-my-money-or-my-organs.html. 12 Zahn, ‘Interview’. 13 Ibid. 14 Parker, ‘The Gift’. 15 Max Malikow, ‘Is It Possible to Be Pathologically Good?’, Philosophical Pathways, 20 January 2011, accessed 17 November 2012, http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/issue159.html. 16 Matthew A. Samberg, ‘The God Within’, Chronically Philosophical, 2005, accessed 18 October 2012, https://files.nyu.edu/mas916/public/godwithin.html. 17 Parker, ‘The Gift’. 18 Malikow, ‘Is It Possible’. 19 ‘The Compulsive Philanthropist’, Psychology Today, 1 January 2005, accessed 17 October 2012, http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200502/the-compulsive-philanthropist. 20 Laurence, ‘I Feel Better’. 21 Parker, ‘The Gift’. 22 Laurence, ‘I Feel Better’.

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__________________________________________________________________ 23

Jason Fagone, ‘What if Zell Kravinsky Isn’t Crazy?’, Philadelphia Magazine, December 2003, accessed 18 October 2012, http://www.phillymag.com/articles/what_if_zell_kravinsky_isnt_crazy/. 24 Laurence, ‘I Feel Better’. 25 Parker, ‘The Gift’. 26 Fagone, ‘What if Zell Kravinsky Isn’t Crazy?’. 27 Matt McCormick, ‘Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005, accessed 18 November 2012, http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/#H9. 28 Parker, ‘The Gift’. 29 Peter Singer, ‘What Should a Billionaire Give: And What Should You?’, The New York Times Magazine, 17 December 17 2006, accessed 17 November, 2012, http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/20061217.htm. 30 Fagone, ‘What if Zell Kravinsky Isn’t Crazy?’. 31 Parker, ‘The Gift’.

Bibliography ‘The Compulsive Philanthropist’. Psychology Today, 1 January 2005. Accessed 17 October 2012. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200502/the-compulsivephilanthropist. Fagone, Jason. ‘What if Zell Kravinsky Isn’t Crazy?’ Philadelphia Magazine, December 2003. Accessed 18 October 2012. http://www.phillymag.com/articles/what_if_zell_kravinsky_isnt_crazy/. Lane, Terry. ‘Why Is Goodness Just too Good to Be True?’ The Age, 27 July 2003. Accessed 14 November 2012. http://theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/26/1059084254428.html. Laurence, Charles. ‘I Feel Better for Giving Everything: Whether My Money or My Organs’. The Telegraph, 8 August 2004. Accessed 18 October 2012. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1468943/I-feel-bett er-for-giving-everything-whether-my-money-or-my-organs.html. McCormick, Matt. ‘Immanuel Kant: Metaphysics’. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005. Accessed 18 November 2012. http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/#H9.

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__________________________________________________________________ Majors, Dan. ‘The Gifted Who Keeps on Giving’. Post-Gazette, 23 July 2003. Accessed 12 October 2012. http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/firstlight/20030723firstlight0723p1.asp. Malikow, Max. ‘Is It Possible to Be Pathologically Good?’ Philosophical Pathways, 20 January 2011. Accessed 17 November 2012. http://www.philosophypathways.com/newsletter/issue159.html. Parker, Ian. ‘The Gift’. New Yorker, 2 August 2004. Accessed 17 January 2014. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/08/02/040802fa_fact_parker. Samberg, Matthew A. ‘The God Within’. Chronically Philosophical, 2005. Accessed 18 October 2012. https://files.nyu.edu/mas916/public/godwithin.html. Schwartz, Jerry. ‘Generous to a Fault or Faulty Generosity?’ Los Angeles Times, 30 November 2003. Accessed 25 November 2012. http://articles.latimes.com/2003/nov/30/news/adna-giver30. Singer, Peter. ‘What Should a Billionaire Give: And What Should You?’ The New York Times Magazine, 17 December 2006. Accessed 17 November 2012. http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/20061217.htm. Tadeusz Lewandowski, PhD, teaches in the Department of Anglophone Cultures at Opole University, Poland. He has authored a reference book on Polish/English interlingual errors and a monograph on the American critic and intellectual Dwight Macdonald.

What Should We Consume? Virginia Gichuru Abstract Aristotelian ethics determines an ethically good action as one that enhances man’s rational nature and achieves the common good. In this chapter, I examine the human action of having genetically modifying foods in Kenya, so as to determine if it is an action that is ethically acceptable. A genetically modified crop is a plant used for agricultural purposes into which one or several genes coded for desirable traits have been inserted through the process of genetic engineering. The ethical acceptability of genetically modified (GM) crops in Kenya is determined using the three Aristotelian methods of evaluating an ethically voluntary action. These are: the object, the intention, and the circumstances. The physical dimenson of the object is the Kenyan farmers’ preferred cultivar, which is lacking some essential qualities, e.g. drought resistance, and needs to be improved in these traits. The moral dimension, on the other hand, is the intention of the scientist, who inserts a foreign gene for a desired trait into the farmers’ cultivar to enhance it. The object is found to be ethically good. The remote intention is the Kenyan farmer wanting his crops to be inserted with foreign genes that have certain qualities. It is determined to be ethically good since by enhancing farmers’ preferred cultivars in certain traits food security is enhanced, improving human dignity. One of the circumstances discussed is the general skepticism from some farmers and consumers concerning the possible harmful effects on health and the environment. This circumstance is determined to be ethically bad, since they lack information, and hence cannot make an informed choice. What may be affecting the ethical acceptability of GM foods in Kenya is the circumstances surrounding them. In order to address skepticism by various stakeholders, there is a need for sound scientific and ethical education on the advantages and disadvantages of GM foods. Key Words: Ethical, genetically modified foods, Kenya, Aristotelian, object, intention, circumstances. ***** 1. An Examination into the Ethical Acceptability of Genetically Modified Foods in Kenya Principled on Aristotelian Ethics Ethics is a branch of philosophy that studies voluntary human actions from the point of view of their ethical value (goodness/badness). The ethical value is determined in terms of how these free voluntary human acts are geared towards the final ends of man. 1 According to Aristotle, the final end of man’s actions is happiness (eudamonia). He stated that this eudamonia consists in something that is ‘final and self

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__________________________________________________________________ sufficient.’ Aristotle discovered that man finds happiness by exercising his rational nature, which gives him the capacity to direct himself to the good in every action. 2 In this chapter, I examine whether genetically modified foods (GM) foods in Kenya are ethically acceptable using Aristotelian etics. For Aristotle, an ethically good action is one that enhances man’s rational nature and hence his human dignity, as well as helps him achieve happiness. In addition, it helps him to achieve the common good. A genetically modified crop is a plant used for agricultural purposes into which one or several genes coded for desirable traits have been inserted through the process of genetic engineering. These genes may stem not only from the same or different plant species, but also from organisms totally unrelated to the recipeint crop. 3 Genetic engineering is more advantageous than conventional breeding because it allows for the direct gene transfer across species boundaries. GM crops are improved for agronomic traits, such as better resistance to pests and diseases, and higher nutrient contents of food products; some plants are designed to produce special substances for pharmaceutical or industrial purposes. 4 GM crops have manifold potential. They can increase agricultural productivity and hence ensure sufficient availability of food and raw materials. 5 In addition, nutritionally enhanced crops could help improve the health status of consumers. 6 In order to determine the ethical acceptability of GM crops in Kenya, I will examine the three elements that Aristotle considered when evaluating, ethically, a voluntary action. First is the object of the voluntary action. The object is made up of two dimensions viz: the physical dimension, which refers to the content that is known and willed by the person who acts. 7 The ethical dimension of the object considers the goodness or badness of the object in terms of the final goal of man in every action, which is happiness. The ethical dimension can also be referrred to as the proximate intention of the agent who acts. In this chapter, the physical dimenson of the object is the Kenyan farmers’ preferred cultivar, or crop, that is lacking some essential qualities, e.g. drought resistance, and needs to be improved for these traits. The moral dimension, on the other hand, is the intention of the scientist, who inserts the foreign gene of a desired trait into the farmers’ cultivar to enhance it. In Kenya, like in many parts of subsaharan Africa, agricultural yields are substantially lower due to various obstacles affecting the region. These obstacles include poor soil quality, increasing drought conditions, crop destroying weeds, and pests. 8 From Aristotelian Ethics, the object obtains its ethical value from the moral dimension. 9 The moral dimension therefore of the scientists’ inserting certain desired foreign genes into farmers’ preferred cultivars in order to enhance them for certain qualities, can be termed ethically good. The reason is that GM crops with enhanced traits will provide food security to Kenyans. This in turn will enhance the common good by eradicating hunger in the Kenyan population.

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__________________________________________________________________ Secondly, the intention or the end of any moral act according to Aristotle is the objective towards which the person directs his actions. 10 This contains the main intention of the agent, without which the act would not be carried out. The intention may coincide with the object of the action in some cases. It is also referred to as the remote intention to distinguish it from the proximate intention. In this chapter, the remote intention will be the Kenyan farmer’s intention for wanting his crops to be inserted with foreign genes that have certain qualities. His reason would be so that he can obtain more crop yield and eventually improve food security. In Kenya there are currently controlled field trials for GM maize. Two research organisations are involved, i.e. the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (K.A.R.I) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (C.I.M.M.Y.T), which began planting maize that is modified to resist stem borers, which cause 20 percent of crop loss to farmers annually. 11 The remote intention of Kenyan farmers can be evaluated according to Aristotelian Ethics as ethically good, since by enhancing farmers’ preferred cultivars for certain traits, food security is enhanced. In so doing human dignity is enhanced, since a basic human right to food is met. A third element considered in Aristotelian Ethics is the circumstances that are important in evaluating the ethical acceptability of GM food in Kenya. The first circumstance to consider is the general skepticism from some stakeholders in the agricultual sector, such as farmers and consumers. Their concern is that there has been speculation that GM foods may be harmful to health and the environment. In 2012, some of these uproars led the Kenyan government to ban GM foods. 12 As shall be seen later, it is not clear what this ban implied. In Kenya, GM foods are still being grown in controlled field trials. In the case where there is a maize shortfall the government has imported GM maize from South Africa. Kenya’s Biosfaety Act states that all materials that contain GMO mateial above one percent should be labelled. 13 Experts say that before GM foods are allowed into the country, a risk assessment should be done internally and with the collaboration of other bodies. 14 A study done in 2007 found that consumers’ knowledge of GM crops was limited. Only 38% of the 604 respondents were aware of GM crops. Nevertheless, people were generally appreciative of GM technology and a great majority would be willing to buy GM maize at the same price as their favorite brand. Half of the respondents, though, feared that GM technology could lead to a loss of biodiversity and affect non-target insects; while more than one-third had concerns about the effects of GM food on human health. 15 The circumstance under consideration can be evaluated as ethically bad according to Aristotelian ethics, since the stakeholders, who are farmers and consumers, lack informed knowledge about the beneficial or harmful effects of GM food – hence they cannot make an informed choice. This circumstance

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__________________________________________________________________ therfore goes against the dignity of the human person since by nature man is rational and able to make choices. A second circumstance that I will discuss in this chapter is the lack of informed decisions by lawmakers and politicians on the possible advantages and disadvantages of GM foods for the country. This adds to the ongoing raging debate on whether the country should embrace GM foods or not. In 2009 the National Biosafety Act, Kenya’s law on biotechnology, was passed. It lays out procedures for evaluating the safety of GM products. This law affects research, potential cultivation, and consumption of GM products. 16 According to the law, Kenya’s primary authority for overseeing biotechnology is the National Biosafety Authority (NBA). The role of this body is to carry out general supervision and control of the transfer, handling, and use of GMO’s. In 2011, the Kenyan government allowed the importation of GM maize on the condition that it would not be used as seed; that products would be clearly labelled; and it would be certified by the National Biosafety Authority. 17 On November 8th 2012, the Minister of Public Health presented concerns about the safety of GM foods to the Kenyan cabinet chaired by the President. 18 The Minister asked the President to immediately ban GM imports and products in Kenya, citing the discredited Seralini study released by a French University in September 2012 that linked cancer in rats to the consumption of GM foods. 19 The President accepted her recommendation and decreed the ban. This ban seemed not to take into consideration the National Biosafety Act of 2009, since the Act did not appear to guide the decision on the ban. The Kenyan government maintained its stand on the ban on GM food in 2013, even though the publication by Seralini had since been retracted after it was found not to be scientifically sound. 20 In 2014, the scientists continued to ask the government to lift the ban. The third circumstance is poor goverance in the implementation of policy on GM foods in Kenya. For example, the Minister of Public health did not consult the National Biosafety Authority before recommending the ban to the government and the President. Following the Presidental decree on the ban on the importation of GM foods, the Minister of Public Health ordered a task force to be constituted to study the health effects of GM foods. 21 Currently, this task force does not include representatives of National Biosafety Authority (NBA) or other relevant ministries. This shows that the Presidential and cabinet decree in Kenya ursups Kenya’s agricultural biotechnology law and regulations. A lack of consistency in following the Biosafety Act on GM foods could be due to the fact that Kenya is caught in a trade war between the US and Europe. The US, for instance, was looking at Kenya as a partner in the East African region as far as agriculture and food safety is concerned. 22 However, the ban on GM food imports means that Kenya cannot get its maize deficit from the US. Also, the ban would prohibit the use of any form of future corn-soy blend (CSB) food assistance to

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__________________________________________________________________ Kenya from the US, a common commodity used for emergency feeding programmes. 23 Kenya has a market for her agricultural products in Europe. Consumers in Europe will shun imports from any country that begins planting GM varieties. The new European Union (EU) regulation calling for strict labelling and traceability on all GM-derived foods and feeds will further discourage the planting of GM crops in poor countries. 24 This circumstance, which shows poor governance in the correct implementation of the Kenya Biosafety Act, can be termed in Aristotelian Ethics as ethically bad. The reason is that it causes a lot of confusion as to whether the country should embrace GM technology or not. Due to this confusion, food safety and security is jeopardised and people end up suffering. 2. Discussion What determines the ethical value of a voluntary action is the object. However, the intention and cicumstances are also important because they modify the overall ethicality of the voluntary action. 25 Having discussed various circumstances that surround the use of GM foods in Kenya, I would like to analyse the overall ethical value of GM foods as follows: According to Aristotle, for a voluntary action to be ethically acceptable, all three elements, namely the object, the intention, and the circumstances, have to be ethically good. From my discussion it is clear that what is affecting the ethical acceptability of GM foods in Kenya is the circumstances surrounding them. In order to address, for instance, the skepticism by various stakeholders, there is a need for a sound scientific and ethical education on the advantages and disadvantages of GM foods. In order to improve governance issues in the implementation of the Kenya Biosafety Act, the Kenyan government needs to understand that allowing GM foods into the country should always be for the benefit of the common good of the citizens of the country. The Kenya Biosafety Act should be a clear policy that guides stakeholders on what to do in case of crop failure and drought, labelling of GM food, and also assessment of food safety using different chemical tests. 26

Notes 1

Patricia Debeljuh, Ethics Learning to Live, trans. Catherine Dean (Nairobi: Focus Publishers Ltd., 2006), 1. 2 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics I, 1.3.3.1. 3 Liz Orton, GM Crops: Going against the Grain, ed. Alex Wijeratna (Manchester: The Corner House, 2003).

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Jan Peter Nap, Peter L. J. Metz, Marga Escaler and Anthony J. Conner, ‘The Release of Genetically Modified Crops into the Environment’, The Plant Journal 33, No. 1 (2003): 1-18. 5 Joachim Von Braun, Food-Security Risks Must Be Comprehensively Addressed (New York: International Food Policy Research Institute 2008-2009), accessed 9 June 2014, http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ar08e.pdf. 6 Martina Newell-McGloughlin, ‘Nutritionally Improved Agricultural Crops’, Plant Physiology 147, No. 3 (2008): 939-953. 7 Debeljuh, Ethics Learning to Live, 1. 8 Anon., ‘Pathways to Productivity? Assessment of the GMO Debate in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania’, CSIS Global Food Project, accessed 15 May 2014, http://csis.org/program/pathways-productivity-assessment-gmo-debate-kenya-tanza nia-and-uganda. 9 Debeljuh, Ethics Learning to Live, 1. 10 Ibid. 11 Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Regulation of GMO Crops and Foods: Kenya Case Study, accessed 15 May 2014, http://www.ny.edu. 12 Anon., ‘Drought Persuades Kenya to Import GM Maize’, ScidevNet, 8 August 2011, accessed 15 May 2014, http://www.scidev.net/global/biotechnology/news/drought-persuades-kenya-to-imp ort-gm-maize.html. 13 Xinhua, ‘Kenya to Gazette GMOs Transportation Rules by November’, Business Today, 8 August 2012, accessed 15 May 2014. http://businesstoday.co.ke/news/2012/08/8/kenya-gazette-gmos-transportation-rule s-November. 14 Ibid. 15 Simon Chege Kimenju, Hugo De Groote, Joseph Karugia, Stephen Mbogoh and David Poland, ‘Consumer Awareness and Attitudes toward GM Foods in Kenya’, African Journal of Biotechnology 4, No. 10 (2011): 1066-1075. 16 Biosafety Act of Kenya: Laws of Kenya (Nairobi: National Council for Law Reporting with the Authority of the Attorney General, 2012), accessed 15 May 2014, http://www.kenyalaw.org. 17 Anon., ‘Drought Persuades Government to Import GM Maize’, Science and Development Network, 12 August 2011, accessed 15 May 2014, http://cenafrica.net/2011/1092/drought-persuades-govt-to-import-gm-maize. 18 Anon., ‘Kenya Bans Genetically Modified Imports’. 19 Eric Séralini Gilles, Emilie Clair, Robin Mesnage, Steeve Gress, Nicolas Defarge, Manuela Malatesta, Didier Hennequin and Joel Spiroux de Vendomois, ‘Long Term Toxicity of a Roundup Herbicide and a Roundup-Tolerant Genetically

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__________________________________________________________________ Modified Maize’, Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal 50, No. 11 (2012): 4221-4231. 20 John Muchangi, ‘Lift Ban on GMOs Scientists Tell State’, The Star, 3 December 2013, accessed 15 May 2014, http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-145869/lift-ban-gmos-scientists-tell-state. 21 Anon., ‘Kenya Bans Genetically Modified Imports’. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Robert L. Paarlberg, Governing the GM Crop Revolution: Policy Choices for Developing Countries (New York: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2000), accessed 9 June 2014, http://www.ifpri.org/publication/governing-gm-croprevolution-0?print. 25 Debeljuh, Ethics Learning to Live, 1. 26 Artemis Don and Ioannis S. Arvanitoyannis, ‘Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods’, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 49 (2009): 164175. .

Bibliography Anonymous. ‘Drought Persuades Kenya to Import GM Maize’. ScidevNet. 8 August 2011. Accessed 15 May 2014. http://www.scidev.net/global/biotechnology/news/drought-persuades-kenya-to-imp ort-gm-maize.html. Anonymous. ‘Drought Persuades Government to Import GM Maize’. Science and Development Network. 12 August 2011.Accessed 15 May 2014. http://cenafrica.net/2011/1092/drought-persuades-govt-to-import-gm-maize/. Anonymous. ‘Kenya Bans Genetically Modified Imports’. USDA/FAS Gain Report. 27 November 2012. Accessed 15 May 2014. https://seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=31834. Anonymous. ‘Pathways to Productivity? Assessment of the GMO Debate in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania’. CSIS Global Food Project. Accessed 15 May 2014 http://csis.org/program/pathways-productivity-assessment-gmo-debate-kenya-tanza nia-and-uganda. Artemis, Don, and Ioannis S. Arvanitoyannis. ‘Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods’. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 49 (2009): 164– 175.

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__________________________________________________________________ Gilles, Eric Séralini, Emilie Clair, Robin Mesnage, Steeve Gress, Nicolas Defarge, Manuela Malatesta, Didier Hennequin, and Joel Spiroux de Vendomois. ‘Long Term Toxicity of a Roundup Herbicide and a Roundup-Tolerant Genetically Modified Maize’. Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal 50, No. 11 (2012): 4221–4231. Kimenju, Simon C., Hugo De Groote, Joseph Karugia, Stephen Mbogoh, and David Poland. ‘Consumer Awareness and Attitudes toward GM Foods in Kenya’. African Journal of Biotechnology 4, No. 10 (2011): 1066–1075. Muchangi, John. ‘Lift Ban on GMOs Scientists Tell State’. The Star, 3 December 2013. Accessed 15 May 2014. http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-145869/liftban-gmos-scientists-tell-state. Nap, Jan Peter, Peter L. J. Metz, Marga Escaler, and Anthony J. Conner. ‘The Release of Genetically Modified Crops into the Environment’. The Plant Journal 33, No. 1 (2003): 1–18. Newell-McGloughlin, Martina. ‘Nutritionally Improved Agricultural Crops’. Plant Physiology 147, No. 3 (2008): 939–953. Orton, Liz. GM Crops: Going Against the Grain. Edited by Alex Wijeratna. Manchester: The Corner House, 2003. Paarlberg, Robert L. Governing the GM Crop Revolution: Policy Choices for Developing Countries. New York: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2000. Accessed 9 June 2014. http://www.ifpri.org/publication/governing-gm-croprevolution-0?print. Patricia Debeljuh. Ethics Learning to Live. Translated by Catherine Dean. Nairobi: Focus Publishers Limited, 2006. Von Braun, Joachim. Food-Security Risks Must Be Comprehensively Addressed. New York: International Food Policy Research Institute 2008-2009. Accessed 9 June 2014. http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ar08e.pdf. Virginia Gichuru is a plant molecular biologist and has research interests in Bioethics. Currently she lectures Ethics and Philosophy to undergraduate students at Strathmore University, and is also the Dean in charge of research.

Markets that Disappoint: The Need for Responsible Consumption Steven Hinson Abstract Proponents of free market economics maintain that rational self-interest by market participants produces an optimal (i.e. global utility maximising) allocation of resources. This chapter argues that, absent market distortions, this outcome might indeed hold, but only under the restrictive dual conditions of universal market participation and continuous equal wealth endowment. The price mechanism allocates scarce resources by ‘signalling’ to self-interested economic agents when the relative opportunity costs of resources change. But for these signals to accurately reflect opportunity costs, all affected parties must participate in the market and be endowed with equivalent monetary ‘votes.’ Yet the market’s reliance on self-interest precludes the maintenance of equivalent wealth. Consequently, markets provide no guarantee of global utility maximisation. To demonstrate this, the chapter presents a simple model with two consumer groups, North and South, and two generations, Present and Future. Market directed economic growth is shown to result in increasing income inequality and therefore a tendency to under produce goods for the North. It further demonstrates that market directed growth also leads to an increasing proportion of present to future consumption. The chapter concludes by exploring, within the context of the model, forms of ethical consumption. The weakest form, sympathetic consumption, rewards businesses that are perceived to support less harmful practices. But it does not restrict personal consumption and so may not effectively remediate either intraor inter-generational inequity. Constrained Consumption (e.g. Fair Trade) is stronger in that it involves an altruistic transfer of wealth. However, while this form may partially remediate some intra-generational inequity it does not directly address the bias toward current generation consumption. Finally, Radically Limited Consumption addresses the issue of inter-generational inequity. But, in the absence of altruistic giving, may fail to resolve current distributional inequity. Key Words: Consumption, markets, growth, invisible-hand, sustainability, inequality, fair-trade, simplicity. ***** 1. Introduction Proponents of free markets argue that informed self-interest leads to socially optimal outcomes. Yet, despite the rapid ascendance of markets over the past two centuries, substantial poverty persists and the sustainability of even current levels of consumption is highly unlikely. In response, some consumers have adopted

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__________________________________________________________________ forms of deliberate, ethical consumption in an effort to ‘redirect’ market outcomes. In this chapter I first demonstrate that markets are inherently biased toward inequality and non-sustainability. I then briefly review and evaluate three different forms/levels of ethical consumption and their respective impacts on both inequality and sustainability. The primary function of any economic system is to effect the most desirable allocation of available scarce resources (i.e. land, people, and energy). But what is the most desirable allocation? A reasonable response is that its one that maximises aggregate utility – where utility represents the ‘pleasure’ or ‘satisfaction’ derived from some economic outcome. Allocating a meal to a hungry person will presumably yield a greater gain in utility than allocating it to someone well fed. So this simple rule would appear to be consistent with a general notion of fairness. 1 And as our task is to evaluate the efficacy (or inefficacy) of markets in appropriately allocating resources, it seems rhetorically useful to utilise this preferred benchmark of pro-market economists. 2. Social Role of Market Price A primary social role of markets is to communicate needed but widely dispersed information on buyers’ preferences to relevant economic decision makers. Consider the following hypothetical case of two identical consumers who, for now, enjoy identical endowments of disposable wealth. Each signals her or his relative valuation of goods by how much she or he is willing to pay for each good. For example, Dick is willing to pay $d for an automobile. This implies that of all possible goods available to purchase for $d, Dick derives the greatest utility from the automobile. On the other hand, Jane is willing to pay $j for a new home where $j > $d. Not only can we conclude that Jane prefers a new home to anything else she might consume for $j but also that she values the new home more than Dick values the automobile. We draw this conclusion because, given their equivalent wealth, she is willing to make the greater sacrifice of other goods to acquire the home. Now let us consider the behaviour of profit-seeking producers. The automobile producer would like to produce an automobile for Dick but must consider the cost of production. For simplicity, let’s assume there are only enough available resources to produce either one home or one automobile and Dick and Jane are the only relevant consumers. Jane is willing to pay $j for a home and so the homebuilder will be willing to pay up to $j to secure the necessary resources. The automobile producer must therefore be able to pay $j to outbid this homebuilder for these resources. Yet Dick is only willing to pay $d for an automobile, where $d < $j. And so producing the automobile would prove unprofitable. Conversely, the homebuilder must only pay $d for the resources and so will generate a profit building the home.

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__________________________________________________________________ Finally our two profit-seeking producers’ self-interest aligns with utility maximisation (reflecting Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’). 2 Jane’s willingness to pay more than Dick signals that she derives a greater utility gain from the home than Dick would from the automobile. Remember they have equivalent wealth and so she apparently is making a greater sacrifice. So both the profit- and utilitymaximising outcome is to allocate the resources to building a home for Jane. 3. Intra-Generational Issues In this example, we assume our economic actors have identical wealth. This allows us to use ‘willingness to pay’ (WTP) as a proxy for utility gain. But, of course, equality of wealth is clearly an unrealistic assumption. What if Jane had a significantly higher level of wealth than Dick? Her willingness to pay more for the use of the resources may simply reflect this inequality. The result is a misleading market signal. To demonstrate the effect(s) of this I present a simple graphical model representing the trade-off of consumption between affluent (North) and nonaffluent (South) consumers. Referring to the left hand diagram in figure 1, the quantity of consumption allocated to the North is measured along the horizontal axis. And the downward sloping line reflects northern consumers’ (diminishing) WTP for successive units of consumption. On the right hand diagram, I superimpose WTP for southern consumers. The quantity allocated to the South is measured from the right. An increase in quantity from left to right therefore represents an increase in consumption in the North at the expense of consumption in the South (and vice versa). Next we determine the optimal allocation of resources. Consider the first unit of consumption allocated to the North. WTPNORTH > WTPSOUTH and so consumption allocated to the North will generate a better price than consumption to the South might generate. And so the production of this unit is profitable (just as the production of the foregone unit of production to the South would have been unprofitable.) Further, given the equivalence of wealth, the utility gained by producing this unit exceeds the utility lost from foregoing a unit for the South and so aggregate utility increases. The same is true for every unit up to the dotted line. Beyond this, additional production for the North would prove both unprofitable and aggregate utility diminishing.

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Figure 1: Initial consumption allocation. © 2014. Steven Hinson. Used with permission. Now consider an innovation that increases world productive capacity. This change is represented in Figure 2. Assuming wealth remains equal, both North and South enjoy an expansion of consumption and corresponding utility. Economic growth in this case equally benefits all consumers.

Figure 2: Equal benefits from growth. © 2014. Steven Hinson. Used with permission. In Figure 3 we make the more realistic assumption that the innovation in question was the result of some profit seeking behaviour with the result being a departure from wealth equality. Further, let us make the equally realistic

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__________________________________________________________________ assumption that the financial gains from this innovation accrue to the North. While the willingness-to-pay numbers for the South remain constant, the numbers for our now more affluent North will increase.

Figure 3: Disparate benefits from growth. © 2014. Steven Hinson. Used with permission. The higher relative WTP numbers for the North causes a reallocation of resources toward the provision of consumption for the North. Does this change in allocation represent a new aggregate utility maximising combination? No. WTP is only a valid proxy for utility gain when wealth is equal. This relative change in the distribution of wealth did nothing to affect either party’s intrinsic valuation of consumption. So the combination first indicated in Figure 2, not the new one, is still the utility maximising combination. 3 Is such wealth inequality necessarily an outcome of the market? Unfortunately, yes. Referring back to our example of Dick and Jane, it was the pursuit of profit that motivated the automobile producer and the homebuilder to attend to price signals. Likewise, in a market economy such as described here, innovation is driven by the pursuit of profit gain. But profit is only meaningful if the result is some disparity in wealth. If everyone were certain of constant unchanging wealth then the motivation to take risks or respond to market signals would be largely diminished if not eliminated. 4. Inter-Generational Issues Do self-interested resource owners have any incentive to preserve productive capacity for future generations? The answer is a qualified yes. If appropriate markets exist, the automobile manufacturer has an incentive to find the right balance between current production and investment in plant and machinery, the

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__________________________________________________________________ private forester to not over harvest trees, and the private rancher to not over graze private land. 4 The real problem of the market here is its inability to economise on the use of non-tradable resources. For example, the private forester has claim to the market value of the forest only as lumber, be it for current or future consumption. However, forests provide significant additional value by providing habitat, preventing erosion, and as a carbon sink. But these ecological services are in the truest sense ‘economic commons’ – that is a resource having limited capacity to provide a non-excludable service. 5 Since the forester is unable to charge for this ecological value of the forest the market misinterprets the lack of a price as a signal of zero opportunity cost. The effect of this misrepresentation is represented by Figure 4. On the left-hand side, opportunity costs are accurately represented in resources markets. (We are again assuming equal wealth.) The resulting allocation of resources should maximise aggregate utility across generations. However, markets do not accurately represent the value of resource use to future generations. And so the resource owner is misled into believing the value of retaining resources for future use is lower than it actually is. This is represented on the right-hand side of Figure 4. The result is a non-utility maximising allocation of resources in favour of present consumption.

Figure 4: Misrepresentation of future consumption. © 2014. Steven Hinson. Used with permission. 5. Market Outcomes In Figure 5 we combine the effects of increasing inequality and this bias toward current consumption. Wealth inequality not only biases present consumption toward the contemporary affluent but also (due to resulting disparate access to

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__________________________________________________________________ health care, education, and capital) to their descendents. (See the top two diagrams.) In the absence of non-market intervention, the result is increased economic divergence and the resulting sub-optimisation of aggregate utility. Further, the inability of markets to properly value the use of some resources for future consumption results in an over utilisation of resources in the present. (See the bottom diagram and note the reduced dimension of the top right.) When coupled with the legacy effects of wealth inequality, the result is particularly problematic for the future South.

Figure 5: Combined effects of market shortcomings. © 2014. Steven Hinson. Used with permission. 6. Ethical Consumption Increasing awareness of these social consequences of markets has led to an increased desire on the part of some consumers to engage in some form of deliberate ethical consumption. 6 For example, the UK Ethical Purchasing Index increased 25% from its 1999 base through 2001. 7 Yet not all forms of ethical

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__________________________________________________________________ consumption are equivalent in their effect. Many consumers, for example, are still reluctant to pay the necessary premium for true ‘fair trade’ products. 8 Instead they engage in ‘sympathetic consumption’ – avoiding more egregious producers and favouring those that are perceived to be more responsible. However, this fails to adequately address the aforementioned market shortcomings. First, information is costly to acquire and so consumers are vulnerable to ‘green washing’ – deliberate, unsubstantiated sustainability claims. 9 Second, so long as consumers are unwilling to pay a fair trade premium, the economic benefits of trade will continue to be concentrated among the advantaged. And so while laudable, and arguably less harmful, the effect is still to reinforce social inequity. 7. Fair Trade Taylor describes the roots of fair trade as being both ‘in and against the market.’ 10 Consumers, dissatisfied with the distribution of economic gains, deliberately eschew more price efficient supply chains in favour of those more favourable to (disadvantaged) market suppliers. Jaffee, Kloppenbury and Monroy report that ‘small farmers and producer organizations are able in come cases to reap as much as 40 percent of the purchase price.’ 11 But does fair trade succeed in remediating the distorting effects of the market? The utility diminishing distortion of the market (represented by Figure 3) results from two related phenomena. First, innovation by self-interested economic agents leads to a disproportionate number of ‘dollar votes’ accruing to those agents. This in turn distorts the signalling function of market price resulting in a non-utility maximising allocation of resources. Consider as an example the 2007 ‘tortilla riots’ in Mexico City. Increased demand for corn-based ethanol in the United States significantly increased the corn price. The result was a substantial (around 400%) increase in the price of tortillas in Mexico City. Did the resulting reallocation of corn from food to fuel represent a global utility gain? More likely the greater willingness to pay for corn for fuel (or for speculative hording) reflected an inequality-induced distortion of the market that resulted in a substantial utility loss. By deliberately rejecting these ‘innovations’ that increase inequality (particularly those involving supply chain efficiency), instead economically favouring alternative arrangements, consumers can direct markets toward inequality reducing outcomes (e.g. fair trade coffee). Unfortunately, the same is not true with respect to sustainability. Remediating inequality does not result in an inter-temporal utility maximising outcome. Recall markets are unable to fully price-in the future social costs of current production. So rather than achieve a utility maximising outcome, the result is simply a movement to the sub-optimal (but still superior) outcome represented in Figure 4.

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__________________________________________________________________ 8. Reduced Consumption Another compelling reaction to the shortcomings of the market (particularly with respect to inter-generational inequity) is the engagement by many consumers in some form of deliberate reduction in consumption. Abstaining from consumption should indeed leave more resources available for future use. 12 But Etizoni further argues that this will allow resources to ‘be shifted to those whose basic needs have not been sated, without undue political resistance or backlash.’ 13 Of this, his last point, I am less convinced. In Figure 6, I represent an overall reduced desire for present consumption by shifting leftward the WTPNORTH and WTPPRESENT lines. There are two distinct outcomes. First, this reduced market value does indeed change the decision calculus of the resource owner so as to increasingly favour holding the resource for future consumption (as represented in the bottom diagram). And, it is possible that reduced consumption might have the effect of reducing resource (and therefore product) prices allowing the south to expand its consumption in the present.

Figure 6: Combined effects of fair trade and reduced consumption. © 2014. Steven Hinson. Used with permission.

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__________________________________________________________________ However, it is not clear what will become of the ownership of this increased savings on the part of the North. It is entirely possible that the result will be an expansion of capital investment (both human and physical) in the North. If this happens, our model shows a residual effect on the distribution of consumption in the future period (top right diagram). The unconsumed income disproportionately advantages future citizens of the north leading to a future non-utility maximizing allocation of resources. So apparently none of the popular notions of ethical consumption are sufficient to the task of complete market remediation in and of themselves. Nor is the adoption of sustainable business practices by fair trade producers and distributors sufficient. Large enough activity to meaningfully impact the economic circumstances of the South is likely unsustainable. And a sustainable level of consumption likely doe not generate enough income. Aggregate utility maximisation (intra- and inter-temporal) therefore requires additionally the altruistic transfer of wealth from North to South and from wealthy to poor.

Notes 1

Unfortunately, this is not necessarily true. If the gains (even if relatively small) are diffused widely enough, collectively they may outweigh even very large losses to a disadvantaged minority (e.g. US syphilis studies in Guatemala during the 1940s). And so alternative ethical frameworks (e.g. Rawlsian Justice) may be more appealing. 2 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1937), 423. 3 While it appears that the South has at least as much consumption as before, this is only an artefact of the diagram. Had the gain in wealth to the North been sufficient, consumption for the South would have decreased. 4 John Hartwick, ‘Investing Returns from Depleting Renewable Resource Stocks and Intergenerational Equity’, Economics Letters 1, No. 1 (1978): 85-88; Robert Solow, ‘On the Intergenerational Allocation of Natural Resources’, Scandinavian Journal of Economics 88, No. 1 (1986): 141-149; Joseph Stiglitz, ‘The Invisible Hand and Modern Welfare Economics’, Working Paper No. w3641, National Bureau of Economic Research (1991). 5 Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162, No. 3859 (1968): 1243-1248; Scott Gordon, ‘The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery’, The Journal of Political Economy (1954): 124-142. 6 Deirdre Shaw and Terry Newholm, ‘Voluntary Simplicity and the Ethics of Consumption’, Psychology and Marketing 19, No. 2 (2002): 167-185. 7 Barry Clavin and Deborah Doane, ‘Ethical Purchasing Index 2002’, Cooperative Bank, Manchester (2002).

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Patrick De Pelsmacker, Liesbeth Driesen and Glenn Rayp, ‘Do Consumers Care about Ethics? Willingness to Pay for Fair Trade Coffee’, Journal of Consumer Affairs 39, No. 2 (2005): 363-385. 9 Dahl (2010) references a TerreChoice consultancy study that found a 79% increase in green labelling over a two year period with 98% of that being reported to be some form of green washing. 10 Peter Taylor, ‘In the Market but Not of It: Fair Trade Coffee and Forest Stewardship Council Certification as Market-Based Social Change’, World Development 33, No. 1 (2005): 130. 11 Daniel Jaffee, Jack Kloppenburg and Mario Monroy, ‘Bringing the “Moral Charge” Home: Fair Trade within the North and within the South’, Rural Sociology 69, No. 2 (2004): 173. 12 Amitai Etzioni, ‘Voluntary Simplicity: Characterization, Select Psychological Implications, and Societal Consequences’, in The Invisible Hand and the Common Good, ed. Bernard Hodgson, (Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2004), 377-405; Deirdre Shaw and Terry Newholm, ‘Voluntary Simplicity and the Ethics of Consumption’, Psychology and Marketing 19, No. 2 (2002): 167-185. 13 Etzioni, ‘Voluntary Simplicity: Characterization, Select Psychological Implications, and Societal Consequences’, 640.

Bibliography Arrow, Kenneth J. ‘An Extension of the Basic Theorems of Classical Welfare Economics’. In Proceedings of the Second Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, edited by J. Neyman. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1951. Clavin, Barry, and Deborah Doane. ‘Ethical Purchasing Index 2002’. Cooperative Bank, Manchester, 2002. Coase, Ronald H. ‘The Problem of Social Cost’. Journal of Law and Economics 3 (1960): 1–52. Dahl, Richard. ‘Green Washing: Do You Know What You’re Buying?’ Environmental Health Perspectives 118, No. 6 (2010): A246–52. Daly, Herman E. ‘Georgescu-Roegen Versus Solow/Stiglitz’. Ecological Economics 22, No. 3 (1997): 261–266.

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__________________________________________________________________ ———. Reply to ‘Solow/Stiglitz’. Ecological Economics 22, No. 3 (1997): 271– 273. De Pelsmacker, Patrick, Liesbeth Driesen, and Glenn Rayp. ‘Do Consumers Care about Ethics? Willingness to Pay for Fair Trade Coffee’. Journal of Consumer Affairs 39, No. 2 (2005): 363–385. Debreu, Gerard. Theory of Value: An Axiomatic Analysis of Economic Equilibrium. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1959. Etzioni, Amitai. ‘Voluntary Simplicity: Characterization, Select Psychological Implications, and Societal Consequences’. In The Invisible Hand and the Common Good, edited by Bernard Hodgson, 377–405. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2004. Feldman, Allan M. ‘Kaldor-Hicks Compensation’. In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, 417–421. London: McMillan Ltd., 1998. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. ‘Energy and Economic Myths’. Southern Economic Journal (1975): 347–381. Gordon, H. Scott. ‘The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery’. The Journal of Political Economy (1954): 124–142. Hardin, Garrett. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’. Science 162, No. 3859 (1968): 1243–1248. Hartwick, John M. ‘Intergenerational Equity and the Investing of Rents from Exhaustible Resources’. American Economic Review 67, No. 5 (1977): 972–974. ———. ‘Investing Returns from Depleting Renewable Resource Stocks and Intergenerational Equity’. Economics Letters 1 No. 1 (1978): 85–88. ———. ‘Substitution among Exhaustible Resources and Intergenerational Equity’. The Review of Economic Studies (1978): 347–354. Hayek, Friedrich A. ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’. The American Economic Review (1945): 519–530.

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__________________________________________________________________ Heilbroner, Robert L., and Laurence J. Malone. The Essential Adam Smith. New York: WW Norton, 1986. Jaffee, Daniel, Jack R. Kloppenburg, and Mario B. Monroy. ‘Bringing the “Moral Charge” Home: Fair Trade within the North and within the South’. Rural Sociology 69, No. 2 (2004): 169–196. Norgaard, Richard B. ‘Economic Indicators of Resource Scarcity: A Critical Essay’. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 19, No. 1 (1990): 19–25. Pearce, David. ‘Substitution and Sustainability: Some Reflections on GeorgescuRoegen’. Ecological Economics 22, No. 3 (1997): 295–297. Shaw, Deirdre, and Terry Newholm. ‘Voluntary Simplicity and the Ethics of Consumption’. Psychology and Marketing 19, No. 2 (2002): 167–185. Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. New York: Random House, 1937. Solow, Robert M. ‘On the Intergenerational Allocation of Natural Resources’. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 88, No. 1 (1986): 141–149. ———. ‘Georgescu-Roegen Versus Solow-Stiglitz’. Ecological Economics 22, No. 3 (1997): 267–268. Stiglitz, Joseph E. ‘A Neoclassical Analysis of the Economics of Natural Resources’. Working Paper No. r0077, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1980. ———. ‘The Invisible Hand and Modern Welfare Economics’. Working Paper No. w3641, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991. ———. ‘Georgescu-Roegen Versus Solow/Stiglitz’. Ecological Economics 22, No. 3 (1997): 269–270. Taylor, Peter Leigh. ‘In the Market but Not of It: Fair Trade Coffee and Forest Stewardship Council Certification as Market-Based Social Change’. World Development 33, No. 1 (2005): 129–147.

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__________________________________________________________________ Tietenberg, Thomas H., and Lynne Lewis. Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Reading, 2000. Tisdell, Clem. ‘Capital/Natural Resource Substitution: The Debate of GeorgescuRoegen (through Daly) with Solow/Stiglitz’. Ecological Economics 22, No. 3 (1997): 289–291. Steven Hinson is an Associate Professor of Economics at Webster University in Saint Louis, Missouri. His interests include the causes and effects of inequality, consumption, and sustainability.

Responsibility and Restricted Economies Domenico Cortese Abstract Particularly since the start of the so-called economic recession, the mainstream Western political-economic conception of an evolved community responsibility has been ineluctably linked to the ability and availability of such a community to honour its national debt and fulfil certain parameters – such as the rate of inflation and government budget balance – which are identified with a sort of moral duty toward the community creditors. With the support of Jacques Derrida’s comments on texts by Bataille, this chapter will highlight that political decisions such as austerity measures, or those focused on economic competitiveness, draw their meaning from their being a way to ‘fulfil a debt’ contracted toward a model of rationality or a ‘restricted economy.’ Such a ‘restricted economy’ is the tendency to calculate the economic – and existential – value and meaning of an element without referring to a pure contextual calculus of the potential total happiness generated by such an element. It is necessary, though, to go beyond Derrida himself and his recommending of an act of responsibility as a mad ‘hospitality of the Other’ within the singularity of event. An attempt – such as this – to ‘dismiss the system of credit from which one acquires one’s authority’ turns out to be, in fact, also typical of most of the economic reforms that try to make our system of credit more ‘sustainable,’ like the proposal of creating a new banking regulation through an EU banking union or of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. None of these, in effect – and no attempt made to simply get out of a system of credit – can avoid resting on what Žižek would call a tautological ‘metalaw,’ which legitimates the economic-existential value of their elements; none of these attempts can avoid falling back on a certain system of credit. Key Words: Responsibility, European Central Bank, fiscal compact, financial stability, competitiveness, bailout, Derrida, Bataille, Hegel, economic authority, sovereignty, banking union, Argentina, General Motors. ***** 1. An Emblem of Non-Responsible Normativity: The Fiscal Compact The official assessment made by the European Central Bank of the fiscal compact talks about ‘responsibility for stability and prosperity in the euro area’ which ‘must be recognized’ by the signing countries. 1 What I argue is that a subject of full responsibility cannot exist. The reason is that the macroeconomic tools that are promoted in order to guide us to a more suitable situation within the European Union are presented, within the text and the context of the fiscal compact, as unquestionably valid or, even, as necessarily-inevitably leading to an

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_______________________________________________________ economically preferable situation. This makes the ratification of the pact a failure to respond to the effective needs of the community, as well as an uncritical acceptance of the idea that there is a certain kind of economic cycle provided with an intrinsic necessity. Let us see how the elements of the pact convey the implication I described above. This chapter maintains that the Member States have to commit themselves to obligations to ‘avoid excessive government deficits – based on a deficit criterion and a debt criterion, which are assessed against the reference values of 3% and 60% of GDP respectively’ – and to ‘maintain sound and sustainable public finances.’ 2 The focus on these particular measures is not explained through a detailed analysis of how they would be able to positively affect indicators of the quality of life of the community. Attention to these dispositions is legitimised by the fact that the economic tasks they imply, such as refraining from ‘adopting the practice of accumulating debt outside the general government accounts,’ 3 are seen as indicators that intrinsically lead to a more suitable economic situation. The indicators are of financial stability and competitiveness. Throughout the ECB assessment of the fiscal compact and the texts that form its context they play the ambiguous role of being both a ‘technical’ instrument implemented in order to achieve a ‘good functioning’ in the Euro area and of representing macroeconomic well-being. On the one hand, we read that the main goal of the fiscal compact is to foster fiscal discipline, notably in the euro area, building on and enhancing the reinforced Stability Growth Pact [...] and the contracting parties commit to implementing in their national legislation a fiscal rule which requires that general government budgets are in balance or in surplus. 4 On the other hand, the aim of the medium-term budgetary objective is: (i) to preserve a safety margin with respect to the 3% of GDP reference value for the government deficit; (ii) to ensure rapid progress towards sustainable public finances and prudent debt levels; and thus (iii) to allow room for budgetary manoeuvre, in particular so as to accommodate public investment needs. 5 Deficit and fiscal criteria in such quotes are introduced as financial stability instruments that are taken into account in order to implement values like fiscal discipline or sound policies and public finances. 6 But they can implement these values only because they are expressing parameters – such as safety margins and

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_______________________________________________________ prudent debt levels – which are unquestionably identified with that sound financial situation that would make an economy competitive. The circle is that certain values are evaluated a priori as sound and preferable and are also the final and sufficient end of the pact. The ECB paper also recalls the final objectives of the Euro Plus Pact: ‘(1) to foster competitiveness, 2) to promote employment, 3) to make public finances sustainable and 4) to reinforce financial stability.’ 7 In this passage we can also notice that values and factors such as employment, prudent public investment to enhance occupation, level of aggregate demand, and the possibility of a sustainable welfare state are not considered in terms of their usefulness in assessing the expectations of quality of life within a society. They are either not taken into consideration or taken as being functions of systems of values, such as ‘financial equilibrium’ or ‘competitiveness.’ These values are interpreted as suitable without question. Macroeconomic tools toward the aim of a ‘suitable human community’ – play the part of the conclusive objectives of the agreement representing that ‘good situation’ through which employment and fair distribution of wealth can be achieved. The official text of the pact establishes: the Contracting Parties shall take the necessary actions and measures in all the domains which are essential to the good functioning of the euro area in pursuit of the objectives of fostering competitiveness, promoting employment, contributing further to the sustainability of public finances and reinforcing financial stability. 8 In order to maintain a united, integrated and ‘competitive’ financial market, to promote financial stability and competitiveness’ 9 – or, better to say, stability in competitiveness – by putting aside autonomous monetary policies and barriers to movements of capital: these tools and functions, interpreted as structurally coincident with the good functioning of a suitable economic cycle, have in effect already been the ambitious objectives of the European Monetary System, 10 and can be found to assume the status of ‘primary objectives’ in the official statement of the ‘mission of the Eurosystem’ by the ECB: ‘The Eurosystem shall aim to safeguard financial stability and promote European financial integration in cooperation with the established institutional structures.’ 11 The intrinsic legitimacy of recourse to certain measures is produced, therefore, by the view of an economic circle in which precise elements are structural to its proper functioning. According to this view, in other words, any economic achievement can be explained as being part of a stage in the evolution of certain essential factors. This is what confers the authority on the contract to define the norm to which the contracting subjects have to adapt themselves, that is to say the authority to define as legitimate the preference of certain criteria in order to deal

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_______________________________________________________ with reality. This is what, ultimately, confers authority on the contract to define how the contracting subject has to be and the possibility of turning it into a subjectof-duty: ‘If the Court finds that the Contracting Party concerned has not complied with its judgment, it may impose on it a lump sum or a penalty payment appropriate in the circumstances and that shall not exceed 0.1 % of its gross domestic product.’ 12 Is a subject who responds to a law of an economic cycle really responsible? Is not, rather, the law ‘responsible’ for having determined the parameters within which that subject is situated, because it determines the possible actions of that subject? Can this subject make decisions to authentically respond to another’s needs, or can it only act through a conception of a closed economic dialectic in which a priori criteria explain and account for all stages of transformation? An act of responsibility, once it is driven by the necessity of a system, cannot be responsible toward an individual or a group in their singularity and in the specificity of the desires and needs. At most, all it does is inscribe subjects within a chain of ‘externally’ imposed meanings and purposes. In order to address these questions, I will delve into the structural conditions for an authentic act of responsibility within an economic circle. I will examine the notion of restricted economy as developed by Jacques Derrida in his essay on Georges Bataille. For Derrida a ‘restricted economy’ is, in its broad sense, a conception of human culture and environment where any production of wealth and energy has only to be utilised through pre-determined patterns of exchange and relation. These patterns aim at avoiding any ‘waste’ of energy, so as to make any production of wealth part of a total relationship of forces that manifest, as Derrida points out, the highest possible rationality, the realisation of the most complete sense typical of human relations. According to him, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit reflects this vision in the Absolute Spirit of history, man, and nature. Any human context, value and function is established through determined criteria in order to make it play a precise role in the ultimate collective sense of our reality. Any production of energy can only be utilised, in a ‘commercial’ way, to reproduce a circuit – for instance, the ethical life characterising the Family and the one characterising the Civil Society find their synthesis and realisation only in the principles governing the political State. 13 This kind of economy is restricted to commercial values, one might say, picking up on the terms of the definition, a ‘science dealing with the utilization of wealth,’ limited to the meaning and the established value of objects, and to their circulation. The circularity of absolute knowledge could dominate, could comprehend only this circulation, only the circuit of reproductive consumption. 14 The problem is that if we demand that a subject of responsibility not be a function of a ‘restricted economy,’ of a certain ‘pattern of exchange and relations,’ it is not only the Hegelian idea of Absolute Knowledge or the self-imposed

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_______________________________________________________ economic parameters of an international agreement that we should be wary of: We should be sceptical when we find the notion of a model in which its economic data, outcomes, and variables can find their correct value and functioning – their ‘naturalness’ – through a general formula or method. We must always be worried about the possibility that the value of economic data or variables is assessed not directly in relation to its manifesting an increase of community quality of life but, rather, in relation to restricted economic values of a ‘scientific’ formula carrying the parameters of its correctness. ‘Here,’ as Derrida states, ‘the error would consist in taking as an immediate given of reading the blindness to a traditional culture which itself wishes to be taken as the natural element of discourse.’ 15 The conferment of the status of ‘functioning method’ is, in effect, what we most often witness while analysing the results of current macroeconomic decisions. Although ‘the IMF has warned that Spain faces five more years with unemployment rates topping 25 percent,’ for instance, the European Commission’s vice president Olli Rehn said that the Spanish program of bail out had worked, adding that the country’s ‘financial markets have stabilized, banks have increased liquidity, their solvency position remains comfortable, deposits have been rising and access to funding markets has been improving.’ 16 Even in this case we can see how technical variables – mostly linked, again, to criteria such as financial competitiveness and stability – are taken as reflecting a ‘working’ and correct rationality, independent of responsible reflections on indexes such as unemployment and their relation to the quality of life of individuals. Often, as have I already remarked, indexes are considered only as functions of a comprehensive and necessary and natural macroeconomic rationality, in a way that ends such as social equity or job creation and quality are perceived as achievable only by rigidly supporting the financial stability of nations, multinational corporations or banks ‘too-big-to-fail.’ After the US government bailout of General Motors – to avoid its bankruptcy 17 –, Barack Obama stated: ‘In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences.’ 18 Again, the term ‘responsibility’ meant the necessity of adapting to the intrinsic and alleged ‘natural’ laws of global market and finance. 19 2. The Other with Jacques Derrida and Beyond In order to realise a genuine act of responsibility towards others’ needs, it is essential to consider how abstract economic models and categories relentlessly change their social and contextual meaning according to the event in which they function. Derrida expresses this necessity more radically. We do not even have to refer to any model, categories, or economic discourse in order to justify any expenditure of energy and wealth we undertake. We have to give up utilising any production of wealth, if to ‘utilise’ means to submit it to a justifiable economic logic, scheme or language. We have to gain our ‘sovereign moments,’ 20 in which we are aware that

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_______________________________________________________ the absolute singularity and contingency of any socio-economic event and its consequences displaces the general logic and coherence of any ‘economic cycle’ and of any kind of rationality that would justify it. The conditions for responsibility become, therefore, paradoxical. We have to be willing to do what may be considered an absolute waste of our energy and wealth production, to act regardless of the necessity of any economic circle; we have to act through ‘the absolute production and destruction of value,’ the exceeding energy as such, the energy which ‘can only be lost without the slightest aim, consequently without any meaning.’ 21 This means that if an authentically responsible decision needs to respond only to the need of the other, within a context that is always singular – which does not necessarily mean small or circumscribed in space but, rather, acknowledged in the relentless changing of its parameters and characteristics – it has to accept the possibility of appearing mad and irresponsible, or a waste, because its contingent logic relentlessly displaces the common notions of necessity. For Derrida, above all, the instant of responsible decision is aporetic because, on the one hand, one has to reason and decide without any regard to ‘public’ forms of reason, logic or ethics – within ‘madness’: ‘Absolute responsibility is not a responsibility,’ at least in its common accepted meanings, ‘it needs to be exceptional or extraordinary [...] it is as if absolute responsibility could not be derived from a concept of responsibility and therefore, in order for it to be what it must be it must remain inconceivable, indeed unthinkable.’ 22 But on the other hand, in doing so the responsible individual is already constructing and implementing a logic and an ethics recognisable as such by looking at the public sphere. For while making the ‘mad’ decision of dismissing any institutionalised economic law and of being engaged with the requests of the other we have, aporetically, not to behave madly, because any effective decision of this sort necessarily requires us to have already learned a certain public logic, to have already outlined, from the public sphere, a certain habit to follow, 23 at least the logic of the other, the logic that the other inscribes within our context. As Žižek highlights in his comments on the constitution of the subject in German idealism, ‘Hegel emphasizes again and again that there is no freedom without habit: in order for us to exercise the freedom in using language, we have to get fully accustomed to it, habituated (in)to it, i.e., we have to learn to practice it, to apply its rules ‘blindly,’ mechanically, as a habit.’ 24 Even if we assume the instant of ‘madness’ as being ‘located in a space opened up by the discord between actual historical development and its conceptual rendering’ 25 that ‘discord’ already means that we are verifying the necessity of developing our interaction with the context in a certain way – it reflects, therefore, a public discourse. This is why Derrida’s paradoxical ethics is essential to understanding ‘responsibility’ within our socio-economic moment; but it is also, however, emblematic of the difficulty of escaping an idealisation or certain ‘restricted

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_______________________________________________________ economy.’ The instant of ‘madness’ advocated by the French philosopher risks, in fact, reiterating a model of socio-economic responsibility whereby the response to the other can be presented as suitable insofar as it involves a certain structurally suitable criterion of action, namely the suspension of any logic seen as currently institutionalised in order to deal with the other’s discourse. This move needs to rely on a type of ‘institutionalised’ discourse, too, and not necessarily coincide with what a consideration of a non-restricted economy should do: an obsessive calculation of how much an economic device’s implementation, in all its aspects, can actually coincide with a global and long-run increase in ‘quality of life.’ There are, in fact, ‘exceptional or extraordinary’ economic interventions focused on breaking a cycle in order to respond to what can be considered the ‘other’s demand’ but they cannot be interpreted as eluding a ‘restricted economy’ logic. For instance, these can be found in the EU council proposition to ‘reshape the banking system’ in order to allow Member States, through new mechanisms of supervision of the ‘integrity’ of the banks, to deal with the negative feedback loop between sovereign debts and the weakness of banks. 26 Although this may appear as an attempt to reform a financial circle toward a more efficacious utilisation of wealth, the fact that the only solution to avoid banks producing social distress is taken to be control of their balance sheets or underwriting them with private and public liquidity 27 is the clue that what is conceived is, even in this case, a reiteration of the ‘nature’ of banks as institutions of stable profits and competitiveness, rather than the creation of a mere instrument that serves the production of real wealth. Similarly, the current Argentinian government’s insistence on overcoming the financial and social crisis by giving priority to a hugely expansive monetary policy 28 in respect of attention to real wealth production is an equal example of how a strong response to the needs of people can, in the same way, end up in an interpretation of an economic instrument as structurally sound. At this point in our socio-economic circumstances, therefore, I think that our most interesting task would concern whether the new social movements – such as Occupy Wall Street, the Localization Movement, the Five Stars Movement, and the 15-M Movement –, which claim to bring a new culture of social responsibility – are able to concentrate on a radical calculus of the potential global benefit of an economic decision rather than privileging particular formulae and conjecturing some a priori economic necessities as reflecting the natural functioning of human environment, 29 as all mainstream tendencies seem to be unable to help doing.

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_______________________________________________________ Notes 1

A Fiscal Compact for a Stronger and Economic and Monetary Union, ECB Monthly Bulletin, May 2012, accessed 12 February 2014, 4, http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/art1_mb201205en_pp79-94en.pdf. 2 Ibid., 3. 3 Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, accessed 31 January 2014, 1, http://european-council.europa.eu/media/639235/st00tscg26_en12.pdf. 4 A Fiscal Compact for a Stronger and Economic and Monetary Union, 4-5. 5 Ibid., 3. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 8. 8 Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, 8. 9 See A Fiscal Compact for a Stronger and Economic and Monetary Union, 6-7. 10 See Augusto Graziani, Pragmatismi, Disciplina e Saggezza Convenzionale. L’economia Italiana dagli Anni ‘70 agli Anni ‘90, conference held in Rome at Università della Sapienza (9-11-1994), accessed 12 February 2014, http://www.correttainformazione.it/in-primo-piano/sme-augusto-graziani/?re f=nf; ‘Contro il Liberoscambismo di Sinistra’, in Emiliano Brancaccio e Marco Passarella, L’austerità è di Destra: E sta Distruggendo l’Europa (Il Saggiatore, Milano, 2012), see also Emiliano Brancaccio, Il Capitale, L’immigrazione e il Suicidio a Sinistra, accessed 12 February 2014, http://sollevazione.blogspot.co.uk/ 2013/10/il-capitale-limmigrazione-e-il-suicidio.html. 11 See the official ECB website, The Mission of the Eurosystem, accessed 12 February 2014, http://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/escb/html/mission_eurosys.en.html. 12 Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, 8. 13 See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of a Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 190-360. 14 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (London: Routledge, 2005), 344. 15 Ibid., 345. 16 See, for instance, Economy Watch, Spain Exits Bailout Programme, Concerns Remain Over Unemployment, accessed 13 February 2014, http://www.economywatch.com/news/spain-exits-bailout-unemployment-concern. 24-01.html. 17 See Richard Wolff, Global Capitalism: September and December 2013 Monthly Update, seminars held in New York, accessed 13 February 2014,

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_______________________________________________________ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdr_9TVXx8g&list=UUB-5u8VgFc_TI1aAj8_ SmDA. 18 See, for instance, ‘President Barack Obama Says that after Bailout, GM Is Now the World’s Top Automaker’, accessed 13 February 2014, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/25/barack-obama/Ba rack-Obama-bailout-GM-number-one/ 19 Although after the federal government manifested its willingness to purchase GM stocks ‘the entire automobile industry added nearly 160,000 jobs’ (see ‘President Barack Obama Says that after Bailout, GM Is Now the World’s Top Automaker’), the entire operation has been carried out without questioning what the general imbalances in national and global wealth distribution that caused a company failure to maintain its workers and if they could be resolved by simply subsidising GM competitiveness. This incident is a good indicator of how alternative actions such as neat public investment to sustain production and demand, control of high financial parasitism and speculations and diplomatic commitment to deal with imbalances in salaries of workers around the world are not authentically taken into consideration within the rationality which drives ‘resolutions’ like this. In such calls to responsibility like this, values such as financial stability and competitiveness are abstracted from the general context of socio-economic events. Consideration of these events and of their repercussions would substantially transform the contextual and economic meaning of ‘competitiveness,’ ‘financial stability,’ and even ‘danger of GM bankrupting.’ 20 Ibid., 342. 21 Ibid., 344. 22 Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death (London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 61. 23 Slavoj Žižek, Madness and Habit in German Idealism: Discipline between the Two Freedoms, accessed 14 February 2014, http://www.lacan.com/zizdazedandconfused.html. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 European Commission, Banking Union: Single Resolution Mechanism, accessed 14 February 2014, http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/finances/docs/banking-uni on/dg-markt-factsheets-srm_en.pdf. 27 See European Commision, Banking Union, and Catherine Boyle, Europe’s Banking Plans: Backstops and Bail-Ins, accessed 23 February 2014, http://www.cnbc.com/id/101281436. 28 See, for instance, Jeff Hornbeck, Argentina’s Post-Crisis Economic Reform: Challenges for U.S. Policy, CRS Report for Congress, April 2013, accessed 14 February 2014, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43022.pdf.

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_______________________________________________________ 29

Derrida highlights how the feature of ‘naturalness’ is what characterises the necessity inherent in the movement of Hegelian dialectic: ‘This movement then makes philosophy appear as a form of natural or naïve consciousness (which in Hegel also means cultural consciousness). For as long as the Aufhebung remains within restricted economy, it is a prisoner of this natural consciousness’. Derrida, Writing and Difference, 349.

Bibliography Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share. New York: Zone Books, 1991. Brancaccio, Emiliano and Marco Passarella. L’austerità è di Destra. E sta Distruggendo l’Europa. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 2012. Dean, Carolyn J. The Self and Its Pleasures: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject. New York: Cornell University Press, 1992. Derrida, Jacques. Force of Law. Translated by Mary Quaintance. In Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, edited by Drucilla Cornell, Michael Rosenfeld and David Gray Carlson, 3–67. New York: Routledge, 1992. ———. The Gift of Death. London: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ———. Limited Inc. Translated by Samuel Weber. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988 [1977]. ———. Monolinguism of the Other. Translated by Patrick Mensah. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998 ———. Of Hospitality. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. ———. Politics of Friendship. London: Verso, 2005. ———. Writing and Difference. London: Routledge, 2005. ECB. A Fiscal Compact for a Stronger and Economic and Monetary Union, Monthly Bulletin, May 2012. Accessed 12 February 2014, http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/art1_mb201205en_pp79-94en.pdf.

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_______________________________________________________ European Commission. Banking Union: Single Resolution Mechanism. Accessed 14 February 2014. http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/finances/docs/banking-union/dg-markt-factshee ts-srm_en.pdf. Foucault, Michel. Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin Books, 1998. Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. New York: First Melville House Printing, 2011. Graziani, Augusto. Pragmatismi, Disciplina e Saggezza Convenzionale. L’economia Italiana dagli Anni ‘70 agli Anni ‘90. Conference held in Rome at Università della Sapienza (9-11-1994). Accessed 12 February 2014. http://www.correttainformazione.it/in-primo-piano/sme-augusto-graziani/?ref=nf. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Elements of a Philosophy of Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Hornbeck, Jeff. Argentina’s Post-Crisis Economic Reform: Challenges for U.S. Policy. CRS Report for Congress, April 2013. Accessed 14 February 2014. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43022.pdf. Krugman, Paul, and Robin Wells. Macroeconomics. Third Edition. New York: Worth Publishers. Land, Nicholas. The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism: An Essay in Atheistic Religion. London: Routledge, 1992. Mankiw, Nicholas Gregory. Macroeconomics. Eighth Edition. New York: Worth Pub. Mansfield, Nicholas. The God Who Deconstructs Himself: Sovereignty and Subjectivity between Freud, Bataille, and Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Official ECB Website Statements. Accessed 12 February 2014. http://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/orga/escb/html/mission_eurosys.en.html. Plotnitsky, Arkady. Reconfigurations: Critical Theory and General Economy, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993.

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_______________________________________________________ Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. ———. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Book, 2000. Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, (31-01-2012). Accessed 12 February 2014. http://european-council.europa.eu/media/639235/st00tscg26_en12.pdf. ‘Uaw GM Agreement’. May 2009. Accessed 12 February 2014. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/gmuaw.pdf. Wolff, Richard. Global Capitalism: September and December 2013 Monthly Update. Seminars held in New York. Accessed 13 February 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdr_9TVXx8g&list=UUB-5u8VgFc_TI1aAj8 _SmDA. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6WVLftjwhA&list=UUB-5u8VgFc _T I1aAj8_SmDA&feature=c4-overview. Žižek, Slavoj. Madness and Habit in German Idealism: Discipline between the Two Freedoms. Accessed 14 February 2014. http://www.lacan.com/zizdazedandconfused.html. Domenico Cortese is a PhD student in Philosophy at Dundee University. His research concerns areas of contemporary philosophy such as deconstructionism, neo-pragmatism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the connection between moral philosophical concepts and the analysis of macroeconomic political decisions.