scholarly journals Payback, Forgiveness, Accountability: Exercising Responsible Agency in the Midst of Structured Racial Harm

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 528
Author(s):  
Michael P. Jaycox
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Moral Ideal ◽  
Moral Accountability

In a context of political conflict, the practice of vengeance, the paying back of harm in exchange for harm suffered, is obviously an ethical problem. The practice of forgiveness is equally though differently problematic when applied to political conflict despite the fact that it is a moral ideal. A third approach, the practice of moral accountability, is more ethically justifiable, yet it remains unclear what it is conceptually and what it would involve practically in a particular context. In this essay, the author develops a conceptual framework for moral accountability, grounded in a broader understanding of justice as responsibility to conflictual and unchosen relationships. Drawing on contemporary sources in Christian ethics, as well as insights from anti-racism community organizing, the author argues that practices of moral accountability restructure the pattern of these relationships, such that perpetrators and guilty bystanders are more likely to assume, rather than avoid, responsibility for causing structured racial harm.

No Win… Facing the Ethical Perils of Welfare Reform

1998 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Withorn
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
The People ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Work Opportunity

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Art of 1996, or “welfare reform,” is highly controversial public policy. In every state the ‘devolution’ of federal entitlements has created intense debate and new legislation, either presaging the national changes or in response to them. In addition to being a source of deep political conflict, welfare reform has also created immediate and continuing dilemmas for the people who try to work within the new rules and for those struggling to change them. The author reviews the context for understanding welfare reform as an ethical problem for the whole society, and uses examples drawn from her work as a teacher and welfare rights activist to illustrate the day-to-day problems that welfare reform forces upon women who use the system and workers whose job it is to help them. Finally, possibilities for responding at different levels are presented.

Homes or Hospitals? Contradictions of the Urban Crisis

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Waitzkin ◽  
Jacqueline Wallen ◽  
John Sharratt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Residential Areas ◽  
Industrial Facilities ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Community Conflict ◽  
Enhance Patient Care

Medical expansion is threatening to eliminate many urban residential areas, despite criticism that argues for comprehensive planning, reduced costs, less concentrated power in the health sector, and a reversal of “medicalization.” Our research on expansion, which grew partly from personal participation in a local struggle against expanding institutions in Boston, revealed certain tensions in combining sociomedical research with concrete political practice. From events in Boston and from an exploratory review of periodicals, we recognized that medical expansion and community conflict occur frequently in cities throughout the United States. Based on general theoretical perspectives from organizational analysis and political economy, we made several hypotheses that we tested through a questionnaire sent to all hospitals in the 20 largest cities of the United States and through other data available on the same hospitals. In large part, this empirical study confirmed our theoretical expectations that (a) larger medical centers show a greater tendency toward territorial growth than smaller hospitals; (b) bureaucratic and administrative dynamics lead to facilities that do not necessarily enhance patient care; (c) despite short-term cycles of expansion and contraction in public hospital growth, expansion projects are widespread and generate considerable political conflict; (d) because of the state's contradictory roles in regulation and social capital expenditures, opposition to medical expansion comes more from community organizations than from governmental monitoring or planning bodies; and (e) the needs of capital determine that medical expansion has a more detrimental impact on housing than on commercial or industrial facilities. Future expansion of private medical facilities is more likely than that of public facilities, although much private expansion may receive public subsidization. As ideologic patterns are demystified, the contradictions between medical expansion and housing needs can provide a focus for successful community organizing.

scholarly journals Recognition and Responsibility

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 467
Author(s):  
Hille Haker
Keyword(s):  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Ecological Ethics ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Moral Accountability ◽  
Cain And Abel ◽  
Recognition Theory ◽  
Ethics Of Recognition

While the concept of responsibility is a cornerstone of Christian ethics, recognition theory still lacks a thorough theological–ethical analysis. This essay seeks to fill the gap and develop normative ethics of recognition and responsibility. The first part provides a systematic analysis of the conceptual elements of recognition, emphasizing the need to focus on misrecognition as a heuristic tool and ethical priority. While recognition coincides with responsivity and attentiveness in the encounter of self and other, responsibility adds to this the moral accountability for acts, practices, structures, and institutions, rendering recognition and responsibility interrelated but also distinct principles of morality. This normative analysis is then correlated to the hermeneutical, narrative ethics of Christian ethics. The founding narrative of biblical ethics, the Cain and Abel narrative in Gen 4, is interpreted as a dialectic of recognition and responsibility. Both exegesis and ethics profit from this interdisciplinary and correlative approach between philosophical and biblical ethics. Finally, the ethics of recognition and responsibility, which emerges from the Frankfurt School critical theory, is confronted with exemplary indigenous approaches focusing on mutual responsibility as the foundation of ecological ethics. Christian ethics of recognition and responsibility resonates with this approach, yet emphasizes the distinctiveness of human interactions and the demands of moral responsibility.

scholarly journals ’n Beoordeling van die Skrifberoep ten opsigte van die doodstraf

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
De Wet Saaiman
Keyword(s):  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Simple Interpretation ◽  
Intimate Knowledge

In die lig van die Christelike etiek is ’n beroep op die Skrif ’n sine qua non waar ’n standpunt in verband met ’n etiese vraagstuk ingeneem word. Met ’n beroep op die Skrif is die probleem ongelukkig nie sonder meer opgelos nie. Die verskillende vertolkings van die Skrif het tot gevolg dat etici met teenoorgestelde standpunte hul op dieselfde Skrifgedeeltes beroep. Dit is egter nie voldoende om slegs ’n goeie uiteensetting van vertrekpunte of selfs hermeneutiese reëls te gee nie. Die Christelike etikus moet ’n grondige kennis van die werklikheid hê – etiek word eenvoudig nie in ’n vakuum beoefen nie. In hierdie artikel is ’n beoordeling gedoen van die Skrifberoep ten opsigte van die doodstraf. In die artikel is aangetoon dat die Skrif ten spyte van goeie hermeneutiese vertrekpunte gemanipuleer kan word om die etikus se eie voorveronderstelling te weerspieël.An adjudication of the use of Scripture regarding capital punishment. The use (recall) of Scripture is, in light of Christian ethics, a sine qua non when a position with regard to an ethical problem is assumed. A simple interpretation of Scripture does not necessarily settle the problem. Different interpretations of Scripture result in a difference of opinions even when the same Scriptural texts are used. It is therefore simply not sufficient to note a fair explanation of departure points or hermeneutical principles. The Christian ethicist should have an intimate knowledge of reality – ethics is not practised in a vacuum. In this article an adjudication of the use or interpretation of Scripture in the light of capital punishment was conducted. In this article it was shown that Scripture is most often misused despite of fair hermeneutical principles only to reflect the ethicist own preconceived ideas.

Wars of National Liberation: The Methodology of Christian Ethics II

Worldview ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 9 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 15-19
Author(s):  
Theodore R. Weber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ethical Problem ◽  
The United States ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
United States Policy ◽  
National Power ◽  
Morality Of War

The primary ethical problem for United States policy in regard to “wars of national liberation” is that of intervention, not war. To be sure, the morality of war must be faced together with the morality of intervention. But the basic question for the intervention is not whether morally it may use force and take human life, but whether morally it may exercise power where it has no authority. By what right does the United States seek to influence the relationships, structures, and focus of authority of another political entity—or evert of a nonentity in process of becoming an entity?Justifiable intervention is an admissible—although limited—concept except to those persons who reject every unilateral use of national power, and to those who take an absolutistic stand in favor of the principle of non-intervention (and that stand also requires an ethical defense).

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