Understandings of Food Insecurity in Aotearoa New Zealand: Considering Practitioners’ Perspectives in a Neoliberal Context Using Q Methodology

Food insecurity in advanced capitalist nations has persisted over decades despite excess food production, welfare systems, and charitable responses. This research examines the perspectives of practitioners who engage with food insecurity in Aotearoa New Zealand using a Q methodology study to synthesise and characterise three typical subjective positions. Consensus across the three positions includes the state’s responsibility for the food security of citizens, while points of contention include the role of poverty as a cause of food insecurity and the significance of a human right to food. The research contributes to research into food insecurity in advanced capitalist nations by identifying areas of consensus and contention among food insecurity practitioners, identifying the significance of children and moral failure in perceptions of food insecurity, and comparing practitioners’ perspectives to existing approaches to researching food insecurity in advanced capitalist nations.

The Case against Non-Moral Blame

Non-moral blame seems to be widespread and widely accepted in everyday life—tolerated at least, but often embraced. We blame athletes for poor performance, artists for bad or boring art, scientists for faulty research, and voters for flawed reasoning. This chapter argues that non-moral blame is never justified, that is, it’s never a morally permissible response to a non-moral failure. Having explained what blame is and how non-moral blame differs from moral blame, the chapter presents the argument in four steps. First, it argues that many (perhaps most) apparent cases of non-moral blame are actually cases of moral blame. Second, it argues that even if non-moral blame is pro tanto permissible—because its target is blameworthy for their substandard performance—it often (perhaps usually) fails to meet other permissibility conditions, such as fairness or standing. Third, it goes further and challenges the claim that non-moral blame is ever even pro tanto permissible. Finally, it considers a number of arguments in support of non-moral obligations and argues that none of them succeeds.

Jesuits and Jews, and the way we dare to think: A Jesuit’s reflections on James Bernauer’s Jesuit Kaddish

This essay explores James Bernauer’s Jesuit Kaddish as an extended reflection on the centuries-long troubled relationship between Jesuits and Jews, with attention to egregious instances of moral failure on the part of Jesuits. It investigates too Bernauer’s highlighting of instances of Jesuit spiritual resistance both to evil and to the undue prudence of cautious institutions. Forthright in weaving his own intellectual journey into the book, Bernauer movingly renders himself a theme for reflection, a scholar’s life-long interrogation of his own religious community, as gratitude, loyalty, and critical distance stand side by side. The concluding statement of Jesuit Repentance perfectly marks the transition from understanding to a performative expression of responsibility for the personal and systemic failures to which we are heirs.

Global health and global bioethics

Covid-19 is not merely a national or regional threat but a global one. It requires coordinated action of the global community. Such action, as argued in this paper, should primarily focus on the question how to prevent the next pandemic. Humankind has been warned multiple time for emerging diseases and the risks of pandemics, although no preparatory responses have been undertaken. Preventive interventions are possible since it is known how and where infectious diseases emerge. Such interventions proceed on the basis of shared vulnerability and responsibility for global health. The fact that they have been inadequate thus far, can be considered as a serious moral failure.

A mural that helped to bring down Jeremy Corbyn

In the 2017 elections, the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn did much better than expected, in spite of being denounced by the established British media for its radical anti-capitalist agenda. To turn the tables, the media then shifted their attack from this political programme to Corbyn’s alleged blindness towards antisemitic manifestations. The resulting loss of sympathy with voters cost Labour dearly in the 2019 elections and brought his leadership to an end. As key evidence for his moral failure to tackle the antisemitism issue, the media cited, in a barrage of pieces, his 2012 comments on a short lived London mural. Was it anti-capitalist or antisemitic? In the absence of any serious dialogue between contrary views, the judgment passed reasserted the underlying media agenda.

A benevolence narrative

This chapter describes an alternate narrative of democracy that centres around the value of sedana or benevolence. This narrative has three parts: the challenge of dictatorial leadership in Myanmar and the moral failure of citizens; the vision of a morally transformed society based on benevolent leadership and the values of unity and obligation; and a strategy of moral education to renew these values within society and promote discipline. This narrative highlights a moral rather than liberal vision – one in which the ability of individual political actors to transcend self-interest is of the highest importance. Proponents of this narrative emphasise that a focus on the narrow interests of particular individuals or groups will spark division and thereby undermine democracy – with the most immoral approach to politics being that of the ar nar shin (‘power-obsessed dictator’).

‘Satan is holding your tongue back’: Stuttering as moral failure

Background: The last decade has seen researchers and speech–language pathologists employ and advocate for a disability studies approach in the study of the lived experiences of people who stutter and in the design of interventions and treatment approaches for such individuals. Joshua St. Pierre, one of the few theorists to explore stuttering as a disability, mentions as a key issue the liminal nature of people who stutter when describing their disabling experiences.Objectives: This article aimed to build on the work of St. Pierre, exploring the liminal nature of people who stutter.Method: Drawing on my personal experiences of stuttering as a coloured South African man, I illuminated the liminal nature of stuttering.Results: This analytic autoethnography demonstrates how the interpretation of stuttering as the outcome of moral failure leads to the discrimination and oppression of people who stutter by able-bodied individuals as well as individuals who stutter.Conclusion: As long as stuttering is interpreted as the outcome of moral failure, the stigma and oppression, as well as the disablism experience by people who stutter, will continue to be concealed and left unaddressed.