Spring 2015 Newsletter
I.
Upcoming events
NASSP Book Panel on Sue Campbell’s Our Faithfulness to the Past at the CPA, June 1st, University of Ottawa (see also attached announcement)
Organised by Christine Koggel (also one of the editors of the book) and Chris Lowry
Presenters: Rockney Jacobsen (Wilfrid Laurier University), Christine Koggel (Carleton University), Alexis Shotwell (Carleton University), Seetal Sunga (Department of Justice and former General Counsel and Special Advisor for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission)
Participants will present papers discussing Sue Campbell’s posthumous collection of essays on the ethics and politics of memory. Our Faithfulness to the Past includes three previously unpublished papers, two of which were commissioned by the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. There are several distinctive features of Campbell’s account of memory. She argues that reconstructionism—the view that memory is shaped by one’s present and future needs and is susceptible to others’ influence when being shared—need not detract from the value of remembering and, instead, is key in understanding its ethical and political importance. Good remembering is not only a matter of getting the facts right; it also must express a defensible understanding of their significance. Such an understanding is a relational, not individual, achievement. The social nature of memory is, at its best, enabling rather than distorting. When done well, it enables us to constitute ourselves and to form relationships of solidarity across groups at odds as a result of past injustices and ongoing oppression. These ideas are developed and illustrated by Campbell through a detailed engagement with the issues facing the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
II.
The 32nd International Social Philosophy Conference will be held at William Jewell College, in Liberty, MO, from July 16-18, 2014. Beth Sperry is the local host. The theme is “Education and Social Justice.” Keynote speakers are Lorraine Code and Nel Noddings. The Presidential Address will be given by Margaret Crouch. More information can be found at: http://www.northamericansocietyforsocialphilosophy.org/category/annual-conference/. We hope to see you in Liberty!
III.
Volume 30 of Social Philosophy Today, on “Food,” edited by Jeff Gauthier, is out and available!
IV.
From Our Members
Jami Anderson attaches a flyer announcing the Center for Cognition and Neuroethics new summer seminar program. This year’s seminar is entitled: “Mirror Neurons, Empathy and Autism.”
Michael Boylan published Natural Human Rights: A Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). He also gave the St. Cross lecture at Oxford on his theory in November, 2014.
Matt L. Drabek announces his new book: Classify and Label: The Unintended Marginalization of Social Groups. This is a philosophical treatment of classification in the social sciences and everyday life, focusing on moral, social, and political implications. The use of labels is essential to how people navigate and understand the world. Classifications and labels also have a dark side, as they may unintentionally misrepresent groups and individuals. These misrepresentations disrupt how people think about themselves and how they treat others, sometimes leading to marginalization.
Matt analyzes classification by considering rich case studies across a variety of domains, including the classification of gender and sexual orientation, the psychiatric classification of sadomasochism and gender disorders, and the classification of people in everyday life through the production of pornography and use of gender identities. This broad sample reveals deep connections between the classifications proposed by social scientists and the classifications used by society at large. He explores how classifications evolve from and eventually affect such seemingly disconnected issues as the situation of under-represented groups in academia, new models of parenting and the family, the nature of sexual orientation, and the nature of scientific bias.
Kyle Johannsen was recently notified that he’ll be receiving an Early Career Scholar Prize from AMINTAPHIL at the 2015 World IVR conference in Washington, DC. Kyle received the award for a paper entitled “Justice in Personal Choice: Cohen’s Equivocal Attack on Rawls’s Basic Structure Restriction.”
Miguel Angel Quintana Paz announces the publication of his book Normatividad, intepretación y praxis: Wittgenstein en un giro hermenéutico-nihilista, by the Universidad Europea Miguel de Cervantes Press. The book is devoted to the analysis of the consequences of the philosophical work of Ludwig Wittgenstein for the ethical, social and political endeavors of our day. More information can be found at: http://quintanapaz.es/en/services/ultimos-libros/
Steve Nathanson announces that he has retired (as of July 1, 2014) to the status of ex-professor. An article of Steve’s on Act and Rule Utilitarianism has recently been posted on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The url is http://www.iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/
He recently gave a talk at an Economics Society event at Northeastern. The title was “If income inequality is the problem, is income equality the solution?”
Nancy E. Snow announces the publication of her edited collection: Cultivating Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, and Psychology, Oxford University Press, 2014.
Lisa Tessman announces her new book: Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Naomi Zack announces that her book, White Privilege and Black Rights, will be coming out in April. Naomi examines racial profiling in American policing but rejects white privilege discourse. She draws clear lines between rights and privileges and between justice and law to make sense of the current crisis. This urgent and immediate analysis of the killings of unarmed black men by police officers shows how racial profiling matches statistics of the prison population with disregard for the constitutional rights of the majority of innocent people of all races. Moving the philosophical discussion from white privilege discourse to the rights of blacks, from ideas of white supremacy to legally protected police impunity, and from ideal/nonideal justice theory to present injustice, White Privilege and Black Rights recounts what happened to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and others in ways that deepen understanding without killing hope (see picture of front cover below).
Newsletter produced by Margaret Crouch and Nancy Snow.