Interlocked: kinship,intimate precarity,and plantation labour in India

This article examines the employment of kinship relations in sustaining the plantation economy and in perpetuating the precariousness of child labourers who later became temporary workers in the tea plantations of Kerala, South India. Kinship ties locked diverse workers into a moral obligation of care that could easily be manipulated by plantation management as a form of labour control. Plantation capitalism, therefore, sustained itself not only through overt forms of violence but also through manipulating the precarity of employment in relation to intimate forms of love, care, and obligation that were bound up with kinship ties. Kinship networks of different kinds need to be understood as integral to the plantation society and as occupying a fundamental place within the capitalist order of plantations. I observe that the entangled relationship between workers’ precarity and plantation capitalism can be understood only if we pay attention to what I call the intimate precarity produced by the employment of kinship networks within plantation capitalism.     

Precarity's reach: intersections of history,life, and labour in the Australian horticultural industry

The temporary labour migrations of Pacific Islanders to work in the orchards and packing sheds of the Australian horticultural industry feed the demands for flexible labour that are marks of the precarious present. At the same time, their labour experiences call attention to the diverse, historically situated, and racialized configurations of power and risk that converge in the present moment within particular places and within the intersecting lives and bodies of differently positioned others. Focused on a fruit packing shed in north-central Victoria, and on the ni-Vanuatu workers, farmers, managers, and mediating agents who meet there, this article seeks to develop an ethnography of precarity's intersections. Here, the insecurities and fraying reciprocities widely theorized in the context of post-Fordist, neoliberal precarity articulate with the hierarchies and imaginaries of development regimes, the colonial co-production of Global North and South, and the always-precarious rhythms of horticultural production. Precarity, I argue, is neither particular to the post-Fordist relations of Western Europe, nor an all-consuming leveller of historical, cultural, and place-based difference. Rather, it emerges out of the situated convergences of diverse people and histories, and practices of both mobility and containment, producing intersecting but ultimately unequal distributions of risk.     

ARE MORAL PHILOSOPHERS MORAL EXPERTS?

In this paper I examine the question of whether ethicists are moral experts. I call people moral experts if their moral judgments are correct with high probability and for the right reasons. I defend three theses, while developing a version of the coherence theory of moral justification based on the differences between moral and nonmoral experience: The answer to the question of whether there are moral experts depends on the answer to the question of how to justify moral judgments. Deductivism and the coherence theory both provide some support for the opinion that moral experts exist in some way. I maintain – within the framework of a certain kind of coherence theory – that moral philosophers are ‘semi‐experts’.     

Contentious connections: infrastructure,dignity, and collective life in Accra,Ghana

Infrastructural systems have emerged as productive ethnographic sites for analysing political subjectivities and rationalities. Through the case of shared electricity and prepaid meters in the compound housing system of Accra, Ghana, I suggest that infrastructures’ political potential lies in their imaginative and hermeneutic abilities to foster desires for dignity, sustain well-being, and question moral ideals of collective life. In contrast to recent anthropological work that has emphasized the material basis of infrastructures as ‘techno-political’ devices materializing certain logics of rule and governance, I reclaim a poetics of sociality whereby infrastructures mobilize a politics of (unwanted) collective life. Through the ‘electricity stories’ circulated by tenants, I chart how the moral economy of infrastructure in a context of collective precarity redistributes marginalization and freedom in ways that always exceed political rationales of energy reforms and policies.     

WHY MORAL PHILOSOPHERS ARE NOT AND SHOULD NOT BE MORAL EXPERTS

Professional philosophers are members of bioethical committees and regulatory bodies in areas of interest to bioethicists. This suggests they possess moral expertise even if they do not exercise it directly and without constraint. Moral expertise is defined, and four arguments given in support of scepticism about their possession of such expertise are considered and rejected: the existence of extreme disagreement between moral philosophers about moral matters; the lack of a means clearly to identify moral experts; that expertise cannot be claimed in that which lacks objectivity; and that ordinary people do not follow the advice of moral experts. I offer a better reason for scepticism grounded in the relation between moral philosophy and common‐sense morality: namely that modern moral philosophy views even a developed moral theory as ultimately anchored in common‐sense morality, that set of basic moral precepts which ordinary individuals have command of and use to regulate their own lives. Even if moral philosophers do nevertheless have a limited moral expertise, in that they alone can fully develop a set of moral judgments, I sketch reasons – grounded in the values of autonomy and of democracy – why moral philosophers should not wish non‐philosophers to defer to their putative expertise.     

The sociality of the wage: money rhythms,wealth circulation,and the problem with cash on the Zimbabwean‐South African border

While wage labour and money have received much anthropological attention, the same cannot be said of wages themselves – actual banknotes and coins distributed in workforces. This article traces wages' social productivity among farm workers on the Zimbabwean‐South African border. In this migrant‐labour setting, money's form matters. Because currency objects are physically the same, it is difficult for workers to store them in an insecure environment, leading them to turn to one another. As they manage their earnings, workers attempt to establish themselves as social persons while maintaining future options in uncertain circumstances. Workforce ties both shape and are constituted by flows of cash and the rhythms and circuits of the wage. Seen in terms of form, wages are highly personal – the very stuff of sociality.     

Negotiating precarious labour relations: dynamics of vulnerability and reciprocity between Chinese employers and their migrant workers in Santiago,Chile

Precarious labour research has highlighted the multidimensional factors shaping migrants’ vulnerability to labour exploitation. This article takes a different approach by attending to the possible reciprocity in labour relations– despite unequal power dynamics– particularly when workplaces are small and involve daily interactions between migrant workers and migrant employers. Methodology is based on observations in Chinese-run retail shops and restaurants in Santiago, and interviews with Chinese employers and their Latin American migrant employees of diverse backgrounds. Proposing the concept of “precarious labour relations”, we examine the independent and shared uncertainties between migrant employers and workers who are differently marginalized through race/migrant status axes in Chile. Analyzing dynamics of hierarchy, (mis)trust, and reciprocity in how these actors negotiate precarity and security as workers and/or migrants, we complicate dichotomies of exploitation and resistance in migrant labour research, by foregrounding the multidimensional relationship between employers and workers when both are racialized migrants and minorities.     

Property as sovereignty in micro: the state/property nexus and the Cyprus Problem

This article shows that landed property can be an exercise of state sovereignty in micro. I argue that property tightly relates to statehood and that the concept of ‘community’ offers us a lens with which to investigate that relation. Property's ‘communal’ character in Cyprus often transcends individual rights to ownership. A house belongs not to an individual, but to persons in their capacity as members of either the Greek-Cypriot or Turkish-Cypriot constitutional communities of the Republic. Focusing on the moral and political claims that ensue from this premise, I show how refugee Cypriots encounter and rearticulate the state in a variety of institutions as they lay claims to property (periousia) – their own or others’. Consequently, I argue that thinking through ‘community’ contributes to understandings of the linkage between property and statecraft (what I call the state/property nexus). In turn, this allows us to better comprehend statehood in post-conflict domains.     

Intention and Moral Enhancement

Recently philosophers have proposed a wide variety of interventions referred to as ‘moral enhancements’. Some of these interventions are concerned with helping individuals make more informed decisions; others, however, are designed to compel people to act as the intervener sees fit. Somewhere between these two extremes lie interventions designed to direct an agent's attention either towards morally relevant issues – hat‐hanging – or away from temptations to do wrong – hat‐hiding. I argue that these interventions fail to constitute genuine moral enhancement because, although they may result in more desirable outcomes – more altruism, more law‐following, and/or less self‐destructive behavior, they ignore a person's intentions, and often what makes an action right or wrong is the intent behind it.     

RETRACING LIBERALISM AND REMAKING NATURE: DESIGNER CHILDREN,RESEARCH EMBRYOS,AND FEATHERLESS CHICKENS

Liberal theory seeks to achieve toleration, civil peace, and mutual respect in pluralistic societies by making public policy without reference to arguments arising from within formative ideals about what gives value to human life. Does it make sense to set aside such conceptions of the good when it comes to controversies about stem cell research and the genetic engineering of people or animals? Whether it is reasonable to bracket our worldviews in such cases depends on how we answer the moral questions that the use of these biotechnologies presuppose. I argue that the moral language of liberal justice – of rights and duties, interests and opportunities, freedom and consent, equality and fairness – cannot speak to these underlying concerns about what the human embryo is, why the natural lottery matters to us, and whether ‘animal nature’ is worth preserving. I conclude that liberal theory is incapable of furnishing a coherent or desirable account to govern the way we use our emerging powers of biotechnology.     

Are Bans on Kidney Sales Unjustifiably Paternalistic?

This paper challenges the view that bans on kidney sales are unjustifiably paternalistic, that is, that they unduly deny people the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies in order to protect them from harm. I argue that not even principled anti‐paternalists need to reject such bans. This is because their rationale is not hard paternalism, which anti‐paternalists repudiate, but soft paternalism, which they in principle accept. More precisely, I suggest that their rationale is what Franklin Miller and Alan Wertheimer call ‘group soft paternalism’. Group soft paternalistic policies restrict the freedom of autonomous individuals, not for their own good (hard paternalism), but as an unavoidable consequence of seeking to protect other, non‐autonomous individuals from harms that they have not voluntarily chosen (soft paternalism). Group soft paternalism supports prohibiting kidney sales on three conditions: (1) that such sales are potentially harmful to vendors, (2) that many vendors would suffer impaired autonomy, and (3) that distinguishing between autonomous and non‐autonomous vendors and interfering only with the latter is unfeasible. I provide reasons for thinking that these conditions will often hold.     

Germ-line engineering,freedom, and future generations

New technologies in germ–line engineering have raised many questions about obligations to future generations. In this article, I focus on the importance of increasing freedom and the equality of freedom for present and future generations, because these two ideals are necessary for a just society and because they are most threatened by the wide–scale privatisation of GLE technologies. However, there are ambiguities in applying these ideals to the issue of genetic technologies. I argue that Amartya Sen's capability theory can be used as a framework to ensure freedom and equality in the use of GLE technology. Capability theory articulates the goal of equalising real freedom by bringing all people up to a threshold of basic human capabilities. Sen's capability theory can clarify the proper moral goal of GLE insofar as this technology could be used to bring people up to certain basic human capabilities, thereby increasing their real freedom. And by increasing the freedom of those who lack basic human capabilities, GLE can aid in decreasing the inequalities of freedom among classes of people.     

On fun and freedom: young women's moral learning in Indonesian Islamic boarding schools

This article analyses the role of fun and freedom in the moral learning of young women students in two Indonesian Islamic boarding schools. Recent debates about Islam and ethical subject formation have centred on the assumed tension between Islam and freedom. I examine decisions about television viewing and dress to illustrate both the flexibility and fixity of moral values and evaluation in girls’ lives. I argue that anthropologists of morality and Islam should take seriously moments of fun as important instances for ‘moral ludus’ or ‘moral play’ – the testing, shifting, and reshaping of the boundaries of moral behaviours that involve balancing the demands of various social fields and the larger ethical community in which a person is embedded. I suggest that these moments be viewed not as ruptures or instances of hypocrisy but as everyday occurrences of embedded agency in the lives of piety-minded individuals.     

First,do no harm: Generalized procreative non‐maleficence

New reproductive technologies allow parents some choice over their children. Various moral principles have been suggested to regulate such choices. This article starts from a discussion of Julian Savulescu's Principle of Procreative Beneficence (PPB), according to which parents ought to choose the child expected to have the best quality of life, before combining two previously separate lines of attack against this principle. First, it is suggested that the appropriate moral principles of guiding reproductive choices ought to focus on general wellbeing rather than prioritizing that of the child and, second, that they ought to be non‐maximizing (e.g. seeking the ‘good enough’ or to avoid harm). Though neither of these suggestions is entirely novel, combining them results in a new, and arguably more plausible, principle to regulate procreative choices, which I call the Principle of Generalized Procreative Non‐Maleficence (PGPNM). According to this principle, the primary obligation on parents is not to cause harm to other people through their reproductive choices.     

‘The complexity of an enduring relationship’: gender,generation, and the moral economy of the Gambian Mandinka household

This article examines the moral economy of the Gambian Mandinka household, focusing on girls' labour contributions in the time of neoliberalism. Scholarship on the moral economy of the household within rural production systems reduces the term to altruism and harmony within the domestic unit. This article provides a more theoretically nuanced understanding of the moral economy of the household, with a focus on the cultural codes that underpin intra‐household relations, the inter‐generational contract, as well as the generational and gendered hierarchies that inform processes of negotiation in relation to labour contributions. Transitions in the moral economy of the household can be captured in the shifting nature of girls' labour contributions and in their changing attitudes towards these contributions. Interpretations of work obligations are increasingly framed in terms of exchanges and incentives. Further, girls aspire to get an education and a good job, or marry well in order to move out of farming. Such novel interpretations and practices recast the moral economy of the household as dynamic and subject to change. These ethnographic insights have relevance for the anthropological study of children's labour, intra‐household relations, and the moral economy of the household.     

The financial situation before and after first-time psychiatric in-patient diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum,bipolar, and major depressive disorder

Schizophrenia spectrum, bipolar, and major depressive disorders are severe mental illnesses (SMIs) that not only entail great suffering for those affected but also major societal costs. In this study, I use administrative register data to provide a detailed picture of the financial situation of people with SMI in Sweden during a period of $\pm$10 years around first-time psychiatric in-patient diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum, bipolar, and major depressive disorders. Receiving a diagnosis was associated with a considerable drop in earnings, which was largely compensated for by social transfers: mainly sickness and disability insurance. However, there were also large and increasing pre-diagnosis earnings gaps, relative to matched comparison groups, especially among those with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. These gaps were to a lesser extent compensated for by social transfers. Consequently, there were permanent and increasing – due to lost earnings growth – income differentials. Hence, findings in previous studies are confirmed: even in an advanced welfare state, people with SMI – especially those with schizophrenia – have an extremely weak position on the labour market and an equally difficult financial situation.     

EXISTENCE: WHO NEEDS IT? THE NON‐IDENTITY PROBLEM AND MERELY POSSIBLE PEOPLE

In formulating procreative principles, it makes sense to begin by thinking about whose interests ought to matter to us. Obviously, we care about those who exist. Less obviously, but still uncontroversially, we care about those who will exist. Ought we to care about those who might possibly, but will not actually, exist? Recently, unusual positions have been taken regarding merely possible people and the non‐identity problem. David Velleman argues that what might have happened to you – an existent person – often doesn't merit moral consideration since the alternative person one would have been had what might have happened actually happened is a merely possible person about whom one has no reason to care. He argues that his way of thinking can eliminate the non‐identity problem. Caspar Hare argues that merely possible people have interests and are morally relevant. He argues that we can solve the non‐identity problem by rejecting the view that merely possible people are morally irrelevant. Both Hare and Velleman argue that focusing on one's de dicto rather than on one's de re children can help us avoid the non‐identity problem. I analyze the role that merely possible, nonexistent hypothetical entities ought to play in our moral reasoning, especially with regard to procreation. I refute both Velleman's and Hare's views and demonstrate the difficulties we encounter when we try to apply their views to common non‐identity cases. I conclude with the common‐sense view regarding who matters, morally: only those who do, did, or will exist.     

Autonomy is a Right,Not a Feat: How Theoretical Misconceptions have Muddled the Debate on Dynamic Consent to Biobank Research

Should people be involved as active participants in longitudinal medical research, as opposed to remaining passive providers of data and material? We argue in this article that misconceptions of ‘autonomy’ as a kind of feat rather than a right are to blame for much of the confusion surrounding the debate of dynamic versus broad consent. Keeping in mind two foundational facts of human life, freedom and dignity, we elaborate three moral principles – those of autonomy, integrity and authority – to better see what is at stake. Respect for autonomy is to recognize the other's right to decide in matters that are important to them. Respect for integrity is to meet, in one's relationship with the other, their need to navigate the intersection between private and social life. Respect for authority is to empower the other – to help them to cultivate their responsibility as citizens. On our account, to force information onto someone who does not want it is not to respect that person's autonomy, but to violate integrity in the name of empowerment. Empowerment, not respect for autonomy, is the aim that sets patient‐centred initiatives employing a dynamic consent model apart from other consent models. Whether this is ultimately morally justified depends on whether empowerment ought to be a goal of medical research, which is questionable.     

Declarations of dependence: labour,personhood, and welfare in southern Africa

Dependence on others has often figured, in liberal thought, as the opposite of freedom. But the political anthropology of southern Africa has long recognized relations of social dependence as the very foundation of polities and persons alike. Reflecting on a long regional history of dependence ‘as a mode of action’ allows a new perspective on certain contemporary practices that appear to what we may call ‘the emancipatory liberal mind’ simply as lamentable manifestations of a reactionary and retrograde yearning for paternalism and inequality. Instead, this article argues that such practices are an entirely contemporary response to the historically novel emergence of a social world where people, long understood (under both pre‐capitalist and early capitalist social systems) as scarce and valuable, have instead become seen as lacking value, and in surplus. Implications are drawn for contemporary politics and policy, in a world where both labour and forms of social membership based upon it are of diminishing value, and where social assistance and the various cash transfers associated with it are of increasing significance.     

MORAL ENHANCEMENT VIA DIRECT EMOTION MODULATION: A REPLY TO JOHN HARRIS

Some argue that humans should enhance their moral capacities by adopting institutions that facilitate morally good motives and behaviour. I have defended a parallel claim: that we could permissibly use biomedical technologies to enhance our moral capacities, for example by attenuating certain counter‐moral emotions. John Harris has recently responded to my argument by raising three concerns about the direct modulation of emotions as a means to moral enhancement. He argues (1) that such means will be relatively ineffective in bringing about moral improvements, (2) that direct modulation of emotions would invariably come at an unacceptable cost to our freedom, and (3) that we might end up modulating emotions in ways that actually lead to moral decline. In this article I outline some counter‐intuitive potential implications of Harris' claims. I then respond individually to his three concerns, arguing that they license only the very weak conclusion that moral enhancement via direct emotion modulation is sometimes impermissible. However I acknowledge that his third concern might, with further argument, be developed into a more troubling objection to such enhancements.