A Practice of Ethics for Global Politics: Ethical Reflexivity

Description

What kind of ethics in world politics is possible if there is no foundation for moral knowledge or global reality is at least complex and contingent? Furthermore, how can an ethics grapple with difference, a persistent and confounding feature for global politics? This book responds to the call for a bold and creative approach to ethics that avoids assuming or aspiring to universality, and instead prioritizes difference, complexity and uncertainty by turning to reflexivity, not as method or methodology, but as a practice of ethics for politics. This practice, 'ethical reflexivity', offers individuals, organizations and communities tools to recognize, interrogate and potentially change the stories they tell about politics-about constraints, notions of responsibility and visions of desirability. The benefits and limits of ethical reflexivity are investigated by the author, who engages writing on critique, rhetoric, affect and relationality, and carefully considers dominant and alternative framings of difficult issues in International Relations (IR)-the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the US policies of 'enhanced interrogation' and drone strikes. This path-breaking study provokes new possibilities for agency and action and contributes to a growing literature in IR on reflexivity by uniquely elaborating its promise as an ethics for politics, and by drawing on thinkers less utilized in discussions of reflexivity such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Aristotle. This book will appeal to scholars and upper-level graduates in several sub-fields of IR, including international/global ethics, IR theory, global governance, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, foreign policy analysis and US foreign policy. A Practice of Ethics for Global Politics- Front Cover A Practice of Ethics for Global Politics Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Foreword Introduction To ‘work on our limits’ through ‘permanent critique’ Organization of the book Notes Chapter 1: Aristotelian reflexivity Aristotle’s phronesis and phronimos: agency, agents and critical rationality Emotion, rhetoric, and critical rationality in Aristotle’s account of ethics Friendliness and friendship in a practice of ethics Questions of politics and metaphysics Conclusion Notes Chapter 2: Giddens’ reflexive modernity, Arendt’s inner dialogue, and Foucault’s ‘critical ontology’ of ourselves Reflexive scholars of ‘modernity’ The contours of ethical reflexivity as practice A practice of ethical reflexivity: some conclusions Notes Chapter 3: The global phronimos Agency and agents in the organizations of world politics Dispositions, attitudes, and skills of the global phronimos Some ideal-type global phronimos Conclusion Notes Chapter 4: Living in and beyond genocide in Rwanda Agency and complexity in Rwanda Moving beyond the event: agencies and narratives in post-genocide Rwanda Ethically reflexive (phronetic) leadership in the International Committee of the Red Cross Institutionalized ethical reflexivity at the ICRC? Conclusion Notes Chapter 5: ‘An ethical train wreck’?: Enhanced interrogation in the U.S. War on Terror Defining and practicing torture: the pure of heart The public response I: ‘An ethical train wreck’ or a legal train wreck? The public response II: torture just doesn’t work The public response III: ‘No one sat down’ The phronimos of ethical reflexivity? If you’re not ‘being a pain in the ass’ then ‘you’re doing it wrong’ Conclusion: slowing down time Notes Chapter 6: The silences of private judgment: Drone practices, criticism at home and abroad, and the failure to respond A ‘remote control’ foreign policy Dennis Blair: Obama’s ‘wishful thinking’ The game changers: drones confronted in and from Pakistan Counting drones, living drones U.S. (non-)response Conclusion: on transparency, difference and dialogue Notes Conclusion: Some closing thoughts on behalf of authorial reflexivity Dangers and limits of ethical reflexivity Notes Bibliography Index