Monday, February 20, 2012
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Tatum referenced this essay in her book. I had read it before, and it definitely made me think. While I have not experienced a lot of what she talks about (for example I have never tried to buy a house), some of the statements were thought-provoking. For example, the colors of band-aids are supposedly meant to represent flesh, but are white (I looked up whether there is still a flesh toned crayon and there was but it was renamed peach in 1962).
Monday, February 13, 2012
Cosmopolitanism
What I take from Cosmopolitanism is that it is important to understand the value systems in place in different cultures. For example, Appiah uses the example of a doctor trying to save a Jehovah’s Witness from dying of blood loss with a transfusion. However, the woman’s culture prohibits the donation of blood through a strict interpretation of the Bible verse prohibiting eating blood. As a doctor, it is your job to save her life if you have the ability to do so. What do you do in this situation?
This somewhat reminds me of the arguments concerning keeping someone alive who has suffered such extreme brain damage that they will not wake up and will not be able to live without machines keeping them alive. In these cases it is up to the family of the individual or the individual’s living will to determine whether to keep this person alive. If you remember the case of Terry Schiavo from a few years ago, her husband wanted to remove her feeding tube while her parents wanted to keep her alive. The doctors had the ability to keep her alive indefinitely despite quality of life arguments against doing so. The court case ended with the determination that her feeding tube should be removed.
This video is heavily biased against the results of the Terry Schiavo case, indicating the differences in opinions on ethical standards felt by people even within the United States.
In these kinds of situations we expect the individual’s in question to decide for themselves in advance whether to live in a vegetative state or to choose to die. While it is unlike the blood transfusion question above in that the doctor is unable to fully cure the individual, it is similar in that a person’s individual quality of life wishes are important and respected when they are expressed.
This may seem an argument in favor of cultural relativism but it is not. In both of these cases the question was down to individual preference in societies that enabled the individual to make informed decisions regarding consent (I am assuming in the case of the Jehovah’s Witness). Since Terry Schiavo did not have a living will it was unknown what she would have wanted herself, but there was significant input from family and the judicial system attempting to do what was best for her with significant input from both sides. I think individual preference should be respected, however when it is the result of a culture’s standards and values it becomes more difficult to navigate. If I grew up a Jehovah’s Witness I would likely not want a blood transfusion either and I would expect a doctor to respect my wishes. However, since I did not grow up within that religion, I would prefer a blood transfusion to death.
If it is this difficult to navigate moral issues even within similar societies, how do we expect to solve cross-cultural ethical behavior? I do not think the answer is that we cannot judge, but I think there has to be some understanding given to the culture in general. Like Appiah wrote, a discussion of values and reasoning surrounding cultural practices that we disagree with are important. However, I wonder what the end goal of this sort of reasoning is. If we disagree with a practice, even after understanding the culture associated with it, are we meant to step in and end it? For example, Appiah uses the example of female circumcision. He writes that it is a practice young women are proud of and excited to go through as a test of bravery. If I still disagree with it, what do I do? Is the point of this exercise to determine that I am allowed to judge another culture’s practices or is it to determine whether I am allowed to forcibly end another culture’s practices, imposing my values on theirs? I think I am perfectly allowed to judge another culture and say it is wrong but I do not know whether I would be comfortable being the one in charge of ending it.
What I take from Cosmopolitanism is that it is important in a globalized world to be respectful and open to cultures not our own. I do not really see it as a guide to navigating issues where cultures conflict.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Creating Capabilities
In Creatin Capabilities, Martha Nussbaum discusses why per capita GDP is a poor indicator of well-being in an economy. Per capita gross domestic product is the value goods and services produced within the country divided by the country’s population. This average can hide huge inequalities in income and well being, which measurements like Nussbaum’s try to overcome. Putting aside per capita GDP, it is possible to assess and compare countries on numerous other qualities that may give a better indication of conditions inside the country. For example the Human Development Index measures well-being based on literacy and education as well as income. Professors Dr. Gibney and Dr. Cornett from UNCA work on the Political Terror Scale, which measures the levels of political violence and terror that people in countries feel on a five point scale.
Per capita GDP can mask inequalities within a country in addition to human development issues. Something I have been interested in is the income inequalities in so-called first-world countries like the United States. A few years ago I went to a talk by behavioral economist Dan Ariely here at UNCA. His talk about rationally irrational behavior was really interesting and you all should check it out especially if you liked Freakanomics. However, what really interested me was his blog which I looked at after his talk.
At the time, he was looking for participants to take a survey based on income inequalities. He requested participants choose the division of wealth in a society that the participant would most like to live in by looking at pie charts depicting the division of wealth between five quintiles representing a fifth of the country’s population in each, divided by wealth.
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| Near total income equality |
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84% of wealth concentrated in top 20% of population (this is the United States)
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The participant was told that they would be dropped into this country with equal change of ending up in any of the five quintiles. By using John Rawls’ original position theory, Ariely seemed to believe that with no prior knowledge of their position in the society, the participant would choose the country with the greatest equity of wealth between the five wealth levels. The participant should choose the countries in which he or she will have the greatest chance of not being dirt poor.
The first few pie charts showing the divisions of wealth are unlabeled, leaving the participant to choose based on the actual divisions of wealth one sees in the chart. Later in the survey, the pie charts are labeled with countries like Great Britain and Haiti, indicating that the wealth division pie chart represents the wealth division in the labeled country.
In this experiment, Ariely seemed to be attempting to understand not what kind of wealth equity people desire in a society in which they are not guaranteed a certain place, but how people choose given little information. It is likely that a participant who chose to live in Haiti’s unmarked wealth division pie chart over Great Britain’s would likely choose the reverse given a labeled pie chart. The pie charts have not changed with the inclusion of labels, only the participant’s perception of the pie charts has changed. Perhaps people have more faith in first world societies ability to provide for its people despite unequal distribution of wealth. Even with the facts in place, regardless of wealth distribution despite that being the question, people will likely choose to live in countries they consider wealthier by comparison.
This is relevant today because of the recent attention to inequalities in wealth in the United States in the Occupy Wall Street movements as well as in the presidential campaign. This article at PBS describes the gains in wealth to the top one percent in recent years.
If anyone is interested, Ariely’s resulting article was published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, titled Building a Better America, One Wealth Quintile at a Time, available in pdf form if you google it:
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