Is Discrimination Harmful?

Interpreters of Robert Nozick’s political philosophy fall into two broad groups concerning his application of the ‘Lockean proviso’. Some read his argument in an undemanding way: individual instances of ownership which make people worse off than they would have been in a world without any ownership are unjust. Others read the argument in a demanding way: individual instances of ownership which make people worse off than they would have been in a world without that particular ownership are unjust. While I argue that the former reading is correct as an interpretive matter, I suggest that this reading is nonetheless highly demanding. In particular, I argue that it is demanding when it is expanded to include the protection of nonhuman animals; if such beings are right bearers, as more and more academics are beginning to suggest, then there is no nonarbitrary reason to exclude them from the protection of the proviso.

Three Questions About the Economics of Relative Position: A Response to Frank and Sunstein

Review: From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier By David McDermott Hughes Reviewed by Bram Buscher Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands David McDermott Hughes. From Enslavement to Environmentalism. Politics on a Southern African Frontier. Seattle: University of Washington Press, May 2006. 288 pp. (hardbound) ISBN: 0-295-98590-9. (90% Recycled, Acid-free paper) US$50.00. Within the vast and burgeoning literature on community-based conservation in Africa, David Hughes’ From Enslavement to Environmentalism is a welcome addition. With great care, Hughes narrates what life is like in and around two villages on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique and shows how outside interventions have over time greatly changed local power dynamics in relation to land and people. But these dynamics differed greatly between the two countries. Interestingly, the book challenges the assumption in much of the literature that African borders are “soft” -- not very meaningful to local people. Instead, the book argues that the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe is “hard” in that “people cross it, but emigration strips at least some people of rights and securities they regularly enjoy at home” (p. 76). This especially concerned Mozambican refugees, crossing the border to flee from civil war, subsequently finding themselves as “pegs” in turf-wars over land between local headmen, the state and private owners in a country “steeped in cadastral culture” (p. 123). In turn, however, the cadastral politics so characteristic of Zimbabwe increasingly started influencing local politics in Mozambique during the 1990s. Although traditionally more so in former British colonies, Hughes contends that due to conservation and private sector interventions even Mozambique has been making a “sea change” from “rule based on categories of people to rule based on the management of zones of land” (p. 145). And he states that this shift “from enslavement to environmentalism” has not brought more security or prospects for people living in rural Mozambique. In fact, the book suggests that neoliberal “community-based” conservation and tourism projects have made people worse off than they were before. The strong point of the book is the ethnographic detail Hughes brings to bear to embed and “ground” the above two arguments. Yet, what the book wins in ethnographic detail, it seems to lose in theoretical rigor, especially when it concerns the operationalization of liberalism and politics. In itself

Review: From Enslavement to Environmentalism: Politics on a Southern African Frontier By David McDermott Hughes Reviewed by Bram Buscher Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands David McDermott Hughes. From Enslavement to Environmentalism. Politics on a Southern African Frontier. Seattle: University of Washington Press, May 2006. 288 pp. (hardbound) ISBN: 0-295-98590-9. (90% Recycled, Acid-free paper) US$50.00. Within the vast and burgeoning literature on community-based conservation in Africa, David Hughes’ From Enslavement to Environmentalism is a welcome addition. With great care, Hughes narrates what life is like in and around two villages on the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique and shows how outside interventions have over time greatly changed local power dynamics in relation to land and people. But these dynamics differed greatly between the two countries. Interestingly, the book challenges the assumption in much of the literature that African borders are “soft” -- not very meaningful to local people. Instead, the book argues that the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe is “hard” in that “people cross it, but emigration strips at least some people of rights and securities they regularly enjoy at home” (p. 76). This especially concerned Mozambican refugees, crossing the border to flee from civil war, subsequently finding themselves as “pegs” in turf-wars over land between local headmen, the state and private owners in a country “steeped in cadastral culture” (p. 123). In turn, however, the cadastral politics so characteristic of Zimbabwe increasingly started influencing local politics in Mozambique during the 1990s. Although traditionally more so in former British colonies, Hughes contends that due to conservation and private sector interventions even Mozambique has been making a “sea change” from “rule based on categories of people to rule based on the management of zones of land” (p. 145). And he states that this shift “from enslavement to environmentalism” has not brought more security or prospects for people living in rural Mozambique. In fact, the book suggests that neoliberal “community-based” conservation and tourism projects have made people worse off than they were before. The strong point of the book is the ethnographic detail Hughes brings to bear to embed and “ground” the above two arguments. Yet, what the book wins in ethnographic detail, it seems to lose in theoretical rigor, especially when it concerns the operationalization of liberalism and politics. In itself

Reviewed by: Human Rights or Global Capitalism: The Limits of Privatization by Manfred Nowak Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann (bio) Manfred Nowak, Human Rights or Global Capitalism: The Limits of Privatization, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017, ISBN 978-08-12248-75-3, 247pages. Shortly before I read Manfred Nowak’s important new book on privatization, I came across an article in the business section of Toronto’s Globe and Mail discussing a promising new investment opportunity. The author alerted his readers about the anticipated increase in the number of for-profit prisons in the US as a result of President Trump’s announced policies to get tough on crime and immigration, and he noted that readers could invest in the companies running those prisons. Nowak has collected much evidence that privatization of essential social services undermines all human rights: civil and political as well as economic and social. Nowak’s principal argument is that international human rights law cannot be neutral regarding whether services essential to the fulfillment of human rights may be privatized. Such a position, he argues, abnegates responsibility to assess the actual consequences of privatization. International law requires progressive implementation of economic, social, and cultural rights to the maximum of a country’s available resources.1 Thus, Nowak argues, it also prohibits the introduction of “deliberate retrogressive measures.”2 He also argues that the requirement of progressive implementation applies to civil and political rights as well as to economic, social, and cultural, although it is unclear if this is the consensus among international human rights lawyers. Thus, Nowak argues, a thorough human rights impact assessment is required before any privatization program is undertaken, and private providers must be held accountable to the same high human rights standards as states. In assessing the consequences of privatization, Nowak suggests as a baseline measure the status quo at the time each state ratified the various relevant legal instruments, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This appears to be a good principle, but it does assume that what states reported to be the provision of services and protection of human rights at the time of ratification actually was the case. In Chapters 3–6, Nowak provides much evidence that privatization of education, health, social services, and water has resulted in poorer services overall. But he does not compare the results of these policies with the reality on the ground before they were implemented. He assumes that all privatization—specially that connected with the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) instituted by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—leaves people worse off. This is not necessarily the case. It may appear, for example, that resorting to private schools in sub-Saharan Africa is a regressive measure compared to earlier guarantees of free government-provided primary schooling. But the reality in many government-supported public schools, both before and after SAPs, was that classrooms were overcrowded, supplies nonexistent, and many teachers unqualified [End Page 1002] or underpaid, if indeed not paid at all. In one study of public schools in seven African countries, children received less than two and a half hours of teaching per day, although there was no evidence that private schools were any better.3 Like the educational systems, government-provided health services may have been more fictitious than real. Hospitals were often undersupplied; patients and their families had to buy their own bandages, drugs, and food; and they routinely had to bribe doctors in order to obtain treatment. It is, indeed, appalling that SAPs required governments to reduce spending on already inadequate health and education services, but we should not be misled into assuming that these services were either universally available or accessible to all on an equal basis. Nor were they ever free; they were supposed to be tax-supported, but countries with very low tax bases due to administrative inefficiencies, taxpayer resistance, corruption, or a combination of all three, routinely do not provide these services. On the other hand, statistical data suggesting improvements in economic performance in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s after SAPs were introduced may also be an artifact of...