Research

Should political theorists engage in ethnographic fieldwork? This paper offers a new argument in favor of adopting an ethnographic sensibility: it helps ‘democratize’ political theory in two ways. First, ethnographic sensibility enables theorists to demonstrate democratic respect for individuals or communities by incorporating their voices and practices into theory. Political theory has been criticized for insufficient attentiveness to real-life politics; part of this problem is relational. Theories about how different agents (e.g., government officials, activists) should act are often developed without attending to those agents’ lived experiences and practices. Ethnographic sensibility helps address this concern through the use of thick description. Second, by rendering the perspectives of, and challenges faced by, different agents intelligible to others, ethnographically informed political theory may help promote mutual understanding among citizens; perspective-taking is important for democracy whether or not one agrees with the perspectives being considered.

Despite facing significant environmental issues, environmental activism in Iraq is underdeveloped. Many scholars attribute this to political structural reasons, such as ongoing political instability and the persecution of environmental activists. This article explores the role gender inequality plays in undermining Iraq’s environmental activism, an issue under-explored in the existing literature. Specifically, this article explores the gendered impacts of environmental degradation on Iraqis’ daily lives and health, as well as barriers and structural constraints limiting Iraqi women’s engagement in environmental activism. It finds that, in Iraq, women are often in charge of domestic roles like finding clean water supply, making them more vulnerable to environmental deterioration. Iraqi women nonetheless remain marginal to environmental activism because of their lack of political opportunities. This mismatch between who feels aggrieved and who has political opportunities contributes to the mobilisation difficulties experienced by Iraq’s environmental movement.

Lenman (2000)'s cluelessness objection against consequentialism states that we are almost entirely clueless to the actual consequences of our action. In ‘Cluelessness,’ Hilary Greaves (2016) distinguishes between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ cases of cluelessness and argues that the principle of indifference applies to ‘simple’ cases, thereby rescuing the ‘simple’ cases from the cluelessness objection. In this discussion note, I argue that Greaves's distinction between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ cases fails and cluelessness is more problematic than Greaves believes.

This chapter addresses the tensions between the rights to urban space of humans and non-human animals, with a special focus on ethical issues relating to stray cats and dogs in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, thousands of cats and dogs are abandoned on the street each year. Most stray animals are put down unless they can be re-homed. Such an urban policy represents an almost absolute prioritization of the interests of humans, specifically the importance of public health and safety, over the rights and interests of non-human animals. This chapter proposes a Buddhist approach to solving the problem of stray animals, contending that the relationship between human and non-human animals should be that of harmonious co-existence. Stray animals should be neutered and returned to their habitat rather than being put down. This chapter also contrasts the Buddhist approach with two Western approaches to animal ethics: (a) the utilitarian approach which states that the interests of animals should be given equal consideration as those of humans; and (b) the rights-based approach which argues in favor of granting rights to animals. It argues that the Buddhist approach is more suitable for addressing urban controversy issues for philosophical and practical reasons.