Global Challenges: War, Self-Determination and Responsibility for Justice
In the late twentieth century many writers
and activists envisioned new possibilities of transnational cooperation toward
peace and global justice. In this book Iris Marion Young aims to revive such
hopes by responding clearly to what are seen as the global challenges of the
modern day.
Inspired by claims of indigenous peoples, the book develops a concept of
self-determination compatible with stronger institutions of global regulation.
It theorizes new directions for thinking about federated relationships between
peoples which assume that they need not be large or symmetrical. Young argues
that the use of armed force to respond to oppression should be rare, genuinely
multilateral, and follow a model of law enforcement more than war. She finds
that neither cosmopolitan nor nationalist responses to questions of global
justice are adequate and so offers a distinctive conception of responsibility,
founded on participation in social structures, to describe the obligations that
both individuals and organizations have in a world of global interdependence.
Young applies clear analysis and cogent moral arguments to concrete cases,
including the wars against Serbia and Iraq, the meaning of the US Patriot Act,
the conflict in Palestine/Israel, and working conditions in sweat
shops.
