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Financial Risks and Social Justice – Three Perspectives

Teppo Eskelinen

Abstract

This article focuses in the allocation of financial risks from the viewpoint of social justice. In contemporary society, finance and the related risk allocation patterns have become highly important in determining the social positions of individuals. Yet it is somewhat unclear how ‘financial risks’ should be understood in normative theory and to what extent their allocation is a specific problem of justice. This article consists of a definition of this category and a typology of three different and distinctive perspectives to financial risks and social justice, out of which a synthesis is drawn. The contribution of the article is to propose a normative basis for a research programme on risks and justice in the society of high financialisation.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Sep 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
1–16 (16 total)
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A Matter of Unbound Leaders in the Lives of Africans

Ajume H. Wingo

Abstract

Conceiving of the problems of African colonialism in geopolitical terms offers an incomplete and ultimately misleading view of the significance of the African colonial experience on the present character of African politics. Unhappily, the track record of much of ‘independent’ Africa suggests that the colonisation of Africa was not so much the cause of Africans’ lack of freedom as a manifestation of the lack of freedom, without which Africans were unable to defend themselves. Colonialism is a force that probes for a certain type of weakness or limitations in a population. Colonialism seeks out certain ‘freedom voids’ – populations that lack the qualities of a free citizenry. I argue that Africans would do better to focus instead on the more general political problem of how any state, regardless of its experience with colonialism, must create and sustain the institutions that support the security and freedom of its citizens.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Sep 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
53–71 (19 total)
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Moral Conflict

The Private, the Public and the Political

Marios Filis

Abstract

This article investigates the connection between the phenomenon of moral conflict and the concepts of the private, the public and the political. In the first part of the article, as a way of locating my pluralistic position within the tradition of authors such as Isaiah Berlin and Steven Lukes, I develop a brief overview of modern meta-ethics and argue that monistic and relativistic explanations of morality are the cause of many of the antinomies that trouble human conduct. In the second part of the article, I make the central contention that moral pluralism is particularly useful in clarifying the concepts of the private, the public and the political as distinct domains of activity. I argue that we should treat moral conflict differently in each of these three domains and conclude that the moral significance and peculiarity of politics has been undeservedly underestimated in contemporary times.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Sep 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
17–34 (18 total)
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Practical Judgment, Narrative Experience and Wicked Problems

Leslie Paul Thiele and Marshall Young

Abstract

Practical judgment can be developed from a wide variety of life experiences upon one condition: the experiences in question are made meaningful through stories. By placing lived experience in narrative form one gains a flexible guide for action. Calculative analysis may usefully supplement, but cannot supplant, narrative knowledge for the decision-maker grappling with the ‘wicked problems’ of social and political life. There is no obvious, or perhaps even feasible, way to determine what constitutes the kind of story that will improve practical judgment and allow for better decisions. It is less the content of stories that requires attention than the process of narrative inquiry, interaction and understanding.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Sep 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
35–52 (18 total)
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Darius in the Shadow of Alexander by Pierre Briant

Dmitry Shlapentokh

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2016
Article Type:
Book Review
Pages:
80–81 (2 total)
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The Economics of Decolonisation

Institutions, Education and Elite Formation

Nicola Viegi

Abstract

Modern economic growth theory gives a central role to ‘institutions’ in understanding the ability of an economy to break development constraints. This article briefly reviews a growing economic literature that focuses on African economic history in order to identify the linkages between institutional development and economic growth. Because present-day African institutions are often direct descendants of the colonial experience, colonial economic and political institutions have been the main focus of this literature. This article instead proposes to analyse closely the role that the colonial education had in the process of decolonisation and in African postcolonial history. Because of the importance of education in the process of economic development, an education system aimed mainly at co-opting an elite in the ways of the coloniser might be a significant obstacle in generating innovation and creativity necessary for the process of economic development.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
61–79 (19 total)
Free access

Empire and Economics

Decolonising Colonialism and Its Legacies in Africa

Edited by Lawrence Hamilton

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2016
Article Type:
Editorial
Pages:
1–5 (5 total)
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‘The Expenditure of a Million of British Sovereigns in this Otherwise Miserable Place’

Frontier Wars, Public Debt and the Cape’s Non-racial Constitution

Jeff Peires

Abstract

This article seeks to enhance the historiography of the Eastern Cape frontier wars by adding war profiteering to land hunger as a motive for settler militancy. Equally important however was the extent to which the exorbitant military expenditure of the Eighth Frontier War (1850–3) aroused the concern of the British Treasury, and drew their attention to the corrupt practices of Colonial Secretary John Montagu, the de facto head of the Cape government. This was precisely the period during which the Cape franchise was under review at the Colonial office, and the article concludes by showing that imperial intervention in favour of a broader more inclusive franchise was due less to democratic concerns than to its desire to put a brake on the Cape’s burgeoning public debt.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
25–43 (19 total)
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Invoking a World of Ideas

Theory and Interpretation in the Justification of Colonialism

David Boucher

Abstract

In this article I want to draw upon examples from European settlement in the Americas, Australasia and South Africa in order to argue that modern colonisation and imperialism, despite considerable variation, drew upon a range of justificatory principles which constituted a background theory, or worldview, that was invoked in part or in its entirety in justifying the civilising mission which was viewed by its proponents as both a right and a duty. I begin by showing how the infamous ‘Requirement’ (‘Requerimiento’) of 1513 becomes intelligible as a performative utterance when connected to the constellation of ideas which makes it warrantably assertible, to use John Dewey’s terminology. It is not so much about the land or its use in conceptual terms but instead about the larger value judgements the colonists were applying. It is contended that despite the variation in emphases and conclusions, and the different levels of discourse at which justifications are offered, the efficacy and veracity of colonial and imperialist justifications invoke the authority of the world of ideas in which the assertions alone have intelligibility.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
6–24 (19 total)
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The Keys to the Economic Kingdom

State Intervention and the Overcoming of Dependency in Africa before the Crisis of the 1970s

Bill Freund

Abstract

This article is concerned with reviewing the history of developmental states on the African continent which have been neglected in this theoretical literature. It is important to consider not only successful model developmental states but also partially successful and failed attempts at developmental policies to understand the concept and its place in economic literature. Particular attention is given first to the ambitious examples of Ghana and Tanzania following independence. There is brief discussion of other individual cases, notably Zaïre and Zambia. The last part of the article looks at the developmental aspects of South African economic history between 1910 and 1990. This was apparently a far more successful project but it contained inbuilt flaws that eventually killed off dynamism. The sociopolitical context of racial dominance and separation was a major one of these flaws.

Cover Theoria

In  Theoria

Published (Print):
01 Jun 2016
Article Type:
Research Article
Pages:
44–60 (17 total)