What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it? Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times (...) when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. -/- Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states. -/- For Delmas, this duty to resist demands principled disobedience, and such disobedience need not always be civil. At times, covert, violent, evasive, or offensive acts of lawbreaking can be justified, even required. Delmas defends the viability and necessity of illegal assistance to undocumented migrants, leaks of classified information, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, sabotage, armed self-defense, guerrilla art, and other modes of resistance. There are limits: principle alone does not justify law breaking. But uncivil disobedience can sometimes be not only permissible but required in the effort to resist injustice. (shrink)

A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should be Uncivil, by DelmasCandice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp vii + 295.

In her book A Duty to Resist, Candice Delmas defends the view that we are not only permitted to disobey gravely unjust laws, but we may have a duty to do so. Moreover, not only civil but also uncivil disobedience may be justified in such cases. To justify both claims she argues that the same principles that justify a duty to obey the law—such as the principle of fairness, Samaritan duty, and associative obligations—also justify a duty to disobey the (...) law. The problem with this argumentative strategy is that it amounts to an attempt to derive the duty to disobey gravely unjust laws (or to resist them) from less stringent duties than the ones that can plausibly ground it. Against this strategy, I argue that the focus on laws that violate fundamental rights is what does all the normative work for justifying the duty to disobey/resist such laws, and the appeal to weaker principles is not only superfluous but also misleading. It has negative consequences for our understanding of what is owed to victims, in virtue of what, and by whom. (shrink)

This article argues humans should not be defined strictly at their physical boundaries with clear distinctions between anatomical bodies, mental states, and the rest of the world. Rather, diverse mental states, which are often diagnosed as “mental illness,” take shape within greater environmental forces and flows, including those that are constructed online. Drawing from a multi-sited ethnography of The Icarus Project, a radical mental health community, the author situates online narratives written by two of its members within posthuman emotional ecologies (...) in which the exchange of ideas online affects mental states in a profound way. These narratives can be seen as a new type of psychiatric resistance based in new technologies, one that “uncivilizes” mental illness by searching for alternative frameworks and metaphors to understand lived experiences with mental distress. This ethnographic perspective differs significantly from traditional bio-psychiatric models and interventions and can offer both patients and mental healthcare providers with an alternative language to frame mental health. (shrink)

This book analyzes the effect of John Locke's political thought on American political culture today. By analyzing nearly the entirety of Locke's political and philosophical writings, this book shows that Locke's thought has helped to cultivate the incivility seen in recent years in American politics.

Delmas successfully guides us to reconsider the traditional “wisdom” of civil disobedience. She also makes a strong case for expanding the notion of political obligation, which has been narrowly construed as mere obedience, to encompass a duty to resist. Principled disobedience, either civil or uncivil, includes a wide range of tools to tackle different forms of injustice, such as education campaigns, peaceful protests, graffiti street art, whistleblowing, vigilante self-defense, and political riots. We may question to what extent the violent (...) disobedience can be justified, as it is always good to be careful about violence that risks harming the innocent, but other forms of civil or uncivil disobedience may rightly be demanded in realistic circumstances. As I see it, these, along with the general warning to not unwittingly serve the status quo by dismissing social movements merely because of “incivility” and the proposal of the civic virtues of vigilance and open-mindedness, are significant contributions to the literature and could also benefit a politically interested general audience greatly. (shrink)

Theorists of political obligation have long devoted special attention to civil disobedience, establishing its pride of place as an object of philosophical analysis, and as one of a short li...

Uncivil obedience, also sometimes called malicious compliance, has the potential to be a galvanizing force for political change. Historically, it played a key role in many 20th century labor movements, and is still used today by both individuals and more organized activist groups. Despite this, uncivil obedience is less often a topic of philosophical discussion than its more well-known cousin, civil disobedience. In particular, uncivil obedience’s relationship to violence is almost entirely unexplored. In this paper, I outline (...) the necessary conditions for some act to count as uncivil obedience, discuss its relationship to violence, and then present the conditions that must be met for uncivil obedience to be justified. Like other forms of protest and resistance, uncivil obedience has normative limits; there are things we ought not do with it, even in the name of fighting for a better world. (shrink)

An impressive body of recent literature posits that traditional notions of civil disobedience prevent us from properly considering potentially legitimate types of ‘uncivil’ political lawbreaking. When might uncivil (covert, legally evasive, morally offensive and potentially violent) lawbreaking prove normatively acceptable? If justifiable, what conditions should its practitioners be reasonably expected to meet? Despite some important insights, defenders of uncivil disobedience rely on a narrow and sometimes misleading view of civil disobedience, as previously practiced and theorized. Notwithstanding legitimate (...) skepticism about Rawlsian notions of civil disobedience, they reproduce its troublesome binary or ‘all-or-nothing’ view of political lawbreaking. Uncivil disobedience’s proponents tend to group a vast array of distinctive types of lawbreaking under one amorphous categorical rubric, impeding the suitably complex, nuanced analysis we need. A superior approach would pay careful attention to uncivil disobedience’s ambivalent historical record, a record suggesting that UD is more likely to reproduce authoritarian populism’s disturbing political logic than counteract it. (shrink)

Of late, resistance has become a central notion in political theory, standing at the heart of attempts to respond to the dilemmas of contemporary times. However, many accounts tend to ascribe to an idealised, heroic view. In this view, resistance represents a clearcut action against injustice and stems from individuals’ conscious choice and their unwavering ethical commitment to the cause. Some liberal scholars, most notably Candice Delmas and Jason Brennan, have argued that citizens of democratic societies have a (...) moral duty to resist state-sanctioned injustice. This resistance occurs either through ‘principled – civil or uncivil – disobedience’ or through ‘defensive actions’. While acknowledging that pervasive injustice can compromise our cognitive and moral capacities, however, their articulation of our political obligation to resist refrains from a sustained examination of the moral dilemmas, uncertainties and risks that arise when fighting systemic oppression. (shrink)

Civil disobedience is a conscientious, unlawful, and broadly nonviolent form of protest, which most political philosophers and many non-philosophers are inclined to treat as potentially defensible in democratic societies. In recent years, philosophers have become more receptive to long-standing complaints from activists that civil disobedience is an unduly restrictive framework for considering the ethics of dissent. Candice Delmas and Jason Brennan have written important books that illustrate and strengthen this trend, both defending forms of “uncivil” resistance that go (...) beyond the narrow confines of civil disobedience. Their books offer contrasting but complementary philosophical defences of incivility as a tactic of resistance, but it is nonetheless a mistake to conclude that the rich tradition associated with civil disobedience no longer has any relevance for resistance in national, transnational, and global contexts. (shrink)

I review José Medina's The Epistemology of Protest: Silencing, Epistemic Activism, and the Communicative Life of Resistance, and raise some questions about the felicity, legitimacy and civility of protest.

Why you have the right to resist unjust government The economist Albert O. Hirschman famously argued that citizens of democracies have only three possible responses to injustice or wrongdoing by their governments: we may leave, complain, or comply. But in When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues that there is a fourth option. When governments violate our rights, we may resist. We may even have a moral duty to do so. For centuries, almost everyone has believed that we must allow (...) the government and its representatives to act without interference, no matter how they behave. We may complain, protest, sue, or vote officials out, but we can’t fight back. But Brennan makes the case that we have no duty to allow the state or its agents to commit injustice. We have every right to react with acts of “uncivil disobedience.” We may resist arrest for violation of unjust laws. We may disobey orders, sabotage government property, or reveal classified information. We may deceive ignorant, irrational, or malicious voters. We may even use force in self-defense or to defend others. The result is a provocative challenge to long-held beliefs about how citizens may respond when government officials behave unjustly or abuse their power. (shrink)

Protest is often theorized in terms of the relationship between the protest and its audience—lawmakers, the public, and the media. Refreshingly, José Medina’s The Epistemology of Protest balances this standard approach with consideration of the internal life of protest. Analyzing the complexity within what is often seen as a monolithic spectacle, Medina demonstrates that this internal perspective is important not only for understanding the experience, nature, and power of protest, but also for understanding how protests are—and ought to be—taken up (...) by society. After reviewing Medina’s analysis, I offer three comments. The first concerns the verbal-content-independence thesis, which is a crucial link in Medina’s analysis of the communicative complexity of protest. The second concerns uncivil protest and attention—while uncivil protest may be an efficient way to gather the “raw materials” for epistemic activism, the work of waking people from their epistemic and political slumber, as Medina puts it, requires far more careful engineering of attention. I conclude with considerations concerning the internal structure of protest. (shrink)

In this piece, the editor of Common Knowledge offers excerpts from his two-year correspondence with a reader in Hong Kong, who was drawn to arguments made in the journal about maintaining “quietism and resistance in the face of vile behavior.” In the summer and fall of 2019, during the insurrection in Hong Kong, his correspondent shifts rapidly from taking comfort in CK’s defense of quietism to a full embrace of “uncivil disobedience.” She implies that the solidarity the editor (...) expresses with Hong Kong is merely rhetorical, and he responds by writing this article and quoting in it the entire text of the 1984 Joint Declaration of the Chinese and British governments on the question of Hong Kong. The declaration’s guarantees of autonomy and civil rights appear in bold italics. The editor concludes by suggesting that it falls to the United Nations Security Council to enforce the terms of the treaty. (shrink)

Can politically inspired property damage or destruction be justified? This question is hardly of mere academic interest, in light of recent political protests in Hong Kong, the USA, and elsewhere. Against some contemporary writers, I argue that placing property damage under an open-ended rubric of uncivil disobedience does not generate the necessary conceptual and normative distinctions. Drawing on Martin Luther King, Jr., I instead argue that property damage should not be equated or conflated with violence against persons; it also (...) takes a variety of quite different forms. Anyone hoping to pursue politically motivated property damage should meet preconditions whose stringency will be determined by a key question: Do their acts generate or at least plausibly relate to violence against persons? Our answer to the question provide some space for legitimate, politically motivated property damage. Although some theories of property resist the strict delineation of violence to persons from property damage I defend, they fail to capture the realities of property ownership in existing societies, including the USA and, as such, do not undermine my defense, under existing conditions, of limited property damage. (shrink)

Kant infamously opposes not only revolution but also any resistance or disobedience by citizens that aims to compel states to reform themselves. This paper argues that, in fact, the Kantian account of the legitimate state has the resources for a distinctive justification of principled disobedience, including even violent or destructive resistance, that applies to citizens of contemporary Western democracies. When a state fails to enforce the law equally, this lack of equal enforcement can deprive some citizens of the (...) equal assurance of the security of their rights that, on the Kantian account, forms part of the very basis of the state’s claim of legitimate authority. This failure of equal enforcement of the law will thus be a defect of legitimacy and, as a result, those citizens may engage not only in civil disobedience but also in uncivil disobedience, even violent or destructive resistance, in order to compel the state to reform itself. In this context, such disobedience or resistance will count as furthering rather than undermining the project of governance by legitimate law. (shrink)

In prosecuting the war on terror, the Bush Administration asserts that the protections inherent in state sovereignty do not apply to state sponsors of terrorism. I examine three elements of normative arguments to assess the administration's policies. The administration sought to delegitmize terrorism by underscoring the uncivilized nature of terrorist acts. It sought to link the war on terror to efforts to prohibit the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and to frame the invasion of Iraq as central to (...) this war. Finally, the administration proposed new international standards of behavior by arguing that state sponsors of terrorism should be held accountable for terrorist acts planned on their territory, and by seeking to link the protections against intervention inherent in the sovereignty norm to this behavior. Despite initial support for delegitmizing terrorism, the US attempt to frame the war on terror as linked to WMD and Iraq met with skepticism, and it faced fierce competition from alternate frames with regard to Iraq. Finally, the invasion of Iraq stimulated resistance to US policy on normative grounds, with particular concern about the consequences for the sovereignty norm. (shrink)

What is the difference between civil and uncivil disobedience? How can illegal protest be compatible with a democratic regime based on the rule of law? Is Edward Snowden a civil disobedient? This book follows the philosophical debate around these and other issues, showing how the notion of civil disobedience has evolved from a form of passive resistance against injustice, to an active way to engage with the political life of the community. The author presents the major contributions in (...) political and legal philosophy, ranging from John Rawls' seminal account in 1971, to the recent views advanced by Kimberley Brownlee, David Lefkowitz and William Smith. In the last chapter, the author proposes a novel account of civil disobedience, able to meet some of the unresolved challenges. The author argues that, to make sense of civil disobedience, we should expand our conception of political obligation, so to include acts that, despite being illegal, may reveal the agent's civility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Epistemology of Protest by José MedinaShannon Brick (bio)Review of José Medina, The Epistemology of Protest ( Oxford University Press, 2023)José Medina's previous book, The Epistemology of Resistance (2012), examined epistemic practices as forms of political resistance. His latest book, The Epistemology of Protest, takes up an obviously political action and examines it as a distinctly epistemic phenomenon. He argues that from an epistemic perspective, protest (...) does much more than convey knowledge, and it is more than an action from which new knowledge might emerge. Instead, protest is a group action by which new forms of epistemic and communicative agency are brought into being. It is a kind of group action, moreover, with respect to which all people shoulder obligations—to listen and, sometimes, to join. Medina's account seeks to clarify the relationship between protesting and silencing, while accommodating a plurality of forms of protest. Various aspects of the account shed light on how silencing might be resisted, both from the perspective of the protesters and of members of the non-protesting public who take their obligations to listen seriously.The Epistemology of Protest has two parts. The first, "Protest as a Matrix of Communicative Resistance," (17) establishes in broad strokes the key aspects of Medina's account of protest. This part will be of primary interest to applied philosophers of language, and those interested in the normative questions raised by protest. The second, "Forging Communicative Solidarity and Re-Making the Polis: Changing Ourselves and Changing the World through Protest," (133) takes up in greater detail the four communicative dimensions of protests that are sketched in the first part of the book: the expression of dissent, as well as the testimonial, evaluative, and prescriptive dimensions of protest. Foregrounded throughout these chapters are the political struggles of actual communities, especially the radical (and often uncivil) protests of liberation movements. The rich discussions of these struggles will be of particular interest to social philosophers and those working on applied speech act theory, as well activists and the public more generally. [End Page E-1]The Epistemology of Protest opens by motivating a basic normative claim: all people have a duty to listen to protest and, in certain circumstances, a defeasible prima facie duty to protest. The latter aspect of this claim—that, in certain circumstances, we have a duty to protest—is situated within the context of the broader, imperfect duty to resist injustice (Medina 2023, 28; see also Delmas 2018). However, joining a protest is not just one way of discharging our imperfect duty to resist injustice, but a way of discharging the duty that all citizens ought to exercise whenever conditions of "social uprising against injustice" (22) obtain—when there is a real opportunity for a growing mass movement to achieve social change. Importantly, this is not a duty that has its roots in our political associations, but one that extends beyond the bounds of even the nation state (a position defended in Chapter Two by way of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous assertion, in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." (King 1963/1990, 5, as cited in Medina 2023, 72).Central to Medina's argument for this claim is that some especially grave sorts of injustice produce not just material harms but, as per Richard Pildes and Richard Niemi, "expressive harms." (1993, 485). These are harms that occur when people are marked as inferior or subordinate, and that—like all injustices—tend to become socially invisible and inaudible, especially for those whom they benefit. Unless one interrupts the generation of these harms by protesting, one becomes complicit in their production. Hence, our duty of justice cannot be discharged simply by refraining from actively participating in the unjust practices that produce expressive harms.This discussion around expressive harms implies that our protest-duties are much stronger than the basic normative claim suggests. If a failure to protest amounts to complicity, why do we only shoulder a prima facie duty to protest when conditions of social uprising obtain? Siding with Candice Delmas (2018), Medina suggests that we cannot all be expected to devote ourselves entirely to... (shrink)

Tony Milligan argues that some forms of covert non-human animal rescue, wherein activists anonymously and illegally free non-human animals from confinement, should be understood as acts of civil disobedience. However, most traditional understandings of civil disobedience require that the civil disobedient act publicly rather than covertly. Thus Milligan’s proposal is that we revise our understanding of civil disobedience to allow for covert in addition to public disobedience. I argue we should not. Milligan cannot justify using paradigm cases to expand the (...) scope of civil disobedience without justifying similar reasons to limit the scope, and he does nto give convincing reasons for discarding the communication requirement, according to which an action cannot count as civil disobedience unless it is communicative. The immediate conclusion is that animal rescue is not civil disobedience, while the broader conclusion is one about civil disobedience more broadly: an act must be public to count as civil disobedience. (shrink)

The problem of self-knowledge has been thoroughly discussed in the context of traditional epistemology. In parallel to the traditional approach to epistemology, Radically Embodied Cognitive Science (RECS) has emerged in the last 30 years as a genuine contender in its field. According to RECS, the unity of analysis of cognitive processes is the dynamics between brain, body and environment. In this paper, I advance a RECS approach to self-knowledge, which immediately suggests that knowing oneself is a matter of knowing what (...) one’s body can do. I then turn to resistance training, particularly weightlifting, and argue that it offers a paradigmatic case of self-knowledge in RECS’s terms. More precisely, resistance training allows the trainee to achieve knowledge of themselves in a fundamentally practical manner—and doing so is transformative of the kind of actions they are capable of. (shrink)

This paper examines the support for diversity from a moral perspective. Combining business ethics theory with a lens of critical discourse analysis, it reconstructs the debates on the ethicality of three disability inclusion practices—positive discrimination, job adaptations, and voluntary disclosure—drawn from multi-stakeholder interviews in disability-friendly organizations. Discursive resistance to disability inclusion practices, otherwise known to work, arises out of moral beliefs characteristic of an ethic of justice, whereas support is more often informed by an ethic of care. This study (...) contributes to the literature by laying bare how ethics fuel ‘resistance to’ rather than ‘support for’ diversity and inclusion. Like prior studies, it links such resistance to the myth of individual merit, noting that some re-appropriation of an ethic of justice becomes possible when legal awareness around issues of disability is raised in the context of work. In addition, it identifies an ethic of care as holding the greatest potential for fostering workplace inclusion yet cautions for two adverse side effects that may arise when promoting corporate care: the potential of paternalism and the inclination to individualise inherent to wellbeing initiatives. (shrink)

This book explores the epistemic side of racial and sexual oppression. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from listening to each other.

Resistance towards non-Muslim leaders emerged when the case of blasphemy against Islam was brought against Basuki Tjahya Purnama, known as Ahok, as the governor of DKI Jakarta at that time (DKI Jakarta is mostly inhabited by Muslims). The case of blasphemy committed by Ahok has triggered the resistance of Muslims towards non-Muslim candidates for the regional leader election. This study uses a cross-sectional design conducted by interviewing 1121 Muslim youths who participated in regional head elections in North Sumatra. (...) Multivariate analysis in this study used a logistic regression test with JAPS 16 software. The results of this study indicate that Muslim youth in North Sumatra province have high resistance to non-Muslim candidates for regional heads (governor and mayor). Hifz Al-Din [maintaining religion] (p < 0.001; Exp [β] = 2.505) is seen to affect the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim governor candidates; Hifz Al-Din (p < 0.001; Exp [β] = 2.053) is seen to affect the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim mayoral candidates; Hifz Al-Ummah [developing national integration] (p = 0.001; [β] = 2.194) is seen to have influenced the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim governor candidates; Hifz Al-Ummah (p = 0.011; Exp [β] = 1.800) affects the resistance of Muslim youth to non-Muslim mayoral candidates. Muslim youth have high resistance to non-Muslim leaders when participating in elections. Muslim youth are afraid that prospective non-Muslim leaders will make various policies that will make it difficult for Muslims to carry out various kinds of worship performed by Muslims. CONTRIBUTION: This study is expected to provide information for non-Muslim leader candidates about the fear of Muslim youth against non-Muslim candidates for the regional leader election, especially regarding the policies to carry out worship for Muslims and to maintain the unity of the Ummah. (shrink)

Constitutional democracies unilaterally enact the laws that regulate immigration to their territories. When are would-be migrants to a constitutional democracy morally justified in breaching such laws? Receiving states also typically enact laws that require their existing citizens to participate in the implementation of immigration restrictions. When are the individual citizens of a constitutional democracy morally justified in breaching such laws? In this article, I take up these questions concerning the justifiability of noncompliance with immigration law, focusing on the case of (...) nonviolent—or mere—noncompliance. Dissenting from Javier Hidalgo’s view, I argue that the injustice of an immigration law is insufficient to make mere noncompliance justified. Instead, I contend that only if an immigration law lacks legitimate authority are individuals justified in breaching it, since the subjects of an institution with legitimate authority are under a content-independent moral duty to comply with its rules. I further argue that a constitutional democracy’s regimes of law regulating immigration and requiring its citizens’ participation in implementing these regulations have legitimate authority. Nevertheless, when a particular immigration law is egregiously unjust, its legitimacy is defeated. (shrink)

Drawing on institutional historical records, interviews and student theses, this article charts the intersection of hospital acquired illness, the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), environments of armed conflict, and larger questions of social governance in the specific case of the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) in Lebanon. Taking a methodological cue from approaches in contemporary scientific work that understand non-clinical settings as a fundamental aspect of the history and development of AMR, we treat the hospital as not (...) just nested in a set of social and environmental contexts, but frequently housing within itself elements of social and environmental history. AMR in Lebanon differs in important ways from the settings in which global protocols for infection control or rubrics for risk factor identification for resistant nosocomial outbreaks were originally generated. While such differences are all too often depicted as failures of low and middle-income countries (LMIC) to maintain universal standards, the historical question before us is quite the reverse: how have the putatively universal rubrics of AMR and hospital infection control failed to take account of social and environmental conditions that clearly matter deeply in the evolution and spread of resistance? Focusing on conditions of war as an organized chaos in which social, environmental and clinical factors shift dramatically, on the social and political topography of patient transfer, and on a missing “meso” level of AMR surveillance between the local and global settings, we show how a multisectoral One Health approach to AMR could be enriched by an answering multisectoral methodology in history, particularly one that unsettles a canonical focus on the story of AMR in the Euro-American context. (shrink)

Responding to the increasingly influential role of Hannah Arendt's political philosophy in recent years, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality, and Resistance, critically engages with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism. According to Arendt, the main goal of totalitarianism was total domination; namely, the virtual eradication of human legality, morality, individuality, and plurality. This attempt, in her view, was most fully realized in the concentration camps, which served as the major "laboratories" for the regime. While Arendt (...) focused on the perpetrators' logic and drive, Michal Aharony examines the perspectives and experiences of the victims and their ability to resist such an experiment. The first book-length study to juxtapose Arendt's concept of total domination with actual testimonies of Holocaust survivors, this book calls for methodological pluralism and the integration of the voices and narratives of the actors in the construction of political concepts and theoretical systems. To achieve this, Aharony engages with both well-known and non-canonical intellectuals and writers who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Additionally, she analyzes the oral testimonies of survivors who are largely unknown, drawing from interviews conducted in Israel and in the U.S., as well as from videotaped interviews from archives around the world. Revealing various manifestations of unarmed resistance in the camps, this study demonstrates the persistence of morality and free agency even under the most extreme and de-humanizing conditions, while cautiously suggesting that absolute domination is never as absolute as it claims or wishes to be. Scholars of political philosophy, political science, history, and Holocaust studies will find this an original and compelling book. (shrink)

Background Non-violent resistance which has involved healthcare workers has been instrumental in securing a number of health-related gains and a force in opposing threats to health. Despite this, we know little about healthcare workers who have engaged in acts of non-violent resistance. Research aim Amongst a sample of healthcare workers who had engaged in acts of resistance this study sought to explore their understanding of non-violent resistance and how or whether they felt healthcare workers made a (...) distinct contribution to such action. Research design Cross-sectional survey Participants and research context Healthcare workers (doctors, nurses, academics and others) from the UK and Europe who had engaged in acts of non-violent resistance. Ethical considerations Ethical approval for this study was granted by the University of Greenwich Human Research Ethics Committee (UREC/20.5.6.11). Findings/results Most participants spoke about the nature of non-violent resistance, its oppositional, didactic and symbolic functions and the role of violence or harm. While most people understood non-violent resistance as a public, oppositional and collective act, many identified more subtle everyday acts in the workplace that undermined policy or procedures they saw as harmful. When asked about distinctions in non-violent resistance carried out by healthcare workers, most participants referred to their standing in society, noting that healthcare works were a trusted and authoritative source. Some identified an ethical imperative to act while others identified the risks that came with such action, noting their accountability and responsibility they had to patients. About a quarter of participants felt that such action was no different to others carrying out non-violent resistance or dependent on the issue or nature of the action. Conclusions These findings speak to the complex and multifaceted nature of non-violent resistance. Additionally our findings suggest healthcare workers have a distinct role to play in leading and supporting non-violent actions. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

As we combat the COVID-19 pandemic, both the prescription of antimicrobials and the use of biocidal agents have increased in many countries. Although these measures can be expected to benefit existing people by, to some extent, mitigating the pandemic's effects, they may threaten long-term well-being of existing and future people, where they contribute to the problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). A trade-off dilemma thus presents itself: combat COVID-19 using these measures, or stop using them in order to protect against (...) AMR. Currently, I argue, we are choosing to continue with these measures, and thus to prioritize combatting COVID-19, without adequate ethical reflection on the AMR-associated costs of these measures. I discuss the magnitude of the possible costs and benefits involved in making the trade-off in favour of COVID-19, and their distribution. I highlight two salient aspects of distribution that can help determine whether combatting COVID-19 whilst exacerbating AMR produces justly distributed costs and benefits: distribution between current and future populations, and distribution between existing geographical populations. Adopting this account, I argue that based on the magnitude and distribution of costs and benefits of combatting COVID-19, we have good reason to rethink this trade-off, and instead consider prioritizing protecting current and future people against AMR, but jettisoning measures against COVID-19 that also exacerbate AMR. (shrink)

The problem of antimicrobial resistance is so dire that people are predicting that the era of antibiotics may be coming to an end, ushering in a ‘post-antibiotic’ era. A comprehensive policy response is therefore urgently needed. A part of this response will require framing the problem in such a way that adequately reflects its nature as well as encompassing an approach that has the best prospect of success. This paper considers framing the problem as a slowly emerging disaster, including (...) its potential benefits and difficulties, from a conceptual and policy perspective. (shrink)

The 1940s and 1950s were marked by intense debates over the origin of drug resistance in microbes. Bacteriologists had traditionally invoked the notions of ‘training’ and ‘adaptation’ to account for the ability of microbes to acquire new traits. As the field of bacterial genetics emerged, however, its participants rejected ‘Lamarckian’ views of microbial heredity, and offered statistical evidence that drug resistance resulted from the selection of random resistant mutants. Antibiotic resistance became a key issue among those disputing (...) physiological vs. genetic explanations of variation in bacteria. Postwar developments connected with the Lysenko affair gave this debate a new political valence.Proponents of the neo-Darwinian synthesis weighed in with support for the genetic theory. However, certain features of drug resistance seemed inexplicable by mutation and selection, particularly the phenomenon of ‘multiple resistance’—the emergence of resistance in a single strain against several unrelated antibiotics. In the late 1950s, Tsutomu Watanabe and his collaborators solved this puzzle by determining that resistance could be conferred by cytoplasmic resistance factors rather than chromosomal mutation. These R factors could carry resistance to many antibiotics and seemed able to promote their own dissemination in bacterial populations. In the end, the vindication of the genetic view of drug resistance was accompanied by a recasting of the ‘gene’ to include extrachromosomal hereditary units carried on viruses and plasmids. (shrink)