Global Injustice and Obligations to Take Political Action

This work supplements current understandings of the obligations individual persons have in relation to global social injustice by proposing an additional moral obligation. Utilising a practical ethics approach, this work introduces structural understandings of social injustice and recommends a collective action solution, whilst maintaining the individual as its primary addressee. Building on previous literature, Kahn proposes that structural injustice is a form of essentially aggregative harm and drives the debate forward by suggesting that those who contribute to global structural injustice are obliged to make efforts to form a collective and prevent the problem from continuing (through an agreement and assurance mechanism).

The book notes that such action not only promotes the common good, but also prevents humanly caused harm from occurring. It is then argued that the precautionary obligation to take political action to lessen structural injustice will require people around the world to make efforts to form a collective which can establish effective governing institutions and utilise these institutions to regulate the actions of agents thereby avoiding future structural injustice. It suggests that the global justice movement (often referred to as anti-globalization movement) offers a practical example of individuals making such an effort.

Exploring why it is necessary to re-examine the relationship between injustice and moral obligation by examining the personal political duties in response to the collective problem of global injustice, this work will be of interest to students and scholars of globalization, political theory and justice & ethics.