Guest editors' introduction to the special issue

The background and focus of this special issue are described in this Introduction.     

Debating brain drain: Three objections that complicate the picture

In my contribution to this brain drain debate sparked by Brock and Blake’s book, Debating Brain Drain, I respond only to Brock’s position, and raise three objections which I suggest complicate the picture that she sketches. First, I take issue with the way in which she frames the moral question, namely by limiting her focus to what home countries may legitimately do to address the problems associated with the brain drain. I argue that the way in which she frames the question has important ideological consequences, because she does not adequately account for the larger context, in particular, by leaving out the moral obligations of the host countries who are the main beneficiaries of the brain drain. My second objection is rooted in the distinction between technical knowledge and practical knowledge found in the work of Habermas – an important distinction which gets obscured in Brock’s analysis in precisely the kind of ideological ways that Habermas was concerned about. She namely attempts to solve what are mainly practical (political) problems through purely instrumental, technical means. Several distortions accompany this fundamental confusion. My third point of critique has to do with the problem that an ethics of care (an ethics of responsibility and obligation) encounters within a liberal paradigm strongly shaped by an ethics of rights. Drawing on the work of Kroeger-Mappes, I argue that Brock arbitrarily singles out a group of people and holds them to an ethics of care which is strictly supererogatory within her own liberal paradigm.     

Brain drain: A communitarian response to Brock and Blake

The problem of brain drain, the movement of skilled citizens of developing countries to developed ones, arises largely because of seriously unequal life prospects in different countries. Hence, there is something profoundly wrong with the brain drain, something that calls for a moral response. Brock and Blake offer such a response by debating the ethical rights and responsibilities of skilled professionals, and of the societies in which they live, from the perspective of moral liberalism. The aim of my paper is to develop a response to some of their arguments from the perspective of moral communitarianism, with particular reference to the work of one of its classical proponents in African philosophy, Kwame Gyekye.     

Introduction: symposium on Brooke Ackerly’s Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice

ABSTRACT

This symposium brings together normative and empirical scholars in dialogue on Brooke Ackerly’s innovative and compelling recent monograph, Just Responsibility. Contributors discuss the book’s distinctive grounded normative theory methodology, its arguments for how individuals can take appropriate responsibility for global structural injustices, and its potential for practical impact.