Philosophy

Anarchist Responses to a Pandemic: The COVID-19 Crisis as a Case Study in Mutual Aid Nathan Jun, Mark Lance Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Volume 30, Numbers 3-4, September/December 2020, pp. 361-378 (Article) Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: For additional information about this article For content related to this article https://doi.org/10.1353/ken.2020.0019 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/773109 https://muse.jhu.edu/related_content?type=article&id=773109 JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 361 ] Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal Vol. 30, Nos. 3 / 4, 361–378 © 2020 by Johns Hopkins University Press Nathan Jun & Mark Lance Anarchist Responses to a Pandemic: The COVID-19 Crisis as a Case Study in Mutual Aid ABSTRACT: When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments. In this paper we focus on the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures to respond to the pandemic and show how they illustrate core elements of anarchist thought. We do not argue for the correctness of any version of anarchist politics, nor claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas explicitly in mind. Nonetheless, the current pandemic, like many social crises before it, serves as a sort experiment in political implementation. Two things have been striking in the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic: the chaos, incompetence, irrationality, and often cruel misguidedness of the centralized government response; and the rationality, care, and effectiveness of grassroots measures in many parts of the country. In this paper we focus on the latter-especially the case of Washington, DC-to illustrate core features of anarchist politics. We do not argue for the correctness of any version of anarchist politics here, but merely illustrate guiding ideas that have been a part of anarchist theory and practice for well over a century. We also do not claim that the bulk of this grassroots work was done with anarchist ideas in mind, or explicitly out of a commitment to anarchist politics. Some was, and some arises out of related ideological commitments, but most simply functions out of no more than a desire to support one another. The current pandemic, like many social crises before it, rather than providing a stand-alone argument or functioning as an implementation KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 362 ] of any political theory, serves as a sort of laboratory experiment. When central authority fails in socially crucial tasks, mutual aid, solidarity, and grassroots organization frequently arise as people take up slack on the basis of informal networks and civil society organizations. We can learn something important about the possibility of horizontal organization by studying such experiments, including how it arises through spontaneous action. If political thought is best illustrated through its implementation in practice, the functioning of grassroots individuals and organizations in a time of crisis is one way to understand the political mechanisms core to anarchist thought.1 1. THE SITUATION IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH–APRIL 2020 A. National Government Responses It is widely recognized that the US government has largely failed to meet the demands of a dangerous emerging new disease. Despite the fact that public health experts in multiple countries and international organizations raised the alarm early and urged aggressive policies of social distancing and testing, the US government lurched between dismissing the worry and a range of different responses. The US was massively short of protective gear, of (accurate) testing equipment, of ventilators, and of ICU beds, and there was no coherent leadership from the top for dealing with these problems. The president downplayed the danger in direct contradiction of the consensus of experts. When he did offer public statements, they veered from bragging to insistence that keeping official US numbers down was more important than public health,2 to incorrect statements of his own administration's position,3 to attacks on journalists,4 and to outright falsehoods about test availability, time for a vaccine, numbers of infected, and status of an anti-viral treatment.5 In response to such an extraordinary failure, it fell to lower levels of social organization to mobilize a response. A great many layers of society took up the slack. B. More Local Responses In contrast to the chaotic, inadequate, and often counter-productive national response, several governors and mayors instituted aggressive, empirically grounded, and scientifically supported policies on their own. But they were far from alone in taking initiative. At all levels of society-from state governments, to corporations, to major civil society JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 363 ] organizations, to grassroots networks and organizations-groups of people began to provide services and support in novel ways. Major corporations closed operations voluntarily. Virtually all sporting events in the US were cancelled by professional leagues, the NCAA, etc. Universities nationwide moved to online instruction. Restaurants voluntarily instituted delivery and carryout-only policies. Civic organizations, clubs, and venues closed to implement social distancing. Much of this was eventually required by local governments in some areas-one of the worst aspects of the lack of national leadership has been the massive variation in response between states and even regions within states, variation that is disastrous in the face of a virus that is indifferent to political boundaries6-but most was initiated autonomously. Even more impressive, we claim, were the steps taken entirely at the grassroots, the steps that involved forming new coalitions and organizations. In tracing the way this happened, it is crucial to keep in mind a truism of social movement theory-that movements arise not utterly spontaneously out of nothing, but by way of existing networks, systems of contacts, and established organizations. Consider the DC Mutual Aid Network.7 Originating in the easternmost wards of DC, Wards 7 and 8-a majority African American region that has the lowest family income in the District (DC Economic Strategy, n.d.)-it has spread to every other ward in the City. The network was initially convened by Black Lives Matter-DC (BLM-DC), an organization initially formed five years ago to combat police violence against African Americans. Since then, they have expanded their work to include food insecurity, grassroots domestic violence support, work against gentrification, support for public housing, and more. BLMDC not only has a large number of direct participants, but it has also developed ongoing relationships with numerous other organizations in the city, some centered in the African American community, but many in others. These networks were easily called upon to quickly build the larger coalition in response to the pandemic. In Ward 6, for example, the initial work was taken on by a group called Serve Your City (SYC). SYC is a youth-focused organization that primarily provides tutoring and youth sports opportunities for underserved youth in DC (SYC, n.d.). Since much of their typical work was shut down as a result of the municipal response to the pandemic, SYC was able to take on direct service work. Importantly, their previous outreach efforts in economically disadvantaged communities created contacts and a history of trust to draw on when providing new forms of support. KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 364 ] In other wards, the lead was taken by groups as vague as neighborhood listservs, or sometimes Neighborhood commissioners or churches. But in all cases, the work quickly spread through existing loose associational networks. The outreach efforts of DC Mutual Aid Network involve work with the elderly, public housing residents, unhoused citizens, and other vulnerable people. People have made grocery runs for seniors and those at high medical risk. Programs have been established to feed at-risk children who are out of school. Fundraising has provided laptops for students learning at home. People have coordinated driving for essential needs and to medical care as well as in-home nursing visits. Social media sites provide centralized information on resources provided by the city, by NGOs, and by individuals. DIY solutions to a shortage of masks and numerous other problems are proposed and debated in real time. New scientific information is centralized and disseminated through the network and its social media platforms, and social pressure to follow best practices is disseminated by people trusted in local communities. (This network has been so effective that the DC government hotline has taken to directing people to DC Mutual Aid Network-without, of course, acknowledging or supporting its work (O'Gorek 2020).) In DC alone, dozens of neighborhood listservs and social media sites offer skillshares and direct support-everything from money to rides to grocery deliveries to dog walking. Hundreds of efforts to support precarious workers exist in the city.8 In all these ways a community of mutual aid has come into being in the midst of a disaster, largely without centralized leadership. And, of course, DC is not unique in this regard. Similar work is happening in numerous cities and rural areas. 2. ANARCHISM Among the classical nineteenth-century political philosophies, anarchism is the least studied within the academy and most widely mischaracterized. A systematic theory of non-hierarchical social organization designed to maximize both freedom and cooperation, with well over a century of sophisticated theory developed largely by anti-capitalist organizers and revolutionaries, it is routinely equated in popular discourse and the press with nihilism or chaos, while academics even coin oxymoronic notions like 'anarcho-capitalism.' In what follows, we move through the core elements of anarchist thought, illustrating how each can be found in the praxis of grassroots responses to COVID-19. JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 365 ] A. Mutual Aid Mutual aid-solidarity, free cooperation-is a core concept of anarchist thought. It is the principle around which just social organization must be built. To embrace mutual aid as the sole legitimate organizing principle of society is to reject the institutionalization of any means of coercion, or of violence and the threat of violence. It is to embrace the idea that we can cooperatively reason with one another, and thereby instantiate our common inclination to build a society that benefits all without instituting any sort of hierarchy that functions to enforce such arrangements. The grassroots DC response to COVID-19 is a clear and vivid illustration of mutual aid. The actions of DC Mutual Aid Network, neighborhood groups, etc., were all undertaken without any demands of local authorities or hope of personal gain. People saw a need, worked together through existing networks, offered help where needed, engaged in discussions of best practices, listened to established experts, and acted in concert with one another in the interests of all. In many cases, people volunteered activities that were dangerous-delivering materials to potentially sick community members, doctors coming out of retirement to serve9-and in no case do these fit the logic of self-interest and competition. As noted on the DC Mutual Aid Facebook page: We want to take this moment to uplift the purpose and spirit of the group: mutual aid. This group is about solidarity, NOT charity. Protecting each other, not policing each other. Replacing oppressive systems and practices, not replicating them. And, as Dean Spade recently said, "banding together to meet immediate survival needs, with a shared understanding that the systems in place aren't coming to meet us...fast enough, if at all, and that we can do it together right now.10 It is a presupposition of anarchist thought that humans have fundamental social inclinations-inclinations to live together and to care for one another. Anarchists have consistently maintained that the actualization of "the material, intellectual, and moral powers that are latent in each person" (Bakunin 1972, 261) and "the all-around development and full enjoyment of all physical, intellectual, and moral faculties" is not possible "outside of human society or without its cooperation" (Bakunin 1992, 46). For anarchists, the fact that human beings are "collective product[s]" born of "collective and social labor" implies that our most basic dispositions-which are "immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being"-are ultimately social KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 366 ] in nature (Bakunin 1972, 236). This suggests, in turn, that "the isolated individual cannot possibly become conscious of [his or her] freedom" and, by extension, that "the freedom of other [people], far from negating or limiting [individual] freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation" (1972, 237). Similar points are made by Errico Malatesta, who argues that solidarity "is the only environment in which [a human being] can express [his or her] personality and achieve [his or her] optimum development and enjoy the greatest possible wellbeing" (1974, 29), as well as by Emma Goldman, who contends that individual freedom is "strengthened by cooperation with other individualities" and that "only mutual aid and voluntary cooperation can create the basis for a free individual...life" (1998, 118). It must be emphasized that none of this entails a "unitary concept of human essence" according to which human beings are naturally benevolent, altruistic, and cooperative, rather than selfish, acquisitive, antagonistic, and the like (May 1994, 13). In point of fact, anarchist thinkers have unfailingly rejected traditional conceptions of "human nature," maintaining instead that individuals are socially constructed and that human personality is socially produced. Mikhail Bakunin, for example, argued that "the real individual"-no less than "his family, his class, his nature, [and] his race"-is constituted by "a confluence of geographic, climatic, ethnographic, hygienic, and economic influences" (1972, 89, 239–41). Like other anarchists, Bakunin resolutely denied that human beings possess "underlying intrinsic properties" or "innate ideas and sentiments." For him, there is no such thing as "human nature" apart from basic biological capacities and inclinations-"rudimentary faculties without content"-that individuals express in different ways and to different degrees. Human personality results from the production of content within these faculties via the complicated array of social, cultural, economic, and political forces that act upon them. In a key sense, nothing is truly "natural" to a human individual-qua-individual except the forces that are "exercised over him." Even Peter Kropotkin-who, more so than any other major anarchist thinker, attempted to ground the human inclination toward sociability in biological fact-rejected the notion it is fully biologically determined. In his seminal work, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Kropotkin's overarching thesis is that although "there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 367 ] mutual defense," which suggests that "sociability" plays as much of a role in biological evolution as "mutual struggle" (1902, 5).11 Just as the nature and development of biological species results from the tension between competing inclinations toward mutual struggle and mutual aid, so, too, is human personality constituted by the conflict between sociability and individual processes of self-development. From the outset, human beings inhabit a reality that is shaped by a struggle between diametrically opposed forces, both internal and external (Kropotkin 1924, 24). Far from being founded on any essentialized conception of human nature, the ethical significance of solidarity, cooperation, and mutual aid is itself a reflection of this struggle (Kropotkin 2002, 119–20). Although the state, capitalism, and other institutions rooted in hierarchy, domination, and coercion serve to amplify the impulse toward competition and antagonism while simultaneously causing immense damage to human sociality, there nonetheless remain many ordinary contexts of life-friendships, clubs, churches, families-in which people routinely do things for and with one another from a sense that cooperation is good for all. Anarchism is a political philosophy built around this simple idea: that we can solve social coordination problems by talking about them and working together. In pursuing this aim, moreover, anarchism doesn't just seek to tear down institutions, but also to marshal already-existing forms of cooperation and solidarity in the service of creating new social forms. As Kropotkin writes, the ultimate goal is not simply "to destroy authority in all its respects, [to] demand the abrogation of laws,...[to] refuse all hierarchical organization," but rather "to build,...to maintain and develop such relations between men that the interests of each should be the interest of all" (2002, 136–37). This is not to say that anarchists reject all coercion, or even all violence. In particular cases of harmful or anti-social action-say a person attempts a murder, rape, or assault-anarchism lacks specific prescriptions for what others should do to prevent this. As a revolutionary theory, moreover, anarchism acknowledges that coercion-and, on some accounts and in some contexts, violence-may be necessary "in order to put an end to the far greater, the permanent, violence that keeps the majority of mankind in servitude" (Malatesta 2015, 49). That said, anarchism is also fundamentally committed to prefiguration which, "in its most general form...denotes an identity between political methods and political goals or ends" (Franks 2017, 29). Because anarchists "explicitly distance themselves from the position that the end justifies the means" (Franks 2009, 99), the question KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 368 ] of whether to engage in particular acts of coercion or violence must be addressed in relation to the ultimate aim of building a free and peaceful society. As Malatesta (2015) puts it, although "violence is justifiable when it is necessary to defend oneself and others from violence" (45), it must nonetheless "be controlled by such considerations as that the best and most economical use is being made of human efforts and human sufferings" (50). I might forcefully stop you from assaulting someone. If you persist in your attacks, our community might even gather and decide to restrain or expel you. What anarchists will not do is create an institution of police-a group of people whose social role, and, by extension, permanent power, is to engage in such coercive action. All of this is consistent with anarchist politics, which doesn't (necessarily) reject coercion and violence per se so much as their use as organizing principles of society. B. Organization vs. Rule Though superficially oxymoronic, anarchism can be thought of as a theory of organization. A clear illustration of this principle is the work of BLM-DC in the pandemic. An organization that was initially formed to confront the most violent civil institutions-police, prisons, etc.-is using its capacity to provide services that other aspects of hierarchical organization cannot adequately deliver. Thus, new horizontal relations between individuals and communities are developed in the work of meeting direct needs. According to anarchism, just social organization is motivated by and originates in mutual aid. It is sustained by instituting mutually beneficial forms of cooperation. Malatesta writes: Organization-which is, after all, only the practice of cooperation and solidarity-is a natural and necessary condition of social life; it is an inescapable fact which forces itself on everybody, as much on human society in general as on any group of people who are working towards a common objective. (2015, 77) People strive to create and maintain just institutions because they see that it is in the interests of their own, and others' lives to do so. As noted above, what anarchism opposes are unjust forms of organization built around coercion, domination, and exploitation-all of which come about as a consequence of people failing to organize themselves (2015, 79). One can see an at least implicit commitment to this structure of organization in the grassroots response to COVID-19. JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 369 ] First, grassroots networks of solidarity, being fully voluntary, have no choice but to be internally horizontalist. No one can be coerced to follow decisions of a group that they can simply leave at any time. And given that most of these groups were spontaneously brought together to deal with a sudden crisis, even more subtle patterns of coercion that can arise in longer term organizations that are embedded within a society marked by multiple dimensions of hierarchy are unlikely to arise here. One can see a commitment to horizontalist organization as well in the ways that many mutual aid networks relate to the institutions of dominant society. The DC Mutual Aid Network explicitly refuses any cooperation with police. In the view of the collective, police are the distillation of coercive authority, an institution whose entire function in society is to enforce social organization by threat or use of violence. It is also an institution that, in the view of those involved in this project-especially but by no means exclusively BLM-DC-has a history of harming the very communities they aim to support. Other institutions while not embraced, are seen as tactically useful allies for specific purposes. Though BLM-DC has been a consistent and outspoken critic of the current DC mayor, and the broader DC government, there is no prohibition on cooperating with city efforts to provide aid and resources in a time of crisis. In fact, the DC Mutual Aid Network collates lists of services and advertises these to at-risk populations, sometimes providing translations. As an ideology that encourages the unity of means and ends and scorns dogmatism of any sort more generally, anarchism has never objected to forming and deploying such tactical alliances-as is made clear, for example, by anarchists' participation in the Popular Front during the Spanish Civil War. What anarchism repudiates, on the contrary, are vanguards-i.e., "particular group[s] with claims to either superior knowledge or more fortunate location in the political terrain... which can take strategic priority and win battles for others (and often speaks on behalf of the client group)" (Franks 2009, 99). Consequently, as Kropotkin writes, "the business of any revolutionary party is not to call for insurrection but only to pave the way for the success of the imminent insurrection" (1993, 41). Cooperating with other groups (which is not the same thing as deferring to them) is more often than not a strategic necessity in pursuing this aim. A third category of mainstream institution includes groups like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other scientific organizations. Grassroots work has been vastly better empirically grounded KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 370 ] than national responses to COVID-19. Grassroots organizations facilitate social distancing in all manner of ways. They establish collectives to make masks and other supplies that government and capitalist industry have failed to produce in sufficient numbers. They pass on the latest scientific information on sterilization, social distancing, when and how to seek medical help, and more. All of this involves embracing the authority of serious scientific work. C. Authority This brings us to the question of authority. As Bakunin famously wrote: Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer....But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. (1972, 229–30) Again, our claim is that this distinction arises spontaneously in the practice of groups like DC Mutual Aid Network. We just noted that the entire project was based upon a respect for science. Not an uncritical respect-a quick perusal of the Facebook page will show active debates about some dimensions of official guidance-but a respect nonetheless. Comments promulgating conspiracy theories, racist theories, and anti-science superstition are shut down or removed. Would that the elite institutions of US society were as able to recognize the difference between wishful thinking, nonsense, and outright lies. In terms of internal process, authority here is based on a careful balancing of organizing experience and commitment to equality and democracy. Some of this is laid out in documents.12 Other times practical matters do not conform to pre-existing rules, and tough decisions have to be made on the fly. At one point a number of highly damaging accusations were made against organizers in an online forum. Though no evidence was presented to support the allegations, they were taken seriously. A mediation process was proposed. Only after numerous efforts to work with this person were all rejected in favor of continued vitriolic attacks were they removed from the process and banned from DC Mutual Aid Network social media sites. But is this not coercive? Is it not authoritarian to ban people? JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 371 ] Of course, social banning can be authoritarian, but two distinctions are in order: first, the "punishment" here was simply non-association. No one was assaulted, imprisoned, or even prevented from engaging in similar work with some new group that they could convince to work with them. Principles of non-coercive social organization are not violated every time we decide not to associate with someone.13 Second, no one was institutionalized as the "banning minister." The use of such a punishment was not institutionalized in ways that could coalesce around a power center. It was a decision taken collectively, after attempts to reconcile and mediate, by those responsible for the work. Though a sort of coercive authority was deemed necessary in order to continue the work, it was exercised in a horizontal manner as a last resort, and with minimal harm to the status and freedom of the person coerced. D. Localism Localism is another core idea that emerges from many currents of anarchist thought: the idea that whenever possible, decisions should be left up to local communities.14 This is both a principle that supports democracy and freedom-if there is no compelling reason to require uniformity, then it would be an assault on freedom to require all communities to act in the same manner-as well as an epistemic principle. Local communities know best what their own needs are, what local conditions are relevant to meeting those needs, and what social conditions and historical associations will constrain just solutions. In the case of DC Mutual Aid Network, this meant that networks were organized by wards. While there were coordinating calls and sharing of resources, each ward organized autonomously, determining priorities for themselves. And, of course, many other initiatives within the city grew up either through informal regional networks, friend groups, sports clubs, etc. In addition, leadership in these networks was local. One of the Ward 6 leaders is Maurice Cook, an adjunct instructor at the University of the District of Columbia and founder of Serve Your City, someone personally known to the residents of Ward 6 public housing neighborhoods and to youth throughout the city.15 Here is the work in his own words: It's been one of those weeks. One of the longest weeks of my life. Since Tuesday I helped build the foundation of a hyper-localized bloc of organizers. The Ward 6 Mutual Aid Team has utilized the model initiated by an amazing group of DC organizers who formed the DC Mutual Aid Network. This grassroots, community-led effort initiated by Black Lives Matter DC, No KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 372 ] Justice No Pride, Black Swan Academy, BYP 100 and others formed in response to the inevitability that our systems will not protect, support, or sustain the lives of poor, working class Black and Brown people here in Washington, DC. No political candidate, local public official, charitable foundation, higher education institution, corporate mitigation fund, public health reps...will do whatever is necessary to ensure that our people receive what is needed to live in dignity while facing this imminent catastrophe.... The DC Mutual Aid Network is organizing ward by ward and have already helped thousands of residents across the city. We were so successful this week that at least two DC agencies called the various ward specific hotline numbers....Serve Your City is serving as the network hub for our Ward 6 Mutual Aid Team connecting resources including food and supplies to the community-based, grassroots orgs and community leaders on the ground. Serve Your City had to cancel all of its programs this spring. That means that Black and Brown children won't learn how to row, swim, snorkel, scuba, play tennis, practice yoga, receive college prep and early career engagement. And I think everyone can imagine how much that hurts me. I'm going to channel that pain and use the very same skills I practice bringing resources to the kids we support to bringing resources to the kids and families we support. The organization is called "Serve Your City" for a reason. I just never imagined that these skills would be necessary to mitigate the massive harm from something so powerfully devastating and destructive. Serve Your City never works alone. It's impossible to do what we do without the power of collectivism, unity, and a shared purpose and vision. We have the most powerful family of people, leaders, and organizations like AquariusVann-Ghasri, Beverly Smith, Frank Muhammed, Kareem, Amy Moore, Mommas Safe Haven, Brothas Huddle, the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, and others, playing a role in the supply chain. Fighting to make sure those without won't have too long to wait for support. Managed and organized by a team of incredible people representing the Ward 6 Mutual Aid Team who were strangers on Monday but forever comrades from a previous life. ...I've known a secret that the coronavirus is teaching and/or reinforcing for all of us. My wellbeing is connected to your wellbeing. The coronavirus is the greatest manifestation of equality that I have ever seen. It cares nothing about your identity, your perceptions, your values, your beliefs, your dogmas, your weapons, or your wealth.16 These comments illustrate not only the leadership of deeply socially engaged people, but also the transformative effect that the work has on all involved. JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 373 ] Localism is not an absolute principle of anarchism. Obviously, some matters need to be addressed on a broader scale. What one community does with a river affects those down and upstream on the same river, to mention the classic example. And one might well think that dealing with a pandemic is a paradigm of something that calls for centralized coordination. Viruses do not recognize national, state, or ward boundaries. And anarchism has developed numerous mechanisms to institute genuinely democratic centralized decision-making, organization, and planning, without falling into hierarchical modes. This recognition that localism is merely a defeasible principle is implicit in much of the work in DC. First, virtually all the local initiatives include demands being made of the DC and national government. One need not endorse government as an ideal structure to demand-in a world in which it is the mode of centralized organization-that it provide evidenced-based and morally decent support to communities. Second, the grassroots efforts are themselves coordinated where possible. Though ward by ward work is largely independent, organizers have regular calls to coordinate, share lessons and resources, and keep up on the latest science from around the world. E. Congruence of Means and Ends A final core anarchist concept is the congruence of means and ends. Unlike traditional Marxists, anarchists do not believe in bringing about a free society through seizing state power or other institutionalized authority.17 The core reason for this is that freedom, according to anarchist thought, is a social skill. Anarchists embrace not merely negative freedom-an absence of coercion-but a rich and substantive sort of positive freedom.18 This positive freedom requires both material and social conditions necessary to achieve meaningful and flourishing ends19-I am not free, in this sense, to be a jazz saxophone player if there are no saxophones and unless there is jazz with all the rich historical and social background that this genre implies-but also active and meaningful involvement in the construction of the conditions of one's life. That is, one is not free in the sense embraced by anarchism merely by being the recipient of a range of life options, but one must as well be in a position to influence what those options are and how they are made available.20 But to participate in politics, to construct with others a world in which all can flourish, requires skills, knowledge, and practice. And those capacities do not arise by fiat. If a new world is brought about by a vanguard party handing down even genuinely KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 374 ] egalitarian conditions from on high, the only people who will gain skills at organizing society are those in the party. Of course, history gives no reason to suspect that this centralization of power will wither away. Hierarchical power protects itself and moves inexorably to ever greater control.21 But even if it did not, no capacity for broader involvement is built through an authoritarian movement toward collective liberation. Grassroots responses to this tragedy do build capacity. In the face of such a devastating and sudden disaster, there are obvious downsides to leaving the response up to the spontaneous organization of local grassroots networks. A meaningful government response would have vastly greater capacity to meet human needs and to control dangerous anti-social behavior-not just congregating in defiance of public health advice, but things like profiteering, abandoning the most economically vulnerable, etc. So, in these ways, grassroots responses to COVID-19, however successful, seem like distant second-best matters of necessity. But in terms of their ability to build capacity and to show us new nonindividualistic, non-competitive ways that we can be together, they are far superior to a competent government. Every time a neighbor delivers loaves of homemade bread to each house in their block, each time someone provides a ride to a medical appointment, a toy to a child, or a grocery run, we learn who we can count on and why. Each time we get together and build a food distro, a community porch singalong, or an online gaming night, we learn both that we can organize ourselves non-hierarchically and that we care enough to do so. These actions teach us new ways of being-ways that capitalism and a capitalist health system systematically hide. In the immortal words of the Industrial Workers of the World, it is building a new world in the shell of the old. And that would be worth doing even in the context of a competent government. NOTES 1. The classic statement of an argument along these lines is from Rebecca Solnit (2010). 2. "I like the numbers being where they are," Trump said during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday. «I don›t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn›t our fault.» Mark (2020). 3. See, for example, Collinson (2020). 4. See, for example, Reuters (2020); Roig-Franzia and Ellison (2020). 5. See, for example, Dale and Subramaniam (2020); Timm (2020). JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 375 ] 6. While California, New York, and DC, for example, were shutting down all large gatherings, the governor of Florida kept beaches open for Spring Break partiers. While Fairfax County, Virginia closed schools, the governor refused to do so. 7 See https://www.facebook.com/groups/492881801379594/ and the broader online Mutual Aid Network: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MutualAidNetwork/ 8 One of us lives in DC and is at high risk due to age and underlying lung conditions. He has been contacted by at least a dozen different neighbors offering support and help. 9 See, for example, Stickings and Dyer (2020); Fox5DC (2020); DemocracyNow (2020). 10 For the group, see https://www.facebook.com/groups/492881801379594/. For the post, see https://pixel.facebook.com/groups/492881801379594/permalink/499132654087842/. For the full Spade quote, see DemocracyNow (2020). 11 Further, "[I]f we resort to an indirect test, and ask Nature: 'Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization....In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense- not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress" (Kropotkin 1902, 3, 293). 12. For example, Solis (1997); People of Color Leadership Summit (1991). 13. Of course, things like shunning can be coercive, even violent in extremes. But deciding collectively not to work with someone in response to repeated aggressive actions that are seen as contrary to the point of our association is not such an extreme. 14. See, for example, Kropotkin (1974), especially chapters 1–3. See also Bakunin (1973, 170–72) and Gordon (2018, 208–9). KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 376 ] 15. Serve Your City is an organization supporting underserved youth in DC, providing tutoring, sports, and material aid. 16. Quoted from a public Facebook post. See, https://www.facebook.com/ M4RJNow/posts/from-our-cofounder-maurice-cookits-been-one-of-thoseweeks-one-of-the-longest-we/1559374354213857/ 17. Again, this is not to say that anarchists eschew coercion as a tactic in changing society. Classical anarchist certainly endorsed things like the expropriation of the means of production-which they took to be illegitimately seized by private or corporate power in the first place. But there is no temporary stage in which the anarchist "leadership" or "vanguard party" would take over such power "on behalf of the proletariat." Rather, seized businesses are to be immediately controlled by those who labor within them. 18. See Goldman (1998, 98); cf. Goldman (1910, 67). 19. Goldman (1910, 61); cf. Bakunin (1972, 261); Guérin, (1998, 57). 20. For a detailed version of this argument see May (2009). 21. See Rudolf Rocker (1998, 63); cf. Malatesta (1974, 14). REFERENCES Bakunin, Mikhail. 1972. Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the ActivistFounder of World Anarchism, edited and translated by Sam Dolgoff. New York: Knopf. --- 1992. The Basic Bakunin, edited by Robert Cutler. Buffalo: Prometheus. --- 1973. Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, edited by Arthur Lehning. London: Jonathan Cape. Collinson, Stephen. 2020. "Trump Address Sparks Chaos as Coronavirus Crisis Deepens." CNN Politics. March 12. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-europe-travel/index.html Dale, Daniel, and Tara Subramaniam. 2020. "Trump Made 33 False Claims about the Coronavirus Crisis in the First Two Weeks of March." CNN Politics. March 22. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/22/politics/fact-check-trumpcoronavirus-false-claims-march/index.html DC Economic Strategy. n.d. "Household Income by Race and Ward." https:// dceconomicstrategy.com/household-income/ DemocracyNow. 2020. "Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid & How to Organize in the Age of Coronavirus." March 20. https://www.democracynow. org/2020/3/20/coronavirus_community_response_mutual_aid?fbclid=IwA R1LmcYYaSA3Yemd7H8zaoyELVnOgMHfUkR0mtXIkygAAHeOWlgBK qdefsk Fox5Dc. 2020. "Maryland Boy Uses $600 of Savings to Make Coronavirus Care Packages for Seniors, Feed 90 Students." March 22. https://www.fox5dc.com/ JUN & LANCE • THE COVID-19 CRISIS AS A CASE STUDY IN MUTUAL AID [ 377 ] news/maryland-boy-uses-600-of-savings-to-make-coronavirus-care-packagesfor-seniors-feed-90-students. Franks, Benjamin. 2017. "Prefiguration." In Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach, edited by Benjamin Franks, Nathan Jun, and Leonard Williams, 28–43. London: Routledge. --- 2009. "Vanguards and Paternalism." In New Perspectives on Anarchism, edited by Nathan Jun and Shane Wahl, 99–120. Lanham: Lexington Books. Goldman, Emma. 1998. Red Emma Speaks, edited by A.K. Shulman. Amherst: Humanity Books. --- 1910. Anarchism and Other Essays. New York: Mother Earth Publishing. Gordon, Uri. 2018. "Anarchism and Nationalism." In Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy, edited by Nathan Jun, 196–215. Leiden: Brill. Guérin, Daniel. 1998. No Gods, No Masters, edited by Paul Sharkey. Oakland: AK Press. Kropotkin, Peter. 1902. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. New York: McClure Phillips & Co. --- 1924. Ethics: Origins and Development, translated by Louis Friedland and Joseph Piroshnikoff. Dorset: Prism Press. --- 2002. Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings, edited by Roger Baldwin. New York: Dover. --- 1993. Fugitive Writings, edited by George Woodcock. Montreal: Black Rose Books. --- 1974. Fields, Factories and Workshops. Oakland: AK Press. Malatesta, Errico. 1974. Anarchy, edited by Vernon Richards. London: Freedom Press. --- 2015. Life and Ideas, translated by Vernon Richards. Oakland: PM Press. Mark, Michelle. 2020. Trump is Reportedly Fixated on Keeping the Number of Official US Coronavirus Cases as Low as Possible - Despite Indications the Disease has Spread Wider than He Wants." Business Insider. https://www. businessinsider.com/trump-reportedly-wanted-coronavirus-numbers-keptas-low-as-possible-2020-3 May, Todd. 1994. The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. --- 2009. "Democracy is Where We Make it: The Relevance of Jacques Ranciere." Symposium 13(1): Spring/Printemps. O'Gorek, Elizabeth. 2020. "Is The City's COVID Helpline Directing Callers to DC Mutual Aid?" HillRag. April 16. https://hillrag.com/2020/04/15/is-dccovid-19-hotline-directing-callers-to-get-help-from-neighbors/. KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS JOURNAL • SEPTEMBER / DECEMBER 2020 [ 378 ] People of Color Leadership Summit. 1991. "Principles of Working Together." October 27. https://www.ejnet.org/ej/workingtogether.pdf Reuters. 2020. "Trump Attacks Journalists for Asking 'Snarky' Questions on Coronavirus Testing in US – Video." The Guardian. March 30. https://www. theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/mar/30/trump-attacks-journalistscoronavirus-briefing. Rocker, Rudolf. 1998. Nationalism and Culture. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Roig-Franzia, Manuel, and Sarah Ellison. 2020. "A History of the Trump War on Media - The Obsession Not Even Coronavirus Could Stop." The Washington Post. March 29. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/ahistory-of-the-trump-war-on-media--the-obsession-not-even-coronaviruscould-stop/2020/03/28/71bb21d0-f433-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html Solis, Ruben. 1997. "Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing." Mothers Out Front. April. https://www.mothersoutfront.org/jemez_principles_for_ democratic_organizing?fbclid=IwAR1Q6GXO87H3PuZUcL8oPBKOoJjyy xTv_LdOVaNZg6DJXeFqR2wikH2xzhw Solnit, Rebecca. 2010. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. New York: Penguin Books. SYC. n.d.. "Serve Your City." https://www.serveyourcitydc.org/ Timm, Jane. 2020. "Fact-checking President Donald Trump's Claims about Coronavirus." NBC News. April 2. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/ donald-trump/fact-checking-president-donald-trump-s-claims-about-coronavirus-n1174356.


Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice. An Argument for âThickâ and âSmallâ Knowledge

Philosophy

In this paper, I present an analysis of the âwindows into realityâ that are used in theories of global justice with a focus on issues of epistemic injustice and the powerlessness of the global poor. I argue that we should aim for a better understanding of global poverty through acknowledging people living in poverty as epistemic subjects. To achieve this, we need to deepen and broaden the knowledge base of theories of global justice and approach the subject through methodologies of âthinking smallâ and âthick descriptionsâ, which are ways to give people living in poverty sufficient room to express themselves and have their voices heard, leading to âsmallâ and âthickâ knowledge claims.

Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 SIX EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE AND POWERLESSNESS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL JUSTICE: AN ARGUMENT FOR "THICK" AND "SMALL" KNOWLEDGE Gottfried Schweiger Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg Abstract: In this paper, I present an analysis of the "windows into reality" that are used in theories of global justice with a focus on issues of epistemic injustice and the powerlessness of the global poor. I argue that we should aim for a better understanding of global poverty through acknowledging people living in poverty as epistemic subjects. To achieve this, we need to deepen and broaden the knowledge base of theories of global justice and approach the subject through methodologies of "thinking small" and "thick descriptions", which are ways to give people living in poverty sufficient room to express themselves and have their voices heard, leading to "small" and "thick" knowledge claims. Introduction Global justice is first and foremost concerned with "material" injustices, such as poverty and a lack of basic goods, while the underlying system of knowledge production, namely the production and distribution of our knowledge about these injustices and about how they can be overcome, is largely neglected. This comes with a reliance of most concepts of global justice on a specific form of third-person knowledge, which can be characterized as distant, "big"1, unpersonal, "thin"2 and objectified. Such knowledge presents us with figures and numbers about hundreds of millions of people living in misery, but the "voices" and experiences of the victims of injustices are marginalized in this kind of knowledge and therefore under-represented in concepts of global justice. In Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 105 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 order to overcome this shortcoming, I argue for a greater concern with "thick" and "small" third-person knowledge, which necessitates work with first-person testimonials, narratives and life stories. It is not a question of either/or, but a balance between different kinds of knowledge bases. "Windows into reality" are needed, otherwise many injustices will simply go unnoticed, unheard and will ultimately not be criticized, constituting an epistemic injustice. My paper is structured in four sections: Every concept of global justice needs a "window into reality" to know what injustices to criticize and how to overcome them. In the first section, I argue that concepts of global justice rely mainly on "big" and "thin" third-person knowledge about global injustices, and I explain why this increases the risk of neglecting certain forms of injustices. In the second section, I turn to epistemic injustices that are embedded within global injustices resulting in poverty and exclusion as well as in the production of knowledge about these injustices. Concepts of global justice that rely on "big" and "thin" third-person knowledge are often not concerned with the production of this kind of knowledge and the ways epistemic injustices are present in it. Besides being the victims of harsh injustices, the global poor are also trapped in a state of epistemic powerlessness. In the following third section, I propose the concepts of "thick" and "mall" third-person knowledge to empower the victims of (epistemic) injustices by giving them the opportunity to tell their stories and their experiences. Thus, people acquiring this kind of knowledge should be able to gain deep insights into such injustices and into the ways they affect the victims and their lives. In the fourth and final section I argue for a balance between different types of "windows into reality" and connect this matter to issues of empowerment and recognition. Theories of Global Justice and "Windows into Reality" Theories of global justice often start with the observation that our contemporary world is radically unjust, and they try to come-up with answers that can help us to remove these injustices. Furthermore, most theories of global justice acknowledge that they rely on empirical findings they cannot 106 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 produce themselves, including data about the state of the world's poor, the conditions they live in, the institutional arrangements on the national and global level that produce, reproduce or reduce poverty as well as the political and legal systems that shape these arrangements. According to many theorists, global justice, if it wants to be considered as a venture that is as feasible as it is reasonable, has to take these non-ideal circumstances and the limits they pose into account, not only for the realization of global justice but also with regard to its conceptualization. This point is made strongly by the so-called non-ideal camp, whose proponents argue that we need to know a lot about the world to apply and to design theories of justice – opposed to the so-called ideal camp, whose proponents argue that we should refrain from as much empirical influence as possible when we design theories of justice (Valentini, 2012). One of the reasons for opting for a non-ideal approach is the intention of most theorists of global justice to propose so-called real-life answers instead of theoretical daydreams. I would like to call this the necessity to have a "window into reality" that connects the philosophical work with the real world it aims to analyze, enabling theorists to criticize and to make proposals on how it could become better and more just. These windows are certain types of knowledge. Only rarely have theorists of global justice systematically reflected on the grounds and the ways in which they use such "windows into reality" or on the kind of knowledge they put to work in their theories. Let us distinguish three types of knowledge, following a similar analysis conducted by Clemens Sedmak (2013): third-person, secondperson and first-person knowledge. Scientific studies are the most prominent example of third-person knowledge. This kind of knowledge is distant, which means that there is not necessarily a connection between the producers of such knowledge and those who use it in their theories of global justice. It appears to be objective, because it is produced according to shared rules; accordingly, it is presumed to be trustworthy and reliable. We can distinguish two types of such scientific knowledge along the distinction between qualitative and quantitative empirical research. Most empirical findings at the heart of theories of global justice are quantitative: they are "big" in the sense that they cover millions Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 107 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 or billions of people, different countries, genders, age groups etc. Their scope also increases the distance in the sense of the old saying that one death is a tragedy, one millions deaths are a statistic. Qualitative findings are "smaller" and cannot be generalized – some say they are less reliable – because they cover less ground and because they are closer to the real life of those who are covered in the research. They are not as often found in theories of global justice, because the latter have a tendency to think big. Second-person knowledge is the kind of knowledge we obtain when other people tell us something they have experienced.3 For example: If I work in a shelter or refugee home in an affluent society, I have the opportunity to hear a wide range of stories from people who were compelled to flee from their homes. In some sense, such knowledge is perceived as much less reliable for its use in theories of global justice when compared to third-person knowledge. On the one hand, second-person knowledge does not cover as much ground as the big knowledge of quantitative studies by the World Bank or other sources, even though the story I am told might be tragic and I might believe in its truth. On the other hand, I have no way of knowing if it is more than a single or local incident. The reliability is furthermore shattered because second-person knowledge is neither considered as scientific, nor does it not come with the label of objectivity. People can and also have the right to tell their own perspective, however, in the context of theories of global justice such stories usually need to be backed-up by scientific procedures of data gathering and analysis. Nonetheless, such stories are sometimes found in the literature on global justice, because they put flesh on the dry bones of quantitative data. However, their function is often limited to exemplifications. The third type is first-person knowledge. It is the knowledge we obtain from our own lived experiences. They might be poor themselves, exploited or otherwise harmed by global injustices – even though most theorists of justice I know are well-off academics. Others used to be poor during their childhood, were later able to escape poverty but still have vivid experiences and memories that they can use to connect their theory of global justice to the real world. Global justice 108 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 theorists might also visit areas where poverty is prevalent: favelas, refugee camps or war zones.4 Such first-hand experience of poverty is reliable, but in a different sense than the scientific third-person knowledge. Academically trained philosophers are often aware that their own experiences cannot simply be generalized and that in cases of conflict, scientific third-person knowledge trumps examples that are only based on own experiences. I believe it is safe to say that theories of global justice most often use a particular form of third-person knowledge, which I have described as "big" and "thin" as a basis for their approaches – just to name two examples from two different approaches: Thomas Pogge (2008) always refers, although sometimes critically, to data from the World Bank and other global institutions about the hundreds of millions of people living in severe poverty to jump-start his arguments for global justice as does Gillian Brock (2009) in her discussion about global poverty, global justice and taxation. Many, if not most theorists of global justice use the statistics on absolute poverty provided by the World Bank, or rely on other scientific sources that regard causes of poverty, like illicit financial flows, studies that analyze the effects of trade agreements or the policies of the World Bank, the Monetary Fund or other institutions. A lot of this kind of knowledge is hence provided by economists, which also illustrates the division of labor between the disciplines. Such a reliance on scientific empirical findings is problematic for at least two reasons: on the one hand, philosophers rarely have any control over the production and validation of findings. On the other hand, and despite its potentially high relevance, it is far from clear what kind of information gets lost by the focus on a particular type of knowledge. While we can expect philosophers to be critical towards such external sources of knowledge, it would overburden them to ask them to be experts on poverty research or other forms of empirical knowledge production about global injustices. Neither can we expect theories of justice to produce their own primary data and analyze it. However, we should – and this is what I am arguing for – reflect on the kind of information that is lost and consider whether or not it would be better to use different types of "windows into reality", or to Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 109 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 have a look at different types of third-person knowledge and ask what value the different variants have to offer. The argument I want to make in this paper is not to criticize reference to third-person knowledge per se, but to broaden the perspective and to turn attention to the issues of justice that might be present in the usage of certain types of knowledge production. Epistemic Injustices and our Knowledge about Global Injustices The term epistemic injustice was coined by Miranda Fricker (2007), and she divides this concept into two types: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice, on the one hand, occurs when the testimony of a speaker is not trusted because of an unjustified prejudice of the hearer. One of Fricker's examples for such an injustice is the case of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee's novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Robinson is a black man accused of raping a white girl, and his testimony is met with racial prejudice during trial: in the context of the racist 1930s in Alabama, where the story takes place, a white girl's testimony is given much more credibility than a black man's testimony. Robinson is unjustly wronged in his ability to know, simply for the color of his skin. Hermeneutical injustice, on the other hand, occurs when persons are wrongfully denied the ability to understand the social experience they make. Fricker's example for this kind of epistemic injustice is the inability of a gay man to properly understand his desire in the context of a society where homosexuality is condemned as a sin. Under such circumstances, it can become impossible for a gay man to develop a positive relation to himself and his sexual orientation. Both testimonial and hermeneutic injustices are not only individual instances of injustices, but they are closely tied to the social background in which they occur. While testimonial injustice denies victims the recognition as a full epistemic subject, hermeneutical injustice denies them the possibility to understand themselves. Both can have severely harmful consequences: they may undermine the status of the victim and they can be experienced as humiliating and excluding. 110 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 How is Fricker's distinction connected to the issue of global justice and to what I said before about the "windows into realty" used by theories of global justice? In most theories of global justice people living in poverty are underrepresented and their testimony is usually not given much space, because those theories rely heavily on the certain kind of third-person knowledge that I described as "thin" and "big". It has been argued by proponents of participatory research that in such "thin" and "big" knowledge people living in poverty are merely treated as objects and "units" of analysis and that their subjective experience and what they have to say about their own situation, how it came about and how it could be alleviated, is more or less ignored (Chambers, 2008). There are two dimensions to be distinguished here: On the one hand, statistics about global poverty, like the one by the World Bank, do not adequately represent individual experiences of poverty. They merely provide numbers about the amount of people living below a certain threshold without telling us anything about the individual experiences of living a life under such circumstances. Such missing information could be counterbalanced by revising the way poverty is measured. Better concepts of poverty can be drafted based on participatory research that reflects what people living in poverty actually view as essential for a better life for them or what they are actually missing.5 On the other hand, people living in poverty are only marginally reflected within poverty research when it comes to recognizing them as subjects and as people with a certain level of knowledge. There is a huge gap between experts on poverty, who are usually not poor themselves, and those actually affected by poverty. Using Fricker's terminology, poor people's credibility to know something about poverty is regularly met with skepticism, especially their ideas about its causes and the means to alleviate it. One report about participatory research makes clear how this should be understood: Participatory research on poverty is not about adding the "subjective" feelings of people living in poverty to the researcher's "objective" knowledge. It is not about adding colorful quotes Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 111 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 to an existing report which already has its own agenda – although this can certainly enliven many texts and demonstrate the limits of "policy speak" on its own. Nor is it just about people living in poverty telling their life-stories. [...] What participatory practice in research and inquiry into poverty is about is putting into practice the belief that people in poverty have a right to participate in analyzing their own situation and how to tackle it. It also means that the perspectives and ideas of people experiencing poverty themselves are seen as key to achieving a more all-round and in-depth understanding of poverty. People in poverty should be seen as having a right to take part in the debate and a particular expertise in doing so. (Bennett & Roberts, 2004, pp. 5-6 emphasis in the original) This also means that the victims of injustices such as global poverty are also victims of epistemic injustice, and that they have considerably less resources available to overcome both. I want to call this a state of double powerlessness, which can also be described as the intersection of different forms of discrimination and injustice. Most poor people are not only poor, but they face challenges due to their gender, race, age or health status, which reinforces their low position of being viewed as inferior epistemic subjects. The inability to be heard by the institutions that undertake poverty research and that are involved in designing and implementing poverty alleviation policies is furthermore accompanied by hermeneutical injustice in a specific sense. Alice O'Connor (2001) has argued that poverty knowledge is increasingly focused on counting and describing people living in poverty, while it leaves aside questions about the problem's causation as well as its political, social and economic background. There is overwhelming evidence that many of the people living in poverty internalize the blame for being poor and feel themselves responsible for their fate, while it is clear that they are not (Jo, 2013). This applies to the unemployed social benefit user in Germany or the USA as well as to farmers in a country in sub-Saharan Africa 112 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 who cannot sell their crop or the sewers working in Bangladesh. It is a specific form of hermeneutical injustice, and I would even suggest that the victims of global injustice are left in the dark as to why they are suffering. Often, they are even made believe that it is their own fault, and that they are bad mothers or fathers when they are unable to provide for their children. Finally, we should expand Fricker's analysis into the direction of processes of invisibilization and silencing of people living in poverty. It is not only that poor people are less frequently represented in the knowledge production that guides the analyses conducted for the purpose of reducing global injustices, but they are also often not even asked and heard. This is a particular harsh form of testimonial injustice. "Thinking Small" and "Thick Concepts" In this section, I would like to argue for a more balanced usage of "windows into reality" in theories of global justice that take into account the insights I have presented so far. Some thirdperson scientific knowledge, namely that which is "thin," distant and "big", about global injustices and poverty is not unproblematic, (a) because it does not tell us much about the lived experience of the victims, (b) because it is produced without granting the perspective of the victims much room and within power structures that are susceptible to epistemic injustice, and (c) because it tends devalue the contributions people living in poverty can make to analyze, criticize and overcome the injustice from which they suffer. I want to refer to two distinct concepts to make my point: David Hulme's (2004) idea of "thinking small" and Clifford Geertz' (1973) notion of a "thick description". Hulme's paper on "thinking small" introduces and analyses the story of Maymana and Mofizul, a couple living in a small town in Bangladesh under severely impoverished circumstances. Hulme argues that such a "close reading" of a single life story is often overlooked in poverty research because of the latter's focus on "thinking big", meaning that poverty research, just like poverty alleviation policies, are primarily interested in numbers and figures that provide insights into the "average" poor. By contrast, "thinking small" brings to life the experience of a single person or family and the struggles they Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 113 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 have to face, the reasons for their poverty as well as solutions for it. Such knowledge has certain limitations, however, it is still an inevitable crucial source of knowledge, first in order to understand the suffering of people living in poverty as well as its causes, and second in order to conceptualize policies and routes out of poverty.6 It is not a question of either or but "thinking big" and "thinking small" are needed and should complement each other as Hulme writes: [S]uch grand approaches [thinking big] are not unproblematic. Ultimately it is individual people who experience the deprivations of poverty, not countries or regions. Understanding what happens "on average" can be an erroneous basis for working out what to do in any specific country, as can understanding what happens to the "average" poor person or poor household. [...] We desperately need to continue thinking big about poverty, but this must not mask the counterbalancing need to "think small". (Hulme, 2004, p. 162) I want to call the knowledge that is produced by "thinking small", "small" knowledge in contrast to "big" knowledge. In comparison to Hulme's advocacy for such "small" knowledge in poverty research and development studies, Geertz' idea of a "thick description" is already a classical tool in disciplines like anthropology, ethnology or sociology (Alexander et al. 2011). It was introduced to provide a framework for the research and interpretation of empirical findings. A "thin" description of a social action is superficial information that contains no explanations and little or no context, while a "thick" description provides in depth information not only on what is present, but also on how and why it exists, by what it is accompanied and what kind of emotions and meanings are attached to it. A "thick description" embeds the content that is described into its context and meaning and reconnects it to those it describes or the description of their actions. If a person is sitting on the street to beg, this information does only then become a "thick description" of poverty, if it is connected to other types of 114 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 information: why is the person begging, what happened in the past that led to this situation, in which context is the person begging and what does he or she feel sitting there or what is his or her motivation. Joseph G. Ponterotto (2006) has summarized the basic pillars of the concept and provides a working definition, which shows that a "thick description" is relevant for the researcher as well as the reader. Thick description refers to the researcher's task of both describing and interpreting observed social action (and behavior) within its particular context. The context can be within a smaller unit (such as a couple, a family, a work environment) or within a larger unit (such as one's village, a community, or general culture). Thick description accurately describes observed social actions and assigns purpose and intentionality to these actions, by way of the researcher's understanding and clear description of the context under which the social actions took place. Thick description captures the thoughts and feelings of participants as well as the often complex web of relationships among them. Thick description leads to thick interpretation, which in turns [sic] leads to thick meaning of the research findings for the researchers and participants themselves, and for the report's intended readership. Thick meaning of findings leads readers to a sense of verisimilitude, wherein they can cognitively and emotively "place" themselves within the research context. (Ponterotto, 2006, p. 543) I suggest that such "thick descriptions" can be understood as forms of "thick" knowledge. Both, "small" knowledge (Hulme 2004) and "thick" knowledge (Geertz 1973), share a similar ideal, namely to enrich our knowledge about certain phenomena such as poverty by regarding it through the lens of a particular, individual story: a life that is struck by poverty and still cannot be reduced to it. These approaches highlight that the experience of living in poverty is shaped by individual traits Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 115 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 and behaviors, by the social context and by tangible and intangible infrastructures that may or may not be available to the person and his or her family. Another very important feature is to aim at understanding the dynamics that take place when injustices like poverty occur. People move in and out of poverty for various reasons that are only poorly reflected in most poverty statistics, and they are active agents within these dynamics, even if they are not in full control (Addison, Hulme, & Kanbur, 2009). "Small" and "thick" knowledge are both produced by scientific inquiry and with the aim to produce scientific knowledge in the sense of the third-person knowledge I introduced above. These concepts are not just replications of testimonies of people living in poverty or other victims of injustices, but they embed affected people's stories into a context, they interpret and connect them to other kinds of scientific knowledge as well as to the position of the researchers themselves. "Small" and "thick" knowledge in the sense I described them above are types of third-person knowledge, they fall under the standards of scientific rigor and they provide thirdpersons, like theorists of global justice, with knowledge about poverty. What makes "thick" and "small" knowledge different from the "thin" and "big" one is that the primary starting point for reflections on global justice is that they have a certain relation to second-person and first-person knowledge, because they try to do justice, epistemic justice so to speak, to the firstperson knowledge of people living in poverty by entering into a specific relation to them, that is acquiring second-person knowledge. Third-person knowledge is always transformed first-person knowledge (of the people living in poverty) and second-person knowledge (of the researcher) but "thick" and "small" third-person knowledge does so in specific way, and with a specific result that aims to give much more substance, nuances and depth, and provide the ones who acquire this "thick" and "small" third-person knowledge with a different kind of "window into reality". Empowering the Victims of Global (Epistemic) Injustices In this last section, I would like to approach the question how we can improve our understanding of global injustices in order Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 105 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 to make better theories of global justice. Based on what we know about the flaws that are inherent in some types of thirdperson knowledge – namely that it is "big" and "thin" – and about how it is produced, I would like to argue for a balanced approach that does not only aim at counterbalancing such knowledge with "small" and "thick" knowledge, but one that also acknowledges that the process of acquiring such knowledge is in itself valuable, because it empowers people living in poverty and recognizes them as full epistemic subjects. On the one hand, "small" and "thick" knowledge provides theorists of global justice with third-person knowledge that is different to the one that is normally used, because it is connected to second-person and first-person knowledge, which is provided by people living in poverty themselves (which in some cases might be the author him/herself). It gives valuable insights into the harm of being poor and how people arrange their lives under such harsh conditions. It is possible that some aspects of theories of global justice will profit less than others from integrating such new "windows into reality", or, to put it differently, it will also depend on the level of generality a theory argues. I want to consider one example to make that point. Monique Deveaux has recently argued that most theories of global justice, like the one of Thomas Pogge, are interested only in what happens on the institutional level, mainly on global institutions and how they should change to alleviate global poverty (Deveaux, 2015). That is certainly an important aspect and how could that profit from "thick" and "small" knowledge? I would want to make three points: Firstly, as Deveaux argues, a focus on the institutional setting on the global level is in danger of overlooking or downplaying the potentials of pro-poor movements and initiatives "on the ground". In this respect, "thick" and "small" knowledge about the self-organization of people living in poverty and how they can be empowered in local initiatives complements insights or claims about what has to happen on the global institutional level. Secondly, change on the global institutional level has also to be translated into practice in distinct settings and for concrete people. This is only possible with "thick" and "small" knowledge. If a NGO comes to a village and builds a well so that the women in this village no longer have to go two hours 106 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 per day to get water, this sounds like a very good idea and the claim to build this well can be grounded in many different theories of global justice. But if it turns out that the women do not use this well, even sabotage it, because the two hours per day that they have to go to get water are an important time for them because they can be away from their husbands and be with other women without supervision, then this information is highly important to put into practice what global justice demands. Yes, it can even turn out that the primary focus of global justice in such settings should be on establishing gender justice first, because without it the justice-based claims to easy access to water cannot be realized. Thirdly, I argue that any focus on the global institutional level also has to take a look at the set-up of those institutions. Are the experiences of people living in poverty heard on that level? Are they giving some weight, when it comes to deciding which programs are implemented and how? Or do we need to accept that every focus on this level necessarily implies acting paternalistically towards people living in poverty? It is possible that the claims of many theories of justices such as Pogge's would not change on a general level, but they would be complemented and deepened, if they would reflect more on these questions and come up with different types of injustices that people living in poverty face today. On the other hand, "thick" and "small" knowledge is not only a tool and "window into reality", but it provides information about the agency of people living in poverty, make them visible as active agents and subjects, and even as epistemic subjects in their own right. This can be connected to two ideas: empowerment and recognition. Empowerment can be defined as the process to restore or build-up the agency of a person whose agency is diminished by the social conditions he or she lives in. Hence empowerment is neither identical with the means that help to achieve agency, like education or health, nor is it identical with the outcome of that process, but it is in itself a dynamic phase of change and development (Drydyk, 2013). "Small" and "thick" knowledge provides insights into actual processes of empowerment that are not visible in thin data or research methods that are empowering in themselves – namely, participatory research that acknowledges people living Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 107 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 in poverty as subjects of knowledge production. These concepts help to overcome the epistemic powerlessness of people living in poverty as described earlier. Closely tied to empowerment is the idea of recognition as something people living in poverty are entitled to, which reflects their agency and what they claim for themselves (Schweiger, 2014). Epistemic injustices – and especially testimonial injustices in their harshest form of silencing and invisibilization – are forms of denied recognition, whether as disrespect, humiliation, denigration or exclusion. Through the recognition of people living in poverty and other victims of global injustices, the problems of silencing and invisibilization may be overcome: Recognition gives poor people the opportunity to speak-up and to be heard. Furthermore, it considers their opinions as valuable and furthermore recognizes them as agents of their own lives. This is not only important for the process of research on people living in poverty and for the ways how we may try to integrate their views into theories of global justice, but certainly also for the design and implementation of policies and other measures of poverty alleviation (Lister, 2004). Finally, such a reshaping of our understanding of poverty and other global injustices is also important if we want to take an original and different look at one central question of global justice, namely the question about its agents. I have referred to Monique Deveaux (2015) and her argument that most theories of global justice focus too heavily on institutions or the rich as agents of justice for people living in poverty, while they ignore the options available to people living in poverty to improve their situation. This should not be interpreted as another way of blaming and shaming people living in poverty for their poverty. Rather, it is meant to acknowledge that people living in poverty are not only epistemically neglected their status as full subjects, but discriminated against also in other dimensions. They are viewed as helpless, passive and powerless, and while that may be true in comparison to other possible agents of justice, such a description remains inadequate: People living in poverty are never only helpless, passive and powerless, but they are also are resistant, active and potentially powerful. 108 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 How could we achieve such justice for poor people? How can they be empowered and recognized? I can only give a very brief and general answer to those pressing questions, which deserve more attention in future research. It would be good to start by attributing responsibilities to different agents of justice. I can think of at least three agents that are relevant here: The first one is the group of people working on global justice like myself. There is plenty of participatory research available now and we should just start making reference to that when thinking about global justice. Most probably, theorizing justice would change if philosophers would start reading accounts of people living in poverty and taking seriously what they have to say about suffering and injustices. The second agent of justice is the heterogeneous group of poverty researchers, some of which are actually doing a lot of work with people living in poverty. I do not call for everyone becoming a participatory researcher, and I also do not want to say too much about the inner lives of disciplines and institutions that I only know from the outside. Yet, I defend the claim that it is a task of the community of people engaged in poverty research whether within a university, an NGO, at the World Bank or in the UN to reflect the breadth and depth of the experiences of people living in poverty and to have their voices recorded, preserved and distributed.7 I chose to say something about two agents of justice that have not much power in changing the situation of people living in poverty. However, I know that empowerment and recognition demand such a change and must not be limited to respecting and valuing their voices in our theories. For these bigger questions, we need to have a lively political? debate on global reforms, about what is feasible, if we should go for revolution or start pressuring our own home countries to spend more on development aid. I want to finish by contemplating one further aspect that relates to the meaning of empowering and recognizing people living in poverty. My suggestion does not say much about giving people living in poverty an active role as being theorists – and activists – of global justice themselves. I made a point that we – which refers at first to such people as myself, who are doing theoretical work on global justice in academic Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 109 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 institutions in well-off countries – should give the voices, the experiences and the resistance of people living in poverty more space in theories of global justice and that we should recognize them as invaluable for making better such theories. Another, even more radical but nonetheless worthy expansion of my claim could also be to argue that people living in poverty should be given the opportunities and support to become theorists themselves. Certainly this would demand much greater efforts than to expand and deepen our knowledge base and to open different "windows into reality". One possible more realistic approach could be to give theorists, who are "closer" to global poverty, for example because they have grown-up in poverty or because they live(d) or work(ed) in countries where poverty is much more widespread and visible, more space within the academic discussion. It seems as if there is now some movement in that direction (Graness, 2015). It is to hope that the theoretical work on global justice that is produced from peoples' histories and experiences and that are working under different circumstances than those in the rich countries, will not be marginalized as embellishments without real influence on the mainstream debates that dominate today.8 Conclusions I would not want my argument to be understood as claiming that we should shift from issues of distribution and inequalities in resources to issues of epistemic inequalities.9 It is certainly necessary to criticize the injustice of global poverty because it hurts people, because it kills people and because this does not need to be the case. Approaches to global justice whether they are based in human rights, Rawlsian justice, the capabilities approach or the utilitarian tradition cannot ignore these facts about global poverty and it seems plausible to give them serious and lengthy attention. The issues I raised in this paper are nonetheless not just minor ones that can be neglected as long as the big issues of a fair distribution of resources or goods and protecting human rights of all are unresolved. Both demand attention, also because both are intertwined as I have tried to show. There are good reasons to assume that it is not sufficient for global justice to give people living in poverty just more resources without paying attention to reaching a level of equal 110 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 respect and social equality, both which are constituted in the process of overcoming epistemic injustices.10 Notes 1 I borrow the term "big" from David Hulme, who has written about thinking big about poverty (Hulme, 2004a). "Big" knowledge means knowledge about the condition of a large group of people, such as on the national or even global level. "Small" knowledge refers to knowledge about an individual or a small group of people like a family or a smaller community. I will come back to that later. 2 I use the term "thin" here in opposition to what Clifford Geertz has called a "thick" description (Geertz, 1973). A description or knowledge is "thin" if it is superficial, stripped of its context and its depth, for example, if you say about a person that s/he has an income below the poverty line, this does not tell you much about how that person actually lives. 3 It is certainly true that third-person knowledge is produced using second-person knowledge. Every statistic and every empirical poverty research somehow needs to get in touch with people that are poor: They are interviewed, have to fill out a questionnaire or tell their life stories. The distinction I am interested here is about the knowledge within theories of global justice and second-person knowledge is such knowledge that theorists acquire if they engage with people living in poverty themselves. 4 Such knowledge is a borderline case between second-person and first-person because visiting poor people, even living with them for a certain period of time, is not the same as being actually poor, because there is no exist option easily available. I will not further go into details here because it is not necessary for the claim of my paper. 5 It would be necessary to say much more about the pros and cons of participatory research methods and concepts of poverty that are based on them (Ruggeri Laderchi, Saith, & Stewart, 2006). I personally think that a balanced or mixed approach that includes participatory research but does not rely on it as the only source for conceptualizing and measuring poverty is the best available thus far. One example for such a mixed approach Epistemic Injustice and Powerlessness in the Context of Global Justice 111 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 based in the capability approach has been argued for and applied extensively by Sabina Alkire (2008). 6 It is worth noting that there is now extensive knowledge available that is produced using participatory research methods, even the World Bank itself conducting such research on a large scale (Narayan-Parker, Chambers, Shah, & Petesch, 2000). It would go beyond the scope of this paper to examine the fallacies attached to participatory research and how it can also be turned into a vehicle of promoting new forms of oppression by reducing participation to a technical issue. For such issues that are also concerned with the World Bank, see the work of Alejandro Leal (2007). 7 Moreover, it will be necessary in this context to look at the wider fallout of the epistemic injustices I examined in this paper, for example the often one-sided and biased representations of people living in poverty in the media and also in schools. 8 An even more radical approach has been formulated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2012). He uses the term of cognitive injustice to describe the exclusion of knowledge from the global South. He sets out two premises of an epistemology of the South: "First, the understanding of the world is much broader than the Western understanding of the world. This means that the progressive change of the world may also occur in ways not foreseen by Western thinking, including critical Western thinking (Marxism not excluded). Second, the diversity of the world is infinite. [...] This immensity of alternatives of life, conviviality and interaction with the world is largely wasted because the theories and concepts developed in the global North and employed in the entire academic world do not identify such alternatives. When they do, they do not valorize them as being valid contributions towards constructing a better society." (de Sousa Santos, 2012, p. 51) 9 This mirrors somehow the discussion between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (2003) whether we should focus on recognition or distribution. One central insight that emerged from this debate is, for me at least, that we need to look at both and that economic injustices and experiences of misrecognition 112 Wagadu Volume 15 Summer 2016 © Wagadu 2016 ISSN: 1545-6196 are often interwoven and go hand in hand. See for that point also Fraser (2008). 10 There is now a strand of philosophers arguing for what they call relational or social equality. They presuppose that to have an equal standing and not feel of less worth is really important for realizing justice (Fourie, Schuppert, & Wallimann-Helmer, 2015). Demanding epistemic justice for people living in poverty implies this. Conversely, giving people in poverty just enough resources so that they are no longer poor, might even further cement their status as inferior. References Addison, T., Hulme, D., & Kanbur, R. (Eds.). (2009). Poverty dynamics: Interdisciplinary perspectives (1st ed.). Oxford / New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Alejandro Leal, P. (2007). Participation: The ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era. Development in Practice, 17(4-5), 539-548. http://doi.org/10.1080/09614520701469518 Alexander, J. C., Smith, P., Norton, M., & Brooks, P. (Eds.). (2011). Interpreting Clifford Geertz: Cultural investigation in the social sciences (1st ed.). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Alkire, S. (2008). 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