Avery Kolers
Biographic Data
| ID | 1401928 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Avery Kolers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Avery |
| FAMILY NAME | Kolers |
| SIGNATURE | KOLERS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Louisville |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6237-3134 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 57 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 26 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Introduction to Symposium
This introductory article summarizes some key elements of Monique Deveaux’s book Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements and situates that book in the philosophical literature on global poverty. It then provides an outline of the symposium contributions by Ashwini Vasanthakumar, Luis Cabrera, Brooke Ackerly, Catherine Lu, and Avery Kolers
Collective political capabilities
Monique Deveaux’s Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-led Social Movements makes a significant contribution to contemporary capability theories by challenging their individualism. Mainline versions of the Capabilities Approach (CA), including those developed by Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, and Ingrid Robeyns, insist on a methodological and normative individualism. And with good reason: communitarianism most often reinscribes patriarchal power, especia…
States as agents and as trustees
In The Shifting Border, Ayelet Shachar observes that the ‘beast’ of state migration policy has broken out of its cage and shifted both outward – to intercept migrants before they can ‘touch base’ and thereby gain rights – and inward, to restrict and subvert the rights of migrants and others in Exclusionary Zones within state territory. Shachar wants to ‘tame’ the beast by obligating states and their agents to uphold basic rights wherever they act…
What does solidarity do for bioethics
Bioethical work on solidarity has yielded an array of divergent conceptions. But what do these accounts add to normative bioethics? What is solidarity’s distinctive social normative role? Prainsack and Buyx suggest that solidarity be understood as the ‘putty’ of justice. I argue here that the putty metaphor is deeply insightful and—when spelled out in detail—successfully explicates solidarity’s social normative function. Unfortunately, Prainsack …
Groundwork for the Mechanics of Morals
Ethics is a skill set. But what skill set is it? An answer to this question would help make progress for both theory and moral agency. I argue that moral performance may best be understood on the model of athletic performance; both moral and athletic performance are rule-structured unions of efficiency and inefficiency, enabling us to engage in the wholehearted and autonomous pursuit of goals subject to constraints. By understanding how athletics…
Response to Mara Marin’s review of A Moral Theory of Solidarity
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Locating the people
In A Political Theory of Territory, Margaret Moore’s basic thesis is that peoples gain rights to territories by occupying them. The current article challenges the underpinning social ontology of this normative theory. For Moore, a people is a collective agent meeting conditions of mutual identification and shared aspirations, political capacity, and a history of political cooperation. In turn, a people so understood occupy a territory when its me…
Solidarity as environmental justice in brownfields remediation
What do individuals owe to affected communities in the name of environmental justice? Principal accounts of environmental justice have made inroads in developing a pluralistic and activist-led approach. Yet precisely because of their strengths, such accounts face three problems – indeterminacy, epistemology, and structure/agency – that hinder activism and widespread engagement and threaten to leave ‘every neighborhood for itself.’ The current art…
Latin America in Theories of Territorial Rights
Who owns it?" is a surprisingly confusing question when applied to territory. Each word opens up puzzles: who can "own" territory? What is "ownership" in this context? How can it be justified in a way that could convince an outsider? These questions are particularly salient in the Latin American context, where multiple distinct kinds of land disputes converge. This paper canvasses two familiar approaches to these questions: the Kantian autochthon…
A Moral Theory of Solidarity
This volume analyses important debates about political responsibility, conscience, loyalty, collective action, moral agency, and the individual in society. Through these debates the volume advances a novel theory of solidarity and provides a major original contribution to a field of growing interest.
Social movements
Social movements are ubiquitous in political life. But what are they? What makes someone a member of a social movement, or some action an instance of movement activity? Are social movements compatible with democracy? Are they required for it? And how should individuals respond to movement calls to action? Philosophers have had much to say on issues impinging on social movements but much less to say on social movements as such. The current article…
The Grasshopper's Error
I here defend the thesis that the best life is the life that one plays as a game-specifically, a 'Suitsian' game that meets the definition proposed inThe Grasshopperby Bernard Suits. Even more specifically, it is a nested, open, role-playing game where the life's quality as a game partly depends on there being no more people than players. To defend this thesis I refute two powerful challenges to it, one from Thomas Hurka (2006) and another from w…
Am I My Profession's Keeper?
Conscientious refusal is distinguished by its peculiar attitude towards the obligations that the objector refuses: the objector accepts the authority of the institution in general, but claims a right of conscience to refuse some particular directive. An adequate ethics of conscientious objection will, then, require an account of the institutional obligations that the objector claims a right to refuse. Yet such an account must avoid two extremes: …
Reply to Armstrong
Floating Provisos and Sinking Islands
Rising sea levels may sink entire countries. Individualistic solutions to this climate catastrophe, such as those proposed by M eisels and R isse, are inadequate on both K antian and L ockean criteria. This article concurs with C ara N ine's recent argument that such ‘ecological refugee states’ are entitled to territorial remedies. But N ine's proposal, founded on L ocke's ‘sufficiency’ proviso and N ozick's famous application of it to waterholes…
Attachment to Territory
It is by now widely agreed that a theory of territorial rights must be able to explain attachment or particularity : what can link a particular group to a particular place with the kind of normative force necessary to forbid encroachment or colonization? Attachment is one of the pillars on which any successful theory of territory will have to stand. But the notion of attachment is not yet well understood, and such agreement as does exist relies o…
Justice, Territory and Natural Resources
Territorial self-determination and global distributive justice seem to be at loggerheads. Cosmopolitans hold that institutions such as states can be justified only derivatively on global justice. But ‘self-determinists’ insist that territorial self-determination is independently significant. The current article hypothesizes that the core disagreement is not over the justification of global resource egalitarianism, but rather over the conception o…
Dynamics of Solidarity
Justice et injustices spatiales
Le débat sur la justice et l'injustice est central et urgent dans les sociétés démocratiques, et la justice sociale est l'horizon de la plupart des politiques d'action sur les territoires. Mais le doute sur les grands récits explicatifs du monde a conduit souvent à relativiser tout discours sur la justice. Ce processus est renforcé par l'émergence de mouvements sociaux divers (féministes, écologistes, anti-racistes...) et par le développement du …
Democracy in a Global World
Land, Conflict, and Justice
Territorial disputes have defined modern politics, but political theorists and philosophers have said little about how to resolve such disputes fairly. Is it even possible to do so? If historical attachments or divine promises are decisive, it may not be. More significant than these largely subjective claims are the ways in which people interact with land over time. Building from this insight, Avery Kolers evaluates existing political theories an…
Land, conflict, and justice
"Territorial disputes have defined modern politics, but political theorists and philosophers have said little about how to resolve such disputes fairly. Is it even possible to do so? If historical attachments or divine promises are decisive, it may not be. More significant than these largely subjective claims are the ways in which people interact with land over time. Building from this insight, Avery Kolers re-evaluates existing political theorie…
Subsidiarity, Secession, and Cosmopolitan Democracy
Justice and the Politics of Deference
The Territorial State in Cosmopolitan Justice
Cosmopolitans attack the idea of the territorial state as, at best, a hold over from another era, and, at worst, an affront to justice. From a cosmo politan perspective the state has two fatal flaws: it is the refuge of scoun drels, such as dictators, illiberal or authoritarian cultures, or patriarchs; and it is powerless or counterproductive as an engine of justice in the increasingly globalized world. States serve important purposes. Until rece…
Justice, Territory and Natural Resources
Territorial self-determination and global distributive justice seem to be at loggerheads. Cosmopolitans hold that institutions such as states can be justified only derivatively on global justice. But ‘self-determinists’ insist that territorial self-determination is independently significant. The current article hypothesizes that the core disagreement is not over the justification of global resource egalitarianism, but rather over the conception o…
Dynamics of Solidarity
Justice and the Politics of Deference
Solidarity as environmental justice in brownfields remediation
What do individuals owe to affected communities in the name of environmental justice? Principal accounts of environmental justice have made inroads in developing a pluralistic and activist-led approach. Yet precisely because of their strengths, such accounts face three problems – indeterminacy, epistemology, and structure/agency – that hinder activism and widespread engagement and threaten to leave ‘every neighborhood for itself.’ The current art…
Social movements
Social movements are ubiquitous in political life. But what are they? What makes someone a member of a social movement, or some action an instance of movement activity? Are social movements compatible with democracy? Are they required for it? And how should individuals respond to movement calls to action? Philosophers have had much to say on issues impinging on social movements but much less to say on social movements as such. The current article…
Ethical Investing
States as agents and as trustees
In The Shifting Border, Ayelet Shachar observes that the ‘beast’ of state migration policy has broken out of its cage and shifted both outward – to intercept migrants before they can ‘touch base’ and thereby gain rights – and inward, to restrict and subvert the rights of migrants and others in Exclusionary Zones within state territory. Shachar wants to ‘tame’ the beast by obligating states and their agents to uphold basic rights wherever they act…
Latin America in Theories of Territorial Rights
Who owns it?" is a surprisingly confusing question when applied to territory. Each word opens up puzzles: who can "own" territory? What is "ownership" in this context? How can it be justified in a way that could convince an outsider? These questions are particularly salient in the Latin American context, where multiple distinct kinds of land disputes converge. This paper canvasses two familiar approaches to these questions: the Kantian autochthon…
The Grasshopper's Error
I here defend the thesis that the best life is the life that one plays as a game-specifically, a 'Suitsian' game that meets the definition proposed inThe Grasshopperby Bernard Suits. Even more specifically, it is a nested, open, role-playing game where the life's quality as a game partly depends on there being no more people than players. To defend this thesis I refute two powerful challenges to it, one from Thomas Hurka (2006) and another from w…
Ethical Investing
The Territorial State in Cosmopolitan Justice
Cosmopolitans attack the idea of the territorial state as, at best, a hold over from another era, and, at worst, an affront to justice. From a cosmo politan perspective the state has two fatal flaws: it is the refuge of scoun drels, such as dictators, illiberal or authoritarian cultures, or patriarchs; and it is powerless or counterproductive as an engine of justice in the increasingly globalized world. States serve important purposes. Until rece…
Justice and the Politics of Deference
Subsidiarity, Secession, and Cosmopolitan Democracy
Democracy in a Global World
Land, Conflict, and Justice
Territorial disputes have defined modern politics, but political theorists and philosophers have said little about how to resolve such disputes fairly. Is it even possible to do so? If historical attachments or divine promises are decisive, it may not be. More significant than these largely subjective claims are the ways in which people interact with land over time. Building from this insight, Avery Kolers evaluates existing political theories an…
Land, conflict, and justice
"Territorial disputes have defined modern politics, but political theorists and philosophers have said little about how to resolve such disputes fairly. Is it even possible to do so? If historical attachments or divine promises are decisive, it may not be. More significant than these largely subjective claims are the ways in which people interact with land over time. Building from this insight, Avery Kolers re-evaluates existing political theorie…
Justice et injustices spatiales
Le débat sur la justice et l'injustice est central et urgent dans les sociétés démocratiques, et la justice sociale est l'horizon de la plupart des politiques d'action sur les territoires. Mais le doute sur les grands récits explicatifs du monde a conduit souvent à relativiser tout discours sur la justice. Ce processus est renforcé par l'émergence de mouvements sociaux divers (féministes, écologistes, anti-racistes...) et par le développement du …
Dynamics of Solidarity
Floating Provisos and Sinking Islands
Rising sea levels may sink entire countries. Individualistic solutions to this climate catastrophe, such as those proposed by M eisels and R isse, are inadequate on both K antian and L ockean criteria. This article concurs with C ara N ine's recent argument that such ‘ecological refugee states’ are entitled to territorial remedies. But N ine's proposal, founded on L ocke's ‘sufficiency’ proviso and N ozick's famous application of it to waterholes…
Attachment to Territory
It is by now widely agreed that a theory of territorial rights must be able to explain attachment or particularity : what can link a particular group to a particular place with the kind of normative force necessary to forbid encroachment or colonization? Attachment is one of the pillars on which any successful theory of territory will have to stand. But the notion of attachment is not yet well understood, and such agreement as does exist relies o…
Justice, Territory and Natural Resources
Territorial self-determination and global distributive justice seem to be at loggerheads. Cosmopolitans hold that institutions such as states can be justified only derivatively on global justice. But ‘self-determinists’ insist that territorial self-determination is independently significant. The current article hypothesizes that the core disagreement is not over the justification of global resource egalitarianism, but rather over the conception o…
Reply to Armstrong
Am I My Profession's Keeper?
Conscientious refusal is distinguished by its peculiar attitude towards the obligations that the objector refuses: the objector accepts the authority of the institution in general, but claims a right of conscience to refuse some particular directive. An adequate ethics of conscientious objection will, then, require an account of the institutional obligations that the objector claims a right to refuse. Yet such an account must avoid two extremes: …
The Grasshopper's Error
I here defend the thesis that the best life is the life that one plays as a game-specifically, a 'Suitsian' game that meets the definition proposed inThe Grasshopperby Bernard Suits. Even more specifically, it is a nested, open, role-playing game where the life's quality as a game partly depends on there being no more people than players. To defend this thesis I refute two powerful challenges to it, one from Thomas Hurka (2006) and another from w…
A Moral Theory of Solidarity
This volume analyses important debates about political responsibility, conscience, loyalty, collective action, moral agency, and the individual in society. Through these debates the volume advances a novel theory of solidarity and provides a major original contribution to a field of growing interest.
Social movements
Social movements are ubiquitous in political life. But what are they? What makes someone a member of a social movement, or some action an instance of movement activity? Are social movements compatible with democracy? Are they required for it? And how should individuals respond to movement calls to action? Philosophers have had much to say on issues impinging on social movements but much less to say on social movements as such. The current article…
Solidarity as environmental justice in brownfields remediation
What do individuals owe to affected communities in the name of environmental justice? Principal accounts of environmental justice have made inroads in developing a pluralistic and activist-led approach. Yet precisely because of their strengths, such accounts face three problems – indeterminacy, epistemology, and structure/agency – that hinder activism and widespread engagement and threaten to leave ‘every neighborhood for itself.’ The current art…
Latin America in Theories of Territorial Rights
Who owns it?" is a surprisingly confusing question when applied to territory. Each word opens up puzzles: who can "own" territory? What is "ownership" in this context? How can it be justified in a way that could convince an outsider? These questions are particularly salient in the Latin American context, where multiple distinct kinds of land disputes converge. This paper canvasses two familiar approaches to these questions: the Kantian autochthon…
Response to Mara Marin’s review of A Moral Theory of Solidarity
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Locating the people
In A Political Theory of Territory, Margaret Moore’s basic thesis is that peoples gain rights to territories by occupying them. The current article challenges the underpinning social ontology of this normative theory. For Moore, a people is a collective agent meeting conditions of mutual identification and shared aspirations, political capacity, and a history of political cooperation. In turn, a people so understood occupy a territory when its me…
Groundwork for the Mechanics of Morals
Ethics is a skill set. But what skill set is it? An answer to this question would help make progress for both theory and moral agency. I argue that moral performance may best be understood on the model of athletic performance; both moral and athletic performance are rule-structured unions of efficiency and inefficiency, enabling us to engage in the wholehearted and autonomous pursuit of goals subject to constraints. By understanding how athletics…
What does solidarity do for bioethics
Bioethical work on solidarity has yielded an array of divergent conceptions. But what do these accounts add to normative bioethics? What is solidarity’s distinctive social normative role? Prainsack and Buyx suggest that solidarity be understood as the ‘putty’ of justice. I argue here that the putty metaphor is deeply insightful and—when spelled out in detail—successfully explicates solidarity’s social normative function. Unfortunately, Prainsack …
States as agents and as trustees
In The Shifting Border, Ayelet Shachar observes that the ‘beast’ of state migration policy has broken out of its cage and shifted both outward – to intercept migrants before they can ‘touch base’ and thereby gain rights – and inward, to restrict and subvert the rights of migrants and others in Exclusionary Zones within state territory. Shachar wants to ‘tame’ the beast by obligating states and their agents to uphold basic rights wherever they act…
Introduction to Symposium
This introductory article summarizes some key elements of Monique Deveaux’s book Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements and situates that book in the philosophical literature on global poverty. It then provides an outline of the symposium contributions by Ashwini Vasanthakumar, Luis Cabrera, Brooke Ackerly, Catherine Lu, and Avery Kolers
Sociology (24 works) · Political science (22 works) · Law (21 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Law and economics (10 works) · Economic Justice (8 works)