Benjamin Ferguson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3873608 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Ferguson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Ferguson |
| SIGNATURE | FERGUSON B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8197-0364 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Data-Driven HIV Humanitarianism, Data Colonialism, and Data Ethics: A Sub-Saharan African (SSA) Perspective
This article examines how data-driven humanitarianism in the HIV/AIDS sector reproduces colonial patterns of extraction and inequality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Drawing on case studies of AI-enabled health data systems, it analyses the ethical implications of large-scale data collection, storage, and transfer in contexts marked by poverty, weak regulatory capacity, and persistent stigma. While datafication and artificial intelligence promise e…
What exploitation is
We experimentally elicit views of what exploitation is from over 2,000 subjects. Our experimental design does not test existing theories of exploitation. Rather, it focuses on more fundamental properties that are the building blocks for these theories. We find, first, that exploitation is not a vacuous concept: Not all economic interactions are deemed exploitative. Second, contrary to several of the major approaches in the literature, both inequa…
African political economy: Contemporary issues
The most hotly debated issues in contemporary political economy are shifting. While the classic discussions of capital and labour, states and markets, the nature of money, and the structure of trad
International bioethics, Ubuntu and HIV testing in Sub-Saharan Africa: An evaluation of Zambia’s HIV testing policy
International bioethical principles place considerable weight on individual rights and autonomy. They require informed consent for both treatment and diagnostic testing. Although individual rights are widely valued, in some non-Western contexts, they receive relatively less weight than other moral values. In particular, the communitarian African philosophy of Ubuntu places a greater emphasis on the collective good of the community than it does on…
Exploitation’s grounding problem
Standard accounts of what makes exploitation wrong ground its wrong in distributive unfairness: when A exploits B he wrongs her by taking a greater share of the benefits from their interaction than he ought. I argue that this standard account does not succeed; distributive unfairness is neither the sole, nor the primary wrong of exploitation. I assume that distributive unfairness is pro tanto wrong. However, I argue that in situations where trans…
Moderate Structural Exploitation
We consider the apparent inability of theories of exploitation to capture common intuitions about structural exploitation. For example, it seems that consumers participate in the exploitation of sweatshop workers, but there is no direct transaction between the parties. This poses a problem for transactional accounts of exploitation. Many address this problem by appealing to structural exploitation. Existing structural accounts fall, primarily, in…
Exploitation as Domination: What Makes Capitalism Unjust
The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism
"Have you ever wondered what libertarians think about vaccine mandates? About gun control? About racial and sexual inequalities? While libertarianism is well-known as a political theory relating to the scope and justification of state authority, the breadth and depth of libertarian work on a wide range of other topics in social and political philosophy is less well-known. This handbook is the first definitive reference on libertarianism that offe…
Routledge Companion to Libertarianism
Territorial rights and colonial wrongs
What is wrong with colonialism? The standard—albeit often implicit—answer to this question has been that colonialism was wrong because it violated the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, where territorial rights were grounded on acquisition theories. Recently, the standard view has come under attack: according to critics, acquisition based accounts do not provide solid theoretical grounds to condemn colonial relations. Indeed, historically …
Why Buy Local
This article critically assesses the moral arguments that speak in favour of three consumer options: buying local food, buying global (non‐local) food, and buying global food while also purchasing carbon offsets to mitigate the environmental impact of food transportation. We argue that because the offsetting option allows one to provide economic benefits to the poorest food workers while also mitigating the environmental impact of food transporta…
Frederick Law Olmsted: A pragmatic exception to Transcendental writing
There has been a resurgence of interest in Frederick Law Olmsted’s career, yet his landscape architecture tends to overshadow his travel writing. This article offers a re-appraisal of his literary oeuvre, which, in its often epistolary and direct style, along with his uniquely technical eye, may strongly resonate with a technology-focused twenty-first century that prizes pragmatic and journalistic writing on topics of social problem-solving. The …
Are we all exploiters
This paper argues that two single‐factor accounts of exploitation are inadequate and instead defends a two‐factor account. Purely distributive accounts of exploitation, which equate exploitation with unfair transaction, make exploitation pervasive and cannot deliver the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. Recent, non‐distributive alternatives, which make unfairness unnecessary for exploitation, largely avoid these problems, but their argum…
Exploitation and the social economy
Many analyses of exploitation focus on the concept as a problematic interaction between two parties. These theories focus on the way in which exploiters dominate (Vrousalis 2013), take advantage of
Kant on Duty in the Groundwork
Are we all exploiters
This paper argues that two single‐factor accounts of exploitation are inadequate and instead defends a two‐factor account. Purely distributive accounts of exploitation, which equate exploitation with unfair transaction, make exploitation pervasive and cannot deliver the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. Recent, non‐distributive alternatives, which make unfairness unnecessary for exploitation, largely avoid these problems, but their argum…
Kant on Duty in the Groundwork
Exploitation and the social economy
Many analyses of exploitation focus on the concept as a problematic interaction between two parties. These theories focus on the way in which exploiters dominate (Vrousalis 2013), take advantage of
Frederick Law Olmsted: A pragmatic exception to Transcendental writing
There has been a resurgence of interest in Frederick Law Olmsted’s career, yet his landscape architecture tends to overshadow his travel writing. This article offers a re-appraisal of his literary oeuvre, which, in its often epistolary and direct style, along with his uniquely technical eye, may strongly resonate with a technology-focused twenty-first century that prizes pragmatic and journalistic writing on topics of social problem-solving. The …
Are we all exploiters
This paper argues that two single‐factor accounts of exploitation are inadequate and instead defends a two‐factor account. Purely distributive accounts of exploitation, which equate exploitation with unfair transaction, make exploitation pervasive and cannot deliver the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. Recent, non‐distributive alternatives, which make unfairness unnecessary for exploitation, largely avoid these problems, but their argum…
Territorial rights and colonial wrongs
What is wrong with colonialism? The standard—albeit often implicit—answer to this question has been that colonialism was wrong because it violated the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, where territorial rights were grounded on acquisition theories. Recently, the standard view has come under attack: according to critics, acquisition based accounts do not provide solid theoretical grounds to condemn colonial relations. Indeed, historically …
Why Buy Local
This article critically assesses the moral arguments that speak in favour of three consumer options: buying local food, buying global (non‐local) food, and buying global food while also purchasing carbon offsets to mitigate the environmental impact of food transportation. We argue that because the offsetting option allows one to provide economic benefits to the poorest food workers while also mitigating the environmental impact of food transporta…
The Routledge Companion to Libertarianism
"Have you ever wondered what libertarians think about vaccine mandates? About gun control? About racial and sexual inequalities? While libertarianism is well-known as a political theory relating to the scope and justification of state authority, the breadth and depth of libertarian work on a wide range of other topics in social and political philosophy is less well-known. This handbook is the first definitive reference on libertarianism that offe…
Routledge Companion to Libertarianism
Exploitation as Domination: What Makes Capitalism Unjust
International bioethics, Ubuntu and HIV testing in Sub-Saharan Africa: An evaluation of Zambia’s HIV testing policy
International bioethical principles place considerable weight on individual rights and autonomy. They require informed consent for both treatment and diagnostic testing. Although individual rights are widely valued, in some non-Western contexts, they receive relatively less weight than other moral values. In particular, the communitarian African philosophy of Ubuntu places a greater emphasis on the collective good of the community than it does on…
Exploitation’s grounding problem
Standard accounts of what makes exploitation wrong ground its wrong in distributive unfairness: when A exploits B he wrongs her by taking a greater share of the benefits from their interaction than he ought. I argue that this standard account does not succeed; distributive unfairness is neither the sole, nor the primary wrong of exploitation. I assume that distributive unfairness is pro tanto wrong. However, I argue that in situations where trans…
Moderate Structural Exploitation
We consider the apparent inability of theories of exploitation to capture common intuitions about structural exploitation. For example, it seems that consumers participate in the exploitation of sweatshop workers, but there is no direct transaction between the parties. This poses a problem for transactional accounts of exploitation. Many address this problem by appealing to structural exploitation. Existing structural accounts fall, primarily, in…
Data-Driven HIV Humanitarianism, Data Colonialism, and Data Ethics: A Sub-Saharan African (SSA) Perspective
This article examines how data-driven humanitarianism in the HIV/AIDS sector reproduces colonial patterns of extraction and inequality in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Drawing on case studies of AI-enabled health data systems, it analyses the ethical implications of large-scale data collection, storage, and transfer in contexts marked by poverty, weak regulatory capacity, and persistent stigma. While datafication and artificial intelligence promise e…
What exploitation is
We experimentally elicit views of what exploitation is from over 2,000 subjects. Our experimental design does not test existing theories of exploitation. Rather, it focuses on more fundamental properties that are the building blocks for these theories. We find, first, that exploitation is not a vacuous concept: Not all economic interactions are deemed exploitative. Second, contrary to several of the major approaches in the literature, both inequa…
African political economy: Contemporary issues
The most hotly debated issues in contemporary political economy are shifting. While the classic discussions of capital and labour, states and markets, the nature of money, and the structure of trad
Sociology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Law and economics (5 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works)