Part 3 Summary of Findings, Conclusions and
4.3 The Self as a Site of (In)justice
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to work back to establish which human qualities, orientations, attitudes and traits – that is, virtues – are likely to produce the desired outcomes (Hugman 2005; Gray 2010; Clifford 2014).
These tenets give rise to two concerns that are relevant for this study. Firstly, the assumption that consensus about what is ‘good’, and what constitutes a virtuous character, was attainable within a given community or society, is potentially flawed (Clifford 2014). Secondly, to the extent that the human character is regarded as the origin of the ‘good’, ‘right’, ‘just’, and so on, these outcomes depend on the ability of individuals to tune into, scrutinise, understand and care for their ‘selves’ prior to being able to attend to the people, community and society around them. Drawing on Aristotle and Socrates, Michel Foucault for example asserts that, ‘ethics is (only) possible to the extent that a person can be responsible for and responsive to her or his self and from that to her or his encounters with the world’ (Hugman 2005:109; brackets in original, highlights added). In this view, the development of their own character must be regarded as the first project of persons seeking virtue; and it is a function of this being done well that they can then also attend well to other matters, other people, and the afflictions of Others. Thus, while virtue-based approaches do not necessarily disregard individuals’ embeddedness within their social contexts, to the extent that they begin their arguments with the individual character rather than with relationality, interdependency and the practices that arise therein, such approaches do risk reproducing an atomistic view of economic, social, political and ethical life. This view, however, has been identified in Section 4.2 as the source of some of the difficulties people experience in imagining alternatives, and responding justly, to contemporary forms of injustice.
It is, among others, with regard to these two concerns that Clifford (2014) articulates the potentially oppressive effects of an uncritical reliance on virtue ethics. With regard to its tendency to regard people as ‘originating agents’ (Clifford 2014:7) of moral life, he points to the danger of ignoring the complexities of social life. He notes that many moral responsibilities arise precisely because structural processes of injustice lead to certain groups of people being unable to participate on a par with their more privileged members of society and thus lacking agency. Citing Onora O’Neill, Clifford (2014:7) warns that, ‘idealised conceptions of justice simply do not apply … in a world in which … men and women always lack the capacities and the opportunities of idealised agents’. Indeed, as Part 2 of this thesis illustrates, so long as members of certain groups do not enjoy equal participation in the
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economic, political, social, and cultural life of the society of which they are part, they are habitually deprived of the necessary resources, misrecognised, find their voices frequently misrepresented or unheard altogether, and their experiences systematically unacknowledged. In assuming the existence of shared values and common purpose therefore, virtue ethics risks boosting ‘the epistemologically unreliable perceptions of the privileged’. It may lead to virtues being defined ‘in ways that may support rather than undermine dominant values’, and consequently being ‘skewed in favour of the interests of the privileged’ (Tessman, cited in Clifford 2014:9). Foregrounding individual virtue in an ideologically skewed context, however, can contribute to the formulation of unrealistic expectations of what providers of social services and care can offer; of how receivers of services and care will respond; and of what the providers and receivers of services and care, together, ought to achieve. This, in turn, renders both social workers, other practitioners of care, and the receivers of services or care, vulnerable.
Two aspects of this vulnerability are important to consider here. On the one hand, Zembylas (2014:212) observes that where providers of services, or care, pay insufficient attention to the ways in which they are woven into webs of relationships and into their political, economic, social and cultural contexts, attention is drawn to developing their ‘competency’ and ‘skills’
in ways that unjustifiably reduce the provision of services, or care, to a ‘project’ the success of which depends upon their ‘individual ability’. This can draw attention away from
‘organisational and structural factors’, leading instead to appeals to individual virtue ‘against the notion that structural changes must be fought for’ (Tessman, cited in Clifford 2014:12).
This, according to Clifford (2014:12), bears the risk that ‘when services falter’, social workers and other providers of care will make ‘an excellent scapegoat … They will be malleable to the needs of market forces, accepting their lot, making less demand for services, “responsible”
for themselves’. The service providers’ role is complemented, on the other hand, by those who are receiving social services or provisions of care. Service recipients, Clifford (2014:12) contends, stand a good chance of having their ‘grasp of the virtues … found wanting, or inferior to those whose virtues have qualified them for employment in the social care sector’, always with the attendant possibility of being identified further as undeserving of public provision and moral concern. Not only does Clifford (2014:12) say that this double effect directs attention away from ‘power holders and systemic factors’, it also means that ‘self-
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blame and despair … are probable outcomes’ (Clifford 2014:12). In this way, ‘the focus on their own character recommended by virtue ethics … [is] potentially damaging to the professional and service user alike’ (Clifford 2014:12).
In sum then, the development of virtues appears to require principally just communities or societies in relation to which individuals can define and develop their virtues. Yet, the literature reviewed up to this point suggests that such principally just communities or societies do not exist. Still, communities of practice can develop reference points for individuals seeking to deepen their understanding of the requirements of justice and looking for support and fortification in their efforts to respond justly to apparent incidents and structures of injustice. This is how I read Tronto’s (1993:30) assertion that ‘much is required of individuals and their community in order for moral life to exist’. Or, in the words of Young (2011:92):
Responsibility [for justice] … falls on members of a society by virtue of the fact that they are aware moral agents who ought not to be indifferent to the fate of Others and the dangers that states and other organised institutions often pose to some people ... If we see injustices … being committed by the institutions of which we are a part, or believe that such … [injustices]
are being committed, then we have the responsibility to try to speak out against them with the intention of mobilising others to … act together to transform the institutions to promote better ends … (Young 2011:92; highlights added).
What Clifford’s (2014) critique of virtue ethics points to, is that as individuals engage one another in response to the kinds of structural processes of injustices in which they are implicated, there is a need for criticality, reflexivity and mindfulness of everyone’s inherent interconnectedness and interdependence.