Unjust History and Its New Reproduction—A Reply to My Critics

Demands calling for reparations for historical injustices—injustices whose original victims and perpetrators are now dead—constitute an important component of contemporary struggles for social and transnational justice. Reparations are only one way in which the unjust past is salient in contemporary politics. In my book, Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, I put forward a framework to conceptualise the normative significance of the unjust past. In this article, I will engage with the insightful comments and try to address the concerns of the contributors to the symposium on my book. I will discuss (i) whether and in what sense my framework incorporates past-regarding duties, (ii) how it is different from causal interpretations of the relationship between past and present injustice, (iii) whether it can carve out a greater place for blame in our thinking about responsibility for (historical) structural injustice, (iv) whether such a responsibility needs to hinge upon an account of solidarity, and (v) how de-temporalising injustice can cast new light on immigration politics. In particular, I will stress and further clarify the importance that the notion of ‘structural debt’, which my book develops to reflect on historical responsibility, can play in thinking about what is owed to an unjust history.

Global Climate Change—Who Ought to Pay the Bill?

Global climate change is a significant challenge for current and, particularly, future generations. In the public debate about the fair allocation of associated costs commonly the moral claim that the developed countries should burden the costs is expressed. To support this claim, often four moral arguments, based on the theory of justice, are raised: (i) the polluter pays, (ii) the historical responsibility, (iii) the beneficiary pays, and (iv) the ability to pay. The aim of the paper is to assess whether these principles impose a duty on the developed countries and whether a fair allocation of costs would be achieved.

Media and History: Discourse of Historical Responsibility in a Changing World

В статье проанализированы особенности трансформации аксиологических функций медиа в отношении общественных представлений о прошлом в контексте антагонистического, космополитического и агонического проектов коллективной памяти. Обосновывается мысль, что переход от антагонистического к космополитическому типу коллективных воспоминаний в прошлом столетии и обозначившийся в начале XXI в. поворот к элементам агонического типа способствуют трансформации функций медиа и повышению их аксиологического статуса как среды развертывания дискурса исторической ответственности. Это связано с усилением роли и значения медиа в качестве инструмента конструирования самого дискурса исторической ответственности, а также инструмента демаркации различных ценностных сред обращения к прошлому и их носителей – сообществ памяти. The article deals with actual problems of the transformation of the axiological functions of media in relation to public representations of the past in the context of antagonistic, cosmopolitan and agonistic projects of collective memory. The transition from the antagonistic to the cosmopolitan type of collective memories in the last century and the turn towards elements of the agonistic type that has emerged today contribute to the transformation of media functions. This transformation is associated with the strengthening not so much of their epistemological status as their axiological status in relation to the past. The axiological status of media is associated with understanding it as a significant environment for the deployment of the discourse of historical responsibility. Modern media act as a tool for constructing the very discourse of historical responsibility, as well as a tool for demarcating various value environments of referring to the past and their carriers - communities of memory.

Achieving The 1.5 °C Goal with Equitable Mitigation in the Latin American Countries

During the past years, the impact of climate change in the Latin America region has become more evident, and is affecting its natural resources and delaying sustainable development. Achieving the 1.5°C long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement while ensuring the right to sustainable development, is of particular interest for regions such as Latin America which are highly vulnerable and have a low capacity of adaptation. This article seeks to analyse if the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted within the Paris Agreement framework by the Latin American countries align with achieving the 1.5°C goal. For this analysis, the cumulative emissions for the 2018–2100 period are distributed among the region and its countries using the climate justice criteria (equality and historical responsibility) outlined in the Model of Climate Justice (MCJ). The results of the MCJ compatible with the 1.5°C global temperature scenario are then compared with the cumulative emissions implied in the NDCs submitted by the Latin American countries. Two main conclusions are obtained from the NDC analysis. First, the Latin American region, in 2030, will consume 67.8% of the emissions budget allocated by the MCJ until the end of the century. Second, this percentage could be reduced if, firstly, the conditional commitments within the NDC that require foreign aid are achieved, and, secondly, those countries that will consume their entire emissions budget by 2030 submit reviewed NDCs that increase the ambition of their mitigation commitments.

Social framework of historical responsibility: in search of rational grounds for historical estimates

Автор статьи настаивает на необходимости определения оснований социальной ответственности, чтобы избежать апелляции к эмоциям и моральному дискурсу при оценке исторических событий. Показано, что идеи И. Канта не дают возможности разрешить проблему ответственности вне свободы и концептуализировать коллективную ответственность. Некоторые решения предложены Х. Арендт, осмысляющей политическую ответственность как коллективную. Структурный подход А.М. Янг позволяет перенести акцент на деперсонализацию в условиях большого числа посредников, последствия действий которых невозможно просчитать, и оценивать ответственность в категориях каузальности. Говоря о присвоении коллективной ответственности личностью и оценивая степень ответственности, необходимо учитывать уровень вовлеченности в структуру и качество выполняемых задач. In the proposed article, the author insists on the need to determine the grounds of social responsibility, since this will avoid appeals to emotions and moral discourse when evaluating historical events. At the first step, the author turns to the ideas of I. Kant, showing that the resources of his theory do not allow solving the problems of responsibility outside of freedom and conceptualizing collective responsibility. The author finds some solutions in X. Arendt, conceptualizing political responsibility as a collective one. A.M. Young's structural approach allows us to shift the focus to depersonalization in the conditions of a large number of intermediaries, the consequences of whose actions cannot be calculated, and to assess responsibility in the categories of causality. Thus, the author speaks about the assignment of collective responsibility by an individual; while assessing the degree of responsibility, it is necessary to take into account the level of involvement in the structure and quality of the tasks performed. This allows us to understand the role of historical dynamics actors without emotional and moral assessments.

Traumatization of the Past and Martyrological Thinking in the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet Space

The purpose of the article is to analyze the mechanisms of the transformation of martyrological thinking in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. The methodological basis of the study is constituted by the works written by the representatives of functionalism (E. Durkheim, M. Halbwachs, P. Bourdieu, J.C. Alexander), who raise the issue of the important role of religious rituals and forms of thinking in social space. Martyrological thinking creates martyrdom cults, performing an ambivalent function. On the one hand, this thinking is a way to maintain a collective identity, and on the other, a way to damage and destroy it. The author concludes that in Soviet society two main stages that formed martyrdom cults can be distinguished: the periods of the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. In both cases, martyrological thinking was an important factor in the consolidation of the society. In post-Soviet society, martyrological thinking becomes a factor that causes the deconstruction of the symbolic space and a hidden factor in the destabilization of the political organization. The perception of the conservative part of the Russian society is expressed in the formation of the cult of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, which, on the one hand, allows to mitigate the historical responsibility, and on the other becomes a moral justification for criticizing the continuity of modern Russian power in relation to the Soviet Union.

Critical Discourse of Discursive Pluralism and Inclusivism of Islamic Leadership in the Local-National Context

This study aims to find the value of pluralism and inclusivism in the discursive leadership of Islam. The data was collected through the recording of documents from the discursive leader of the Islamic organization Nahdlatul Wathan (abbreviated NW), as well as the governor of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB abbreviated), Indonesia, namely Mr. Guru Bajang (abbreviated as TGB). Data is in the form of thought texts, statements, TGB actions, and other parties' statements as discursive. TGB is positioned as a discursive storyteller as well as a guide in its transformation. Data were analyzed according to the communication function in functional grammar and Critical Discourse Analysis component analysis. Through this study, it was found that the discretion of the TGB was related to optimism, alignment of Islamic values, safeguarding the Unitary Republic of Indonesia, caring for diversity, and building the nation as a discursive common property and needs as a plural society and transformed inclusively. As an ideational communication function, discursive becomes TGB aspirational form of contextual dynamism, as an instrument of accelerating interpersonal development agenda, and textual future historical responsibility. The five discursive TGB in this study belong and jointly guide the dynamics of the future. TGB as a storyteller has a reciprocal relation to the five discourses and has shown results through development progress in the context of NTB and Indonesia.

A Study on Hainan University’s Development in the Context of Free Trade Zone Construction

The Hainan Free Trade Zone represents not only Hainan’s significant contribution to China’s modernization and the advancement of Asian civilization, but also the historical responsibility that China’s revival and Asian prosperity has entrusted to Hainan. The orientation of industrial development will be carried out in accordance with national demands, regional strategic needs, and local development needs, assuming that the location of Hainan Free Trade Zone and Free Trade Port has been clarified. This article focuses on the analysis of Hainan University’s student management concept innovation and the construction of a high-quality campus culture system from the perspective of Hainan University’s development during the construction of the free trade zone.

How Fairness Principles in the Climate Debate Relate to Theories of Distributive Justice

A central question in international climate policy making is how to distribute the burdens of keeping global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. In particular, there are four distributional issues: how to allocate the total amount of greenhouse gases that can still be emitted, who should bear the costs of mitigation, who should bear the costs of adaptation to unavoidable climate change, and who should bear the costs of residual climate damage. Regarding these distributional issues the academic literature offers a plethora of fairness principles, such as ‘polluter pays’, ‘beneficiary pays’, ‘equal per capita rights’, ‘grandfathering’, ‘ability to pay’, ‘historical responsibility’ and ‘cost effectiveness’. Remarkably, there is a theoretical gap between these principles and the central theories of distributive justice in moral and political philosophy. As a consequence, it is unclear how these principles are related, whether they can be combined or are mutually exclusive, and what the fundamental underlying values are. This paper aims to elucidate that debate. Understanding the different underlying values may facilitate bridge-building and movement in negotiation positions.