Progressive and regressive uses of reasonable distrust

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 28, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 87-100

  Hedman, Carl ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84887928899     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.1997.tb00365.x     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. For the purposes of this paper, I build on Bernard Williams' characterization of trust and define X's distrust of Y as involving a belief on X's part that she can't rely on Y to do her part in a cooperative venture where X is a "dependent party"; i.e., where X's getting what she wants out of the cooperative venture depends on Y's doing her part, and Y's action is not under X's "immediate control" in the sense that X cannot immediately detect when Y does not do her part." "Formal Structure and Social Reality," in Trust; Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, ed. Diego Gambetta (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 7-8.
2. In drawing a contrast between "unreasonable prejudice" and "reasonable distrust" I assume that prejudice is a bad thing, something to be avoided. For a discussion by a social psychologist of the case for a neutral sense of prejudice, where it is understood simply as a negative attitude members of one group have toward members of another group, see John Duckitt, The Social Psychology of Prejudice (New York: Praeger, 1992), chap. 1.
3. It's interesting to note that some social psychologists go on to characterize the negative intergroup attitude in terms of distrust. See, e.g., M. B. Brewer and R. Kramer, "The Psychology of Intergroup Attitudes and Behavior," Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 36 (1985), p. 230.
4. Annette Baier's essays on trust are brought together in Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
5. Other significant contributions to the growing literature on trust are: Lawrence Thomas, "Trust and Survival," Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 20, nos. 1 & 2 (Spring, 1989)
6. and Trudy Govier, "Distrust as a Practical Problem," ibid., vol. 23, no. 1 (Spring, 1992).
7. This proviso is crucial. As Baier notes, "Exploitation and conspiracy, as much as justice and fellowship, thrive better in an atmosphere of trust. There are immoral as well as moral trust relationships, and trust-busting can be a morally proper goal" (Moral Prejudices, p. 95).
8. Although she was not one of the visiting feminists, Alison Jaggar's "Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology," [in Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, eds. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsal (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)] is the kind of paper I'm talking about. Jaggar begins by suggesting that, contrary to received opinion, "emotions may be helpful and even necessary rather than inimical to the construction of knowledge," and concludes by sketching a case for such "outlaw emotions" as feminist anger.
9. Mary Briody Mahowald notes this tendency of liberal theory in Women and Children in Health Care (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Mahowald contrasts her way of attacking inequality-by paying attention to differences-with a "rather widespread trend among Tiberal'-minded individuals to speak and write in a gender-neutral manner. Corresponding trends exist with regard to race, ethnicity, and religion. In fact, though, differences in sex, race, culture, and religion have important positive and negative consequences in people's lives" (p. 266).
10. Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Bantam, 1971)
11. continues to provide the best example of a theory that takes male privilege to be the primary form of privilege. For a recent example of a theory that takes class privilege to be primary, see Andy Levine, The End of the State (London: Verso, 1987).
12. Ann Ferguson, Sexual Democracy: Women, Oppression, and Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), p. 14.
13. Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), p. 186.
14. Susan Sherwin, No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), p. 88.
15. Mahowald stresses the need for "self-conscious acknowledgment of one's limitations in representing others' needs and interests" and suggests that this "argues for inclusion of a broad range of perspectives for policy making that affects us all" (Women and Children in Health Care, p. 18).
16. Gloria Joseph, "The Incompatible Menage a Trois: Marxism, Feminism and Racism," in Women and Revolution, ed. Lydia Sargent (Boston: South End Press, 1981), p. 97.
17. Noble develops his case for a new Luddism in the three-part essay, "Present Tense Tech- nology," originally published in the now-defunct journal Democracy (1983)
18. republished as Progress Without People: In Defense of Luddism (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing, 1993).
19. I contrast Noble's approach to recent technological developments with that of Andre Gorz in "Luddites, Hippies, and Robots," Prometheus, vol. 7, no. 2 (Dec, 1989).
20. For further discussion of the differential impact on women, see Technology and the Future, ed. Albert Teich (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993)
21. Women Working, ed. Ann Helton Stromberg and Shirley Harkness (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 1998)
22. Men's Work, Women's Worked. Harriet Bradley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
23. That is, it isn't just the elimination of blue-color jobs that had been so important to minority progress after WWII. The jobs that remain are being taken far from the communities where minorities tend to live and they presuppose such things as "computer literacy." William Julius Wilson documents these developments and how they are adversely affecting black people in The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
24. See, e.g., Test-Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood? ed. Rita Arditti et al. (London: Pandora Press, 1989)
25. Man-Made Women: How New Reproductive Technologies Affect Women, ed. Gena Corea et al. (London: Hutchinson 1985)
26. Reproditctive Technologies: Gender Moth- erhood and Medicine ed. Michelle Stanworth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987).
27. Carl Hedman, "The Artificial Womb: Patriarchal Bane or Technological Blessing," Radi- cal Philosophy, 56 (Autumn, 1990).
28. Bernice Johnson Reagon, "Coalition Politics: Turning the Century," in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, 1983), p. 359.
29. Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s," Socialist Review, 15 (1985), pp. 87-88.