While distributive justice is concerned with how to fairly distribute the benefits and burdens that arise from social cooperation, productive justice asks how we should organise social cooperation in the first place. My main research project investigates what we owe one another as contributors. In it, I explore what counts as a genuine social contribution, when and why we have duties to contribute, and how these questions should guide our choices about work. A central aim is to challenge the assumption that market-determined wages reliably track social value by examining cases in which they systematically diverge, such as in essential work, unpaid caregiving, or harmful industries. These cases raise broader questions about how societies should reward social contribution, when and why certain wage differentials are unjust, and what we can reasonably expect wages to do.
Publications
Forthcoming. ‘Working from Home and Gender Justice’. In Social Theory and Practice.
Abstract: Working from home has rapidly become commonplace in recent years, expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper asks whether a default employee entitlement to work from home would promote or hinder the pursuit of gender justice. While such a policy would likely improve the employment prospects of women with significant caregiving responsibilities, this could come at the expense of creating a new glass ceiling and exacerbating the gendered division of labour. I argue on pragmatic grounds that feminists should nevertheless endorse the policy, in tandem with measures to mitigate these negative effects.
Forthcoming. Book chapter ‘Caregiving work,’ in Julian Jonker & Grant Rozeboom (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Why think of caregiving as work? What is wrong with its present organisation? And what would be a better alternative? In this chapter, I discuss these questions and offer an overview of contemporary feminist debates around care work.
2024. ‘Moderate Realist Ideology Critique’. In the European Journal of Philosophy, 32(1): 260-273.
Abstract: Realist ideology critique (RIC) is a strand of political realism recently developed in response to concerns that realism is biased toward the status quo. RIC aims to debunk an individual’s belief that a social institution is legitimate by revealing that the belief is caused by that very same institution. Despite its growing prominence, RIC has received little critical attention. In this article, I buck this trend. First, I improve on contemporary accounts of RIC by clarifying its status and the role of motivated reasoning. Second, I show that realist ideology critics face a dilemma: either their account makes deeply implausible epistemological assumptions, or they temper its epistemology at the expense of rendering it toothless. I argue for each horn in turn before revealing the dilemma to be a false one by making a novel distinction between varying strengths of RIC based on their underlying epistemological assumptions. I propose Moderate RIC as a solution: upon discovering that one reason for your belief that a social institution is legitimate is likely malignantly epistemically circular, the belief should undergo further epistemic testing. I respond to three potential objections and suggest that Moderate RIC would make a fruitful addition to political theorists’ methodological toolkit.
Reviews
2023. Review of H. Hester’s & N. Srnicek, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time. In the Journal of Applied Philosophy, 41(1): 177-179.
Under review
Without titles to preserve peer review anonymity.
- Paper on socially necessary work
- Paper on immoral work
- Paper on sexual deception