WS/ES 390/Das Gupta/ Spring 2008

Guidelines for Group Exercises in Ethical Deliberation (10% of total grade)

Requirements:

• Each student will sign up for one of the topics listed below to formulate group exercises that will allow students to deliberate on the range of ethical positions that one can take on the topic.   This means several of you will be in charge on particular weeks for these exercises.
• The exercise needs to be formulated in consultation with me.  We can do this by e-mail or you can meet as a group with me during my office hours (W: 1-4pm, Geroge 306).
• Length: Max 30 mins
• The exercise will be based on the readings we do in class. You will be drawing on the knowledge that you will be building up during the course.
• The exercise will be graded on the effectiveness of the exercise in drawing out the ethical issues (content) and guiding your fellow students through their deliberation of these issues (level and quality of participation).

Goal:
This course will take a rights and social justice approach to racism and sexism as systems of oppression that have emerged out of particular historical circumstances.  Each ethical question will be considered in every day contexts and as having a history. The exercise should aim at moving students to consider substantive outcomes rather than formal, means-ends oriented outcomes.  In this way, we can move away from nominal justice toward envisioning social arrangements that can make gender and racial equality real for women and men living in the United States and affected by U.S. policies.
Resources:  
To plan this exercise all of you will read A Framework for Ethical Decision Making.  This page was developed by The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at the Santa Clara University which has several links to various kinds of resources that will be useful for you to think about ethical issues and exercises. You should also hear Justice Talking, a hour-long NPR show that takes up "hot" topics to expose different positions on it and invite audience participation.  This show can be heard online and will open up in RealPlay.

TOPICS and Tentative Dates:

• 2/25: Moral Panics: Media, Public Opinion and the Rule of Law in the Massie Case
• 3/17:Confronting Sexism in Communities of Color
• 3/31: Gender Violence and Culture
• 4/7: Reproductive Choice, Reproductive Rights
• 4/28: Cultural Appropriation, Cultural Appreciation

Pointers for Group Exercise Leaders:
Moral Panics
a)  Use the Massie case to differentiate between morality and ethics. 
b) Consider an important debate in feminist ethics:  how to argue against sexism (in this case, rape) and racism (in this case, the portrayal of Native Hawaiian and Asian men as rapists and white men as honorable)
c)  Consider the relationship between ethics and law 
d)  Consider media ethics 
e)  Consider the ethical basis of models of White anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and interracial solidarity

Confronting Sexism in Communities of Color
a)      Identify and consider the various positions found within Native American sovereignty movements on gender violence. 
b)      Identify and consider the ethical dilemmas that Black women face in their communities when speaking up about gender violence. 
c) Consider the role of an insurgent musical form such as rap in the context of gender equality.

Gender Violence and Culture
a) What is cultural relativism?  Can it lead to ethical relativism?
b)  What are the different ethical positions that have been taken by the women's movement on the ethics of cultural responses to gender violence?
c)  What kind of balance needs to be struck to respond to gender violence in culturally sensitive ways?

Reproductive Choice, Reproductive Rights
a) Why is birth control controversial even within the feminist movement? 
b) What are the ethics of choice? How can the emphasis on choice be ethically problematic?
c) Consider the ethical shift in transforming the language of reproductive choice into that of reproductive rights.

Cultural Appropriation, Cultural Appreciation
a) How does one determine whether the adoption of a cultural practice is an act of appreciation or appropriation?
b) What are the various possible ethnical positions on adopting cultures?
c) What are the ethics of veiling?  Why are U.S. feminist positions on veiling controversial?  Why is veiling controversial among women in the Middle East?
d) What kinds of ethical positions need to be developed to avoid Orientalism?