POLI 773 Global Justice and Territory
Dr. Cara Nine
Thursdays 12:30-3:20 pm
Hamilton Hall 365
Territorial rights are foundational to contemporary political theory. Nearly every theory of democratic membership, global and domestic distributive justice, collective self-determination, national identity, immigration, political legitimacy, political obligation, or international relations and includes territorial rights playing a formative, yet often uncredited, role.
In this course, we first explore the origins of contemporary liberal theories of territorial rights—found in the debate about the global scope of distributive justice. The upshot here is that even though territorial rights are central to global distributive justice debates, there are few elements in distributive justice theories to justify territorial rights themselves. We will then look at modern theories of territorial rights, including Grotius, Locke, and Kant. With that necessary background under our belts, we move on to discuss leading territorial rights theories defended in the past 20 years. The course will conclude with the ecological shift in territorial rights theory that offers indigenous and other alternatives to state-centric approaches to natural resource and environmental system management.
We will read authors such as: John Rawls, Thomas Pogge, Anna Stilz, Margaret Moore, David Miller, A.J. Simmons, Jeremy Waldron, Avery Kolers, Omar Dahbour, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Alejandra Mancilla, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Lea Ypi, and Taiaiake Alfred.
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