Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights [Paperback]

Poverty, Agency, and Human Rightscollects thirteen new essays that analyze how human agency relates to poverty and human rights respectively as well as how agency mediates issues concerning poverty and social and economic human rights. No other collection of philosophical papers focuses on the diverse ways poverty impacts the agency of the poor, the reasons why poverty alleviation schemes should also promote the agency of beneficiaries, and the fitness of the human rights regime to secure both economic development and free agency.

The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 considers the diverse meanings of poverty both from the standpoint of the poor and from that of the relatively well-off. Part 2 examines morally appropriate responses to poverty on the part of persons who are better-off and powerful institutions. Part 3 identifies economic development strategies that secure the agency of the beneficiaries. Part 4 addresses the constraints poverty imposes on agency in the context of biomedical research, migration for work, and trafficking in persons.

Introduction, Diana Tietjens Meyers
Part 1: Thinking through the Meanings of Poverty
1. Surviving Poverty, Claudia Card
2. Poverty Knowledge, Coercion, and Social Rights: A Discourse Ethical Contribution to Social Epistemology, David Ingram
3. Rethinking Coercion for a World of Poverty and Transnational Migration, Diana Tietjens Meyers

Part 2: Ethical Responses to Poverty
4. Responsibility for Violations of the Human Right to Subsistence, Elizabeth Ashford
5. Global Poverty, Decent Work, and Remedial Responsibilities: What the Developed World Owes to the Developing World and Why, Gillian Brock
6. Trafficking in Human Beings: Partial Compliance Theory, Enforcement Failure, and Obligations to Victims, Leslie P. Francis and John Francis
7. Are My Hands Clean? Responsibility for Global Gender Disparities, Alison Jaggar