CFP: Incivility, Whistleblowing, and Disobedience: Bad Citizenship or Democratic Dissent?

Submission deadline: June 6, 2014

Conference date(s):
September 8, 2014 - September 10, 2014

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Conference Venue:

Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT), University of Manchester
Manchester, United Kingdom

Topic areas

Details

Call for Papers: Incivility, Whistleblowing, and Disobedience: Bad
Citizenship or Democratic Dissent?
MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory
8-10 September, 2014

The notion of 'good citizenship' and of related ideas of civic virtue,
civility and political obligation have been extensively explored in recent
decades by political theorists. By contrast, the contrary notion of 'bad
citizenship' has received far less attention. With the possible exception of
the literature on civil disobedience, political theorists have found little
to say about uncitizenly behaviour, incivility and civic vice. This is a
somewhat surprising omission given the seemingly more immediate practical
relevance of considerations of bad citizenship to the experience of many
contemporary liberal democratic societies.

Similarly scant attention has been given to the ethics and legitimacy of
whistleblowing in the context of democratic societies. The role of the
whistleblower needs a thorough philosophical analysis since it lies between
(depending on the stance one takes) understanding the act as that
constituting bad or good citizenship. Recent revelations on NSA secrecy
programme, as well as Wikileaks cables, testify to the extent secret
services have reached, in the US and abroad, in their capacity of collecting
citizens’ data, without proper mechanisms of accountability. A question
arises whether these revelations should be considered legitimate instances
of whistleblowing.

This panel is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the
questions surrounding the notion of bad citizenship and seeks to understand
it with reference to disobedience, incivility and vice. The second part of
the panel deals specifically with the role of whistleblower, its
justification (or not), and its distinction with other forms of democratic
dissent, viz. civil disobedience and conscientious objection.

Part I: Bad Citizenship: Disobedience, Incivility and Vice

This section is dedicated to examining the question of what constitutes bad
citizenship. For example, are recent cases of political whistleblowing
unpatriotic and, therefore, to be regarded as instances of bad citizenship?
Or do they express a higher form of civic responsibility? Should we always
consider secretive acts of resistance, such as those performed by members of
the hacking group Anonymous, as examples of bad citizenship? Are acts of
violent protest and resistance legitimate only when citizens face autocratic
governments, or can such acts ever represent acceptable forms of civic
defiance within constitutional democracies?

And what of everyday public 'rudeness' - queue-jumping, swearing, loitering,
proselytising and the wearing of clothes deemed to be excessively revealing
or concealing? What sense can we make of the key concepts here of anti-
social behaviour and incivility? Can any sense be made of such ideas in
diverse, multicultural societies? And what ought the state to do about such
behaviours - should they be prohibited, or do they fall within the domain of
freedom of expression and toleration? How do these behaviours bear on
longer-standing debates in political philosophy around the importance of
social manners and mores, and the ‘ethos’ of justice?

Part II: The Ethics of Whistleblowing

 This section will focus on the role of whistleblowing in democratic
societies and its relevance for political theory. Moving from the debate on
the public impact of recent revelations, we are particularly interested in
exploring two aspects of whistleblowing practices.

The first deals with the criteria of moral justification for whistleblowing.
We’ll seek to answer the following set of questions: what makes an act of
whistleblowing morally permissible? Under which conditions an act of
whistleblowing can be judged to be morally demanded? Moreover, since
whistleblowing is a communicative act meant to convey information of public
interest, which performative conditions should whistleblowing satisfy to be
successful?

Civil libertarians argue that whistleblowing constitutes a genuine act of
democratic dissent when it reveals injustices or illicit practices that are
consequence of secretive governmental practices. This contention requires
further analysis, especially against the charge that whistleblowing is a
breach of sworn oath of office’s duties, or even a betrayal of patriotic
allegiance.
Against these charges, we are interested in answering the following
questions: can whistleblowing constitute a genuine act of democratic
dissent? If so, is it an act of conscientious objection, a form civil
disobedience, or does it constitute a distinct category of dissent?
Relevant to this question are also concerns of publicity and punishment:
should a whistleblower reveal her identity? Should the whistleblower be
willing to submit to the law?

We invite papers which discuss issues relating to either of these parts. If
you are interested in participating in this workshop, please submit an
abstract (750 to 1000 words) to [email protected]  by Friday
June 8, 2014.  Please do earmark in the email the part of the panel (Part I
or II) the submission should be considered for. We intend to circulate full
versions of papers for an enriched discussion, though it is not mandatory
for participation in the workshop. Participants intending to submit full
papers should do so by August 25, 2014.

Workshop Convenors

Derek Edyvane (University of Leeds)   Manohar Kumar (Luiss University, Rome)
Enes Kulenovic (University of Zagreb) Daniele Santoro(Luiss University,Rome)

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