Do global injustices such as climate change, sweatshop labour and global poverty mean that all of us should become activists?

Dr Joshua Hobbs argues that ordinary citizens can address global injustices not just through activism, but by supporting activists in a journal article published on the 12th November.

A new journal article by Dr Joshua Hobbs, Lecturer and Consultant in Applied Ethics at IDEA: the Ethics Centre, suggests that there are reasons to resist the conclusion that all ordinary citizens should become activists and provides some answers about what we might do instead.

Published in the journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, the article, Between Activism and Apathy: Global Structural Injustice and Ordinary Citizens – argues that we all share a political responsibility to address global structural injustices, but that this need not require all of us becoming activists.

Dr Hobbs explains that there are a range of practical and principled reasons why ordinary citizens might legitimately choose to pursue lives that do not foreground political activism.

However, our responsibility to address global structural injustices does not disappear.

Dr Hobbs suggests that one way those of us living non-activist lives can act on this responsibility is through ‘scaffolding responsibilities’ – supporting the activism of others.

As Dr Hobbs argues, it is vital that we recognise the role of ordinary citizens in scaffolding political activism. “From the Civil Rights Movement to the modern day, political movements have relied on the support of ordinary citizens engaged in scaffolding.”

“By choosing to take up this responsibility, ordinary citizens need not become activists in order to combat global structural injustice.”

Read Dr Hobbs’ full paper online in journal Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy