My research is concerned with questions of political ethics, or questions of how to live well in conditions of increasing human interconnection and accelerating social change.
Philosophically, my work draws from pragmatist and pluralist traditions, especially developing a situationist ethics inspired by John Dewey, which sits alongside an agonistic pluralist commitment to radical democracy. At the centre of my research is a concern to interrogate the philosophical, especially ethical, ideas through which we understand the world, and which guide our actions. In turn, I also try to attend to how philosophical reflection grounded in everyday political experience can assist in addressing pressing social problems, leading to my interest in developing ways of doing political theory in a manner that is engaged with practical political action.
My current research interests include questions of (i) urban justice, especially related to gentrification and the right to the city, (ii) reflections on political theory methodology, particularly developing a distinctly urban political theory and a situationist ethics, as an approach to grounded normative theory drawing from John Dewey’s philosophy, and (iii) a pragmatist genealogy of architectonic conceptions of justice.
Previously, my research focused on the contested idea of universal human rights, including how these ideas have developed, how they have transformed world politics and what further changes they may yet enable as ethical and political claims made within national and transnational institutions as well as within global social movements.
Living Just Enough for the City
This project reconsiders how we think about legitimacy, justice, rights, and citizenship in political theory, using the city as both a site for theorising and a focal point bringing multiple political concerns together. Its central argument is that using the city to get our bearings—in the sense of knowing where we are, as well as developing a distinctive urban disposition—leads to important insights into the pursuit of justice in our troubled present. I addresses the uncertainty and pessimism of our contemporary political moment by focusing on two questions. First, “where are we?” And, second, “where should we be going?” Framing these questions in spatial terms, I argue, opens up new ways of seeing the political world and provides important resources for pursuing positive change. In the project, I argue we should start with the concrete reality of our increasingly global urban experience.
The language of human-rights claims and numerous human-rights institutions shape almost all aspects of our political lives, yet we struggle to know how to judge this development. Scholars give us good reason to be both supportive and sceptical of the universal claims that human rights enable. All too often, however, our evaluations of our human-rights world are not based on sustained consideration of their complex, ambiguous and often contradictory consequences. Reconstructing Human Rights argues that human rights are only as good as the ends they help us realise. We must attend to what ethical principles actually do in the world to know their value. Human rights are a tool that should enable us to challenge political authority and established constellations of political membership by making new claims possible. Human rights claims mobilise the identity of humanity to make demands upon the terms of legitimate authority and challenge established political memberships. In this work, I argue that human rights should be guided by a democratising ethos that enables claims for more radical democratic forms of politics and more inclusive political communities.
This project looks at the claiming of a human right to land and housing by activist groups as an emerging challenge to dominant liberal conceptions of human rights. This project has looked at the development of a human right to housing, considering both the limited institutionalisation of such a right at the national and international levels, while focusing on how social movements have claimed and fought for such a right. This research combines empirical and philosophical work, and looks at the claiming of a human right to land and housing by activist groups around the globe, with an empirical focus on the US and UK where I have had opportunity to work more closely with housing groups.
Dr Joe Hoover 