Conclusion
The questions that prompted this investigation involved trying to determine responsibility for a racially motivated hate crime. In part, given that races are ontologically contested and in many ways unwieldy, racial groups and other large social groups have not been the focus of the group responsibility debate.
Instead, discussions of group agency for conglomerates or shared agency for plural groups have dominated. Entering the debate through this alternative path of narrative provides one way of targeting large social groups specifically To review, as my account has it, racial groups possess narratives, contributed to by many, which contain norms. Some of those norms encourage harm and all members who have contributed to those norms share responsibility when those norms are acted upon. As a result, one’s share of responsibility may be fractional, but it is not non-existent unless one has taken action to uproot the established faulty norm. The way to avoid responsibility, then, is to defy the faulty norms and contribute to changing the narrative.Additional motivations for adopting a narrative approach were that the narrative conception of individuals appears to be more comprehensive than the other standard conceptions and that a narrative account offers promising ways of addressing the reductive, normative, and practical objections, plus issues of group-related punishment, apology, and akrasia. Of course, many aspects of this account have not been defended here and merit further scrutiny.17 Larry May’s (1992) account of shared responsibility among members of large groups is similar to mine in many respects, although he relies on “attitudes” and “climate” rather than “norms” or “narrative.”18 Nonetheless, many of the objections to his view, plus his replies and extensions, would be applicable to mine as well. Indeed, May and Strikwerda (1994) have extended his view to cover men’s shared responsibility for rape.
The narrative view I have sketched would likely corroborate May’s conclusion. Overall, what I have attempted to demonstrate here is that the narrative approach is a novel and potentially useful tool for addressing one of our most vexing moral problems. For as Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Luther King and others rightly remind us, “groups are more immoral than individuals” (292).Notes
1 Acknowledgments: Some aspects of this chapter were published previously in: Striblen, C. (2013) “Collective Responsibility and the Narrative Self,” Social Theory and Practice 39, 1, 147—165; Striblen, C. (2014) Group Responsibility: A Narrative Account, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
2 See, for example, Arras (1997); Strawson (1994); Tomlinson (1997).
3 See, for example, Bratman (1999) or Gilbert (2000).
4 See, for example, Cooper (1968/1991); List and Pettit (2010); Tollefsen (2015).
5 See, for example, Feinberg (1991); May (1992); Striblen (2014).
6 Margaret Gilbert (2013) also offers the unique notion of “joint” responsibility, which she describes as non-distributive yet shared. Most proponents of shared responsibility hold that responsibility distributes in some fashion and most proponents of non-distributive responsibility hold that a group must qualify as an agent; she does neither.
7 Nelson (2001) provides a series of what we might call “reality” constraints on the narrative process (93-104).
8 Elsewhere (Striblen 2014) I describe how Nelson’s view of groups can be expanded using both Anthony Appiah’s (2005) view and a common view in sociology labeled “interactionism” (Turner 1987). This is to suggest, in part, that such a view of groups is neither idiosyncratic nor inconsistent with social science.
9 For a full account see Striblen (2014).
10 This objection appears in Lewis (1948).
11 This is an involuntarily acquired role responsibility, akin to becoming a “daughter.” For a full explanation and defense see Striblen (2014). There I lean heavily on Appiah (2005); May (1992); and Mills (1997).
12 For a similar view on “taking” responsibility, see Held (2002).
13 Many who also lean toward a “collectivist” or “shared” stance still require intention and decisionmaking procedures. See, for example, Bratman (1999); Gilbert (2000); Tuomela (1991).
14 One motivation for this tendency identified by social science is called the Ultimate Attribution Error (UAE). For a fuller description, see Striblen (2014), ch. 2.
15 For a few examples of philosophical treatments of group-related moral emotions see Gilbert (2002); Jaspers (1961); Striblen (2007); Tollefsen (2003).
16 Such an “expressivist” justification for collective punishment is suggested by Golash (2010).
17 For a more fully articulated and defended account see Striblen (2014).
18 I eschew “climate” and “attitudes” in favor of “narrative” and “norms” in part because the former are ephemeral unless present in narrative; furthermore, I argue that May's view does not adequately distinguish perpetrator from victim group members in terms of their contribution to climate. For details see Striblen (2014), ch. 4.
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