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Please join the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics for "Understanding Demonization," a public lecture with Juliana Bidadanure, Associate Professor of Philosophy at NYU.
Title: Understanding Demonization
Abstract: In the age of individual responsibility, those at the bottom of the income hierarchy are routinely shamed. Out-of-work benefits claimants are subject to severe forms of vilification, their unemployment being portrayed as resulting from personal failings. When these shortcomings are constructed as moral failings, we enter the space of “demonization”. Demonization is the portrayal of individuals as wicked threats to the community and as worthy of moral contempt for their alleged behavior. Benefits recipients are demonized when they undergo sustained attacks on their moral character, when they are viewed as deliberately choosing idleness over hard work. The trope of the lazy free rider living at taxpayers’ expense is remarkably uniform across advanced economies and has been an effective strategy to undermine support for welfare. Starting from this example, Bidadanure will offer a normative analysis of demonization, identifying morally significant steps in its workings and unpacking its social function.
Bio: Juliana Bidadanure is Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University. Before moving to NYU in Fall 2023, she was Assistant Professor of Philosophy and, by courtesy, of Political Science, at Stanford University where she founded and led the Stanford Basic Income Lab. Bidadanure is a political philosopher working mostly on social inequalities. Her book Justice Across Ages: Treating Young and Old as Equals (Oxford University Press, 2021) addresses the topic of inequalities between persons at different stages of their lives. She proposes a theory to guide a fair distribution of goods like jobs, healthcare, income, and political power between age groups. Hercurrent project explores the kinds of egalitarian relationships we have reasons to value by looking at modes of relating we have reasons to avoid. This year, she is writing on infantilization and demonization. Bidadanure's work branches from philosophy into public policy. She has written on youth policies, youth quotas in parliaments, basic income, basic capital, and baby bonds, among other proposals.