Daniele Santoro

Daniele Santoro
Résidents Labex RFIEA+
pas Eurias

dates de séjour

15/09/2014 - 13/02/2015

discipline

Sciences politiques

Fonction d’origine

Professeur

Institution d’origine

Département de sciences politiques, Université Luiss, Rome (Italie)

Fonction actuelle

Chercheur

Institution actuelle

Université du Minho, Braga (Portugal)

pays d'origine

Portugal

projet de recherche

Inequality, Relative Deprivation, and the Significance of Choice

The project explores the concept of relative deprivation and the role that the perception of inequality plays in the moral psychology of self-respect. The working hypothesis is that concept of relative deprivation highlights a crucial aspect of inequality that that it is not reducible to socioeconomic differentials, but it incorporates a subjective perception of one’s position in the social hierarchy. To this purpose, I propose to distinguish between a psychological and a normative dimension of relative deprivation. The psychological dimension focuses on the psychosocial stress people experience when deprived of status or other positional goods. The normative dimension aims to capture the unfair disadvantage people experience when they are deprived of something they believe to be entitled to. On this basis, I elaborate on this distinction from the point of view of the theories of distributive justice, by paying particular attention to Rawls’ notion of ‘self-respect'. The stance is that when one’s social status is perceived as unfair with regard to what people may reasonably expect from their life-prospects, distress arises as a response to lack of control over the ability to pursue their plans. This way, relative deprivation undermines the significance of choices by eroding the significance that people attach to their choices.

biographie

Daniele Santoro is a researcher in the Centre for Ethics, Politics, and Society (CEPS) at the University of Minho (Portugal), and an associate member of the Luiss Center for Ethics and Global Politics in Rome. His research interests lie in political and legal philosophy. His current projects explore how government secrecy affects constitutional rights, the role of dissent in democracy, and the nature of public interest. His contributions on these and related subjects have appeared in Social Epistemology, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophia, Philosophical Topics, and in edited volumes for Routledge and Continuum. He is the author of Speaking Truth to Power — A Theory of Whistleblowing, Springer 2018 (with Manohar Kumar).