Who deserves what? Analyzing inequalities in institutional decision-making

Undergraduate / Graduate

A key element of societal structuring is producing and reproducing ways to identify ourselves and categorize each other. Ways of differentiating often carry with them implicit or explicit moral assessments - is this difference good or bad, valuable or not? Government institutions and other systems of social organization make decisions and allocate resources based on markers of difference. Therefore, inequalities based on morally loaded categories become embedded in systems that decide who is deserving of earning a diagnosis, health care, a legal status or other resources. This course looks at the ways people become labeled (desirably or not), how these labels impact institutional or systemic decision-making, and how moral assessments are present in justifications of such decisions. Over the quarter we will introduce and apply the analytic of deservingness and investigate decision-making processes (e.g., diagnosis, legal claims, insurance coverage) in various geographic locations and settings with a focus on medical, legal, and bureaucratic institutions. We will explore themes of objectivity, evaluation, expert intervention, inequality, systemic violence and moral justification. Primary course questions include: How do institutions and governments make decisions? How are their decisions justified? What role do experts and expert knowledge play in decision-making? As an analytic tool, what does deservingness make visible about decision-making processes and their impacts?