Collective responsibility

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Collective responsibility or collective guilt, is the responsibility of organizations, groups and societies. [1] [2] Collective responsibility in the form of collective punishment is often used as a disciplinary measure in closed institutions, e.g., boarding schools (punishing a whole class for the actions of one known or unknown pupil), military units, prisons (juvenile and adult), psychiatric facilities, etc. The effectiveness and severity of this measure may vary greatly, but it often breeds distrust and isolation among their members. Historically, collective punishment is a sign of authoritarian tendencies in the institution or its home society. [3] [4]

Contents

In ethics, both methodological individualists and normative individualists question the validity of collective responsibility. [5] Normally, only the individual actor can accrue culpability for actions that they freely cause. The notion of collective culpability seems to deny individual moral responsibility. [6] Contemporary systems of criminal law accept the principle that guilt shall only be personal. [7] According to genocide scholar A. Dirk Moses, "The collective guilt accusation is unacceptable in scholarship, let alone in normal discourse and is, I think, one of the key ingredients in genocidal thinking." [8]

In business

As the business practices known as corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability mature and converge with the responsibilities of governments and citizens, the term "collective responsibility" is beginning to be more widely used.[ citation needed ]

Collective responsibility is widely applied in corporations, where the entire workforce is held responsible for failure to achieve corporate targets (for example, profit targets), irrespective of the performance of individuals or teams which may have achieved or overachieved within their area. [9] Collective punishment, even including measures that actually further harm the prospect of achieving targets, is applied as a measure to 'teach' the workforce.

In culture

The concept of collective responsibility is present in literature, most notably in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", a poem telling the tale of a ship's crew who died of thirst after they approved of one crew member's killing of an albatross.

1959's Ben-Hur and 1983's prison crime drama Bad Boys depict collective responsibility and punishment. The play 'An Inspector Calls' by J.B Priestley also features the theme of collective responsibility throughout the investigation process. [10]

In politics

In some countries with parliamentary systems, there is a convention that all members of a cabinet must publicly support all government decisions, even if they do not agree with them. Members of the cabinet that wish to dissent or object publicly must resign from their positions or be sacked. [11]

As a result of collective responsibility, the entire government cabinet must resign if a vote of no confidence is passed in parliament.

In law

Where two or more persons are liable in respect of the same obligation, the extent of their joint liability varies among jurisdictions.

In religion

The Jewish faith recognizes two kinds of sin, offenses against other people, and offenses against God. An offense against God may be understood as a violation of a contract (the Covenant between God and the Children of Israel). Ezra, a priest and a scribe, was the leader of a large group of exiles. On his return to Jerusalem, where he was required to teach the Jews to obey the laws of God, he discovered that the Jews had been marrying non-Jews. He tore his garments in despair and confessed the sins of Israel before God, before he went on to purify the community. [12] The Book of Jeremiah (Yirmiyahu [ירמיהו]) can be organized into five sub-sections. One part, Jeremiah 2-24, displays scorn for the sins of Israel. The poem in 2:1–3:5 shows the evidence of a broken covenant against Israel. [13]

This concept is found in the Old Testament (or the Tanakh), some examples of it are the account of the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah and in some interpretations, the Book of Joshua's Achan. In those records, entire communities were punished for the actions of the vast majority of their members. This was accomplished in as much as it is impossible to state whether there were no other righteous people, or that there were children who were too young to be responsible for their deeds.

Through this framework of inductive reasoning, both the account of the Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah do identify righteous people who happen to be the immediate or prospective family members of a prophet or prophet's nephew, along with them. These sequences of events are reconciled for the former example afterwards as the etiological basis for the reader's presumed good fortunes in the Noahic covenant [14] with all living creatures, in which God promises never again to destroy all life on Earth (a category implicitly broader than the unrighteous) by flood [15] and creates the rainbow as the sign of this "everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth", [16] and for the latter example pre-empted with an explicitly stated numerical target of 9 other community members' lives to be put in peril (and to have an ostensibly lower number of homes destroyed, being located in Sodom) due to a hypothetical 10th's evaluation as unrighteous. [17]

The practice of blaming the Jews for Jesus' death is the longest-lasting example of collective responsibility. In this case, the blame was not only cast upon the Jews of Jesus's time, it was also cast upon successive generations of Jews. This practice is documented in Matthew 27:25-66 New International Version (NIV) 25: "All the people answered, 'His blood is on us and on our children!'"

Collective punishment

The announcement of the execution of 100 Polish roundup (Pol: lapanka) hostages as revenge for the assassination of five German policemen and one SS man by Armia Krajowa's guerrilla fighters (referred to in the text as: a Polish "terrorist organization in British service"). Warsaw, 2 October 1943. Bekanntmachung Warschau 1943.jpg
The announcement of the execution of 100 Polish roundup (Pol: łapanka) hostages as revenge for the assassination of five German policemen and one SS man by Armia Krajowa's guerrilla fighters (referred to in the text as: a Polish "terrorist organization in British service"). Warsaw, 2 October 1943.

Collective responsibility in the form of collective punishment is often used as a disciplinary measure in closed institutions, e.g. boarding schools (punishing a whole class for the actions of one known or unknown pupil), military units, prisons (juvenile and adult), psychiatric facilities, etc. The effectiveness and severity of this measure may vary greatly, but it often breeds distrust and isolation among their members. Historically, collective punishment is a sign of authoritarian and/or totalitarian tendencies in the institution and/or its home society. [3] For example, in the Soviet Gulags, all members of a brigada (work unit) were punished for bad performance of any of its members. [4]

Collective punishment is also practiced in the situation of war, economic sanctions, etc., presupposing the existence of collective guilt. [18] Collective guilt, or guilt by association, is the controversial collectivist idea that individuals who are identified as a member of a certain group carry the responsibility for an act or behavior that members of that group have demonstrated, even if they themselves were not involved. [19] Contemporary systems of criminal law accept the principle that guilt shall only be personal. [7]

During the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Germans applied collective responsibility: any kind of help which was given to a person of Jewish faith or origin was punished with death, and not only the rescuer, but his/her family was also executed. [20] [21] [22] This was widely publicized by the Germans. [23] [24] During the occupation, for every German killed by a Pole, 100-400 Poles were shot in retribution. [25] Communities were held collectively responsible for the purported Polish counter-attacks against the invading German troops. Mass executions of łapanka hostages were conducted every single day during the Wehrmacht advance across Poland in September 1939 and thereafter. [26]

Another example of collective punishment was applied after the war, when ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe were collectively blamed for Nazi crimes, resulting in the committing of numerous atrocities against the German population, including killings (see Expulsion of Germans after World War II and Beneš decrees). [27]

Perception

Entitativity is the perception of groups as being entities in themselves (an entitative group), independent of any of the group's members. [28]

Ethics

In ethics, individualists question the idea of collective responsibility.

Methodological individualists challenge the very possibility of associating moral agency with groups, as distinct from their individual members, and normative individualists argue that collective responsibility violates principles of both individual responsibility and fairness. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) [5]

Normally, only the individual actor can accrue culpability for actions that they freely cause. The notion of collective culpability seems to deny individual moral responsibility. Does collective responsibility make sense? History is filled with examples of a wronged man who tried to avenge himself, not only on the person who has wronged him, but on other members of the wrongdoer's family, tribe, ethnic group, religion, or nation. [6]

According to A. Dirk Moses, "The collective guilt accusation is unacceptable in scholarship, let alone in normal discourse and is, I think, one of the key ingredients in genocidal thinking." [29]

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guilt (emotion)</span> Cognitive or an emotional experience

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justice</span> Concept of moral fairness and administration of the law

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide denial</span> Attempt to deny the scale and severity of genocide

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greek genocide</span> 1913–1922 genocide of Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire

The Greek genocide, which included the Pontic genocide, was the systematic killing of the Christian Ottoman Greek population of Anatolia, which was carried out mainly during World War I and its aftermath (1914–1922) – including the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1923) – on the basis of their religion and ethnicity. It was perpetrated by the government of the Ottoman Empire led by the Three Pashas and by the Government of the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, against the indigenous Greek population of the Empire. The genocide included massacres, forced deportations involving death marches through the Syrian Desert, expulsions, summary executions, and the destruction of Eastern Orthodox cultural, historical, and religious monuments. Several hundred thousand Ottoman Greeks died during this period. Most of the refugees and survivors fled to Greece. Some, especially those in Eastern provinces, took refuge in the neighbouring Russian Empire.

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Armenian genocide denial is the negationist claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In its aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed. Denial has been the policy of every government of the Ottoman Empire's successor state, the Republic of Turkey, as of 2024.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taner Akçam</span> Turkish-German historian and sociologist (born 1953)

Altuğ Taner Akçam is a Turkish-German historian and sociologist. During the 1990s, he was the first Turkish scholar to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and has written several books on the genocide, such as A Shameful Act (1999), From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (2004), The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity (2012), and Killing Orders (2018). He is recognized as a "leading international authority" on the subject. Akçam's frequent participation in public debates on the legacy of the genocide have been compared to Theodor Adorno's role in postwar Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German collective guilt</span> Collective guilt attributed to Germany

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudia Card</span> American philosopher

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The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide is a 2006 book by Guenter Lewy about the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. In the book, Lewy argues that the high death toll among Ottoman Armenians was a byproduct of the conditions of the marches and on sporadic attacks rather than a planned attempt to exterminate them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide justification</span> Attempts to claim genocide is a moral action

Genocide justification is the claim that a genocide is morally excusable/defensible, necessary, and/or sanctioned by law. Genocide justification differs from genocide denial, which is an attempt to reject the occurrence of genocide. Perpetrators often claim that genocide victims presented a serious threat, justifying their actions by stating it was legitimate self-defense of a nation or state. According to modern international criminal law, there can be no excuse for genocide. Genocide is often camouflaged as military activity against combatants, and the distinction between denial and justification is often blurred.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Germany and the Armenian genocide</span>

During World War I, Germany was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire, which perpetrated the Armenian genocide. Many Germans present in eastern and southern Anatolia witnessed the genocide, but censorship and self-censorship hampered these reports, while German newspapers reported Ottoman denials of the genocide. Approximately 800 officers and 25,000 soldiers of the Imperial German Army were sent to the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I to fight alongside the Ottoman Army, with German commanders serving in the Ottoman high command and general staff. It is known that individual German military advisors signed some of the orders that led to Ottoman deportations of Armenians, a major component of the genocide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assassination of Talaat Pasha</span> 1921 assassination in Berlin, Germany

On 15 March 1921, Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian assassinated Talaat Pasha—former grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire and the main architect of the Armenian genocide—in Berlin. At his trial, Tehlirian argued, "I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer"; the jury acquitted him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Causes of the Armenian genocide</span> Differing views of what caused the Armenian genocide

Differing views of what caused the Armenian genocide include explanations focusing on nationalism, religion, and wartime radicalization and continue to be debated among scholars. In the twenty-first century, focus has shifted to multicausal explanations. Most historians agree that the genocide was not premeditated before World War I, but the role of contingency, ideology, and long-term structural factors in causing the genocide continues to be discussed.

References

  1. ↑ Collective Responsibility in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  2. ↑ Gregory Mellema (1997). Collective Responsibility. Rodopi. ISBN   90-420-0311-1.
  3. 1 2 "Personality traits predict authoritarian tendencies, study finds". PsyPost. 29 September 2017. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
  4. 1 2 Alexopoulos, Golfo (January 2008). "Stalin and the Politics of Kinship: Practices of Collective Punishment, 1920s–1940s". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 50: 91–117. doi:10.1017/S0010417508000066. S2CID   143409375.
  5. 1 2 Smiley, Marion (1 January 2011). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  6. 1 2 Larry May; Stacey Hoffman (27 October 1992). Collective Responsibility: Five Decades of Debate in Theoretical and Applied Ethics. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 36–. ISBN   978-0-7425-7402-1.
  7. 1 2 Edwards, James (2018), "Theories of Criminal Law", in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 6 March 2019
  8. ↑ Anderson, Margaret Lavinia; Reynolds, Michael; Kieser, Hans-Lukas; Balakian, Peter; Moses, A. Dirk; Akçam, Taner (2013). "Taner Akçam, The Young Turks' crime against humanity: the Armenian genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)". Journal of Genocide Research. 15 (4): 463–509. doi:10.1080/14623528.2013.856095. S2CID   73167962. This is a telling slip; Lewy is talking about 'the Armenians' as if the defenceless women and children who comprised the deportation columns were vicariously responsible for Armenian rebels in other parts of the country. The collective guilt accusation is unacceptable in scholarship, let alone in normal discourse and is, I think, one of the key ingredients in genocidal thinking. It fails to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, on which international humanitarian law has been insisting for over a hundred years now.
  9. ↑ "Building a culture of Responsibility in CEP Plant Timișoara – Continental" . Retrieved 6 March 2019.
  10. ↑ Christie, William (13 October 2006). Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-0-230-62785-7 (inactive 1 November 2024). ISBN   978-0-230-62785-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)[ page needed ]
  11. ↑ tutor2u (22 December 2018). "Collective Cabinet Responsibility". tutor2u. Retrieved 22 December 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  12. ↑ Ezra 7–10
  13. ↑ O'Connor 2007, p. 491.
  14. ↑ Gen 9:1–17
  15. ↑ 9:11
  16. ↑ 9:12–17
  17. ↑ Collective responsibility at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  18. ↑ Dickson, Eric. "On the (in) effectiveness of collective punishment: An experimental investigation" (PDF). NYU.edu.
  19. ↑ Fletcher, George (January 2004). "Collective Guilt and Collective Punishment". Theoretical Inquiries in Law. 5 (1): 163–178. doi:10.2202/1565-3404.1089. S2CID   59937653.
  20. ↑ "Jozef & Wiktoria Ulma – The Righteous Among The Nations – Yad Vashem". Archived from the original on 13 August 2013. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  21. ↑ "Vasiuta Wegrzynowska and her children – Righteous Among the Nations". Archived from the original on 2 June 2016. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  22. ↑ "Malgorzata Wolska and her children – Righteous Among the Nations". Archived from the original on 16 May 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  23. ↑ "Info". citinet.net. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  24. ↑ "The Nazi abuse of the Polish people continues – WWII Today". ww2today.com. 19 June 2013. Archived from the original on 9 May 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
  25. ↑ "Project InPosterum: Forgotten Survivors. Polish Christians Remember The Nazi Occupation<".
  26. ↑ Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (2004). Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939–1947. Lexington Books. pp. 92, 105, 118, and 325. ISBN   0739104845.
  27. ↑ Steffen Prauser and Arfon Rees, "The Expulsion of 'German' Communities from Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War" Archived 1 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine , cadmus.iue.it, European University Institute, Florence. HEC No. 2004/1, pp. 53–54; accessed 26 May 2015.
  28. ↑ Hamilton, David L.; Sherman, Steven J.; Castelli, Luigi (1 January 2002). "A Group By Any Other Name—The Role of Entitativity in Group Perception". European Review of Social Psychology. 12 (1): 139–166. doi:10.1080/14792772143000049. ISSN   1046-3283. S2CID   144009376.
  29. ↑ Anderson, Margaret Lavinia; Reynolds, Michael; Kieser, Hans-Lukas; Balakian, Peter; Moses, A. Dirk; Akçam, Taner (2013). "Taner Akçam, The Young Turks' crime against humanity: the Armenian genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)". Journal of Genocide Research. 15 (4): 463–509. doi:10.1080/14623528.2013.856095. S2CID   73167962. This is a telling slip; Lewy is talking about 'the Armenians' as if the defenceless women and children who comprised the deportation columns were vicariously responsible for Armenian rebels in other parts of the country. The collective guilt accusation is unacceptable in scholarship, let alone in normal discourse and is, I think, one of the key ingredients in genocidal thinking. It fails to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, on which international humanitarian law has been insisting for over a hundred years now.

Works cited

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