GUY AITCHISON
My work to date has reconceptualised human rights as a dynamic tool for challenging power, proposed novel ethical justifications for political resistance and critiqued immigration enforcement. I am particularly interested in how concepts, such as rights, are used in political conflict and the issues of legitimacy which arise when people mobilise outside institutional structures. I am currently managing Starving for Dignity: Re-framing the Ethics of Hunger Strikes, which is funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme. I have also written on online public shaming and various other issues in applied ethics.
A list of my publications (many of them in world-leading journals) can be found below as well as on Google Scholar, Academia.edu and my Loughborough research repository page. If you are looking to find a paper you don't have access to, drop me an email and I will be happy to share a pdf.
PUBLICATIONS
Journal articles
Aitchison, Guy, 'When suicide is unjust violence: power, structural harms and moral culpability, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 86, No. 3, (2023).
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/729936
Essex, R, Dillard-Wright, J, Aitchison, G, Aked, H., 'Everyday resistance in the UK’s National Health Service', Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Vol. 20 (2023).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11673-023-10274-3
Aitchison, Guy, Essex, R. ‘Self-harm in immigration detention: political, not (just) medical’, Journal of Medical Ethics, Published Online First: 29 December 2022. https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/12/28/jme-2022-108366.info
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Fragility as Strength: The Ethics and Politics of Hunger Strikes’, Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 30, Issue 4, (2022): pp. 535- 558.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12261
Issa, Rita, Baker C., Spooner, R., Abrams R., Gopfert., Evans M., Aitchison, G. ‘Mapping the movement for climate change and health in England’, Perspectives in Public Health, Vol.141, Issue 6, (2021): pp. 328-337.
https://doi.org/10.1177/17579139211058303
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Border-Crossing: Immigration Law, Racism and Justified Resistance’, Political Studies, (2021): pp. 1-19.
https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211030184
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Beyond Lockdown? The ethics of global movement in a new era’, Ethics and Global Politics, Vol. 14, (2021): pp. 36 49.
https://doi.org/10.1080/16544951.2021.1895487
Aitchison, Guy, Meckled-Garcia, S., ‘Against Online Public Shaming: Ethical Problems with Mass Social Media’, Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 47, Issue 1, (2020): pp. 1-31. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract20201117109
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Domination and disobedience: Protest, coercion and the limits of an appeal to justice’, Perspectives on Politics, Issue 16 (3), (2018): pp. 666 679. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592718001111.
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Coercion, resistance and the radical side of non-violent action’, Raisons Politiques, Issue 1, No. 69, (2018): pp. 45-61.
https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.069.0045
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Introduction to special issue: Uncivil Disobedience’, Raisons Politiques, Issue 1, No. 69, (2018): pp. 5-12.
https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.069.0005
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Are human rights moralistic?’, Human Rights Review, Issue 1, Vol. 19, (2018): pp. 23-43.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-017-0480-4
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Foucault, democracy and the ambivalence of rights’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 22, Issue 6 (2017), pp. 770-785. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2017.1369627
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Three Models of Republican Rights: Juridical, Parliamentary and Populist’, Political Studies, Vol. 65, Issue 2, (2017): pp. 339-355.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321716648339
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Rights, Citizenship and political struggle’, European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 17, Issue 1, (2015): pp. 23-43.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1474885115578052
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Reform, rupture or re-imagination: Understanding the purpose of an occupation’, Social Movement Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2011): pp. 431- 439. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.614114
Book chapters
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Policing and Coercion - What are the Alternatives?’ in Koshka Duff ed. Abolishing the Police, Dog Section Press, (2021): pp. 133-147.
Aitchison, Guy, ‘Popular resistance and the idea of rights’, in Stuart White, Karma Nabulsi and Bruno Leipold, eds., Radical Republicanism: Reclaiming the Tradition’s Popular Heritage, Oxford University Press, (2020): pp. 103-118.
Policy report
Aitchison, Guy, The dangers ahead: COVID-19, authoritarianism and democracy, Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit, LSE (2020): pp. 1-21, (Co-authored with Luke Cooper). http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105103
Editor
Special journal issue on (Un)civil disobedience, Raisons Politiques, Issue 1, No. 69, (2018).
Book reviews
Aitchison, Guy, ‘The Right of Necessity’ by Alijandra Mancilla, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Vol. 20, Issue 5 (2017): pp. 1099-1101.
Aitchison, Guy, ‘The Ethics and Politic of Immigration’ edited by Alex Sager, LSE Review of Books, (2017), https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/05/16/book-review-the-ethics-and-politics-of-immigration-core-issues-and-emerging-trends-edited-by-alex-sager
Aitchison, Guy, ‘The Political Theory of the Irish Constitution: Republicanism and the Basic Law’ by Eoin Daly and Tom Hickey, Public Law, (2017).