Everyday ethics of the global event: Grenfell Tower and the politics of responsibility

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article engages the question ethical responsibility in relation to Grenfell. We argue that ethical, legal and political responses are guided by a state-centric and individualist concept of ethico-legal liability. While a crucial consideration, this can downplay the everyday relations and social structures that produced the disaster. We therefore draw on the literature on global ethics to identify a politics of responsibility in relation to Grenfell. On this view, the social relations and hierarchies that pervade London, a global city, speak of the complex (and violent) ways in which responsibility is ‘shared’.