Understanding Harm

""Offers a masterful, interdisciplinary analysis and critique of our understanding of both injury and human flourishing sounding both at a theoretical level and, concretely, through a detailed, original examination of our conceptions of poverty, disability, discrimination, harassment, gender relations and sexuality, religious accommodation, and identity politics. Kelman offers fresh, rich, nuanced, and sometimes provocative takes on classical, foundational issues about human flourishing and on how the interdependence of subjective and objective components of human welfare bear on contemporary problems in a pluralist society. Rather than minimizing complexity for the solace that reductionism may offer, Kelman's book is an exemplar of rigorous, unflinchingly honest scholarship about difficult questions that interweaves contributions from philosophy, political theory, legal theory, feminist theory, queer theory, disability theory, empirical psychology, economics, and sociology. It should be required reading to advance the thought of philosophers, political theorists, lawyers, welfare economists, social scientists, and others seeking a deeper understanding of these pivotal matters.""--Seana Shiffrin, author of Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law ""What injuries matter--morally, legally? How do we measure their costs? Which demand redress? Understanding Harm provides a theoretically sophisticated and practically grounded response to these questions. For those who care deeply about social justice, Kelman's brilliant and nuanced book about what injuries matter, why and how much is essential reading""--Kimberly A. Yuracko, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law