The Duty to Rescue

• Author: Alison Dundes Renteln
• Published date: 01 October 2012
• Date: 01 October 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0090591712453038
• Subject Matter: Review Essay

453038PTX40510.1177/00905
91712453038Political TheoryRenteln
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Review Essay
Political Theory
40(5) 663 –674
The Duty to
© 2012 SAGE Publications
Reprints and permission: http://www.
Rescue: Approaches
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to Global Justice
The Political Responsibilities of Everyday Bystanders, by Stephen L. Esquith.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 242 pp.
Globalizing Justice: The Ethics of Poverty and Power, by Richard W. Miller.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 341 pp.
Can Globalization Promote Human Rights? by Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 182 pp.
Reviewed by: Alison Dundes Renteln, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
DOI: 10.1177/0090591712453038
It is a tragic fact that gross violations of international human rights are
revealed in the media everyday. Despite widespread publicity about these
abuses, we also witness the persistent failure of states to stop them from
occurring. In the face of such large-scale atrocities, scholars seek more than
a grand theory of global justice; they search for effective techniques to
ensure positive political action. In recent scholarship, social scientists and
philosophers analyze the nature of a duty to act in order to render assistance
to those who suffer, and they try to interpret the precise scope of such a duty.
Three books, two by political philosophers and one by a sociologist, share a
common focus on the quest for global justice in the twenty-first century.
This scholarship, taking diverse approaches, examines who deserves res-
cue, what sacrifices may be required if such a duty can be found to exist, and
how best to exert pressure on states to fulfill their obligations. These works
highlight strategies for raising awareness of the plight of individuals in differ-
ent parts of the world, whether they suffer from a lack of food or other basic
necessities, or whether they are victims of genocide or torture.
While most would agree that individuals ought to be concerned about the
welfare of their neighbors, an important question is whether they have an actual
duty to render assistance to others. The “Good Samaritan” debate dates back to
antiquity, resurfacing periodically in academic circles and also in the realm of
politics.1 Accounts of children dying because adults failed to take action to save
them are necessarily shocking.2 In the twenty-first century, scholars ask whether
all of us have an obligation not only to help strangers at home but also abroad,
and if so, they ask further what is the scope of that obligation.

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Political Theory 40(5)
Much ink has been spilled over the failure of people, institutions, and
countries to act when confronted with the reality of crimes against humanity
and gross violations of human rights, as happened in Nazi Germany. Classic
studies in social psychology reveal the frightening capacity of human beings
for non-action and their display of cruelty to others.3 Thus, even if a duty to
rescue can be demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction, there remains the sig-
nificant challenge of translating that sense of obligation into action. It is this
fascinating problem of moving from theory to concrete social action with
which the authors are concerned.
Stephen L. Esquith’s erudite book takes an international approach to the
question of civic engagement and reflects a deep commitment to humanitar-
ian action. The central premise of this imaginative study is that everyone has
a duty to help others and therefore bystanders must realize their political
responsibility. In this interdisciplinary monograph, Esquith illuminates the
duties of ordinary bystanders and conveys his pedagogical insights about
civic engagement to “citizen-teachers,” a group including instructors inside
and outside the classroom.
Observing that the world is not divided into only perpetrators of wrongdo-
ing and the victims, he proposes that we reconsider the role of bystanders,
including individuals and institutions. He focuses primarily on bystanders
confronted by the three most severe forms of violence—famine, civil war,
and genocide.
The victims of such violence share “the cruel way they have lost their
political voice and have no legitimate political way to regain it.”4 Their suf-
fering is a consequence not only of the deliberate acts of the perpetrators but
also of everyday bystanders who fail to intervene to provide assistance.
Esquith makes clear that the involvement of bystanders may have adverse
consequences. He illustrates how the role of bystanders can become compli-
cated with the powerful example of Sabrina Harman. Harman was a military
police officer who documented the practice of torture in the Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq. By recording the serious violations of international human
rights, she knowingly contributed to the trauma of the victims. Her presence
intensified their suffering because the presence of women under the circum-
stances of that prison violated Islamic law. Although Esquith acknowledges
that her extraordinary role in this sensational context differs from that of ordi-
nary “everyday bystanders,” he shows in a compelling way that the bystander
can be implicated in injustice.
This highly provocative consideration of the significance of bystanders
emphasizes the complicity of all individuals, groups, and institutions in the
existence of injustices. Esquith distinguishes between sympathy, which

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involves feelings of pity for a victim of wrongdoing, and empathy, the ability
to put oneself in the shoes of another. A large part of his project is finding
ways to enable students to experience empathy. But more than that, he strives
to make them understand their own complicity in historic injustices. This is
part of his larger argument that current generations bear responsibility for
addressing historic injustices of past generations.
The book presents various teaching techniques designed to raise aware-
ness of social suffering such as online simulations, the use of photographs,
and dramatic reenactments.5 He brings up the example of the virtual refugee
camp on the website of Doctors Without Borders and discusses games such
as “Darfur Is Dying” to teach about genocide.6 While these proposals are
intriguing, Esquith does not elaborate on any of them in sufficient depth to
draw any definite conclusions about their efficacy.
While he recognizes that viewers may react differently to photographs, at
times he gives the impression that there is only a single correct interpretation
of the image, for instance, when he presents one of a dehydrated woman.
Others have considered the ability of images to mobilize activists by
asserting that saturation leaves viewers desensitized with “compassion
fatigue.”7 Surprisingly, Esquith does not discuss the seminal work of Stanley
Cohen, whose account of ways in which individuals absolve themselves of
responsibility through a...