Chapter 1: Ethics, Crowding and Globalisation

The twenty-first century has thus far been characterised by a persistent amplification of global flows and an equal attempt to control these flows. The flows are diverse and interconnected, forming and re-forming like moving water to find opportunities and gaps for movement. In response, control may be sought by pushing back in an attempt to resist these flows as far as possible, or by harnessing and channelling the flows to achieve individual and collective benefits. Whether we resist, appropriate, or simply observe those forces, for most (if not all) of us they have meant significant change and adaptation.

This journal issue is focussed on the theme of ethics in a crowded world, which was also the theme of the 2018 Australian Association of Applied Ethics (AAPAE) conference, at which most of the chapters in this volume were presented. The conference was held in Melbourne in September 2018, hosted by RMIT’s School of Global, Urban and Social Studies and RedR Australia. Crowdedness was conceived broadly in the sense of a greater exposure to the lives and realities of others both proximate and distant, facilitated by the perpetual motion of globalisation, characterised by Appadurai (1996) as falling into five key flows: movement of people, media, money, technology, and ideas and ideologies.