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

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’.