A research poster in philosophical ethics from the School of Underlying Conditions proposes a test for when a promise made by the last holder of a post binds the next.
Five things said across a farm gate by a departing field officer are sorted into those the post must keep and those that leave with her
I have taken over three posts in my working life and was handed a set of keys each time. I am grateful to everyone who has since told me what else came with them.
— Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, School of Underlying Conditions
So the lead author introduces The Promise in the Handover File: Does an undertaking given by the last holder of a post bind the next?, a research poster in philosophical ethics from the School of Underlying Conditions. Dr Emenike wrote it with Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, and Dr Lindiwe Achterberg, Lecturer in the School of Emergent Priorities.
The poster imagines one field officer, one landholder and five things said across a gate, and asks which of them the next officer is answerable for. Its answer rests on a single test: whom the landholder would have had to tell in order to let a promise go. Where anyone holding the post would have done, the poster concludes, the promise belongs to the post and passes with it. Where only the person would have done, it stays with her wherever she goes next.
The University counts it a sign of a settled school that its people will stop to ask what they owe before they ask what they have found. The poster brings a long tradition of moral argument to bear on the ordinary circumstances of a field round, and closes by recommending that departing staff write down what they have promised. Dr Obiora said the three authors had “kept a list while writing it, on principle, and it ran to more than one page”.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.nq655z.