Responsibility for Structural Injustice (original) (raw)
Related papers
Responsibility for structural injustice: a third thought
Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2021
Some of the most invidious injustices are the seemingly results of impersonal workings of rigged social structures. Who bears responsibility for the injustices perpetrated through them? Iris Marion Young-the preeminent theorist of responsibility for structural injustice-argues that we should be responsible mostly in forward-looking ways for remedying structural injustice, rather than liable in a backward-looking way for creating it. In so doing she distinguishes between individualized responsibility for past structural injustice and collective responsibility for preventing future structural injustice. We reject both those arguments but embrace and extend Young's third line of analysis, which was much less fully developed in her work. We agree that people should take a stand against structural injustice, even if it is likely to prove futile. That is in fact a position that is widely endorsed in social practice.
What responsibilities do individuals have for global injustices, such as sweatshop labor? Iris Marion Young sought to answer this question with her " social connection model " of responsibility. She argues that all individuals " connected " to structural injustice share political responsibility (as opposed to moral or legal responsibility) to collectively struggle against it. The theory was inspired by the anti-sweatshop movement, which recognized that consumers felt responsible for the working conditions of distant garment workers, even though they do nothing morally wrong when purchasing clothes. The social connection model is intuitively appealing and popular because it can explain why there is a responsibility for structural injustices like sweatshop labor, which falls short of guilt and blame, and takes structure seriously. However, Young left several gaps in the theory. One such gap is that she does not explain what she means by " connection " to structural injustice. Three potential definitions of connection arise in Young's work— what I call existential, dependent and causal connection—but Young does not unpack or defend any version in detail. In this article, I aim to clarify these different meanings of connection and assess their plausibility within Young's own framework. I argue that the most appropriate and consistent way to understand connection to structural injustice is that individuals reproduce the background conditions in which they act. Young's conception of reproduction of background conditions is thus elaborated and defended as the relevant form of connection that generates political responsibility.
Two forms of responsibility. Reassessing Young on structural injustice
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2020
In this article, I critically reassess Iris Marion Young’s late works, which centre on the distinction between liability and social connection responsibility. I concur with Young’s diagnosis that structural injustices call for a new conception of responsibility, but I reject several core assumptions that underpin her distinction between two models and argue for a different way of conceptualising responsibility to address structural injustices. I show that Young’s categorical separation of guilt and responsibility is not supported by the writings of Hannah Arendt, which Young draws on, and that it is also untenable on independent systematic grounds. Furthermore, I argue that several of Young’s other criteria fail to clearly demarcate two distinct phenomena. I therefore propose to transcend Young’s distinction of two models in favour of a related, but conceptually different distinction between two forms of responsibility: interactional and structural. Embracing this terminology facilitates the conceptualisation of the general features of responsibility that are shared by both forms, including their retrospective and prospective time-direction and their applicability to individual, joint and group agency. The distinction between interactional and structural responsibility also yields a more compelling general account of the role of background structures and of blame within ascriptions of political responsibility.
The implications of being implicated. Individual responsibility and structural injustice
ethic@ - An international Journal for Moral Philosophy
Within the global justice debate the demandingness objection is primarily aimed at utilitarian theorists who defend a version of the 'optimizing principle of beneficence' to deal with the problem of global poverty. The problem of demandingness, however, is hardly ever raised within the context of the dominant institutional theories of global justice that see severe poverty as a human rights violation. Nor are the fundamental underlying questions posed by many of these theorists. Which specific responsibilities do individual moral agents have regarding institutional and structural forms of injustice (1)? Which political spheres, organized public spaces, or political practices are necessary to create a setting in which these responsibilities can be discharged (2)? Does a 'defensible and psychologically feasible conception of responsibility' (Scheffler 2002, 62) exist that is restrictive-yet demanding-enough to deal with the complex challenges of our globalizing age (3). This paper addresses questions (1) and (3) on the basis of a critical analysis of Iris Marion Young's social connection theory of responsibility.
Philosophy Compass, 2021
The concept of "structural injustice" has a long intellectual lineage, but Iris Marion Young popularised the term in her late work in the 2000s. Young's theory tapped into the zeitgeist of the time, providing a credible way of thinking about transnational and domestic injustices, illuminating the importance of political, economic and social structures in generating injustice, theorising the role of individuals in perpetuating structural injustice and the responsibility of everyone to try to correct it. Young’s theory has inspired secondary and novel research. In this paper, I outline the main topics in this recent literature: what structural injustice is, responsibility for structural injustice, acting on responsibility, avoiding responsibility, and historical injustice. I conclude by noting how the influence of structural injustice theory is spreading beyond the confines of political theory. Any field that is concerned with structural inequalities, disadvantage or oppression, can utilize structural injustice theory.
2016
I, Maeve McKeown confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. What responsibilities do individuals have in relation to global injustice? Iris Young argues that all agents “connected ” to global structural injustice bear political responsibility, rather than moral responsibility; the difference being that political responsibility is non-blameworthy, shared and forward-looking, whereas moral responsibility entails blameworthiness, isolates particular agents for censure and is backward-looking. Thus, individuals are not guilty of wrongdoing but they bear responsibility for global injustice. Young’s argument is intuitively appealing and influential, however it is underdeveloped. In this thesis, I aim to develop Young’s account into a coherent theory of individuals ’ responsibilities for global injustice, by reconstructing her core insights and critically developing t...
2007
Young makes a strong case that people in the affluent Global North have shared political responsibility with respect to the working conditions of distant workers in other countries. She frames the issue within a particular conception of responsibility, namely “political responsibility, ” as opposed to the dominant conception of responsibility as liability. Her “argument is not that the concept of political responsibility should replace that of a fault or liability model, but [that it] should supplement that model in analyses of responsibility, in relation to structural processes ” (Young 2004, 381). Young is in agreement with contemporary ethical theorists such as O’Neill, Beitz and Pogge that there is moral responsibility between moral agents in different nations and that better-off people in some parts of the world have a responsibility toward globally worse-off people wherever they are.