LEGAL THEORY YOUNG CHAPTER 1: DISPLACING THE DISTRIBUTIVE PARADIGM & CHAPTER 2: FIVE FACES OF OPPRESSION
YOUNG: The concepts of oppression and domination, rather than the
concept of distribution, should be the starting point for a conception of
social justice
o Why does Young say this?
Philosophical theories of justice tend to restrict the
meaning of social justice to the morally proper distribution
of benefits and burdens among societys members.
It is a mistake to reduce social justice to distribution
What is the distributive paradigm?
o defines social justice as the morally proper distribution of social
benefits and burdens among society's members
o The distributive definition of justice often includes nonmaterial social
goods such as rights, opportunity, power, and self-respect. What
marks the distributive paradigm is a tendency to conceive social
justice and distribution as coextensive concepts.
o The distributive paradigm of justice so ensnares philosophical
thinking that even critics of the dominant liberal framework continue
to formulate the focus of justice in exclusively distributive terms
o The paradigm assumes a single model for all analyses of justice: all
situations in which justice is at issue are analogous to the situation
of persons dividing a stock of goods and comparing the size of the
portions individuals have.
What does this mean? - assumes that individuals or other
agents lie as nodes, points in the social field, among whom
larger or smaller bundles of social goods are assigned.
Assumes a social atomism, inasmuch as there is no
internal relation among persons in society relevant to
considerations of justice.
Problems with Distributive Paradigm
o Presupposes and obscures institutional context that
determines material distributions
Young point out that most theorizing about social justice
focuses on the distribution of material resources, income,
or positions of reward and prestige.
Debates among theorists focus on two practical issues:
Is the distribution of wealth and income in advanced
capitalist countries just, and if not, does justice permit or
even require the provision of welfare services and other
redistributive measures?
Is the pattern of the distribution of positions of high income
and prestige just, and if not, are affirmative action policies
just means to rectify that injustice?
The general criticism I am making of the predominant
focus on the distribution of wealth, income, and positions is
that such a focus ignores and tends to obscure the
institutional context within which those distributions take
place, and which is often at least partly the cause of
patterns of distribution of jobs or wealth.
Institutional context should be understood in a broader
sense than "mode of production."
It includes any structures or practices, the rules and norms
that guide them, and the language and symbols that
mediate social interactions within them, in institutions of
state, family, and civil society, as well as the workplace.
Many discussions of social justice not only ignore the
institutional contexts within which distributions occur, but
often presuppose specific institutional structures whose
justice they fail to bring under evaluation.
Some political theories tend to assume centralized
legislative and executive institutions separated from the
day-to-day lives of most people in the society, and state
officials with the authority to make and enforce policy
decisions.
They take for granted such institutions of the modern state
as bureaucracies and welfare agencies for implementing
and enforcing tax schemes and administering services
Young focuses on three primary categories of
nondistributive issues that distributive theories tend to
ignore:
Decisionmaking structure and procedures
include not only questions of who by virtue of their
positions have the effective freedom or authority
to make what sorts of decisions, but also the rules
and procedures according to which decisions are
made
Division of labor
Can be both understood distributive and non-
distributive
As a distributive issue: division of labor refers to
how pregiven occupations, jobs, or tasks are
allocated among individuals or groups.
As a non-distributive issue: division of labor
concerns the definition of the occupations
themselves. Division of labor as an institutional
structure involves the range of tasks performed in
a given position, the definition of the nature,
meaning, and value of those tasks, and the
relations of cooperation, conflict, and authority
among positions.
Culture
It includes the symbols, images, meanings,
habitual comportments, stories, and so on
LEGAL THEORY YOUNG CHAPTER 1: DISPLACING THE DISTRIBUTIVE PARADIGM & CHAPTER 2: FIVE FACES OF OPPRESSION
through which people express their experience
and communicate with one another.
The symbolic meanings that people attach to
other kinds of people and to actions, gestures, or
institutions often significantly affect the social
standing of persons and their opportunities.
o Overextending the concept of distribution
Applying a logic of distribution to such goods produces a
misleading conception of the issues of justice involved.
It reifies aspects of social life that are better understood as
a function of rules and relations than as things.
And it conceptualizes social justice primarily in terms of
end-state patterns, rather than focusing on social
processes. This distributive paradigm implies a misleading
or incomplete social ontology.
Provided Rawls as an example:
Justice concerns the distribution of rights and
duties
What does distributing a right mean?
One may talk about having a right to a distributive
share of material things, resources, or income.
But in such cases it is the good that is distributed,
not the right.
What can it mean to distribute rights that do not refer to
resources or things, like the right of free speech, or the
right of trial by jury?
We can conceive of a society in which some
persons are granted these rights while others arc
not, but this does not mean that some people
have a certain "amount" or "portion of a good
while others have less.
Altering the situation so that everyone has these rights,
moreover, would not entail that the formerly privileged
group gives over some of its right of free speech or trial by
jury to the rest of society's members, on analogy with a
redistribution of income.
Rights are not fruitfully conceived as possessions.
Rights arc relationships, not things; they are institutionally
defined rules specifying what people can do in relation to
one another.
Rights refer to doing more than having, to social
relationships that enable or constrain action.
Talk of distributing opportunities involves a similar
confusion.
If by opportunity we mean "chance," we can meaningfully
talk of distributing opportunities, of some people having
more opportunities than others
Opportunity is a concept of enablement rather than
possession; it refers to doing more than having. A person
has opportunities if he or she is not constrained from doing
things, and lives under the enabling conditions for doing
them.
Being enabled or constrained refers more directly,
however, to the rules and practices that govern one's
action, the way other people treat one in the context of
specific social relations, and the broader structural
possibilities produced by the confluence of a multitude of
actions and practices.
It makes no sense to speak of opportunities as themselves
things possessed.
Young also provides the concept of self-respect as an
example. (WHY? Many of the writers of justice regard self-
respect as a primary good that all persons must have in
order for society to be just.)
What can it mean to distribute self-respect?
Self-respect is not an entity or measurable aggregate, it
cannot be parcelled out of some stash, and above all it
cannot be detached from persons as a separable attribute
adhering to an otherwise unchanged substance.
Self-respect names not some possession or attribute a
person has, but her or his attitude toward her or his entire
situation and life prospects.
(Rawls does not speak of self-respect however, he
suggests that distributive arrangements provide
background conditions for self-respect)
Problems with Talk of Distributing Power
o why talk about this? Critics may say that what is in question is
indeed not goods, but social power; the distributive paradigm,
however, can accommodate these issues by giving more attention
to the distribution of power.
o Young: This is another case of extending the concept of distribution
beyond material goods.
o Conceptualizing power in distributive terms means implicitly or
explicitly conceiving power as a kind of stuff possessed by individual
agents in greater or lesser amounts.
o From this perspective a power structure or power relations will be
described as a pattern of the distribution of this stuff.
o There are a number of problems with such a model of power:
First, regarding power as a possession or attribute of
individuals tends to obscure the fact that power is a
relation rather than a thing
Second, the atomistic bias of distributive paradigms of
power leads to a focus on particular agents or roles that
LEGAL THEORY YOUNG CHAPTER 1: DISPLACING THE DISTRIBUTIVE PARADIGM & CHAPTER 2: FIVE FACES OF OPPRESSION
have power, and on agents over whom these powerful
agents or roles have power.
o A distributive understanding of power, which treats power as some
kind of stuff that can be traded, exchanged, and distributed, misses
the structural phenomena of domination
o A distributive conceptualization of power can construct power
relations only as patterns.
o conceptualizing power as relational rather than substantive, as
produced and reproduced through many people outside the
immediate power dyad, brings out the dynamic nature of power
relations as an ongoing process.
o Power exists only in action
The logic of distribution, in contrast, makes power a
machine or instrument, held in ready and turned on at will,
independently of social processes.
Defining Injustice as Domination and Oppression
o Because distributive models of power, rights, opportunity, and
selfrespect work so badly, justice should not be conceived primarily
on the model of the distribution of wealth, income, and other
material goods.
o The scope of justice is wider than distributive issues.
o the connection between justice and the values that constitute the
good life.
o Justice is not identical with the concrete realization of these values
in individual lives; justice, that is, is not identical with the good life as
such.
o Rather, social justice concerns the degree to which a society
contains and supports the institutional conditions necessary for the
realization of these values.
o The values comprised in the good life can be reduced to two very
general ones:
(1) developing and exercising one's capacities and
expressing one's experience
(2) participating in determining one's action and the
conditions of one's action
o These are universalist values, in the sense that they assume the
equal moral worth of all persons, and thus justice requires their
promotion for everyone.
o To these two general values correspond two social conditions that
define injustice: oppression, the institutional constraint on self-
development, and domination, the institutional constraint on self-
determination.
What is Oppression?
Many people would not use the term oppression to describe injustice in our
society because they do not understand the term in the same way as do new
social movements
In its traditional usage, oppression means the exercise of tyranny by a ruling
group. Yet, oppression creates injustice in other circumstances as well.
People are not always oppressed by cruel tyrants with bad intentions. In
many cases, a well-intentioned liberal society can place system-wide
constraints on groups and limit their freedom. Oppression can be the result
of a few peoples choices or policies that cause embedded unquestioned
norms, habits, and symbols. These societal rules can become an restrictive
structure of forces and barriers that immobilize and reduce a group or
category of people
General definition of oppression: oppression is when people reduce the
potential for other people to be fully human.
o In other words, oppression is when people make other people less
human. This could mean treating them in a dehumanizing manner.
But, it could also mean denying people language, education, and
other opportunities that might make them become fully human in
both mind and body.
THE FIVE FACES OF OPPRESSIONS
^ is a useful set of categories and distinctions which is comprehensive, in the
sense that it covers all the groups said by new left social movements to be
oppressed and all the ways they are oppressed
1. Exploitation
o is the act of using peoples labors to produce profit while not
compensating them fairly. Although they are paid for their efforts
and toils, they are not paid a fair wage considering how much
money they make for the company.
Ex. People who work in sweat shops are exploited. Miners
in Africa are also exploited when they have to rent their
mining tools everyday. If these miners find nothing of value
on any given day, then they owe for the supply rental and
are not paid for their efforts.
o Exploitation uses capitalism to oppress. The economic theory of
capitalism states that people are free to exchange goods freely. Yet,
whenever this has happens throughout history, it has created
different classes of people: wealthy and poor. Karl Marx, the father
of socialism, said that capitalism creates haves (those that have
wealth) and have-nots (those that do not have wealth). Typically in
a capitalistic society, the haves end up exploiting the have-nots
for their hard work. Therefore, exploitation creates a system that
perpetuates class differences, keeping the rich richer and the poor
poorer
LEGAL THEORY YOUNG CHAPTER 1: DISPLACING THE DISTRIBUTIVE PARADIGM & CHAPTER 2: FIVE FACES OF OPPRESSION
o Many writers have cogently argued that the Marxist concept of
exploitation is too narrow to encompass all forms of domination and
oppression. The Marxist concept of class leaves important
phenomena of sexual and racial oppression unexplained.
o Feminists have had little difficulty showing that women's oppression
consists partly in a systematic and unreciprocated transfer of
powers from women to men. Women's oppression consists not
merely in an inequality of status, power, and wealth resulting from
men's excluding them from privileged activities. The freedom,
power, status, and self-realization of men is possible precisely
because women work for them. Gender exploitation has two
aspects, transfer of the fruits of material labor to men and transfer of
nurturing and sexual energies to men.
C. Delphy sees marriage as a form of exploitation because
women perform tasks for someone on whom they are
dependent w/o remuneration
o To summarize, women are exploited in the Marxist sense to the
degree that they are wage workers. Some have argued that
women's domestic labor also represents a form of capitalist class
exploitation insofar as it is labor covered by the wages a family
receives. As a group, however , women undergo specific forms of
gender exploitation in which their energies and power are
expended, often unnoticed and unacknowledged, usually to benefit
men by releasing them for more important and creative work,
enhancing their status or the environment around them, or providing
them with sexual or emotional service.
2. Marginalization
o ... is the act of relegating or confining a group of people to a lower
social standing or outer limit or edge of society. Overall, it is a
process of exclusion. Marginalization is in some ways worse than
exploitation because society has decided that it cannot or will not
use these people even for labor.
Examples of marginalized social groups: Elderly, Children,
Women, Poor, Differently Abled etc.
o Marginalization is perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression.
A whole category of people is expelled from useful participation in
social life and thus potentially subjected to severe material
deprivation (limited access to resources) and even extermination.
3. Powerlessness
o The idea of powerlessness links to Marxs theory of socialism: some
people have power while others have-not. The powerless are
dominated by the ruling class and are situated to take orders and
rarely have the right to give them. Some of the fundamental
injustices associated with powerlessness are inhibition to develop
ones capacities, lack of decision making power, and exposure to
disrespectful treatment because of the lowered status
Professionals are privileged in relation to non-
professionals, by virtue of their position in the division of
labor and the status it carries. Non-professionals suffer a
form of oppression in addition to exploitation, which Young
calls powerlessness.
In the U.S., the powerless do not participate in basic
democratic processes because they feel that they cant or
that their participation wont mean anything. In most cases,
it means not voting or participating in any decision making
process
4. Cultural Imperialism
o To experience cultural imperialism means to experience how the
dominant meanings of a society render the particular perspective of
one's own group invisible at the same time as they stereotype one's
group and mark it out as the Other
o Cultural imperialism involves the universalization of a dominant group's
experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm. Some groups
have exclusive or primary access to means of interpretation and
communication in a society. As a consequence, the dominant cultural
products of the society, that is, those most widely disseminated, express
the experience, values, goals, and achievements of these groups. Often
without noticing they do so, the dominant groups project their own
experience as representative of humanity as such.
o Across the world, sexuality is a common example of cultural
imperialism. The dominant group in society is heterosexual, so
all other types of sexuality are grouped as Others and viewed
as inferior or abnormal. Culture and education systems
reinforce the notion that heterosexuality is normal and better.
Those who have different types of sexuality are told to become
heterosexual.
o Those who are oppressed by cultural imperialism are both marked by
stereotypes and made to feel invisible. The stereotypes define what they
can and cannot be. At the same time, these same stereotypes turn these
people into a mass of Others that lack separate identities. The White
male can have a distinct identity and be an individual because he holds
the most power. All other groups are just groups of Others.
5. Violence
LEGAL THEORY YOUNG CHAPTER 1: DISPLACING THE DISTRIBUTIVE PARADIGM & CHAPTER 2: FIVE FACES OF OPPRESSION
o Violence is probably the most obvious and visible form of oppression.
Members of some groups live with the knowledge that they must fear
random, unprovoked attacks on their persons or property. These attacks
do not necessarily need a motive but are intended to damage, humiliate,
or destroy the person.
In American society, women, Blacks, Asians, Arabs, gay men,
and lesbians live under such threats of violence. And in at least
some regions, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, and other
Spanish-speaking Americans must fear violence as well.
All forms of sexual violence and hate crimes are prevalent
examples of violent oppression. Most, if not all, violent
oppression is the direct result of xenophobia (an intense and
irrational fear of people, ideas, or customs that seem strange or
foreign)
o The oppression of violence consists not only in direct victimization, but in
the daily knowledge shared by all member s of oppressed groups that
they are liable to violation, solely on account of their group identity. Just
living under such a threat of attack on oneself or family or friends
deprive s the oppressed of freedom and dignity, and needlessly expends
their energy.