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What is Structural Injustice?

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Abstract

This paper intends to explain the problem of structural injustice. The Rawlsian theory of justice is problematic due to the reality of positional differences. The assumptions of Rawls are put into question. Oppression, according to Iris Marion Young, is social in character. Fair opportunity is not enough. To elaborate this critique, this study presents the exclusion of individuals with handicap, the problem of global justice, and the situation of women in patriarchal cultures. Some social rules and the behavior of people discriminate the powerless. For instance, particular standards in society promote the high sense of respectability for professionals but not the respect for the equal dignity of persons. Procedures, laws, and policies manifest the prejudice against others. Beyond Rawls, the pursuit of justice and democratic inclusion, it is argued, requires overcoming unjust structures.

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Notes

  1. Rawls (1999), 3. Rawls asks the question: Once we view a democratic society as a fair system of social cooperation between citizens as free and equal, what principles are most appropriate to it?” See Rawls (2001), 39.

  2. Young (2007), 68.

  3. Rawls explains that “the original position is, one might say, the appropriate initial status quo, and therefore the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair.” See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 11.

  4. Joshua Cohen says that “the original position with the veil of ignorance is a model: it models the moral irrelevance of certain facts by assuming we reason about justice in ignorance of those facts.” See Cohen (2004), 115.

  5. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 16.

  6. According to Rawls, the agreement is regarded as hypothetical “since we ask what the parties could, or would, agree to, not what they have agreed to” and it is “non-historical since we do not suppose the agreement has ever or indeed ever could actually be entered into.” Ibid.

  7. Kymlicka (2007), 63.

  8. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 4

  9. A level playing field is about the power to make your own choices. Kymlicka, for instance, thinks that “the attractive idea at the base of the prevailing view is that people’s fate should be determined by their choices – by the decisions they make about how to lead their lives – not by the circumstances which they happen to find themselves in.” See Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, 59.

  10. Nussbaum (2006), 28.

  11. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 53.

  12. Schaefer (1979), 12.

  13. Barry (1995), 11.

  14. Ibid., 92.

  15. Barry (2001), 69.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Schaefer, Justice or Tyranny, 12.

  19. Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” 63.

  20. Young (1990), 164.

  21. Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” 64.

  22. Young explains that “a woman is often told that she must be careful not to get hurt, not to get dirty, not to tear her clothes, that the things she desires to do are dangerous for her,” and thus, as an individual, “she develops a bodily timidity that increases with age,” and for this reason, “in assuming herself to be a girl, she takes herself to be fragile.” Young (2005), 43.

  23. Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” 64.

  24. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 38.

  25. The problem, Young thinks, is the concept of homogeneity. This means that “the veil of ignorance removes any differentiating characteristics among individuals, and thus ensures that all will reason from identical assumptions and the same universal point of view.” Ibid, 100.

  26. Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” 63.

  27. Young, “Throwing like a Girl,” 31.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 20.

  30. Galston (1980), 6.

  31. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 55.

  32. Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” 60–61.

  33. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 41.

  34. Reiman (2012), 741.

  35. Collste (2015), 18.

  36. Ibid., 100.

  37. Ibid., 112.

  38. Ibid., 114.

  39. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 38.

  40. Ibid., 49.

  41. Ibid., 56.

  42. Ibid., 47.

  43. Ibid., 55.

  44. Abberley (1987): 7.

  45. Kittay (1999), 88.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Abberley, “The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of Disability,” 10.

  48. Young, “Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference,” 67.

  49. Kittay (2001), 574.

  50. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 25.

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  1. Philosophy Department, Ateneo de Davao University, Roxas Avenue, Davao City, Philippines

    Christopher Ryan Maboloc

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  1. Christopher Ryan Maboloc
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Maboloc, C.R. What is Structural Injustice?. Philosophia 47, 1185–1196 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-0025-3

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