Injustice Flashcards
(17 cards)
What is Rawls’ (1971) theory?
Hypothetical procedure through which a just society will be realised: principles of justice are decided upon in the original position in which everyone is under a veil of ignorance
Two principles of justice:
- All moral people have an equal right to the system of basic equal liberties (freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, political freedom etc.)
- Difference principle: all social and economic inequalities must be to the benefit of the most disadvantaged + equality of opportunity
In the next stage, which will be the constitutional phase, a system of constitutional powers and the basic rights of citizens will be decided; the veil of ignorance will be partially lifted so that the delegates still do not know their own social status of class position, but they do know facts about their society such as its natural resources, level of economic advance and political culture.
What do both Mills and Pateman argue regarding classical liberal contractarianism?
Both argue that classical liberal contractarianism only extends freedom and equality to white men
- Rather than being genuinely egalitarian the social contract is predicated on regarding people of colour/women as less then equal
- Contracts about property constitute relations of subordination, even when entry into the contracts is voluntary
- Global racial contract underpins the stark disparities of the contemporary world.
- “Clear precedent” in contractarian tradition for exclusionary, manipulative contracts deployed by the powerful to subordinate others in society under the pretext of including them as equals
Why does Pateman think contract theory cannot be salvaged?
Pateman is more hostile towards contract theory because of the theoretical baggage it carries and because she sees contract as a central modern mechanism for the reproduction of sexual and racial hierarchies.
In what way does Mills think contract theory can be salvaged?
Mills argues that contract theory can be salvaged through reconstruction. Mills argues that Rawls’s apparatus of the veil of ignorance that blocks crucial knowledge from us can be adapted to the different task of determining rectificatory justice. In this revisionist Rawlsianism, the range of societies among which we must choose does not include societies with no history of racial injustice. So, we are forced to select, on self-interested grounds, not knowing our race, among a subset of possible social orders all of which have as their ancestor a white-supremacist state. Thus, we must confront the possibility that we might end up as black in a society fundamentally shaped in its “basic structure” by systemic illicit white advantage. Mills argues that, once we face this reality, we will be prudentially moved to choose a society where reparations have been implemented as public policy, and that this is convergent with the moral judgment outside the veil that it is unjust for whites to benefit from, and blacks to be disadvantaged by, racial exploitation.
What is Mills criticism of Rawls for idealisation of society
Ideal theory means the theory maps an ideally just society from the ground up; in contrast, non-ideal theory would start from an already existing non-ideal unjust society and prescribe what ideally would be required to rectify the injustice and make it more just.
Rawls explicitly states that he is going to work within ideal theory, in which there is a well-ordered society with no history of injustice, even though not such society exists.
Rawls also makes an implicit idealization: he claims at the beginning of A Theory of Justice that a society “is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage”.
Once you have predicated the modelling of society on such a foundation, you are already assuming a consensual non-exploitative sociopolitical system that is completely antithetical to the way the modern world was actually created, with it’s long history of domination based on race, gender, and class.
In at least the second stage of Rawls’ procedure for creating a just society, delegates are supposed to know the facts about the society they live in, but Rawls abstracts away from the oppression that has dominated human history, denying the consequences of this oppression in a way that orients his justice focus and priorities.
What is Mills domination contract and how does it correct the issue with ideal theory?
- Domination contract is a reconstruction of contract theory; non-ideal theory with a starting point of an unjust stage of society and the true historical account presupposed
- A correction to non-ideal theory requires a factual characterization of past and present injustices, that is, a description. And the point of framing it in terms of a “contract” among the privileged is to register the crucial claim that these injustices were (and are) embedded in the basic structures of these societies, not anomalies within a structure essentially just.
- Domination contract is exploitative and biased towards dominant groups and their interests, with the goal of reinforcing and codifying unjust institutions.
- Domination contract more accurately reflects current, non-ideal society, and through the condemning of the contract there can be an awakening to systematic social injustice and the appropriate corrective measures that are needed for the realisation of a more just society.
- Radical contract theory is saying: political society is basically coercive and exploitative; cases of class, gender, and racial exclusion are not anomalies, since the contract (the sociopolitical order) was not meant to include everybody but (cumulatively, in its different guises) to exclude the majority from equal consideration.
According to Shelby (2004), how does Rawl’s theory of justice rule out racial injustice?
- The formal and substantive dimensions of Rawls’s theory, properly understood and applied, would arguably rule out most if not all familiar forms of racial injustice.
- Rawls’ theory explicitly rules out regarding the members of any racial group as anything less than full moral persons
- According to Rawls, the principles of generality, universality, publicity, ordering, and finality must be satisfied.
- Universality holds that the principles of justice must apply to everyone in virtue of their being moral persons i.e., people who are “capable of having conception of their good” and “capable of having a sense of justice, a normally effective desire to apply and to act upon the principles of justice, at least to a certain minimum degree”
- Since there is no racial group which lacks the attribute of being moral persons, which Rawls explicitly states, due to the universality constraint, the principles of justice must apply equally to all races.
Rawls would have the delegates at the constitutional stage “select from among the procedural arrangements that are both just and feasible those which are most likely to lead to a just and effective legal order.” Given the tragic history of genocide, chattel slavery, and other forms of racial violence and domination in the modern era, such special provisions to combat racial discrimination and to affirm the equal citizenship of racial minorities are needed in most, if not all, democratic societies.
- It seems clear that realising the principle of fair equality of opportunity would require, at a minimum, considerable redistribution of wealth, the expansion of educational and employment opportunities, and aggressive measures to address discrimination in employment, housing, and lending.
The principle of fair equality of opportunity, were it to be institutionally realized in a well-ordered society in which the basic liberties were secure, and their fair value guaranteed, would mitigate, if not correct, race-based disadvantages by ensuring that the life prospects of racial minorities are not negatively affected by the economic legacy of racial oppression.
Rawls not only wants to see an end to discrimination and poverty, but he thinks a just society is one where each has a fair chance to realize his or her conception of the good, to carry out an autonomously arrived at rational plan of life, without being inhibited in this pursuit by one’s race or class origin
What does Young (2011) argue about the nature of injustice?
Justice is structural
Structural injustice is produced and reproduced by thousands or millions of persons usually acting within institutional rules and according to practices that most people regard as morally acceptable.
To judge a circumstance unjust implies that we understand it at least partly as humanly caused and entails the claim that something should be done to rectify it. On the other hand, when the injustice is structural, there is no clear culprit to blame and therefore no agent clearly liable for rectification.
What is Young’s social connection model of responsibility?
Social connection model of responsibility: The social connection model finds that all those who contribute by their actions to structural processes with some unjust outcomes share responsibility for the injustice. This responsibility is not primarily backward-looking, as the attribution of guilt or fault is, but rather primarily forward-looking. Being responsible in relation to structural injustice means that one has an obligation to join with others who share that responsibility to transform the structural processes to make their outcomes less unjust.
What, according to Fricker (2007) are two forms of epistemic injustice?
- Testimonial Injustice: occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word
- Hermeneutical injustice: occurs at a prior stage, when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences.
We might say that testimonial injustice is caused by prejudice in the economy of credibility; and that hermeneutical injustice is caused by structural prejudice in the economy of collective hermeneutical resources
What are two distinct understandings of injustice according to Fraser and how can there remedies stand in tension?
- Socioeconomic injustice, rooted in political-economic structure of society. Remedy is redistribution
- Cultural or symbolic injustice, rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation, and communication. Remedy is recognition.
Two claims of redistribution and recognition can stand in tension as recognition claims often take the form of calling attention to the putative specificity of some group, and then of affirming the value of that specificity. Thus, they tend to promote group differentiation. Redistribution claims, in contrast, often call for abolishing economic arrangements that underpin group specificity. Thus, they tend to promote group de-differentiation.
Some collectivises suffer injustices traceable to both political economy and culture (e.g., race and gender)
What are two broad approaches to remedying injustice that cut across the redistribution-recognition divide according to Fraser?
Two broad approaches to remedying injustice that cut across the redistribution–recognition divide. I shall call them ‘affirmation’ and ‘transformation’ respectively. Affirmative remedies are remedies aimed at correcting inequitable outcomes of social arrangements without disturbing the underlying framework that generates them. Transformative remedies are aimed at correcting inequitable outcomes precisely by restructuring the underlying generative framework.
What are four ideas for remedying injustice which are the intersections of redistribution-recognition and affirmation-transformation (Fraser)?
In the first cell, where redistribution and affirmation intersect, is the project of the liberal welfare state; centered on surface reallocations of distributive shares among existing groups, it tends to support group differentiation; it can also generate backlash misrecognition.
In the second cell, where redistribution and transformation intersect, is the project of socialism; aimed at deep restructuring of the relations of production, it tends to blur group differentiation; it can also help redress some forms of misrecognition.
In the third cell, where recognition and affirmation intersect, is the project of mainstream multiculturalism; focused on surface reallocations of respect among existing groups, it tends to support group differentiation.
In the fourth cell, where recognition and transformation intersect, is the project of deconstruction; aimed at deep restructuring of the relations of recognition, it tends to destabilize group differentiations.
Why are affirmative redistribution and recognition insufficient to deal with racial injustice?
Affirmative redistribution fails to engage the deep level at which the political economy is racialised. It does not attack the racialized division of exploitable and surplus labour, nor the racialized division of menial and non-menial occupations within paid labour. Leaving intact the deep structures that generate racial disadvantage, it must make surface reallocations again and again. The result is not only to underline racial differentiation, it is also to mark people of colour as deficient and insatiable, as always needing more and more. Thus they too can be cast as privileged recipients of special treatment. The problem is exacerbated when we add the affirmative recognition strategy of cultural nationalism. In some contexts, such an approach can make progress toward decentring Eurocentric norms, but in this context the cultural politics of affirming black difference equally appears as an affront to the liberal welfare state. Fuelling the resentment against affirmative action, it can elicit intense backlash misrecognition.
Why are transformative methods (socialism in the economy plus deconstruction in the culture) best for dealing with injustice according to Fraser?
Transformative redistribution to redress racial injustice in the economy consists in some form of anti-racist democratic socialism or anti-racist social democracy. And transformative recognition to redress racial injustice in the culture consists in anti-racist deconstruction aimed at dismantling Eurocentrism by destabilizing racial dichotomies. Thus, the scenario in question combines the socioeconomic politics of socialist anti-racism with the cultural politics of deconstructive anti-racism or critical ‘race’ theory. Its principal drawback, again, is that both deconstructive–anti-racist cultural politics and socialist–anti-racist economic politics are far removed from the immediate interests and identities of most people of colour, as these are currently culturally constructed.
What is Crenshaw’s argument regarding the importance of intersectionality?
- Whilst the existence of identity categories need not be vestiges of bias or domination, and difference between groups can instead be the source of social empowerment and reconstruction, identity politics frequently ignores intra-group differences
- Most frequently, this results in the violence that is experienced by black women not being taken seriously by neither feminism, which focus on the struggle of white women, or antiracism, which focuses primarily on black men.
- Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices.
- The intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately
