Unjust Constraint

Question 1

What is domination and exploitation?

Answer 1

• rules and norms of a system can exploit and constribute to oppresion and domination of a group of peope
• domination however involves more intentionality

Question 2

What does DuBois say about racism and structural injustice?

Answer 2

• the problem isn’t being called slurs rather it’s because he is different, he doesn’t look how a person ‘ought’ to look in a white society
• white society cannot see him as an equal member simply because he is black

Question 3

What is double consciousness?

Answer 3

1. seeing oneself in two ways simultaneously: as a black person and as a white society views you (for example sitting in the back of the bus because you’re black and don’t belong at the front)
2. always evaluating oneself using the norm of a white society
3. a psychological consequence of a racist society
4. the person lacks ‘true self-consciousness’ since they struggle with two conflicting perspectives

Question 4

What is the ultimate aim of Dubois?

Answer 4

Able to be an equal amongst other human beings, irrespective of race, and contribute with one’s gifts to the human project of culture

Question 5

What are the 4 means for true self-consciousness?

Answer 5

• Emancipation (being legally free)
• suffrage
• education
• craft (working with one’s hand, establishing one’s own business)

Question 6

What is Frye’s aim?

Answer 6

To provide a rigorous account of oppression that is central to the feminist movement

Question 7

What is Frye’s definition of oppression?

Answer 7

oppression functions through group categorization and group membership

• people are not oppressed because of their particularity
• oppression functions through recognizing that people are members of a group by some feature that groups them together

Question 8

What are the features of oppression?

Answer 8

1. characterised by double binds
2. utilizes systematic restriction on people
3. categories people into groups identified by natural or physical features
4. oppressive normas harm a group generally while privileging another group (s)

Question 9

What is double binding?

Answer 9

double binding is where the situation of a person is severely limited and all other options are punishment or censure

• individuals are to choose situations that are somehow all harmful or punishing, trapping them in a cycle of oppression

Question 10

What are the problematic features of double binding?

Answer 10

1. options that are equally meaningless or futile
2. bad choices between prudentially and morally better choices (cooperating with or resisting an oppressive norm)
3. options co-opt a person agency-strips them of autonomy (strips away self-governance)

Question 11

Who is Coulthard and what is the main aim of his text?

Answer 11

• He is an indigenous political theorist and a professor at UBC
• his main aim is to criticize Canada’s current approach to indigenous peoples: Recognition

Question 12

What is the settler-colonial relationship?

Answer 12

1. a form of domination expressed through social relations between the state and the colonized
2. it functions through discursive and non-discursive means (eg. law, arrests, violence)
3. aims to dispose indigenous people of their land**
4. in virtue of losing land, indigenous people lose self-determining authority (they become dependent on the state)

Question 13

What is primitive Accumulation?

Answer 13

Marx described the capitalists as those who violently strip any non-capitalist producers

Question 14

What are the two important conditions of domination?

Answer 14

1. it privatizes what was once collectively held land and resources (dispossessions and enclosure). It steals land and resources and asserts a right to its control
2. dispossession and enclosure ultimately produce a class of workers who are exploited into labour for their survival (proletarianization)

Question 15

what are the insights that colonialism yields?

Answer 15

1. we cannot justify appropriating less developed societies since there is an inherent injustice in the settler-colonial relation
2. dispossession of land is a more important feature
3. the land itself is exploited
4. economic relations are not the only concern for decolonization

Question 16

What is Coulthard’s solution

Answer 16

For the Indigenous, a significant part of self-conception will involve their relationship with the land

decolonization will involve preparing their ability to relate to the land in the way required by their self-conception

Question 17

What is the case of Sandy?

Answer 17

• she is a victim of a system or structure of her society
• she cannot afford housing that is closer to her work, or she cannot provide funding for a car that she needs to get to work from

Question 18

What is social structure?

Answer 18

1. it consists in the fact that people occupy certain positions, and those positions are related and affect one another thereby internally constituting those position
2. social structures are processes that reproduce themselves by agents acting from their positions (renter vs landlord)
3. a social structure depends on past collective behaviour and, so, is not individually determined
4. social structures produce effects in future that no one may have intended

Question 19

What is structural injustice?

Answer 19

it is harmful to individuals as a result of structural processes involving many people

Question 20

What is the liability model?

Answer 20

searches for a causal connection between an action performed by an agent and harm and assigns responsibility to the agent for the harm done

Question 21

What are the 5 differences of Political Responsibility?

Answer 21

1. PR doesn’t search for a single actor to absolve others (just as some people may be found more guilty doesn’t mean everyone else who contributes is not responsible)
2. Liability remedies a deviation from a norm; PR addresses the normal functioning of society (hold people liable for breaking the law, their behaviour deviates from what should happen. PR focuses on the justices that are built into our social structure)
3. PR is mostly forward-looking (focused on creating a more just society)
4. What PR entails for agents is open to determination rather than strictly assigning blame
5. PR is shared by all who contribute to a social structure (liability focuses on singular agents, PR focuses on a collective)