Responding to Structural Injustice

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How can and should we respond to pervasive structural injustice in and between contemporary societies, from ongoing racial disparities in health, wealth, and education to sweatshop labor in the global economy to inequitable gendered divisions of household labor? While there is a general consensus that received notions of moral responsibility are inadequate to this task, the alternative notion of “political responsibility” developed by Iris Marion Young has itself been heavily criticized, showing little to no sign of reaching a consensus around a positive view. Moreover, the question of responding to structural injustice arguably raises a host of issues that go beyond responsibility and which have been largely ignored in the literature on structural injustice, from the nature of agency within unjust social structures to the kinds of collective political action that would effectively address these problems.
This panel addresses the pressing question of what politically responding to structural injustice might entail from multiple vantage points. In addition to bringing new perspectives on the meaning of responsibility in contexts of structural injustice, the panelists confront related but distinct problems for the challenge of responding to structural injustice, specifically, how should we understand concepts of agency, motivation, causality, and responsiveness when thinking in structural terms? In doing so, it aims to both broaden and deepen the ongoing political conversation on structural injustice.

Sub Unit

• Division 3: Normative Theory

Individual Presentations

• Responding to Climate Injustice: The IPCC and Participatory Democracy - Jonathan Masin-Peters, Harvard University

• The “Liability” Model and Causal Contributions to Structural Injustice - Anjali Mohan, Stanford University

• Agency for Justice: Theorizing Pathways to Structural Change - Kyuree Kim, McGill University

• Structural Injustice and Political Responsibility - Rachel Nusbaum, Brown University

• Thinking Responsibly about Structural Injustice - Hochan Kim, Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Chair

• Clarissa Rile Hayward Washington University in St. Louis

Discussants

• Benjamin McKean Ohio State University

• Clarissa Rile Hayward Washington University in St. Louis