Justice and the Politics of Difference

by Young, Iris Marion; Allen, Danielle

• ISBN13: 9780691152622
• ISBN10: 0691152624
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-08-22
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In this classic work of feminist political thought, Iris Marion Young challenges the prevailing reduction of social justice to distributive justice. It critically analyzes basic concepts underlying most theories of justice, including impartiality, formal equality, and the unitary moral subjectivity. The starting point for her critique is the experience and concerns of the new social movements about decision making, cultural expression, and division of labor--that were created by marginal and excluded groups, including women, African Americans, and American Indians, as well as gays and lesbians. Iris Young defines concepts of domination and oppression to cover issues eluding the distributive model. Democratic theorists, according to Young do not adequately address the problem of an inclusive participatory framework. By assuming a homogeneous public, they fail to consider institutional arrangements for including people not culturally identified with white European male norms of reason and respectability. Young urges that normative theory and public policy should undermine group-based oppression by affirming rather than suppressing social group difference. Basing her vision of the good society on the differentiated, culturally plural network of contemporary urban life, she argues for a principle of group representation in democratic publics and for group-differentiated policies. Danielle Allen's new foreword contextualizes Young's work and explains how debates surrounding social justice have changed since--and been transformed by--the original publication of Justice and the Politics of Difference.

Author Biography

Iris Marion Young (1949-2006) was a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. Her books include Intersecting Voices, Inclusion and Democracy, and On Female Body Experience.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 2011 Edition	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 3
Displacing the Distributive Paradigm	p. 15
The Distributive Paradigm	p. 16
The Distributive Paradigm Presupposes and Obscures Institutional Context18
Overextending the Concept of Distribution	p. 24
Problems with Talk of Distributing Power	p. 30
Defining Injustice as Domination and Oppression	p. 33
Five Faces of Oppression	p. 39
Oppression as a Structural Concept	p. 40
The Concept of a Social Group	p. 42
The Faces of Oppression	p. 48
Applying the Criteria	p. 63
Insurgency and the Welfare Capitalist Society	p. 66
Normative Principles of Welfare Capitalist Society	p. 67
The Depoliticization of Welfare Capitalist Society	p. 70
The Ideological Function of the Distributive Paradigm	p. 74
The Administered Society and New Forms of Domination	p. 76
Insurgency and the Repoliticization of Public Life	p. 81
The Dialectic of Recontainment versus Democracy	p. 88
Democracy as a Condition of Social Justice	p. 91
The Ideal of Impartiality and the Civic Public	p. 96
Postmodernist Critique of the Logic of Identity	p. 98
The Ideal of Impartiality as Denying Difference	p. 99
The Impossibility of Impartiality	p. 102
The Logic of Identity in the Ideal of the Civic Public	p. 107
Ideological Functions of the Ideal of Impartiality	p. 111
Participatory Democracy and the Idea of a Heterogeneous Public	p. 116
TheScaling of Bodies and the Politics of Identity	p. 122
The Scaling of Bodies in Modem Discourse	p. 124
Conscious Acceptance, Unconscious Aversion	p. 130
Behavioral Norms of Respectability	p. 136
Xenophobia and Abjection	p. 141
Moral Responsibility and Unintended Action	p. 148
Justice and Cultural Revolution	p. 152
Social Movements and the Politics of Difference	p. 156
Competing Paradigms of Liberation	p. 158
Emancipation through the Politics of Difference	p. 163
Reclaiming the Meaning of Difference	p. 168
Responding Difference in Policy	p. 173
The Heterogeneous Public and Group Representation	p. 183
Affirmative Action and the Myth of Merit	p. 192
Affirmative Action and the Principle of Nondiscrimination	p. 193
Affirmative Action Discussion and the Distributive Paradigm	p. 198
The Myth of Merit	p. 200
Education and Testing as Performance Proxies	p. 206
The Politics of Qualifications	p. 210
Oppression and the Social Division of Labor	p. 214
The Democratic Division of Labor	p. 222
City Life and Difference	p. 226
The Opposition between Individualism and Community	p. 227
The Rousseauist Dream	p. 229
Privileging Face-to-Face Relations	p. 232
Undesirable Political Consequences of the Ideal of Comunity	p. 234
City Life as a Normative Ideal	p. 236
Cities and Social Injustice	p. 241
Empowerment without Autonomy	p. 248
Epilogue: International Justice	p. 257
References	p. 261
Index	p. 277
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