Iris Marion Young Quotes on Justice
Iris Marion Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990) and the posthumous Responsibility for Justice (2011) gave late twentieth-century political philosophy one of its most influential alternatives to the distributive paradigm dominant in the Rawlsian liberal tradition. The principal argument is that justice cannot be reduced to the distribution of goods among individuals — many of the most serious injustices of contemporary societies are structural rather than distributive (the five faces of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence) — and that an adequate political philosophy must therefore analyze the institutional processes through which group-based injustices are reproduced. The framework, integrating critical theory with feminist, antiracist, and disability-rights political thought, shaped subsequent work on structural injustice through Sally Haslanger, Tommie Shelby, and Charles Mills.
Quotes
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Attributed to Iris Marion Young:
“The five faces of oppression are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.”
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Attributed to Iris Marion Young:
“Justice without recognition is incomplete.”
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Attributed to Iris Marion Young:
“Difference is a resource, not a problem to be overcome.”
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“Social movements for global democracy and justice should try not only to build on and create global legal and regulatory institutions, but also to expand possibilities for transnational association and public spheres.”
Inclusion and Democracy (2000), Ch. 7: Self-Determination and Global Democracy -
“Responsibility for Justice (2014)”
A developer has bought the central-city apartment building where Sandy, a single mother, has been living with her two children; he plans to convert it into condominiums. … She looks in the newspaper and online for apartment rental advertisements, and she is shocked at the rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments. … Sandy searches for two months, with the eviction deadline looming over her. Finall