The Critique of Domination

Abstract

Abstract This chapter offers an account of the concept of domination and articulates the normative contours of the critique of domination. It concentrates on the multilayered phenomenon of the domination of wage workers by capitalist employers. The first, conceptual part of the chapter offers an analytical framework. Domination is characterized as a highly asymmetric social power relationship between agents such that some are able to impose their will on others with respect to some issues or outcomes, in some circumstances. Several dimensions of domination are identified, including its degree, range, sites, scope, depth, mechanisms, resources, and dynamic transformation. The idea of non-domination is also distinguished from the related ideas of self-determination and agential empowerment. The second part of the chapter offers a substantive account of the critique of domination by using, and developing further, the Dignitarian Approach. Domination conflicts with rights that have a dignitarian justification. People have rights to access the conditions for their self-determination and self-realization, so that they can feasibly and reasonably develop and exercise the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. Domination frustrates access to these conditions. In addition to clarifying and justifying rights against domination, the Dignitarian Approach generates other requirements of support for people’s empowerment which are independent of the avoidance of domination. As a result, the approach provides a systematic and unified perspective to simultaneously articulate the content, grounds, and limits of the critique of domination as an appraisal of social injustice.