Iris Marion Young Research Articles

Youth homelessness: A social justice approach

Social justice approaches that work towards eliminating youth homelessness with a sole focus on material needs overlook the significance of non-material aspects, such as the impact of social exclusion and stigma on individuals’ subjectivities. The lack of social legitimacy associated with homelessness is exacerbated under neoliberal conditions, with the shift from social to individual responsibility positioning those unable to achieve the normative transition to adulthood as social failures. We draw on interviews with young homeless women in Australia to extend the emerging sociological focus on the relational aspects of homelessness through a social justice lens. We analyse the association between subjectivity, stigma and neoliberalism, and draw on Iris Marion Young’s theory of justice to highlight how these shape experiences of homelessness. We conclude that overcoming homelessness requires policies and practices that give a greater focus to non-material aspects of homelessness through an emphasis on empowerment, self-respect and autonomy.

Breaking Down the Myth and Curse of Women Athletes: Enough is Enough, Period

From a theoretical perspective, I analyze the claim that women’s athletic performances are negatively affected by their menstrual cycles. To demonstrate the perpetuation of the belief that menstruation is a mythical debilitating bodily function for women and sport participation, an overview of Elizabeth Spelman, Simone De Beauvoir, and Iris Marion Young’s philosophical framing of somatophobia and menstruation is outlined. Analysis of specific examples of elite female athletes who have addressed menstruation in connection to their sporting performance are also discussed to emphasize how menstruation is linked to the frailty myth. I offer an analysis of the scientific literature on hormonal swings of the menstrual cycle and, the effects on sport performance to show that research is equivocal. Finally, a brief examination of feminine hygiene marking campaigns takes place to further emphasize the argument how the frailty myth is closely linked to women athletes and menstruation and how change can be created.

Responsibility and Ignorance: On Dismantling Structural Injustice

This essay tackles the thorny question of how to dismantle structural racial injustice. It engages Iris Marion Young’s work on responsibility for structural justice. But it also draws on Charles Mills’s work on what Mills calls white epistemologies of ignorance to challenge Young’s emphasis on changing how racially privileged people understand their responsibilities. It makes the case that disruptive politics play a crucial role in dismantling structural injustice. Because they interrupt privileged people’s motivated ignorance, disruptive politics create a political opening to institutionalize structural change.

Global Structural Exploitation: Towards an Intersectional Definition

If Third World women form ‘the bedrock of a certain kind of global exploitation of labour,’ as Chandra Mohanty argues, how can our theoretical definitions of exploitation account for this? This paper argues that liberal theories of exploitation are insufficiently structural and that Marxian accounts are structural but are insufficiently intersectional. What we need is a structural and intersectional definition of exploitation in order to correctly identify global structural exploitation. Drawing on feminist, critical race/post-colonial and post-Fordist critiques of the Marxist definition and the intersectional accounts of Maria Mies and Iris Marion Young, this paper offers the following definition of structural exploitation: structural exploitation refers to the forced transfer of the productive powers of groups positioned as socially inferior to the advantage of groups positioned as socially superior. Global structural exploitation is a form of global injustice because it is a form of oppression.

Iris Marion Young on responsible intervention: reimagining humanitarian intervention

ABSTRACTIris Marion Young took a strong stance against humanitarian intervention and other so-called legitimate instances of what she calls ‘official violence’. Nevertheless, she was also aware that there may be some situations for which military humanitarian intervention should at least be considered. Young was concerned that some states will use their obligation to defend against human rights violations as a mechanism in securing or maintaining global dominance. In addition, she recognized that what counts as a violation of human rights is not uncontroversial; human rights norms and conventions are interpreted, negotiated, and otherwise contested. In this article, I build on Young’s arguments for a social connection model of responsibility by applying it to a situation where a forceful response to violence might be justified. I juxtapose Young’s position with the emerging international standard called ‘the responsibility to protect’ in order to suggest an account of intervention for global governance relations.

Understanding political responsibility in corporate citizenship: towards a shared responsibility for the common good

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and the role of business in global governance. In the debate on political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart from economic responsibilities firms assume political responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast this with a subsidiarity-based approach to governance, in which firms are seen as intermediate actors who have political co-responsibilities in society endowed upon them by (inter)national governmental institutions. We argue that both approaches face conceptual and empirical problems, and do not make clear the content and scope of political corporate responsibility. Based on Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility we argue that corporate actors and governmental actors have a shared responsibility to tackle societal problems. Taking political corporate responsibility not only entails engaging in private action or engaging in public–private partnerships, but it also includes aiding governmental actors to remedy injustice or even create public institutions where they do not yet exist. By adding this perspective we contribute to the debate on responsibility in corporate citizenship and clarify the political role business can play in global governance.

Treating Moral Harm as Social Harm: Toward a Restorative Ethics of Christian Responsibility

This essay explores small ordinary experiences of moral harm as problems of social injustice. Starting with two stories, we first argue against a dominant framework of personal responsibility that assigns responsibility to particular blameworthy agents. Instead we sketch an account of why structural responsibility for social harm must be considered, drawing on the work of Iris Marion Young and Pierre Bourdieu. Finally, drawing on Margaret Walker's notion of moral repair and Christopher Marshall's interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan, we sketch an account of Christian moral responsibility grounded in restorative justice that seeks to address daily experiences of moral harm through the moral repair work of neighbor-love.

Organic social change

ABSTRACTThe distinctness of each person’s life and experience is an important consideration in dominant accounts of how democratic institutions should distribute basic rights and liberties. Drawing on recent social movements, philosophers like Iris Marion Young, Miranda Fricker, and Axel Honneth have nonetheless drawn attention to the distinctive claims and challenges that plurality and difference entrain in democratic societies by analysing how the dominant discourses on rights and justice tend to elide, obscure, or reify the lived experiences of individuals belonging to disadvantaged and oppressed groups. In this essay, I offer an independent justification for why we should take such lived experiences seriously. I show how the lived experiences of disadvantaged and oppressed individuals can be a resource for deep and meaningful social change. I propose a distinctive kind of social change in which the disadvantaged and oppressed themselves drive the process of transformation whereby they change the oppressive frames of difference relating to their race, class, sex, or ability. I call this kind ‘organic social change’. I also show that organic social change is distinctively important in that the disadvantaged and oppressed get to enact an empowering mode of cooperation that harnesses their singularities when they are the ones driving the process of their own and one another’s transformations.

Data justice for development

This paper looks at the intersection of two growing trends in international development – use of justice in development theory, and use of data in development practice – and asks what data-justice-for-development would mean. The rationale for this can be the presence of current data injustices in developing countries, and different framings for data injustice point to three different mainstream perspectives on data justice: instrumental, procedural, and distributive/rights-based. These three perspectives are explained but they are also subject to small data, sustainability, Senian, and structural critiques. A full understanding of the mainstream perspectives and conceptualisation of the critiques is largely the task of a future research agenda. However, the paper does particularly argue that a structural approach should be the foundation for understanding data justice in a development context. It offers three potential ways to conceptualise structural data justice – through the ideas of Iris Marion Young, of political economy, and of the capability approach – and ends with some thoughts on the practical agenda when seeking to deliver structural data justice for development.

Re-visit Iris Young’s responsibility for Justice : in terms of legal concept on non-positivism

Re-visit Iris Young’s responsibility for Justice : in terms of legal concept on non-positivism

Taking It Out on the Body? A Phenomenological Study of Young Adults’ Gendered Experiences of Depression and Antidepressant Use

In this article, we use in-depth interviews with young adults in Sweden to explore the gendered and embodied experiences of depression and antidepressant use. Building upon previous phenomenological research, we analyse being depressed and on antidepressants as altered embodied states, in which corporealization—experiencing the body as a material object—is central. Feminist interventions by Toril Moi and Iris Marion Young inform our analysis of embodiment as gendered. The bodily facets of depression include the weight of the anxious body in crying and not sleeping, as well as the weakened or distorted relationship between body, mind and world in brooding thoughts and hopelessness. These experiences of corporealization are not expressed in gendered terms but, when acted out in depression, they do appear to be gendered. The female body becomes “the first battleground”—as the socially endorsed object upon which to act destructively. In contrast, male behaviour is not expressed as self-destructive, but projects in the world are emphasized at the cost of (bodily) well-being. Although antidepressants lift the corporeal weight of anxiety and low mood, they install a new, and in some respects more profound, corporealization of the body. This is expressed as feeling and caring less and being like a thing or machine. It can be understood in terms of an increased distance from the world—not articulated in gendered terms. As a way of existing in the world, the medicated state bears strong similarities to the depressed state from which it was originally an effort to escape. Thus, taking medication can be seen as yet another way of acting on the body as object. Furthermore, it could be suggested from our findings that when the body is not felt—when there is a breakdown of the meaningful relationship between the body and the world—the experience is less gendered.

(Hip) Throwing Like a Girl: Martial Arts and Norms of Feminine Body Comportment

Although women have long been participants in martial sports, norms of “proper” feminine comportment can interfere with their success. Iris Marion Young's “Throwing Like a Girl” argues that, in physical activities, many women experience an inhibited intentionality. I extend this idea and argue that norms of proper feminine comportment make it harder for women to conceptualize their bodies as standing in agential physical relationships to others' bodies. This hampers many women starting out in combat sports and needs to be accounted for in women's self-defense training.

Maynard and Iris

To address the deep contradictions in social and economic life that motivated Keynes, I propose a combination of “environmental Keynesianism” and “deep democracy.” Massive state investment in infrastructure and environmental remediation would be an excellent way of soaking up capital in the ground, thus responding to the overaccumulation crisis feared by Keynes. Deep democracy, proposed by Iris Marion Young, proposes a sustained political engagement at different scales with different interlocutors on different issues. This is a kind of politics that, she suggests, requires people to pay attention to each other’s circumstances, needs and beliefs and thereby arrive at outcomes perceived as fair and fairly arrived at.

Women in Europe and in the world: The state of the Union 2016

Building on the definition of oppression developed by the philosopher Iris Young, the article argues that women in Europe are an oppressed group. Relying on recent statistics, it points out that a high percentage of women are still subject to gender violence; economically exploited and marginalized; powerless with regard to governance and participation in the public sphere, as well as victims of androcentrism—a pattern of cultural evaluation which seriously undermines women’s potential for development. The article then shows how this state of affairs has worsened over the last years, under the effects of the financial and economic crisis, and the austerity policies with which the European states have responded. Finally, it singles out two possible future scenarios. If the current neo-liberal trends persist, we can expect a move towards societies more polarized in terms of class and ethnicity; low fertility rates; and an increasing poverty of those most in need of care and in charge of care provision. The crisis could instead be perceived as an opportunity to diverge from this prevailing neo-liberal model, calling for a new, inclusive, societal model of development—a new humanism which puts the person, in her whole complexity and in her very real care dependent nature, at the very core of the political and economic project.

아이리스 마리온 영의 정의론의 관점에서 본 츠빙글리 연구

아이리스 마리온 영의 정의론의 관점에서 본 츠빙글리 연구

Karl Mannheim on democratic interaction: Revisiting mass society theory

Abstract This essay re-considers Karl Mannheim’s notion of democratic behaviour in the context of mass society. Although the term ‘mass society’ seems archaic, it is still the precondition of democracy today. Mannheim conceptualized mass society as irrational, disintegrating Great Society and presented the remedy of Planning for Freedom to counter the crisis of mass democracy. In his remedy Mannheim advocated social education that fosters citizens’ democratic interaction, and the keywords of his education were ‘integrative behaviour’ and ‘creative tolerance’. The similar orientation of his remedy can be found in much more contemporary critiques of deliberative democracy. Iris Marion Young’s ‘communicative democracy’ was a version of her democratic interaction in a complex, large-scale mass society. Young’s notion of ‘reasonableness’ has substantial affinity with Mannheim’s integrative behaviour, both of which require the democratic attitude of hearing the other side and the readiness to self-transform. Mass society theory has relevance for contemporary democratic theory.

Género, racismo y ciudadanía

Resumen: Este trabajo explora las formas en lascuales se da la discriminación racial contra las mujeres,tomando como caso para el análisis las mujeres negrasde la ciudad de Cali. Se define el racismo en términos delos derechos humanos, como un tipo de violenciainvisibilizada. Se analizan las formas de opresión quepadecen las mujeres negras en esta ciudad empleandolas concepciones de Iris Young sobre los cinco aspectosde la opresión: la explotación, la marginación, la carenciade poder, el imperialismo cultural y la violencia. Sediscuten algunos obstáculos para la acción gubernamentalen contra de la discriminación racial, y seesboza una serie de propuestas de acciones encaminadasa eliminar dicha discriminación.Palabras clave: Mujeres negras, Cali, derechoshumanos, discriminación, racismo.Abstract: This article explores the ways in whichracial discrimination against women works, using thecase of black women in Cali for the analysis. Racism isdefined in terms of human rights as a kind of invisibleviolence. The text analyzes forms of oppression againstwomen in this city using Iris Young’s concepts of the fiveaspects of oppression: exploitation, marginalization,powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. Itdiscusses some obstacles for governmental action againstracial discrimination, and proposes some actions aimedat eliminating it.Key Words: Black women, Cali, human rights, discrimination,racism.

Identidad y violencia

Resumen: Apelando a filósofas como Simone deBeauvoir, Celia Amorós, y Iris Young, entre otras, estetrabajo define y caracteriza la violencia contra lasmujeres en el marco del debate entre feminismo de laigualdad, basado en el racionalismo de la Ilustración, yel feminismo de la diferencia, basado en el rechazo postestructuralistaal ideario liberal. El texto se centra enla concepción política de la «identidad» en su interseccióncon la variable «mujeres» en el marco de losdenominados «nuevos movimientos sociales» que son labase de los «nuevos conflictos sociales» y, consecuentemente,de las «nuevas identidades sociales» de conjuntosemergentes en lucha por su reconocimiento. Seentra en diálogo con la realidad latinoamericana alabordar el problema de la violencia como un problemade importancia global, rescatando los valores universalistase igualitaristas de la Ilustración.Palabras clave: Violencia, identidad, movimientossociales, Ilustración.Abstract: Drawing from such philosophers as Simonede Beauvoir, Celia Amorós, y Iris Young, this articledefines and characterizes violence against women in theframework of the debate between the feminism of equality,based on the rationalism of the Illustration, and thefeminism of difference, based on the post-structuralistrejection to liberal ideas. It centers on the politicalconception of «identity» in its intersection with thevariable «women» in relation to new social conflictsand new social identities of emerging groups fightingfor recognition. It enters into dialogue with LatinAmerican reality while approaching the problem of violence as a global issue, rescuing the universalist and equalitarian values of the Illustration.Key words: Violence, identity, social movements,Illustration

What values, whose perspective in social and emotional training? A study on how ethical approaches and values may be handled analytically in education and educational research

This present article takes an interest in the fairly new phenomena of social and emotional training programs in youth education. Prior research has shown that values and norms produced in these types of programs are supporting ethical systems that teachers may not always be aware of. This motivates the development of methods for analyzing these activities from an ethical point of view. An analysis model has been developed and piloted in the analyses of two different classroom activities. The model is based on theories of communicative ethics and an ethics of dialogicity, drawing upon the work of Jürgen Habermas, Iris Marion Young, and Emmanuel Levinas. The analyses show that norms concerning whose perspective is prioritized and what ethical values are constituted in the classroom vary depending on how the program is organized and how the teacher chooses to use the program. The article also argues that the analytical model suggested might serve as a contribution to both teachers’ own professional, ethical awareness, and to critical studies on what takes place within social and emotional training activities in education.

From Bounded Morality to Consumer Social Responsibility: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Socially Responsible Consumption and Its Obstacles

Corporate social responsibility has been intensively discussed in business ethics literature, whereas the social responsibility of private consumers appears to be less researched. However, there is also a growing interest from business ethicists and other scholars in the field of consumer social responsibility (ConSR). Nevertheless, previous discussions of ConSR reveal the need for a viable conceptual basis for understanding the social responsibility of consumers in an increasingly globalized market economy. Moreover, evolutionary aspects of human morality seem to have been neglected despite the fact that private consumers are undoubtedly human beings. In addition to that, empirical studies suggest that many consumers believe themselves to be responsible but do not act according to their alleged values or attitudes. This raises the question of what deters them from doing so. Therefore, the contribution of this conceptual paper is threefold: we (i) (re-)conceptualize ConSR in terms of a combination of a Max Weber-inspired approach (social action and the ethic of responsibility) with the social connection approach to shared responsibility proposed by Iris Marion Young; (ii) shed light on the previously neglected implications of an evolutionarily induced bounded morality for ConSR, and (iii) identify potential obstacles to socially responsible consumption, particularly against the backdrop of shared social responsibility and bounded morality. In this latter respect, the paper focuses specifically on the obstacles of low moral intensity, moral stupefaction, informational complexity, and the lack of perceived consumer effectiveness. In sum, the paper advances knowledge in the field of ConSR by using a transdisciplinary, literature-based approach.