Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T07:48:21.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Groups and Oppression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Elanor Taylor
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Oppression is a form of injustice that occurs when one social group is subordinated while another is privileged, and oppression is maintained by a variety of different mechanisms including social norms, stereotypes, and institutional rules. A key feature of oppression is that it is perpetrated by and affects social groups. In this article I show that because of the central role that groups play in theories of oppression, those theories face significant, and heretofore mostly unrecognized, metaphysical problems. I then identify resources from analytic metaphysics that can be used to address these problems. I show that, although we should not be pessimistic about the prospects for a viable theory of oppression, it will take serious metaphysical work to develop a plausible ontology of oppression, and existing theories have for the most part failed to respond to this challenge.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , Summer 2016 , pp. 520 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, Elizabeth. 2012. Emergence and fundamentality. Mind 121 (484): 873–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Karen. 2008. Exclusion again. In Being reduced: New essays on reduction, explanation, and causation, ed. Hohwy, Jakob and Kallestrup, Jesper. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Sara. 2016. Overdetermination underdetermined. Erkenntnis 81 (1): 17–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalmers, David. 1996. The conscious mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Correia, Fabrice, and Schneider, Benjamin, eds. 2012. Metaphysical grounding: Understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cudd, Ann. 2004. The paradox of liberal feminism: Preference, rationality, and oppression. In Varieties of feminist liberalism, ed. Baehr, Amy R.Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Cudd, Ann. 2006. Analyzing oppression. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frye, Marilyn. 1983/2005. Oppression. In Feminist theory: A philosophical anthology, ed. Cudd, Ann and Andreasen, Robin. Malden, Mass., and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2012. Resisting reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keaton, David, and Polger, Tom. 2014. Exclusion, still not tracted. Philosophical Studies 171 (1): 135–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. 1993. Supervenience and mind: Selected philosophical essays. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon. 2006. Emergence: Core ideas and issues. Synthese 151 (3): 547–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, Andrew, Sober, Elliott, and Wright, Erik. 1987. Marxism and methodological individualism. New Left Review I/162: 67–84.Google Scholar
Morrison, Margaret. 2012. Emergent physics and micro‐ontology. Philosophy of Science 79 (1): 141–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ney, Alyssa. 2007. Can an appeal to constitution solve the exclusion problem? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (4): 486–506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Elanor. 2015. Collapsing emergence. Philosophical Quarterly 65 (261): 732–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas. 1989. Laws and symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Jessica. 2010. Non‐reductive physicalism and degrees of freedom. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 61 (2): 279–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Jessica. 2016. Metaphysical emergence: Weak and strong. In Metaphysics in contemporary physics, ed. Bigaj, Tomasz and Wüthrich, Christian. Leiden: Brill/Rodopi.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1998. Five faces of oppression. Philosophical Forum 19 (4): 270–90. Reprinted in Ann Cudd and Robin Andreasen, eds., Feminist theory: A philosophical anthology. Malden, Mass., and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005.Google Scholar