Oscar’s Philosophy Essay: Young’s Explanation of Oppression

Oscar’s Philosophy Essay: Young’s Explanation of Oppression
Name
Institution
Young’s Explanation of Oppression
In some societies, a few people use their power and status to make policies or choices that cannot be questioned by others even though these choices and policies may be oppressing some individuals or groups within the society. In her philosophical explanation of oppression, Iris Marion Young begins by describing the concepts of justice and injustice. According to her, justice entails placing institutional conditions that make it possible for individual capacities and development to be practiced while also promoting cooperation and communication collectively. Injustice on the other hand involves placing constraints in form of domination and oppression that tend to disable the ability to practice all the mentioned. Young mentioned that oppression would be more relevant in the days of slavery although in the present society it can be seen in five forms, which she referred to as the five faces of oppression. These are exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. Young identified that the categorization of people in society into various social groups is the leading reason for the existence of oppression in the 21st century. Therefore, it means that tackling oppression would involve eliminating groups and instead, treating people as individuals. However, human existence naturally requires the existence of groups implying that the elimination of the same cannot be that easy. Young was able to acknowledge this fact and thus, identified the five faces of oppression as the best alternative solution.
Concerning the first face of exploitation, Young notes that it involves one person taking advantage of another. In other words, the labor and sacrifices made by an individual end up being enjoyed by someone else. Young suggests that this process is unfair since the person that does the real work does not benefit in any way in terms of monetary income but instead, other different persons or groups enjoy the benefits. The second phase is marginalization and on this, Young points out that marginalization involve the excluding of people or group deliberately or unintentionally from certain privileges given to the rest. In other instances, the state may give sanctions that tend to discourage particular groups from participating. According to Young’s theory, marginalization prevents people from accessing equal opportunities given to others hence destroying their lives. Ideally, this is very wrong and therefore justifies it as a form of exploitation. Powerlessness is the third form or face of exploitation and according to the theoretical framework by Young, this entails lacking the kind of authority that professionals have. This is in form of sense of self and status, which the powerless usually do not have (Young, 1990). Cultural imperialism is the type of oppression whereby the culture and experiences of one group that is dominant, are universalized and minority group members are expected to conform to the same. This way, the right to self-expression is taken away from these minority groups, which largely interferes with their ability to be happy. Evidently, the fact that ...