Overview

Injustices are, in the first instance, brute acts of identifiable individuals. But they are typically perpetuated, more subtly, through seemingly innocent workings of innocuous social structures. Critics of structural injustice are quick to call out that ruse. They say much about all the sites where such structural injustices reside - but without saying much, as yet, about how exactly structural injustice actually works. By what specific mechanisms are unfair advantages and disadvantages perpetuated? What, specifically, can we do to interrupt them? That is the focus of this book, in which Robert Goodin identifies several fundamental mechanisms of structural injustice: social position, networks, language, social expectations and norms, reputation, and organization. His discussion is deeply informed by a wide range of social sciences, mined with a philosopher's sharp eye to what matters and lucidly explained with a deft turn of phrase. Having exposed each of those specific mechanisms of structural injustice, Goodin proceeds to explore what they all have in common. The underlying drivers, he shows, are a combination of scale effects and attention scarcities. That combination limits - but also informs - what can reasonably be done to overcome the various, nefarious mechanisms that perpetuate unfair social advantage and disadvantage.

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9780192888204

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Reviews

Recommended. With reservations. General readers through faculty. * Choice * In pushing the reader to think seriously about questions of scale, responsibility and effective action, this text demonstrate that the field of structural injustice is flourishing. More than ever, we need the rigorous, informed and clear-sighted analysis exemplified by Goodin argument if we are to better understand and respond to the injustices of our current moment. * Ashley Dodsworth, European Journal of Political Theory *

Recommended. With reservations. General readers through faculty. * Choice *

Author Information

Robert E. Goodin is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University and sometime Professor of Government at the University of Essex, specializing in political theory and public policy. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Political Philosophy and was General Editor of the eleven-volume Oxford Handbooks of Political Science. He has been awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science and the Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research.

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