Chapter 29 Summary

In “Five Faces of Oppression,” Iris Marion Young attempts to clarify the meaning of the concept of oppression, particularly as it has been employed by contemporary social movements. According to Young’s analysis, the term “oppression” refers to several distinct structures, situations, or conditions, which she organizes into five categories: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.

Exploitation is a process of transferring the results of the labor of one group to benefit another group. Young does not follow Marx in treating exploitation as a strictly class-based phenomenon. On Young’s view, exploitation can proceed along gender and racial lines as well. Marginalization occurs when a group of people is shut out from the labor market and is thereby expelled from useful participation in social life. Marginalization causes severe material deprivations but is unjust in other ways as well. For example, it also deprives people of the rights and freedoms enjoyed by others and blocks opportunities for people to develop and exercise their capacities. Powerlessness is based on the difference in status between professionals and nonprofessionals and best understood negatively. Nonprofessionals are powerless relative to professionals in that they lack social respectability, work autonomy, and careers that allows them to expand and develop their capacities. Unlike the previous three categories, cultural imperialism is not rooted in the social division of labor. It occurs when a dominant social group establishes its own experiences as normal and universal, while the perspectives and experiences of other groups are treated as other, deviant, or inferior. Finally, violence refers to the way many oppressed groups are subject to systematic, legitimized, and irrational attacks.