Justice and the Politics of Difference

A work of critical political theory that challenges the way most theories of justice frame their subject. Young argues that the dominant distributive paradigm treats justice as the fair allocation of goods and overlooks the structures, processes and cultural meanings through which groups are dominated and oppressed. She proposes that justice be understood instead in terms of domination, the constraint on self-determination, and oppression, the constraint on self-development. Her best-known chapter identifies five faces of oppression: exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. Young then criticises the ideal of impartiality and the civic republican picture of a unified public, arguing that both suppress group difference. She defends a politics of difference, with group representation for oppressed groups, discusses affirmative action and the division of labour, and closes with city life as a normative ideal of togetherness without unity. Critics worry that the emphasis on group identity can fragment common citizenship or fix groups in place.

Its five faces of oppression give a precise vocabulary for injustices that money alone cannot fix, and it underlies much current thinking on structural injustice.