Cogs in the Machine? Evaluating Individual Contributions to our own Oppression

Abstract

The concept of structural oppression broadly refers to the idea that oppression is not merely an outcome of aggregating individually oppressive actions by discrete agents spread about society—rather, oppression is rooted in the very basic operations of our societies. Social norms, laws, political policy, the economy, and even the independently non-objectionable choices of individuals can bring it about. Simply put, oppression can be part of the fabric of our daily lives, so shaped by the social structures in which we live. The fundamental insight of structural views of oppression is that we must shift our attention to the social forces that structure our lives in order to understand how oppression works, and- importantly- how it may be overcome. We must take care, however, not to refocus our attention to the structural in such a way that neglects the significance of individual agency. Focusing too much on individual agency leads us to place blame on individuals for collectively detrimental outcomes, but focusing too much on social structure leads us to treat individual action as pre-determined, and so we undermine the importance of individual agency. This dissertation sets out to appreciate the impact of both. As with any large-scale social phenomenon, oppression comes about due to the structural shaping of the social environments in which individuals exercise their agencies. In the chapters that follow, I offer a method by which we can understand oppression as occurring in the interplay between social structure and individual behavior. Approaching the study of oppression as occurring within and among networks of individuals allows us to appreciate both its structural and agential elements, which provides us with a foundation for normative evaluations of our contributions to it. This dissertation utilizes the language and insights of social network theory to establish such a foundation. I argue for a view of oppression as a self-reinforcing pattern of unfairly restricted social relations that systematically disadvantages one social group in relation to another. In doing so, I will answer some of these questions and, in the traditional spirit of philosophy, raise more.