Justice and The Politics of Difference

Young argues that affirmative action is better at counteracting current biases than remedying past discrimination. Such policies seek to increase the inclusion and participation of oppressed groups, yet the debate about affirmative action takes place within the paradigm of distributive justice. Even though affirmative action policies can award prestigious positions to women and members of other oppressed groups, they have only a “minor effect in altering the basic structure of group privilege and oppression” (199). In directing attention away from the lack of opportunity for most in these oppressed groups, the debate about affirmative action tends to support the status quo. Young criticizes two premises underlying the status quo: the hierarchical division of labor, which includes very few positions of power and prestige, and the distribution of such positions on the purported basis of merit.

The use of merit to award scarce positions would only be justifiable if qualifications were defined objectively and independently of culture and values, if the competencies required were job-related, and if performance and competence were judged individually and without cultural bias (201-02). Young considers this impossible. Most jobs are too complex to enable a precise measurement of performance, and individual contributions are often difficult to assess in collective outputs. Additionally, managerial or high-status positions often entail a great deal of leeway as to how the work is best completed. Those who evaluate workers are typically not “familiar with the work process” (203), further undermining the integrity of such merit ratings. In reality, the criteria of evaluation are value-based and culturally specific. More often than not, white men who are able-bodied and heterosexual evaluate the work of members of oppressed groups and bring to the table unconscious aversions and misunderstandings of cultural differences.

Educational attainments and standardized test results are commonly used to predict academic success and job performance. Yet standardized tests reflect values and culture and typically measure a limited set of aptitudes and skills. In reducing all persons to a common score of alleged intelligence, they define difference negatively. As white, middle-class men have usually authored these tests, women, people of color, and working-class people tend to have lower scores. Thus, the tests do not provide an accurate measure of “cognitive competence independent of and neutral with respect to values and culture” (210).

The processes of establishing criteria for positions and ranking qualifications are political. Given this, such criteria should be established democratically within a context of fairness. That context would require that the criteria be explicit and public and not exclude any social groups from consideration. Additionally, all applicants should enjoy consideration according to formal procedures that are publicized, and people with particular group affinities could receive preference, but only to undermine oppression or disadvantage (212). In the workplace, all workers should have input into general policies of hiring and a voice in the determination of criteria for their specific forms of work. In some cases, clients should have input into this hiring process as well.

Young considers a hierarchical division of labor—one with few winners and a distinction between task-defining and task-executing functions—to be unjust. Professionals, who receive higher pay and regulate entrance into their ranks, typically engage in task design. In designing tasks, they remove all autonomy and creativity from the executing function. This cheapens labor and renders it more easily subject to automation. Workers are left powerless, with “little or no authority or autonomy in most aspects of” life (219), especially work. They are told what to do and must act as “obedient subordinates, a stance that usually diminishes a sense of self” (221). Justice demands that people have the opportunity to develop and use skills. Most in the working class are therefore denied justice. To remedy this situation, workplace democracy is necessary. Employees must participate in the “basic decisions of the enterprise as a whole” and the “specific decisions that concern their specific work situation” (223). Workplace democracy reinforces governmental democracy. Young is not calling for the elimination of specialization or differential pay; rather, she seeks to eliminate the class division between professionals and nonprofessionals, ensuring greater mobility in the workforce and ending the special status of professionals in the form of status and prestige (225).

Political theorists must offer alternative visions of social relations. Several theorists have posited the ideal of community as an alternative to individualism, which assumes people to be “separate and self-contained atoms, each with the same formal rights, rights to keep others out, separate” (227). While Young agrees with the need for an alternative to liberalism and the distributive paradigm of justice, she rejects the communitarian alternative. Communitarian theorists assume a shared subjectivity, in which citizens understand others as they do themselves. There is a unity of purpose. Instead, Young argues that an individual subject is never fully present to themselves, let alone others. Communitarians celebrate face-to-face interaction and call for small, decentralized units of decision-making. While Young acknowledges that a good society should have institutional arrangements in place to accommodate small groups, she does not deem them suitable for society as a whole. She questions the impact on urban life and the way such small communities would relate to one another. Such a communitarian model excludes those who are different. In seeking a mutual identity, people naturally gravitate to those with whom they feel comfortable and away from those to whom they do not relate.

Politics, per Young, should be conceptualized as “a relationship of strangers who do not understand one another in a subjective and immediate sense, relating across time and distance” (234). She offers city life as an alternative vision of social relations that affirms group differences (227). People interact as strangers in cities yet experience belonging without a sense of oneness. Most have multiple group affiliations, some of which are with close friends and others which push them into the unfamiliar. Young presents four virtues of the unrealized potential of city life. First, there are social differences without exclusion. In fact, “social group differences flourish” (238), with group boundaries overlapping and open. Second, there is variety, as neighborhoods include parks, homes, and commercial centers. They are not single use, which is often isolating. Third, city life has an erotic dimension, which draws people from their routines to encounter something new and possibly causes them to lose their identities. Finally, city life offers publicity with space accessible to all. Such public spaces are critical for politics.

These are unrealized possibilities because cities are currently unjust. Domination and oppression are prevalent. Young blames this on corporate power, which is global in nature and disconnected to the needs of cities, as well as on the powerlessness of cities before state bureaucracies. Decision-making at the city level is depoliticized, with private groups making decisions behind closed doors on matters such as land use. Increasingly, urban space is segregated into single-use areas via zoning. That form of development makes life more difficult, particularly for women and oppressed social groups who have to spend time and money commuting.

To unleash the possibilities of city life, Young advocates large regional governments with mechanisms in place to represent neighborhoods and towns. A region is “the space across which people commonly travel to work, play, visit their friends, and take children on errands, the span of a day trip” (252). A region would include a city and its surrounding suburban and rural areas. All citizens should be empowered in these governments, meaning that they have a voice and a vote in making economic and political decisions. Individuals and groups would retain autonomy to make their own decisions without interference, but only when those decisions do not harm anyone else, do not inhibit the ability of others to develop and exercise their capacities, and do not determine conditions under which others are compelled to act (251). Young hopes that regions will promote liberty, minimize segregation and single-use areas, and foster public spaces.

Because Young considers theory to be socially and historically situated, her arguments are intended to apply to Western societies, especially the US. However, her theory has potential applicability internationally. She speculates on this possibility in the Epilogue and invites further research. It is important to go beyond the distributive questions to include ones about decision-making, the division of labor, and culture in both international relations and the internal politics of other countries. Domination and oppression are prevalent throughout the world. Indeed, affirming a “positive sense of group difference” and giving “specific representation to oppressed groups” might be the most important political issues per Young (259). She cites examples of ethnic minority movements in the Soviet Union, India and women’s movements. There is, she notes, a “resurgence of ethnicity within states that had claimed to transcend such differences as politically irrelevant” (260). Separate nations and states are additionally forming and strengthening institutions that bring them into greater cooperation without surrendering their identity. The European Union would be one example. Yet in many places, difference is still understood as “absolute otherness, with domination and violence the result” (260). Group differences form the background for violence throughout the world. Given these trends and realities, Young concludes that a politics that affirms group differences and represents oppressed groups has relevance beyond Western borders.