Book Manuscript

Emergent Disorders: A Theory of Structural Injustice

This book project develops an account of structural injustice as a coherent and compelling package of ontological, normative, and political claims about social structures and their constraining and enabling effects on our lives. Drawing on untapped resources in social theory and philosophy, I argue that an adequate theory of structural injustice must address itself to two facts: (1) social structures are a product of human actions and yet have emergent properties that are irreducible to agents and their actions, and (2) social structures can be morally objectionable for several, often entangled reasons, from harmfully constraining one’s freedom to subordinating one to others in social hierarchies. This account unravels prominent theoretical puzzles about what exactly is “structural” and “unjust” about structural injustice. It also offers some guidance for confronting the political challenges of addressing structural injustice, such as appreciating its multiple, reinforcing causes without giving into fatalism and motivating structurally privileged groups to support structural change.