Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T08:58:24.824Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Distinguished Lecture: Social structure, narrative and explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sally Haslanger
Sally Haslanger*
Affiliation:
MIT
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent work on social injustice has focused on implicit bias as an important factor in explaining persistent injustice in spite of achievements on civil rights. In this paper, I argue that because of its individualism, implicit bias explanation, taken alone, is inadequate to explain ongoing injustice; and, more importantly, it fails to call attention to what is morally at stake. An adequate account of how implicit bias functions must situate it within a broader theory of social structures and structural injustice; changing structures is often a precondition for changing patterns of thought and action and is certainly required for durable change.

Keywords

implicit biasstructural explanationsocial meaningsocial justicenarrative
Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcoff, Linda Martín. 2005. Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth S. 2010. The Imperative of Integration. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1979. “Individualism and the Mental.”; Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1): 73–121. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4975.1979.tb00374.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cudd, Ann. 2006. Analyzing Oppression. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Einspahr, Jennifer. 2010. “Structural Domination and Structural Freedom: A Feminist Perspective.”; Feminist Review 94 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1057/fr.2009.40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Brian. 2014. “Building the Social World: Ontological Individualism vs. Anchor Individualism.”; In Rethinking the Individualism/Holism Debate: Essays in the Philosophy of Social Science, edited by Finn Collin and Julie Zahle, Synthese Library 372. Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing.Google Scholar
Epstein, Brian. 2009. “Ontological Individualism Reconsidered.”; Synthese 166 (1): 187–213. doi:10.1007/s11229-007-9272-8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, Alan. 1981. Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2012. Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2014. “Studying While Black: Trust, Opportunity and Disrespect.”; DuBois Review, 11 (1): 109–136.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. 2015. “What is a (Social) Structural Explanation?”; Philosophical Studies: 172.Google Scholar
Hays, Sharon. 1994. “Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture.”; Sociological Theory 12 (1): 57–72. doi:10.2307/202035.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, JA, and Howard, JA. 2000. “Social Psychological Theories on Social Inequalities.”; Social Psychology Quarterly 63 (4): 338–351. doi:10.2307/2695844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lessig, Lawrence. 1995. “The regulation of social meaning.”; The University Of Chicago Law Review 62 (3): 943–1045. doi:10.2307/1600054.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machery, Edouard. forthcoming. “De-Freuding Implicit Attitudes.”; In Implicit Bias and Philosophy, edited by Brownstein, M. and Saul, J.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, John Levi. 2009. Social Structures. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1859/1977. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers, (Preface).Google Scholar
Okin, Susan M. 1989. Justice, Gender and the Family. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Ortner, SB. 1984. “Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties.”; Comparative Studies in Society and History 26 (1): 126–166. doi:10.1017/S0010417500010811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sewell, William H. Jr. 1992. “A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation.”; American Journal Of Sociology 98 (1): 1–29. doi:10.1086/229967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, Claude. 2010. Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 2002. Stories, Identities and Political Change. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Valian, Virginia. 1998. Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
White, Harrison C. 2008. Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge. 2nd ed.Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Witt, Charlotte. 2011. The Metaphysics of Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar