Structural injustice

Structural Differences in Insular Cortex Reflect Vicarious Injustice Sensitivity

Sensitivity to injustice inflicted on others is a strong motivator of human social behavior. There are, however, enormous individual differences in vicarious injustice sensitivity. Some people are strongly affected when witnessing injustice, while others barely notice it, but the factors behind this heterogeneity are poorly understood. Here we examine the neuroanatomical basis of these differen...

Explaining Injustice in Speech: Individualistic vs. Structural Explanation

Implicit bias has recently gained much attention in scholarly attempts to understand and explain different forms of social injustice by identifying causally relevant mental states in individual’ minds. Here we question the explanatory power of implicit bias in a particular type of injustice, testimonial injustice, and more generally in what we call speech injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs...

Rational Injustice

Different attempts have been made to answer Reich's question why the majority of those who are hungry don't steal and why the majority of those who are exploited don't strike. The two most influential approaches have been the ideological one and the gunman theory. The gunman theory seems to have the upper hand in that it not only explains many cases of successful oppression by a minority of a m...

The Disutility of Injustice

Taking advantage of injustice

What, if anything, is wrong with taking advantage of people’s unjust circumstances when they both benefit from and consent to the exchange? The answer, some believe, is that such exchanges are wrongfully exploitative. I argue that this answer is incomplete at best, and elaborate a different one: to take advantage of injustice is to become complicit in its reproduction. I also argue that the cas...