Structural Responsibility

I argue that current normative discussions of the responsibility for structural injustice are marred by an inadequate socio-theoretical view of structures and their functioning. This view reduces the relation between structures and actions to one of constraint: structures mainly inhibit transformative action; transformative action can only come from outside structures. I offer an alternative view of structures and their functioning that, drawing on and extending Sewell’s and Haslanger’s conceptions of structures and Arendt’s view of action, shows that actions are structurally and publicly constituted—they acquire social meaning in relation to structures, in a process of public interpretation—which is why they can transform the structures where they originate. Responsibility to dismantle unjust structures should then be understood as “structural responsibility”: responsibility to act from one’s structural position in ways that can disrupt the mechanisms of structural maintenance.