Confronting Injustice and Oppression

Concepts and Strategies for Social Workers

David Gil

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780231535335
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

More urgent than ever, David G. Gil's guiding text gives social workers the knowledge and confidence they need to change unjust realities. Clarifying the meaning, sources, and dynamics of injustice, exploitation, and oppression and certifying the place of the social worker in combating these conditions, Gil promotes social-change strategies rooted in the nonviolent philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.. He shares suggestions for transition policies intended to alleviate poverty, unemployment, and discrimination and examines modes of radical social work practice compatible with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and President Roosevelt's proposed "Economic Bill of Rights." For this updated edition, Gil considers the factors driving two crucial developments since his volume's initial publication: the Middle East's Arab Spring and the U.S. Occupy Wall Street movement.

PART 1

Theoretical and Historical Perspectives

ONE

Injustice and Oppression: Meaning, Links, and Alternatives

AS NOTED in the introduction, social workers are required by the NASW Code of Ethics “to challenge social injustice” and “to prevent and eliminate domination of, exploitation of, and discrimination against any person, group, or class.” The code does not specify, however, the meanings of these terms, as if they were self-evident. Yet social justice cannot be promoted and oppression, domination, exploitation, and social injustice cannot be overcome unless their meanings, sources, and dynamics are clarified.

Unraveling these meanings, sources, and dynamics is, however, fraught with difficulties, mainly because oppression tends to be more effective in achieving its ends—the enforcement of domination, exploitation, social injustice, and constraints on liberty—when people are not conscious of the societal dynamics involved, when victims and victimizers perceive these conditions as natural and inevitable, and, especially, when the victims share illusions of being free citizens of a democracy. Throughout much of human history, denial and rationalization of oppression and injustice, and their validation as sacred and secular law and order, may actually have been the most effective means in the defense and legitimation of unjust ways of life that tended to benefit mainly powerful and privileged social groups and classes.

Students of injustice and oppression and of their opposites need to explore not only the meanings, sources, and dynamics of these phenomena but also their own consciousness and values, their possible direct and indirect benefits from and denials of injustice and oppression, as well as their unexamined, taken-for-granted justifications of established, oppressive, and unjust ways of life.

The Meaning of Injustice, Oppression, and Their Opposites

“Oppression” refers to a mode of human relations involving domination and exploitation—economic, social, and psychological—among individuals, among social groups and classes within and beyond societies, and, globally, among entire societies. Injustice refers to coercively established and maintained inequalities, discrimination, and dehumanizing, development-inhibiting conditions of living (e.g., slavery, serfdom, and exploitative wage labor; unemployment, poverty, starvation, and homelessness; and inadequate health care and education) imposed by dominant social groups, classes, and people upon dominated and exploited groups, classes, and people.

Domination is usually motivated by the intent to exploit (i.e., benefit disproportionally from the resources, capacities, labor, and productivity of others), and it results typically in disadvantageous, unjust conditions of living for its victims. Domination is the means to enforce exploitation toward the end of attaining and maintaining privileged conditions of living for certain social groups relative to some other groups. Justice is the absence of exploitation-enforcing domination; it implies liberty, while domination-induced injustice involves unequal, discriminatory constraints on liberty.

To individuals, groups, classes, and peoples who dominate and exploit others and impose upon them unjust conditions of living, these policies and practices tend to make sense. In the consciousness of people involved in relations of oppression, their attitudes and actions seem, by and large, compatible with law and order, i.e., the pursuit of socially sanctioned, legitimate goals, and in conformity with the internal logic of established social, cultural, economic, and political institutions. How and why did human societies evolve ways of life in which oppression and injustice came to be taken for granted and considered legitimate and appropriate? Answers to this disturbing question will be developed in chapter 2.

Societies whose internal and external relations involve oppressive tendencies are usually not divided simply into oppressors and oppressed people. Rather, people in such societies tend to be oppressed in some relations and be oppressors in others, and some relations may involve mutual oppression. Oppression is not a static context but a dynamic process. Once integrated into a society’s institutional order and culture and into the individual consciousness of its people through socialization, oppressive tendencies come to permeate and affect almost all relations. Oppression thus tends to evolve into hierarchical chains and vicious circles. The intensity of oppression is, however, not constant but varies over time as a result of countertendencies toward human solidarity, which tend to give rise to liberation movements struggling to overcome oppression (Freire 1970).

The Defining Characteristics of Injustice, Oppression, and Their Opposites

To discern the defining characteristics of injustice and oppression and of their opposites, one needs to examine how just and nonoppressive and how unjust and oppressive human relations are shaped by the following key institutions of social life and their underlying values:

1. Stewardship (i.e., development, management, control, use, and ownership) of natural and human-created resources

2. Organization of work and production

3. Exchange of products of human work, and distribution (i.e., indirect exchange) of concrete and symbolic goods and services and of social, civil, and political rights and responsibilities

4. Governance and legitimation

5. Biological reproduction, socialization, and social control

In any human group, at any time, the combined effects of these key institutions of social life and of the values underlying them shape the circumstances of living and the relative power of individuals, social groups, and classes; the quality of human relations among individuals, groups, and classes; and the overall quality of life, be these relations and conditions nonoppressive and just or oppressive and unjust (Gil 1992).

By focusing the analysis of oppression, injustice, and their opposites on these key institutions and the values underlying them, I do not mean to disregard other social, psychological, historical, and cultural dimensions of social relations and living conditions. I merely intend to stress that, regardless of the role such other dimensions may play in maintaining and reproducing these relations and conditions, injustice and oppression can neither be understood nor overcome at their roots, apart from the institutions of resource stewardship, work and production, exchange and distribution, governance and legitimation, and reproduction, socialization, and social control. This is because these institutions and the social values that shape them constitute always the very core of any mode of social life. The manner of operation of these key institutions would, therefore, have to be changed significantly if an oppressive and unjust mode of life is to be transformed into its opposite.

Furthermore, resource use, work, exchange, and reproduction seem to be fundamental processes not only for human social organization but for all forms of life in nature. Living beings, from single cells to complex organisms, are never self-contained, but they assure their existence by interacting with other organisms and nonorganic substances in their environments. This is how they generate, obtain, and transmit matter and energy necessary for individual and species survival. These essential, life-sustaining interactions in nature may be understood as the universal model of resource use, work, exchange, and reproduction. Organisms that cease to engage in such life-sustaining interactions are dying. Resource use, work, exchange, and reproduction seem a sine qua non of all life, and their organization and institutionalization are essential for human survival and societal continuity. In the case of the human species, governance and legitimation, i.e., processes of making and legitimating choices and decisions, must be added to the list of essential institutional systems. Accordingly, systems of resource stewardship, work, exchange, governance, and reproduction are valid foci for the analysis of oppression and injustice as well as for efforts to overcome these dehumanizing practices and conditions.

Stewardship of resources, work and production, exchange and distribution, governance and legitimation, and reproduction, socialization, and social control can be—and have actually been—organized by different societies, in different times and circumstances, in nonoppressive and just ways, in accordance with values of equality, liberty, mutualism, cooperation, and community. Conversely, they can be—and have been—organized in oppressive and unjust ways, in accordance with values of inequality, domination, exploitation, competition, and selfishness (i.e., disregard for others and community).

Based on the foregoing considerations, the defining characteristics of nonoppressive and oppressive societies and of just and unjust systems of exchange and distribution can now be identified:

Societies are nonoppressive when all people are considered and treated as equals and have equal rights and responsibilities concerning

• Stewardship and use of resources

• Control, organization, design, substance, quality, and scope of production and the amount and type of work they perform

• Exchange and distribution of goods and services and of social, civil, and political rights and responsibilities

• Governance of their communities and society

• Biological reproduction, socialization, and social control

Under such genuinely democratic conditions, everyone would enjoy the same level of liberty and would be subject to the same level of expectations and constraints concerning work and other aspects of life.

Societies are oppressive when people are not considered and treated as equals and therefore do not have equal rights and responsibilities concerning the key institutions of social life. Under such inherently undemocratic conditions, different people, and by extension different groups and classes, are entitled to different levels of liberty and are subject to different levels of expectations and constraints concerning work and other aspects of life. Establishing and maintaining unequal levels of rights and responsibilities concerning the key institutions of social life—and unequal levels of liberty, expectations, and constraints concerning work—is usually not possible without overt and covert domination and coercion, i.e., “societal violence” (Gil 1992, 1996).

Systems of exchange and distribution are just

• when terms of exchange (measured in units of human work and natural and human-created resources invested in the products of different workers) are fair and balanced, i.e., egalitarian and nonexploitative;

• when everyone’s individual needs and potential are considered and treated as equally important;

• when all people are treated as equals, relative to their individual needs, in the distribution of concrete and symbolic goods and services and social, civil, political, and reproductive rights and responsibilities and with regard to socialization experiences and opportunities (Barry 1973; Rawls 1971; Tawney 1964).

Systems of exchange and distribution are unjust

• when terms of exchange are discriminatory, unfair, and unbalanced, i.e., unequal and exploitative;

• when the needs and human potential of members of certain groups and classes are deemed more important than those of others;

• when these individuals, groups, and classes receive routinely preferential treatment in the distribution of concrete and symbolic goods and services and of social, civil, political, and reproductive rights and responsibilities, and with regard to socialization experiences and opportunities.

Establishing and maintaining unjust modes of exchange and distributions are usually predicated upon overt and covert processes of coercion and domination, in the same way that oppressive social order and work systems are established and maintained.

oppression and injustice and between Oppression and injustice tend to vary among societies in levels of intensity, from very low to very high. These variations reflect differences in values and in degrees of inequality with respect to the key institutions of social life in particular societies at particular times. The higher the degrees of inequality, the higher also are likely to be the levels of coercion necessary to enforce inequality, as well as the levels of conflict, resistance, and reactive repression.

It may be noted here that an important function of social work and social services throughout history has been to modify and fine tune the intensity of oppression and injustice in societies and to ameliorate their destructive consequences for human development. Social work and social services were, however, never meant to eliminate inequalities, oppression, injustice, and their consequences.

While variations are possible in the levels of intensity of oppression and injustice, variations are not possible concerning social justice and nonoppressive relations, which, by definition, are predicated upon equal rights and responsibilities with regard to the key institutions of social life. Equal rights and responsibilities can not vary by levels, because equality is not a continuum but the zero point on the continuum of inequality.

When politicians and social work leaders, in their public policy discourse, nevertheless advocate “more equality,” as they often do illogically, what they actually mean are lower levels of inequality, privilege, and deprivation, not real social equality and the elimination of discrimination, privilege, and deprivation. Reductions of inequality, discrimination, privilege, and deprivation are, of course, improvements in the quality of social life, but that should not be mistaken for an end to the oppression and the establishment of justice. The quality of social life will continue to be affected by the dynamics and logic of oppression and injustice as long as some level of inequality concerning the key institutions of social life are conserved, and dominant social values will remain essentially unchanged.

Historically, societies that developed nonoppressive social orders and work systems tended also to evolve just systems of exchange and distribution, while societies that developed oppressive social orders and work systems tended to evolve unjust systems of exchange and distribution. These typical associations between nonoppressive social orders and work systems and just systems of exchange and distribution, on the one hand, and oppressive and unjust ones, on the other, reflect causal links between oppression and injustice and between nonoppressive social relations and justice.

These associations suggest and reflect also the presence or absence of overt and covert coercion or societal violence, which has been used throughout history and continues to be used in our time by dominant groups, classes, and people, from local to global levels, to establish, maintain, and legitimate privileged conditions of living for themselves. People have always been unlikely to submit of their own free will to discriminatory, development-inhibiting, inegalitarian practices concerning the key institutions of social life. Accordingly, it does not seem possible ever to establish and maintain such systems and conditions of living through truly democratic processes and without at least some measure of overt and covert coercion or societal violence.

It follows from these theoretical considerations that whenever significant inequalities are prevalent in a society concerning the key institutions of social life, such as unemployment, relative poverty, hunger and homelessness, inadequate education and health care, and distinctions and discrimination by social class, race, sex, sexual orientation, age, and disabilities—the gamut of conditions that bring people to social services—that society’s way of life involves oppression and injustice, its people are not free in a meaningful sense, and its political institutions are essentially undemocratic, coercive, and structurally violent, in spite of formal elections and misleading claims such as “being part of the free world.”

TWO

Injustice and Oppression: Origins, Evolution, Dynamics, and Consequences

Historical Notes

Contrary to widely held and unquestioned beliefs, injustice and oppression are not inevitable, natural characteristics of human life. The study of social evolution reveals that these practices did not become firmly established in human societies until some ten thousand years ago, following the discovery, development, and spread of agriculture, animal husbandry, and crafts, which gradually generated a stable economic surplus. These new conditions facilitated the emergence of complex divisions of work, of occupational and social castes and classes, and of spatial and social differentiations of societies into rural peasant communities and urban centers. Since homo sapiens, the species of modern humans, is thought to have evolved more than two hundred thousand years ago, the last ten thousand years are a relatively short period and should not be perceived erroneously as our entire history (Eisler 1987).

For many millennia, from the emergence of the early humans until the agricultural revolution, people tended to live in small and isolated nomadic communities that subsisted by gathering, fishing, and hunting. The internal organization of these societies was usually based on egalitarian, cooperative, and communal principles and did not involve systematic oppression, exploitation, and injustice.

People’s resources during these early stages of evolution consisted of their human capacities, their accumulated experiences and orally transmitted knowledge and traditions, and the natural wealth of the territories they inhabited. Stewardship over these resources was exercised collectively toward the goal of meeting everyone’s survival needs. Work roles were barely differentiated, as nearly everyone had to participate in securing the basic necessities for survival. Whatever division of work did emerge tended to be based on age, sex, physical conditions, and individual capacities but not, as during later stages of social evolution, on discriminatory social criteria such as tribe, race, religion, caste, or class.

Exchanges of work products and the distribution of goods and services tended to be balanced and egalitarian, i.e., nonexploitative. Over the course of their lives, most people contributed to and received from aggregate social production about as much as others. Social, civil, and political rights and responsibilities also tended to be shared equally and to be linked to age, sex, and capacities. People enjoyed roughly equal liberties, and they were subject to roughly equal constraints concerning work and reproduction.

These essentially egalitarian modes of resource stewardship, work and production, exchange and distribution, governance, socialization, and reproduction seem to have required little coercion beyond child rearing and conformity-inducing public opinion. Under the conditions prevailing in these early societies, people seem to have been self-motivated to work, as their work was typically linked directly to their real interests, that is, the satisfaction of their basic needs.

Levels of conflict within societies seem to have been low during the early stages of evolution, as everyone’s needs were deemed equally important and were met accordingly, subject to limits set by the resources and the collective productivity of societies. Also, since the gathering, hunting, and fishing mode of production necessitated nearly everyone’s participation to assure provisions for basic needs, few opportunities existed for the emergence of crafts and the generation of a stable economic surplus—the disposition and appropriation of which became a potential so...