Abstract

What structure do paradigm cases of oppression and domination, like racism and capitalism, have? Most theories of oppression and domination take them to have a binary structure. There are the oppressors and the oppressed, the dominators and the dominated. I argue that a better model for many paradigm cases of oppression and domination is a structure of graded inequality. Such a structure comprises multiple groups arranged in hierarchically ascending and descending order. A model of graded inequality has both descriptive and explanatory advantages over a binary model. It better illuminates some mechanisms by which oppression and domination stabilize themselves. Understanding those mechanisms allows us better to destabilize them. That is so even though good reasons may hold for adopting the binary (or some other) model for other purposes. The larger methodological upshot of the paper is to connect more closely social philosophy to moral psychology.