Iris Marion Young

"This book challenges the prevailing philosophical reduction of social justice to distributive justice. It critically analyzes basic concepts underlying most theories of justice, including impartiality, formal equality, and the unitary moral subjectivity. Starting from claims of excluded groups about decision making, cultural expression, and division of labor, Iris Young defines concepts of domination and oppression to cover issues eluding the distributive model. Democratic theorists, according to Young do not adequately address the problem of an inclusive participatory framework. By assuming a homogeneous public, they fail to consider institutional arrangements for including people not culturally identified with white European male norms of reason and respectability. Young urges that normative theory and public policy should undermine group-based oppression by affirming rather than suppressing social group difference. Basing her vision of the good society on the differentiated, culturally plural network of contemporary urban life, she argues for a principle of group representation in democratic publics and for group-differentiated policies."--Back cover.

Including over fifty newly commissioned survey articles, this volume represents the first truly comprehensive guide to feminist philosophy. The advent and development of feminist philosophy are traced and contextualized by the editors' introduction, followed by essays that reflect both conventional philosophical divisions as well as a number of topics absent from mainstream philosophy, and including sections on Feminist Perspectives on the Western Canonical Tradition, Theories of Subjectivity and Embodiment, Moral Theory, Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Knowledge, Philosophy of Language, Aesthetics, and Practical Concerns. A unique feature is the inclusion of essays tracing the emergence of feminist philosophy in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

"Inspired by claims of indigenous peoples, the book develops a concept of self-determination compatible with stronger institutions of global regulation. It theorizes new directions for thinking about federated relationships between peoples which assume that they need not be large or symmetrical. Young argues that the use of armed force to respond to oppression should be rare, genuinely multilateral, and follow a model of law enforcement more than war. She finds that neither cosmopolitan nor nationalist responses to questions of global justice are adequate and so offers a distinctive conception of responsibility, founded on participation in social structures, to describe the obligations that both individuals and organizations have in a world of global interdependence." "Young applies clear analysis and cogent moral arguments to concrete cases, including the wars against Serbia and Iraq, the meaning of the US Patriot Act, the conflict in Palestine/Israel, and working conditions in sweat shops."--book jacket.

Feminist Ethics and Social Policy presents complex social issues in light of a feminist ethical perspective. The spirited essays collected here critique gender blindness and biases in traditional ethical theory while developing more gender-sensitive theories and concepts. Taken together, they conceptualize issues of right action, social justice, and the human good out of the specifically gendered experience of diverse groups of women.