i think we need to make an important distinction here. if the japanese think americans smell bad because they eat butter what consequences does that have for the individual and collective lives of americans? does it harm them? how so? i'd call this ethnocentrism, though charles had another word for it, though i don't recall. the point is that such a belief doesn't necessarily have a deleterious effect on an american's or americans' [as a group] lives. this is because there aren't any powerful social institutions and practices that intersect in complex ways with other beliefs and practices which systematically and systemically diminish the lives of americans.
here's something i mentioned to angela a couple of weeks ago that might be interesting in fleshing out how we might talk about racism as a form of oppression and how it's linked to exploitation and domination. THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE
Habermas' framework is the foundation upon which Iris Marion Young (1990:3) builds a theory of justice out of the conceptual cornerstones of "domination and oppression." While she concedes that Habermas' account of societal rationalization, advanced capitalism, and communicative action should be retained, she believes that critical theory must be strengthened in at least two ways: First, it must construct a detailed theory of oppression and domination and, second, these concepts require a corresponding "politics of difference."
Liberal theories of justice, Young (1990: 15-25) argues, are inadequate because they begin with the assumption that social goods are reified things rather than the product of social processes and relations. Liberal theories of justice obfuscate the institutional context within which social goods (such as jobs) are defined and distributed as scarce goods. Moreover, the "distributive paradigm" rests on a conception of humans as essentially atomistic, possessive individuals among whom social goods are distributed.
A more emancipatory theory of social justice must be premised on an explicitly social ontology. Such a theory would gauge contemporary society in terms of which it sustains the conditions for realizing those values which constitute the 'good life' which, for Young (p. 37), is the attainment of the Enlightenment ideals of reason and freedom. As a critical theorist she does not detail exactly what the 'good life' might look like. Instead, she offers the critical concepts of oppression and domination with which to gauge the degree of inequity and injustice in contemporary life. Thus, she offers a structural definition in which oppression is "embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols" and "in the assumptions underlying institutional rules" (p. 16). Moreover, a structural account of oppression requires a definition of groups as developmental processes which are constitutive of and constituted by individuals. In turn, Young provides a social ontology of group difference in which social life is understood as an irreducible and continuous process of group differentiation. Oppression and Domination
Young deploys oppression and domination as negative or critical concepts with which we might gauge the degree of injustice in contemporary life. Oppression is conceived as institutional constraints on learning and the exercise of the capacity for reason. The first three "faces of oppression" are associated with the social division of labor: exploitation, marginalization, and powerlessness. Marx's theory of class exploitation is expanded and redefined as the institutionalized "transfer of energies" from one group to another to produce "unequal distributions" that enable an elite to "accumulate" at the expense of the multitude of others (p. 53). Marginalization is a process that defines groups of people as incapable of participating in the labor force because of ascribed characteristics such as age, gender, disability, and race. Powerlessness is experienced as the absence of status, occupational authority, a sense of self, and/or respectability. This form of oppression results from the proliferation of managerial hierarchies that accompany capitalist rationalization: large-scale organizations increasingly require a cadre of educated, administrative elites which comprises the professional upper-middle class (pp. 57-58).
Young (p. 58) distinguishes the two remaining forms of oppression -- cultural imperialism and violence -- from the first three because they do not "delimit people's material life." They are, instead, intrinsically related to the sphere of cultural reproduction. Cultural imperialism involves a "paradoxical oppression" in which the dominant culture singles out groups as deviant while concomitantly rendering them invisible by denying them access to the "means of interpretation and communication" (p. 59). Violence, Young (p. 38) argues, is an extreme form of systematic cultural imperialism and it is a form of injustice that conventional theories of justice have failed to address.
Young defines domination in terms of institutional practices which bar people from realizing their capacities for freedom and self-determination. Here Young draws on, yet also advances, Habermas' theory of the asymmetry of societal rationalization by fleshing out the specific ways in which domination is structured and experienced. Taken-for-granted standards of bureaucratic management -- proceduralism, professionalism, expertism, and meritcoracy -- tend to depoliticize decision-making. Rationalization entails "a diffusion as well as proliferation of power" in the name of efficiency, standardization, science, and merit (p. 82).
kelley
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.