EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Social justice as goal1
 Full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is
mutually shaped to meet their needs
 Vision of society in which the distribution of resources is
equitable and all members are physically and psychologically
safe and secure
 Society in which individuals are both self-determining (able
to develop their full capacities) and interdependent (capable
of interacting democratically with others)
 Social actors with sense of their own agency and sense of
social responsibility toward others and society as a whole
Social justice as process:
 Democracy
 Participation
 Inclusion
1
From: Adams, M., Bell, L. A. & Griffin, P. (1997). Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice. Routledge:
New York & London
 Affirmation of human agency and human capacities for
working collaboratively to create change
Features of oppression
1. Pervasiveness – oppression is woven throughout social
institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness.
Oppression fuses institutional and systemic discrimination,
personal bias, bigotry and social prejudice in a complex web of
relationship and structures that saturate most aspects of life in our
society
2. Restricting – oppression denotes structural and material
constraints that significantly shape a person’s life chances and
sense of possibility. Oppression restricts both self-development
and self-determination
3. Hierarchical – oppression signifies a hierarchical relationship in
which dominant/privileged groups benefit, often in unconscious
ways, from the disempowerment/subordinated/target groups
4. Complex, multiple, cross-cutting relationships – power and
privileges are relative, since individuals hold multiple and crosscutting social groups memberships. For example, an upper class
professional man who is national minority, may enjoy economic
opportunities not available for most women, yet at the same time
face limitations not endured by workers who belong to national
majority (whether they are male or female).
5. Internalized – oppression resides not only in external social
institutions, but also within the human psyche as well
6. Oppression is manifested through “Isms” – each “Ism” is
different, has its own history, but the mechanisms through which
they operate are the same/very similar
The Social Oppression Matrix
The Context
A) Individual level
Focus is on the beliefs or behaviors of an individual person, rather than on
institutional or cultural practices. This level refers to actions or attitudes of
individual that maintain oppression (harassment, racial/ethnic/religious slurs,
exclusion of targets, etc).
An individual agents is both affected by and has an effect on institutions:
individuals are socialized and guided by institutions that maintain and
perpetuate oppressive structure and in turn, individuals have an effect on the
institutions and broader culture to the extent that they work, consume, teach
and live the values of the dominant society/culture.
B) Institutional level
Focus is on institutions that maintain and perpetuate system of oppression
(family, government, education, law, industry, religion, etc)
C) Societal/Cultural level
Society’s cultural norms perpetuate implicit and explicit values that bind
institutions and individuals. In an oppressive society the cultural perspective
of the dominant group is imposed on institutions by individuals and on
individuals by institutions. These cultural guidelines, such as philosophies of
life, definitions of the good, normal, health, deviance, often serve the
primary function of providing individuals and institutions with the
justification for social oppression.
This level is the foundation of all the “isms”, as well as the internalized
oppression and internal domination.
Notion hegemony is used to describe how a dominant group can project its
particular way of seeing reality so successfully that its view is accepted as
common sense, as part of natural order (internalized domination), even by
those who are in fact disempowered by it (internalized oppression).
Hegemony helps us understand power as relational and dynamic, something
that circulates within a web of relationships in which we all participate,
rather than something imposed from top down. Hegemony is maintained
through “discourse” which includes ideas, texts, theories, and language.
These are embedded in networks of social and political control that Foucault
called “regimes of truth”. Regimes of truth operate to legitimize what can be
said, who has the authority to speak, and what is sanctioned as true.
Oppression operates through everyday practices that do not question the
assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences
of following those rules. One important mechanism for challenging
oppression, according to Freire, is to make visible and vocal the underlying
assumptions that produce and reproduce structures of domination so that we
can collectively begin to imagine alternative possibilities to organize social
life.
The Psycho-Social Processes
Psycho-social processes describe the types of involvement to one`s
advocacy, participation, support or collusion in a system of social
oppression. These processes are conscious or unconscious
A) Conscious processes involve knowingly supporting the maintenance of
social oppression through individual, institutional and cultural/societal
attributes.
B) Unconscious processes represent unknowing or naive collusion with the
maintenance of social oppression and occur when the target or agent comes
to accept the dominant logic system and justifies oppression as normal part
of the natural order.
The Application
A) Attitudinal level describes the individual and systemic values, beliefs,
philosophies and stereotypes that feed the system of oppression
B) Behavioral level describes the actions of individual and systems that
support and maintain social oppression (for example, different forms of
exclusion of marginalized groups, racist behavior, etc.)
Roles in the system of oppression
 Targets - members of social identity group that are exploited,
victimized, marginalized in a variety of ways by the oppressor and the
oppressor’s system of institutions
 Agents - members of dominant social groups privileged by birth or
acquisition who knowingly, or unknowingly exploit and reap unfair
advantage over members of target groups. Freire observes that a
paradox of social oppression is that agents are also dehumanized
because they have engaged in a process of stealing the humanity of
others.
Freire notes that oppression is perpetuated from generation to generation
as a new generations become its heirs and are shaped in its climate.
Agents, due to their power to define reality, see themselves and are seen
by others as normal or proper, whereas targets are likely to be labeled as
deviant, abnormal, or defective. Unlike targets, agents are frequently
unaware that they are members of a dominant group due to the privilege
of being able to see themselves as persons rather than stereotypes. In this
way, agents are also subjected to psychological colonization because,
once the oppressive structure are in place, oppression becomes
normalized and succeeding generation of agents learn to accept their
inheritance of dominance and privilege as the natural order – the way
things are and always will be.
Relationships within and between the roles
in the system of oppression
A) Internalized oppression – targets collude with their oppressors by
accepting a definition of themselves that is hurtful and limiting. They
think, feel and act in a way that demonstrate the devaluation of their
group and of themselves as members of that group.
 Questing the credentials or abilities of their own social group
 Favoring dominant group members and distancing (often
unconsciously) from their own target group
B) Conscious collaboration – target group members knowingly, but not
always voluntarily, go along with their own mistreatment to survive, or to
maintain some status, livelihood, or other benefit (for example, when a
person of color silently endures racist jokes told by a boss)
C) Internalized domination – members of the dominant group learn to
think and act in ways that express internalized notions of entitlement and
privilege.
 Belief that privileges are part of natural order
 Power to impose their own values, beliefs and norms as natural
order
 Power to “erase” target group members by failing to acknowledge
their existence or importance (fro example, historical presentation
that Columbus discovered America, erased the existence of native
peoples who preceded him by several thousand years)
D) Vertical interaction between target and agent
This can be viewed as one-up and one-down pattern and vertical
relationship, in which the agent operates out of internalized privilege, in a
manner oppressive to targets, who simultaneously collude to some degree
out of their own internalized subordination. The agent is literally above, or
over the target, denying the rights of the target, while the target colludes
with this oppression
E) Horizontal relationships
This term is used to reflect relationships and interactions between members
of the same social group, who, at least on one dimension of social identity,
are “equal” in status. May take two forms:
 Target – Target: The conscious and/or unconscious attitudes and
behaviors exhibited in interactions between members of the same
target group, that support the system of oppression (for example,
women who label other women for not conforming to sex-role defined
behavior)
 Agent – Agent: The conscious and/or unconscious punishments that
agents bestow on other agents who violate the ideology of the
oppressive system (for example, teasing men who share equal
responsibility for child care and household maintenance). This
relationship also include conscious and/or unconscious rewards given
to those who actively support or passively accept oppressive system.
Subtle Forms of Oppression/Isms2
A) SYMBOLIC “ISMS” – reject old-style “Isms”, but still express prejudice
indirectly (e.g. as opposition to policies like affirmative action that help
target groups)
B) AMBIVALENT “ISMS” – existence of emotional conflict between
positive and negative feelings toward stigmatized target group
C) MODERN “ISMS” – people are aware that isms are wrong, but they still
see target groups as making unfair demands or receiving too many resources
D) AVERSIVE “ISMS” – People believe in egalitarian principles such as
racial/gender equality, but have a personal aversion toward those target
groups
2
From Nelson, T. D. (2002): The Psychology of Prejudice. London: Allyn and Bacon