Structural injustice and the place of attachment

Journal article

Reflection on the historical injustice suffered by many formerly colonized groups has left us with a peculiar account of their claims to material objects. One important upshot of that account, relevant to present day justice, is that many people seem to think that members of indigenous groups have special claims to the use of particular external objects by virtue of their attachment to them. In the first part of this paper I argue against that attachment-based claim. In the second part I suggest that, to provide a normatively defensible account of why sometimes agents who are attached to certain external objects might also have special claims over them, the most important consideration is whether the agents making such claims suffer from structural injustice in the present. In the third part I try to explain why structural injustice matters, in what way attachment-based claims relate to it and when they count.

Authors: Ypi, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: University of Oxford, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
• Journal: Journal of Practical Ethics
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-21
• Publication date: 2017-06-30
• Acceptance date: 2017-06-01
• ISSN: 2051-655X