Structural harm, structural injustice, structural repair

Book section : Chapter

In Chapter 1, ‘Structural Harm, Structural Injustice, Structural Repair’, Jonathan Wolff explores the nature of structural injustice and how it tends to come into being. For Wolff, structural harm is not an injustice but rather a mere unfortunate outcome of structural processes. In order to refine a definition of structural injustice, Wolff suggests four features—first there must be a social structure; second a mechanism or set of processes for keeping that structure in place; third a significant harm (or risk of harm) to a group; and fourth an identifiable reason for thinking such a harm is an injustice. In order to grasp what the injustice might consist in, Wolff draws on Kwame Turé’s work on institutional racism, Michael Marmot and Richard Wilkinson’s analyses of the social determinants of health, and Paul Farmer’s concept of structural violence as well as the work of Iris Marion Young. Wolff explores the types of actions that can be required in response to structural injustice or structural harm, taking inspiration from the metaphor of finding a structural fault in a building, suggesting that different circumstances will call for different types of action. Wolff sets out several different ways in which structural injustice might be ‘repaired’, arguing that some cases will require individual agency and others collective, but what is always needed is an agent of change and a pathway for reform.

Authors: Wolff, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: What Is Structural Injustice?
• Pages: 12-30
• Chapter number: 1
• Place of publication: Oxford
• Publication date: 2024-09-19
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198892878.003.0002
• EISBN: 9780191996900
• ISBN: 9780198892878
• Language: English
• Keywords: structural injustice; structural violence; agency; social determinants of health; structural harm
• Subtype: Chapter