Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 33, No.

1, March 2004

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive

relations: facing a dilemma for the subject
of moral education
Dwight Boyd*
OISE/University of Toronto, Canada

In modern Western moral and political theory the notion of the liberal subject has flourished as
the locus of moral experience, interpretation and critique. Through this conceptual lens on
subjectivity, individuals are enabled to shape and regulate their interactions in arguably desirable
ways, e.g. through principles of respect for persons and the constraints of reciprocal rights, and
moral education has largely adopted this perspective. However, this article argues that some kinds
of morally significant relationsthose framed by social groups related to each other through
structures of hierarchical powerconstitute a different kind of subjectivity that needs more
theoretical and empirical attention. In contrast to four core characteristics of liberal subjectivity,
a view of subjectivity that can be located in how individuals are members of particular kinds of
social groups is offered. It is argued that unless it can accommodate working with attention to this
form of subjectivity as well, moral education runs the risk of itself contributing to forms of
oppression such as racism, instead of being a means of combating them.

Preface
I feel extremely honoured to have the opportunity to present the 16th Annual
Kohlberg Memorial Lecture; and I would like to extend a special thank you to
Adam Niemczynski for inviting me to do so.
This does, indeed, mean a lot to me on a personal, as well as professional, level.
I happened to go to Harvard the first year that Larry Kohlberg was there, 1967.
Despite the fact that this was graduate school and I had never before taken even one
psychology course, when I saw that there was a new offering in Moral Development and went to speak to him about my interest, Larry graciously welcomed me
into his seminar. (Perhaps it was because I had read the first article that he published
in Vita Humana and knew that the second one that he cited as forthcoming in
its bibliography did not really exist.) Despite the fact that I wasand remainedin
philosophy, Larry Kohlberg was a true mentor to me.

*Department of Theory and Policy Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University
of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street, Ontario, Canada M5S 1V6. Email: dboyd@oise.utoronto.ca
This is the text of the 16th Lawrence Kohlberg Memorial Lecture, delivered at the 29th annual
conference of the Association for Moral Education, Krakow, Poland, 19 July 2003.
ISSN 0305-7240 print; ISSN 1465-3877 online/04/010003-20
2004 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0305724042000200047

D. Boyd

I learned many things from Larry, far too many to acknowledge here. However,
one thing I learned that informs my work still to this day is how the border between
philosophy and developmental psychology is important, but also permeable in an
important sense. Approaching issues in morality and moral education from the
directions of both disciplines and seeking a unified picture provides validity not
found from either perspective alone. I believe that my topic for this article is one that
would benefit from an application of this lesson learned. However, for reasons of
space I will be able to approach it solely from a philosophical perspective. If my
comments are deemed worthy of it, I hope that those who identify more as
psychologists will initiate complementary explorations from that direction as well.
Introduction
As humans and their relationships are remarkably complex, so also is moral education. If we think of moral education as addressing problems within human
interaction, the range of kinds of such problems is obviously immense; so, of course,
there will be weak spots, places where both theory and practice need strengthening.
This article is about one of those. Moreover, as the kind of interaction that I have
in mind constitutes a large proportion of the egregious harm that humans seem able
and prone to inflict on each other, this weak spot suggests a major shortcoming for
which we need to become more accountable.
Examples are not hard to come by, as they are in the news on a regular basis. They
vary in scope from the relatively localized to those almost global in pattern, but all
are horrifying in their consequences for some people. To make this concrete, let me
remind you of the following. Consider the contemporary conflicts between: the
Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka; the Protestants and Catholics in Northern
Ireland; the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East; the Karen and the Shan in
Burma; the Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda; the Serbs, Croats and Muslims in the
former Yugoslavia; the Hemas and Lendas in the Democratic Republic of Congo;
the Indians and Pakistanis in Kashmir; the Europeans and the First Nations People
in Canada. And of course we can all think of historical examples that could be added
to this sobering list.
Most of us are acquainted with the fact of these tragedies of human conflict, some
perhaps from personal experience. A few of us may have initiated studies in their
context, at least after the fact (e.g. Garrod et al., 2003) but, in general, to ask what
moral education today has to say about them produces very little by way of
satisfactory answer. Because they seem so much outside our normal experience, for
most of us they tend to remain outside what we theorize about in moral education.
Something very similar is, however, already extant in our own neighbourhoods,
part of our everyday normal experience. Here I point less to relatively localized and
(sometimes) temporally limited conflicts, and more to more generalized, enduring,
structurally manifested patterns of harmful human interaction identified loosely by
the often-used labels of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexualism, etc. These
may not be as obvious and are seldom as newsworthy, but on a long-term basis they
are equally egregious as the more localized conflicts, if not more so. In fact, they are

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

causally related to them in some cases. Moreover, they are not so easily removed
from our professional purview, because we are inside the conflict, whether we like it
or not. However, as is the case with the more localized, limited conflicts I believe
that, in general, the attention paid to these morally problematic patterns of human
interaction within the contemporary field of moral education is weak, at best.
As a way of focusing my concerns in what follows I will concentrate on one of
these patternsnamely, racismand how moral education might better deal with it.
If one takes as representative of the field the articles published in the Journal of Moral
Education, it is striking that until fairly recently very little attention has been paid to
the problem of racism, and that attention more often than not has been marginal,
more a hand-wave than a substantive coming-to-grips. In other major, recent
publications, even the hand-waves are rare (e.g. Damon, 2002). Of course, there are
some notable exceptions to this generalization, the best example being Larry Blums
(1999) previous Kohlberg Memorial Lecture. However, I am concerned that even in
theseand especially in the field more generallya crucial aspect of the problem is
under-theorized.
The question of human subjectivity
I am going to focus on one aspect of this weak spot, a particular theoretical aspect
that I think may be underpinning it in general. In short, I will be discussing the
fundamental question of how we should think about human subjectivity. My reason
for doing this is that I think much of any success in adequately addressing this weak
spot depends on coming to grips with this question. It is, I believe, at the core of
what moral education must be about, even if it often remains hidden, or only
implicitly acknowledged, in both theory and practice. Moral education is inevitably
shaped and constrained by how subjectivity is conceived. By raising assumptions
about subjectivity to the level of critical awareness we stand a better chance of
becomng clearer about what we are doingand not doingin moral education.
With this clarity, we also lessen the possibility that we will be blind to kinds of harm
to which our approaches to moral education may be contributing, despite the fact
that we like to think that anything rightfully called moral education must be good.
Talking about subjectivity is rife with dangers of being misunderstood: there are
myriad uses of this term in both philosophy and psychology. I want to be clear that
I am not thinking of subjectivity in its common usage as predicated of kinds of
statements, claims or judgements in the sense they might be said to be subjective
as opposed to objective. Nor, when I refer to the subject of moral education do
I mean to refer to an area of study in schools. Rather, I am using subjectivity as a
shorthand way of referring to what we think of as the core of what constitutes human
persons, in an ideal, abstract sense. I understand human subjectivity to be a form of
self-awareness and sense of agency that is constituted by the interaction of embodied
persons and their interpretations of that interaction. As essentially social animals, I
think that it is arguable that humans, qua persons, do not really exist except insofar as
they see themselves related to each other, and that seeing is a cognitive achievement,
at least to some extent. We are constituted by conceptions of how we relate to each

D. Boyd

other, and the shape that such relational-self-conceptions can take may be almost
unlimited.1 Illuminating one way in which moral education might be constrained in its
underlying conception of this kind of subjectivity is what I want to explore.
The context in which I am raising the question of how we should think of human
subjectivity is circumscribed by the kinds of serious problems identified earlier.
Within this set there are, of course, significant differences among what I called the
localized conflicts, differences among the more generalized patterns and differences
between the former and the latter. However, from one perspective at least they also
have something in common, and it is this common factor that I believe contributes
significantly to their failure to show up adequately on the radar of moral education
attention. Although I ultimately part company with him in his treatment of racism,
in his excellent and relevant book, Sharing Responsibility, Larry May (1992) has
succinctly articulated this factor when he notes that:
action in the world is as much a function of groups as of individuals In advanced
technological societies, much greater evil is done by groups of people than by discrete
individual people. (May, 1992, p. 53)

In short, it is from the perspective of groups and their impact on subjectivity that these
egregious moral problems need to be viewed. Throughout, I will take racism as an
example of what this might mean. My general concern is that the prevalent assumptions about subjectivity in most contemporary moral education make it difficult, if not
impossible, to come to grips with the kinds of evil that May and I have in mind.
My aim is to try to make a case forto make theoretically more visible and
plausiblea particular kind of human subjectivity that I think arises in the context
of social groups of a particular kind, the kind that seems to be entailed in the
problems noted earlier. My approach will be to work into this case by first
synthesizing what I see as the dominant assumptions about subjectivity in the field
today. These, I will argue, follow from a tendency to focus on all forms of social
interaction through the lens of the discrete individual and, I think, a particular
liberal interpretation of the idea of the discrete individual. To these I will then
contrast a group-embedded picture of subjectivity that I think we need to consider
in addition. My argument will be that even though these two perspectives on
subjectivity are incompatible, paradoxically we need both if moral education is to
speak helpfully to the egregious problems noted.
A metaphorical and personal approach to the commonplace of individualism
In order to point effectively to an alternative way of thinking about subjectivity in the
context of the kind of problems identified, I must first offer my synthesis of the
prevailing assumptions about subjectivity. To make the need for this synthesis more
plausible, however, I will approach the task in this section metaphorically and
personally. The reason for the metaphorical approach is that it gives me a way of
shining a spotlight on a view of subjectivity that is so commonplace, so ordinary in
the way most of us interpret our experience, as to escape notice as even being a

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

perspective at all, let alone a contestable one. The reason for the more personal
comments is to locate myself in reference both to this perspective and to my motive
for worrying about it. In doing this, I seek to avoid the appearance of finger pointing,
a problem perhaps inherent in any serious attempt to come to grips with racism.
The metaphor
As noted earlier, I believe that the very nature of human people depends upon their
collective achievements in conceiving how they are essentially interrelated. In this
quintessentially human endeavour, entry into thinking about relations through a
focus on the discrete individual has been hegemonic for centuries in the West. As
Heller et al. (1986) note:
Some form of individualismbroadly conceived as the view that the individual
human subject is a maker of the world we inhabithas been a key factor in the life of
the West for the last five hundred years. Modern definitions of the self and psychology,
of ethical responsibility and civic identity, and of artistic representation and economic
behavior all rest on the notion of an individual whose experience and history, whose
will and values, whose expressions and preferences are essential constituents of reality.
(Introduction, p. 1).2

As it is clearly built upon most of these definitions, moral education as we know

it today has been unavoidably shaped by this focus. In fact, I think we can be more
precise about this. I suggest that a particular interpretation of this general adherence
to individualism, a particular perspective on subjectivity that I will refer to in
shorthand as the idea of the liberal individual, shapes and delimits almost all of
contemporary moral education theorizing. However, because it is so dominant, so
taken for granted, so transparent to our critical attention, approaching it metaphorically first may help us to see it better.
Although often threatened, the idea of the liberal individual has managed to
survive throughout the last several centuries, repeatedly demonstrating remarkable
self-protective, regenerative powers. One might very well think of it as the glass
snake of human self-conception. Let me explain this. Growing up on a Kansas
farm, and thus spending most of my childhood outside, led me to appreciate nature
and, in particular, the number and variety of critters that inhabit it. Most of these
were quite unremarkable and could be found at some time or other in my clutches
as a temporary pet. Bunnies, kittens, turtles, fish, lizards and even (once) a black
widow spider fit the bill quite nicely. But one such critter escaped this attentionthe
glass snake. This was a snake found only rarely, but one that presented quite a
spectacle when found, at least by the always-present pet dog. Kansas farm dogs kill
snakes, of course. Their method is to grab the snake with their jaws and shake
vigorously until the snake appears to clearly embody the limpness of death; but in
my experience the glass snake almost always won this battle. The victory was
achieved not in the opossum-manner of faking the limpness of death in the hopes
that the canine short attention span would incline the dog to simply walk off in
victory, and the opossum to also amble off somewhat later. Rather, the glass snake
faked death in a much more flamboyant manner: it visibly flew into numerous pieces

D. Boyd

as a result of the vigorous shaking by the dog. Now, even a dog knows that snakes
do not come in multiple pieces, at least while alive. Again, the dog walks off and
eventually the boy as well. And the one essential piece of the glass snake, the one not
technically classified as tail, the piece (although short) including all the vital organs
and the head, crawls off to regenerate its whole self and live another day.
As a moral/political self-conception held by humans, the liberal individual surely
matches the glass snake in apparently miraculous powers. In many different problematic environments it somehow manages to shed whatever is superfluous, just
tail, and thus to avoid fatal, dogged critical attention. Sometimes it just crawls right
into the thorny thicket of the practical problems of the real world to emerge whole
again, supposedly as the only thing available to do the dirty work needed to solve the
mess. It has also been seen slithering into the dense bushes of bureaucratic incompetence and inertia, to be discovered later quite healthily ensconced in the upper
branches disguised as an efficiency manager. Or, when necessary, it rolls down the
slippery slope of moral complacency, but bounces back as a visionary leader. And
perhaps not so surprising, given its ideological origins, it often glorifies itself by
sinking into the swamp of capitalistic greed and popping back up whole as just
human nature. It can even lose itself in the dense forest of practical dilemmas faced
by educators, only to metamorphose as a moral professional. Finally, and most
importantly here, it can also surreptitiously wiggle into ones philosophical theorizingeven when that theorizing is about problems that would seem to present an
environment hostile to its flourishingand thus effectively constrict attention until
any vision of its conceptual competitors fades from view.
Now, there was a distinctively negative flavour to the metaphorical rhetoric that I
just used to focus attention on the idea of the liberal individual and its remarkable
regenerative powers. But, one might wonder, what is so wrong with thinking of
people, oneself and others, by focusing on subjectivity from the perspective of the
discrete individual? Surely, if this is what has enabled major liberal thinkers (such as
Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and Kant earlier and Rawls, Gutmann and our own
Kohlberg recently) to see praiseworthy human interaction in terms of the lofty
notions of autonomy, equality, human dignity, respect for persons and justice, etc. we
have some really substantial prima facie reasons for accepting it and, if so, we might
also seem to have very good grounds for anchoring moral education in this way.
As a result of my parental upbringing and subsequent education, this perspective
certainly feels right to me much of the time. The glass snake of the liberal
individual is coiled, almost unseen, at the conceptual centre of much of my earlier
work (e.g. Boyd, 1980, 1984; Kohlberg et al., 1990). I believe that this is also true
for much of contemporary moral education today, at least as it surfaces in English
publications. However, I want to acknowledge that the analysis that I will present is
circumscribed by my own location in a primarily North American milieu, in terms
of history, social conditions and academic orientation. The Association for Moral
Education has become increasingly international and multicultural over the last
several years and, I am convinced, healthier thereby. However, whether the liberal
legacies as I read them are as salient to many in this audience here in Krakow must
remain a seriously open question. Moreover, it is certainly the case that my

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

motivation for beginning to question my own adherence to them has sprung from
my particular location and history that is specific to North America.
One example will have to suffice here. I was dismayed a few years ago, even
morally shaken, to learn from reading a paper by Charles Mills (1994) that in A
Theory of Justice John Rawls (1971) mentions only the slavery of antiquity, and
simply ignoresin a book about justice in reasonably developed democratic societiesthe particular and horrendous fact of slavery in the USA. But what disturbed
me even more, because it more clearly put the ball in my court rather than Rawls,
is that I had missed this fact, despite having studied the book twice in courses with
him at Harvard before it was published and having used it subsequently in my work
for the next 30 years. I began to wonder about the connection between this morally
suspicious ignorance and my commitment to focusing on social reality and subjectivity through the lens of the discrete individual, and I began to think and write
about how I might see human subjectivity differently if I tried on a different lens.3

Vital characteristics of the glass snake of liberal individual subjectivity and

the kind of moral work they enable
Characteristics
So what is the piece that survives so resiliently as the core of this idea of how we are
related to each other as social animals, liberalisms legacy concerning a perspective
on subjectivity? I submit that in most varieties of liberalism4 the vital life force of the
idea of the liberal individual can be synthesized in terms of four characteristics of
subjectivity. Although there may be more, at least it is these that have had the most
influence on contemporary moral education. It is from the perspective of these
characteristics and how they work together that the subjectivity that we attend to
and seek to mould through moral education comes into purview. It is these glass
snake characteristics of the subject of moral education that I think need questioning
if moral education is to address adequately the kinds of problems of human conflict
that I noted earlier.
The four characteristics that I will explicate briefly are the following: (1) ontological uniqueness, (2) symmetrical positioning, (3) intentional rational agency and (4)
capacity for transcendence. I recognize that any one of these might be found in
another tradition, but it is the combination of them that I want to focus on as a legacy
of liberalism, the coherent idea as a whole that thrives so well. It is their integration
that enables particular, important moral work to be conducted, as I will shortly
identify.
(1) Ontological uniqueness. I submit that the heart of liberalisms legacy in moral
education is the conception of individual embodied persons as ontologically unique
centres of consciousness and experience. By ontologically unique I do not mean
anything particularly esoteric, and certainly not anything prior to, or removed from,
social reality. Rather, I just mean that from this perspective the boundaries of persons
do not overlap in their interactions and individuals are never in any fundamental way

10

D. Boyd

the same or indistinguishable. Everybody is unique is not just a shibboleth, it is

reality from this perspective. We apparently have the authority of science to back up
this belief: nobody is the same as anyone else in fingerprints, voiceprints, retinal
patterns and, especially, that granddaddy of all uniqueness determinants, DNA. The
uniqueness of individualized personal subjectivity is considered to be as firmly
established, as ontologically sound and as equally uncontestable as these empirical
facts.
(2) Symmetrical positioning. A second characteristic of this perspective on subjectivity
positions all instances symmetrically with all others. Despite the variation entailed by
embodied uniqueness, in principle all are on a level playing field, none higher or
lower on some scale of subjective importance, but equal. As a result, recognition of
difference is neutral: it can be articulated in the same mirror image terms from any
position. The relational structure of liberal subjectivity is the same for everyone,
regardless of how they are positioned in actual society.
(3) Intentional rational agency. Third, individuals so positioned share the same kind
of agentic potential. From this kind of perspective, socially recognizable action can
be predicated only of individual subjective locations and only in so far as they engage
in intentional behaviour to effect some desired state in the world. Moreover, both
this desired state and the behavioural means used to effect it are in principle open
to rational evaluation. Without these capacities as exercised by discrete individuals,
action in the social world does not exist. Differences in actual subject locations are,
in the end, attributable to the choices of desired states made by individuals over time
and the relative success in effecting them. Rational choice and intentional agency are
the muscles that enable this glass snake to move through the world and to change
it.
(4) Capacity for transcendence. Finally, the horizons of possible change for this
individualized agency are quite open, both internally and externally. Another way of
saying this is that the capacity for transcendence results from the exercise of the
muscles of rational choice and intentionality. The striving for autonomy is the
internal expression of this capacity, although not thereby necessarily a cause of
separation or forced independence. This aspect of the capacity is undoubtedly
comfortably familiar to most contemporary developmental psychologists. Development is not just any change, but change in some internal patterns of psychological
organization, each step of which is an improvement on previous patterns manifested
within the organism, in the direction of increasing adequacy in, and degrees of
freedom for, making sense of perceived environment. However, the external exercise
of this capacity is, for my purposes, perhaps more important. This sense consists of
what autonomy is thought to be able to accomplish in terms of overcoming external
constraints. In this context it entails the possibility of standing outside of any existing
social contingencies for the purpose of altering them in some desired direction.5 In
this sense, anyone possessing liberal subjectivitywhich is everyone, in principle
has at least some degree of social freedom: through judicious, critical application of

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

11

the powers of choosing not to go along with any social constraint and intentionally
acting in some way to effect this choice, the social world can be reshaped.
Moral work
I hope this synthesis is not too far off the mark, that despite its abstract qualities you
can recognize yourselves and the grounding of your approach to moral education in
this interpretation of subjectivity. Certainly I do, at least in some circumstances and
for some kinds of problems. It is very important to me, and to appropriate
appreciation of what I am trying to do in the following sections, that you understand
that I do not want to throw all of this out the conceptual window, willy-nilly. The
legacies of liberalism, as located in this synthesis of subjectivity, have been, and will
continue to be, of considerable value in moral education, even for some aspects of
the kind of problems that I identified earlier. To make this concrete, I want to
identify briefly some of the very important moral work that is made possible by this
perspective on human subjectivity.
First, failing to accept the assumption of ontological uniqueness would seemingly
amount to cutting the heart out of moral education as we know it today. At least
since Kant, the belief that each and everyone of us is a person is his/her own right
pumps the circulation of basic, inviolable respect that is the lifeblood of liberal
morality and moral education. Taking seriously the categorical imperative in its form
of treating others always as ends and never solely as means puts important constraints not only on the interaction of adults but also on any grand moral education
scheme that would seek to use the next generation as tools to bring about some
imagined future, perfect society. Then, one way this constraint does its work is
through the characteristic of symmetrical positioning. Because all individuals are
assumed to be symmetrically positioned with regard to each other, the perspectives
of self and other (all others) are reversible and ideal reciprocity can be expected.
Walking in the shoes of another may be contingently difficult but not, in principle,
impossible and we strive to teach children how to develop the capacity and
disposition to do exactly this, regardless who the other is, through moral education.
However, that capacity and disposition cannot be developed without attention to the
moral agentic muscles of rational choice and intentionality. Respect for persons rests
conceptually upon intentional efforts of individuals to identify ways of acting toward
others that are freely chosen and rationally evaluated in terms of being acceptable
from the perspective of all parties involved. Finally, the possibility of moral progress
flows directly from the capacity for transcendence. Through recognition of this
capacity, as it is shaped by the first three characteristics, we acknowledge the
possibility and need to stand outside of our current social circumstances in order to
imagine how they might be changed for the better. We seek to build moral education
programmes that enable the next generation to accept what we pass on to them that
is good, and to construct something better when they deem necessary.
Ah, what a pretty picture of morality and moral education! An ideal, to be sure,
one often identified by its absence more than its actualisation, but surely something
worth hanging on to as a legacy of liberalism; and I do want to hang on to it. At the

12

D. Boyd

same time, I want to argue with equal strength that that is not the entire picture. This
picture is only one perspective on the social world, one well-established way that
humans have developed to interpret themselves in relationship, one kind of subjectivity. What I want to show now is how this perspective is quite different from the
one that we need for a full account of the kind of problems that I started with, and
of racism in particular.
Racism as mob-like activity
As a first stepthe most crucial steptoward identifying this difference, I think it
must be recognized that some kinds of harmful relations in the social world are not
primarily between or among individuals, when persons are conceived in the manner
just described. Racism is one example. In such cases, the social entity that comes to
the forefront is a particular kind of group and a relationship of oppression.
Now, it has been my experience, both self-referentially and in observation of
others, that talk of oppression makes the liberal individual in people squirm
mentally and morally. There is a tendency to respond to it as rhetoric that is just too
much over the top, inflated, sensational and, thus, ultimately self-defeating in the
context of understanding and critiquing racism because it merely provokes reactions
of resistance. Why is it necessary, so it is thought, when what we need to do is to see
all people of whatever colour as equals and worthy of the same respect? Surely all the
tools that are needed to address racism adequately can be found in the assumptions
about the liberal individual noted earlier, together with careful application of the
moral norms that have been developed within this tradition of working from this
perspective on subjectivity. Well, no. Or at least I think we should have serious
doubts, doubts that worry me personally.
These doubts are raised by a particular understanding of what we are talking
about in referring to racism. Let me explain. First of all, it is crucial to see that
racism is not an unfortunate, emergent accident of the natural fact of different
races in the world. In fact, biological race is simply not in the world: it is no longer
thought to have any empirical validity as a meaningful way to differentiate humans.6
On the other hand, race as racism certainly is in the world as a way that humans
have developed to see each other as socially related. As McLaren and Torres
(1999) argue:
it is essential for scholars to understand that the construction of the idea of race is
embodied in racist ideology that supports the practice of racism. It is racism as an
ideology that produces the notion of race, not the existence of races that produces
racisms. (p. 47)

Moreover, and equally important, this particular ideological way of seeing others
cannot be understood adequately as involving only discrete individuals in relation, for
example, in the form of morally inappropriate attitudes of racial prejudice. Instead,
what we gain by oppression talk is the perspective of social groups and attention
to a kind of interaction between such groups. In what follows I find myself in
agreement with a number of contemporary scholars (e.g. Young, 1990; Alcoff, 1996;

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

13

Cudd, 2001; Gould, 2001) who argue that groups do indeed have a kind of (social)
ontological status. I will depend heavily upon the analysis provided by Iris Marion
Young (1990) in Justice and the Politics of Difference, as it is the clearest that I know
of (and it has personally helped me understand my own location in the problem of
racism).
From this point of view, it is in so far as individuals are identified as members of such
groupsand located in a particular group in relation to anotherthat they can be
said to be oppressed, i.e. to suffer some inhibition of their ability to develop and
exercise their capacities and express their needs, thoughts, and feelings (Young,
1990, p. 40). This interpretation moves us away from the common understanding of
oppression as necessarily involving the coercion of a tyrannical power and toward
structural and systemic concerns:
Oppression in this sense is structural, rather than the result of a few peoples choices
or policies. Its causes are embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the
assumptions underlying institutional rules and the collective consequences of following
those rules. It names, as Marilyn Frye puts it, an enclosing structure of forces and
barriers which tends to the immobilization and reduction of a group or category of
people (Young, 1990, p. 41).

The full harms of racism as oppression, understood in this sense, then come into
view only when groups are seen to be defined in relation to each other and this relation
is systemically manifested through structures of unequal power. (From now on,
when I speak of groups or social groups it is only this kind of collectivity that I
have in mind.) In contrast, I submit that the perspective provided by focusing on the
discrete individual, even one so morally privileged as the ideal liberal individual,
simply cannot accommodate oppression talk in this sense.
In order to draw this contrast as clearly as possible, I must now introduce another
metaphor (to give the glass snake some real competition), and a rather harsh one
at that. In short, I find it hard to come to grips with the insidious nature of racism
unless I begin to think of the social groups that are so related as mobs. Correspondingly, I think it is crucial to also struggle with the idea that in so far as persons are
racialized in their interactions with others, they need to be conceived qua member
of a group in terms of something like mob membership. From this perspective the
glass snake of the liberal individual cannot be found. It is simply not the functional
way of seeing subjectivity in this context.
Now, why mob? Is it just a metaphor that we could dispense with? I think the
answer to this question is that we should not reject it at least until we have explored
it in some depth. Certainly it does some important work immediately via what it
connotes to most people. First, mobs are usually associated with something negative, often horrifyingly so, such as a lynching. Then they also seem to take on a life
of their own, as if they have a will. Further, individuals in a mob are said to lose their
identity and their capacity to act on their own. Although the actions of the mob are
carried out through the behaviour of individuals, the will of the mob does not seem
reducible to the aggregate of the intentions of discrete individual members. Finally,
it seems difficult to apply our everyday notions of individual responsibility to the

14

D. Boyd

actions of a mob. What we pick up, then, in beginning to think of racialized

individuals in terms of mob membership is a perspective that I think is more
congruent with the reality of racism as oppression. We also gain a perspective that
presents a vivid contrast to liberalism, in particular to how it sees embodied
persons and their interaction in the social world.7
Thinking of social groupssuch as racialized groupsas mobs presents a difficult
challenge to liberalism. Much of this challenge boils down to its threat to how
individuals are conceived in relation to a group. Within liberalism, for all kinds of
recognizable groups, the individual is ontologically prior to the collectivity. The
collectivity is possible only if individuals exist first. However, in the case of social
group membership the group is ontologically prior to the individual: it constitutes
individuals qua members of the groups. From the perspective of social groups,
embodied persons are ontologically embedded in pre-existing relationships (and
always in several at the same time), and thus need to be understood as having a kind
of subjectivity quite different from the idea of the liberal individual.
The subjectivity of (oppressive) group membership
As someone raised masculine, white, middle-class, heterosexual and liberally educated to the level of a doctorate, the liberal individual resides at the core of my
subjectivity as easily as the glass snake in dog-less knee-high grass. It usually feels at
home to me, or it, in me. But I worry that I am also something quite different as
a particular embodied instance of my membership in the social groups to which
these social location descriptors point.
So, here is the question. What are people when they are considered as members
of social groups? How should we think of them? What kind of discourse best
captures all aspects of what it means for someone to be seen, whatever else may be
true of them, qua social group member? Do we have any reason to think, other than
our prima facie commitment to the assumptions about ourselves as (in principle)
liberal individuals, that that-which-is-a-member-of-a-social-group is the same kind
of subjectivity as what one finds in the make-up of other kinds of collectivities? My
aim in what follows is to articulate what I think group-embedded subjectivity looks
like. To make this as clear as possible, I will do this in terms of distinct contrasts to
the four essential characteristics of the liberal individual outlined earlier, noting in
each case how mob-like the resulting picture is. However, I must note first that the
contrast comes into view clearly only when the order of these characteristics is
changedbecause what matters in the world is changed.
Collective practice embeddedness
Forms of oppression such as racism are not unrelated, episodic behavioural patterns
of discrete individuals considered as autonomous agents. Instead, they need to be
seen as collective practices or projects8 that historically produce, and are reproduced by, a particular form of subjectivity. When mobs form, they do not do so as
an accident of the similarity between the occasional behaviours of individuals (as an

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

15

aggregate interpretation might have it). Nor is there a clear purpose based in the
intentions of individuals before they become mob members (as an associative
interpretation would assume). In contrast, mobs are manifested through the sharing
of patterns of action by members, by collective practice. Moreover, although mobs
themselves probably cannot be said to have intentions,9 the collective practice of the
mob certainly supercedes the intentions of individuals. It does this by inserting into
individuals actions a collective aim, an insertion so powerful that it can even
effectively override the counter intentions that individuals might have had before
becoming a member. In fact, this insertion is partly constitutive of that becoming.
Mobs exist through what they seek to achieve in the world. I believe that
racialized groups take exactly this form. As I have already noted, race does not
describe any empirical fact about the world. Seeing others through this concept only
masquerades as a factual claim. Instead, the use of the notion itselfthe shaping of
our subjectivities as group membersis an illocutionary practice. As Goldberg
(1993) has argued so persuasively:
The minimal significance race bears itself does not concern biological but naturalized
group relations. Race serves to naturalize the groupings it identifies in its own name
Its meaning, as its forces, are always illocutionary. In using race and the terms bearing
racial significance, social subjects racialize the people and population groups whom
they characterize and to whom they refer. (p. 81)

From this perspective, individuals do not and cannot transcend their social group
embeddednesat least this kindwith the ease of the liberal individual. Rather,
they are formed by it in relation to others deemed as other via a shared illocutionary
practice that, in turn, shapes behaviour in the world. Mobs, of course, are relatively
short-lived. Racialized groups, however, are defined much more as historical
projects. They are both the result of shared patterns of practice by group members
over significant blocks of time and the structures that enable and constrain subsequent shared practice. They certainly appear and disappear in particular
configurations over time but they are also far more stable than mobs, having much
broader and deeper effects on the lives of their members. The performance of a
racialized relationship constitutes a form of subjectivity that is quite the opposite of
the capacity for transcendence that accrues to the liberal individual. It is a kind of
embeddedness in an historical practice of relational naming that constitutes persons
in relation to others through this very naming.

Hierarchical difference
The kind of subjectivity that is constituted through the embeddedness in an
historical practice of racialization cannot be found on the level playing field of
discrete, symmetrically positioned individuals. Rather, it flows from the fact of how
racialized groups are formed in terms of hierarchical difference that is relationally
defined. As Young says in referring to this special kind of group, Groups are an
expression of social relations; a group exists only in relation to at least one other
group (Young, 1990, p. 43). What this means is that a social group does not have

16

D. Boyd

ontological status on its own, nor do its individualized members. Rather, it must
always and necessarily be understood in terms of some other social group that
constitutes a Difference. One finds oneself in some particular social group as and
insofar as one finds the other in a particular contrasting social group. For example,
I am white insofar as others are deemed to be black (and other colours).
(Further, I am masculine insofar as others are deemed to be feminine; I am
heterosexual insofar as others are deemed to be gay/lesbian, etc.) In every case,
the others social group identification depends on the reciprocal relationship.
This is not, however, a reciprocity of equality. On the contrary, the relationality
that characterizes social groups in this sense is that of one groups systemic
dominance over another as a relatively stable, although historically fluctuating, fact.
This dominance is effected in many different forms, forms that work together for the
maintenance of unequal power. In some forms, the more visible and often acknowledged, this amounts to the kinds of power over that one group (and its members)
has relative to another group (and its members). These are the forms that show up
in statistics about who controls the political institutions, the police forces and
armies, the wealth, the access to education and job opportunities, etc. Other forms
of dominance are more subtle in mechanism, but no less an expression and means
of maintaining unequal power. In these cases, the relationship is located more in the
power to of one group relative the other, in essence the power to determine the
categories, norms and evaluation of the ways people determine meaning and interact
with each other in social discourse around that meaning.10 From this perspective, the
playing field is decidedly not level (as it is for the liberal individual) but higher for
some subject positions than for others because of this relationship. Difference is not
neutral, but defined for the benefit of some at the expense of others. This kind of
difference cannot be simply shed like the glass snake liberal individuals success in
transcending social influences. Nor can the subject so formed walk in the others
shoes. Instead, as Young shows convincingly, it is ontologically impossible for
people in one social position to adopt the perspective of those in the social positions
with which they are related in social structures and interaction (Young, 1997,
p. 44).
Fungibility
As the heart of liberal subjectivity is located in the characteristic of ontological
uniqueness, that of embodied group membership, in contrast, is located in the
fungibility of group members qua members. The core meaning of fungible is that
singular instances of some substance are interchangeable. Fungible is a term used
most commonly in law, especially with regard to economic exchange. In that context
it means not only interchangeable, but interchangeable in the satisfaction of an
obligation. Examples would be grains of wheat or barrels of oil that are being bought
or sold. As long as they are of the same quality, the grains are interchangeable with
any other grains and the barrels are interchangeable with any other barrels in the
fulfilment of a contract. It does not matter which ones are exchanged because they
are deemed to be fungible. In the context in which I am using the term there is not,

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

17

strictly speaking, an obligation to be satisfied. However, there is a kind of binding

quality that is functionally equivalent. On the dominant side of the relationship
between two groups it amounts to the pressure to pull ones weight in the collective
project of oppression, to at least appear to act in such a way as to not unduly
threaten the norms, habits and symbols through which dominant solidarity is
maintained. On the subjugated side, it takes the form of mutual recognition of
others similarly located as united in vulnerability, double consciousness and
resistance. The subjectivity of members of social groups depends upon the strength
of their performative fungibility.
As already noted, the kind of relationship that can be called oppressive involves
deeply embedded and significant kinds of inequality of power adhering to
social groups defined relative to each other. It is important to understand that
I am using a particular sense of power here, one that I take primarily from
Thomas Wartenbergs (1992) social field analysis of power. Wartenberg
argues that an adequate picture of power is one that that does not just focus
on particular, discrete individuals that are interacting in some identified social
context, for example a teacher and student in a classroom. Instead, to
appreciate fully what can be done and what not, we must understand the role of
peripheral social agents that constitute the social field within which, and in terms
of which, the individuals are enabled or constrained to effect specific actions and
reactions.
The situated conception of power replaces a model that treats power as an agents
possession by a model of the social field It asserts that many relationships of social
power are constituted in the first instance by the way in which peripheral social agents
treat both the dominant and the subordinate agents. (Wartenberg, 1992, p. 87)

These peripheral social agents play an active role in supporting a particular pattern
of interaction, a particular practice, through their alignment with each other and
with the actors. This perspective on power and the role of alignment in it explains
how individuals come to have a social being that transcends their own individual
experience. (Wartenberg, 1992, p. 96)
In the way I am using this analysis, one can then see that both our experience of
the social world and our interactions within it are already aligned for us in so far
as we are constituted as members of social groups. The social being that transcends
particular experience viewed from the point of view of embodied instances of social
groups is itself the same for every member, in so far as they are aligned with each
other considered qua member. As I noted earlier, individuals tend to lose themselves in a mob. I believe this perception of what happens to people is accurate from
the point of view of the liberal individual when they are seen as embedded in social
groups. That kind of subjectivity fades ontologically as mob membership grows in
strength because particular instances are fungible. Starting from within something
like a mob, I/we recognize, and relationally interact with, those other others as
something like an opposing mob. In short, I am unavoidably part of something that
is doing something in me, for me, through me, as me.

18

D. Boyd

Proxy agency
As I described it earlier, the subjectivity of the liberal individual works inand
onthe world through its essential muscles of rational choice and intentionality; but
these muscles of social action function only when predicated of centres of consciousness and experience that are ontologically unique. The fungibility of social group
members enables a kind of agency that is fundamentally different, what I call proxy
agency. In contrast to individualized liberal agency, mob members act through
each other and as each other. A proxy is a person authorized to act for another. The
existence of a mob rests directly on this kind of reciprocal authorization among
members with regard to achieving its ends. Any given member need not perform a
particular act for it to be undertaken in his/her name, as his/her agent. Even
stronger, it is their unavoidable action by proxy that is partly constitutive of this kind
of subjectivity because the authorization is itself largely independent of the intentions of particular members of the social group.
Understood as oppression, racism thrives on this kind of action by proxy on the
part of racialized group members. As manifested on the dominant side of the group
relationality there are myriad forms of this action by proxy, and they are all
interconnected to form the structure of oppression. Some of it takes the form of
overt acts of control and violence. When white police stop young black drivers while
ignoring the same infractions committed by white drivers, they are stand-ins for
anyone qua white. When they react with violent rage to a suspects resistance and
this reaction is differentially related to the skin colour of the suspect, they are acting
for all white masters in a practice deeply embedded in the history of slavery in
North America. Most black people understand this action by proxy in cases such as
the Rodney King beating, whereas relatively few whites do. The former depend on
this awareness for survival and health on a daily basis; the latter express their
privilege by being able to be oblivious to it. Other forms of action by proxy are more
symbolic and semiotic. These range from the one-drop blood rule for determining
who qualifies as white to media images of black youth, especially men, as criminals.
Again, in all such cases these actions work performatively to position any person
deemed white in a position of relative privilege (although I hasten to add that this
will vary in accordance with other social location facts about the person, such as
class and gender). Finally, yet other forms permeate much of educational practice.
These range from the predominance of whites in the profession of teaching to the
impact of literary and philosophical canons limited primarily to the works of dead
white males. These instances are perhaps the most worrisome because the proxy is
being acted on in the name of the next generation by the very peopleeducators
who are in the role of enabling that generation to conceptualize how they want to
interact as persons. Since we as moral educators are at the heart of this endeavour,
our failure to take seriously this aspect of this alternative perspective on subjectivity
is morally very dangerous.
Concluding comments
Throughout this article I have focused my argument on perspectives, in particular

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

19

on two perspectives that might be taken on subjectivity. My motive for doing so has
been to trouble our too comfortable dependence within moral education on what I
have synthesized as the kinds of assumptions about subjectivity that are legacies of
liberalism. The rationale for this critique I find in the uncontestable existence of
patterns of egregiously harmful interactions of humans in the world around us that
are arguably more about certain kinds of social groups and their oppressive relations
than about discrete individuals. Using racism as an example, I have sought to
portray these two perspectives as not just different, but fundamentally incompatible.
One perspective blocks what can be seen from the other, and vice versa. My pursuit
of this theoretical analysis has been motivated by my worry that an attempt to view
this kind of problem through the lens of the idea of the liberal individual is too
limiting, a potentially dangerous constriction of moral vision. To make this analysis
more vivid I introduced the metaphors of the liberal individual as glass snake and
social groups as mobs.
Now, in conclusion, I want to take a meta-perspective on what I think may have
been accomplished, to clarify where I think we are left if we accept the analysis and
argument. I am sure most of you are familiar with the perspectival paradoxes that are
presented by pictures that have two figures in them, only one of which can be seen
at one time. One common example is the picture of the duck and rabbit heads. If
you see the duck the rabbit vanishes; if, on the other hand, you see the rabbit the
duck disappears. (I have also learned that some people have extreme difficulty seeing
the second figure after the initial experience of identifying the first.) I think it is
helpful to think of the contrast that I have drawn as a conceptual version of this kind
of perspectival paradox. If one views the problem of racism from the perspective of
the liberal individual, one cannot see the problem in terms of social group relations,
as oppression. On the other hand, if one views the problem from the beginning as
one of oppressive relations between social groups, the liberal individual seems to
disappear.
The difference between the two examples of paradoxes is significant, however.
Unless one has some kind of weird duck or rabbit fetish, it really does not matter
which is seen; nor does it really matter if a person cannot make the switch and see
both at different times. However, I submit that any fully adequate approach to
addressing the kind of problems that I have focused on requires assuming the
perspective of both kinds of subjectivitythat of the liberal individual and that
formed through the relations of social groups.
If this is the case, then I think we are left with a genuine meta-dilemma of
perspective. In many circumstances that involve racism, for example, we may need
to utilize both, but cannot do so at the same time. Moreover, utilizing only one will
have dangerous consequences from the other perspective. Assuming that the subjectivity that is operative is what we find in the liberal individual seems to give us
needed leverage to change things such as racial oppression but, at the same time, so
doing occludes recognition of the existing structural features of group-based oppression and the kind of subjectivity that it thrives upon. On the other hand,
assuming the latter enables acceptance of the impossibility of a racially neutral
position, given the reality of contemporary society, but at the same time seems to

20

D. Boyd

undermine hope because the only viable model of agency and responsibility that we
have is that accruing to the idea of the liberal individual.
However, to this picture I want to add a strong caveat. I think we should be
careful not to slip into thinking that the perspective of the liberal individual is the
default position, one that we can always fall back upon. That is, thinking that the
dilemma can be solved, in the sense that it goes away, through an individuals
rational choice to use which perspective in any given context is, I think, to fail to
appreciate its full power. It is to lose sight of the fact that some kinds of subjectivity
do not work that way in the real world. The glass snake has managed to regenerate
itself once again and constrict our attention away from the problem.
I believe that this is a genuine dilemma, one that we must face with considerable
intellectual and moral courage and with creative thinking. If moral education today
is ever to seem more adequate in the context of the kind of problems that focus my
attention in this article, that success, I submit, will depend on facing and seeing our
way through this dilemma. I trust that you share my concern about the kinds of
conflicts I identified at the beginning of this article, and about the pernicious effects
of racism in particular. If I am correct in my argument about the kind of subjectivity
involved, then I hope you will agree with me that the legacies of liberalism are not
an adequate basis on which moral education can be grounded to address such
problems. If we do not explore something like the alternative perspective that I
describe, then we may be actually supporting the status quo. In my judgement, in this
regard the status quo is morally unacceptable to any moral education that deserves
our support.

Notes
1.

2.

3.

4.

Although this claim may raise the realist hackles on some, and I must just stipulate it here,
some version of it would find solid support in the work of an array of prominent
contemporary philosophers, from Foucault to Harre to Hacking. In terms of my understanding of it, Hacking perhaps says it best when he identifies with the position that he
labels dynamic nominalism, that numerous kinds of human beings and human acts come
into being hand in hand with our invention of the categories labelling them (Hacking,
1986, p. 236).
I use the characterization hegemonic advisedly here, as they also correctly acknowledge
that, although arguably still dominant, this focus has also been challenged from a number
of directions from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the present (p. 1).
Of course I was aware of the alternative lens provided by some forms of communitarianism,
such as that offered by MacIntyre (1981, 1988), but in the context of the kind of systemic
problem such as racism that I was worried about I felt that it was even more suspect, as it
can easily provide apparent justification for traditional practices that are instances of the
problem.
I am well aware that historically there have been, and even currently still are, many varieties
of views that characterize themselves as, or are called by critics, liberalism. Perhaps some
of them do not depend on the core assumptions that I seek to illuminate here. If so, it is
thus possible that my critique that follows does not apply to these interpretations. However,
there should be no doubt that some of the most prominent varieties of liberalism do indeed
contain these assumptions, although there might be legitimate intrafamilial quibbles about
how they are best articulated.

The legacies of liberalism and oppressive relations

5.

6.

7.
8.

9.

10.

21

As Heller et al. (1986) note, the early social contract theorists (arguably at the heart of the
liberal tradition) recognized that:
Man [sic] had to rise above his life history in order to achieve the dispassionate exercise of
reason that full autonomy required. Kants solution to this dilemma, the transcendent figure
of the subject as a nonindividuated potential for self-actualization, still appears repeatedly
in our most enshrined collective practices. Its current manifestations include the welfaredefining maximizer in economics, the democratic voter in politics, the socially mobile role
selector in functionalist sociology, and the maturing moral actor in developmental psychology. Despite the criticisms that have been directed at the ontological grounding and the
political consequences of this individualist imagery, it continues to prevail in institutionalized culture. (pp. 56)
This claim is now a commonplace within critical race studies literature. For the best
theoretical account of its grounding that I know of see David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture
(Oxford, Blackwell, 1993). One startling, relevant empirical finding that has emerged from
the Genome Project is that The concept of race has no basis in the genetic history of
human beings [because] we are all 99.9 percent identical (Mary Claire-King, as quoted by
Eve Nichols in Discussion of Genomes Societal Impacts, at www.wi.mit.edu/news/
genome/media.html).
The same claim might be made for any kind of oppression, although I would want to be
open to how the account might need modification.
In my use and understanding of this notion I am following Connells brilliant analysis of
gender. See R. W. Connell, Gender and Power (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1987),
215ff.
I am not aware of any work addressing this question directly. If it does not exist, I would
suggest that one reasonat least until it proves to be a dead endlies in the hegemonic
influence of liberalism once again. In this case, the liberal individual usurps all accounts
of agency through the tight connection between individual intentions and all action in the
world.
For a more in-depth analysis of how these forms of dominance differ, together with
a more nuanced account of the means and results of the dominance of meaning,
see Barbara Applebaum and Dwight Boyd (2000) The meaning of dominance, the
dominance of meaning, and the morality of the matter, in M. Leicester, C. Modgil & S.
Modgil (Eds) Education, culture and valuesvolume iv: moral education and pluralism (London, Falmer).

References
Alcoff, L. (1996) Philosophy and racial identity, Radical Philosophy, 75, 514.
Blum, L. (1999) Race, community and moral education: Kohlberg and Spielberg as civic
educators, Journal of Moral Education, 28(2), 125143.
Boyd, D. (1980) The Rawls connection, in: B. Munsey (Ed.) Moral development, moral education,
and Kohlberg: basic issues in philosophy, psychology, religion, and education (Birmingham, AL,
Religious Education Press), 113131.
Boyd, D. (1984) The principle of principles, in: J. Gewirtz & W. Kurtines (Eds) Morality, moral
development and moral behavior (New York, John Wiley and Sons), 365380.
Connell, R. (1987) Gendered power (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press).
Cudd, A. (2001) Nonvoluntary social groups, in: C. Sistare, L. May & L. Francis (Eds) Groups
and group rights (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press), 5870.
Damon, W. (Ed.) (2002) Bringing in a new era in character education (Stanford, CA, Hoover
Institution Press).
Garrod, A., Beal, C., Jaeger, W., Thomas, J., Davis, J., Leiser, N. & Hodzic, A. (2003) Culture,
ethnic conflict and moral orientation in Bosnian children, Journal of Moral Education, 32(2),
131150.

22

D. Boyd

Goldberg, D. (1993) Racist culture (Oxford, Blackwell).

Gould C. (2001) Group rights and social ontology, in: C. Sistare, L. May & L. Francis (Eds)
Groups and group rights (Lawrence, KS, University of Kansas Press), 4357.
Hacking, I. (1986) Making up people, in: T. Heller, S. Morton & D. Wellbery (Eds) Reconstructing individualism: autonomy, individuality, and the self in western thought (Stanford, CA,
Stanford University Press), 222236.
Heller, T., Sosna, M. & Wellbery, D. (Eds) (1986) Reconstructing individualism: autonomy,
individuality, and the self in western thought (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press).
Kohlberg, L., Boyd, D. & Levine, C. (1990) The return of stage 6: its principle and moral point
of view, in T. Wren (Ed.) The moral domain (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press), 151181.
MacIntyre, A. (1981) After virtue (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press).
MacIntyre, A. (1988) Whose justice? Which rationality? (Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre
Dame Press).
McLaren, P. & Torres, R. (1999) Racism and multicultural education: rethinking race and
whiteness in late capitalism, in: S. May (Ed.) Critical multiculturalism: rethinking multiculturalism and antiracist education (London, Falmer Press), 4276.
May, L. (1992) Sharing responsibility (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press).
Mills, C. (1994) Non-Cartesean sums: philosophy and the African experience, Teaching Philosophy
17, 228229.
Rawls, J. (1971) A theory of justice (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press).
Wartenberg, T. (1992) Situated social power, in: T. E. Wartenberg (Ed.) Rethinking power
(Albany, NY, State University of New York Press), 79100.
Young, I. (1990) Justice and the politics of difference (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press).
Young, I. (1997) Intersecting voices: dilemmas of gender, political philosophy, and policy (Princeton,
NJ, Princeton University Press).