Thesis advisor: Micah Lott / How do we rectify structural injustice? Iris Marion Young presents a Social Connection Model that states those who participate in social processes that produce injustice have a forward-looking responsibility to redress the resulting injustice. Within some philosophical discourse, however, there is a general consensus that SCM is not action-guiding and is overly demanding. To supplement Young’s ideas, I explore Robin Zheng’s Role-Ideal Model; Zheng fills some necessary gaps left by Young. My aim in this paper is to use Young's SCM and Zheng's RIM in tandem to create a more action-guiding and ameliorative project for structural injustice. I offer a structurally sensitive account of responsibility for disempowerment that avoids passively repeating domination. I establish a prefatory set of tasks that can be applied to all roles. These tasks are an expansion of the terms mentioned in Zheng Role-Ideal:“raised consciousness” and “boundary pushing.” / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This thesis develops the prioritization guidance and action guidance provided by Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model of responsibility for injustice. Young’s parameters of reasoning are limited in their ability to assist responsible agents in determining what they ought to do to fulfill their responsibilities, as they are severed from the structural analysis characteristic of the rest of the SCM. This thesis addresses the resulting limitations by developing categories of prioritization and an action guidance framework. I develop 6 categories of prioritization: power, benefit, interest, centrality, contribution, and control. Applied to social-group-based analysis, these categories determine the strength of the prioritization claim which a given injustice holds over a given social group. The action guidance framework takes the perspective of the political community and works its way through three questions and their corresponding considerations: “What can we do?” –structural change, altering practices, and harm alleviation; “How can we do it?” –understanding sub-issues and sub-options, determining interests, and organizing collectives; and “What can I do?” –eliminating contributory behaviours, and considering personal circumstances. Through this framework, agents can analyze the capacities of the political community and the structures of an injustice to determine which projects should be undertaken and how agents ought to contribute. Finally, the developments of this thesis are applied to the case of landlords and housing, therein establishing the necessity of landlords abandoning rental profits so as to fulfill and not contradict their responsibility to eliminate housing injustice. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis develops the prioritization guidance and action guidance provided by Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model of responsibility for injustice. Young’s parameters of reasoning, meant to provide this guidance, are limited in their ability to assist responsible agents in determining what they ought to do to fulfill their responsibilities. This thesis addresses these limitations by developing 6 categories of prioritization and an action guidance framework. The categories of prioritization determine which social groups ought to prioritize a given injustice. Through the action guidance framework, agents can analyze the capacities of the political community and the structures of an injustice to determine which projects should be undertaken and how agents ought to contribute to them. The developments of this thesis are applied to the case of landlords and housing injustice, therein establishing the necessity of landlords abandoning rental profits.

Ce mémoire court a comme objectif d’appliquer le concept de responsabilité politique développé par Iris Marion Young dans Responsibility for Justice, ainsi que son modèle de connexion sociale, au contexte du recyclage des déchets électriques et électroniques. Au premier chapitre, il sera question en un premier temps d’explorer comment Young définit ses concepts et comment ils diffèrent des conceptions plus traditionnelles de la responsabilité. Au chapitre suivant, il s’agira de comprendre à quels problèmes philosophiques Young tente de répondre. Il sera intéressant ici de voir comment Young se distingue de J. Rawls, de comment elle s’inspire d’H. Arendt et comment elle se distance de l’approche nationaliste de D. Miller. Enfin, au dernier chapitre, ce travail termine par une application du modèle de Young au contexte du recyclage des déchets électriques et électroniques. Bien qu’il y ait des similitudes avec l’étude de cas présenté par Young dans Responsibility for Justice, des différences marquées dans les types d’interactions sociales à la source des injustices structurelles illustrent la pertinence d’utiliser le modèle de Young afin d’entamer une réflexion sur les solutions possibles. Ce mémoire court se veut donc être une sorte d’hommage à la pensée de Young qui est toujours d’actualité. / The objective of this short-form master thesis is to put in application the concept of political responsibility and its social connexion model developed by Iris Marion Young in Responsibility for Justice to the context of e-waste. In the first chapter, we will start by exploring how Young define her concepts and how they differ from traditional conceptions of responsibility. In the second chapter, we will see which philosophical questions Young wanted to address with her model. It will be interesting to see how she distinguishes her theory to the one of J. Rawls, how she seeks inspiration in the thoughts of H. Arendt, and how she distances herself from the national conception of responsibility developed by D. Miller. Finally, in the last chapter, this work ends with an application of Young’s social connection model to the context of e-waste. While there are some similarities with the case study presented by Young in Responsibility for Justice, the context of e-waste provides a different insight on the many types of social interactions at the source of structural injustices, and how Young’s theory is useful for a reflection about the possible solutions. This work is a kind of tribute to the thoughts of Young which are still relevant today.