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ABSTRACT
Iris Marion Young’s social connection model of responsibility faces one difficulty when dealing with a non-ideal case where actors, especially victims, lack what I call “capability for responsibility”. Without taking this problem into consideration, Young’s model could be criticized for blaming the victim for not taking their responsibility for political Justice. In this paper, I address this question by examining a case study taken from Japan where society is deeply structured in a mode that oppresses women. The first sections point out that Young’s model overlooks the importance of agents for political justice while trying not to blame anyone. In the second sections I will introduce the idea of the “capability for responsibility” to connect the analytical part and the prescriptive part of her model as a theory of justice, arguing that actors’ engagement in self-examination through collective action is necessary for the enhancement of their capability for responsibility.
Acknowledgement
I would like express my appreciation for all the questions and comments I received from my presentation of an earlier draft of this paper under the title “How not to blame the victim: rethinking Young’s model of responsibility” in Colloque international sur Iris Marion Young (May 31 to June 2, 2017) held at University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. I am also most grateful to the anonymous referee for her very helpful comments.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on Contributor
Yuko Kamishima is Professor of Philosophy at College of Comprehensive Psychology of Ritsumeikan University. Her research interests include moral and political philosophy, in particular virtue ethics, liberalism, global justice, and the capability approach. She has recently published “Can Merging a Capability Approach with Effectual Processes Help Us Define a Permissible Action Range for AI Robotics Entrepreneurship?” (co-authored with Bart Gremmen and Hikari Akizawa), Philosophy of Management (2018) 17:97–113.
Notes
1. Young visited Japan in early 2004 and spoke at several academic institutions. As a graduate student, I attended two of her talks. At one of the receptions, I was the only female Japanese participant. As I was serving beer to some of the male participants (as were other male participants), Young came to me and took me to a corner of the room. She said, “Don’t pour beer for the men, they will expect more”. At first, I was astonished, but in this way she helped me to begin seeing social structures critically, and to share a small part of the political responsibility for gender justice.
2. Young, Responsibility for Justice, 70.
3. Ibid., 47–48.
4. Ibid., 123–51.
5. The following description of the case is based on news stories, a report by Haru Sugiyama, Rupo Gyakutai: Osaka Niji Okizarishi Jiken (Reportage of Abuse: The death of two abandoned children in Osaka) (Chikuma-shobo, 2013), and the text of the judgement by the district court in Osaka in March 16, 2012. http://www.courts.go.jp/app/files/hanrei_jp/267/082267_hanrei.pdf (accessed on September 15, 2018). The text is in Japanese. Quotes from the text are translated by the author.
6. For example, in July 2017, a nineteen-year-old employee at a hostess bar in Tokyo was beaten to death by her employer. She was the single mother of a two-year-old girl. The accused was sentenced to eleven years and six months penal servitude in November 2018 by the district court in Tokyo.
7. Young, Responsibility for Justice, 98.
8. The 1945 Constitution granted women civil rights equal to men; its Article fourteen stipulates non-discrimination, stating that “All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin”.
9. http://www.gender.go.jp/english_contents/index.html (accessed on September 15, 2018)
10. http://www.mofa.go.jp/fp/pc/page23e_000181.html (accessed on September 15, 2018)
11. The statistics below are taken from NHK “Josei no Hinkon” Shuzaihan (NHK news crew on “Women’s poverty”), Joseitach no Hinkon: “Arata na Rensa no Shougeki”, (Women’s Poverty: Impact of the “New Interlocking”), Gentosha, 2014.
12. As of April 2018, 23,700 children were on the waiting list for day-care facilities nationwide. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/08/16/national/japans-day-care-shortage-intensifies-populations-cluster-near-city-centers/#.W5ekE2W_Si4 (accessed on September 15, 2018)
13. This is clearly different from the “public political culture” defined by John Rawls. According to Rawls, public political culture (for short, the public culture) is the culture of a democratic society that “comprises the political institutions of a constitutional regime and the public traditions of their interpretation (including those of the judiciary), as well as historic texts and documents that are common knowledge. Comprehensive doctrines of all kinds – religious, philosophical, and moral – belong to what we may call the ‘background culture’ of civil society. This is the culture of the social, not of the political. It is the culture of daily life, of its many associations: churches and universities, learned and scientific societies, and clubs and teams, to mention a few” (John Rawls, Political Liberalism, with a New Introduction and the “Reply to Habermas”, (Columbia University Press, 1996), 13–14). As defined in this paper, the public sphere is larger than what Rawls describes, encompassing social and economic activities.
14. Eaton, “A Sensible Antiporn Feminism”, 676.
15. For example, see the following article in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/27/japanese-ad-eel-showing-girl-fattened-up-cooked-pulled (accessed on September 15, 2018).
16. For example, see the following article in the South China Morning Post: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2039534/whats-wrong-tokyo-subway-picture (accessed on September 15, 2018).
17. Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays, 42.
18. Ibid., 44.
19. Ibid., 44.
20. The family of the highest rank has traditionally been the Imperial family. Today, only the male children of the Emperor are in line; once married, the female children leave the Imperial family and become private citizens.
21. http://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/05-Shingikai-12601000-Seisakutoukatsukan-Sanjikanshitsu_Shakaihoshoutantou/0000164401.pdf (accessed on September 15, 2018)
22. http://www8.cao.go.jp/youth/whitepaper/h26honpen/b1_03_03.html (accessed on September 15, 2018)
23. http://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/06-Seisakujouhou-11900000-Koyoukintoujidoukateikyoku/0000083324.pdf (accessed on September 15, 2018)
24. NHK “Josei no Hinkon” Shuzaihan, Joseitach no Hinkon, 91–121.
25. Young, Responsibility for Justice, 109, 111, 113, respectively.
26. Ibid., 92.
27. Ibid., 92.
28. Michaels and Fuji Johnson. “Political Responsibility Refocused”, 4–5.
29. Young, Responsibility for Justice, 109.
30. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 5. Her list includes: life (to be able to live a life of normal longevity with dignity); bodily health (to be able to be healthy); bodily integrity (to be able to have one’s body be sovereign and mobile); senses, imagination, and thought (to be able to feel and think humanly); emotions (to be able to choose loving and caring relationships); practical reasoning (to be able to form a conception of the good through critical reflection); affiliation (to be able to share a life with others in a respectful manner); other species (to be able to coexist with nature); play (to be able to have leisure); and control over one’s environment (to be able to participate in political as well as economic activities). Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 78–80.
31. Sen, “Human Rights and Capabilities”, 159.
32. J. L. Schiff is one of the few theorists who examine Young’s responsibility model with reference to the capability approach. Although Schiff makes a similar point to mine – that Young pays insufficient attention to an actor’s power and ability – she focuses on what she calls an actor’s “capacity to respond” and rejects the capability approach because she believes that the capability approach “is blind to the problem of structural injustice” by overlooking “the relationship between capabilities that are manifest in problems of structural injustice” (Schiff, “Power and Responsibility”, 59). She is right to point out that in structural injustice some actors’ capabilities are repressed by other actors’ capabilities. In the case of Sandy, the landlord’ s capability to sell the apartment building overpowered Sandy’s capability to rent a decent property. In the case of Sanae, the brothel owner’s capability to exploit Sanae overpowered Sanae’s capability to take decent care of her children. However, Schiff is wrong to suggest that the capability approach in any forms overlooks this problem. To the contrary, the capability approach can be relational, for it looks at what each person can really do and be and evaluates a person’s state of affairs as compared to others. Moreover, it can propose to equally protect certain core capabilities of individuals, as Nussbaum notably does. The capability approach can offer more insights than Schiff suggests.
33. Young, Responsibility for Justice, 52.
34. Ibid., 143.
35. Barry and Ferracioli, “Young on Responsibility and Structural Injustice”, , 255–6.
36. Young, Responsibility for Justice, 144.
37. Ibid., 124.
38. Ibid., 145.
39. Ibid., 92.
40. The term “agent” here is borrowed from Amartya Sen who defines it as “someone who acts and brings about change”. Sen, Development as Freedom, 19.
41. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, 20.
42. Ibid., 21.
43. Ibid., 21.
44. This may also seem to be the case of Young’s mother, as depicted by Young in “House and Home” in Young, On Female Body Experience.
45. Nussbaum, “Iris Young’s Last Thoughts on Responsibility for Global Justice”, 145.
46. Young, Responsibility for Justice, 144.
47. Ibid., 145.
48. Ibid., 145.
49. Ibid., 147.
50. Sanae’s father did not see her daughter for about half a year after her arrest. According to the text of the judgement by the court, Sanae’s ex-husband and his parents made very strong emotional requests for the imposition of a harsh penalty on Sanae.
51. Young, Political Responsibility for Justice, 146.