Analyzing Oppression

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Oxford University Press, Apr 27, 2006 - Social Science - 296 pages
Analyzing Oppression presents a new, integrated theory of social oppression, which tackles the fundamental question that no theory of oppression has satisfactorily answered: if there is no natural hierarchy among humans, why are some cases of oppression so persistent? Cudd argues that the explanation lies in the coercive co-opting of the oppressed to join in their own oppression. This answer sets the stage for analysis throughout the book, as it explores the questions of how and why the oppressed join in their oppression. Cudd argues that oppression is an institutionally structured harm perpetrated on social groups by other groups using direct and indirect material, economic, and psychological force. Among the most important and insidious of the indirect forces is an economic force that operates through oppressed persons' own rational choices. This force constitutes the central feature of analysis, and the book argues that this force is especially insidious because it conceals the fact of oppression from the oppressed and from others who would be sympathetic to their plight. The oppressed come to believe that they suffer personal failings and this belief appears to absolve society from responsibility. While on Cudd's view oppression is grounded in material exploitation and physical deprivation, it cannot be long sustained without corresponding psychological forces. Cudd examines the direct and indirect psychological forces that generate and sustain oppression. She discusses strategies that groups have used to resist oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist in some way. In the concluding chapter Cudd proposes a concept of freedom that would be possible for humans in a world that is actively opposing oppression, arguing that freedom for each individual is only possible when we achieve freedom for all others.

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Contents

Part II Forces of Oppression
83
Part III We Shall Overcome
185
Appendix
239
Notes
243
References
259
Index
271
Copyright

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Page 91 - ... the nature of war as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together ; so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.
Page 5 - NATURE hath made men so equal in the faculties of the body and mind, as that, though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he.
Page 9 - ... a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
Page 104 - Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: a. Killing members of the group; b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part...
Page 17 - It arose simply from the fact that from the very earliest twilight of human society, every woman (owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength) was found in a state of bondage to some man. Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals.
Page 62 - Violence alone, violence committed by the people, violence organized and educated by its leaders, makes it possible for the masses to understand social truths and gives the key to them.

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About the author (2006)

Ann E. Cudd grew up in Ohio and received her BA from Swarthmore College, her MA in Economics, and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. She now teaches philosophy and is Director of Women's Studies at the University of Kansas. She is past president of the Society for Analytical Feminism. Professor Cudd lives in Lawrence, Kansas with her husband and three sons.

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