Oppression, Dehumanization and Exploitation: Connecting Theory to Experience

1

• Oppression, Dehumanization and Exploitation
  Connecting Theory to Experience

2

• This presentation is in two parts
• A lecture about recent theories which distinguish
  between oppression, dehumanization and
  exploitation.

3

• This presentation is in two parts
• 2. An exercise in which we identify words and
  affective phrases associated with our own
  experiencs of oppression, dehumanization and
  exploitation.

4
In the exercise.(later)

• Participants identify the words and affective
  phrases describing the feelings we have
  experienced due to acts of oppression,
  dehumanization and exploitation. These are
  shared on 3x5 cards that are shuffled,
  redistributed, and discussed.

5
For Example

• beaten down
• being left behind
• being used
• beleaguered
• belittled
• blamed
• boot in the face

6
A similar list of words.

• In the textbook written here in Minnesota, Direct
  Social Work Practice Theory and Skills, a
  similar list was developed. But in my teaching
  of a course on oppression at Fordham University
  in 1989, I found that these lists didnt seem to
  match the words and affective phrases my students
  were coming up with to describe their experience
  of oppression.

7
A similar list of words.

• But the use of lists of words and effective
  phrases is therefore an established part of
  social work education. Why not expand the list,
  my students and I decided. And, over the years,
  we concluded that it was not just feelings of
  oppression we were identifying, it was also
  feelings of dehumanization and exploitation.

8
A similar list of words.

• And, we realized that some of our words and
  phrases described how we felt at the very moment
  of the experience of oppression, and others were
  how we felt seconds or minutes latter. Finally,
  some were things we felt that evolved over time
  from our experiences of oppression,
  dehumanization or exploitation, including both
  adaptive and maladaptive feelings.

9
A similar list of words.

• So, while Im talking about theories of
  oppression, dehumanization and exploitation, feel
  free to start thinking back to experiences you
  have had. You wont be asked to describe them or
  discuss them. But try to remember how you felt
  at that very moment, and begin to jot down the
  words and phrases which describe how you felt.

10
A similar list of words.

• Dont worry about the need to take notes about
  what Im presenting to you, as you have available
  to you on course reserves a copy of a chapter in
  which I discuss this, in case you want to do
  further reading.

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Introduction

• Bertha Capen Reynolds said in Uncharted Journey,
  "Oppression produces the resistance which will in
  the end overthrow it ... We shall learn how to
  struggle when we care most what happens to all of
  us, and we know that all of us can never be
  defeated.

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First..

• We begin by defining and discussing theories of
  oppression, dehumanization and exploitation.
  Then we move beyond theory, beyond the isms,
  and share the feelings produced by these
  experiences.

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Definitions

• Would anyone like to take a shot at explaining
  what the difference is between oppression,
  exploitation and dehumanization? (Students
  first!).

14
Oppression

• In their article in the Encyclopedia of Social
  Work, Wambach and Van Soest cite an excellent
  metaphor for oppression, one which explains why
  it is so hard to theorize and to observe a
  structure of oppression. That metaphor is the
  cage.
• They point out how hard it is "to understand that
  one is looking at a cage and there are people
  there who are caged, whose motion and mobility
  are restricted, whose lives are shaped and
  reduced." A well designed cage has a strong
  structure, but the actual wires that keep the
  birds in are as thin as possible to enable people
  to see in.

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Mechanisms of Oppression

• The authors argue there six mechanisms of
  oppression
• (1) violence and the threat of violence,
• (2) rendering the oppressed group or their
  existence as an oppressed group as invisible, so
  that their status is taken for granted and not
  questioned,
• (3) ensuring that the group is ghettoized so as
  to be out of sight, out of mind,

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Mechanisms of Oppression

• (4) Engaging in cultural oppression by treating
  the group as inferior,
• (5) When oppressed groups are easily visible,
  they argue that the oppression can be
  rationalized or excused or
• (6) keeping oppressed groups divided within
  themselves or from other oppressed groups.

17
On second thought.

• Just because this is in the encyclopedia of
  social work doesnt mean we should agree with
  this, however. We should always think critically
  about social theories, by which I mean think
  analytically. We might end up agreeing or not
  agreeing, being critical or not critical, but we
  should analyze the theory, i.e. think critically
  about it. And of course I would encourage you to
  think critically about the things I say as well.

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Thinking Critically (Analytically)

• Van Soest and Garcia (2003) themselves, in the
  first edition of their CSWE book Diversity
  Education for Social Justice Mastering Teaching
  Skills point out that it is important to
  critically challenge the assumptions of the
  prevailing academic approaches to diversity
  education.

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Thinking Critically (Analytically)

• I would argue that although Van Soest and her
  colleague refer to these six processes as the
  social mechanisms of oppression, they are really
  ways in which oppression is maintained after it
  has already be put in place. The oppressed group
  is made invisible, ghettoized, treated as
  inferior, and kept divided only after it has
  already become an oppressed group!

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Thinking Critically (Analytically)

• In other words, racist beliefs and other
  ideologies of oppression serve to justify
  oppression after it has been established. For
  instance, Ive just finished a great new book,
  Darwins Sacred Cause.

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Thinking Critically (Analytically)

• Charles Darwin was motivated all his life by the
  abolitionist views of his family of origin, which
  had their origin in a religious belief that all
  people were creatures of God. Even though Darwin
  no longer believed in the Biblical account of the
  origins of life, he firmly believed that all
  human beings share a common origin.

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Thinking Critically (Analytically)

• According to the Bible, all human beings stemmed
  from Adam and Eve and then later from those who
  survived the great flood. Darwin used objective
  scientific methods in service of his deeper
  beliefs. He would have been heartbroken if he
  had found otherwise, but he was able to establish
  theories of natural and sexual selection that
  argued that human beings were indeed descended
  from a common origin.

23
Thinking Critically (Analytically)

• Darwins sacred cause in over 30 years of
  research was to refute the growing scientific
  racism which claimed that people of African
  origin were a different and inferior species and
  that this justified slavery. But that scientific
  racism came after slavery, to justify slavery.
  Theodore Allen in his acclaimed book The
  Invention of the White Race has also shown that
  racism as an ideology came after slavery to
  justify it, not before.

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Mechanisms of Oppression

• So what are the originating mechanisms of
  oppression? And how do they differ from the
  mechanisms of exploitation and dehumanization?
  First, I would like to discuss one important
  mechanism, called closure.

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Parkins Concept of Closure

• Closure is a mechanism through which one group
  dominates another group. Frank Parkin theorized
  that a mechanism called social closure is a
  "process by which social collectivities seek to
  maximize rewards by restricting access to
  resources and opportunities to a limited circle
  of eligible." (p. 44)

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3 Kinds of Closure

• He defines THREE kinds of closure One is what
  he calls exclusionary closure, which is the
  process by which one group excludes another
  group. Different kinds of exclusionary closure
  are in place in different kinds of societies.
  This is the most important kind of closure to
  understand for our purposes.

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Parkin (Weberian Perspective)

• The concept of closure was first introduced in
  Parkins 1979 book, Marxism and Class theory.
  This is perhaps the most salient Weberian
  critique of neo-Marxism. Marxist class analysis,
  he argues, tends to deny the importance of
  "racial ideology", of "ethnic cleavages" or
  "communal divisions.

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Weberian Theory

• Parkin argued that it is important to understand
  the oppression of groups by groups. Many of the
  current theories of oppression we are using today
  - including feminist theory - are derived from
  Weberian group theory. Weberian group theory
  provides a powerful ability to sustain social
  critiques.

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Classical Origins of Theories of Oppression,
Dehumanization and Exploitation

• Oppression Weberian group theory
• Dehumanization - Durkheimian institutional theory
• Exploitation - Marxist class theory

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Theories of Oppression, Dehumanization and
Exploitation

• Last Fall, I published a chapter, Oppression,
  Dehumanization and Exploitation Connecting
  Theory to Experience, as Chapter 16 in the
  Second Edition of Van Soest and Betty Garcias
  book, Diversity Education for Social Justice
  (Second Edition). Alexandria VA Council on
  Social Work Education. In that chapter I
  presented an original typology of theories of
  oppression, dehumanization and exploitation.

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Basis of Typology of ODE Content For Social Work
Education

• Oppression Ann Cudds Analyzing Oppression
  (2006). First unified and philosophically
  constructed theory of oppression.
• Dehumanization Nick Haslams social
  psychological theories of animalistic and
  mechanistic dehumanization.
• Exploitation Robin Hahnel and Chuck Tillys
  post-Marxist theories of exploitation.

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Exploitation

• Lets skip any real discussion of classical
  Marxist class theory of exploitation, but there
  is one great article which explains it well
• Longres, John. Marxian theory and social work
  practice. Catalyst. 1986 (20)13-34.

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Exploitation

• But in order to establish a typology of ODE
  content, it is necessary to show the manner in
  which oppression, dehumanization and exploitation
  can be distinguished from each other. Thats
  easier said than done, because theories of
  oppression have become broader and broader in
  their conceptualization in recent years, so that
  O, D, and E become indistinguishable.

34
Exploitation

• For instance, Tilly (1998) has developed a
  theory of inequality that posited mechanisms of
  group domination as well as economic extraction.
  David Gil (1994) has sought to incorporate
  exploitation and dehumanization into a theory of
  oppression.

35
Exploitation

• But efforts to theorize oppression,
  dehumanization and exploitation in ways which
  incorporate each other risk overstressing the
  extent of the overlap between each others
  arguably distinct mechanisms.

36
Exploitation

• A major problem with classical and most recent
  theories of exploitation has been that they see
  the exploitation of economic class by economic
  class as the root of all evil, as the source of
  all oppression, and as the engine of all
  dehumanization. Modern feminist, postmodernist
  and other emerging theories were a reaction to
  this overemphasis on the role of class.

37
Exploitation

• For the source of a theory of exploitation which
  both avoids this kind of ideological imperialism
  and recognizes the manner in which oppression can
  be distinguished from exploitation, I chose Robin
  Hahnels work.

38
Exploitation

• Hahnel recognized that exploitation can be
  analyzed in terms other than Marxian theories of
  surplus value. Even mutually beneficial,
  voluntary economic exchanges can worsen the
  degree of inequality.

39
Exploitation

• Those who begin with a capital advantage will
  have a competitive advantage in economic
  exchanges, because they will be able to operate
  with greater efficiency. This in turn leads to
  further efficiency gains with each exchange. The
  result is still greater inequality of income and
  assets, via accumulation. Exploitation is simply
  based upon unfair advantage.

40
Exploitation

• What is one of the most important concepts which
  can help understand the outcome of such unfair
  exchanges? Cumulative disadvantage. Cumulative
  disadvantage refers to the manner in which over
  the life course of individuals and of entire
  groups and communities of people, such unfair
  exchanges can become institutionalized into a
  system of economic exploitation.

41
Exploitation

• Unjust outcomes follow from transactions between
  unequal parties within an institutionalized
  environment. The outcome is a result of
  exploitation. But Hahnel said unjust outcomes can
  happen outside the context of exploitation as
  well. Hahnels model of exploitation leaves room
  for consideration of the relationship of
  exploitation to oppression and dehumanization.

42
Oppression

• Just as Hahnel theorized exploitation in a way
  which left room to theorize oppression, so Ann
  Cudd theorizes oppression in a way which leaves
  room to consider exploitation separately. In
  fact, Cudd devoted a major portion of his book to
  showing that exploitation isnt necessarily
  oppressive! It may (or may not) be unjust, but
  it isnt necessarily oppressive.

43
Oppression

• Wait, am I saying that the feminist philosopher
  Ann Cudd argued that exploitation isnt
  necessarily oppressive? Yes, the reason is that
  Cudds theory of oppression requires that all
  oppression be conceptualized much like Parkin
  did as a function of the oppression of one
  social group by another social group.

44
Oppression

• Cudd argued that the origins of different
  historical examples of oppression may differ and
  while the effect of oppression on various groups
  may diverge, oppression has a common set of
  features.

45
Oppression

• Cudd identified four necessary and sufficient
  conditions for oppression (1) Harm, (2)
  Inflicted on a group, (3) by a more privileged
  group, (4) using unjust forms of coercion.
• Lets look at each of these four and then Ill
  provide you with a definition of oppression based
  on Cudd.

46
Oppression

• A harm condition related to an identifiable
  institutional practice
• Avoidance of serious harm is a universal human
  goal according to Doyal and Goughs Theory of
  Human Need. Harm is a much theorized concept in
  moral philosophy. But the harm must be performed
  in an organized, institutionalized manner, says
  Cudd.

47
Oppression

• (2) A social group condition that requires that
  the harm be perpetrated by a social institution
  or established practice on a social group.
• And that social group must have a pre-existing
  identity other than that stemming from the
  presence of the harm condition itself.

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Oppression

• (3) A privilege condition associated with the
  existence of a social group that benefits from
  the identified institutional practice

49
Oppression

• (4) A coercion condition consisting of the
  ability to demonstrate the use of unjust forms of
  coercion as part of the bringing about of the
  identified harm.

50
Oppression

• Thus, according to Cudds theory, oppression
  involves the infliction of harm in a fully
  institutionalized way by a more privileged group
  on another identifiable group via the use of
  unjust forms of coercion.

51
Oppression

• She excluded economic classes per se, because
  classes may be specific to an economic system.
  Cudd concluded from a rigorous philosophical
  analysis that coercion cant be established as an
  inherent element of workplace participation under
  either capitalism or socialism. Therefore, Cudd
  carefully distinguished oppression from class
  exploitation.

52
Oppression

• Still, Cudd identified both direct and indirect
  forms of material and psychological oppression.
  Material oppression takes place when one social
  group uses violence or economic domination
  (domination, not exploitation) to reduce the
  access of persons of another social group to
  material resources such as income, wealth, health
  care, the use of space, etc. (Note much like
  closure).

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Oppression

• Psychological oppression is both direct and
  indirect. Direct psychological forces produce
  inequality through the purposeful actions of
  members of the dominant group on people in a
  subordinate group (including the use of terror,
  degradation and humiliation, and
  objectification). Direct psychological forces
  also involve the imposition on the oppressed
  social group of cultural influence.

54
Oppression

• However, indirect psychological forces contribute
  to inequality by influencing decisions made by
  oppressed people within the oppressive context in
  which they live.

55
Oppression

• In either direct or indirect forms of oppression,
  Cudd argued, there are subjective and objective
  dimensions. Cudd viewed subjective oppression as
  the conscious awareness that one is in fact
  oppressed. In other words, a person realizes
  they are being unjustly and systematically harmed
  by virtue of their membership in a social group.

56
Oppression

• And it is that realization by Cudd which helps
  introduce todays exercise, because what it
  involves is becoming more aware of the ways in
  which we are oppressed and/or dehumanized and/or
  exploited, so that we can be more aware of how
  our clients and communities are oppressed,
  dehumanization and exploited. But first we need
  to discuss dehumanization briefly.

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Dehumanization

• I see dehumanization as being best explained by
  theories developed from the tradition of Durkheim
  and of institutional analysis. Would anyone like
  to take another shot at defining dehumanization?

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An Example

• Lets look at an shot from an early films of
  Charlie Chaplin, his 1936 film, Modern Times. He
  portrayed how human beings are increasingly
  dwarfed by and subjected to the machine.

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(No Transcript)
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Dehumanization

• Recent theoretical and empirical work on the
  question of dehumanization has distinguished
  between two forms of dehumanization animalistic
  dehumanization and mechanistic dehumanization
  (Haslam, 2006). This is an important
  distinction, because it makes it possible to
  better recognize the relationship between
  oppression and dehumanization.

61
Dehumanization

• Animalistic dehumanization involves one social
  group denying that another social group has the
  same set of uniquely human (UH) attributes. This
  form of dehumanization is called animalistic
  dehumanization because it is often characterized
  by the explicit application to the other social
  group of animalistic characteristics.

62
Dehumanization

• Animalistic dehumanization takes place primarily
  in an intergroup context, in interethnic
  relations and towards groups of persons with
  disabilities. It is accompanied by emotions such
  as disgust and contempt for the members of the
  other social group. Animalistic dehumanization is
  fully consistent with the mechanisms spelled out
  in Cudds theory of group-based oppression

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Dehumanization

• Therefore, I exclude Haslams theory of
  animalistic dehumanization from my typologys
  source of theories of dehumanization. I only
  utilize Haslams theory of mechanistic
  dehumanization.

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Dehumanization

• Mechanistic dehumanization involves the treatment
  of others as not possessing the core features of
  human nature (HN). Dehumanized individuals or
  groups are seen as automata (not animals). It is
  called mechanistic because it is involves
  standardization, instrumental efficiency,
  impersonal technique, causal determinism, and
  enforced passivity (Haslam, 2006, p. 260).

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Dehumanization

• It is mechanistic dehumanization which is the
  form of dehumanization which can be distinguished
  both from Cudds theory of oppression and
  Hahnels theory of exploitation. And it is
  because that distinction can be made
  theoretically that it is also important to
  explore whether there are, at the level of human
  emotions, words and affective phrases which can
  characterize the experience of moments of
  oppression, dehumanization and exploitation.

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Weve All Experienced

• Either oppression or exploitation or
  dehumanization at some point in our lives.
• Many of use have experienced all three.
• Human emotions in response to these processes are
  quite similar.
• Current thinking is that there is little purpose
  served by constructing hierarchies of oppression
  in terms of how much more or less oppressed or
  exploited people or groups are.

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The Exercise

• We write down on 3x5 cards the words and
  affective phrases which describe the moment of
  being oppressed, dehumanized or exploited our
  initial reactions to the experience of that
  moment, and any evolved responses over time (as
  well as whether we feel they were adaptive or
  maladaptive). The cards are shuffled and we take
  turns reading from the 3x5 cards.

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For Example

• beaten down
• being left behind
• being used
• beleaguered
• belittled
• blamed
• boot in the face

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Discussion

• Next we discuss what these words and affective
  phrases say about the feelings produced by
  oppression, dehumanization and exploitation.

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Discussion

• A previously developed compendium of words and
  affective phrases is displayed (see PDF file).
  Discussion centers on the use of the exercise and
  compendium in classroom learning and teaching and
  in the field by social workers seeking to be more
  sensitive to the feelings of clients.

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Use of the Compendium

• Some words and affective phrases are associated
  with the moment of an act of oppression,
  dehumanization or exploitation.
• Other words and phrases describe emotions
  experienced after the moment of the act but in
  reaction to that act or similar acts.
• Other words and affective phrases describe
  emotions which evolve over time due to the
  experience of such acts adaptive and maladaptive.

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Conclusion

• This exercise roots a social worker's empathy
  within a sociocultural context. It provides a
  platform for developing a more effective
  individualization of the client within this
  context. It makes empathy a less mysterious and
  abstract, and more achievable phenomena. If a
  social worker is in touch with her or his own
  oppression, dehumanization and exploitation, this
  helps overcome barriers or differences between
  the worker and client by reducing any sense of
  distance from the client the worker may feel.
  This is one step towards cultural competence.