Abstract
Social oppression is generally understood to be “structural”: formal and informal rules and common patterns of interaction cause disparate and inequitable outcomes for members of certain social groups. However, it is common—especially in psychology and some philosophical subfields—for work to focus narrowly on features of individuals or interpersonal interactions. This symposium brings together four papers on the science of structural oppression that aim, in different ways, (1) to diagnose the causes of this tendency to examine interpersonal rather than structural phenomena, (2) to identify barriers to studying structural oppression, and (3) recommend new avenues of research that embrace the structural character of oppression. Thus, we examine experimental measures of discrimination, hypotheses about conditions that make microaggressions harmful, and how oppression can be facilitated by artifacts and by categorization choices in demography. This symposium will present new work that grapples with the structural character of oppression rather than its personal or interpersonal manifestations, and bring attention to recent work from various disciplines that does the same. We also hope to model a valuable kind of work in philosophy of science that supports a broader project of inquiry through interdisciplinary engagement and constructive, good-faith criticism.
