Mara Marin (University of Victoria) will give an IPW Lecture on 17 June 2025 entitled Structural Responsibility.

Abstract

Discussions of structural injustice have proliferated in political theory. I argue that discussions of responsibility for structural injustice fail to consider how structures are produced and reproduced in action and, consequently, how they can be transformed by action. I trace this failure to a problematic view of structures and their functioning, a view that reduces the relation between structures and actions to one of constraint: structures mainly inhibit transformative action; transformative action can only come from outside structures (Cudd 2006, Young 2011). I offer an alternative view of structures and their functioning that shows that actions have the capacity to transform the structures within which they are taken. Drawing on and extending Sewell’s (1992) and Haslanger’s (2016; 2022; 2024) conceptions of structures and Arendt’s (1958) view of action, I argue that actions are “socially structured” and “plurally public,” features that explain the capacity of action to transform the structures within which they are taken. Action, unlike behavior, has public meaning. Action is “socially structured” in the sense that its meaning is constituted by the available cultural meanings, practices and material things that jointly constitute a society’s social structure. Actions are “plurally public” in the sense that the public of one’s actions plays a crucial role in conferring meaning to actions; actions acquire social meaning in a process of public interpretation of the structures within which they are taken. Responsibility to dismantle unjust structures should therefore be understood as “structural responsibility:” responsibility to act from one’s structural position in ways that can disrupt the mechanisms of structural maintenance.

Mara Marin is a political theorist with interests in feminist theory, critiques of capitalism, critical race theory, as well as theories of structural injustice, oppression and domination. Her current research focuses on the nature of social structures of gender, race and class, their mutual constitution, and the normative issues they raise. She is the author of Connected by Commitment. Oppression and Our Responsibility to Undermine It (Oxford University Press, 2017). Her articles have been published inAmerican Political Science Review, Contemporary Political Theory, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, and Hypatia, among others. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada, and will be an Associate Professor as of July 2025. Previously, she held postdoctoral positions at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics, the Exzellenzcluster Normative Orders and Justitia Amplificata Centre for Advanced Studies at Frankfurt University, and served as a Collegiate Assistant Professor and Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.