A Study Of Iris Young’s The Politics Of Difference

The politics of difference is a frontier issue in the study of political philosophy.For a long time,contemporary political theorists’ discussions on the issue of social justice have had a tendency of universalism,ignoring issues such as particularity and difference,resulting in the oppression of certain groups and making it difficult to truly achieve social justice.Iris Young integrates the ideas of liberalism and communitarianism,reinterprets the meaning of difference,and puts forward a unique idea of the politics of difference,which opens up a new perspective for us to reflect on the theory and practice of justice.Reflecting on contemporary theories of justice,Iris Young focuses his critique on the dominant paradigm of contemporary theories of justice-distributive justice.Iris Young points out that the main problem facing the distributive paradigm of justice theory is that it focuses too much on the distribution of economic benefits and ignores the structural factors behind it.Iris Young critically reinterprets a series of political-philosophical issues such as difference and social structure,advocates the inclusion of group differences between the state and the individual in the public sphere,and ultimately leads to a vision of justice that is sensitive to group differences in order to weaken the structural injustice of domination and oppression.In Young’s political-philosophical framework,group differences are identified and institutionalized initially by recognizing and empowering oppressed groups with differential rights,demonstrating those oppressed perspectives through "group representation," and ameliorating the injustices experienced by some groups.At a later stage,Iris Young proposed the idea of building an urban life with multiple virtues as a spatial vehicle to realize the politics of difference and to facilitate the exchange and interaction of different groups.Iris Young’s idea of the politics of difference contains a comprehensive reflection on the theory and practice of justice.Her attempt to transcend the liberal and communitarian justice struggle and orient towards a design of justice that expresses practical concern for difference,especially structural group difference,is a useful effort and attempt.However,her understanding of the dichotomy between the universal and the particular,and her ambiguous and contradictory categorization of oppression have led to much controversy in her thinking.