Civilized oppression and moral relations victims, fallibility, and the moral community

Abstract

There are significant differences between civilized oppression and violent oppression and these differences show not only in the phenomena involved, but also in the nature of those who actively contribute to the two phenomena ('contributing agents'). Fair characterizations of the agents of civilized oppression often require very different descriptions from those applying to violent oppressors. Many of the failings behind civilized oppression are shared by both the contributing agents and a large number of the victims. Often it is the privileged social position of the agents that allows those failings to have such a serious impact, whereas the same failings in the victims may be fairly innocuous (though they are not always). This book is alert to this and other differences between civilized and violent oppression. Jean Harvey examines what the moral relations should be between the key players in civilized oppression: the agents, victims, and 'bystanders'.