The plight of local catlle farmers in Padre Garcia, Batangas: A Youngian analysis on structural injustices and their possible remedies

• Main Author: De Chavez, Giovanni D.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2020
• Subjects: Farmers > Philippines > Batangas; Cattle; Farmers—Social conditions; Philosophy
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/5952; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12968&context=etd_masteral
• Institution: De La Salle University

In her theory of structural justice, Iris Marion Young presents a way of viewing social justice that deviates from the distributive paradigm of looking at social justice. She argues that social justice is not only about the way distribution of benefits and burdens is carried out. It is also about the absence of systemic domination and oppression experienced by various social groups as conditions that are embedded in the social structure and its processes to which the society or a community participate by their actions and decisions. While in her theory of collective responsibility, she proffers that responsibility in addressing systemic domination and oppression as structural injustice is shared by people who take part of the social structure through conventional and institutional norms, practices, and actions which cause unintended harms. Upon gathering qualitative data from participants and building upon these theories, this study discusses that the subject of the study, the local small-scale cattle farmers in Padre Garcia, Batangas, are vulnerable to experience structural injustice manifested in different forms. Such harms are not necessarily inflicted directly upon them by individuals or social groups. However, they are unintended consequences of the social structure which consists of the initial social positions of social groups, the connections and relations of these social positions, and the confluence of actions and decisions of the social groups which are mostly according to accepted norms, practices, and rules. Furthermore, this paper argues for the responsibility shared by the different social groups as well as the local community based on social connection. This means that they contribute through their collective actions to the processes that produce unjust outcomes. They are socially connected through a system of interdependent processes of cooperation and competition through which they seek benefits and aim to realize projects. Also, they consist of different social groups who have different social positions with various degrees of power, interest, privilege, and collective ability in addressing structural injustice and its manifestations.