Iris Marion Young's "Social Connection Model" of responsibility: Clarifying the meaning of connection

What responsibilities do individuals have for global injustices, such as sweatshop labour? Iris Marion Young sought to answer this question with her “social connection model” of responsibility. She argues that all individuals “connected” to structural injustice share political responsibility (as opposed to moral or legal responsibility) to collectively struggle against it. The theory was inspired by the anti-sweatshop movement, which recognised that consumers felt responsible for the working conditions of distant garment workers, even though they do nothing morally wrong when purchasing clothes. The social connection model is intuitively appealing and popular because it can explain why there is a responsibility for structural injustices like sweatshop labour, which falls short of guilt and blame, and takes structure seriously. However, Young left several gaps in the theory. One such gap is that she does not explain what she means by “connection” to structural injustice. She does not explicitly tell us what kind of connection to structural injustice generates political responsibility for it. Three potential definitions of connection arise in Young’s work – what I call existential, dependent and causal connection – but Young does not unpack or defend any version in detail. In this paper, I aim to clarify these different meanings of connection and assess their plausibility within Young’s own framework. I argue that existential connection, while serving as inspiration for the “social connection model,” does not fit the framework in which social connections give rise to responsibility for injustice and individuals reproduce structural injustice through their actions. I claim that dependent connection is problematic because if all agents bear responsibility for structural injustice, including the victims, then it is not only those who are dependent on structural injustice that bear political responsibility for it. I argue that causal connection is problematic because individuals cannot be said to cause structural injustice, if we take the legal and common-sense interpretation of causation to mean the human intervention that ‘makes a difference’ to cause a particular effect. The most appropriate and consistent way to understand connection to structural injustice is that individuals reproduce the background conditions in which they act. Young’s conception of reproduction of background conditions is thus elaborated and defended as the relevant form of connection that generates political responsibility. This is not intended as the last word on the subject, because it is possible that there are other forms of connection that generate political responsibility that Young has not thought of. For the purposes of this paper I restrict the discussion to an immanent critique.