Emerging Culturo-Behavior Science Contributions to Global Justice

Abstract

Does contemporary behavior science have the capacity to meaningfully contribute to global justice, and if so, do culturo-behavior scientists carry a moral obligation to do so? These are challenging questions for a science that began in the laboratory and whose applications have primarily targeted microsystemic interventions. Although justice and injustice can only be enacted through behavior, effective action supporting social (including economic) and ecological (including environmental) justice will require collective action focused on shifts in cultural practices. As discussed in this article, contemporary culturo-behavior science (CBS) has begun shifting disciplinary attention toward potential contributions to critical dimensions of global justice. A key contemporary challenge for CBS in these areas is the development of meaningful conceptual and experimental approaches that can simultaneously advance rigorous science (in most cases, necessarily across disciplines) and offer meaningful utility in public sectors.

Appendix

Five Faces of Oppression

American political theorist Iris Marion Young argued that justice lies in the “institutional conditions necessary for the development and exercise of individual capacities and collective communication and cooperation” (Young, 2011, p. 39). She focused particularly on the “five faces of oppression”—exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence, all of which are systemically supported patterns of cultural practices—and traced the structural roots of each.

• exploitation: Exploitation is oppression that “occurs through a steady process of the transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit another” (p. 49). To replace exploitation with justice would require “reorganization of institutions and practices of decisionmaking, alteration of the division of labor, and similar measures of institutional, structural, and cultural change” (p. 53).

• marginalization: “Marginals are people the system of labor cannot or will not use” (p. 53). Discussions of marginalization typically refer to racial groups, but it can be the experience of other groups (e.g., the elderly, single mothers, homeless persons, queer youth, or the disabled). Young suggests marginalization might be the most dangerous form of oppression, as the marginalized not only experience material deprivation but also are prevented from fully participating in community life.

• powerlessness: In capitalistic societies, many have limited opportunities to participate in making decisions that affect the conditions of their lives. The powerless are those over whom power is exercised, those who must obey orders, and those who have little or no work autonomy or opportunities to develop or exercise skills.

• cultural imperialism: This is a term elaborated on by Lugones and Spelman (1983): “To experience cultural imperialism means to experience how the dominant meanings of a society render the particular perspective of one’s own group invisible at the same time as they stereotype one’s group and mark it out as the Other” (pp. 58–59).

• violence: Members of certain groups are subject to systemic violence simply for their membership in that group. On the pervasiveness of systemic violence, Young (2011) notes, “This rule-bound, social, and often premeditated character makes violence against groups a social practice” (p. 62)—a cultural practice, in behavioral terms.