Interdependent Responsibility for Systemic Injustice

Stephanie Collins (Monash University)

A systemic injustice occurs when political, legal, or economic processes produce unjust outcomes, which cannot be reduced to identifiable wrongs perpetrated by agents (whether individual or collective). This paper offers a new answer to the question: who bears forward-looking responsibility for alleviating systemic injustice, and why? The paper argues that ‘relations of interdependence’ are the source (i.e., normative grounds or justification) of forward-looking responsibility. These relations combine to determine the extent (level of cost required) for each responsibility-bearing agent, allowing us to differentiate between the responsibilities of powerful collective agents versus ordinary individuals. Finally, these interdependence relations also inform the content of forward-looking responsibility (that is, the actions or practices required): our respective forward-looking responsibilities call on each agent to perform ‘contextual care’: the meeting needs of in the local context, in a way that promotes the meeting of needs in the larger contexts in which our local contexts are embedded.