Marx and Justice

‘Power Differences’ and ‘the Power of Difference’: The Dominance of Secularism as Ontological Injustice

“…Ontological justice is entangled with other concerns of global justice, including material and epistemological justice, but to date has been under-theorized. Conceptualizing secularism's dominance as a form of ontological injustice enables recognition of the ways in which secularism infringes on the capacity of certain individuals and communities to fully experience the human (Daly, 2000), as well as its contribution to the marginalization and subordination of certain 'views of alternative worlds'. I am not (yet) suggesting that we should abandon 'secular' and 'religious' as analytical categories.…”

‘Power Differences’ and ‘the Power of Difference’: The Dominance of Secularism as Ontological Injustice

“…Ontological justice is entangled with other concerns of global justice, including material and epistemological justice, but to date has been under-theorized. Conceptualizing secularism's dominance as a form of ontological injustice enables recognition of the ways in which secularism infringes on the capacity of certain individuals and communities to fully experience the human (Daly, 2000), as well as its contribution to the marginalization and subordination of certain 'views of alternative worlds'.…”

“…The dominance of secularism may then be argued to constitute an ontological injustice because it excludes or at the very least subordinates worlds where gods, spirits and ancestors, to name a few, are real actors with power, agency and influence that impact on daily life as well as societal and political institutions and structures. Similar to the way in which Daly (2000) has argued that, from a Marxist perspective, capitalism is an ontological injustice because it prevents people from becoming fully human by emphasizing their labour as the key aspect of their identity, secularism may be considered a form of ontological injustice because it attempts to privatize, minimize and exclude ways of understanding and living that do not conform to the assumptions of secular ontologies. Venkatesan (2008, p. 154) provides a lucid explanation of the problem on which ontological injustice focuses: 'Ontologies, theories of being and reality, have histories (and genealogies).…”

“…The term has been applied in criminal psychology (Gray, 2007) and spatial sciences (Calvelli, 2011), but appears rarely in other social science and humanities literature. When it does (for example, Daly, 2000), it is often utilized without explanation. In developing a concept of ontological injustice, I draw on this existing literature, but especially Mario Blaser's work on 'political ontology', as part of the recent so-called ontological turn in cultural anthropology (Blaser, 2013;Viveiros de Castro, 2013).…”