Oppression Lies In The Invalidation Of Experience - Essay Example

Young believes that these criteria are objective. Her approach is based on an understanding that the main duty of the social scientist is to articulate the actual meanings of the basic concepts of the current social movements; hence she is not especially worried by semantical errors like idem per idem (tautology--"the same by the same"), the lack of precise definitions, or the usage of value-loaded concepts. This approach assumes some type of critical metalanguage and is not especially troubled by empirical evidence.

In contrast, I suggest the following understanding of oppression: it is an external or internal man-made limitation of the available options of human behavior of an individual or a group (if individuals belonging to this group identify themselves with it). This definition stresses that oppression may come from outside or inside. Oppression not only affects cognitive options of available types of conduct (these limitations may be especially visible when in contrast to a "revolution of expectations") and not only widens the options of human behaviour (since it deals with legal and illegal attachments) but also restricts, sometimes in a literal sense, physical possibilities of behaviour.

Oppression is understood here not so much as a clear denial of expected options (which generates relative deprivation), or as a burden that seems to be obnoxious when compared with the light hardships of others (noticed due to relationship with other reference groups), but as a constant, invisible, almost unconsciously binding restriction of existing possibilities. By this perception, oppression may be treated as natural, given, or unquestionable. Since it is not always easily visible, it may appear for the individual as a result of a time of reflection.

Oppression can assume many forms: legal, economic, political, ideological, cultural, or existential. Kafka described, in an obsessive way, the oppressive entanglements of all forms that can enmesh an average citizen in his/her everyday life. Cultural pressures inside the bourgeoisie, and especially the lower-middle bourgeoisie, can be devastating, as Balzac and others have convincingly shown.