Core Concepts for Social Justice Education: Five Faces of Oppression

Flashcards providing vocabulary definitions for the Five Faces of Oppression from the lecture notes on Core Concepts for Social Justice Education.

Exploitation

The process by which the results of the labor of one social group are transferred for the benefit of another.

Marginalization

The process by which people who the labor system cannot or will not use are expelled from or denied useful or productive participation in economic and social life, often resulting in material deprivation and dependency.

Powerlessness

An inability to participate in making decisions that affect the conditions of one’s lives and actions; lacking in authority, status, and sense of self; limited concrete opportunities to develop and exercise one’s capacities.

Cultural imperialism

The process by which the dominant symbols, activities, or meanings of a society reinforce the perspective of a dominant social group while making invisible, stereotyped, or marked as “other” the perspectives of subordinate or targeted social groups; includes the universalization of a dominant group’s experience, culture, and religion.

Violence

Random, unprovoked attacks against members of (targeted or subordinated) social groups and their property, with the primary motivation to damage, humiliate, or terrorize, and in a social context in which this violence is tolerated or even enabled by accepted institutional and social practices.