What is structural injustice, and who ultimately bears responsibility for it? What is the political responsibility of ordinary individuals? How can ordinary individuals with very little power pressure morally responsible, powerful agents to address structural injustice? In answering these questions Maeve McKeown goes beyond the widely accepted narrative of unintended consequences and blameless participation to explain how power and responsibility truly function in today’s world. Drawing on case studies from sweatshops to climate change, McKeown identifies three types of structural injustice: the pure and unintended accumulation of disparate activities; the avoidable injustice that could be ameliorated by the powerful but nevertheless continues; and the deliberate perpetuation of structural processes that benefit powerful political and economic agents. In each of these, the role of power is different which changes the allocation of responsibility. From this understanding, we can shape a deeper, more sophisticated idea of how structural injustice operates and what we as individuals can do about it.

Dr Maeve McKeown is an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at Campus Fryslân, an interdisciplinary faculty at the University of Groningen. In 2024, she published her first monograph With Power Comes Responsibility: The Politics of Structural Injustice (Bloomsbury Academic) and a volume co-edited with Prof Jude Browne, What is Structural Injustice? (Oxford University Press, Open Access). Her research interests include structural injustice, historical injustice, reparations and feminism.