Authority and Social Relations

Abstract

This panel explores how authority is produced, experienced, challenged, and justified within contemporary social life. Rather than treating authority as something located only in formal political institutions, the panel examines its presence in everyday relations, collective action, housing markets, democratic conflict, and struggles over recognition. The papers ask how power becomes legitimate or arbitrary, how relations of dependence can generate domination, and how claims to injustice, respect, and standing shape political agency. Particular attention is given to the ways in which social actors contest authority: through anger, activism, demands for recognition, and resistance to hierarchical or discretionary forms of control. At the same time, the panel reflects on the risks and ambiguities of such contestation, especially when appeals to justice are made from conflicting social positions. Together, the contributions illuminate authority as a relational phenomenon: something sustained not only by laws and institutions, but also by social status, material dependence, collective identities, and the capacity to act with or against others.

Title	Details
Dominant-Group Anger and the Grammar of Injustice	View Paper Details
A Republic of Housing? Arbitrary Authority in the Private Rental Sector	View Paper Details
Legitimacy for Activists	View Paper Details
Justice for Social Beings: Why Relational Egalitarianism is the Best Liberal Response to Populism	View Paper Details