Transformative Action as Socially Structured and Plurally Public

Discussions of structural injustice and our responsibility for it have proliferated in political theory. I argue that normative discussions of the responsibility for structural injustice are marred by an inadequate socio-theoretical view of structures and their functioning. This view, widely held but undertheorized, reduces the relation between structures and actions to one of constraint. On this view, structures mainly inhibit transformative action; they reproduce themselves by constraining action taken from inside them. Transformative action can only come from outside structures. I offer an alternative view of structures and their functioning that shows that actions have the capacity to transform the structures within which they are taken. Drawing on and extending Sewell’s (1992) and Haslanger’s (2016; 2022; 2024) conceptions of structures and Arendt’s (1958) view of action, I argue that actions are “socially structured” and “plurally public,” and that these features explain the capacity of action to transform the structures within which they are taken. (Social) action, unlike behavior, has public meaning. Action is “socially structured” in the sense that its meaning is constituted by the available cultural meanings, practices and material things that jointly constitute a society’s social structure. Structures are “read” on the bodies of actions. Without structures there would be only movement of bodies, not actions. Bodily movements become actions when they are interpreted through particular structural lenses, with the cultural knowledge that comes from being a member of a social world. Thus, actions are not only constrained or enabled by structures, as recognized in the literature, but also constituted by structures. Actions are “plurally public” in the sense that the public of one’s actions plays a crucial role in conferring actions their meaning; their meaning is conferred in a process of public interpretation of the structures within which they are taken. Different publics can confer different meanings to an action. Thus, by being structurally and publicly constituted, action is also a collaborative process between the agent and the action’s publics. This is a highly contingent, unpredictable process. I argue that this contingency and unpredictability explain action’s ability to transform the structures within which it is taken.