According to traditional theories of responsibility, we would not think that western consumers have any responsibility for the exploitation of sweatshop workers, as we are not connected to them in a way that moral philosophy has typically been able to understand. Iris Marion Young, however, wanted to make sense of the kind of responsibility that western activists felt when protesting global injustices. This led to her model of structural injustice and our responsibility for structural injustice. This conversation between two scholars of Young's work offers a clear overview of Young's diverse and influential philosophical output. McKeown and Nuti explore questions such as: are corporations to blame for their unjust practices? How do individuals assume responsibility for structural injustice without feeling completely powerless in the face of so many injustices? What is the relationship between activism and political theory?

MAEVE MCKEOWN is Assistant Professor in Political Theory at the interdisciplinary faculty Campus Fryslân, University of Groningen. Her current research focuses on individuals’ responsibilities for global injustice.

ALASIA NUTI is a lecturer in the department of politics at the University of York. She works in contemporary political theory and gender studies, and has a strong interest in postcolonial theory and critical race theory.

ALASIA NUTI (AN): Who was Iris Marion Young and why has she become this very important political philosopher. Also, when and how did you come across her work, and what do you find so appealing in her writings?

Maeve McKeown (MM): Iris Marion Young is the greatest! Anyone who is interested in philosophy, political theory, or feminism, needs to read her work. She was born in 1949 and died in 2006 at the age of 56, which was a big loss for the political theory community. She contributed to pretty much every area of contemporary political theory: in her early work she dealt with justice theory, democratic theory, feminist phenomenology, and Marxist feminism, and in her later work, structural injustice and global political issues. She seemed to enter a research area in political theory, say some amazing things, and then move onto another area! While she was certainly a big name in academia, especially after her 1990 book Justice and the Politics of Difference, it is only in the last 15 years that her work has taken on a life of its own to the extent that she has almost become part of the canon.