IB Philosophy 8. Social Philosophy Key Definitions

Civil disobedience is the deliberate, public, and non-violent refusal to obey a law or policy that one considers unjust, undertaken to bring about a change in government policy. Theorised by Thoreau and practised by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., it was defended by Rawls as a legitimate act within a nearly just society.

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in global temperature, precipitation, and weather patterns driven primarily by the accumulation of greenhouse gases from human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels. The phenomenon raises urgent philosophical questions about intergenerational justice, the moral weight of future persons, and how responsibility should be distributed among nations with vastly different historical contributions to emissions.

Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, identities, and expectations that a given society associates with being male, female, or other categories.

Gender identity is an individual's internal sense of their own gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth or to the gender roles expected by society.

Gender performativity is Judith Butler's thesis that gender is not an innate quality but a repeated performance of socially scripted acts, where there is no pre-existing identity behind these performances because the identity is constituted by the very acts said to express it.

Gendered socialisation describes the process through which children learn and internalise the behaviours, attitudes, and identities that their culture defines as appropriate for their sex. De Beauvoir argues this channels girls away from autonomy and self-assertion and toward passivity, compliance, and dependence.

In social ontology, group agency is the claim that collectives such as corporations or institutions can be genuine agents with beliefs, intentions, and moral responsibility that cannot be reduced to the actions of individual members.

Raewyn Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity describes the culturally idealised form of masculinity that dominates a given society, subordinating both femininity and alternative masculinities while being embodied by relatively few actual men.

In Antonio Gramsci's political thought, hegemony describes how dominant groups maintain power through cultural and intellectual leadership rather than force alone, making existing power structures appear natural and inevitable to those who are disadvantaged by them.

Heteronormativity is the assumption that heterosexuality is the default, natural, and normal form of sexual orientation, structuring social institutions and cultural expectations so that non-heterosexual identities appear deviant or marginal.

Intersectionality is a framework developed by Kimberle Crenshaw showing that forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, and classism overlap and interact, producing distinct experiences of disadvantage that cannot be understood by examining each category in isolation.

Legitimacy in political philosophy refers to the moral right of a government to exercise authority and the corresponding obligation of citizens to obey its laws. Theories of legitimacy range from consent-based accounts, which ground authority in the agreement of the governed, to procedural accounts that locate it in fair institutional processes, and substantive accounts that tie it to the government's delivery of justice and the common good.

Marginalization refers to the systematic exclusion or disadvantage of certain groups from full participation in the economic, political, and social life of their community, typically along lines of race, gender, class, or disability. The concept highlights how structural inequalities, rather than individual prejudice alone, can entrench disadvantage across generations, limiting access to education, employment, healthcare, and political representation.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, including questions about existence, substance, causation, and the relationship between mind and body. Ayer argues that metaphysical statements are cognitively meaningless because they are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable.

On Kate Manne's analysis, misogyny is not simply hatred of women but the enforcement mechanism of a patriarchal social order that polices and punishes women who violate gendered norms and expectations. It is distinguished from sexism, which provides the ideological justification for gender hierarchy.

Natural rights are rights that individuals possess by virtue of their humanity, prior to and independent of any legal system or political institution. John Locke argued that the rights to life, liberty, and property are natural and inalienable, and a government that violates them forfeits its legitimacy.

In feminist philosophy, objectification occurs when a person is treated as a thing, reducing them to their body, appearance, or usefulness. Nussbaum identified seven forms, including instrumentality, denial of autonomy, and fungibility, all of which deny the full humanity and agency of the person.

Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance argues that unlimited tolerance necessarily leads to the disappearance of tolerance, because tolerating intolerant movements allows them to gain power and destroy the conditions that make tolerance possible.

Drawing on Rawls, Nussbaum's framework of political liberalism seeks principles acceptable to citizens holding diverse comprehensive doctrines about the good life, remaining neutral between competing religious, moral, and philosophical worldviews. The capabilities list is designed to be endorsed from within many different comprehensive doctrines, making it a genuinely public basis for political justification.

Role distribution is the social process by which different tasks, responsibilities, and behaviours are allocated to individuals based on their gender, creating distinct masculine and feminine spheres.

Role identification is the psychological process by which individuals come to see particular social roles as part of who they are, internalising the expectations associated with those roles.

the biological classification of organisms as male, female, or intersex, typically based on chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive anatomy.

Sexism is the systematic disadvantaging of individuals on the basis of sex or gender, operating through individual attitudes, institutional practices, and cultural norms that treat one gender as inferior or subordinate.

Social constructionism about gender is the thesis that gender categories and gender identity are produced by social practices, institutions, and cultural norms rather than determined by biology or nature.