Socio-Legal Discussion Group: Between Discrimination and Resistance: The Making of Self and World

Debates on discrimination often privilege either the personalistic or social perspective. The personalistic perspective focuses on attitudes and their relation to mental representations—such as stereotypes and prejudices—as well as to discursive ideologies. In contrast, the social perspective (including structural, systemic, and institutional discrimination) emphasizes the persistent reproduction of hierarchies between social groups and the unequal distribution of social resources, which disadvantage certain groups.

The articulation between these two perspectives depends on how the relationship between individuals and the social world is conceived. This relationship can be framed in various ways—through different conceptions of the individual, such as the subject, agent, actor, skin, or body—as well as through different modalities of understanding the social world, including structures, systems, institutions, and spheres. However, the challenge of integrating these perspectives gives rise to further dichotomies: subjectivity vs. objectivity, interiority vs. exteriority, intentionality vs. ideology, individual vs. institution, and even idealism vs. materialism.

To adequately address discrimination, these dichotomies must be overcome. Multi-level analysis, as developed by several scholars, provides a framework for bridging these perspectives, highlighting the interplay between personal agency and social constraints. This approach sheds light on the dynamics of social resistance, emphasizing how individuals and groups actively challenge discrimination in its various manifestations.