Table Of ContentAbout the author
Bob Pease is chair of social work in the School
of Health and Social Development at Deakin
University in Geelong, Australia. He has
published widely in the fields of masculinity
studies and critical approaches to social work
practice and is the author or co-editor of ten
previous books. His most recent co-edited
books are the International Encyclopedia
of Men and Masculinities (2007), Migrant
Men: Critical Studies of Masculinities and
the Migra tion Experience (2009) and Crit
ical Social Work: Theories and Practices for
a Socially Just World (2nd edition 2009). He
has been involved in pro-feminist masculinity
politics for many years and actively engaged
in campaigns to end men’s violence against
women.
Undoing Privilege
unearned advantage in a divided
world
Bob Pease
Zed Books
london · new york
Undoing Privilege: Unearned advantage in a divided world was first
published in 2010 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London n1 9jf,
uk, and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, ny 10010, usa
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Bob Pease 2010
The right of Bob Pease to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988
Set in Monotype Sabon and Gill Sans Heavy by Ewan Smith, London
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available
isbn 978 1 84813 028 9 hb
isbn 978 1 84813 029 6 pb
isbn 978 1 84813 537 6 eb
Contents
Acknowledgements | vi Preface | viii
PArt one Theoretical and conceptual foundations
1 Oppression, privilege and relations of domination . . . 3
2 The matrix and social dynamics of privilege . . . . . 17
PArt two Intersecting sites of privilege
3 Western global dominance and Eurocentrism . . . . 39
4 Political economy and class elitism. . . . . . . . . 62
5 Gender order and the patriarchal dividend. . . . . . 86
6 Racial formations and white supremacy. . . . . . . 108
7 Institutionalised heterosexuality and heteroprivilege. . 128
8 Ableist relations and the embodiment of privilege. . . 149
PArt three Undoing privilege
9 Challenging the reproduction of privilege from
within . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Bibliography | 189
Index | 221
Acknowledgements
A book like this is always a collective effort. The ideas have been
developed over many years by engaging with allies and opponents in
political struggles, through reading the work of others and testing
ideas out in conversations and teaching. I have been very fortunate
to have the support of so many people in working through my
ideas. I have also been buoyed by the encouragement I have received
and the belief by others that the ideas in this book were important
to share more widely.
In the first instance, I want to thank Stephen Fisher and Maria
Pallotta-Chiarolli who read the early chapters of the book when I
was developing my conceptual framework for interrogating privi-
lege. Their comments reminded me of the importance of writing a
book that would reach beyond the academy if I wanted to motivate
people to take action against social injustice.
This book took me outside my comfort zone and I faced many
challenges in writing it. This is as it should be. Writing a book such
as this required me to immerse myself in multiple areas of scholar-
ship, including development studies, Marxism and post-Marxism,
feminist theory and masculinity studies, critical race theory and
whiteness studies, sexuality studies and disability studies. I do
not claim to be an expert in all of these fields. So I am immensely
grateful to the following people who generously commented on
draft chapters in their areas of expertise: Jacques Boulet (develop-
ment studies); Keith Abbott, Mike Donaldson and Iain Ferguson
(Marxism and post-Marxism); Cathy Bettman, Sarah Epstein and
Carole Wright (feminist theory); Veronica Arbon, Clare Land and
Selma Macfarlane (critical race theory and whiteness studies);
Maxwell Clarke, Gary Dowsett, Steven Hicks (sexuality studies);
Barbara Fawcette, Kelley Johnson, Jane Maidment and Erin Wilson
(disability studies). Heather D’Cruz also read and commented on
a draft of the final chapter. They all provided extremely useful and
very thoughtful comments and suggestions that enabled me to
strengthen earlier drafts of these chapters. Without their critical
Acknowledgements | vii
feedback, there would have been embarrassing errors of omission
and misinterpretation.
I am also indebted to Heather Fraser, Mel Gray, Jim Ife and Silvia
Starc, who read and commented on the full draft of the manuscript.
I have benefited greatly from their salient comments and sugges-
tions; they have all made this a much better book. I want to thank
the non-anonymous reviewer for Zed Books, Ravindra Rukmini
Pandharinath, who read and commented on the original manuscript
and whose critical comments were very useful in identifying some
important gaps in the book. It is, of course, important to say that
any flaws or limitations remaining in the argument are mine.
This book has also been strengthened by responses from audi-
ences at a number of seminars and conferences in Australia and
Sweden. I would like to thank Keith Pringle and Mona Livholts for
their Swedish hospitality and for organising a number of public
forums where I tested out many of the ideas in the book.
I would like to acknowledge the support of Deakin University
for granting me study leave to complete the book. Part of this book
was written during a period of leave at the University of Bradford.
I would like to thank Brid Featherstone and her colleagues for pro-
viding me with collegial support and the facilities to write.
I would like to thank Ellen McKinlay at Zed Books, who com-
missioned the book and regularly checked in with me to see how it
was going. After Ellen left the company, Ken Barlow took over as
commissioning editor and he generously provided me with an extra
three months to finish the book when I needed it.
Writing a book always involves an intense commitment of time
and energy and these limited resources have to be found amid com-
peting pressures and demands, and invariably such a project impacts
on family life. So, finally, I want to express my special appreciation
to Silvia Starc who, in addition to reading the full manuscript, sup-
ported me in the writing endeavour when I was struggling under the
pressure of these other demands.
Preface
I can trace many of the ideas in this book back to 1990 when I pres-
ented a paper at an international social work conference in Peru.
The theme of the conference was eliminating poverty. With hun-
dreds of thousands of very poor people in the capital city of Lima,
it seemed like a good place to hold an international conference on
poverty. I remember vividly the experience of passing by the shanty
towns and the beggars on the way to the hotel from the airport.
When I checked into the five-star hotel where the conference was
being held, I was acutely aware of the tension of discussing poverty
in such luxurious surroundings. Is it an irony or a contradiction that
professional educators travel to ‘exotic’ locations and deliver papers
on poverty?
At the conference, I talked about some of the dilemmas and
contradictions facing those who of us who were privileged, but who
positioned ourselves on the side of those who were marginalised
and oppressed. For those of us who are male, white and professional
in the ‘developed world’, it seemed to me that we were very much
part of the problem that needed to be addressed. How could people
such as myself, who are members of privileged groups, develop a
consciousness of our privilege and challenge the ideas that lead
us to participate in the oppression of others? Was it possible for
members of privileged groups to overcome the interests of our own
group? Could we form meaningful alliances with oppressed groups?
I remember that I raised more questions than I provided answers in
that paper. Twenty years later, these questions are still with me.
In most of my research, writing and activism since then, I’ve
addressed these questions primarily in relation to men’s work in
challenging male privilege and dominant forms of masculinity.1
Where do men who are supportive of gender equality stand in
relation to feminism? How can we challenge other men’s sexism
and violence without colluding with them? How do we make sure
1. See, for example, Pease (2000), Pease and Pringle (2001) and Pease
(2002a).
Preface | ix
that our work against sexism is accountable to women? But in
focusing my work primarily on male privilege, I became increas-
ingly concerned that I was allowing other aspects of my privileged
identity, in relation to whiteness, heterosexuality, the class-elitist
world of academia and my location in the West to go unchallenged.
It seemed then that an obvious and necessary next step was for me
to extend my research, writing and activism into other dimensions
of privilege. This book is an outcome of that project. It is one stage
of a journey to give voice to some of the dilemmas and experiences
of inhabiting many privileged social positions, while being opposed
to the underpinnings of that privilege.
The emphasis of this book on ‘undoing privilege’ makes it differ-
ent from those books that challenge social dominance by focusing
on what the oppressed can do. Many of these books are written
by class-privileged, white heterosexual men who say nothing about
their own stake in the political project they advocate. I argue that
we cannot understand oppression unless we understand privilege. I
believe that too much attention has been focused on the responsibil-
ity of those who are oppressed and too little attention has been
given to how those in privileged groups reproduce inequality.
On the surface, it would seem that the concept of privilege has
been discussed for some time in political science and sociology.
Certainly, elite studies is a well-established area of social inquiry,
along with the considerable literature on social inequality, social
divisions, social exclusion, social problems, discrimination and
oppression. However, I maintain that much of this literature does
not adequately examine the complex nature of privilege and how it
is reproduced daily by members of privileged groups.
Part of the problem is that it is very difficult to get the issue of
privilege on the agenda because it is so well legitimated. Privilege is
not recognised as such by many of those who have it. Privilege
structures the world so that its mechanisms are either invisible or
appear to be natural. Therefore, it is necessary to ‘unmask’ privilege
and make it more visible so that its consequences can be addressed.
Every book has an intended audience and is often written with
an ideal audience in mind. Of course, books are read by diverse
audiences and this is sometimes regarded as problematical. In the
1970s, I was part of a profeminist reading group who read and
discussed major feminist texts of the time. We endeavoured to
locate our experiences in a context of feminist theory; although
