The meaning of dominance, the dominance of meaning, and the morality of the matter

A growing body of scholarship has recently focused on revealing the ways in which some groups of people oppress other groups of people in contemporary Western society (Wellman 1977, Katz 1978, Delpit 1988, Young 1990, Essed 1990, 1991, Frankenberg 1993, Goldberg 1993). This focus in recent scholarship can be found in diverse fields of study, but is most evident in discussions of issues involving gender, racial or ethnic membership, and sexual orientation. The resulting literature substantiates the extent to which “pervasive intimations of inferiority�? (Bartky 1990:7) are commonplace. Although rarely defined, often presumed to be understood and, even worse, often employed to refer to different phenomena, the term “dominance�? has become a frequent and recurrent theme in this literature. Our primary aim in this chapter is to clarify the meaning of a particular understanding of this notion of dominance as it is found in this critical literature.