| Situated in democratic theory, feminist theory, and public law, this dissertation connects the framework of structure and agency with political theories of freedom. I ask, what is the nature of the interplay between (free) individual action and choice, and the central institutions that we frame and that frame our lives in turn? I then connect this exploration with normative theories of freedom: Are some institutional forms more amenable to human freedom than others, and if so, what would be the criteria by which to make this judgment? Or, to put the question the other way around, what kind of a theory of freedom would be considered viable if we take the constraining and enabling effects of institutions into account?; Through the development of a structural theory of freedom, drawing from thinkers such as Marx, Giddens, and Sewell, I challenge the definition of freedom as the absence of restraint and (re)place freedom into relationship to structural equality. I argue for an understanding of freedom that refuses a dichotomous construction of the individual and the collective, the “material” and the “symbolic,” the “internal” and the “external.” I argue that a structurally free society would be one in which formative mediating institutions, both “public” and “private,” would cohere with the two ethical principles of structural freedom: non-domination and self-definition. Drawing from republican and feminist conceptions of freedom, these two principles construct an understanding of freedom as contextualized practice. Non-domination is that condition wherein a person is not in a position to be subject to the arbitrary will of others, and relational self-definition is the capacity to construct ourselves as free and to be recognized as subjects so capable. I argue that our mediating institutions should be built and maintained with these principles in mind. I apply this structural understanding of freedom to child custody law in the fourth chapter; this analysis suggests further applications for structural freedom in the ongoing, reflexive process of and participation in institutional design more generally. |
