Group Affiliation

Group affiliation is identification of a person by which group they belong to rather than by what they have done, and Marsh's objection is that everything collective follows from it. Collective privilege and collective punishment are only possible through group affiliation, so the two arrive together and neither can be had without the other. Sanctions make the point plainly. Collective punishment is a war crime under the fourth Geneva Convention and is nonetheless accepted in the form of sanctions when the United Nations endorses them, while the same action by a weak state would be considered genocidal, as she says it is. Affiliation is also what breaks representation. Where a group speaks with one voice, every word must be approved, and if any member disagrees then the person speaking is no longer representing the group but speaking as an individual. Dissenting voices go unrepresented, and assemblies that ought to consist of individuals with equal voices instead weigh how their positions will please the groups condemning or endorsing them. Her prescription is consistent across the framework. Group affiliation is never necessary to call out discrimination, since courts try people for actions rather than for affiliations, and being judged for nouns rather than for anything done is what she identifies as the root of racism, nationalism, ageism, sexism and every other bigotry. People proud to identify by membership rather than by their own actions have accepted the mechanism that makes collective judgement possible.

Social identity theory studies group affiliation as a basic feature of cognition, demonstrating in-group favouritism on minimal and arbitrary criteria. Liberal political philosophy has a long argument about whether rights and responsibilities attach to individuals or to groups, with Will Kymlicka defending group-differentiated rights and others holding that only individuals bear them. International law prohibits collective punishment while collective sanctions remain routine, an inconsistency legal scholars have written on extensively. Marsh's position is at the individualist extreme and reaches it by a structural route rather than a rights-based one, since her objection is that affiliation is the mechanism collective judgement runs on, which makes any group-based remedy an extension of the problem.