Routledge International Handbook of Social Justice

Michael Reisch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138690455
• eBook ISBN: 9781317934004
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery
• Index: Social Sciences

In a world where genocide, hunger, poverty, war, and disease persist and where richer nations often fail to act to address these problems or act too late, a prerequisite to achieving even modest social justice goals is to clarify the meaning of competing discourses on the concept. Throughout history, calls for social justice have been used to rationalize the status quo, promote modest reforms, and justify revolutionary, even violent action. Ironically, as the prominence of the concept has risen, the meaning of social justice has become increasingly obscured.

This authoritative volume explores different perspectives on social justice and what its attainment would involve. It addresses key issues, such as resolving fundamental questions about human nature and social relationships; the distribution of resources, power, status, rights, access, and opportunities; and the means by which decisions regarding this distribution are made. Illustrating the complexity of the topic, it presents a range of international, historical, and theoretical perspectives, and discusses the dilemmas inherent in implementing social justice concepts in policy and practice. Covering more than abstract definitions of social justice, it also includes multiple examples of how social justice might be achieved at the interpersonal, organizational, community, and societal levels.

With contributions from leading scholars around the globe, Reisch has put together a magisterial and multi-faceted overview of social justice. It is an essential reference work for all scholars with an interest in social justice from a wide range of disciplines, including social work, public policy, public health, law, criminology, sociology, and education.

PART I Historical and cultural concepts of social justice

INTRODUCTION TO PART I

Michael Reisch¹

The essays in Part I provide a selective overview of the evolution of secular and religious concepts of social justice in nations and cultures around the globe. This international focus is important because most contemporary discussions of social justice reflect both universalist and temporal fallacies. First, they often assume that social justice, particularly as it is conceived in the West, is either embraced or rejected in its entirety throughout the world, and that cultures that articulate a view of social justice share similar goals, values, and ideological perspectives. They also assume either that the concept of social justice emerged only in modern times or that the concept is fixed—i.e., that people defined social justice in the same way throughout history. Finally, they assume that whatever societal differences exist regarding the meaning of social justice can easily be reconciled in practice through the development of a common framework such as human rights.

Yet, in an increasingly interdependent world in which many previously homogeneous societies are becoming more ethnically and religious diverse, it seems clear that the concept of social justice requires a more complex and nuanced understanding. For practitioners, policymakers, and scholars these complexities give rise to new, previously unacknowledged challenges. This section of the book, therefore, attempts to de-center this important discussion away from Western perspectives and to emphasize the importance of context, culture, and history in the formulation and implementation of ideas about social justice.

As these essays demonstrate, ideas about social justice have been used both to promote greater equality and social equity and to perpetuate or rationalize existing inequalities, often in subtle or unintended ways. There are both remarkable similarities and significant differences in how social justice has been defined and implemented in different societies and within different eras. This neither implies that social justice is a universal concept, nor that it does not exist as an ideal, in some form, in all societies. Instead, it suggests that a more nuanced understanding of its meaning and application is required to grasp the complexities of the 21st-century world.

The eight essays in Part I each examine the relationship between the evolution of particular conceptions of social justice and the environments in which they emerged. The essays are broadly representative, rather than inclusive, and inevitably reflect the subjectivity and limitations of the editor. Collectively, they seek to contextualize the meaning of social justice in order to move contemporary discourse beyond rhetorical appeals to normative concepts to the development of justice-oriented principles for policy and practice. It is also important to note that the purpose of these essays is neither to demonstrate the inevitability of “progress” in the development of concepts about social justice nor to argue that certain concepts of social justice are superior to others. Rather, they introduce the reader to several ways of examining ideas about social justice and alternative means of implementing them.

In the first essay, “The emergence of social justice in the West,” Walter Lorenz, current Rector at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and former Jean Monnet Professor for European Social Policy at the National University of Ireland, discusses how a concern with issues of social justice, which emerged due to the disruption of social bonds and relationship structures produced by the industrial revolution and the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, marked a decisive transition point towards modernity in Western history. He posits that the goal of creating more just societies evolved in the West as a consequence of efforts to improve the quality of life for all peoples. Lorenz argues that this notion of justice resulted from a synthesis of two different principles: the creation of laws and policies that affect the multiple dimensions of people’s lives in a society and the construction and nurturance of the social relationships required to properly care for the people that live within that society in a non-discriminatory manner. He further argues that in the 21st century the goal of social justice increasingly represents a project whose advancement depends on the recognition that it is interpreted in a variety of ways and on open and democratic dialogue between proponents of diverse perspectives. Citing Habermas (1990) and Bankovsky (2012), Lorenz regards the future pursuit of social justice as both a collective commitment to the creation of authentic forms of communication and a core element of human existence.

In the second essay, “Religious influences on justice theory,” Daniel C. Maguire, Professor of Ethics at Marquette University and past President of the Society of Christian Ethics, emphasizes the contemporary relevance of ancient religious ideas about social justice and discusses how these ideas intermingled with secular concepts to create modern notions of justice. For example, he asserts that expressions of prophetic justice in the Bible symbolized recognition of the importance of establishing social justice principles in societies that were increasingly stratified on the basis of status, power, class, and wealth; at the same time, they also illustrated the need to create redistributive and systemic solutions to address these social conditions. Biblical ideas of justice, therefore, left a legacy that focused more on social and distributive justice than on commutative justice—principles that were also embodied in Islam. (See essay by Esteves, Chapter 6.) Similarly, millennia ago, Buddhists identified humanity’s principal failings as greed, delusion, and ill will and criticized people’s lack of interrelatedness and interdependence.

Maguire argues that all the world religions give special emphasis to social justice because it is through this emphasis that human selfishness is most challenged and where our resistance to sharing is most put to the moral test. He asserts that these principles are more relevant today than ever. The growing disparities that exist between social classes today stems from the persistence of the human attraction towards greed. The history of religious views of social justice, therefore, provides a distinctive framework to comprehend the three major forms of justices that are used today—commutative, social, and distributive—and to develop solutions to the problems of human suffering, selfishness, and unequal resource distribution.

The remaining essays in Part I discuss how diverse concepts of social justice emerged on virtually every continent in different historical eras under different circumstances. In his essay, “The Gandhian concept of social justice” (Chapter 3), J. Prasant Palakkappillil, the Principal of Sacred Heart College, in Thevara, Kochi, India, reviews the spiritual, political, ethical, and religious life work of Mohandas K. Gandhi, with a particular focus on the principles of social justice he espoused and their implications for social and political practice. Emerging from years of persecution under British imperialism in South Africa and India, Gandhi developed a philosophy of non-violence as a means to overcome oppression and create a just society. Seeking to produce both a political and spiritual revolution, Gandhi rejected the material world of possession and consumption, violence and oppression in favor of a life that brings balance and joy, healing and justice. He regarded the pursuit of justice as inseparable from the pursuit of both the emotional and physical well-being of individuals and communities. Gandhi believed that the most critical manifestation of justice occurred in the fusion of ethics and economics and that this integration was impossible in a market-driven culture which sanctioned immoral practices and the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the needy. His ideas about social justice and about the means to achieve it continue to influence activists and revolutionaries on every continent.

Gandhi rejected Western ideas about social justice because of their materialist foundation. For similar reasons, Japanese philosophers, scholars, and political leaders have not embraced the concept of social justice as the basis of their nation’s social policy. Tatsuru Akimoto, Director and Professor of the Social Work Research Institute at the Asian Center for Welfare in Society at the Japan College of Social Work, questions whether Western concepts of social justice can be applied to a society like Japan whose cultural values and norms are so different, even in an era of globalization in which dominant nations attempt to impose their ideologies throughout the world (“Social justice in an era of globalization,” Chapter 4). He argues that in Japan, people seldom speak of and demand “justice” directly, a consequence of the structure of Japanese psychology. In Japanese culture, the desire for justice is not expressed openly, but only as a last resort. Instead, norms of distribution are established on principles of social obligation and solidarity. The implications of this case study in the current international context are significant. Akimoto challenges us to examine whether the promotion of universal principles of social justice is a viable and effective exercise in nations that developed social policies based on other values. His essay underscores the importance of understanding context and history in evaluating the practices of other societies and in promoting human well-being.

Contemporary conflicts over the meaning of social justice are more visible in the Middle East than in any other region. According to Elizabeth Thompson, Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia, ideals of social justice in today’s Middle East are articulated in political discourses rooted in both a history common to most post-colonial societies and in the region’s particular traits that are the products of its Islamic culture and proximity to Europe. Her essay, “Social justice in the Middle East” (Chapter 5), traces the evolution of these ideals from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the recent Arab Spring. She emphasizes the existence of two fissures between the ideal and practice of social justice: the growth in state power resulting from the abuse of public trust and the uneven distribution of wealth and legal rights which was a byproduct of colonization. For two centuries, the presence of these inequalities has produced a backlash and the rise of political movements that have linked state injustice directly to the growing influence of European powers.

Since the early 20th century, Islamists have sought to strip away the legacy of imperialism, secular law, and the legal codes borrowed from Europe and have reopened the dilemma facing 19th-century societies in the region: how to combine Islamic political tradition with the advent of universal codes of justice built on the principle that all citizens enjoy equal, human rights. The Arab Spring exploded, moreover, as the region’s marginalization in the digitalized global economy has become more evident. Thompson asserts that the vast unemployment and under-education of the Middle East’s youthful majorities will drive politics toward new models of social justice. She maintains that the effects of the Arab Spring demonstrate the importance that the citizens of the Middle East, especially the youth, place on dissolving the oppressive political regimes of the past and instilling a practice of democracy based on socially just principles. As in Japan and India, the delicacy of implementing a highly Western philosophy onto societies that have a strong political tradition is a process that requires a deep understanding of their history, culture, religion, and socio-political context in order to define what equality and social justice mean to a country’s people.

Latin America is another region in which alternative views of social justice have emerged in response to the effects of centuries of colonization and exploitation by Western powers. In addition to tracing the evolution of Latin American ideas about social justice, the essay by Ana Margarida Esteves, “Decolonizing livelihoods, decolonizing the will: solidarity economy as a social justice paradigm in Latin America” (Chapter 6), analyzes the emergence of the concept of Solidarity Economy as both a development paradigm and a social movement. This concept represents an attempt to create an “alter-modernity” that bases the modernization of society on the elimination of the Western distinction between the “public” and “private” spheres of social life. According to Esteves, the idea of a Solidarity Economy reflects an approach to community that includes all living and inanimate beings and recognizes the emancipatory potential of the norms, social dynamics, and forms of organization of subaltern groups, particularly “the poor.” It is based on a notion of social justice that complements and enriches the ideas of the Western Enlightenment. Yet, it goes beyond Western ideas about social justice, which focus on issues of equity, redistribution, and the social contract, by adding the dimension of solidarity, a “cosmic” conception of community and social emancipation, as the key goal of economic activity and politics. Instead of focusing on procedural rationality as the core of public life, Solidarity Economy attempts to create a “counter-public” t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Historical and cultural concepts of social justice
• Part II Theories and conceptual frameworks
• Part III Social justice issues in policy and practice
• Part IV Cultural reflections on social justice
• Index