Politics & International Relations
Social Justice
Social justice refers to the fair and equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and privileges within a society. It aims to address systemic inequalities and promote the well-being of all individuals, particularly those who are marginalized or disadvantaged. This concept is often associated with efforts to combat discrimination, poverty, and other forms of social injustice.
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7 Key excerpts on "Social Justice"
eBook - PDF- J. Demaine(Author)
- 2001(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
3 Rethinking Social Justice: A Conceptual Analysis Sharon Gewirtz Given the centrality of issues of Social Justice to so much policy± sociology research in education, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to exploring precisely what we mean, or ought to mean, when we talk about Social Justice. This chapter represents an attempt to begin to remedy this situation. It is in three parts. In the first part, I argue for an extension of the boundaries of what is usually thought of as Social Justice, suggesting that it should include a relational as well as a distribu- tional dimension. I then go on to provide a critical review of four approaches to Social Justice ± the liberal distributive approach, commu- nitarian mutuality , postmodernist mutuality and the freedom from oppressive relations model propounded by the socialist feminist theorist, Iris Marion Young. In the final part, I draw on insights derived from the earlier discussion to briefly sketch out a research agenda that education policy±sociologists concerned about issues of Social Justice might pursue. Rethinking the boundaries of Social Justice Social Justice has traditionally been understood as referring to the way in which goods are distributed in society. I want to suggest that Social Justice is more usefully understood in an expanded sense to refer to a family of concerns about how everyone should be treated in a society we believe to be good. Broadly conceived in this way, Social Justice can be said to encompass two major dimensions ± a distributional and a relational dimension. The distributional dimension is concerned with the principles by which goods are distributed in society. This is the conventional conception of Social Justice, classically defined by Rawls (1972: 7) as follows: 49 the subject matter of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions .
eBook - PDF- Etienne Balibar, Sandro Mezzadra, Ranabir Samaddar, Etienne Balibar, Sandro Mezzadra, Ranabir Samaddar(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Temple University Press(Publisher)
GLOBAL JUSTICE AND POLITICS 35 and foundationalist vision in order to feel the need to disrupt the process of globalization as the new idea of a common care for the world is born, expressed by the sentence “We want to see what is going on.” But to understand the link between political action and global justice is to expose oneself to another objection. We have become so used to the frag-mentary and micropolitical perspective expressed by the human sciences during the last twenty years, particularly following what Lyotard referred to as the end of metanarratives like world history ( Weltgeschichte ), 7 that we man-ifest reluctance to play the language game of justice within a macropolitical frame, or within an historical horizon, which tends to be replaced by the con-flict of memories. 8 This is also true of the very language of politicians, which has become more and more ethnocentric over the last two decades, ignor-ing more and more the injustices of the dominant world order, and which completely privileges a more “microrealistic” vocabulary, referring to the con-crete interests, management, and governance of particular countries, com-munities, and regional geopolitical blocks (whether rich, like the European Union or the North America Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA], or poorer, like MERCOSUR). And when it comes to protesters, it is more and more difficult to mobilize the public about global issues because there is a feeling that concrete and direct intervention can only be limited to local issues. So the idea of justice as referring to the whole world, to the whole humanity (a term that is nowadays being replaced by the word “humanitarian,” with a completely different meaning and scope, as charity, compassion, or assistant-ship), seems more and more like an anachronism from the last century.
eBook - PDF- Behrooz Morvaridi(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
1 The question I address in this book is whether a Social Justice approach to development could be achieved so long as ‘hegemonic states’ domi- nate institutions of global governance. Showing how development and Social Justice are intrinsically linked, this book analyses the legit- imacy of power relations that perpetuate social, political and eco- nomic injustices and inequalities between nation states, groups and individuals. Social Justice has a heritage that lies in the early social scientists , who defined inequality as unjust social relations. The principle of equality that underpins Social Justice entails material distribution such as income and (as well as) ‘the distributive paradigm’ that encompasses power and domination. At the global level this means nation states and individuals are treated equally in terms of resources, opportunity and capacity. The current tendency, however, is to align Social Justice with development through the notion of modernity and the rise and prac- tice of global capitalism. As such this fulfils a political function, being underpinned by two significant global shifts, the first being the rise of modern markets and secular states, and the second being the political claim to equality or rights which accompanied the development of capitalism. The focus of this book is how the emergence of the right to develop- ment seeks to address social injustices that result in inequality and poverty, and why it struggles to succeed given that a whole host of eco- nomic and political forces contrive to undermine it. The pertinent question is why mainstream development theory and institutions of global governance continue to couch poverty reduction itself as an analytical category and a policy objective, rather than focus on inequality. This is despite the fact that ample evidence supports the 1 Introduction: Social Justice and Development
eBook - PDFFreedom from Poverty
NGOs and Human Rights Praxis
- Daniel P.L. Chong(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- University of Pennsylvania Press(Publisher)
95 For U.S. Social Justice groups advocating freedom from poverty, the risk of a negative radical flank effect looms large, due to the ease with which any claim to economic rights can be disparaged as socialist, foreign, and un-American. Because these organizations take such different approaches to justice, which involve vastly different models of political accountability, the challenge is for Social Justice organizations to develop a consistent message that resonates within the existing cultural environment. Human Rights as “Equality” Another source of ambiguity and some conceptual confusion within the human rights and Social Justice discourses arises from the close association 92 Chapter 4 between human rights and notions of equality. Equality-based themes suffuse virtually all rights-based approaches, but “equality” takes on vastly differ-ent meanings in different contexts; these meanings are often implicit rather than explicit. For example, when activists claim that “human rights are about equality,” do they mean that all human beings are born equal in dignity (i.e., philosophical equality)? 96 That people should receive equal protection under the law (i.e., nondiscrimination and procedural equality)? That the state should ensure an equal provision of public goods (i.e., distributional equal-ity)? 97 That there should be an equality of outcomes among the population on a range of social and economic indicators (i.e., substantive equality)? 98 Or some combination of the above? Participants in the movement have associ-ated human rights with all of these notions, some of which are in conflict, and all of which have different political implications. There is a virtual consensus within the human rights movement, and widespread support within U.S. culture, in favor of equal dignity and proce-dural equality.
eBook - PDFThe New Politics of Welfare
Social Justice in a Global Context
- Bill Jordan(Author)
- 1998(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
1 Introduction: Social Justice In a Global Context CONTENTS Scope and methods of the book 3 The constraints of globalization 6 Social Justice, poverty and exclusion 1 1 Social Justice in political thought 1 5 Social Justice, polit ical integration and multiculturalism 1 9 Conclusions and plan of the book 22 Notes and references 26 This book is an analysis of the emerging orthodoxy on social welfare in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton agree on many aspects of social policy, and the reforms they have implemented are similar in many features. Their programmes are a positive and proactive response by nation states to the phenomena of globalization. The new politics of welfare is far more than a plan to reform the social services. It takes the moral high ground, and mobilizes citizens in a thrust for national regeneration. It deals in ethical principles, and appeals to civic responsibility and the common good. Above all, it bids to recreate a cohesive community, through the values of self-discipline, family solidarity and respect for lawful authority. Yet it does so at a time when national governments seem most ineffectual in the face of global market forces. If postwar welfare states appeared to have made workers less dependent on competing in the labour market, globalization now puts the wage relation back at the heart of the political struggle. Instead of resisting this, the new social politics reinforces it, by promising to 'put the work ethic back at the centre of the welfare state'. It drives citizens into the waiting arms of a 2 THE NEW POLITICS OF WELFARE revital ized global capital, exhorting them to intens ify their competitive efforts for the sake of greater productiv ity and growth.
eBook - PDFClassical and Modern Thought on International Relations
From Anarchy to Cosmopolis
- R. Jackson(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Yet if we look we shall find justice there too. Justice of some sort is essential for all flourishing societies, including international society. Justice consists in fair play, impartiality, evenhandedness, due process, equal consideration, and similar other-regarding practices that invite rather than discourage sustainable involvement of human beings with each other. Justice, as Lucas well puts it, is “the bond of society,” which serves as a check on expediency, efficiency, productivity, arrogance, pride, bias, disregard, contempt, hostility, hindrance, and all other instrumental, self-interested, self-indulgent, self-seeking, and one-sided expectations and actions of people. Protests against injustice are indicative of such bonds. The bond is a shared conception and mutual expectation of at least minimal, tolerable, or passable fairness and equity. One crucial and historically commonplace home of such expectations is the state conceived as a framework of just laws for its citizens: the state as covenant. International law, diplomatic practices, inter- national organizations, and other such arrangements can be conceived as spheres of justice or fair dealings between states: the bonds and covenants of international society. 16 To sum up thus far: power and justice are companion and interactive ideas. Calculations of power and considerations of justice do not exist or operate in separate watertight compartments. On the contrary, they exist and operate in tandem. Instrumental actions are likely to provoke, at some point, normative issues or concerns, including those of justice. I conceive of that interactive relation as sometimes a dialogue or conversation, at other times a disagreement or dispute, between two categorically different ways of con- templating and taking actions: that which is in one’s self-interest versus that which gives at least minimally owed regard or consideration to the legitimate interests and rights of others.
eBook - PDFNew Directions in Political Science
Responding to the Challenges of an Interdependent World
- Colin Hay(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
Chapter 11 Global Justice KIMBERLY HUTCHINGS Introduction In the 1970s and 1980s, in the context of neoliberal challenges to redis-tributive welfare states, theoretical debates about justice were largely taken up by arguments about principles of distributive justice appropriate for liberal political communities (Rawls 1971; Nozick 1974). In the 1990s, feminist and multiculturalist politics challenged the assumptions of mainstream theories of justice, and issues of difference and identity, as well as distribution, became the focus of attention in both theory and practice (Young 1990; Kymlicka 1995; Mulhall and Swift 1996; Parekh 2000; see also Kantola and Squires in this volume). Across all of these debates, two matters were taken for granted: first, the assumption that the nation-state was the site within which claims of justice could be articu-lated and satisfied; and, second, a particular understanding of the disci-plinary role of the political theorist, in relation to that of the political scientist, the policy-maker or the activist. In this chapter, I will suggest that disrupting the first of these assumptions has implications for the second. Once discussions about theories of justice shift to the global arena, it becomes harder to sustain the myth of the political theorist as a monological source of authority on the meaning of justice. And it becomes apparent that much closer collaboration between political theo-rists, scientists and activists is required if principles of global justice are to make sense to a global audience, as opposed to the select company of liberal political theorists and their critics within the western academy. As is clear from other contributions to this volume, analysts disagree about the extent to which levels of global economic, ecological and polit-ical interdependence are, as a matter of empirical fact, new. Within polit-ical theory, the question of the relevance of such interdependence to theorizing justice is also contested.
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