This article explores the significance of disability for social justice, using Nancy Fraser's theory of justice as a guideline. The article argues that the disability perspective is essential for understanding and promoting social justice, although it is often disregarded by critical thinkers and social activists. The article looks at three prominent strategies for achieving social justice under conditions of capitalism: economically, by decommodifying labour; culturally, by deconstructing self-sufficiency; and politically, by transnationalising democracy. The disability perspective reveals that decommodification of labour requires enhancement of disability support, deconstruction of self-sufficiency requires valorisation of disability-illuminated interdependence, and transnationalisation of democracy requires scrutiny of the transnational production of impairments. The article discusses each of these strategies in theoretical and practical terms by drawing on disability studies and Fraser's analyses.
By the year 2030 there will be twice as many retirees in the United States as today but only 18 percent more workers. This aging of the population will place considerable financial strain on the United States social security system; relatively few workers will be taxes to pay the benefits of relatively many retirees. Because of this change in demographics, the Social Security Administration will not be able to pay scheduled social security benefits as outlined by current law. Therefore, it is imperative that the government act soon to address the looming fiscal imbalance of the social security program. The Senate Aging Committee and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) both encourage Congress to take a Rawlsian perspective when evaluating social security reform measures that are intended to cope with changing demo- graphics. In their estimation, a desirable reform should not only balance the budget, but it should also protect benefits for the economically vulnerable. In this paper, I examine the relationship between John Rawls theory of social justice and the US social security system. I then provide fifteen possible social security reforms that are consistent with Rawls theory. I conclude with an analysis of the political feasibility of the various reforms considered. As a special example, the mathematical model used to generate the results for three of the reforms is included at the end of the paper.
Protecting democracy by combating inequality is the task of social justice lawyers. The practice of democracy mandates inclusion of the diverse populations of this nation into the social order. Social justice lawyers seek to give material meaning to democratic ideals in the daily lives of individuals and communities that are marginalized, subordinated, and underrepresented. Currently, not enough lawyers serve the disenfranchised and not enough lawyers emerge from disenfranchised communities. Hence, the disenfranchised continue to be denied access to legal resources, to the detriment of democracy. Legal educators must begin to think about how to institutionalize consciousness about social justice as part of the canon of legal education and to promote the idea that a professional is one dedicated to public service and the provision of justice. The creation of centers and institutes in social justice law can help accomplish this goal. This article discusses the institutional values necessary for building a successful center, emphasizing communication and inclusion. It also addresses key components of a successful social justice program, including a curriculum that coordinates theory with practice in the traditional classroom and clinical settings; faculty scholarship and related social justice practice; involvement of students, student groups, and staff; an intellectual climate that promotes extracurricular events and work with other centers of specialization within the law school and university; and alumni/community relations and fundraising. The article makes suggestions for how to implement each element.
Jennifer Thomson, assistant professor of History at Bucknell University, interviews students in the Bucknell course Music 322: Music and Social Justice. Students describe the goals of the course and discuss the resources used to exchange knowledge about social justice issues including race, inequity, prison abolition, and sentence disparity.
Abstract South Africa is the world's most unequal country. Poverty and inequality, exacerbated by unemployment are the country's foremost challenges. The present government has made significant progress regarding the provision of basic services and broadening the social wage. However, the unfortunate reality is that inequality grew since the advent of democracy over twenty years ago. This development runs contrary to the commitments of the South African Constitution and social policy provisions, thereby raising more serious questions of rights and social justice. The continuity, depth and breadth of inequality, including the extraordinary financial and social costs is linked to the legacy of apartheid. Inequality is structurally embedded spatially and economically. Crucially, inequality is also a function of access to opportunities and human development outcomes. The paper attempts a theoretical discussion of the relationship between inequality, poverty and unemployment, which requires greater input; identifies some barriers to transformation; and presents tentative approaches towards lowering inequality.
Authors on social justice provide a specific lens through which social justice in education can be viewed. They construct an ideal that cannot be legislated or achieved by means of international conventions or declarations – social justice is seated in the hearts and minds of people and it must be lived. It requires that every citizen should take the responsibility to protect, advance and promote the values, principles and ideals of social justice. In achieving these noble ideals developing countries need to come to terms with certain challenges that must be addressed lest social justice remain but a dream. This article argues that as long as these conditions exist there cannot be social justice.
It is often assumed that children lack the developed capacity to understand complicated political issues (for example, Arendt, 1959; Pearce, 2011; and Warmington, 2012a, 2012b). This assumption is contested through a review of the literature examining adult conceptions the child, and children's rights to political participation, citizenship, and direct representation (Steffler, 2009; Wall & Dar, 2011; Wyness, Harrison, & Buchanan, 2004). A variety of historical and contemporary examples of children engaging in social justice campaigns and movements are provided (Elshtain, 1996; Milstein, 2010; Smith, 2012; Traubman, 2005; Bergmar, 2010). A potential means for supporting children in social justice engagement is explored through social justice education (Dover, 2009; Kelly & Brooks, 2009).
This article unfolds in three stages. First, it locates the emergence of modern conceptions of social justice in industrializing Europe, and especially in the discovery of the "social," which provided a particular idiom for the liberal democratic politics for most of the twentieth century. Second, the article links this particular conception of the social to the political rationalities of the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. Finally, the article discusses the myriad ways in which this legacy of the social and social justice has been disrupted, although not yet fully displaced, by the economic orthodoxies and individualization that inform the contemporary neoliberal governing project in Canada. The result, the article concludes, has been the institutionalization of insecurity, which demands the renewal of a social way of seeing and a politics of social justice on local and global scales.
Canadian social issues for young adults: Books, websites and magazinesINFO6250 Services and Resources for Young Adults (15 yrs+). Library staff may wish to share with youth at a YA programming event about democratic involvement and social issues.
The Marg Barry Memorial Lecture celebrates the contribution of a woman for whom social justice was integral and essential to good social arrangements. Social Justice disappeared almost entirely from Australian public life and discourse between 1995 and 2007. This also marked an increase in income inequality, and increased disadvantage and exclusion for those experiencing multiple difficulties in their lives. Not only is this morally repugnant but this growing inequality meant worse social and health outcomes for everyone. Evidence has been accumulating that societies with institutional social justice arrangements do better for everyone, including the wealthy, than those rewarding the growth in the gap between rich and poor. Although the Rudd government once again embraced the notion of fairness in the form of social inclusion, the revival of social justice, that is ensuring systemic and structural social arrangements to improve equality, as a core political and social value, should be a goal for us all.
The Journal of Underrepresented and Minority Progress (JUMP), a scholarly refereed journal, is founded against the backdrop of colossal political upheavals further marginalizing the lives of minorities around the world. United States, on the cusp of being a nation of many minorities is troubled with tensions about whether it respects and welcomes minorities and immigrants at all. The 28th annual world report by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that the surge of authoritarian populists worldwide seems increasingly inevitable, with the United Kingdom preoccupied by Brexit and United States led "by a president who displays a disturbing fondness for rights-trampling strongmen." The report warned against the tendency of demagogues who rose to power by "demonizing unpopular minorities, attacking human rights principles, and fueling distrust of democratic institutions" (HRW, 2018, p. 15). We are truly at a precarious juncture of human civilization because the US and the UK, so far looked upon as the "defenders of human rights" globally have been beleaguered by nationalism. We must keep our hopes that governments' actions will align more and more with various interest groups advancing civil rights and democracy. There is some hope in the policies adopted by Germany, France, and their European Union partners, even though they too have been bedeviled by groups driven by racism and bigotry. Such democracies as Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, and South Africa exist, but their voice for human rights is not the loudest always (HRW, 2017). There is, thus, an urgent and critical need for a scholarly discourse that identifies and describes the problems, provides a forum for analysis and solutions, and serves as a vehicle for sharing statistics and research nationally and internationally. As Bourdieu (2003, p. 11) reminded, we as social scientists "cannot stand aside, neutral and indifferent, from the struggles in which the future of the world is at stake." We have no option but to jump for the advancement of social ...
There is already a rich literature on property transformations in Poland. However, in this literature, works considering them from the point of view of respecting principles of social justice if we leave out of consideration the calming statement that prii>atisation by its very nature could not be fair. These are rarely considered from the point of view that would seem obvious — of observing the principles of social justice. An exception here would be the appeasing statement, frequently expressed especially during the first years of transformation, that privatisation by its very nature could not have been fair. Indeed, perhaps it could not have been fully fair. But did it have to be so blatantly unfair? Taking up this theme, it is worth departing from a bipolar view (just or unjust) in favour of the concept of graded justice. Let's try to look at some of the most promising (even programmatic) threads of privatisation in Poland (even if only provided by the programme) through the prism of the principles of social justice which are after all part of the Constitution. Analysing the problem of the relation between ownership transformation and the idea of social justice, the author examines in turn: ignoring of the idea of "democratic ownership" by the economic and political elites which had a direct impact on the processes of privatisation, the problem of employee-owned companies, the idea of mass privatisation programme implemented in the National Investment Fund Programme, the Pact on State-owned Enterprise (as interpreted by Jacek Kuroń). Finally, the author proposes a thesis that Polish privatisation is of an elitist character and large groups of society are excluded from participating in it.
Affective relations are not social derivatives subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. The nurturing work that produces love, care, and solidarity operates under principles of other-centredness, even when it fails in this purpose. Furthermore, neither love nor care are purely personal or intimate matters; care exists as a public practice, be it in terms of health care, environmental care, community care, educational care or public welfare; solidarity can be regarded as the political expression of such public care. Because the relational realities of nurturing (and their counterpoint, neglect) operate as a distinct set of social practices, love, care and solidarity relations are sites of political import that need to be examined separately in social justice terms. The lack of appreciation of affective relations leads to a failure to recognise their pivotal role in generating injustices in the production of people in their humanness. This paper outlines a framework for thinking about affective relations in structural social justice terms. In so doing, it hopes to contribute to the redistribution, recognition, representation debate about justice by making the case for a fourth dimension, relational justice. The framework is sociologically informed by theoretical work and empirical research undertaken on love, care and solidarity. It takes a structural rather than individualist approach to social justice, arguing that equality of conditions matter as it is impossible to have anything but weak forms of equality of opportunity in economically and politically (structurally) unjust societies. ; European Commission Horizon 2020 ; 18 month embargo once published - AC ; Check for published version during checkdate report - AC
SOCIAL JUSTICE, HEALTH AND POVERTY IN UGANDA John Barugahare Injustice in Uganda manifests in many ways. One most serious, yet least discussed social injustice, is inequity in Health. Although there are two equally important aims of health systems – efficiency and equity, in Uganda too much focus has been on ensuring efficiency and as a consequence concerns of equity have been relegated. Ultimately, health policy in Uganda has disproportionately negatively affected the poor's livelihoods in general and the trend seems to be worsening by day. Even though it is possible to borrow a leaf from the Western literature on how to design a good health policy, low income countries like Uganda have special features that render the extrapolation of the Western input good but not enough. In particular, these special features are the level of resource constraints, poverty and the financing mechanism of health care services. These three have very serious implications for equity in health. In general, there is a lot of injustice in the Uganda health care and this has been mainly due to poverty levels and the financing mechanism which the system relies on. Hence, there is an urgent need to concentrate on a discussion of injustice in health because health enhances people's functionings and is a mandatory condition for people's enjoyment of other life opportunities to the extent that if a section of a society is made to suffer injustice in health, this will translate into injustice in all the dimensions of their lives. This is something that fair‐minded people cannot afford to live with for long. Therefore, it is important in this work to illustrate how the above three special features play to cause and sustain inequity in Uganda health care system and to suggest the starting point to overcoming this injustice, not only in Uganda but as a general trend in health policy analysis. THE POLITICS OF RESTORING ETHICS AND THE CHALLENGE OF PATRIOTISM IN SERVICE DELIVERY IN UGANDA'S PUBLIC SERVICE Dickson Kanakulya Reports indicate that there is an erosion of professionalism and ethics across most of the East African public service systems and this is limiting the efficient service delivery and negatively impacts on social justice. Because of this challenge many approaches are being applied to mitigate it, such as the institutional, legal, cultural and the political. This paper discusses the political approach and particularly problematizes the political push for patriotism in Uganda. Most of the critique and analysis was done while carrying out research and consultancy with Makerere Centre for Applied Ethics (MACAE) in selected districts in Uganda under the project "Pro‐poor Integrity" (PPI) funded by Tiri and DFID. The paper argues that the government's policy of patriotism is more of politicking than real improvement of service delivery to the people. Political interference in public service has engendered a culture of impunity and increased unethical conduct among 'politically‐connected' civil servants right from the grass root service to the top administration, The paper argues that if ethics in Uganda's public administration is to improve politicians ought to be divorce party‐biased ideology from the patriotism discourse such that it can appeal to a wider spectrum of Ugandans. PERSISTENT COLONIAL COERCION IN CONTEMPORARY UGANDA: FOUNDATION OF SOCIAL INJUSTICES IN THE COUNTRY Gervase Tusabe Since 1962, all Uganda's major centres of power i.e., political, economic and military have always been dominated by a chosen few, and the attendant wealth that goes with such powers has always been disproportionately enjoyed in favour of these chosen few when a considerable large number of people in the country are living under the weight of abject poverty. The major argument advanced in this paper is that the fundamental cause of this experience of injustice in Uganda is the persistent domestic colonial mode of political administration that is managed by a particular closed group of individuals who more or less conspired to work together to promote their self‐centred interests at the cost of deliberately ignoring the legitimate interests of the Ugandans who are outside their group. STRUCTURAL INJUSTICES AND THE ETHICS OF ENGENDERING POVERTY ERADICATION POLICIES IN UGANDA Michael George Kizito Since time immemorial, poverty reduction interventions in Sub‐Saharan Africa like everywhere in the South, have focused on the individual as the basic ingredient of a moral society (ethical individualism). According to this perspective, in order to lift human persons out of poverty, it is imperative to integrate poor persons into poverty eradication interventions irrespective of sex, social status and gender. Scholars and institutions that subscribed to this conception of poverty thought that individuals were poor because of personal weaknesses (case poverty).This perspective has been greatly challenged due to the upsurge of gender and human rights scholarship in the 20th century. Gender scholars have painstakingly argued that in order to understand poverty, we need to look at society (ethical collectivism). They have rejected the Women in Development(WID) discourse that aims at integrating women into the development process in favour of the Gender and Development(GAD) approach to development and poverty reduction that aims at confronting power relations between men and women (empowerment).This GAD perspective looks at poverty in terms of the powerlessness speared head by prevailing structures in society (structural poverty) and hence the need to empower vulnerable persons such as women to challenge structures and strictures of oppression. The International Monetary fund (IMF) and World Bank as vehement promoters of economism in Sub‐Saharan Africa for decades have urged governments to include the perspectives of the poor in poverty polices through what they call participatory poverty assessments (PPAs). Despite its deceptive appearance, this PPAs stance of the IMF and World Bank tacitly looks at poverty as a case and not structural issue and that is why Uganda's ambitious poverty reduction policy though greatly informed by Participatory Poverty Assessments greatly ignores structures and strictures that render women vulnerable to poverty. This paper critically assesses the obliviousness of Uganda's Agricultural poverty policy to structures and how this has militated on the gender poverty production in Uganda. The paper contends that in order to realise engendered poverty eradication in Uganda, it is pertinent for the agricultural policy to ultimately make paradigm shift from focusing on the individual as the basic ingredient of a moral society (ethical individualism) to confronting structures and strictures that disempower and vulnerablelise individual moral agents (ethical collectivism). ; Contrubution authors to the chapters are John Barugahare, Dickson Kanakulya, Michael George Kizito and Gervase Tusabe.
I would like the thank R. Sefton-Green, H. Muir Watt, N. Reich, T. Roethe, C. Torp, G. Miller, K. Purnhagen for extremely helpful comments and B. Schüller not only for his support in my research, but also for interesting discussions over a couple of months. The responsibility for all errors and misconceptions, however, remains mine. ; During the C20th, the Member States of the European Union developed their own models of social justice in private law. Each model is inherently linked to national culture and tradition. However, all models have a common thread, which is the use of the law by the (social welfare) state as a means to protect the weaker party against the stronger party. Since the adoption of the Single European Act in 1986, the European Union has assumed a social outlook which has gradually developed over time eventually taking shape in the Lisbon Treaty and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Since the adoption of the SEA, more particularly the White Paper on the Completion of the Internal Market,[1] the European Union adopted a huge set of secondary law means which influence either directly (consumer, labour, anti-discrimination and business law directives) or indirectly (directives meant to liberalise markets, e.g. telecommunication, postal services, energy - electricity and gas, transport, health care) private law matters. This new regulatory private law is governed by a different philosophy, one which cannot be brought into line with the understanding of social justice as enshrined in labour or later the consumer movement and one which is challenging national models of social justice in private law. I call the EU model of justice access justice/Zugangsgerechtigkeit (justice through access, not access to justice), i.e. that it is for the European Union to grant access justice to those who are excluded from the market or to those who face difficulties in making use of the market freedoms. European private law rules have to make sure that the weaker parties have and maintain access to the market - and to the European society insofar as this exists. ; 1. How the Argument Goes . 1 2. The Socio-Economic and Political Background of Social Justice (in Private Law) in France, Germany and England . 3 2.1. The English Model – A Liberal and Pragmatic Design Fit for Commercial Use . 4 2.1.1. English Pragmatism and Two Explanatory Hypotheses . 4 2.1.2. The Gradual Intrusion of Social Justice into Labour and Consumer Law . 7 2.2. The French Model – A Forward Looking Political Design of a (Just) Society. 8 2.2.1. The Political Conception – A Tentative Explanation. 9 2.2.2. Politicising Private Law as Social Law. 9 3.3. The German Model – An Authoritarian Paternalistic-Ideological though Market Orientated Design . 11 3.3.1. Ideological Paternalism and Market Pragmatism. 11 3.3.2. Authoritarian Liberalism and the Rise of Labour Law and Consumer Law . 12 4. The European Integration Process and the European Model of Justice. 13 4.1. The Evolving Character of the European Legal Order and the Rise of 'The Social'. 14 4.2. The Impact of the European Integration Process on Labour and Anti-Discrimination Law. 15 4.2.1. Labour Law and Anti-Discrimination Law . 15 4.2.2. Consumer Law . 19 5. The European Model on Access Justice . 21 5.1. Social Distribute, Access Justice and Allocative Libertarian Justice. 21 5.2. The Two Constitute Elements: Access Rights and Anti-Discrimination Rights. 23 5.2.1. Specific Access Rights in Labour, Anti-Discrimination and Consumer Law. 24 5.2.2. The Horizontal Dimension of Anti-Discrimination . 26 Bibliography. 28
