Showing papers on "Economic Justice published in 2010"

The Just City

Abstract: Justice has always been a major topic within political philosophy, but scholars in the behavioural sciences have largely avoided normative statements. After the urban uprisings of the 1960s and 1970s, however, leftist scholars adopted a critical approach that, while not specifying a concept of justice, injected a moral dimension into their work. Within urban studies, the argument of Henri Lefebvre, who defined space as a social construction and who maintained that all groups should have a ‘right to the city’, became particularly influential. During the 1990s, scholars began to be more explicit about the concept of justice. Three main approaches to urban justice were developed: (1) communicative rationality; (2) recognition of diversity; (3) the just city/spatial justice. Differences between the communicative and just city approaches revolved around emphasis on democracy versus equity, process versus outcome. I argue that democracy, diversity, and equity are the three governing principles for urban justice...

Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale (Reprint)

Abstract: This and the subsequent papers in this special issue set out the contours of Marxian urban political ecology and call for greater research attention to a neglected field of critical research that, given its political importance, requires urgent attention. Notwithstanding the important contributions of other critical perspectives on urban ecology, Marxist urban political ecology provides an integrated and relational approach that helps untangle the interconnected economic, political, social and ecological processes that together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes. Because the power-laden socioecological relations that shape the formation of urban environments constantly shift between groups of actors and scales, historical-geographical insights into these ever-changing urban configurations are necessary for the sake of considering the future of radical political-ecological urban strategies. The social production of urban environments is gaining recognition within radical and historical-materialist geography. The political programme, then, of urban political ecology is to enhance the democratic content of socioenvironmental construction by identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of environmental production can be achieved.

Procedural Justice, Trust, and Institutional Legitimacy

Abstract: This paper summarizes ‘procedural justice’ approaches to policing, contrasting these to the more politically dominant discourse about policing as crime control. It argues that public trust in policing is needed partly because this may result in public cooperation with justice, but more importantly because public trust in justice builds institutional legitimacy and thus public compliance with the law and commitment to the rule of law. Some recent survey findings are presented in support of this perspective.

Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity1

Abstract: In Punishing the Poor, I show that the ascent of the penal state in the United States and other advanced societies over the past quarter-century is a response to rising social insecurity, not criminal insecurity; that changes in welfare and justice policies are interlinked, as restrictive ‘‘workfare’’ and expansive ‘‘prisonfare’’ are coupled into a single organizational contraption to discipline the precarious fractions of the postindustrial working class; and that a diligent carceral system is not a deviation from, but a constituent component of, the neoliberal Leviathan. In this article, I draw out the theoretical implications of this diagnosis of the emerging government of social insecurity. I deploy Bourdieu’s concept of ‘‘bureaucratic field’’ to revise Piven and Cloward’s classic thesis on the regulation of poverty via public assistance, and contrast the model of penalization as technique for the management of urban marginality to Michel Foucault’s vision of the ‘‘disciplinary society,’’ David Garland’s account of the ‘‘culture of control,’’ and David Harvey’s characterization of neoliberal politics. Against the thin economic conception of neoliberalism as market rule, I propose a thick sociological specification entailing supervisory workfare, a proactive penal state, and the cultural trope of ‘‘individual responsibility.’’ This suggests that we must theorize the prison not as a technical implement for law enforcement, but as a core political capacity whose selective and aggressive deployment in the lower regions of social space violates the ideals of democratic citizenship.

Relational Being. beyond Self and Community

Abstract: Kenneth J. Gergen: Relational Being. Beyond Self and Community Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, $ 45.00, pp. 448, ISBN 978-0-19-530538-8 While the belief in the power of science, even in the social field, reached a peak in the period after World War II, there also emerged a critique. Contributors like Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Toulmin, Polanyi and others directed their attacks against the tools of science, in particular such ideas as the objective language, the neutral observer, the unequivocal empirical observation, and the necessary logics. Their focus was on the discontinuities of science. They focused, however, less on the other major problem of discontinuity: that of the objects. In particular in the social field, those that are under investigation: people, groups, organizations, societies, are not stable, either. They are continuously on the move, continuously taking on new shapes and forms. How can this be handled from a research perspective? How can we create knowledge about phenomena that will, in all likelihood, have undergone change by the time the paper is published? One response to the challenges associated with "the double discontinuity" were trends like post-modernism, post-structuralism, deconstructivism, and similar. In spite of major contributions to the critique of concepts like absolute truth, unequivocal justice, universal reason and linear progress, it can be argued that the deconstruction aspect became so overriding that the need for people to also construct something tended to be forgotten. People have a life to live, and institutions to build, and need to hold something as better, more true, or more reasonable, than something else. The fact that the world is "on the move" needs a positive understanding, not only a tearing down of all forms of understanding. Furthermore, since the contributors to the various "post-schools" seem, with some exception for psycho-therapy, not to have any research-related practical experiences of their own, they tend to imagine that the world can be enlightened by texts alone, something that in a sense goes contrary to their own argument. The "post schools" would have to be followed by something that puts more emphasis on positive, in this sense "constructive", understanding and continuity without, however, falling back on the more traditional versions of universal reason. In everyday research, there are emergent trends representing, in different ways, responses to this challenge: First, rather than focusing on the structural properties of the phenomena, focus shifts towards the mechanisms that generate these properties. The generative forces are thought to be more stable than the patterns they create each and every time. Second, increased emphasis is put on the actor (or agent) perspective, at the expense of the "objective, path dependency" type reasoning often characterizing the traditional, structurally oriented kind of research. What people do, is decided more by their Intentions, perceptions and relationships, and less by "objective forces". Third, and in line with this, choice becomes more important than determinants. Fourth, more emphasis is placed on what people create in interaction with each other, at the expense of what the individual, often "rational player", is creating on his or her own. Concepts like community and joint learning gain in importance. Fifth, more emphasis is put on agreement between the actors concerned, as the foundation for whatever can be identified in terms of structural characteristics of, say, an organization, or a society, at the expense of internal or external forces. Sixth, an increased emphasis is put on practices, as the spearhead of the transactions between people. For instance, most learning takes place as a result of what happens when new efforts are made, new tools tried out, new plans put into action. Finally research itself is no exception from these trends. Research has to find its place as an actor in interaction with other people, not as an observer that in some way or other stands outside the human community. …

A General Theory of Domination and Justice

Abstract: 1. Introduction PART ONE: DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS 2. Social Relationships and Dependency 3. The Imbalance of Power Conception 4. Arbitrariness and Social Conventions PART TWO: NORMATIVE ANALYSIS 5. Domination and Human Flourishing 6. Domination and Justice 7. Applications of Minimizing Domination 8. Conclusion Appendix I: Historical Notes on 'Domination' Appendix II: Formal Models of Domination Bibliography

Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy

Abstract: Contents Introduction Coming to Terms The Transitional Justice Database The Politics of Transitional Justice At What Cost? Justice from the Outside In Beyond the Justice Cascade The Peace Dividend Does Transitional Justice Work? Conclusion: The Justice Balance

Climate change and the duties of the advantaged

Abstract: Climate change poses grave threats to many people, including the most vulnerable. This prompts the question of who should bear the burden of combating ‘dangerous’ climate change. Many appeal to the Polluter Pays Principle. I argue that it should play an important role in any adequate analysis of the responsibility to combat climate change, but suggest that it suffers from three limitations and that it needs to be revised. I then consider the Ability to Pay Principle and consider four objections to this principle. I suggest that, when suitably modified, it can supplement the Polluter Pays Principle.

The Capability Approach

Abstract: text In its most general description, the capability approach is a flexible and multi-purpose normative framework, rather than a precise theory of well-being, freedom or justice. At its core are two normative claims: first, the claim that the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance, and second, that freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people’s capabilities, that is, their real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value. This framework can be used for a range of evaluative exercises, including most prominent the following: (1) the assessment of individual well-being; (2) the evaluation and assessment of social arrangements, including assessments of social and distributive justice; and (3) the design of policies and proposals about social change in society. In all these normative endeavors, the capability approach prioritizes (a selection of) peoples’ beings and doings and their opportunities to realize those beings and doings (such as their genuine opportunities to be educated, their ability to move around or to enjoy supportive social relationships). This stands in contrast to other accounts of well-being, which focus exclusively on subjective categories (such as happiness) or on the means to well-being (such as resources like income or wealth).

The Lisbon Treaty: A Legal and Political Analysis

Abstract: Introduction 1. Origins and birth of the Treaty of Lisbon 2. General provisions 3. Democracy 4. Fundamental rights 5. Freedom, security and justice 6. Institutions 7. External affairs 8. Financial, economic, social and other internal affairs 9. Conclusion: the Treaty of Lisbon and beyond 10. Annexes.

Climate Change Justice

Abstract: Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Ethically Relevant Facts and Predictions 10 Chapter 2: Policy Instruments 41 Chapter 3: Symbols, Not Substance 59 Chapter 4: Climate Change and Distributive Justice: Climate Change Blinders 73 Chapter 5: Punishing the Wrongdoers: A Climate Guilt Clause? 99 Chapter 6: Equality and the Case against Per Capita Permits 119 Chapter 7: Future Generations: The Debate over Discounting 144 Chapter 8: Global Welfare, Global Justice, and Climate Change 169 A Recapitulation 189 Afterword: The Copenhagen Accord 193 Notes 199 Index 219

The City and Spatial Justice

Abstract: The specific term “spatial justice” has not been commonly used until very recently, and even today there are tendencies among geographers and planners to avoid the explicit use of the adjective “spatial” in describing the search for justice and democracy in contemporary societies. Either the spatiality of justice is ignored or it is absorbed (and often drained of its specificity) into such related concepts as territorial justice, environmental justice, the urbanization of injustice, the reduction of regional inequalities, or even more broadly in the generic search for a just city and a just society.

Localizing transitional justice : interventions and priorities after mass violence

Abstract: Through war crimes prosecutions, truth commissions, purges of perpetrators, reparations, and memorials, transitional justice practices work under the assumptions that truth telling leads to reconciliation, prosecutions bring closure, and justice prevents the recurrence of violence. But when local responses to transitional justice destabilize these assumptions, the result can be a troubling disconnection between international norms and survivors' priorities. Localizing Transitional Justice traces how ordinary people respond to-and sometimes transform-transitional justice mechanisms, laying a foundation for more locally responsive approaches to social reconstruction after mass violence and egregious human rights violations. Recasting understandings of culture and locality prevalent in international justice, this vital book explores the complex, unpredictable, and unequal encounter among international legal norms, transitional justice mechanisms, national agendas, and local priorities and practices.

Doing Justice to the Political: The International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan

Abstract: International criminal justice has become a weapon in political struggles in Uganda and Sudan. In this light, this article discusses the political meaning of the International Criminal Court's judicial interventions. It argues that the ICC, presented by its advocates as a legal bastion immune from politics, is inherently political by making a distinction between the friends and enemies of the international community which it purports to represent. Using original empirical data, the article demonstrates how in both Uganda and Sudan warring parties have used the ICC's intervention to brand opponents as hostis humani generis, or enemies of mankind, and to present themselves as friends of the ICC, and thus friends of the international community. The ICC Prosecutor has at times encouraged this friend�enemy dichotomy. These observations do not result in a denunciation of the Court as a �political institution�. On the contrary: they underline that a sound normative evaluation of the Court's activities can be made only when its political dimensions are acknowledged and understood. To show that justice has its practical and ideological limits is not to slight it. � The entire aim is rather to account for the difficulties which the morality of justice faces in a morally pluralistic world and to help it recognize its real place in it � not above the political world but in its very midst. J. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals and Political Trials (1986), at 122�123.

Measuring justice: primary goods and capabilities

Abstract: 1. Social primary goods and capabilities as metrics of justice Ingrid Robeyns and Harry Brighouse Part I. Theory: 2. A critique on the capability approach Thomas Pogge 3. Equal opportunity, unequal capability Erin Kelly 4. Justifying the capabilities approach to justice Elizabeth Anderson 5. Two cheers for capabilities Richard Arneson Part II. Applications: 6. Capabilities, opportunity, and health Norman Daniel 7. What metric for justice for disabled people? Capability and disability Lorella Terzi 8. Primary goods, capabilities, and children Colin MacLeod 9. Education for primary goods or for capabilities? Harry Brighouse and Elaine Unterhalter 10. Gender and the metric of justice Ingrid Robeyns Part III. Concluding Essay: 11. The place of capability in a theory of justice Amartya Sen.

Food Rebellions!: Crisis And The Hunger For Justice

Abstract: Foreword by Walden Bello Introduction to the Global Food Crisis Part One - The Real Story Behind The World Food Crisis 2 Hunger, Harvests and Profits: The Tragic Records of the Global Food Crisis 3 Root Causes: How the Industrial Agrifoods Complex Ate the Global South 4 The Overproduction of Hunger: Uncle Sam's Farm and Food Bill 5 Agrofuels: A Bad Idea at the Worst Possible Time 6 Summing Up the Crisis Part Two - What We Can Do About It 7 Overcoming the Crisis: Transforming the Food System 8 Africa and the End of Hunger 9 The Challenge of Food Sovereignty in Northern Countries 10 Epilogue

Climate change, responsibility, and justice

Abstract: In this paper I make the following claims. In order to see anthropogenic climate change as clearly involving moral wrongs and global injustices, we will have to revise some central concepts in these domains. Moreover, climate change threatens another value (“respect for nature”) that cannot easily be taken up by concerns of global justice or moral responsibility.

Climate Change, Social Theory and Justice

Abstract: This article seeks to answer why North—South climate negotiations have gone on for decades without producing any substantial results. To address this question, we revisit and seek to integrate insights from several disparate theories, including structuralism (new and old), world systems theory, rational choice institutionalism, and social constructivism. We argue that the lack of convergence on climate grew almost inevitably from our starkly unequal world, which has created and perpetuated highly divergent ways of thinking (worldviews and causal beliefs) and promoted particularistic notions of fairness (principled beliefs). We attempt to integrate structural insights about global inequality with the micro-motives of rational choice institutionalism. The structuralist insight that ‘unchecked inequality undermines cooperation’ suggests climate negotiations must be broadened to include a range of seemingly unrelated development issues such as trade, investment, debt, and intellectual property rights agreemen...

International statistics on crime and justice.

Abstract: The United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (UN-CTS) collects information on recorded crime and on the resources of criminal justice systems in Member States. This report, prepared in partnership between HEUNI and UNODC, analyses results for the UN-CTS from countries in Europe and North America.

After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights

Abstract: Preface: My TaskIntroduction: Disavowing Evil1. The Ideology and Ethics of Human Rights2. Ways of Winning3. Living On4. The Dialectic of Race and Place5. "Never Again"6. Still the Jewish Question?7. Bystanders and Victims8. Adverse Possession9. States of "Emergency"10. Surviving CatastropheConclusion: Justice in TimeAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex

An ethical approach to climate adaptation finance

Abstract: This article develops a framework of procedural and distributive justice specifically tailored to the international-level funding of adaptation based on the assumptions that the ethical contents of such funding should consist of a fair process which involves all relevant parties, that adaptation funds should be raised according to the responsibility for climate impacts, and that the funds raised should be allocated by putting the most vulnerable first. In particular, after underlining the usefulness and possibilities of an ethical approach to climate adaptation finance, the article, in defining the framework of justice, first explores and justifies principles of procedural and distributive justice, and on their basis advances fairness and equity criteria that serve as benchmarks for assessing the ethical contents of international adaptation funding. Then, in order to test the robustness and investigative potential of the framework of justice developed, the article uses its fairness and equity criteria to evaluate the procedural and distributive justness of some climate adaptation finance architectures.

Implicit effects of justice on self-identity.

Abstract: The authors provide one of the first tests of whether justice has effects at implicit or subconscious levels. By manipulating justice in a laboratory experiment, they found that the activation of interdependent and individual self-identities were higher when people experienced fairness and unfairness, respectively. Although these effects occurred at both implicit and explicit levels, they were stronger in the former case. These identity-based effects proved to be important because they mediated the effects of justice on trust and on cooperative and counterproductive behaviors. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Access to Civil Justice and Race, Class, and Gender Inequality

Abstract: Access to civil justice is a perspective on the experiences that people have with civil justice events, organizations, or institutions. It focuses on who is able or willing to use civil law and law-like processes and institutions (who has access) and with what results (who receives what kinds of justice). This article reviews what we know about access to civil justice and race, social class, and gender inequality. Three classes of mechanisms through which inequality may be reproduced or exacerbated emerge: the unequal distribution of resources and costs, groups' distinct subjective orientations to law or to their experiences, and differential institutionalization of group or individual interests. Evidence reveals that civil justice experiences can be an important engine in reproducing inequalities and deserve greater attention from inequality scholars. However, the inequality-conserving picture in part reflects scholars' past choices about what to study: Much research has focused narrowly on the use of formal legal means to solve problems or advance interests, or it has considered the experience only of relatively resource-poor, lower status, or otherwise less privileged groups. Thus, we often lack the information necessary to compare systematically groups' experiences to each other or the impact of law to that of other means of managing conflicts or repairing harm.

Measuring Justice: Justifying the capabilities approach to justice

Abstract: In this chapter, the author defends the capabilities approach against Pogge's critique, and explains why it is superior to its main rivals, subjective and resourcist approaches. Theories of distributive justice must specify two things: a metric and a rule. The metric characterizes the type of good subject to demands of distributive justice. The rule specifies how that good should be distributed. The fundamental difference between capability theorists and resource theorists lies rather in the degree to which their principles of justice are sensitive to internal individual differences, and environmental features and social norms that interact with these differences. Capabilities and resource theorists agree that principles of justice aim to secure persons' effective access to the means they need to satisfy their objective interests, as defined in terms of needed functionings. The capabilities approach is capable of supplying a public criterion of justice suitable for the basic structure of society.

The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egalitarians

Abstract: (2010). The Fundamental Disagreement between Luck Egalitarians and Relational Egalitarians. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 40, Supplementary Volume 36: Justice and Equality, pp. 1-23.

The economic payoff to investing in educational justice

Abstract: The quest for educational equity is a moral imperative for a society in which education is a crucial determinant of life chances. Yet whether there is an economic return to the taxpayer for investing in educational justice is often not considered. It is possible that the economic benefits of reducing inadequate education exceed the costs, returning a healthy dividend to the taxpayer. This article addresses a four-decade quest to ascertain the fiscal consequences of investing in effective approaches to reduce inadequate education in the United States. It uses economic analysis to calculate both the costs of effective strategies to raise high school graduation rates and their benefits to the taxpayer in higher tax revenues and reduced costs of criminal justice, public health, and public assistance. The results suggest that improving educational justice provides substantial returns to taxpayers that exceed the costs.

Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy: Cosmopolitanism and Moral Theory

Abstract: Introduction: Smith's oikeiosis Part I. The Circle of the Self: 1. Conflicted self 2. Sympathetic self Part II. The Circle of Society: 3. Discipline and the socialized conscience 4. Perfectionism and social order Part III. The Circle of Humanity: 5. Sympathy in space: Section 1. Physical Immediacy Section 2. Affective 'Connexion' Section 3. Historical Familiarity 6. The commercial cosmopolis 7. Negative justice Conclusion: Cultural pluralism, moral goods, and the 'laws of nations'.

Out of the Mainstream: Water Rights, Politics and Identity

Abstract: Water is not only a source of life and culture. It is also a source of power, conflicting interests and identity battles. Rights to materially access, culturally organize and politically control water resources are poorly understood by mainstream scientific approaches and hardly addressed by current normative frameworks. These issues become even more challenging when law and policy-makers and dominant power groups try to grasp, contain and handle them in multicultural societies. The struggles over the uses, meanings and appropriation of water are especially well-illustrated in Andean communities and local water systems of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, and Bolivia, as well as in Native American communities in south-western USA. The problem is that throughout history, these nation-states have attempted to 'civilize' and bring into the mainstream the different cultures and peoples within their borders instead of understanding 'context' and harnessing the strengths and potentials of diversity. This book examines the multi-scale struggles for cultural justice and socio-economic re-distribution that arise as Latin American communities and user federations seek access to water resources and decision-making power regarding their control and management. It is set in the dynamic context of unequal, globalizing power relations, politics of scale and identity, environmental encroachment and the increasing presence of extractive industries that are creating additional pressures on local livelihoods. While much of the focus of the book is on the Andean Region, a number of comparative chapters are also included. These address issues such as water rights and defence strategies in neighboring countries and those of Native American people in the southern USA, as well as state reform and multi-culturalism across Latin and Native America and the use of international standards in struggles for indigenous water rights. This book shows that, against all odds, people are actively contesting neoliberal globalization and water power plays. In doing so, they construct new, hybrid water rights systems, livelihoods, cultures and hydro-political networks, and dynamically challenge the mainstream powers and politics.