Showing papers on "Economic Justice published in 2016"

Energy justice : a conceptual review

Abstract: Energy justice has emerged as a new crosscutting social science research agenda which seeks to apply justice principles to energy policy, energy production and systems, energy consumption, energy activism, energy security and climate change. A conceptual review is now required for the consolidation and logical extension of this field. Within this exploration, we give an account of its core tenets: distributional, recognition and procedural. Later we promote the application of this three-pronged approach across the energy system, within the global context of energy production and consumption. Thus, we offer both a conceptual review and a research agenda. Throughout, we explore the key dimensions of this new agenda – its evaluative and normative reach – demonstrating that energy justice offers, firstly, an opportunity to explore where injustices occur, developing new processes of avoidance and remediation and recognizing new sections of society. Secondly, we illustrate that energy justice provides a new stimulating framework for bridging existing and future research on energy production and consumption when whole energy systems approaches are integrated into research designs. In conclusion, we suggest three areas for future research: investigating the non-activist origins of energy justice, engaging with economics, and uniting systems of production and consumption.

Caring democracy: Markets, equality and justice

Abstract: Caring Democracy Markets Equality And Though keenly aware of the personal and private character of many care activities, Tronto makes a compelling case for care as a public good and for rethinking the way in which caring responsibilities are carried out in order to achieve the freedom, equality, and justice that are necessary not only to better care, but to better democracy. Her notion of & caring with as a fundamental democratic ideal brings a much-needed corrective to the literature on care that enables us to think more ...

Energy decisions reframed as justice and ethical concerns

Abstract: All too often, energy policy and technology discussions are limited to the domains of engineering and economics. Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns. We conclude by proposing an energy justice framework centred on availability, affordability, due process, transparency and accountability, sustainability, equity and responsibility, which highlights the futurity, fairness and equity dimensions of energy production and use. The structure of the global energy system and the pending consequences of climate change are among the central justice issues of our time, with profound implications for human happiness, welfare, freedom, equity and due process1. One global study distinguishing between ‘experienced’ and ‘imposed’ effects of climate change — essentially separating out primary emitters from those suffering from climate change — concluded that people in rich countries impose 200–300 times more health damage on others than they experience themselves as a result of their nation's historical emissions2. Others argue that the costs of climate change will befall the weakest and least developed countries as well as the poorest in developed nations, while the benefits, if there are any, will probably be accrued by the rich and powerful3. Meanwhile, serious environmental burdens can arise from having too much energy (from waste, over-consumption and pollution4) or from not having enough (from lack of access to modern forms of energy, under-consumption and poverty). With increasing wealth, these environmental burdens shift in terms of severity, geographic scope and temporal reach. For instance, a decline in household environmental risks through enhanced access to modern energy services, clean water and better healthcare coincides with an increase in global risks such as climate change and other forms of transboundary environmental pollution. While solutions to some problems, such as poverty, obviously require an increase in energy consumption, solutions to other problems, such as climate change, might well require a decrease in energy consumption. Clearly, the current fossil fuel-based global energy system has many benefits but also many disadvantages, including significant health burdens that shorten lives, undermine the conditions for happiness and impede a more just and equitable society. Yet most of us confront and frame such climate and energy risks within a moral vacuum. It has been argued that our moral systems are ill-equipped to handle the complexity and expansiveness of modern-day energy and climate problems5,6, and that individuals will work to avoid feelings of responsibility for climate change or energy insecurity; some will even have optimistic biases, downgrading any negative information they receive and counterbalancing it with almost irrational exuberance7. In this Perspective, we argue that concepts from ethics and justice provide an important structure to think about, and approach, the world's climate and energy dilemmas. We reframe five contemporary energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as justice and ethics concerns. We then synthesize justice elements into a common framework that energy decision-makers can utilize to create a more just and equitable energy future. By ‘decision-makers’, we refer not only to the more traditional notion of policymakers and regulators, but also ordinary students, jurists, homeowners, businesspersons, investors and consumers — essentially, anyone that makes decisions or choices about energy conversion and use8. Admittedly, we take an anthropocentric perspective based on social justice principles, though there are certainly justice claims that arise with how humans interact with non-human forms of life. Some have called this human-centered approach ‘cosmopolitan justice’, as it acknowledges that all ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a collective morality9. Many scholars have taken up modern manifestations of these ideals, and have advanced the core arguments presented in Table 110,​11,​12,​13,​14,​15,​16,​17,​18,​19. These arguments underscore how all human beings have equal moral worth and, as we will argue, are deserving of ‘energy justice’.

Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research

Abstract: The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) highlighted the importance of cities to climate action, as well as the unjust burdens borne by the world's most disadvantaged peoples in addressing climate impacts. Few studies have documented the barriers to redressing the drivers of social vulnerability as part of urban local climate change adaptation efforts, or evaluated how emerging adaptation plans impact marginalized groups. Here, we present a roadmap to reorient research on the social dimensions of urban climate adaptation around four issues of equity and justice: (1) broadening participation in adaptation planning; (2) expanding adaptation to rapidly growing cities and those with low financial or institutional capacity; (3) adopting a multilevel and multi-scalar approach to adaptation planning; and (4) integrating justice into infrastructure and urban design processes. Responding to these empirical and theoretical research needs is the first step towards identifying pathways to more transformative adaptation policies.

Is there a global environmental justice movement

Abstract: One of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. There are conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste disposal. Therefore, there are many local complaints, as shown in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJatlas) and other inventories. And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice. Moreover, since the 1980s and 1990s, this movement has developed a set of concepts and campaign slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include environmental racism, popular epidemiology, the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, biopiracy, tree plantations are not forests, the ecological debt, climate justice, food sovereignty, land grabbing and water justice, among other concepts. These term...

Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy

Abstract: This book shows through argument and numerous policy-related examples how understanding moral philosophy can improve economic analysis, how moral philosophy can benefit from economists' analytical tools, and how economic analysis and moral philosophy together can inform public policy. Part I explores the idea of rationality and its connections to ethics, arguing that when they defend their formal model of rationality, most economists implicitly espouse contestable moral principles. Part II addresses the nature and measurement of welfare, utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis. Part III discusses freedom, rights, equality, and justice - moral notions that are relevant to evaluating policies, but which have played little if any role in conventional welfare economics. Finally, Part IV explores work in social choice theory and game theory that is relevant to moral decision making. Each chapter includes recommended reading and discussion questions.

Occupational Justice: Moral Imagination, Critical Reflection, and Political Praxis.

Abstract: Occupational justice is a term that has made its way onto the conceptual scene in occupational therapy and occupational science over the last two decades (Durocher, Gibson, & Rappolt, 2014; Durocher, Rappolt, & Gibson, 2014; Stadnyk, Townsend, & Wilcock, 2010; Townsend & Wilcock, 2004a, 2004b; Whiteford & Townsend, 2011; Wilcock, 2006; Wilcock & Hocking, 2015; Wilcock & Townsend, 2000). As a relatively new construct, debates are ongoing about its theoretical underpinnings, conceptualizations, definitions, and its relationship to related constructs such as social justice, human rights, and political practice. The articles in this special issue reveal the theoretical “fruitfulness” (Kuhn, 1977) of the construct of occupational justice for illuminating justice issues from an occupational perspective.

Transport Justice: Designing fair transportation systems

Abstract: Transport Justice develops a new paradigm for transportation planning based on principles of justice. Author Karel Martens starts from the observation that for the last fifty years the focus of transportation planning and policy has been on the performance of the transport system and ways to improve it, without much attention being paid to the persons actually using – or failing to use – that transport system. There are far-reaching consequences of this approach, with some enjoying the fruits of the improvements in the transport system, while others have experienced a substantial deterioration in their situation. The growing body of academic evidence on the resulting disparities in mobility and accessibility, have been paralleled by increasingly vocal calls for policy changes to address the inequities that have developed over time. Drawing on philosophies of social justice, Transport Justice argues that governments have the fundamental duty of providing virtually every person with adequate transportation and thus of mitigating the social disparities that have been created over the past decades. Critical reading for transport planners and students of transportation planning, this book develops a new approach to transportation planning that takes people as its starting point, and justice as its end.

Towards data justice? The ambiguity of anti-surveillance resistance in political activism:

Abstract: The Snowden leaks, first published in June 2013, provided unprecedented insights into the operations of state-corporate surveillance, highlighting the extent to which everyday communication is integrated into an extensive regime of control that relies on the ‘datafication’ of social life. Whilst such data-driven forms of governance have significant implications for citizenship and society, resistance to surveillance in the wake of the Snowden leaks has predominantly centred on techno-legal responses relating to the development and use of encryption and policy advocacy around privacy and data protection. Based on in-depth interviews with a range of social justice activists, we argue that there is a significant level of ambiguity around this kind of anti-surveillance resistance in relation to broader activist practices, and critical responses to the Snowden leaks have been confined within particular expert communities. Introducing the notion of ‘data justice’, we therefore go on to make the case that resistance to surveillance needs to be (re)conceptualized on terms that can address the implications of this data-driven form of governance in relation to broader social justice agendas. Such an approach is needed, we suggest, in light of a shift to surveillance capitalism in which the collection, use and analysis of our data increasingly comes to shape the opportunities and possibilities available to us and the kind of society we live in.

Migration in Political Theory: The Ethics of Movement and Membership

Abstract: PART ONE: ENTRY AND EXIT PART TWO: MIGRATION, EQUALITY, AND JUSTICE PART THREE: MIGRATION AND MEMBERSHIP

Climate justice and the international regime: before, during, and after Paris

Abstract: With a focus on key themes and debates, this article aims to illustrate and assess how the interaction between justice and politics has shaped the international regime and defined the nature of the international agreement that was signed in COP21 Paris. The work demonstrates that despite the rise of neo-conservatism and self-interested power politics, questions of global distributive justice remain a central aspect of the international politics of climate change. However, while it is relatively easy to demonstrate that international climate politics is not beyond the reach of moral contestations, the assessment of exactly how much impact justice has on climate policies and the broader normative structures of the climate governance regime remains a very difficult task. As the world digests the Paris Agreement, it is vital that the current state of justice issues within the international climate change regime is comprehensively understood by scholars of climate justice and by academics and practitioners, not least because how these intractable issues of justice are dealt with (or not) will be a crucial factor in determining the effectiveness of the emerging climate regime. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:834–851. doi: 10.1002/wcc.419 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond Tolerance

Abstract: Very diverse societies pose real problems for Rawlsian models of public reason. This is for two reasons: first, public reason is unable accommodate diverse perspectives in determining a regulative ideal. Second, regulative ideals are unable to respond to social change. While models based on public reason focus on the justification of principles, this book suggests that we need to orient our normative theories more toward discovery and experimentation. The book develops a unique approach to social contract theory that focuses on diverse perspectives. It offers a new moral stance that author Ryan Muldoon calls, "The View From Everywhere," which allows for substantive, fundamental moral disagreement. This stance is used to develop a bargaining model in which agents can cooperate despite seeing different perspectives. Rather than arguing for an ideal contract or particular principles of justice, Muldoon outlines a procedure for iterated revisions to the rules of a social contract. It expands Mill's conception of experiments in living to help form a foundational principle for social contract theory. By embracing this kind of experimentation, we move away from a conception of justice as an end state, and toward a conception of justice as a trajectory. Listen to Robert Talisse interview Ryan Muldoon about Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World on the podcast, New Books in Philosophy: http://tinyurl.com/j9oq324 Also, read Ryan Muldoon’s related Niskanen Center article, "Diversity and Disagreement are the Solution, Not the Problem," published Jan. 10, 2017: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/diversity-disagreement-solution-not-problem/

Justice from within: The relations between a procedurally just organizational climate and police organizational efficiency, endorsement of democratic policing, and officer well-being.

Abstract: Recent clashes between law enforcement and the public have led to increased attention on policing strategies that build trust and motivate cooperation in communities through the application of fair procedures and decision-making. A growing body of policing research has highlighted that officers commonly report working within police departments that lack procedural fairness and that these intradepartmental dynamics influence officers motivation and behavior on the street. This study builds on this work by examining the influence of a procedurally fair organizational climate on officer’s organizational behavior, commitment to democratic policing, and well-being. Patrol officers and sergeants in a large urban police force completed surveys assessing their perceptions of their department, the communities they police, their views on different policing styles, and their well-being. Results showed that when officers were in a procedurally fair department, they were more likely to trust and feel obligated to obey their supervisors, less likely to be psychologically and emotionally distressed, and less likely to be cynical and mistrustful about the world in general and the communities they police in particular. More importantly, these effects were associated with greater endorsement of democratic forms of policing, increased organizational efficiency, and officer well-being. Taken together these results clearly support the utility of infusing procedural justice into the internal working climate as a means to improve police officer job performance, their well-being, and their relationship with the communities they police.

Children's recognition of fairness and others' welfare in a resource allocation task: Age related changes

Abstract: The present study investigated age-related changes regarding children's (N = 136) conceptions of fairness and others' welfare in a merit-based resource allocation paradigm. To test whether children at 3- to 5-years-old and 6- to 8-years-old took others' welfare into account when dividing resources, in addition to merit and equality concerns, children were asked to allocate, judge, and reason about allocations of necessary (needed to avoid harm) and luxury (enjoyable to have) resources to a hardworking and a lazy character. While 3- to 5-year-olds did not differentiate between distributing luxury and necessary resources, 6- to 8-year-olds allocated luxury resources more meritoriously than necessary resources. Further, children based their allocations of necessary resources on concerns for others' welfare, rather than merit, even when one character was described as working harder. The findings revealed that, with age, children incorporated the concerns for others' welfare and merit into their conceptions of fairness in a resource allocation context, and prioritized these concerns differently depending on whether they were allocating luxury or necessary resources. Further, with age, children weighed multiple moral concerns including equality, merit, and others' welfare, when determining the fair allocation of resources. (PsycINFO Database Record

Voice and Agency: Where Are We Now?

Abstract: This article examines how scholarship in feminist economics has developed and used evolving definitions of voice and agency, analyzing their expressions in the key domains of households, markets, and the public sphere. It builds on a rich body of work that explores the voice and agency of women and girls using bargaining theory, as well as behavioral and experimental economics, to understand inequalities in power and agency in relation to different institutional domains and socioeconomic processes. It also discusses each study in this volume, highlighting their contributions and drawing attention to critical gaps that remain in the literature.

Necessary energy uses and a minimum standard of living in the United Kingdom:energy justice or escalating expectations?

Abstract: Access to affordable energy is a core dimension of energy justice, with recent work examining the relation between energy use and well-being in these terms. However, there has been relatively little examination of exactly which energy uses should be considered basic necessities within a given cultural context and so of concern for energy justice. We examine the inclusion of energy-using necessities within the outcomes of deliberative workshops within members of the public focused on defining a minimum-standard of living in the UK and repeated biannually over a six year period. Our secondary analysis shows that energy uses deemed to be necessities are diverse and plural, enabling access to multiple valued energy services, and that their profile has to some degree shifted from 2008 to 2014. The reasoning involved is multidimensional, ranging across questions of health, social participation, opportunity and practicality. We argue that public deliberations about necessities can be taken as legitimate grounding for defining minimum standards and therefore the scope of ‘doing justice’ in fuel poverty policy. However we set this in tension with how change over time reveals the escalation of norms of energy dependency in a society that on climate justice grounds must radically reduce carbon emissions.

Stories We Tell About Labor: Turkopticon and the Trouble with "Design"

Abstract: This paper argues that designers committed to advancing justice and other non-market values must attend not only to the design of objects, processes, and situations, but also to the wider economic and cultural imaginaries of design as a social role. The paper illustrates the argument through the case of Turkopticon, originally an activist tool for workers in Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), built by the authors and maintained since 2009. The paper analyzes public depictions of Turkopticon which cast designers as creative innovators and AMT workers as without agency or capacity to change their situation. We argue that designers' elevated status as workers in knowledge economies can have practical consequences for the politics of their design work. We explain the consequences of this status for Turkopticon and how we adapted our approach in response over the long term. We argue for analyses of power in design work that account for and develop counters to hegemonic beliefs and practices about design as high-status labor.

Rethinking the Role of “Culture” in Educational Equity: From Cultural Competence to Equity Literacy

Abstract: “Culture” has tended to play a central role in the nomenclature and operationalization of popular frameworks for attending to matters of diversity in education. These frameworks include multicultural education, culturally responsive pedagogy, culturally relevant teaching, cultural proficiency, and cultural competence. In this article, I argue that too tight a focus on “culture,” the meaning of which remains intensely contested, stunts the possibility of real progress toward educational justice. As I will show, although some culture-centric frameworks are grounded in commitments to educational equity, they often are implemented in ways that essentialize marginalized students and mask the forms of structural injustice that feed educational outcome disparities. I argue for a new commitment to centering equity rather than culture in conversations and practices related to educational justice—recommending the equity literacy framework as one way to enact that commitment.

The Unfulfillable Promise of Meritocracy: Three Lessons and Their Implications for Justice in Education

Abstract: This paper draws on a literature in sociology, psychology and economics that has extensively documented the unfulfilled promise of meritocracy in education. I argue that the lesson learned from this literature is threefold: (1) educational institutions in practice significantly distort the ideal meritocratic process; (2) opportunities for merit are themselves determined by non-meritocratic factors; (3) any definition of merit must favor some groups in society while putting others at a disadvantage. Taken together, these conclusions give reason to understand meritocracy not just as an unfulfilled promise, but as an unfulfillable promise. Having problematized meritocracy as an ideal worth striving for, I argue that the pervasiveness of meritocratic policies in education threatens to crowd out as principles of justice, need and equality. As such, it may pose a barrier rather than a route to equality of opportunity. Furthermore, meritocratic discourse legitimates societal inequalities as justly deserved such as when misfortune is understood as personal failure. The paper concludes by setting a research agenda that asks how citizens come to hold meritocratic beliefs; addresses the persistence of (unintended) meritocratic imperfections in schools; analyzes the construction of a legitimizing discourse in educational policy; and investigates how education selects and labels winners and losers.

Decolonizing Food Justice: Naming, Resisting, and Researching Colonizing Forces in the Movement

Abstract: Over the past 15years social movements for community food security, food sovereignty, and food justice have organized to address the failures of the multinational, industrial food system to fairly and equitably distribute healthy, affordable, culturally ap- propriate real food. At the same time, these social movements, and research about them, re-inscribe white, patriarchal systems of power and privilege. We argue that in order to correct this pattern we must relocate our social movement goals and practices within a decolonizing and feminist leadership framework. This framework challenges movement leadership and scholarship by white people who uncritically assume a natural order of leadership based on academic achievement. We analyze critical points in our collabora- tion over the last four years using these frameworks. Doing so highlights the challenges and possibilities for a more inclusive food justice movement and more just scholarship.

Beyond the Business Case: The Need for Both Utility and Justice Rationales for Increasing the Share of Women on Boards

Abstract: Manuscript type Empirical Research Question In the context of the recent introduction of gender representation regulations (quotas) for boards in public limited companies (PLCs) in Norway, this article explores how gender quotas designed to increase the share of women in senior positions are rationalized and/or justified by those who benefit, and asks: what arguments do the beneficiaries of quotas tend to use when discussing their usefulness? Research Findings/Insights Drawing on qualitative interview data from 19 female non-executive board members, the article illustrates how women draw on utility, mainly the “business case,” and individual justice arguments both in support of quotas and to justify their use in helping women attain board positions. Further, it highlights how issues of merit and of gender are entangled with these arguments in often contradictory ways. In so doing, the article challenges and complicates some of the key critiques of gender quotas often found in the public and academic debates. Theoretical/Academic Implications This article advances theory around the intersection of justice and utility arguments in relation to the use of quotas to increase diversity on boards. Moreover, this article provides empirical support by demonstrating how “the first wave” of women affected by quotas are legitimizing their role on boards in a context in which their role is in question. In addition, this article advances the literature regarding women on boards by demonstrating the need for a discourse about political strategies, such as quotas on boards, that goes beyond the narrow understanding of the business case that has until now dominated public, political, and academic debates. In particular, this article argues for the need to build on both utility and justice logic when making a case for increasing the share of women on boards. Practical Implications With the current focus on how to increase diversity and the share of women on boards, this study highlights the importance of regulation as well as the importance of reframing the debate using utility and justice lines of arguments rationalized by merit arguments.

In Pursuit of Paradigm: A Theory of Restorative Justice

Abstract: Restorative justice is a new way of looking at criminal justice that focuses on repairing the harm done to people and relationships rather than on punishing offenders. Originating in the 1970s as mediation between victims and offenders, in the 1990s restorative justice broadened to include communities of care as well, with victims’ and offenders’ families and friends participating in collaborative processes called “conferences” and “circles.” This new focus on healing and the related empowerment of those affected by a crime seems to have great potential for enhancing social cohesion in our increasingly disconnected societies. Restorative justice and its emerging practices constitute a promising new area of study for social science. In this paper, we propose a conceptual theory of restorative justice so that social scientists may test these theoretical concepts and their validity in explaining and predicting the effects of restorative justice practices. The foundational postulate of restorative justice is that crime harms people and relationships and that justice requires the healing of the harm as much as possible. Out of this basic premise arise key questions: who is harmed, what are their needs and how can those needs be met? A CONCEPTUAL THEORY OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE Restorative justice is a collaborative process involving those most directly affected by a crime, called the “primary stakeholders,” in determining how best to repair the harm caused by the offense. But who are the primary stakeholders in restorative justice and how shall they be involved in the search for justice? Our proposed theory of restorative justice has three distinct but related conceptual structures: the Social Discipline Window (Wachtel, 1997, 2000; Wachtel & McCold, 2000), Stakeholder Roles (McCold, 1996, 2000) and the Restorative Practices Typology (McCold, 2000; McCold & Wachtel, 2002). Each of these, in turn, explains the how, what and who of restorative justice theory. Social Discipline Window Everyone with an authority role in society faces choices in deciding how to maintain social discipline: parents raising children, teachers in classrooms, employers supervising employees or justice professionals responding to criminal offences. Until recently, Western societies have relied on punishment, usually perceived as the only effective way to discipline those who misbehave or commit crimes. Punishment and other choices are illustrated by the Social Discipline Window (Figure 1), which is created by combining two continuums: “control,” exercising restraint or directing influence over others, and “support,” nurturing, encouraging or assisting others. For simplicity, the combinations from each of the two continuums are limited to “high” and “low.” Clear limit-setting and diligent enforcement of behavioral standards characterize high social control. Vague or weak behavioral standards and lax or nonexistent regulation of behavior characterize low social control. Active assistance and concern for well-being characterize high social support. Lack of encouragement and minimal provision for physical and emotional needs characterize low social support. By combining a high or low level of control with a high or low level of support the Social Discipline Window defines four approaches to the HIGH

Poverty and the ideological imperative: a call to unhook from deficit and grit ideology and to strive for structural ideology in teacher education

Abstract: In this article I explore the educational equity implications of three popular ideological positions that drive teachers’ and teacher educators’ understandings of, and responses to, poverty and economic injustice in schools: deficit ideology, grit ideology, and structural ideology. The educator’s ideological position, I illustrate, determines their understandings of conditions such as socio-economic-based outcome disparities. Those understandings, in turn, determine the extent to which the strategies they can imagine have the potential to eliminate or mitigate those disparities. I then argue that teacher education for equity and economic justice must equip pre- and in-service educators with a structural ideology of poverty and economic injustice, based on a sophisticated understanding of relationships between structural inequalities and educational outcome disparities, rather than a deficit or grit ideology, both of which obscure structural inequalities and, as a result, render educators ill-equip...

Food justice or food sovereignty? Understanding the rise of urban food movements in the USA

Abstract: As world food and fuel prices threaten expanding urban populations, there is greater need for the urban poor to have access and claims over how and where food is produced and distributed. This is especially the case in marginalized urban settings where high proportions of the population are food insecure. The global movement for food sovereignty has been one attempt to reclaim rights and participation in the food system and challenge corporate food regimes. However, given its origins from the peasant farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, food sovereignty is often considered a rural issue when increasingly its demands for fair food systems are urban in nature. Through interviews with scholars, urban food activists, non-governmental and grassroots organizations in Oakland and New Orleans in the United States of America, we examine the extent to which food sovereignty has become embedded as a concept, strategy and practice. We consider food sovereignty alongside other dominant US social movements such as food justice, and find that while many organizations do not use the language of food sovereignty explicitly, the motives behind urban food activism are similar across movements as local actors draw on elements of each in practice. Overall, however, because of the different histories, geographic contexts, and relations to state and capital, food justice and food sovereignty differ as strategies and approaches. We conclude that the US urban food sovereignty movement is limited by neoliberal structural contexts that dampen its approach and radical framework. Similarly, we see restrictions on urban food justice movements that are also operating within a broader framework of market neoliberalism. However, we find that food justice was reported as an approach more aligned with the socio-historical context in both cities, due to its origins in broader class and race struggles.

Sexual Violence during War and Peace: Gender, Power, and Post-Conflict Justice in Peru

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. Sexual Violence in War 3. Sexual Violence and the Reproduction of Inequalities 4. Transitional Justice, Truths, and Narratives of Violence 5. Impunity 6. Peacetime Violence 7. Sexual Violence and Post-conflict Justice

Revolution in Rojava: Democratic Autonomy and Women's Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan

Abstract: List of Figures Translator's Note Foreword by David Graeber Introduction Prologue: On the Road to Til Kocer 1. Background 2. Rojava's Diverse Cultures 3. Democratic Confederalism 4. The Liberation 5. A Womens' Revolution 6. Democratic Autonomy in Rojava 7. Civil Society Associations 8. Defense: The Theory of the Rose 9. The New Justice System 10. The Democratization of Education 11. Health Care 12. The Social Economy 13. Ecological Challenges 14. Neighbors 15. Prospects Afterword: The Philosophy of Democratic Autonomy by Asya Abdullah Glossary About the Authors Index