Distributive Justice and the Politics of Difference

Abstract

This essay identifies a point of convergence between economically oriented, distributive approaches to social justice and culturally oriented, identitarian ones. The primary problem of difference politics, I claim, is insuring that disadvantaged groups have equal abilities to participate in the social processes that construct and value identities. I argue that this is best accomplished through a conception of equality promoting human agency in both the cultural and economic spheres.     

Popular Attitudes toward Distributive Injustice: Beijing and Warsaw Compared

Popular reactions to the transition from centrally planned socialism to a market-based economy are explored through an examination of survey data on distributive justice and injustice attitudes in Beijing, China, in 2000, and in Warsaw, Poland, in 2001. In both capitals objective socioeconomic status characteristics of respondents have weaker and less consistent associations with distributive injustice attitudes than measures of subjective social status and self-reported trends in family standards of living. When objective and subjective respondent background characteristics are controlled for statistically, residents of democratic and enthusiastically capitalist Warsaw have stronger feelings of distributive injustice than respondents in undemocratic and only partially reformed Beijing. However, one exception to this pattern is that Beijing residents favor government redistribution to reduce income differences more than their Warsaw counterparts. Conjectures about the sources of these differences in distributive injustice attitudes are offered. Martin King Whyte is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His recent research focuses on changing family patterns in contemporary China, China’s distinctive economic development path, and popular attitudes toward distributive injustice issues. His recent publications include two edited volumes: China’s Revolutions and Intergenerational Relations (University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies) and One Country, Two Societies? Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China (Harvard University Press, forthcoming). Chunping Han recently completed her PhD in Sociology at Harvard, with a doctoral thesis entitled, Rural-Urban Cleavages in Perceptions of Inequality in Contemporary China.     

Had we but world enough,and time: integrating the dimensions of global justice

Requirements for a decent life are to be found in the dimensions both of human time and ecological space. While the latter has attracted attention from some global justice theorists, the former is a comparably neglected matter. This paper aims to integrate temporal and ecological perspectives in order to provide an enriched conceptual framework for grasping what global justice means today. We begin by showing that while contemporary political philosophy tends to assume a somewhat undifferentiated conception of time, treating temporal justice as a future-oriented concern distinct from issues of intra-generational justice, there are richer understandings to be found in some influential schools of critical social theory. Drawing then, particularly, on Alf Hornborg’s theory of ‘unequal exchange of time and space’, and supplementing this with insights from David Harvey, we analyse three ways in which disadvantage can be perpetrated in the dimension of time. We then show how those categories of temporal disadvantage broadly correspond with the three basic rights identified by Henry Shue. On this basis, we claim there is a strong argument for regarding temporality as an integral aspect of global justice here and now, for the generation already – although too often precariously – living.     

Transforming (but not transcending) the state system? On statist cosmopolitanism

Can states become committed and competent agents of cosmopolitan justice? The theory of ‘statist cosmopolitanism’ argues that they can: their citizens can be turned towards a commitment to cosmopolitan principles and actions by moral entrepreneurs constituting a ‘cosmopolitan avant-garde’, and can be sustained in their commitment to those principles by their pre-existing attachment to the state as a political community. Taking cosmopolitan principles as axiomatic, this paper subjects statist cosmopolitanism to critique. First, I question the scale of the transformation that a cosmopolitan avant-garde can engender given the complexity of the causal chains the avant-garde seek to elucidate, as well as the countervailing potency of the state itself which reinforces particularistic attitudes in its citizens. Second, I argue that even if, contra my preceding argument, the cosmopolitan avant-garde were to be successful, states would find it desirable to federally integrate in order to be better able to realise their cosmopolitan commitments. Such integration is compatible with statist cosmopolitanism’s motivational theory, even if not its institutional vision. Finally, I re-characterise the cosmopolitan avant-garde as agitators for the transcendence, rather than just transformation, of the state system.     

Falling into the justice gap? Between duties of social and global justice

The literature on cosmopolitan justice has yet to address what principles to adopt when duties of global justice and duties of social justice are in conflict. In this paper, I address David Miller’s contention that some may fall into the justice gap since we need to prioritize duties of social justice in cases of conflict. I argue that Miller’s analysis depends on three stipulations: the incommensurability of the values underlying duties of social justice and those of global justice; the need to justify duties of justice to their holders; and the need to consider the necessary institutions to realize and implement justice obligations. I argue against the incommensurability clause by showing that both conceptions of justice pursue moral equality as the underlying and commensurate value. Instead, I propose that the currencies of justice we employ in the two contexts of justice are different. Discussing the justifiability clause I agree with the stipulation that we have to justify decisions that affect the realization of justice to those who have to carry the burden of realizing them. This implies, however, that we may have to accept that some prioritize duties of global justice over duties of social justice. If this is the case, it seems as though the state has little recourse to prioritize duties of social justice. Finally, discussing Miller’s institutional clause I ask why the justice relevant institutions can only be those of the state. It is plausible to say that in our current world, institutions of humanitarian aid are effective means to satisfy duties of global justice.     

Palpable insecurity and Sen’s comparative view of justice: anthropological considerations

Amartya Sen’s comparative approach to justice makes clear that notions of justice are shaped by human agency and experience, and both his focus on the ‘internal view’ of well-being that emphasizes suffering as a central feature of illness and his recognition that social and cultural factors shape perceived injustice are critical to this approach. However, Sen questionably depicts the contributions of anthropological research to this project as limited to ‘the sensory dimension of ill-health.’ Focusing on mental health in the context of global justice, I argue that Sen’s treatise on justice can be refined through an ethnographic method that synchronizes attention to (1) cultural knowledge and social relations in ecological settings; (2) fundamental human needs; and (3) levels of analytic specificity involving situations, categories, and events. This method integrates analysis of internal phenomenology and external constraints of political economy and ideology. To demonstrate I discuss three cases involving students and violence in Rio de Janeiro, women and witchcraft in Ghana, and historical migration and war trauma among Vietnamese immigrants in which external conditions of insecurity and inequality contributed to deteriorating mental health conditions including depression, trauma, and debilitating anxiety.