Reconstructing Social Justice

The rhetoric of social justice is commonplace but increasingly it means little more than a tag line or a punctuation point. Reconstructing Social Justice presents a new framework for social justice that will change the way people think about social justice and change the way people implement social justice. This book carves out an intellectual and practical space for social justice that is distinct from political, legal, and economic spheres. While emphasizing a distinct domain for social justice, the author then makes sense of its healing role in terms of the polity, economy, technology, and religion. Drawing from a rich supply of classroom experiences, her research on mosque controversies after September 11, 2001, and then the global examples of truth and reconciliation commissions, Frederking invites the reader to think about the relevance of social justice from the micro to the macro level. Rather than a set of policy outcomes or ideological positions, social justice is a process of social accountability that demands honest and transparent engagement. While disagreement is likely and controversy inevitable, this social justice process reaffirms our connectedness and moves us forward as a collective.

The rhetoric of social justice is commonplace but increasingly it means little more than a tag line or a punctuation point. Reconstructing Social Justice presents a new framework for social justice that will change the way people think about social justice and change the way people implement social justice. This book carves out an intellectual and practical space for social justice that is distinct from political, legal, and economic spheres. While emphasizing a distinct domain for social justice, the author then makes sense of its healing role in terms of the polity, economy, technology, and religion. Drawing from a rich supply of classroom experiences, her research on mosque controversies after September 11, 2001, and then the global examples of truth and reconciliation commissions, Frederking invites the reader to think about the relevance of social justice from the micro to the macro level. Rather than a set of policy outcomes or ideological positions, social justice is a process of social accountability that demands honest and transparent engagement. While disagreement is likely and controversy inevitable, this social justice process reaffirms our connectedness and moves us forward as a collective.

Drawing on his own experience teaching diverse grades and subjects, Kevin Kumashiro examines aspects of teaching and learning toward social justice, and suggests concrete implications for K-12 teachers and teacher educators.

What are Latin America’s prospects for the twenty-first century, in the face of rapidly changing international conditions and increasing internal social pressures? In this volume eminent Latin American scholars and activists explore their collective future. They analyze a wide range of issues, including economic alternatives to neoliberal policies,

Reconstructing Rawls has one overarching goal: to reclaim Rawls for the Enlightenment—more specifically, the Prussian Enlightenment. Rawls’s so-called political turn in the 1980s, motivated by a newfound interest in pluralism and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has led liberalism more broadly toward cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. Robert Taylor believes that it is time to redeem A Theory of Justice’s implicit promise of a universalistic, comprehensive Kantian liberalism. Reconstructing Rawls on Kantian foundations leads to some unorthodox conclusions about justice as fairness, to be sure: for example, it yields a more civic-humanist reading of the priority of political liberty, a more Marxist reading of the priority of fair equality of opportunity, and a more ascetic or antimaterialist reading of the difference principle. It nonetheless leaves us with a theory that is still recognizably Rawlsian and reveals a previously untraveled road out of Theory—a road very different from the one Rawls himself ultimately followed.

This book examines and offers suggestions for how post-conflict practices should conceptualize and address harms committed by child soldiers for successful social reconstruction in the aftermath of mass atrocity. It defends the use of accountability and considers the agency of youth participants in violent conflict as responsible moral entities.

This book takes bold steps in forming much-needed philosophical foundations for restorative justice through deconstructing and reconstructing various models of thinking. It challenges current debates through the consideration and integration of various disciplines such as law, criminology, philosophy and human rights into restorative justice theory, resulting in the development of new and stimulating arguments. Topics covered include the close relationship and convergence of restorative justice and human rights, some of the challenges of engagement with human rights, the need for the recognition of the teachings of restorative justice at both the theoretical and the applied level, the Aristotelian theory on restorative justice, the role of restorative justice in schools and in police practice and a discussion of the humanistic African philosophy of Ubuntu. With international contributions from various disciplines and through the use of value based research methods, the book deconstructs existing concepts and suggests a new conceptual model for restorative justice. This unique book will be of interest to academics, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners.

Taken from papers presented at the 2015 International Social Theory Consortium (ISTC), this volume focusses on “Reconstruction”, dedicated to taking account of and interrogating the possibility of picking up the pieces.