RETHINKING SOCIAL JUSTICE
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Transcript of RETHINKING SOCIAL JUSTICE
RETHINKINGSOCIAL JUSTICE
Göteborgs UniversitetRektors chefs- och prefektmöte
Varberg, 2 april 2014
Jan ScholteInstitutionen för globala studier
VISION 2020
‘strong social responsibility and global engagement’
?? But what could this mean??
OUTLINE
• Reconfiguring society• Distributive justice• Cognitive justice• Ecological justice• A new democracy?• Implementation in the University
RECONFIGURING SOCIETY
• Society as Country-State-Nation• Methodological territorialism, statism,
nationalism
• Globalization• Regionalization (substate and suprastate)• Re-nationalization• Localization
RECONFIGURING SOCIETY
We live transscalar lives
• shift from social geography in terms of countries and ‘international relations’ to social geography as an interplay of scales
‘global engagement’ is also (interlinked) regional, national, local and proximate engagement
RECONFIGURING SOCIETY
RECONFIGURING SOCIETYETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
• To what ’society’ are we responsible and how?
• domains of distributive justice• life-worlds needing cognitive justice• need for ecological justice
• What does democracy mean when society does not relate (only) to the nation-state-country?
RECONFIGURING SOCIETYETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
‘social responsibility’ with simultaneous and interrelated economic, cultural, ecological and political dimensions
….in a transscalar society
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICEBEYOND THE WELFARE STATE
social responsibility of distributive justice ˃
narrowing of material inequalities of class and gender within a national space
GLOBAL MALDISTRIBUTION
245 : 1Top 5% : Bottom 25%
Global Household Incomes (NB not assets)(2008)
GLOBAL MALDISTRIBUTION
61 – 70Global Gini Coefficient
Cf. Sweden 23 (2005)EU 31 (2011), USA 45 (2007)
GLOBAL MALDISTRIBUTION
not only between countries and classes
• genders• ages• castes• (dis) abilities• faiths
• indigeneity• languages• nationalities• races• sexual orientations
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
• increase international aid or change global rules – for example …
• global progressive taxation• alternative currencies• revised intellectual property• digital access
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
• fair trade schemes• equitable migration• universal basic income
• coupled with progressive redistribution regionally, nationally and locally, i.e., on transscalar basis
COGNITIVE JUSTICE
• justice is ideational as well as material
• how to extend due recognition, respect, voice and influence to diversities of life-worlds, life-ways, life-styles in transscalar spaces?
• thereby obtaining more creative and more effective global engagement and cooperation
COGNITIVE JUSTICE
• beyond assimilationist modernism – ‘make the world like Sweden’ – erase the Other
• beyond multiculturalist traditionalism – ‘to each their own’ – refuse the Other
• beyond interculturalist romanticism – ‘let’s communicate’ – embrace the Other
• transculturalist learning for change – de-other the other and other the self
COGNITIVE JUSTICE
• insistence on reflexivity – awareness of context and historicity
• acknowledgement of culture/power relations – the arbitrary nature of knowledge hierarchies
• recognition of cultural complexity – not fixed, neatly bounded and separate nations or civilisations, but fluid intersections of multiple facets of being, becoming and belonging
COGNITIVE JUSTICE
• celebration of diversity as opportunity and creative resource rather than ‘problem’; pursuit of divergence rather than consensus
• cultivation of humility in the face of unpalatable difference for maximal accommodation
• promotion of deep listening – concentrated, careful, patient, receptive, empathetic
• reciprocal learning for mutual positive change
ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE
• Homo sapiens are able to make deliberate interventions that purposively alter ecology• right action and right organisation in
humanity’s relation to the web of life• social responsibility as ecological
responsibility
ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE
• a largely forgotten aspect of justice in modern society• enormous harms and disruptions• human population growth – 3 to 9
billion• 10% of all homo sapiens who have
ever lived
ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE
• pollutions and toxicities• natural resource depletion – 3x 2000
to 2050• biodiversity losses – 6 to 17,000• climate change
ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE
• anthropocentrism and extractivism• separating humanity and its society from ‘nature’• affirming the superiority and greater importance
of humanity relative to other life• assuming humanity’s prerogative to use the rest
of the biosphere solely for its benefit• viewing the ability to control and alter ‘nature’ as
the chief mark of human progress.
ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE
• from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism?• from a society-nature divide to humanity
within a web-of-life• from environmentalism to ecological integrity• economy beyond growth and ‘sustainability’• beyond human rights to ecological justice• from citizenship to eco-ship (florestania)
SUMMARY: A NEW DEMOCRACY?
• plural demoi (peoples)• transcultural politics of diversity• structural redistribution• from citizenship to eco-ship• transscalar action to engage
polycentric governance
IMPLEMENTATION
• certainly these new ethics are not achieved automatically, straightforwardly or quickly
• however, contemporary social change moves swiftly; who would have thought …?
• it is vital to have creative visions to meet and guide the transformations
IMPLEMENTATION THROUGH GU
• be a ’transscalar’ university• infuse staff and students with
adjusted conceptions of justice – material, cognitive, ecological – for a new world• lead in the development of new
democratic practices
VISION 2020
‘strong social responsibility and global engagement’
Tack så mycket