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 – 70

Global 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