The Sharing of Risks and the Risks of Sharing: Solidarity and Social Justice in the Welfare State

Solidarity as a social phenomenon means a sharing of feelings, interests, risks and responsibilities. The Western-European Welfare State can be seen as an organized system of solidarity, historically grown from group solidarity among workers, later between workers and employers, moving towards solidarity between larger social groups: between healthy people and the sick, between the young and the elderly, between the employed and the unemployed. This sharing of risks at a societal level however, has revealed the risks of sharing. In the postwar development of the welfare state, solidarity has been organized mainly in administrative forms, run by anonymous bureaucracies and giving way to free riders and calculative citizens. This article describes this development and provides arguments for a reorientation of the welfare state and for the re-allocation of rights, risks and responsibilities.     

Spheres of Justice within Schools: Reflections and Evidence on the Distribution of Educational Goods

This article argues that there are distinct spheres of justice within education and examines a range of justice norms and distribution rules that characterize the daily life of schools and classrooms. Moving from the macro to micro level, we identify the following five areas: the right to education, the allocation of (or selection into) learning places, teaching–learning practices, teachers’ treatment of students, and student evaluations of grade distribution. We discuss the literature on the beliefs by students and teachers about the just distribution of educational goods in these five domains, and on the practices used in the actual allocation of these goods. In line with normative ‘spheres of justice’ arguments in social theory, we conclude that the ideals of social justice within schools vary strongly according to the particular resource to be distributed. Moreover, these ideals often do not correspond with the practices that actually guide resource distribution in education, which may go some way toward explaining explicit or latent conflicts in this sphere. Justice is a human construction, and it is doubtful that it can be made in only one way – Michael Walzer (1983, p. 5)     

Criteria of Justice: Desert,Needs and Equality

The conception of social justice as equality is defended in this paper by examining what may appear to be two inegalitarian conceptions of justice, as distribution according to desert and as distribution according to need. It is argued that claims of just entitlement arise within a context of reciprocal co-operation for mutual benefit. Within such a context there are special cases where it can be said that those who contribute more deserve more, and that those who need more should get more, but those claims themselves presuppose a norm of equal contribution and equal benefit. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Inequality,Justice, and the Myth of Unsituated Market Exchange

This article examines inequality from a framework of justice that attends to the socially situated nature of market activity, including exchange. I argue that accounts of unsituated exchange—accounts of market exchange that abstract from social situations, such as philosopher Robert Nozick’s influential libertarian account of justice—overlook various factors that contribute to growing economic inequality in contemporary society. Analyses of market exchange must incorporate the role of “third parties” who play a role in shaping and/or who are affected by economic transactions. The involvement of these additional parties, including the government and future generations, is not interference but, instead, an integral part of the economic and moral accounting of exchange. An approach to justice and inequality which embeds exchange within multiple dimensions of economy and society is needed; the latter part of this article traces such a socially situated approach.     

公平与效率的辩证结合:中国社会发展的价值选择

公平与效率是社会发展中的基本矛盾,二者的结合机制反映了不同社会的发展特征及其基本价值取向。资本主义以资本增值为根本逻辑,坚持以物（资本）为中心的社会发展理念,形成了公平与效率的尖锐对立;社会主义坚持以人为中心的社会发展理念,能在社会发展中历史地实现公平与效率的辩证结合。中国在改革开放的探索中,在处理公平与效率的关系上不断进行调整,这既反映了中国社会发展观随着历史发展而不断进行的变革,更折射和体现了中国社会发展的根本价值选择。     

Justice, instruction, and the good: The case for public education in Aristotle and Plato'sLaws

This paper develops an interpretation and analysis of the arguments for public education which open Book VIII of Aristotle'sPolitics, drawing on both the wider Aristotelian corpus and on examination of continuities with Plato'sLaws. Part III: Sections VIII-XI examine the two arguments which Aristotle adduces in support of the claim that education should be provided through a public system. The first of these arguments concerns the need to unify society through education for friendship and the sharing of a common end. Several versions of his second argument are considered, and the most promising of them is elaborated in connection with an examination of the links between instruction and legislation in theLaws. This yields what is probably the most compelling argument there is for the claim that public supervision of education is anecessary condition for a just society.     

Catholic Social Teaching,Economic Inequality,and American Society

The essay begins with an explanation of the underlying theological vision that supports Catholic social teaching's commitment to the centrality of the common good and the role of solidarity as both a virtue and a norm. The vision of humanity as one family and the church as a sacrament of unity is the foundation for a communitarian ethic that prizes inclusion, participation, and relative equality in the quest for a truly just society. An array of social science studies is then employed to show that economic inequality “bleeds” into other realms of public life to undermine fundamental commitments of American society, namely, equal opportunity and political democracy. The essay concludes that an understanding of Catholic social teaching promotes a critical perspective that is deeply at odds with ongoing trends in the U.S. economy.     

Teenage Childbearing,Reproductive Justice,and Infant Mental Health

Reproductive justice advocates emphasize the rights of women to choose to have children, to decide the conditions under which they give birth, and to parent their children with support, safety, and dignity. This article examines what a reproductive justice perspective contributes to infant mental health work with teenage mothers and their families. It explores the historical framing of teenage pregnancy in which young mothers are the cause of a variety of social problems and in which the primary policy and practice approach is pregnancy prevention. The article offers alternative framings of teenage childbearing, based on reproductive justice principles, which focus on social conditions surrounding teenage parenthood and the meaning of motherhood in the lives of young women. These alternative frames shift the practice agenda to eradicating unjust social conditions and providing supports for young women in their roles as parents. The article then describes ways in which two infant mental health programs have incorporated reproductive justice principles into their work with young families: Chicago's community doula model and Florida's Young Parents Project for court-involved teenage parents. Finally, the article extracts a set of principles deriving from a reproductive justice perspective that are relevant to infant mental health work with young families.