Social Justice

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The principles of equity and fairness in the distribution of resources, opportunities, and outcomes in urban society.

Social inequality: This explores the factors that contribute to unequal access to resources, opportunities, and power within society.
Marginalization: This refers to the exclusion of certain individuals or groups from social, economic, or political spheres.
Discrimination: This involves the unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on characteristics like race, gender, sexuality, or socioeconomic status.
Racial justice: This examines the ways in which race intersects with social justice issues and how systemic racism affects marginalized communities.
Feminism: This focuses on gender-based inequalities and discrimination, advocating for the empowerment of all genders.
LGBTQ+ rights: This concerns the legal rights, protections, and freedoms of individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning.
Environmental justice: This looks at the ways in which environmental degradation disproportionately affects marginalized communities and how they can be protected from harm.
Intersectionality: This concept recognizes that multiple social identities (like race, gender, and class) intersect to create unique experiences of marginalization.
Economic inequality: This explores the underlying causes and consequences of economic disparities within society.
Poverty and social welfare: This looks at how poverty is defined, measured, and addressed through social welfare policies and programs.
Affordable housing: This examines the challenges of accessing affordable housing, including issues related to gentrification, displacement, and homelessness.
Urban planning and development: This explores the ways in which urban planning and development policies can impact social justice outcomes, including issues related to land use, transportation, and environmental sustainability.
Education equity: This concerns the unequal access to quality education, and the ways in which educational policies and practices perpetuate or alleviate inequities.
Criminal justice: This looks at the systemic biases and injustices within the legal system, including issues related to police brutality, the prison industrial complex, and mass incarceration.
Immigration and border justice: This examines the ways in which immigration policies impact undocumented individuals and communities, and the ways in which borders are used to perpetuate inequality.
Indigenous rights: This concerns the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, including issues related to land rights, cultural preservation, and historical trauma.
Disability justice: This looks at the ways in which people with disabilities experience marginalization and discrimination, and advocates for their inclusion and empowerment.
"Social justice is justice in relation to a fair balance in the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals's rights are recognized and protected."
"The concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society."
"The emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets, and economic justice."
"Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation."
"The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity."
"Interpretations that relate justice to a reciprocal relationship to society are mediated by differences in cultural traditions, some of which emphasize the individual responsibility toward society and others the equilibrium between access to power and its responsible use."
"Reinterpreting historical figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas."
"Gender, ethnic, and social equality, advocating justice for migrants, prisoners, the environment, and the physically and developmentally disabled."
"Classical and Christian philosophical sources, from Plato and Aristotle to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas."
"The term social justice finds its earliest uses in the late 18th century, albeit with unclear theoretical or practical meanings."
"The term was popularized generically through the writings of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati."
"Progressive Era American legal scholars, particularly Louis Brandeis and Roscoe Pound."
"From the early 20th century it was also embedded in international law and institutions."
"John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971)."
"The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action treats social justice as a purpose of human rights education."
"The use of the term was early on subject to accusations of redundancy and of rhetorical flourish."
"Luigi Taparelli coined and defined the term in a natural law social scientific treatise, establishing the natural law principle."
"Social justice is invoked today in efforts for gender, ethnic, and social equality, advocating justice for migrants, prisoners, the environment, and the physically and developmentally disabled."
"Social justice was made central to the philosophy of the social contract."
"Universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice."