Culture Wars and Social Justice: Week 1 Social Justice

On Social Justice and Gramsci

Justice

Fair treatment of all under the law.

Social Justice

• Fair treatment for all persons in a context wider than is encompassed by current law. Equity on all fronts.

• Protection of vulnerable/disadvantaged groups from harm and to give them support

Distributive Justice

• How a society distributes benefits/burdens among members.

• Social contract and recognition of each other’s rights and humanity.

• Reallocation of resources to create equal access.

Retributive Justice

• Redistribution of resources and redressing of historical and persisting inequalities and wrongs.

Restorative Justice

• Resolve long-standing conflicts through conflict resolution and increased understanding

• Engages offenders and survivors in process of mediation.

• Usually: public accountability; payment of reparations.

Transformative Justice

• An approach to wrongdoing or harm that seeks to place conflict within its larger structural context.

• Only when addressing, recognizing, and reconfiguring inequalities and conflicts can transformative justice be possible.

• Dismantling the social mechanisms that helped make ineuqalities possible.

Social Justice and Other Spheres

• Religious and spiritual movements

• Social movements

• Socioeconomic movements

Hegemony

• Superstructure enforced by the base and forms the base.

• Cultural/ideological sphere that reinforces the consent of the masses and security of the elite.

Positivist Conception of Culture

• Culture as observable, stable, homogenous

• People “have” a culture

• Distinct to a group of people, encompasses their lives

Constructivist Conception of Culture

• Culture as negotiable, heterogenous, evolving

• A common set of experiences and shaped by a variety of aspects

• Creation of a shared perspective in a group of people

Operation of Culture

• Context

• History

• Value

Fraser’s Tri-Dimensional Conception of Social Justice

• Redistribution (of resources)

• Recognition (of marginalized groups)

• Participation (of individuals and groups)

Dignity

Recognition of someone as human, as equal to one’s self and deserving of a humane quality of life.

Ideological Approach to SJ (Fraser)

• SJ as ideal/principle

• Standard of enforcement with transnational framework

• Legacy of past inequalities

Pragmatic Approach to SJ (Reisch)

• How to pursue it as a goal

• Equitable access; legal standing to challenge the wrongdoing

• Society-changing rights and policies

• Future harm reduction

Marxist Approach to Arts and Culture

• Superstructure legitimizes base/Base shapes superstructure

• Revolution: When the prole controls state powers

• Culture is secondary to economy and politics

• Only considers physical labor

Gramscian Philosophy of Praxis

• Revolution needs widespread acceptance to be lasting. Organization of knowledge and will key to revolutionary change.

• Unity of culture, politics, economy.

• All labor is labor.

Gramscian Conception of Culture

• Not tied to specific culture, time, place.

• Culture is how a class lived.

• Pluralist: all cultural expressions are valuable.

• Shifting, fluid. Sometimes incoherent, full of contradictions.

Hegemony

• System of class rule; predominance by consent. Disseimination of the interests of those who rule.

• Dominio (force, coercion)/Direzione (leadership, consensus).

• hidden in cultural texts (common sense)

• struggle for hegemony and unquestioned consent of the people

• counterhegemony

Gramsci’s Central Ideas

• The arts, humanities, and education are key in countering oppression

• Know thine enemy

Cultural hegemony

• Ideas with persuasive power (GPP: myths)

• Tug-of-war between hegemonic cultures and subordinate cultures