Social Justice in Social Policy

It is claimed that social justice is firmly on the political agenda and is a major concern of numerous policy documents, think tanks and research units. However, ̳social justice‘ can be seen as a poorly defined ̳motherhood and apple pie‘ term. Virtually everyone is in favour of ̳social justice‘ but their interpretations of the term vary widely (there are many different varieties of apple!). We examine how the social policy literature defines social justice. First, we develop a template from the social justice literature of concepts (for example, patterned versus process; equity versus equality; autonomy versus solidarity; distributional criteria) drawing upon the work of the most influential authors in this area (eg Rawls, Nozick, Plant, Miller etc). Then, we report some early findings from a project designed to explore the concept as it is codified in different aspects of the social policy literature. Introduction At a time when public resources have become a battleground and the state is in the process of withdrawing welfare support in so many different directions the subject of ̳social justice‘ has become of increasing importance (Policy Exchange 2010, 2011). However, although its significance is almost universally accepted, social justice remains a highly contested concept, and nowhere are these two assertions more evident than in the establishment of the Commission for Social Justice by the Labour Party in 1992, and the Conservative‘s Centre for Social Justice in 2004 (see Burchardt and Craig, 2008). Miller (1999: ix) writes that social justice is an idea that is central to the politics of contemporary democracies. Spicker (1988: 135) claims that the concept of social justice has attracted more attention in recent years than any other question in political theory. However, if social justice is a vital concept for politics, political theory and society as a whole then we would argue that it sits at the very heart of what social policy is about. For example, Lavalette and Pratt maintain that ̳at the heart of social policy debates lies a series of ̳contested concepts such as equality, justice and rights‘ (2006: 105). Similarly, Daly (2011) argues that welfare is bound up with moral discussions about precepts such as equality, justice, freedom and rights, and implicit in this is the recognition that different ideas about social justice are fielded in different time periods, places and policy contexts (Newman and Yeates, 2008). The quality of these debates and their relationship to knowledge in allied areas has been a source of frustration for some commentators, where many principal works in modern political theory have been divorced from the reality of social and political issues: ...space travellers in Ackerman‘s (1981) bizarre discussion of social justice. When well-respected books maunder about the ̳right to walk on my hands‘ (Raz, 1986) or whether we can have a library in our back yard (Nozick, 1974), I have to curb my exasperation (Spicker, 2006: vi). In a similar vein Piachaud (2008) could suggest: ̳For practitioners of social policy, concerned with the practical policies reflecting many motivations, social justice is often a remote reference point, as abstruse as a lecture on thermodynamics to someone on the footplate of a steam engine‘. Burchardt and Craig (2008) aimed to bridge the gap between political philosophy and social policy by taking into account the practical limitations of the former, and the unwillingness of the latter to adequately refer to theories of social justice. The meaning and application of social justice in social policy writing is the subject of this paper. What we present here is the first part of an extensive project examining the meaning and applicability of social justice more broadly as a core social scientific, philosophical and political ideal. The findings are drawn from a two-stage comparative documentary analysis of two front-line social policy journals Social Policy and Administration and Critical Social Policy – over a ten year period 2000-2010. Social Justice There are various definitions of social justice. In the tradition of typical social policy students we commence with a definition from Wikipedia: ̳Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity that understands and values human rights, and that recognises the dignity of every human being‘. The traditional definition of social justice is in terms of distributive issues, and social justice and distributive justice are often used interchangeably (eg Miller, 1976, 1999). Rawls (1971) regards justice as fairness. Harvey (1973: 97) argues that justice is essentially a principle (or set of principles) for resolving conflicting claims. Miller (1976) defines social justice by its root meaning ̳suum cuique‘̳to each his own‘. Miller (1999: 1) defines social justice as ̳how the good and bad things in life should be distributed among the members of a human society‘. However, there has been a recent trend to define social justice in terms of recognition as well as redistribution (see below; eg Miller, 1999: 157). There are a number of typologies of social justice. One differentiates ̳patterned‘ from ̳historical‘, ̳processual‘, ̳procedural‘ or ̳entitlement‘ views (eg Nozick, 1974). A historical view examines the process by which distributions came into being. According to Nozick (1974: 151), ̳a distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means‘. In other words, it is necessary to inquire how a particular distribution came about. Patterned distributions are broadly based on ̳to each according to their x‘, where x is a principle such as need, merit or desert. Patterns can be based on arithmetic equality (cutting a cake into equal slices) or proportional equality (where unequal slices are justified on some other principle). Discussions in the social justice/philosophy literature discuss different elements or bases of social justice. For example, Sen argues that patterned principles of social justice can be seen in terms of ―to each according to his or her X‖. There is a range of competing principles: for example, merit, desert, worth, entitlement, need (Plant et al., 1980) need, worth, work and merit (Titmuss, 1968); need, contribution to the common good and merit (Runciman, 1966; Harvey, 1973); and rights, desert and need (Miller, 1976). There are large debates about the categorisation and content of these principles. Moreover, few of the above writers have made significant attempts to apply their criteria to welfare distributions. According to Harvey (1973: 99-100), several criteria have been suggested: inherent equality; valuation of services in terms of supply and demand; need; inherited rights; merit; contribution to common good; actual productive contribution; efforts and sacrifices. These eight are not mutually exclusive and they obviously require much more detailed interpretation and analysis. He follows Runciman (1966) in a weak ordering of need, contribution to common good, and merit. Harvey (1973: 98) writes that ̳unfortunately there is no one generally accepted principle of social justice to which we can appeal.‘ Methods Using Web of Knowledge we searched articles in two social policy journals: Critical Social Policy (CSP) and Social Policy and Administration (SPA) over a ten year period (2000-2010) using a set of key search terms. As discussed earlier we intend to extend this work much further, but facing limited time and other restrictions, we elected to start with these journals because they represent the mainstream (SPA) and more critical/radical (CSP) wings of social policy scholarship. Table 1 gives the ̳raw‘ numbers and the number of full text articles read after excluding articles focused on legal/criminal justice; gender equality. We decided to exclude these articles as studies on (eg) intergenerational fairness, gender and ̳race‘ equality, equal opportunities tend to draw on their own conceptual literature rather than the wider and broader social justice literature. In addition, we ̳hand searched‘ titles and abstracts to capture articles without the relevant key words but with some discussion of social justice.