Toward a Synergetic View of Social Justice Judgments: The Israeli Case

Abstract

In my talk today, I will present a personal conceptual journey that I have undertaken over the last two decades, since I became a researcher of social justice judgments— societal distribution preferences with respect to different classes of resources (hereafter, SJJ). This journey can be briefly described as an attempt to create a bridge between culture-blind and more indigenous meanings of SJJ. For many years, my work focused on the study of commonalities of SJJ structures. My position was culture-blind; I was an ‘‘outsider’’ researcher who searched for universals through replications of SJJ configurations across different conditions, including culture. Later, I began to be excited by new forms of knowledge about SJJ and I became more sensitive to culture. To some extent, I became an ‘‘internal’’ researcher who explored more indigenous forms of knowledge about social justice. I also aimed to develop a dynamic dialog between these two forms of knowledge. In my case, the ‘‘natural’’ context in which to pursue this dialog was Israeli society. In the following, I elaborate on my journey and travel across its various sites. Even though this is a personal journey, I would not have been able to make it without the invaluable help and collaboration of Chezi Dar, Klaus Hurrelman, Nura Resh, Rani Lahav, Manfred Schmitt, and my colleagues and students at the University of Haifa. Throughout this journey, Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice has been thought-provoking and a major source of inspiration for my own ideas.