Two Faces of Justice: A Milestone in Quantitative Cross-cultural Research

Abstract

Few matters dominate our everyday discussions as much as subject of injustice. Daily we suffer and commit manifold injustices, real or imagined, and if we are not engaging others in conversation about injustices we ourselves have experienced, we are being told about those in others' lives. Judged by how much of our attention it occupizs, injustice is indeed the most ordinary of our ordinary vices.' So we begin with a commonplace: Injustice concerns us. When wronged or harmed, we seek justice, and our search usually involves two related pursuits: establishing who is responsible for what happened, and sanctioning responsible party. Left as it is, however, this general truth hides much interesting variation, for people of world perceive harms, locate responsibility, and punish offenders in decidedly different ways. Hamilton and Sanders's Everyday Justice describes, explains, and compares how Americans and Japanese think about these tasks and thus uncovers some of fascinating variation that lies hidden behind universal urge to do justice. In process book also develops a theory of responsibility allocation that should greatly aid future researchers in their efforts to uncover still more of that legal-cultural variety.