Economic Injustice Research Articles

What can we learn from Bonhoeffer concerning the churches facing Palestinian suffering?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay on “The Church and the Jewish Question” (1933) inspired already two ecumenical processes. The first one was the decision of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in 1977 declaring apartheid a status confessionis, the second was the call of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) to engage in a processus confessionis “regarding economic injustice and ecological destruction” (1997). This led the LWF (2003), the WARC (2004) and also the World Council of Churches (WCC in 2013) to formally reject imperial neoliberal capitalism. Now it inspires the church actions against the state of Israel, depriving the Palestinians of their civil and political rights and the justification of this by misusing the Bible in (Christian) Zionism. This amounts to apartheid according to all relevant human rights organizations and the UN. There are important consequences for Christian-Jewish relations in Germany and the West today. After Western antisemitism and the horrific genocide by German Nazis against the Jewish people it was extremely necessary to overcome this past by intensive Christian-Jewish dialogue. However this has become a deal to silence critique of Israel’s constant violations of international law and human rights, as pointed out by the Jewish liberation theologian Marc Ellis. In order to overcome this a theology of land respectful of human rights is needed. Churches are being called to a process of study and discernment leading to action. A special responsibility lies with the churches in Germany and the USA because their governments must link their cooperation with the State of Israel to international law and human rights.

¿Qué vamos a comer?

What are specific ways performance contributes to discourses about hunger? One promising intervention is by decolonizing the relationship between food and the land. This essay examines Obsoleta (Obsolete), a multimedia happening by Colombian artistic collective Lenguajes Gastronómicos, as a force of decolonization against industrialized food, economic injustice, and extractivism. We invite readers to think of Colombia's mojojoy (an Amazonian larva) as a source of decolonial knowledge, as an indigenous food source, and as a disruptor of contemporary agribusinesses. Early in the twentieth century, the United Food Company introduced the African Oil Palm to Colombian's Pacific, setting the stage for escalating violations of territorial rights, deforestation, and ecological disasters. For the past hundred years, agribusinesses have fought the mojojoy as a pest that destroys their profitable crop. Obsoleta rebels against the colonial conception of the mojojoy as a biological pest indicating that the palm is the true invasive organism. Colombia's mojojoy is Obsoleta's protagonist. Waiters serve a meal with live mojojoys as the main dish. After fighting their disgust, guests ultimately taste the moving larva. It is a performance of entomophagy that questions colonized assumptions about food. Obsoleta's scenography performs as visual dramaturgy juxtaposing video-art sequences of agribusiness marketing strategies with videos of ultra-processed foods. Our analysis unpacks hunger as a failure of imagination about what we eat and our colonized guts. The Colombian and Mexican scholars of this essay propose a decolonial framework to understand how colonization has made Latin America hungry. Indigenous and local communities have eaten insects like the mojojoy in the Americas for millennia. Obsoleta visualizes a dramatic reimagining for the insect: the mojojoy as disruptor of contemporary industrialized food dynamics and the mojojoy as a food of the future. Although it might be an unwinnable battle for Colombia's invertebrate, it can still damage the industrial food industry by eating it from the insides and by exposing its colonial history.

Young Poets and Black Spaces: Vanessa Howard’s Poetics of Nature

This article explores the poetics of nature in the work of Vanessa Howard, a young poet involved with The Voice of the Children workshop, a group of Black and Latinx teenaged writers in Brooklyn, New York, who worked with poet June Jordan and educator Terri Bush from 1967 to 1971. A significant poet whose work has not received sufficient scholarly attention, Howard uses nuanced strategies to craft a poetics of nature that acknowledges injustice and remakes possibilities for envisioning and depicting Black spaces. Across a range of poems, Howard figures internal capacities of perception and imagination, and visions of natural and urban landscapes that counter external environments constrained by racial and economic injustice. The fact that Howard created her innovative poetics of nature as a young person demonstrates the importance of recovering and including young poets in considerations of African American poetry and poetics.

Exploring the Portrayal of Indigenous Culture: A Sociocultural Critique of Folk Literature

The current study examines the relation of culture and language, conveying a range of forms resulting in diversified meanings contextually. Enriched with a visual representation , Pakistani culture presented on vehicles such as trucks and public transport: buses, rickshaws and coasters are also the representation of the indigenization of the cultures through respective languages. The data has been collected from the truck pictures frequently shared on Instagram for the propagation of indigenous culture, language and business purposes to attract customers by putting those phrases and verses written on the rear view side of the trucks. A qualitative approach has been implied to evaluate the data, whereas, the nature of the study is analytical using the images. . The main objective of the study is to analyse the visualized and scripted poetry with reference to Hymes’ social interaction model of SPEAKING (1974) as a theoretical framework. The research suggests that the representation of folk literature on truck vehicles gives us glimpses of the public opinions such as political system, social injustice, economic injustices and more prevalent issues in the country.The findings of the study signifies that indigenous languages permeate the message through printed stuff on trucks.

BORDER AND ILLEGAL MIGRATION IN LUIS ALBERTO URREA’S THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY: A TRUE STORY

In the last two decades, literature concerning Latin American undocumented migration to the United States has emerged as a significant resource for comprehending the evolving landscape of state authority. The article considers techno-militaristic and the discursive production of the migrant figure in Luis Alberto Urrea’s Devil’s Highway. The author considers how Urrea’s text constructs a notion of migrant subjectivity and how the text participates in the reproduction of the material and discursive conditions by which the undocumented migration is rendered to readers. Undocumented migration is the focus of cross-border migration story described by Luis Urrea. It emphasizes the pervasive impact of global capitalism on migration processes. The undocumented migrants are perceived by the dominant power as a sub-human category. Urrea’s Devil’s Highway describing contemporary undocumented migration allows for a more nuanced comprehension of migrant subjectivity, extending beyond economic injustice. Urrea interweaves the migrant’s journey with the intricate tales of the border. Nevertheless, the physical encounter of crossing the border constantly interrupts their journey. The desert's autonomous power inscribes the men's experiences instead of the men defining the land. Urrea directs the readers' attention to the tangible reality of the human bodies and the vast desert landscapes, crafting a multi-dimensional narrative that immerses the readers in the story. Urrea vividly portrays the brutal impact of the desert on the bodies of the walkers, urging the readers to empathize with their physical ordeal. The article argues that the subjectivity of undocumented migrants needs to be reconsidered in the context of such discourses as negative globalization, human rights, and economic dispossession.

Positive Peace in the Islamic Perspective of International Relations: The Case of Iran’s Foreign Policy

The characteristics of the interpretation of the concepts of “positive” and “negative” peace within the framework of the Islamic paradigm of international relations, as well as the application of Islamic approaches to conflict settlement by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) are analyzed. The relevance of the study is due to the need to rethink approaches to peacekeeping and move away from Western peace strategies and initiatives, since these approaches have demonstrated their inadequacy over the past 50 years. Based on the hermeneutic method of studying the Islamic sacred texts and comparative analysis, as well as the approach to “negative” and “positive” peace of the Norwegian sociologist J. Galtung, the authors justify the existence of two strategies for achieving peace, based on Islamic ideals - “resistance strategy” and “non-violence strategy,” using as an example of the first one the foreign policy activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran to resolve regional conflicts, taking Syria, the Palestinian problem and the Hormuz Peace Initiative as examples. The authors come to the conclusion that Islam considers only “positive peace” to be true peace, capable of ensuring security, a fair world order and universal equality. Iran, guided by the ideological attitudes generated by the Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979 (spirituality, the fight against corruption and economic injustice, the protection of the ‘oppressed’ and the fight against the ‘oppressors,’ the rejection of violence in social movements, the elimination of social discrimination, governance based on the people’s decision), seeks to introduce Islamic principles into its foreign policy practice, particularly in the Middle East. However, with a number of Arab countries in the region pursuing anti-Iranian policies, some of Tehran’s initiatives remained unrealized and did not gain support. Nevertheless, in the current context where the Western-centric world order is being revised, it is more relevant than ever to explore alternative approaches to conflict resolution and to identify their advantages and significance, based on practical examples that already exist.

Transformasi Gereja Bagi Keadilan Ekonomi

One of the most important dimensions of the economy is the creation of justice and common prosperity for all people in the world. The economy is both rules and norms forming a unified global society. Therefore, conversations and all systems that govern the economy must answer the most important question of the economy, namely whether the system formed and compiled by humans is able to bring social justice and shalom to all mankind. The biggest problem in addressing global poverty is the injustice of the economic system which makes the owners of capital richer, while the workers and the people are getting impoverished even though they have worked hard. This structured poverty has also resulted in a series of negative impacts of social life such as terrorism, environmental damage, racism and global discrimination. This article questions the role of the church in the phenomenon of economic injustice that has often been discussed in the global ecumenical community, for it seems the churches have not done much or even grasped the reality of this injustice. The true church is a church that is able to balance ecclesiocentricity and oikocentricity, meaning that the spiritual life of the church must be felt by members of the congregation socially and politically with social justice. Ecclesiology can only be understood if the church joins hands ecumenically, across religions and across nations in demanding an end to the injustice of the economic system while seeking equitable economic alternatives by absorbing the values of local wisdom.

Community‐driven science and science education: Living in and navigating the edges of equity, justice, and science learning

Community‐driven science and science education: Living in and navigating the edges of equity, justice, and science learning

Collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in the ASAB cleaning women’s strike in Sweden and the Women’s Day Off in Iceland

ABSTRACT In recent years feminist movements have increasingly employed the form and rhetoric of strikes in framing their protests. The rise of the women’s strike movement has been seen as an indicator of an invigorated wave of feminist activism that focuses, to a greater extent, on structural economic injustices. The aim of this article is to provide a historical aspect to the growing research on strikes as a multifaceted form of protest. The article analyses articulations of collective identity, solidarity, and sisterhood in two different kinds of ‘women’s strikes’ that took place in the Nordic region during the mid-1970s; the ASAB cleaners’ strikes in Sweden during 1974–1975 and the Icelandic Women’s Day Off that took place on October 24, 1975. The article explores how the relationship between gender and class was conceptualized by participants, organizers, and bystanders. We employ these cases to study how solidarity and sisterhood across differences among women might have appeared in practice while at the same time reflecting internal tensions and varying interests. Moreover, the article reflects on the specific form of the strikes and the potential impact their respective form might have had on the political articulations that came out of them.

Gender-Based Violence in Bosnia From Conflict to The Post-Conflict Setting

This review article aims to investigate gender-based violence in wartime and post-war Bosnia. While the existing literature exclusively focuses on the relationship between gender and nationalism, this article rather addresses the psychological and economic violence against women in Bosnia. By adopting a continuum approach, this study uncovers how different forms of violence against women interact with each other from the conflict to the post-conflict contexts. Through a literature survey, this study depicts how gender-based violence has been reproduced from past to present in the case of Bosnia. In discussing gender-based violence, it dwells upon the intersections between mass rapes, forced pregnancy and traumatization. As the main argument, this article contends that sexual violence during the war triggered the spiral of violence and further led to stigmatization and marginalization of these women in the post-war context. It is especially argued that the persistent public stigma is the most blatant manifestation of psychological violence against female rape victims. In addition, it is shown that the overlapping processes of conflict, patriarchy and neoliberalization have led to a series of economic injustices, such as, in the form of the dispossession, poverty and exclusion of women in Bosnia. This article overall suggests establishing linkages between sexual, psychological and economic violence against women during the conflict and post-conflict processes.

Distributive Justice Perspective of Sharia Economic Law in Indonesia

Injustice is a traditional and current issue that all economic systems encounter. This economic injustice and disparity of income and wealth is the origin of the poverty problem. The idea of distributive justice emerged in Islamic economics in response to the inability of current economic theories to address the issues of poverty, income, and wealth disparity. As a result, the study of distribution has long been an intriguing topic in Islamic economics. This study defines distribution from an Islamic economic standpoint, examines problems related to injustice in the Indonesian distribution system, criticizes capitalist economic distribution, and concludes with a study of Islamic economic distribution in discovering distributive justice and distribution mechanisms in Islam as an answer for justice and social welfare

Karts Area Mining and Social Conditions Communities

Karst is a very vital landscape, karst areas as natural destinations function as water buffers, are able to store water throughout the year and are useful in meeting the supply of clean water for the survival of the Maros people. The karst area around Salenrang Village has been exploited on a large scale and until now has affected the economic conditions of the community. The research aims to determine the impact of the socio-economic conditions of the community due to mining in the Karts area. The informants in this study consisted of government, community leaders, traditional leaders, environmentalists and the community. This research method is qualitative with an environmental sociology approach, the data collection technique is field research which is taken through observation, in-depth interviews and document review. While data analysis includes data collection, data presentation, data reduction, to conclusions.The results of research show that mining in Karts areas has a major impact on the economic life of the community so that it influences the sustainability of people's lives to the point of changing social structure, social interaction and economic conditions. The impact of mining in karts areas affects the condition of society both positively and negatively, positively mining Karts areas has an impact on reducing unemployment, opening up job vacancies, stimulating the development of social infrastructure such as places of worship, banking and markets and educational facilities, changing the mindset of industrial society. While the negative impacts of mining in Karts areas include environmental degradation, social conflicts due to economic injustice, and decreased farmers' income due to environmental damage.

Hustler Populism, Anti-Jubilee Backlash And Economic Injustice In Kenya’s 2022 Elections

Abstract Deputy President William Ruto’s victorious presidential campaign in Kenya’s 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the ‘hustlers’, young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto’s campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards ‘populism’ in Africa, transmuting ethno-nationalist identities into class-based ones. However, whilst Ruto’s campaign capitalized on rising prices to devastating political effect, he also channelled discontent with the Jubilee government and its unmet promises of shared prosperity. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in central Kenya’s Kiambu region since 2017, this article understands Ruto’s victory not through the lens of ‘hustler populism’ but rather as an anti-Jubilee ‘backlash’. Ruto’s campaign took advantage of Uhuru Kenyatta’s personal unpopularity as voters increasingly questioned the nature of ‘dynastic’ authority and ‘state capture’, seeking to punish Uhuru personally for his failures to create prosperity in the region whilst enriching himself at their expense. Elaborating on these tensions, the article points towards broken ‘moral economies’ between voters and politicians as a vital field of research.

Parliamentary Dress

Parliamentary Dress

The Racialized Global Capitalist Economy: Reading Samir Amin in the 2020s

Abstract Using Samir Amin’s theories of worldwide value and historical materialism, this article seeks to show that capitalism is inherently racist, at least since the TransAtlantic enslavement, and that its proponents are perpetuating racism by using it as a tool to deepen economic divides, and to destroy solidarity between workers. The global health crisis of Covid-19 demonstrates the expendability of frontline workers, a large proportion of whom are Black people and has exasperated the economic injustice propagated by the capitalist model. The racist and exploitative structure is global, with a Center extracting rent from the Periphery, where political power and “corruptionists” collude with global corporations. In low-intensity democracies such as the US, paid elections at best will lead to politicians making superficial discursive changes at Superstructure level, whereas the racist Base remains the same. Movements such as Black Lives Matter can be shaped and contained through manipulation of media. To change the Base, this article argues the need for “delinking” of the Periphery from the monopoly economy, and rehabilitation of Marxism through creation of a new global organization – a new Internationale of Workers, or a new Bandung. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in Spring 2022 adds a layer of complexity to the international situation (as it is opening for discourses that are strengthening the monopoly economy worldwide, e.g., in arms manufacturing), but may eventually lead to the demise of the autocratic-capitalist system in Russia, with international repercussions.

Albion W. Tourgée on Race, Class, and Caste: Plessy v. Ferguson Redux

If Albion W. Tourgée is remembered today, it is as a defender of racial justice, who wrote two best-selling Reconstruction novels and served as Homer Plessy's lead attorney. This essay emphasizes Tourgée's awareness of the inextricable link between racial and economic injustice by interweaving analysis of four neglected late works of fiction that explore the complicated relationship between race, class, and caste. Reading Plessy through the lens of these works highlights economic aspects of Tourgée's argument in the case obscured when Plessy is read, as it usually is, retrospectively through the lens of Brown v. Board of Education.

Sustainable agri-food supply chain planning through multi-objective optimisation

ABSTRACT Farms usually plan the planting and harvest of crops independently and without considering the plans of the rest of supply chain (SC) members. This generates large imbalances between crops' supply and demand in markets, as well as significant price fluctuations. Shifting how crop production is planned to joint SC decision-making would offer significant advantages in preserving agricultural SC sustainability. This paper explores this idea by proposing a multi-objective optimisation model for planning the planting, cultivation, harvesting, storage, packaging, transport, labouring, and sale of fresh crops. The tool considers five objectives aligned with sustainability: maximising SC profits (economic), minimising waste (environmental), minimising unsatisfied demand (social), maximising sold crops' freshness (environmental and social), and minimising economic injustice perceived by farmers (social). The tool is validated through its application to the La Plata fresh tomato SC case study in Argentina and it is shown how the tool could be used by real decision-maker(s).

Advancing More Equitable Care Through the Development of a Health Equity Report Card

The root causes of racial disparities in access to optimal cancer care and related cancer outcomes are complex, multifactorial, and not rooted in biology. Contributing factors to racial disparities in care delivery include implicit and explicit bias, lack of representation of people of color in the oncology care and research workforce, and homogenous research participants that are not representative of the larger community. Systemic and structural barriers include policies leading to lack of insurance and underinsurance, costs of cancer treatment and associated ancillary costs of care, disparate access to clinical trials, and social determinants of health, including exposure to environmental hazards, access to housing, childcare, and economic injustices. To address these issues, ACS CAN, NCCN, and NMQF convened the Elevating Cancer Equity (ECE) initiative. The ECE Working Group developed the Health Equity Report Card (HERC). In this manuscript, we describe the process taken by the ECE Working Group to develop the HERC recommendations, the strategies employed by NCCN to develop an implementation plan and scoring methodology for the HERC, and next steps to pilot the HERC tool in practice settings.

Introduction to Special Issue: Re-imagining Teaching and Learning in the Context of Current Crises

In this editorial, we describe the reasons for the special issue, namely the need to understand and re-imagine the “new normal” of teaching, learning, and teacher professional development in light of the societal inequities and economic injustices laid bared by the COVID-19 pandemic. We summarize the extent to which the articles in this issue help us take a new look at classroom practices of teachers within higher education and K-12 spaces, and re-envision of educational policies and theoretical frameworks within and beyond learning spaces to enhance inclusivity.

Toward a moral reckoning on structural racism: Examining structural factors, encouraging structural thinking, and supporting structural intervention.

The racial reckoning of 2020 involved the largest social movement protest in U.S. history, but support for the Black Lives Matter movement declined shortly after. To advance a moral reckoning on structural racism that dismantles racialized structures and redresses racial inequities, we call on scholar activists within the field of community psychology to realign their own practices by (a) examining structural factors; (b) encouraging structural thinking; and (c) supporting structural intervention for racial justice. Two structural factors-political determinants and commercial determinants-maintain the status quo of structural racism, undermining efforts for racial equity. As a result, we encourage the development of structural thinking, which provides a structural analysis of racism and leads to support for structural intervention. With an intersectional race and class perspective, we detail how structural thinking could be developed among the professional managerial class (through structural competency) and among the oppressed class (through critical consciousness). Finally, we discuss structural intervention factors and approaches that can redress racial inequities and produce structural change. Ultimately, we provide a pathway for community psychologists to support activists building a multiracial, multiclass coalition to eliminate structures and systems of racial, political, and economic injustice.