Justice Discourse Research Articles

Distributive justice discourses, time and futures: a social media discourse analysis of the loss and damages debate

ABSTRACT There is a growing concern with issues of distributive justice in sustainability transformations. Justice discourses are related to time, and particularly futures. However, there is a lack of in-depth knowledge about how futures and justice discourses interact. Combining insights from futures studies and the political philosophy literature on justice, this exploratory paper unpacks the construction of distributive justice discourses and the role of temporal dimensions herein. Based on a social media discourse analysis, using the Loss and Damage debate among readers of a Dutch online news outlet as an empirical focus, this paper shows how justice discourses and temporal dimensions interact leading to two main conclusions: (1) the temporal perspective plays a crucial role in the configuration of justice discourses (alignment of scope, pattern and currency), and (2) expected futures can be used (also strategically) to legitimise certain justice discourses, and thus the allocation of responsibilities.

Ethical discourses of justice: understanding edu-philanthropy in exclusionary schools

ABSTRACT Contemporary discourses of educational philanthropy highlight the increasing role that benefactors play in shaping schools’ policy and practice. In Australia, there have been growing ethical concerns about the model of school funding and the attention it attracts from billionaire edu-philanthropists to support faith-based private schools as highly exclusionary forms of schooling. Utilising ‘small d’ discourse analysis and Nancy Fraser’s theory of justice, we draw on focus group and interviews conducted with leading Australian edu-philanthropists, alongside observations of social media platforms, to identify the ethical discourses surrounding edu-philanthropic justice in such schools. Discourses revealed paradoxes of (i) fairness extending access to exclusionary forms of schooling; (ii) identity – preventing disadvantaged students from experiencing identity-based rejection in schools supposedly designed to meet their needs; and (iii) welfare – fulfilling this right in a quasi-education market, though, consequently, diminishing the welfare state’s responsibilities. This new knowledge advances discussions on edu-philanthropy, educational ethics, and school choice.

Post-communist Transformation in Law and Justice’s Populist Discourse after 2015

The aim of the article is to attempt to determine the importance of the issue of systemic transformation within the populist discourse of Law and Justice since 2015. The text analyzes the electoral programs and statements of the party’s leaders. Attention was focused on such elements of the discourse as: criticism of the elites, the importance of the elites in the transformation process, social inequalities and the crisis of identity. The analysis carried out allows us to conclude that the populist discourse used by PiS after 2015 refers to the issues of systemic transformation.

Decolonising Environmental Justice

Abstract This article explores the practices and discourses of environmental justice in Iranian Kurdistan/Rojhelat. In the face of unprecedented destruction of the natural environment, Kurdish people, including a significant number of women, organise themselves to defend ecosystems, lakes, rivers, and forests, making them part of the global environmental justice movement. Local communities face growing challenges such as water scarcity, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, exploitation of natural resources, and pollution, which directly affect their lives and health. Drawing on decolonial and critical perspectives of environmental justice studies, we ask how Kurdish activists understand the concepts of “justice” and “environment” in the context of discriminatory practices of the capitalist, patriarchal, and authoritarian Iranian state. Based on interviews and fieldwork in the region, this article argues that the global environmental justice movement should pay closer attention to the contextual realities of the subaltern, their aims and ideas related to nature, justice, and women empowerment.

Social justice as nursing resistance: a foucauldian discourse analysis within emergency departments.

Social justice is consistently upheld as a central value within the nursing profession, yet there are persistent inconsistencies in how this construct is conceptualized, further compounded by a lack of empirical inquiry into how nurses enact social justice in everyday practice. In the current context in which structural inequities are perpetuated throughout the health care system, and the emergency department in particular, it is crucial to understand how nurses understand and enact social justice as a disciplinary commitment. This research examines how nurses' talk and institutional texts discursively construct social justice within the institutional context of the emergency department, and how such discourses shape the enactment of social justice within nursing practice. Guided by Iris Marion Young's theorizing of distributive and systemic social justice paradigms, this Foucauldian discourse analysis draws on emergency department nurses' talk (N = 25 interviews) and institutional documents (N = 27) as key texts that visibilize dominant and excluded discourses of social justice within the institutional context of the emergency department, and implications for how social justice is enacted through nursing practices. This analysis identified one overarching discursive pattern, in which social justice was discursively constructed through a hegemonic distributive paradigm, yet also resisted through nurses' conceptualization and enactment of a systemic social justice paradigm that facilitated their recognition and remediation of inequities. This central discursive pattern is explored through three exemplars of nurses' enactment of social justice as resistance: triage, harm reduction, and care planning. Findings from this analysis demonstrate that while a hegemonic distributive paradigm has dominated conceptualizations of social justice within nursing, a re-construction of social justice through a systemic paradigm may guide nurses in enacting practices that remediate inequities in health and health care.

Move over and make space for lived experience criminology: Why we do “lived experience”

This paper points out the disparity in the recognition of lived experiences between the United States – where convict criminology is more established, and Australia. The authors call for a shift from convict to lived experience criminology in Australia, emphasising the need for diverse methodologies beyond autoethnography. It is pertinent to note here that the authors of this paper, Antojado and McPhee, are formerly incarcerated scholars, serving time in various prisons in Australia. We use our expertise by experience to inform our work. This paper discusses the challenges individuals with lived prison and/or criminal legal sanction experience (LPCLSE) face in gaining academic recognition and critiques the academic community's hesitance to accept us as equals. It stresses the significance of lived experiences in deepening the understanding of the social and emotional aspects of crime and justice. Integrating these narratives into criminology is argued to challenge and enrich present epistemological frameworks, leading to more holistic and empathetic research and policy-making in the criminal legal sector. The authors advocate for redefining criminological expertise to value experience equally with academic qualifications and call for academic support for the development of lived experience criminology. This is seen as crucial for a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of crime and justice discourses, urging criminologists to embrace and develop this subfield. Using the work of bell hooks and Dean Spade, we also turn our attention to the reasons for why people with lived experience expertise might engage in this type of work, arguing that it is a way for us to make/unmake meaning, to live with purpose, to live with guilt, and to love.

Views of Arundhati Roy on Political, Genre, and Canonical Writers

This research paper examines the non-fictional works of Arundhati Roy through the lens of the notion of 'justice'. Justice is a crucial concept in every culture or political system. The past demonstrates that justice transcends language and cultural divides. Democracy encompasses the concept of justice thoroughly and inclusively, providing equal opportunity for all individuals in a community. The notion of democracy is included by the idea of justice. This project argues that the nonfictional works of Arundhati Roy may be analysed as discourse of justice, given their significant contribution to broader discussions on justice.

Gaseous politics: contradictions and moral frontiers of the energy transition in Ghana

In Ghana, new oil and gas discoveries at a time of global decarbonization and energy transition have put into question the viability of the country’s hydrocarbon reserves and their promises of prosperity and development. As the country anticipates stranded assets, a discourse of carbon justice has emerged around new oil and gas extraction that emphasizes differentiated responsibilities for carbon emissions and colonial legacies of energy underdevelopment. In this paper, I explore the assemblage of what I call the “moral frontiers” of the energy transition through the case of natural gas expansion. I focus on the Atuabo gas processing plant in Ghana’s Western region, built in 2016 during an acute energy crisis to provide indigenous gas from the oilfields to the grid. Amidst growing opposition to and declining investment in oil, natural gas at Atuabo is presented as a “bridging fuel” that reconciles, physically and ethically, the contradictions of global decarbonization imperatives with local demands for industrialization, energy access, security and sovereignty. Through the materiality of gas infrastructure at Atuabo – including the land acquisition process, the take-or-pay contracts of its IPPs, the operations of the plant and its applications, and the contested environmental impact of the plant – I argue that gas’ liminality as a transition or bridge fuel reshapes the moral and political possibilities of fossil fuels in a global but unequal energy transition.

Rising to the challenge: a systematic review of development of environmental justice in India

ABSTRACT Environmental justice has experienced rapid expansion in its scope and conceptualization in the last three decades. Literature on environmental justice narrates how individuals and communities mobilize to confront economic and environmental issues at the local, national, and global levels and how globalization, gender, racism, and class affect the environment. This article presents a systematic review of environmental justice in India, aimed at showing how the concept originated and came into common parlance and how it differs or actually resembles now a lot with the environmental justice discourse in the United States. The focus of this study is on various salient events that are crucial in the development of a well-established movement. The review contends that environmental justice may have only recently become a recognized concept in Indian environmental history, as a philosophy, it has been a mainstay of Indian environmental consciousness. India has an indigenous environmental justice movement, albeit not on the lines of the US. This review also suggests that the discourse on environmental justice in India is currently shaped by both global environmental justice movements as well as indigenous efforts and concerns about environmental challenges.

Social justice in Canadian nursing professional documents: A Foucauldian discourse analysis.

Social justice is widely advanced as a central nursing value, and yet conceptual understandings of social justice remain inconsistent and vague. Further, despite persistently articulated commitments to upholding social justice, the profession of nursing has been implicated in perpetuating inequities in health and health care. In this context, it is essential to establish both conceptual clarity and tangible guidance for nurses in enacting practices to advance social justice-particularly through regulatory, education and accreditation documents that shape the nursing profession. This Foucauldian discourse analysis examines how social justice is discursively positioned within nursing professional documents in Canada, and illustrates that social justice was largely discursively excluded from these texts. Where social justice discourses were invoked, we identified that four central discursive patterns obscured and de-centred this nursing value: (i) Vague language undermined professional commitments to social justice; (ii) Constructions of knowledge and awareness de-emphasized practice; (iii) Individualism discourses minimized institutional/professional responsibility; and (iv) Aspirational language obscured present action. Extending from this analysis, we contend that the nursing profession must re-examine how social justice is understood and articulated, and call for a re-conceptualization of social justice grounded in nursing practice toward remediating inequities in health and health care.

Introducing boards to the equity conversation: State-level governing boards and discourses of social justice.

Introducing boards to the equity conversation: State-level governing boards and discourses of social justice.

ANALISIS YURIDIS PEMENUHAN HAK PELAYANAN PUBLIK BAGI PENYANDANG DISABILITAS KABUPATEN JEMBER

Public transportation plays a crucial role in the social and economic structure of cities worldwide by providing access to various services and activities. An efficient transportation system supports mobility in employment, education, healthcare, and recreation, and contributes to inclusive and sustainable urban development. However, individuals with disabilities often face barriers to accessing public transportation, both physical, such as the lack of disability-friendly facilities, and non-physical, such as insufficient staff training and supportive policies. These limitations hinder full participation of individuals with disabilities in society and widen the gap in life opportunities. In Indonesia, issues of inclusion and accessibility for people with disabilities are central to human rights and social justice discourse. Although legislative progress has been made, field practices often remain suboptimal. Regulations such as Article 12 (e) of Regional Regulation No. 7 of 2016 and Law No. 8 of 2016 on Persons with Disabilities provide a legal framework for accessibility, yet implementation on the ground still faces gaps. This study highlights the importance of improving legal protection and enhancing accessibility at public transportation stops in Jember Regency, aiming to identify barriers faced by people with disabilities and provide a basis for advocating for more inclusive policy and infrastructure changes. This research underscores that improving accessibility not only meets practical needs but also ensures recognition and protection of the legal rights of people with disabilities for equal mobility and full participation in society.

Mobilising for change: the role of social movements in advancing climate justice

ABSTRACT Social movements play a key role in advancing climate justice. This article analyses three case studies and examines the role these movements play in implementing climate justice by mobilising communities, raising awareness, and advocating for policy change. It discusses how grassroots activism challenges power structures and drives change, highlighting three examples of movements in Commonwealth countries: Seed Mob in Australia, the Karachi Bachao Tehreek campaign in Pakistan, and RuralRevive in Namibia. By mobilising diverse stakeholders and leveraging media and technology, social movements advocate for systemic transformation and community resilience. However, they face constraints in driving transformative change. This paper advocates for greater recognition of their role in shaping climate justice discourse and practice while acknowledging their limitations.

Memanfaatkan Analisis Kritis untuk Menelaah Gagasan Green Law Daerah untuk Pengelolaan dan Perlindungan Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia

In today's criminal justice discourse, restorative justice has gained traction. A restorative justice system has been included into the institutional policy of several law enforcement agencies. Additionally, it is included in the 2020–2024 National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN). Since restorative justice is beneficial to and compatible with environmental conservation, it has also been developed in the field of environmental law. In light of this, the present study examines restorative justice as a broad idea within the context of Indonesian environmental legislation. This paper also highlights issues and considers critically whether the normative juridical approach of restorative justice may be used to address environmental crimes.

Preventing Trivialization of Global Social Justice Discourse: A Framework of Critical Social Media Literacy

Growing scholarship emphasizes social media as potential platforms to facilitate social justice discourse, while others document simultaneous polarization and trivialization. With the objective of supporting educators, students, and community members, this article conceptualizes a framework of critical social media literacy (CSML) based upon Freirean pedagogy. While social media platforms exist in diverse formats, social media numbers in the form of likes, shares, and views emerge as common elements to influence social justice ideologies. Building upon this preliminary conceptualization, the framework proposes that students may benefit from understanding how social media numbers can: grant automatic, unfounded legitimacy; be mobilized toward not social justice but the pursuit of profit; be a prerequisite for visibility of content; replace critical thinking as ubiquitous metrics; lead to false sense of disorienting dilemmas; facilitate antagonization of nuanced perspectives; encourage conformity; and be directly purchased. Implications on conformity—and expanded thinking for students—conclude the study.

Towards just planning: on the relationship between procedural and distributive justice in local development actions

ABSTRACT Though scholars often argue that the relationship between procedural and distributive justice is crucial in planning practice, conceptual and empirical contributions are rare in the literature. In this paper, we suggest an analytical framework to better understand how procedural and distributive justice are interrelated in local development actions. Drawing on empirical findings from 22 case studies across Europe we identify promoting and inhibiting factors influencing the relationship between procedural and distributive justice. The paper contributes to linking the conceptual discourse of justice in planning to the analysis of actual local cases by focussing on a number of dimensions and categories.

Discursive pragmatics of justification in terrorist threat texts: Victim-blaming, denying, discrediting, legitimating, manipulating, and retaliation

This article explores the under-researched area of discursive tactics employed in terrorist threat texts that exploit moral values to constantly justify violence, fostering a ‘discourse of justification’, disaffiliation and conflict. Employing a discursive pragmatic analysis, it delves into the tactics of violent extremists associated with jihadism and far-right ideologies. Utilising the Appraisal framework and the ‘moral disaffiliation’ strategy, the study uncovers verbal practices shaping a dynamic of justification. Findings reveal threateners’ involvement in regulatory discursive functions – manipulation, deontic-retaliation, and boulomaic effect – and practices of ideologically positioning functions – discrediting, blaming, denying and (de)legitimating. The analysis highlights the construction of negative victim individuals and societies while praising the threatener/in-group, anchored predominantly in values of propriety, capacity, valuation and veracity, as the primary dynamic of threatener-victim disalignment. This study contributes insights into threatener profiling, motivations of violence and future research on threat-genre rhetorical structure analysis.

"What Kind of Court Is This?": Perceptions of International Justice Among Rohingya Refugees

ABSTRACT: In the context of mass atrocities, the legitimacy of institutions for international justice—such as the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice—is based on the assumption that they vindicate demands for accountability by the survivors of horrific human rights violations. Yet, notwithstanding advances in victim representation at these Hague-based courts, victim-centered justice remains elusive. This article contributes to centering the voices of survivors in their specific cultural contexts, against the backdrop of existing efforts that too often render invisible their perspectives. Through semi-structured interviews, conducted in late 2022, with 444 Rohingya survivors of genocide who have fled Myanmar to refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh, we attempt to convey the priorities of these survivors situated within their cultural understanding of justice. We contextualize the empirical data gathered from the survey within Rohingyas' lived experiences of persecution in Myanmar, their cultural framings of communal justice, and their current reality of prolonged displacement in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The article concludes by describing the implications of this survey's findings on future engagement of the Rohingya in international justice processes, and a wider reflection on how grassroots perspectives can and should shape the global justice discourse.

Power & temporality in pursuing transformative planetary justice

ABSTRACT Planetary justice discourse has emerged as a new approach for earth system governance which centers justice concerns within a particular temporal epoch, the so-called ‘Anthropocene.’ Here, we examine the distinctive features of the planetary justice framework, focusing specifically on the importance of the temporal dimensions relevant for understanding injustices beyond humans and at the planetary scale. We use two examples – PFAS and insurance – to demonstrate how the multiscalar, beyond-human approach adopted by planetary justice scholars, coupled with the discourse’s embeddedness in existing earth system governance processes, could have meaningful influence in planetary decision-making processes. We argue that there is a need for (1) expanding the ‘pro-poor’ agenda of planetary justice research, and (2) cultivating space for inclusion of existing and alternative approaches to justice in pursuing a pluralized planetary justice. In closing, we suggest future areas of research and action for redressing power imbalances across space-time in the pursuit of planetary justice.

Haunting justice: queer bodies, ghosts, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

This article was named the winner of the 2022 Enloe Award. The committee commented: Using a queer hauntological approach to read queer bodies in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the seemingly innocuous language of judges, legal counsels, and witnesses, the author illuminates the ways in which queer lives are made absent in international law and in experiences of war, peace, and justice. By rendering queer lives as “ghosts,” the author shows how the “straight, binary, and cisgender subject,” be it victim or perpetrator, is maintained in international criminal justice. Going beyond critique by centering a queer archive created by queer people about their experiences of the war, the article stood out to the committee as an important contribution to international law and beyond. By rendering queer lives “intelligible and grievable and as lives that matter,” it continues Cynthia Enloe’s legacy of finding sex and gender where it has been hidden. Ultimately, the author does not call for the inclusion or assimilation of queer experiences into liberal international criminal justice discourses, which co-opt and empty radical politics. Successfully showing how “haunting” represents a radical call for “alternative worlds,” the article provides an original challenge to move beyond mere inclusion. The committee commends the author for their careful scholarship and deep theorization.