Justice Literature Research Articles

Equity in human adaptation-related responses: A systematic global review

Equity in human adaptation-related responses: A systematic global review

Bringing narrative victimology to transitional justice: Blame, victimhood and life stories of wrongful conviction

This article applies a narrative victimological lens of inquiry to the memoirs of those wrongfully convicted of high profile politically violent offences arising from the conflict in the North of Ireland. Using these life stories of wrongful conviction, the article critically examines how nuanced and complex understandings of victimhood and blame emerge from within victims’ own testimony. While on the one hand, victims can ‘story’ victimhood and blame in simplistic ways that echo dominant paradigms found within the criminological literature, at the same time they can ‘story’ victimhood and blame in more sophisticated ways that reflect complex debates found within the transitional justice literature. The ability to take both a more generous approach to victimhood that recognises the harm experienced by others and a more critically self-reflective approach of one's own culpability, it is submitted, shows the potential value that proposed oral history mechanisms have in allowing different perspectives on victimhood and blame to emerge from the testimony of those who suffered harms like wrongful conviction.

The relationship between justice perceptions and organizational commitment among alternative work arrangement participants and non-participants

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of auditor alternative work arrangement (AWA) participants’ and non-participants’ perceptions of procedural and distributive justice on organizational commitment.Design/methodology/approachUsing survey data from 110 auditors in the USA, this study uses a regression model to explore how AWA participants’ and non-participants’ perceptions of procedural and distributive justice affect organizational commitment.FindingsAs predicted, results show both participants’ and non-participants’ perceptions of procedural justice significantly affect organizational commitment. However, neither groups’ perceptions of distributive justice significantly affect their organizational commitment.Originality/valueOrganizational justice literature has shown that procedural and distributive justice influence organizational commitment. However, no study has controlled for AWA participation. The authors extend research by investigating the effects of procedural and distributive justice perceptions on organizational commitment for both participants and non-participants. The authors also extend accounting research that has narrowly examined AWA benefits and drawbacks, support, viability and perceptions of subordinate career success. Furthermore, there is limited AWA auditing research and this study offers a view prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Revisiting the Missing Theories of Organizational Justice

Organizational justice (OJ) literature focuses on the well-established theories of OJ dimensions (distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justices) and the relative significance of different OJ dimensions on dependent variables (Ambrose & Schminke, 2009). However, literature suggest an equal focus on relevant missing theories of justice to have a complete understanding of this concept. The researchers assume that the inclusion of relevant missing theories in their respective OJ dimensions would yield better results. They used two data sets to test this assumption. One data set, include well-established theories using Colquitt (2001) scale, while the second data set include well-established theories along with the relevant missing theories, such as, external equity, equality, and need etc. They concluded that with the incorporation of relevant missing theories in their respective OJ dimensions; overall, results improved in terms of diagnostic statistics including specifically t-statistics (p-values), F-statistics and R2; however, missing theories claim has not been substantiated.

Do renewable energy communities deliver energy justice? Exploring insights from 71 European cases

A growing energy justice literature underlines that complex energy injustices in energy transition disproportionally affect vulnerable and energy-poor households. Literature and policies discuss renewable energy communities’ (RECs) potential to enable citizen participation in energy transition and shape a just transition. Low-income and energy-poor households could benefit from granting access to affordable energy tariffs and energy efficiency measures when participating in RECs. Recent EU legislation highlights RECs’ social role in energy poverty alleviation and stipulates the participation of all social groups in RECs, especially those groups that are underrepresented under RECs’ members. In this light, the energy justice framework is increasingly applied to analyse RECs’ social contributions in different countries. Still, empirical evidence of RECs’ capacity to include underrepresented and vulnerable groups and mitigate energy poverty as a particular form of energy justice remains scarce. Drawing on data collected among 71 European RECs, our exploratory research investigates how RECs engage in this social role by improving participatory procedures to enable vulnerable groups’ participation and by distributing affordable energy and energy efficiency to vulnerable households. Using the energy justice framework, we explore how RECs resonate with the three energy justice tenets (distributive, recognitional and procedural) by addressing underrepresented groups and energy poverty.

Leveraging Multimedia Patient Engagement to Address Minority Cerebrovascular Health Needs: Prospective Observational Study

BackgroundSocial inequities affecting minority populations after Hurricane Katrina led to an expansion of environmental justice literature. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey rainfall was estimated as a 3000- to 20,000-year flood event, further affecting minority populations with disproportionate stroke prevalence. The Stomp Out Stroke initiative leveraged multimedia engagement, creating a patient-centered cerebrovascular health intervention.ObjectiveThis study aims to address social inequities in cerebrovascular health through the identification of race- or ethnicity-specific health needs and the provision of in-person stroke prevention screening during two community events (May 2018 and May 2019).MethodsStomp Out Stroke recruitment took place through internet-based channels (websites and social networking). Exclusively through web registration, Stomp Out Stroke participants (aged >18 years) detailed sociodemographic characteristics, family history of stroke, and stroke survivorship. Participant health interests were compared by race or ethnicity using Kruskal-Wallis or chi-square test at an α=.05. A Bonferroni-corrected P value of .0083 was used for multiple comparisons.ResultsStomp Out Stroke registrants (N=1401) were 70% (973/1390) female (median age 45 years) and largely self-identified as members of minority groups: 32.05% (449/1401) Hispanic, 25.62% (359/1401) African American, 13.63% (191/1401) Asian compared with 23.63% (331/1401) non-Hispanic White. Stroke survivors comprised 11.55% (155/1401) of our population. A total of 124 stroke caregivers participated. Approximately 36.81% (493/1339) of participants had a family history of stroke. African American participants were most likely to have Medicare or Medicaid insurance (84/341, 24.6%), whereas Hispanic participants were most likely to be uninsured (127/435, 29.2%). Hispanic participants were more likely than non-Hispanic White participants to obtain health screenings (282/449, 62.8% vs 175/331, 52.9%; P=.03). Asian (105/191, 54.9%) and African American (201/359, 55.9%) participants were more likely to request stroke education than non-Hispanic White (138/331, 41.6%) or Hispanic participants (193/449, 42.9%). African American participants were more likely to seek overall health education than non-Hispanic White participants (166/359, 46.2% vs 108/331, 32.6%; P=.002). Non-Hispanic White participants (48/331, 14.5%) were less likely to speak to health care providers than African American (91/359, 25.3%) or Asian participants (54/191, 28.3%). During the 2018 and 2019 events, 2774 health screenings were completed across 12 hours, averaging four health screenings per minute. These included blood pressure (1031/2774, 37.16%), stroke risk assessment (496/2774, 17.88%), bone density (426/2774, 15.35%), carotid ultrasound (380/2774, 13.69%), BMI (182/2774, 6.56%), serum lipids (157/2774, 5.65%), and hemoglobin A1c (102/2774, 3.67%). Twenty multimedia placements using the Stomp Out Stroke webpage, social media, #stompoutstroke, television, iQ radio, and web-based news reached approximately 849,731 people in the Houston area.ConclusionsUsing a combination of internet-based recruitment, registration, and in-person assessments, Stomp Out Stroke identified race- or ethnicity-specific health care needs and provided appropriate screenings to minority populations at increased risk of urban flooding and stroke. This protocol can be replicated in Southern US Stroke Belt cities with similar flood risks.

Do Truth Commissions Really Improve Democracy?

This article presents and tests an original theory that truth commissions (TCs) inspire democratic behaviors, but have little discernible impact on democratic institutions. Using quantitative analyses of countries undergoing transitions between 1970 and 2015, and accounting for endogeneity of TCs, we find that these temporary bodies are associated with greater democratic participation and state agent observance of physical integrity rights. However, they have no measurable effect on institutions like fair elections, rules regulating political association, liberal checks on the executive, or judicial independence. This contradicts a key argument in the transitional justice literature that TCs catalyze institutional reform through investigation and extensive recommendations. This article’s findings might encourage those who intend to use these bodies as a tool to promote citizen activism or police restraint. However, the findings might discourage those who hope TCs could jump-start judicial reforms or create a firewall against executive overreach.

Political Equality and Political Sufficiency

AbstractThe distinction between equality and sufficiency, much discussed in the distributive justice literature, is here applied to democratic theory. Overlooking this distinction can have significant normative implications, undermining some defences and criticisms of political equality, as I show by discussing the work of three prominent democratic theorists: Thomas Christiano, David Estlund, and Mark Warren. Most importantly, Christiano sometimes defends egalitarian conclusions using sufficientarian premises, or worries about inequality in situations where insufficiency is also part of the problem; inequality above the level of sufficiency is not always as troubling. Estlund makes the reverse error. He attacks rather than defends political egalitarianism, but insufficiency seems to explain some of his concerns. Nonetheless, I show that political egalitarians may need to specify a sufficientarian threshold, to avoid levelling-down objections. Democratic theorists should thus take seriously the distinction between political equality and political sufficiency. More generally, political theorists and philosophers should be aware of omitted variable bias and interaction effects due to conceptual stretching arising from under-theorised distinctions in their thought experiments.

The Fair Process Counter-Effect: Procedural Justice and Protests in China’s School Admissions Reform

How does procedural justice influence protest emergence? This question has been neglected as the procedural justice and social movement literatures have taken disparate approaches to explain people’s response to substantive injustices. This paper fills this gap by developing a theory of fair process counter-effect, namely that procedural justice facilitates collective action. Based on longitudinal fieldwork conducted from 2010-2019 on school admissions in China, I find that a bureaucratization reform had the unintended consequences of inducing previously nonexistent collective protests. Characterized by transparency and equal treatment, the post-reform procedures improved procedural justice perception among parents while also inducing protests, as the procedures enabled parents to more directly perceive substantive injustices, use public information to form protest narratives, and mobilize through shared experiences and grievances. By identifying the fair process counter-effect, this study reveals that collective action is facilitated by fair procedures and suppressed by unfair procedures. In doing so, this study bridges the justice-based and mobilization-based perspectives in explaining responses to inequalities.

Can Work Interactions Cause Technostress during the COVID-19 Crisis?A Dyadic Study

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) containment protocols led to two broader shifts in the workplace namely the increased use of information and communication technologies (ICTs); and modified work interactions. The aim of the current study is to investigate how work relationships impact the technostress or the stress experienced by using ICTs during the pandemic. We measured work interactions through (i) interactional justice or fairness of interpersonal treatments received at work; and (ii) relational crafting or proactive modifications in the frequency and nature of work interactions. Through mixed-methods design, our research seeks to answer how manager-employee interactions are impacted during the COVID-19 crisis and how these interactions determine the level of technostress experienced by each party. For Study 1, we conducted Actor Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) analysis on manager-employee dyads to elucidate how they have modified their work interactions during the pandemic. Our findings indicate a strong interdependence between managerial interactional justice and employee relational crafting and vice-versa. Engagement in relational crafting also significantly informed the technostress for both managers and employees. In Study 2, semi-structured interviews were conducted for completeness and complementarity of the first study. Through thematic analysis, we gained in-depth insights into the modifications of work interactions during the COVID-19. The proposed relationships contribute to refining our understanding of justice, job design, and stress literature during times of emergency. Managerial implications during and beyond the COVID-19 times are discussed.

Toward transformative climate justice: An emerging research agenda

AbstractCalls for climate justice abound as evidence accumulates of the growing social and environmental injustices aggravated or driven by climate change. There is now a considerable and diverse literature on procedural, distributional and intergenerational dimensions, including questions of recognition in climate justice. Yet its meaning, scope and practical implications are still contested. Importantly, the broader landscape within which climate justice is situated is rapidly changing, bringing new challenges to the understanding and practice of climate justice. This review takes stock of climate justice literature in view of this new context. We find several disconnects and tensions between more philosophical and academic treatments of the subject on the one hand, and “activist”‐oriented approaches to climate justice on the other. Scholarship often falls into silos around scales from global and local, between mitigation and adaptation or draws distinctions between climate justice and other forms of (in)justice. This inhibits an understanding of climate justice that can address more directly its underlying root causes in an historically constituted global economic system and intersecting set of social inequalities. We propose a research agenda centered on a transformative approach to climate justice, placing analysis of power in its various guises at the center of its enquiry, and subverting and moving beyond existing distinctions by focusing on the social and institutional relations and inequalities that both produce climate change and profoundly shape responses to it. We elaborate on three key strands of such an approach: inclusive climate justice, deepening climate justice and governance for climate justice.This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice

When and Why Bias Suppression Is Difficult to Sustain: The Asymmetric Effect of Intermittent Accountability

The justice literature suggests that adhering to justice rules should be self-reinforcing. Yet, the literature on bias suppression (a facet of procedural justice) indicates that the effects of debi...

Experiences of Spiritual Advocacy for Land and Territorial Itineraries for the Defense of Wiwa Women’s Rights in Postconflict Colombia

Abstract This article explores Wiwa female spiritual advocacy in the Colombian Caribbean region during the postconflict period. The methodologies and practices of indigenous communities have been underappreciated in transitional justice literature about land and property rights. This article seeks to analyze spiritual and territorial advocacy by local indigenous women for the defense of their lands and their collective rights. We examine intercultural and intersectional methodologies, rituals and recollection as strategies for clarifying the ‘truth.’ These methodologies attempt to revitalize indigenous women’s advocacy for sacred sites of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta affected by armed conflict. These spiritual advocacy practices are one expression of the Law of Origin, the customary law as a form of telling the truth. Here, we explain how participatory action research should be used to include female indigenous techniques and conduct ethnographic observations.

Producing landscapes of environmental justice: exploitation of woodlands and wetlands and deep historical geographies of justice on Gotland

ContextThe importance of justice is increasingly recognized in environmental policy making. Research on environmental justice offers an important perspective on landscape transformations, both natural and social.ObjectivesThis paper asks how current work on environmental justice might contribute to the development of socio-environmental knowledge of the biophysical landscape. The paper explores the relations between environmental justice thinking and the production of a distinctively capitalist landscape.MethodsThe paper builds on a review of environmental justice and landscape literature and, for the empirical part, on archival studies and secondary sources.ResultsThe paper shows that there remains a disjunction between landscape studies and the environmental justice literature. It provides a theoretically informed approach of bringing together environmental justice scholarship with the transformations of a contested and distinctively capitalist landscape. By studying changes in woodlands and wetlands on the island of Gotland, Sweden, it uncovers a process of the production of landscape that elicits “deep” historical geographies of environmental justice. The massive exploitation of wetlands and forests shows how an approach encompassing environmental justice in conjunction with forms of resource exploitation and conservation can help grasp changes in the landscape.

The role of traditional rituals in resisting energy injustice: The case of hydropower developments in Svaneti, Georgia

This study intervenes in the energy justice literature by bringing to the foreground the local, emplaced, and bottom-up perspective. We specifically explore the potential of place-based agency, expressed in the form of traditional rituals, to expand the repertoire of extra-institutional means of resistance against various manifestations of energy injustice. We investigate the recent developments in the hydropower sector in the Svaneti region of the Republic of Georgia. Based on a qualitative research design involving personal interviews and document analysis, we explain how and why the traditional ritual of taking the oath of unity on the icon of St. George has been used to oppose hydropower developments, and how the employment of this extra-institutional action is linked to the changed political opportunity structure. In addition to underscoring the need to recognize and respect the cultural and religious importance assigned to traditional rituals by local communities, the findings of our study imply a need to consider traditional rituals not merely as symbolic or/and performative means of resistance, but also as political tools that may have a significant impact on the development of energy projects.

Multigenerational immigrant trajectories and children's unequal exposure to fine particulate matter in the US

Fine particulate matter is a serious health threat and exposures are particularly damaging for children. The environmental justice (EJ) literature shows that racial/ethnic minority communities experience disproportionate exposure to particulate pollution in the US. While important, those EJ studies tend to neglect people's complex identities, including their nativity and their families' generational histories of residence in the US. Yet there is growing interest in the intersection of immigrant populations and EJ. Our use of individual-level data enables examination of immigrant generational status by race/ethnicity, which provides insights on the intergenerational persistence of environmental injustice. We pair data on 12,570 US third graders (from 2013 to 2014) collected through the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey with PM2.5 concentrations for the census tracts of their home and school locations. We apply generalized estimating equations to test for intergenerational disparities in exposure and to examine how those disparities vary between racial/ethnic groups. Independent of race/ethnicity, first- and second-generation children have greater PM2.5 exposure than 2.5- and third-generation children. However, generational status disparities in exposures vary based on race/ethnicity. First-generation White children face greater exposure than White children of later generational statuses, with inequalities attenuating by the second generation. In contrast, Hispanic/Latinx children experience no significant drop in exposure until the third generation. Among Asian and Black children, generational status was not a significant determinant of exposure. Results quantify the intergenerational persistence of environmental injustices for persons of color while showing the amelioration of inequalities for Whites after just one generation is born in the US, reflecting another facet of White privilege in the US.

The Milwaukee youth engagement pilot: Evidence of reciprocal legal socialization in Juvenile Court

AbstractThis paper describes a pilot project implemented in Milwaukee's Juvenile Court, which was designed as a preliminary feasibility study to assess whether a change in court procedures could alter young offenders’ engagement in the court process and enhance their relationship with the juvenile court judge. Participants in the pilot engaged in regular monthly conversations with the juvenile judge and other legal actors in an informal context focused on collaborative planning and problem solving. The procedural justice and legal socialization literature suggests that these changes in interactions and relationships might facilitate the development of a “consensus” orientation to legal authority associated with a shared trust in the law and a voluntary acceptance of its legitimacy. This paper offers an evaluation of the pilot project using a quasi‐ethnographic approach based on observational data and interviews with participants. Although the original focus of the pilot was on the relationship between the young offenders and the judge and on the impact of that relationship on the youths’ attitudes, it became evident, over the course of the study, that the impact of the engagement was felt on both sides of the relationship, and that it was not limited to the judge and the youth. The paper explores the potential value of “reciprocal socialization”—socialization of legal authorities by the subjects with whom they interact—to the successful achievement of the juvenile justice system's aims.

Making the invisible visible: managing tensions around including Traveller culture and history in the curriculum at primary and post-primary levels

The formal recognition of Travellers as a distinct ethnic group by the Irish State in 2017 was arguably a significant step towards redressing the pernicious and endemic institutional racism and marginalisation that Travellers have historically experienced in Ireland. It was announced by the Irish Government in October 2018 that a review of the place of Travellers in existing school curricula would be undertaken, with a view to including Traveller history and culture at primary and post-primary levels. While there are benefits associated with curricular recognition, including its capacity to potentially disrupt the reiterative reproduction of institutional racism at a formal curricular level, a significant body of literature highlights the shortcomings associated with additive curricular approaches. These include tokenism and a failure to challenge dominant mainstream-centric perspectives and wider systemic inequities. The potential for curricular interventions to obscure or side-line critical consideration of the role of teachers’ and student teachers’ subjectivities, privileges and biases in perpetuating inequities is another dimension of this critique. This article draws on critical social justice literature, including tools from Critical Whiteness studies, to critically explore anti-Traveller racism and to analyse the tensions inherent in including Traveller culture and history in Irish primary and post-primary curricula.

Antecedents of the perceived organizational justice: An aggregated theoretical framework

The interest of the perceived organizational justice realm remains an increased manifold. It is a behavioral concept that emphasizes how people subjectively assess the ethical and moral norms of organizational management. Perceived organizational justice (OJ) is sometimes studied as a dependent variable, but often as an independent variable. For that reason, various OJ antecedents are examined in this paper, such as factors related to individual characteristics (Demographic characteristics, personality traits), culture (Individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, long, term/court term orientation, masculinity/femininity), organizational processes (organizational structure, HR practices, CSR initiatives), and interpersonal relationship (Leader-member-exchange and social contagion). Besides, the current paper presents an analytic review of the existing perceived organizational justice literature, and attempts to respond to the following question: What contributes to framing a fairness perception? Because of the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinarity of this field, we consolidated more than 125 theoretical and empirical papers, to portray firstly a holistic overview of fairness theories (cognitive/process and content theories), and highlight secondly the different relationships between perceived organizational justice and an array of predictors. Thereby, this review aims to contribute to the enrichment of the state of knowledge of justice or fairness, by providing a clear roadmap and deeper insight for researchers and practitioners concerned with perceived organizational justice, and enabling them to understand how and why people make such fairness perceptions in the workplace. To do so, we discuss its relationships with various antecedent aspects and propose an aggregated theoretical framework to identify multiple areas for future investigation and guide the field forward.

Treaty Preambles and The Environmental Justice Gap

AbstractGlobal environmental architectures have the potential to reduce inequalities, however, legal, and political procedures and structures may also increase injustices and disempowerment. Multilateral environmental agreements create large regimes over some of the most expansive planetary systems. Contracting states list the purposes, motivations and considerations that led them to conclude legally binding agreements in treaty preambles that are an interpretive tool, a declaration of context, motivation, and intent of the contracting states or parties. This study produces an environmental justice conceptual framework that references the scholarship on environmental justice and environmental governance, outlines the elements required to introduce environmental justice debates into treaty preambles, and gives an example of its application to determine whether the preambles include justice concepts. The preambles selected are from treaties with broad geographic and subject matter scope: they regulate oceans, climate, and biodiversity, the transport of waste, mercury pollution, migratory and endangered species, and wetlands. Using the environmental justice conceptual framework, the study found a justice gap between how justice is addressed in justice debates and literatures and the stated intent of the contracting parties in the preambles. The conclusions support the literature that argues that multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) are ahistorical as regards the moral responsibility that lies at the heart of the definitions of justice.