Victims Of Injustice Research Articles

Negotiating the Struggle for Justice: Negotiation and Communication Practices of Selected Families of Media Killings

This qualitative study inquires into the negotiation styles and counter-hegemonic communication practices employed by the families of media killings in their pursuit of justice. Anchored on the analytical concepts of Gramscian hegemony and resistance, the study reveals the dominant negotiation styles utilized by the families and how these styles, first and foremost, manifest the families’ need to be recognized as victims of injustice and impunity especially by the institutions of state power, and secondly, reflect their own power to resist the prevailing state hegemony in the context of negotiation.

The Criminal Community of Victims and Perpetrators: Cognitive Foundations of Citizen Detachment From Organized Violence in Mexico

After its successful transition to democracy, Mexico has experienced an epidemic of organized societal violence known as the drug war that, to date, has caused well over 100,000 casualties. Most of this violence has been consigned to oblivion, without proper investigation or prosecution. Victims have been organizing and protesting, yet ordinary citizens have remained quiet, except for two short lived waves of nationwide protest. As I hypothesize, a primary reason for their acquiescence is cognitive. The framing of organized violence as a self-contained war among criminals (“bounded violence”) erodes the attitudinal foundation of citizen solidarity and sympathy with the victims of injustice. I explore the cognitive foundations of citizen attitudes towards victims on the basis of original data from the Mexican 2013 National Survey on Organized Violence. Logistic regression analysis confirms the expected framing effect. Even when controlling for alternative explanations, such as personal proximity to violence and social proximity to its victims, the notion of bounded violence within a criminal community induces citizens to view its victims with indifference.

‘We demand justice. We just getting started’: the constitutive rhetoric of 1Hood Media's hip-hop activism

AbstractThe hip-hop activism of Pittsburgh's 1Hood Media has been a key element of the success of several contemporary social justice campaigns, such as the 2010 Justice For Jordan Miles police brutality case. After offering some background on 1Hood Media and a discussion of constitutive rhetoric, this study offers a close reading of 1Hood's rhetorical appeal, focusing on the ways in which the audience is constituted as both collective and individual subjects whose participation in the narrative is essential to its closure. 1Hood Media's texts focus on a diverse range of victims of injustice who suffer at the hands of police brutality and murder, and other forms of systemic oppression. The villains in these narratives are institutional forces, such as racist police forces, or corrupt Wall Street banks. By focusing on music, lyrical and visual features of 1Hood's cultural products, this study contributes to studies of popular music, hip-hop, rhetoric and cultural politics.

Perceived injustice after traumatic injury: Associations with pain, psychological distress, and quality of life outcomes 12 months after injury.

There is growing recognition that individuals who experience traumatic injuries perceive themselves as victims of injustice and that elevated levels of perceived injustice are associated with problematic physical and psychological outcomes. To date, research regarding injustice perception and injury outcomes has been restricted to a small number of musculoskeletal pain conditions. No research to date has examined the potential impact of perceived injustice among individuals admitted for trauma care. As part of this cross-sectional study, individuals (n = 155) admitted to a Level-1 trauma center completed measures of perceived injustice, pain, depression, posttraumatic stress, and health related (physical and mental/emotional) quality of life (HRQoL) outcomes 12 months after trauma admission. Bivariate analyses revealed significant associations between perceived injustice and demographic variables (education, income, race, and age) as well as injury-related variables (type of injury and length of hospital stay). Perceived injustice was correlated with greater pain intensity, depression, and PTSD symptoms, as well as poorer physical and mental HRQoL. Controlling for relevant demographic and injury-related variables, perceived injustice accounted for unique variance in pain intensity, depression severity, the presence and intensity of PTSD symptoms, mental HRQoL, and was marginally significant for physical HRQoL. This is the first study to examine perceived injustice in a trauma sample. Results support the presence of injustice perception in this group and its associations with pain and quality of life outcomes. Additional research is suggested to explore the impact of perceived injustice on recovery outcomes among individuals who have sustained traumatic injury.

Collective action from a distance: Distance shapes how people view victims of injustice and decreases willingness to engage in collective action

The present research examines whether distance affects not only how people view victims of injustice, but also group members’ willingness to engage in collective action. Across two experiments, examining both spatial (Experiment 1) and temporal (Experiment 2) distance, distant victims were seen as less familiar and more likely to be viewed at a relatively more superordinate level of identity (less in terms of subgroup identity) compared to near victims. In addition, participants were less willing to engage in collective action on behalf of distant victims, relative to near victims. Across studies, decreased collective action on behalf of distant victims, relative to near victims, was explained by the tendency to view victims in a more abstract way—as less familiar (Experiment 2) and at a more superordinate level (Experiments 1 and 2). Across both studies, results also demonstrated that participants were less willing to engage in collective action on behalf of out-group targets, relative to in-group targets, which was explained by perceptions of familiarity (Experiment 2). Implications for collective action and more broadly social change are discussed.

Doing Gender Justice as a Mission Imperative

Announcement of the kingdom of God The gospel of Luke describes John the Baptist going throughout Jordon, proclaiming a baptism of repentance: "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight'" (Luke 3: 4-5). When the people ask John, "What then should we do?" John doesn't moralize, but responds proactively: "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages." (Luke 3: 11-14) In other words, to prepare the path for God's kingdom is to actively do justice and destroy the consequences of the sin. What we have in the words of John the Baptist is an expression of Christological eschatology, i.e. the kingdom of God is going to be given to us as a gift, but at the same time we have been called to "make the path smooth" in our acceptance of the gift. In that sense, eschaton is God-human endeavour, the kingdom that we're awaiting from God is anticipated and expressed in history through the praxis of human beings that should iconize the new eon. In Gustavo Gutierrez's words, "The hope which overcomes death must be rooted in the heart of historical praxis; if this hope doesn't take shape in the present to lead it forward, it will be only an evasion, a futuristic illusion." (1) Christological eschatology means one important thing: it is divine-human synergy, just as Christ has divine-human nature as defined by the ecumenical council of Chalcedon. It isn't a communist utopia in which heaven on earth will be brought about by the proletariat, or a utopia of Zealots during the time of Jesus that human will is capable of bringing kingdom of God. We sometimes forget this truth and make ourselves passive in history through the expectation that God will do everything exclusively. We forget sometimes that "from the very beginning Christianity was socially minded. The whole fabric of Christian existence is social and corporate. All Christian sacraments are intrinsically 'social sacraments,' i.e., sacraments of incorporation ... To build up the church of Christ means, therefore, to build up a new society and, by implication, to re-build human society on a new basis." (2) The New Testament reveals the kingdom of God as a new mode of relationship, a new quality of life. The kingdom is proclaimed when the sick and the poor are healed, when the dead are resurrected, when the disenfranchised are accepted, when abundance of food is offered to many, when justice, love, peace, harmony, and solidarity rule (Matt. 4:23, 5:10, 25:34; Luke 9:2, 9:12-18; Rom. 14:17; 1 Cor. 6:9). Let's look at the words from the beginning of the liturgy in the Orthodox Church: "Blessed is the kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." Through these opening words, the liturgy is supposed to open up toward the eschatological kingdom, "a progressive movement towards the fullness of the kingdom of Christ, toward His cosmic and historical triumph." (3) The kingdom of God should be manifested in all of its social implications through historical limitations. It means that the liturgy should not reflect a patriarchal mode of relationship, the degradation of women,4 * disregard of lay people/ and inaccessibility for the sick and elderly. Primacy should be given to these issues that collide with the values of God's kingdom. Genesis 3:16 argues that man should rule over woman, but this verse comes as a consequence of the sin--the fall. This verse only expresses how the male-female relationship has been lived or conducted in our communities where the ideology of men rules, and not God's given/original order. …

What are Adaptive Preferences? Exclusion and Disability in the Capability Approach

AbstractIt is a longstanding problem for theorists of justice that many victims of injustice seem to prefer mistreatment, and perpetuate their own oppression. One possible response is to simply ignore such preferences as unreliable ‘adaptive preferences’. Capability theorists have taken this approach, arguing that individuals should be entitled to certain capabilities regardless of their satisfaction without them. Although this initially seems plausible, worries have been raised that undermining the reliability of individuals' strongly‐held preferences impugns their rationality, and further excludes already marginalised groups. I argue that such criticisms trade on an ambiguity between two uses of the term ‘adaptive preference’. An adaptive preference is often assumed to be irrational, and an unreliable guide to its possessor's best interests. However, I suggest a preference may also be adaptive in the sense that it is an unreliable guide to our distributive entitlements, and that this does not require an assessment of individuals' rationality. I consider this distinction in relation to disability, arguing that this clarification allows us to justifiably ignore some disabled individuals' preferences, in the context of theorising about distributive justice, without disrespecting or undermining their rationality or culture.

Jenseits der Regelbefolgung. Metaethische Konsequenzen der Legalismus-Kritik Judith Shklars

Abstract In my paper I reconstruct J. Shklar’s arguments against legalistic positions which try to reduce the moral point of view to a model of legitimizing and applying rules. I emphasize in particular the relevance of her arguments for current metaethical debates. The paper shows that Shklar’s thought comes close to some arguments of S. Cavell, who locates the problem of how to define the relation between a rule and a case at the very center of ethical reflection. Finally I discuss how Shklar’s scepticism about any objective moral point of view corresponds with two other negativistic motives of her philosophy: a) her accusation that traditional theories of justice make invisible the perspective of the victims of injustice, and b) her thesis that injustice cannot be reduced to “a prelude, a rejection, and a collapse of justice.”

Innocence is No Defense: Politicized Childhood in Antonio Skármeta’s La composición/The Composition

Chilean author Antonio Skarmeta’s picture book The Composition (2000), illustrated by Alfonso Ruano, focuses on the political involvement of 9-year-old Pedro. This essay brings together Maria Nikolajeva’s concept of aetonormativity and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s concept of childism to examine how The Composition troubles normative assumptions regarding children’s political action and reflects necessary changes in how children are regarded. Pedro’s political actions are not grounded in an established political ideology, nor do they result from advice from adults. Rather, Pedro’s parents naively attempt to reinforce the idea that childhood is an apolitical status—this despite the dictatorship’s willingness to exploit children’s assumed lack of political knowledge. Uniting literary critics with psychological and political criticism, this essay insists on the necessity of literature that recognizes children’s political activities and responsibilities. Such literature should not be exclusively directed toward children who are victims of injustice, nor should it deny that those children involved in political action are still children; ascription of an honorary adult status to young political actors may serve to further marginalize specific children as well as children as a class.

A Catholic Perspective on Capitalism and Economic Democracy: Edward M. Marciniak’s Advocacy for Justice

Edward M. Marciniak (1917-2004) was a labor activist and crusader for justice who left his mark on Catholic social action in his native Chicago and beyond. What began as a personal response to depression-era problems evolved into a vocation to challenge the systemic causes of social and economic injustice. He built on his experiences as a Catholic Worker to found the Catholic Labor Alliance in Chicago and dedicated himself to educating workers, employers, and public officials to undertake economic reforms. While he recognized the failures of communism, he did not substitute anti-communism for patriotism. Rather he called for an economic justice that recognized the rights of workers and those of management as an alternative to the unrestricted individualism of American capitalism. His solution was to support economic democracy, often known as the Industrial Council Plan, wherein the interests of workers, management, and government were balanced in a partnership aimed at the common good. As leader of Catholic Labor Alliance and editor of its paper, Work , he was not unique in Catholic social action. However, his blend of idealism and realism, grounded by life in the labor movement trenches and daily rubbing shoulders with the victims of injustice was uncommon. This realism with his constancy and drive made him a voice to be reckoned with in Catholic social action.

Youth Education for Social Responsibility

Social responsibility requires youth education that promotes it. This article addresses the problem of irresponsible, unjust social behavior from the perspective of its origins in the prevailing Prussian model of public education. It proposes an alternative partnership model that teaches collaborative, socially responsible behavior. We define socially responsible behavior in terms of five central issues of social justice. We also assert, with others, that transformative remedies must arise from collaboration between the victims of injustice and those who have the means to alter the educational models. We adduce several key insights from anthropology and the philosophy of value and meaning to support this objective. We conclude with several ideas concerning educational experiments that could help in the transformation of youth education models, including Venezuela's El Sistema, which uses orchestral music to teach collaborative life skills. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fatima's Revolutionary Image in Fadak fi al-Ta'rikh (1955): The Inception of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's Activism

This article examines Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's first publication, Fadak fi al-Ta'rikh, contextualising the historiographical depiction of the dispute that ensued between Abu Bakr and Fatima over the Fadak land. Informed by traditional Shi‘i approaches to this episode of early Islamic history, the study locates the text's themes within various Iraqi contexts, including the struggle for the ideological orientation of the state, the quest for a unified Iraqi Civil Code and the place of Shi‘is in the new Iraqi state. The main contention of this study is that through his engagement with contours of Iraqi oppositional discourse, Sadr transforms the traditional image of Fatima from a weak and abused victim of injustice to a revolutionary heroine who fought for Shi‘i political and legal rights. His innovative portrayal of Fatima's claim to the Fadak marks one of the earliest efforts to reinterpret Shi‘i parables in an activist spirit. Sadr is among the first to promote the shift from passive eschatological expectations for redress to temporal confrontation with forces of injustice and to convey the message that protest is desirable irrespective of its chances of success.

Slavery, Slave Trade and Reparation Movement in Africa

Slavery and slave trade, no doubt contributed to the underdevelopment of Africa. It was a phenomenon which demeaned Blackman’s dignity and laid the foundation of racial inequality between Whiteman and black-skinned man. Slave trade aided the growth and development of the slave-holding nations and retarded the growth and development of Africa. Many scholars have challenged the relationship between Africa and the outside world, which according to them, altered the rate at which Africa’s development was growing prior to slave trade, hence, the calls for reparations as a form of restitution for the injustice perpetrated by Christian Europe and Muslim Arabs who were beneficiaries of slave trade. This paper therefore examines slavery and slave trade with their effects on Africa and includes Arab World as co-culprit with Europe and therefore liable to pay reparations alongside with Europe to Africa. The work carefully examines reparation’s Movements in Africa together with the arguments of anti-reparation advocates. Also, the paper take a review of examples of reparations paid in the past to victims of injustice which acted as a basis for several reparation calls in Africa in the 1990s. The work concludes by making suggestions on how best reparation idea should be championed which according to the writer, is a ‘just course’ that must be pursued to a logical conclusion.

Helping by hurting: the paradox of suffering in social justice education

Suffering has a complex role in social justice education. The alleviation or eradication of suffering is a goal of social justice education while, simultaneously, students suffer in the process of learning about the suffering of others. Educational theorists have attempted to resolve this paradox in various ways and the author of this article identifies and discusses four distinct resolutions. First, student suffering is permissible because it is self-inflicted (rather than inflicted by the teacher). Second, the students’ pain, compassion, is desirable and distinct from the pain experienced by victims of injustice. Third, students should experience the same kind of suffering as the victims of injustice in order to inoculate them against racist, discriminatory, and oppressive attitudes. Fourth, the suffering of marginalized and oppressed students is a distinct form of suffering that empowers students by enabling them to recognize their own suffering.

Desire beyond the Château d'If

Desire beyond the Château d'If

Introduction

There is no question that the scope and complexity of forensic practice has expanded over the past two decades, as has the scientific evidence for vari-ous issues which come before Courts throughout much of the world. The rule of law is a hallmark of democratic societies. The pursuit of justice is not just the concern for legal professionals, but a wide range of professionals whose clients’ lives are touched by law or law breakers. The application of the best available evidence applied through a professional practice which is unbiased, reliable, and seeks the truth is the hallmark of a forensic expert. It is meaningless to try to balance one injustice against another injus-tice. The mentally ill adult, battered woman, as well as the child who becomes the victim of injustice, all suffer an outrage in a free society. Injustice whether because of biased testimony or ill-informed knowledge makes the forensic “expert” no expert at all. As children are among the most unheard, oppressed, and easy victims of those who break the law, forensic practice with children makes the duties of the expert even more critical than in areas where the subject of forensic practice is better able to speak for and advocate for her/himself or where scientific findings are robust and clear. In no area of the law or forensic practice is the pursuit of new knowledge more critical than it is practice with children. The manuscripts in this Special Issue rise out of the need for new knowledge to inform forensic practice with children. We are fortunate to have articles from among the leading researchers and experts on areas of knowledge that directly impact forensic practice with children. Each article expands our knowledge of forensic practice with and for children.

‘The Subject is Obscene: No Lady Would Dream of Alluding to It’: Marie Stopes and her courtroom dramas

Although it is often assumed that Marie Stopes (1880–1958) was put on trial for her promotion of birth control, the cause célèbre which brought her major media attention in 1923 was in fact her own libel suit against the Roman Catholic doctor Halliday Sutherland for his attack against her clinic. This article looks at Stopes performing in the courtroom as a victim of injustice, deserving of remedy, both in this case, and in her earlier case for the annulment of the marriage to her first husband, Reginald Ruggles Gates, on the grounds of his impotence. It is argued that her success in bringing the latter to a successful conclusion led her to an unrealistic assessment of the degree to which she could control the narrative about herself within the context of the courtroom in her libel suit. In both cases, factors external to the courtroom had a significant impact.

‘Actually evil. Not high school evil’: Amanda Knox, sex and celebrity crime

In November 2007, the media around the globe were transfixed by US student Amanda Knox, an alleged participant in the sexual assault and murder of her flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. Her celebrity status was established within days of the murder, and at the end of 2008 she was voted Woman of the Year by an Italian TV station, ahead of Carla Bruni and Sarah Palin. The focus of this study is the representation of Amanda Knox in the UK media, particularly the coverage offered by the Daily Mail. The Mail has shown a detailed and sustained interest in the case throughout, its focus on her character and personal life helping to secure Knox's status as a celebrity murderess (and, in the wake of her acquittal in October 2011, as an apparent celebrity victim of injustice). Focusing on the Mail’s narratological strategies, as well as its rhetorical ones, this study explores connections between celebrity, sex and violence in order to assess what the Knox phenomenon reveals about contemporary attitudes towards transgressive female sexuality. Under scrutiny are the ways in which the celebrity crime figure Amanda Knox has been represented, and how these representations conform to dominant ideological constructions of the violent female.

Two ways of realizing justice and democracy: linking Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Amartya Sen advocates democracy defined as ‘public reasoning’ and ‘government by discussion’. Sen’s discursive approach facilitates the exercise of political freedom and development of one’s public capacities, and enables victims of injustice to give public voice and discussion to specific injustice. It also responds to the contested nature of ‘universal human rights’ and the need to clarify and defend them via public reasoning. However, Sen’s approach leaves intact the hegemony of a liberal form of democracy that prioritizes political and civil rights over social and economic rights and thus precludes alternative democratic forms, most notably a form of cooperative democracy that politicizes social and economic activities in the pursuit of local and global justice. Sen’s ‘government by discussion’ must combine with cooperative democracy and a global ethos emphasizing cooperation (and action) over privatization in order to address our most serious global injustices, including exploitation, inequality and poverty in the Global South, accelerating destruction of the environment and biodiversity, and global warming and climate change.

Benefiting from Injustice and Brute Luck

Many political philosophers maintain that beneficiaries of injustice are under special obligations to assist victims of injustice. However, the examples favored by those who endorse this view equally support an alternative luck egalitarian view, which holds that special obligations should be assigned to those with good brute luck. From this perspective the distinguishing features of the benefiting view are (1) its silence on the question of whether to allocate special obligations to assist the brute luck worse off to those who are well off as a matter of brute luck but not as a result of injustice, and (2) its silence on the question of whether to allocate assistance to those who are badly off as a matter of brute luck but not as a result of injustice. In this new light, the benefiting view is harder to justify.