Victims Of Injustice Research Articles

The Balance of Injustice and the War for Independence

Americans think of the North American colonies’ War for Independence from Great Britain as a struggle for freedom by a people subjected to colonial domination. Without denying the colonies’ grievances, this paper argues that the principal victims of injustice in North America were not European Americans but Americans of color. The freedom to exterminate Indians and take their land was one of the main objectives of the colonists’ drive for independence. The British government for its own reasons sought to slow down the colonies’ westward expansion. With territorial expansion would come the spread of slavery. Such effects were intended and accomplished and had been reasonably predictable at the time. It follows that one must question whether the War for Independence was morally justifiable.

Public relations and organizational justice: More fairness or just more cooperation?

This article brings together two established fields of organizational study, organizational justice (OJ) and public relations (PR), in a search for potential benefits. The ‘fair process effect’ says that people tend to behave more cooperatively and prosocially when they perceive fairness in a situation, and less cooperatively when they perceive unfairness. Scholars have stressed the potential benefits of understanding perceptions of fairness in a range of contexts including policing, sport refereeing, management and teaching. Some have also challenged OJ scholars to use that field’s understanding of what people find to be fair to better help the victims of injustice. The article reports that PR and OJ have developed bodies of knowledge that enhance organizations’ capacity to influence change for greater fairness, but both fields have been criticized because their knowledge has more often been applied to increasing the perception of fairness (resulting in greater stakeholder cooperation with organizations and their decisions), than to increasing fair outcomes for a range of stakeholders. The article also shows that PR could benefit in several ways from a deeper understanding of OJ, and that OJ could be very usefully integrated in tertiary PR and professional inservice courses. First, OJ may provide a meta-language and evidence basis for planning, framing and evaluating organizational communication and processes that would help PR focus on the frames and drivers of fairness. Second, PR, like OJ, needs a better understanding of power if it is to recognize subtle forms of domination and exercise influence that advances fairness for the most vulnerable. Third, OJ highlights the importance of independence in decision making if those affected by decisions are to trust decision makers and perceive decisions to be fair. Stakeholder mistrust limits PR agency and capacity to advance fairness, but independence would represent a profound shift from the existing paradigm of relations that PR practitioners have with organizations, as employees or consultants. The article introduces PR to OJ’s impressive body of empirical evidence from organizations, and sophisticated theories and models to frame and clarify concepts for advancing practice and scholarship of fairness. Although it may be tempting to apply the power of procedural and interactional justice effects to influence perceptions of fairness and reactions to privately determined decisions, the article cautions that stakeholders will best be served where PR ensures that multiple voices are heard and acted on in matters of distribution.

CFTC/CFDT Attitudes towards Immigration in the Parisian Region

This paper, which is based on the detailed analysis of the post-war archives of the French Christian union Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC), which became the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT) in 1964, highlights the difficulties, both from a practical and ideological point of view, for a militant organisation to embrace the cause of immigrant workers and to give them a voice. The CFDT had to ‘construct’ immigrant workers as a group they could represent, which means as a group that relates to French workers, despite possible xenophobia. A key moment was the denunciation of their housing conditions that make immigrant workers not competitors in the job market but victims of injustice. The union had to reinvent its engagement frames in order to include the specific problems faced by the immigrant workforce. The study shows that the urban dimension was essential in this process as Paris slums made visible an important plight of migrants and provided the opportunity to change public opinion.

China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers, and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image by Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo (review)

Reviewed by: China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers, and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image by Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo Franklin J. Woo (bio) Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo. China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers, and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image. Translated by Catherine Mansfield. New York: Crown Publishers, 2013. xiv, 350 pp. Hardcover $26.00, isbn 978-0-385-34657-3. If we were to see reportage on China as falling into either the glass-is-half-full or the-glass-is-half-empty category, China’s Silent Army, by two Spanish journalists, Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo, definitely falls into the half-empty category. Despite the fact that Beijing has in the last three decades jettisoned Marxism ideology and embraced global capitalism with a vengeance, the authors still view Communist China as being sinister and out to conquer the world in its image. Furthermore, China is doing it with an army of Chinese citizens from all walks of life: “pioneers, traders, fixers and workers”—patriots who are integral members of the emerging Chinese empire with one accord of conquest. Like most titles of books distributed by publishers with sales in mind, China’s Silent Army [End Page 578] seems more sensational and alarmist than the authors would have it. Nevertheless, they also seem anxious to show their views regarding China’s rapacious drive throughout the world. In their effort to confirm their assumption, Cardenal and Araujo traveled far and wide to various parts of the world to get the facts “on the ground” (a phrase repeated with pride throughout the book) to do their investigative reporting. They risked dangerous situations of lawlessness, which threatened their lives. Regardless, they were doggedly determined to see for themselves and, wherever possible, to obtain interviews with significant people involved in China’s frenetic drive to take over the planet. China has been building infrastructures of roads, airports, schools, hospitals, and even sports stadiums for developing countries (many neglected by the departed colonial powers and their native successors) in exchange for China’s insatiable need for energy and natural resources to fuel and supply their factory of the world. The countries the writers visited were mostly in the undeveloped world, postcolonial places, many isolated and sparsely populated with little or no mechanisms of social control, or checks and balances, except the iron hand of dictators. In such newly exploitable places, the Chinese companies, most of which are “state-owned” (another term repeatedly used in the pejorative sense), do business on a basis of noninterference into the domestic polity of the receiving country. No questions are asked regarding the indigenous government’s policies, however harmful to its own people. The authors especially sought the candid views of local victims of injustices and, if present, their advocates for better working conditions, more humane treatment, and compensation. Although they do not mention China’s silent army, Cardenal and Araujo do seem to have a monolithic view of the Chinese presence in the world, despite the diverse agendas of the latter. The authors try to avoid their prejudicial Cold War perceptions. Even after denying that “the Chinese diaspora forms part of some monolithic entity that is following the lead of the Chinese party-state to unite against their Western rivals” (p. 40), their endless litany of examples of ruthless exploitation affirms what they deny. Such can be seen in the thousands of petty Chinese entrepreneurs going door-to-door with their overstuffed bags of affordable made-in-China merchandise everywhere in the metropolis of Cairo; China’s illegal deforestation of Siberia, enabling Chinese factories to build a third of the world’s furniture; China’s exploitation of the precious jade of Burma, whose miners work under dangerous and inhuman conditions; China’s creation of casinos for gambling and prostitution in Burma’s isolated jungles; the thousands of miles of pipeline built across the central Asian countries of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan that convey Turkmenistan’s natural gas to the People’s Republic; China’s depletion of copper and iron ore in Latin America; and China’s construction of dozens of dams...

“From This Far Place”: On Justice and Absence

Addressing historic injustice involves a struggle against absence. This article reflects on the foundations of that challenge, on absence and justice. I ask what it means to address the absent victims of deadly injustice given the distance of time and death that separates us from them. This topic embraces a wide swath of events of interest to students of politics. Some are as recent as the Rwandan genocide; others are by now historical: the Holocaust or slavery in antebellum America. All have in common that they and their victims are distant from us, a separation that makes doing them justice deeply perplexing. In response, I sketch an argument that the absent victims of injustice are not nullities but retain a status, a presence as claimants on justice that defines our efforts to address the wrongs done them.

‘Saving Africa From Dangerous Ideas’

In the last two decades, no other ideas have gained the totemic status that ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ have attained in global and African public policy and political discourses. From Cameroon to Kenya, democracy and human rights were the rallying cries of the 1990s reform movements that have radically reshaped the politics of most African states. While ridiculed and rejected as Western impositions by many African leaders (many of them relics of the Cold War), the indigeneity of the voices for democracy and human rights were never in doubt, particularly among the victims of injustice and misrule in Africa...

Bonhoeffer and the Palestinian‐ Israel Conflict: South African Reflections

Bonhoeffer and the Palestinian‐ Israel Conflict: South African Reflections

When Citizens Fight Back: Justice Sensitivity and Resistance to Political Reform

A considerable number of individuals show resistance to reform, whereas others, although similarly affected, do not react in a resistant way at all. Based on research showing that people differ concerning how sensitive they are toward being a victim of injustice (victim justice sensitivity), we argued that people high in victim justice sensitivity perceive a reform more as an illegitimate limitation to their freedom resulting in more reactance. Consequently, people high in victim justice sensitivity should show more resistance to reform. We conducted three studies to test these assumptions. Our studies revealed that physicians (healthcare reform, Study 1) and students (introduction of tuition fees, Studies 2 and 3) with higher victim justice sensitivity experienced more reactance and thus showed more resistance to reform. The implications of these results for the implementation of political reforms are discussed.

The International Ecumenical Peace Convocation: Towards an Ecumenical Theology of Just Peace?

The International Ecumenical Peace Convocation: Towards an Ecumenical Theology of Just Peace?

Third-party punishment and symbolic intragroup status

Retributive justice theory has suggested two processes by which punishment is psychologically satisfying to victims of injustice: leveling the power imbalance caused by the transgression and revalidating social consensus over the importance of the rules, norms, and values violated by the offense. The current investigation proposes a third symbolic function that has not yet been identified as a psychological consequence of punishment: confirmation of the victim's membership status in the group (i.e., intragroup standing or respect). Three studies identified perceptions of intragroup membership status as following from third-party punishment, partly explaining the effect of punishment on a victim's group identification. Study 1 showed that, following the experience of an injustice, punishment prevented perceived membership status threats from resulting in victim disidentification. Study 2 showed that third-party desires to punish increased subsequent identification by symbolically communicating the ingroup's regard for the victim, even when the offender did not actually suffer the effects of third-party sanctions. Finally, Study 3 showed that punishment only implied membership status when the act of punishment was instigated by an ingroup authority and was thus identity-relevant. Taken together, these studies offer the first examination of membership status as a relevant concern underlying retributive justice.

Becoming Corsairs: Byron, British Property Rights and Orientalist Economics

LORD BYRON WAS FAMOUSLY ASSOCIATED WITH MARITIME PIRACY throughout his literary career, thanks to his dashing depictions of corsairs and their swashbuckling at sea. Stricken with itch of wanderlust and Proscribed at home, / And taunted to a wish to roam, (1) many of his heroes sailed to and fro, living for stretches of time as pirates or suffering their depredations. Briefly mentioned in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812), The Giaour (1813), Mantled (1817) and Beppo (1818), subject of piracy appears at length for first time in The Bride of Abydos (1813), in which protagonist, Sehm, avenges an upbringing of humiliations at hands of his pasha uncle by embarking on a campaign of high-seas terror. Cantos 2, 3 and 4 of Don Juan (1819--21) mark Byron's list full treatment of issue, though merciless pirate, Lambro, is less matinee idol than cruel villain, tearing his daughter Haidee away from lovelorn Juan. But it was publication of poet's most popular work, The Corsair (1814), that turned piracy into emblem of Byronic heroism: readers were seduced by Conrad, an exile camped on a Mediterranean island who commands a renegade crew that attacks passing vessels. This passion for piracy in Byron's oeuvre begs question of why subject generated such interest in author and in audience that turned The Corsair into one of best-se/ling poetical works of Romantic period. (2) The Byronic pirate clearly owes much to popular traditions of medieval outlaw, hero of peasant folklore and ballads who resists an unjust feudal order that oppresses unprotected masses. (3) Like Conrad, archetypical Robin Hood takes up criminal fife because he has been a victim of injustice at an early age and reveals his innate goodness in his courtesy towards women. But by 18th century, romances glorifying audacious bandits were being relegated to nursery, considered a debased form of cultural capital apt to entertain children but unfit for edifying adults. (4) Why, then, did Romantics resurrect thieving outlaw for a post-feudal audience endowed with much-vaunted political rights? While no doubt attesting to Romantic taste for medievalism, figure of noble outlaw, certainly single most popular hero of Romantic Movement, (5) also engaged contemporary concerns. In particular, this essay argues that appeal of pirates lay in how their robberies refracted 19th century's most combustible social question: sanctity of property rights and potential that more representative government might engineer more equitable economic outcomes. The controversy over wealth subtends all political battles of period: a Reform movement agitating for universal suffrage not only disputed property as a qualification for vote but also threatened legislative measures to redistribute economic surpluses. In this context, piratical activities could activate disparate ideologies, at once invoking confiscations of an antiquated and arbitrary executive power or incipient egalitarianism of an emerging social democracy. Reconciling Byron's ode to piracy with these political vectors appears daunting given its ambiguities. In self-fashioning protagonist who has eschewed his noble prerogatives, risen above crowd of vulgar men, lustily quenched the thirsting eye of Enterprize and idealized domestic idyll of companionate marriage, we may identify thirsting 'T' of bourgeois meritocracy, individualism and privatized happiness. (6) If we emphasize his murders, robberies and slave trading, combined with his lordly arrogance, our hero more closely resembles entitled pasha who despotically rules neighboring fiefdom, blissfully oblivious to rights of man. Finally, we could read fact that Conrad cares not a whir about the grosser joys of sense and leads this crowd of vulgar men into battle against a hypocritical social order as radical attack of a disenfranchised mob on unquestioned privilege of nobility and capitalists to monopolize material satisfactions. …

The Benefits, Costs, and Paradox of Revenge

In this article, we examine the psychology of revenge. We begin by discussing challenges associated with defining revenge. We then review the relative costs and benefits associated with taking revenge. Although revenge can deter future harm, promote cooperation, and restore avengers’ self-worth and power, it can also contribute to conflict escalation and adverse psychological outcomes for avengers, such as depression and reduced life satisfaction. Next, we examine the prevalence of revenge. In distinguishing between the desire for revenge and act of revenge, we challenge the notion that the act of revenge is an automatic or pervasive response to injustice. We highlight four factors that influence whether victims of injustice choose to take revenge: the persistence of anger, perceptions of the costs of revenge, cultural and religious values regarding revenge, and the presence of external systems that can restore justice on behalf of victims. ‘‘Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell’’ ‐ Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2

What gives victims satisfaction when they seek revenge?

The present paper aims to elucidate under what conditions victims of injustice who seek revenge feel satisfied and perceive that everybody got what he or she deserved. Two hypotheses are discussed: The comparative suffering hypothesis states that seeing the offender suffer from fate is sufficient for evoking satisfaction and perceptions of deservingness among victims. The understanding hypothesis states that revenge can only be satisfactory when the offender understands it as a response to his or her prior behavior. These hypotheses were tested in three experimental studies. The comparative suffering hypothesis received only weak support. The understanding hypothesis, on the other hand, received much stronger support: When the offender understood revenge as punishment, revenge led to satisfaction and deservingness among victims. These findings are discussed with regard to the question why people take revenge. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The relationship between organizational justice and workplace aggression

This paper is a discussion of the links between organizational justice and workplace aggression. Managers have been identified as key players in implementing and maintaining an organizational culture of trust and justice. Employees who perceive themselves to be victims of injustice may rebel, using various means to 'punish' the source of the injustice. Literature review of publications in English and French from the early 1960 to 2009, including books, was conducted. Bibliographic databases searched for journal articles were Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Current Content, EMBASE, Medline, PsycINFO and Web of Science. The work environment and roles of nursing managers have changed considerably in the last 20 years, resulting in challenging working conditions for nursing managers. These can have an impact on their ability to create a trusting and fair culture, and can mean that they themselves be considered victims of organizational injustice. The failure of many re-engineering projects has been linked to a lack of consideration of the impact of perception of justice when implementing change. In addition, perception of organizational justice has the potential to influence many organizational outcomes, such as perception of respect and trust. As justice is a founding principle of biomedical ethics, principles of justice, equity and fairness must be upheld in practice in accordance with the requirements of professional codes of ethics. The concept of justice is linked to the founding principles of biomedical ethics, and these must be upheld in order to practise in accordance with professional codes of ethics and conduct.

The politics of trauma and reconciliation

This paper explores transitional justice as a way to bring an end to violence and consolidate peace. It approaches transitional justice as an expression of the 'never again' consensus to prevent or prosecute crimes against humanity. It explores transitional justice as an expression of globalizing law and the implications this has for the recovery of the 'rule of law' and 'political legitimacy' in the post conflict State. It takes Robert Meister (2002)'s formulation of the politics of victimhood, revenge and resentment in the relationship between the beneficiaries and the victims of injustice, as remaining at the centre of transitional justice politics in trying to decide on the balance between reconciliation and justice projects. It explores how human rights discourse has been used to de-politicise the 'victim' by adopting an individually embodied concept of violence as opposed to a structural one. It argues that transitional justice as an expression of globalizing law has been primarily directed at maintaining peace to achieve closure on past 'evil' but that the beneficiary-victim issue has re-emerged in the social justice movements and renewed desire for prosecutions.

James Joyce and the Politics of Food

In Stephen and Bloom at Life's Feast (1984), Lyndsey Tucker notes that Joyce pays close attention to food and digestion, especially in Bloom's gustatory progress through Ulysses.1 A close reading of Joyce's work also reveals characters who restrict their food intake in particular social and political situations, and in doing so, draw complicated connections between food, politics, and gender in Ireland. For instance, within both Dead and A Portrait ofthe Artist as a Young Man, women refuse food during important holiday dinner scenes; addi tionally, Stephen Dedalus displays his complex relationship with eating throughout the day in Ulysses, eventually refusing solid food completely. For Dedalus, uncertainties about identity?not just gender, but also Irishness and wholeness?become triggers to his food behaviors. Food refusal in Joyces work, which culminate in Stephen Dedalus's eventual rejection of solid food in Ulysses, builds upon an Irish historical and cultural tradition of food refusal as a form of political speech and suggests a way to rebuild fractured identity. The political implications of food in Ireland intensify because starvation, both willing and unwilling, is a recurring theme in Irish history. The long standing tactic of denial and self-starvation to protest mistreatment or impris onment adds a local significance to any analysis of ingestion in Irish literature. In The Hunger Artists, Maud Ellmann describes how Medieval Ireland, like medieval India, had a legal procedure of Tasting to distrain,' known as troscud, whereby a creditor could fast against a debtor, or a victim of injustice could fast against the person who had injured him.2 Such self-imposed starvation emerged famously in the 1920 death of Terrence McSwiney. In the 1980s, hunger strikes were used again by prisoners in Northern Ireland.

Lampião, Luiz and Padim Ciço: Three icons of the Brazilian Northeast

This article focuses on the collective memory within the Brazilian Northeast of three iconic figures, a renowned bandit, a miracle-working priest and a famous singer, identifying and analyzing the attributes that account for their status as regional heroes. It suggests that these attributes form a counter-narrative that casts them as champions of the powerless and victims of injustice, themes that resonate among and reflect the lived experience of the northeast’s masses. This element of resistance later served as a regional counter-narrative to a dominant national history that derogated the Northeast.

Reconciliation: a gift from God

Reconciliation: a gift from GodThis article analyses the work of reconciliation based on Prof P Meiring, especially his work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The article takes seriously the theological aspect of reconciliation that leads to peace. This ritual is helpful in making sure that victims hear the stories of how their beloved were killed in Apartheid times. The TRC thus created a space where victims of injustices could have a privilege of meeting with perpetrators, in a way of reconciliation. It finally looks at the suffering experienced by them and the response by government.

How Social Justice Got to Me and Why It Never Left

In september, 1976, the college where I was teaching, Calvin College, sent me to a conference at the University of Potchefstroom in South Africa—this being one of the old Afrikaner universities. There were a fair number of Dutch scholars present at the conference. They were well acquainted with the South African situation, much better than were any of us who came from North America. And they very angry with the Afrikaners. For two days they exploited every opening they could find to vent their anger at the Afrikaners; the Afrikaners, in turn, exploited every opening they could find to vent their anger at the Dutch for being so angry at them. After a couple of days of this angry back-and-forth, neither party had anything new to say to the other. Then the scholars from South Africa who were so-called blacks and coloreds began to speak up, not so much in tones of anger as in tones of hurt. They described the daily indignities heaped upon them and the many ways in which they were demeaned, they spoke of being expelled from their homes and herded off into Bantustans, and they cried out for justice. I was deeply moved. I felt that I had been issued a call to speak up for these wronged people—in the classic Protestant sense of a call. I did not hear God speaking words in the air. But I had no doubt that fidelity to God required that I speak up for these victims of injustice in whatever way might prove appropriate.

The End of Duty

Justice is often viewed in terms of seeing to it that right-holders are provided with the goods that they are entitled to. Less attention is given to the other dimension of justice, namely, that of duty-holders. If persons are assigned more duties, or more burdensome duties, than fairness requires, then they are victims of injustice just as much as persons whose rights are left unfulfilled. In this essay, I will argue for certain limits to the duty to assist people in need. My argument does not intend to show that we have no positive duties, but rather that these duties, whether they are of an interpersonal or a global, institutional kind, should be guided by an idea of fairness that pertains to the relations between duty-holders as well as between them and right-holders. I will discuss structural differences between negative and positive duties, as well as formulate a Principle of Contributive Fairness.