OH, IRIS!

- “Justice and the Politics of Difference”

While working on a definition of‘transformation’- assessing the work and goals of
Baan Mangkong project we came up with a simple line:
Transformation is a process enabling a just + equal (re)distribution and access to
rights and liberties that should provide well-being.

It is clear, that this sentence is based on 2 definitions: Rawlsian ‘ A Theory of Justice”

and classical definition of ‘Ethics’ dating Aristotle. It sounded fine to us for few
reasons: a) it was talking about the basic human needs that should be granted in any
conditions (blame it on universalism!) b) it was a combination of social justice and
ethics- we thought: the ‘essence’. For the rest of our ideas, such as ‘ knowledge-
sharing’ process’ we used Mr Foucault, who, thankfully, seems to fit to everything (or
almost everything).

Our transformation definition was met with some criticism: 1) Rawls does not fit
Foucault 2) Rawlsian theory is outdated 3) it does not focus on ‘institutionalization’
and in reality we are assessing it is, apparently, crucial. We were told: “Look at Iris
Marion Young, she is the one you should work with”.

So we did, we got a brightly colored “ Justice and the Politics of Difference” and
started from the Introduction that was basically sufficient to see what the author is
trying to say.

Young says explicitly, that she is not constructing a theory of Justice, but wants to
point out that all the ‘social justice’ theories (with Rawls marching in the first row)
focus on distribution rather than starting from ‘domination and oppression’ as the
definition of injustice necessary for institution assessment. For Young distribution
means “ possession of material goods & social positions”, sometimes it goes beyond
material goods (self-respect/opportunities/ power etc.) but what Rawls is trying to
say- “ rights as rights & duties”, for Young is completely wrong. We should not think
about ‘relationship as things”. Young talks about existence of ‘social group
differences’ where some are privileged and some oppressed (5 aspects:
exploitation/marginalization/ powerlessness/cultural imperialism/ violence) and
‘social justice requires explicitly acknowledging and attending to those group
differences in order to undermine oppression’. Great, but what is the version of justice
we should use in our assessment? Young says: libertarianism and communitarianism
is inadequate, we should talk about City Life. For developing world it sounds like a
fair idea, especially that everybody wants to reach the ‘city level’ when it comes to
‘Quality of Life’ ( Nussbaum,Sen).

It seems, however, that Young is not entirely response to our needs (when in comes to
constructing criteria or any definitions) because she is rather ‘critical’ (one could say
that she uses quite an aggressive language, which can be blames on the feminist
tradition) and not ‘constructive’. She might be right that Rawlsian theory is not
acceptable ( at least fully), but so does Amartya Sen who in some sense is Rawls’
follower. That is why it seems reasonable ( is justice reasonable or emotive though?)
to follow Amartya Sen’s “The Idea of Justice” and ‘Happiness, Well-being and
Capabilities”.