LIBERATING SOCIAL JUSTICE: ASPIRATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN AN UNEQUAL WORLD - Hasan Shafie

If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice. - Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC)

The question I intend to address in this article is whether a social justice approach to development could be achieved so long as social inequality characterizes the relations between individuals, groups and categories of every conceivable kind. Showing how development and social justice are intrinsically linked, I would try to analyze the legitimacy of power relations that perpetuate social, political and economic injustices and inequalities between nation states, groups and individuals. We live in an unequal world, where social justice is to be understood within the broader framework of development and poverty. As dominant paradigms, neoliberalism and economic globalization, by adopting the ideas of individual freedom, limited state activity, and a free market, to some extent, challenge the assumptions of a right to development and of social justice. However, this paper makes the point that, instead of focusing on distribution, a conception of justice should begin with the concepts of domination and oppression. Especially in Northwest Bangladesh, where social group differences exist and some groups are privileged while others are oppressed, social justice requires explicitly recognizing and addressing these group differences in order to diminish oppression.

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND TRIBAL DEVELOPMENT DOUBTS IN THE DEPTHS

SOCIAL JUSTICE

GENEALOGIES OF TERMS The Politics of Recognition Spheres of Justice Eclipse

What is Social Justice? Recognizing that there are many definitions of social justice from many perspectives, the Saint Louis University School of Social Work has made a commitment to the following: The School of Social Work is committed to the teaching and learning of social justice, understood as 1) the creation of just relationships at all system levels; 2) the development of structures that provide for equality of opportunity; 3) the facilitation of access to needed information, services and resources; and 4) the support of meaningful participation in decisionmaking for all people. This commitment is grounded in the ethic of the social work profession and faithful to the social justice values at the core of a Jesuit Education. It is infused into all major components of the School of Social Work's educational and service mission. The National Association of Social Workers' Code of Ethics states that a commitment for social workers to promote social justice is a fundamental mandate of the profession (NASW, 1999). Social justice curriculum content

is required by the Council on Social Work Education, the accrediting body for schools of social work (CSWE, 2001). The 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus set an agenda of social justice as a moral imperative for human rights, life, the environment, and interdependence in a global world (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1995). Saint Louis University challenges faculty, students, staff, and alumni(ae), not just to learn about social justice but also to do justice, a witnessing of faith that does justice (O'Brien & Shannon, 1997). CORE OPERATIONAL OBJECTIVES The School community, consisting of faculty, staff, students and others actively involved in the teaching and learning process, promotes social justice through Developing just, egalitarian professional alliances with clients and client systems in order to assist them in developing empowering environments and contexts at all levels; Advocating for inclusive policies and laws that protect the human rights and dignity of all individuals, groups, families and communities; Organizing with others to advocate for the establishment and preservation of human rights for all groups of people around the world; Developing efficient and effective interventions that assist in the alleviation of suffering and facilitation of empowerment of individuals, groups, families and communities; establishing service organizations, institutions and systems that provide equal access to resources, both human and natural, and respect the dignity and diversity of all persons; and

 Engaging in the advancement of knowledge, critical thinking and open dialogue about our understanding and implementation of social justice.

Defining Our Terms One definition of justice is "giving to each what he or she is due." The problem is knowing what is "due". Functionally, "justice" is a set of universal principles which guide people in judging what is right and what is wrong, no matter what culture and society they live in. Justice is one of the four "cardinal virtues" of classical moral philosophy, along with courage, temperance (self-control) and prudence (efficiency). (Faith, hope and charity are considered to be the three "religious" virtues.) Virtues or "good habits" help individuals to develop fully their human potentials, thus enabling them to serve their own self-interests as well as work in harmony with others for their common good. The ultimate purpose of all the virtues is to elevate the dignity and sovereignty of the human person. Distinguishing Justice From Charity

While often confused, justice is distinct from the virtue of charity. Charity, derived from the Latin word caritas, or "divine love," is the soul of justice. Justice supplies the material foundation for charity. While justice deals with the substance and rules for guiding ordinary, everyday human interactions, charity deals with the spirit of human interactions and with those exceptional cases where strict application of the

rules is not appropriate or sufficient. Charity offers expedients during times of hardship. Charity compels us to give to relieve the suffering of a person in need. The highest aim of charity is the same as the highest aim of justice: to elevate each person to where he does not need charity but can become charitable himself. True charity involves giving without any expectation of return. But it is not a substitute for justice. Defining Social Justice Social justice encompasses economic justice. Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others. Social justice also imposes on each of us a personal responsibility to work with others to design and continually perfect our institutions as tools for personal and social development. Defining Economic Justice Economic justice, which touches the individual person as well as the social order, encompasses the moral principles which guide us in designing our economic institutions. These institutions determine how each person earns a living, enters into contracts, exchanges goods and services with others and otherwise produces an independent material foundation for his or her economic sustenance. The ultimate purpose of economic justice is to free each person to engage creatively in the unlimited work beyond economics, that of the mind and the spirit.

The Three Principles of Economic Justice Like every system, economic justice involves input, output, and feedback for restoring harmony or balance between input and output. Within the system of economic justice as defined by Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler, there are three essential and interdependent principles: The Principle of Participation, The Principle of Distribution, and The Principle of Harmony. Like the legs of a three-legged stool, if any of these principles is weakened or missing, the system of economic justice will collapse. The Three Principles of the Kelso-Adler Theory of Economic Justice The Principle of Participation The principle of participation describes how one makes "input" to the economic process in order to make a living. It requires equal opportunity in gaining access to private property in productive assets as well as equality of opportunity to engage in productive work. The principle of participation does not guarantee equal results, but requires that every person be guaranteed by society's institutions the equal human right to make a productive contribution to the economy, both through one's labor (as a worker) and through one's productive capital (as an owner). Thus, this principle rejects

monopolies, special privileges, and other exclusionary social barriers to economic self-reliance. The Principle of Distribution The principle of distribution defines the "output" or "out-take" rights of an economic system matched to each person's labor and capital inputs. Through the distributional features of private property within a free and open marketplace, distributive justice becomes automatically linked to participative justice, and incomes become linked to productive contributions. The principle of distributive justice involves the sanctity of property and contracts. It turns to the free and open marketplace, not government, as the most objective and democratic means for determining the just price, the just wage, and the just profit. Many confuse the distributive principles of justice with those of charity. Charity involves the concept "to each according to his needs," whereas "distributive justice" is based on the idea "to each according to his contribution." Confusing these principles leads to endless conflict and scarcity, forcing government to intervene excessively to maintain social order. Distributive justice follows participative justice and breaks down when all persons are not given equal opportunity to acquire and enjoy the fruits of income-producing property. The Principle of Harmony The principle of harmony encompasses the "feedback" or balancing principles required to detect distortions of either the input or output principles and to make whatever corrections are needed to restore a just and balanced economic order for all. This principle is violated by unjust barriers

to participation, by monopolies or by some using their property to harm or exploit others. "Economic harmonies" is defined in The Oxford English Dictionary as "Laws of social adjustment under which the self-interest of one man or group of men, if given free play, will produce results offering the maximum advantage to other men and the community as a whole." This principle offers guidelines for controlling monopolies, building checks-and-balances within social institutions, and re-synchronizing distribution (outtake) with participation (input). The first two principles of economic justice flow from the eternal human search for justice in general, which automatically requires a balance between input and outtake, i.e., "to each according to what he is due." The principle of harmony, on the other hand, reflects the human quest for other absolute values, including Truth, Love and Beauty. It should be noted that Kelso and Adler referred to the third principle as "the principle of limitation" as a restraint on human tendencies toward greed and monopoly that lead to exclusion and exploitation of others. Given the potential synergies inherent in economic justice in today's high technology world, CESJ feels that the concept of "harmony" is more appropriate and more-encompassing than the term "limitation" in describing the third component of economic justice. Furthermore, "harmony" is more consistent with the truism that a society that seeks peace must first work for justice. (For more discussion on these terms, see Chapter 5 of The Capitalist Manifesto, by Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler (Random House, 1958) and Chapters 3 and 4 of Curing World Poverty: The New Role of Property, John H. Miller, ed., Social Justice

Dependency theory, as it originated in Cardoso and Falettos (1969) historical approach, is a useful analytical tool to understand our world. Dependency refers to an asymmetrical, structural relationship between social formations, such that the

dependant society is shaped to a large extent by the social dynamics and interests generated in the dominant society. The process of dependency operates through the interplay of social actors who respond simultaneously to their specific to their specific historical conditions and to larger framework of worldwide relationships in which they are included (Tourine, 1988: 1).

The question I intend to address in this article is whether a social justice approach to development could be achieved so long as the legitimacy of power relations that perpetuate social, political and economic injustices and inequalities between nation-states, groups and individuals.

The question I intend to address in this article is whether a social justice approach to development could be achieved so long as hegemonic states dominate institutions of global governance. Showing how development and social justice are intrinsically linked, this book analyses the legitimacy of power relations that perpetuate social, political and economic injustices and inequalities between nation states, groups and individuals. Social justice has a heritage that lies in the early social scientists , who defined inequality as unjust social relations. The principle of equality that underpins social justice entails material distribution such as income and (as well as) the distributive paradigm that encompasses power and domination. At the global level this means nation states and individuals are treated equally in terms of resources, opportunity and capacity. The current tendency, however, is to align social justice with development through the notion of modernity and the rise and practice of global capitalism. As such this fulfils a political function, being underpinned by two significant global shifts, the first being the rise of modern markets and secular states, and the second being the political claim to equality or rights which accompanied the development of capitalism. The focus of this book is how the emergence of the right to development seeks to address social injustices that result in inequality and poverty, and why it struggles to succeed given that a whole host of economic and political forces contrive to undermine it. The pertinent question is why mainstream development theory and institutions of global governance continue to couch poverty reduction itself as an analytical category and a policy objective, rather than focus on inequality. This is despite the fact that ample evidence supports the

Ethiopia Office

Social inequality impairs equity in distribution of and access to resources in relations between individuals, groups and categories of every conceivable kind (Beteille 1994) and hence may be considered as one of the leading causative factors of poverty and impoverishment of the majority population in Bangladesh.

We live in an unequal world, with the majority of the wealth and opportunities in the hands of a few. The paradigm of social or global justice seeks to tackle this, and there is an important link with development, as inequality prevents a country from developing and expanding its economy. The introduction starts with placing the idea of social justice in the broader framework of development and poverty to illustrate its importance. Morvaridi does not take basic concepts such as development or equality for granted, but sets out to present the debate about these themes and their interrelatedness. Also briefly considering the debate on the universality of human rights, the introduction from the start places the book firmly at the intersection of many current debates in development. In the first few chapters, numerous paradigms, authors, and their critiques are described. The second chapter considers the emergence of the idea of rights and social justice in development. With a brief assessment of modernisation and dependency theory, this background helps to situate the idea of the Right to Development, a central concept in this book. The concept has no legal status but it has reference to two international Covenants and therefore gives some legal force to obligations, although it does not come from a legal positivist position. The implementation of the right to development is not straightforward, and it includes many actors. The nation state is the most important duty bearer, but the international community also plays an important role. Morvaridi presents some of the challenges that accompany the concept, mostly linking to the problem of universality of rights, paying extra attention to the critique coming from the Asian and Islamic perspectives. Although these are certainly not new debates, the author succeeds in sketching the context and complexities that both national governments and international actors face when using a rights-based approach. The book takes different dominant paradigms, such as neo-liberalism in Chapter 3, and examines how they obstruct the concept of social justice. Neo-liberalism persists as a dominant way of thinking in development. Its economists prefer to talk of individual freedom, limited state activity, and a free market. For the author, however, they lack an appreciation of the context of the poor, suggesting that the poor are responsible for their own poverty. Morvaridi then continues to discuss economic globalisation and its impact on global social justice. The increasing interdependence caused by economic globalisation challenges the assumptions of a right to development. This book seems to be very relevant for people who are unfamiliar with numerous theories in development, and how they have developed over the years, particularly those related to rights in one way or another. Some of the most important thinkers

are mentioned and discussed briefly, as well as important terminology such as sustainability, universality, and conditionality. At times, however, readers might suffer from information overload and lose sight of the aim of the book. The author tries to tackle and include too many debates, authors, and paradigms, which does not make for a smooth read. The first few chapters merely restate the opinions of others in numerous areas, something that has been done time and time again. The last two chapters are more interesting, as the author finally seems to refocus his writing on explaining why the current global political and economic system often obstructs or complicates the concept of social justice. Although a smooth transition between different sections of the chapters is missing, new ideas are introduced. He discusses how intergovernment organisations fail to address social justice and issues of inequality, because they are ruled by the worlds most powerful nations. The strength of the book lies there, in the critique of those organisations capacity to address issues of structural inequality and how they use the term global governance as a justification for this. He does not merely focus on institutions of global governance, but also on the ways in which transnational corporations have increasingly become actors in the field of social justice, under the rubric of corporate social responsibility (CSR). However, CSR does come slightly out of the blue, as the majority of the book focuses on government-related institutions. It would have been interesting to read the authors rationale for considering only large institutions regarding global governance and transnational corporations, because there are certainly other actors also working in the field of social justice, such as NGOs like Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, both of whom have a considerable influence in the field. Morvaridi aims to show how development and social justice are linked, and to analyse the legitimacy of power relations that perpetuate social, political and economic injustices and inequalities between nation states, groups and individuals (p.1). He is successful in accomplishing his first aim, illustrating the emergence of the concept of social justice in relation to development theories. The second aim, which is more interesting than the first, is less successfully realised, and is tackled only at a late stage in the book, which is a shame. It seems that too much effort has been invested in trying to include as many theories as possible relating to the concept of social justice. The failures of major institutions in global governance and transnational corporations are portrayed clearly. The conclusion ends by presenting some changes that might trigger a move by the aforementioned actors towards adopting aims of social justice. Although relevant, none of them seems really innovative, nor does the author give an idea how these changes might be realised. Thus the recommendations remain mostly theoretical, with an ideological

undertone. It would have been more challenging if the author had spent less time describing the theories and more time developing the analysis of the legitimacy of power relations. The fact that Social Justice and Development challenges the economic order makes the book very relevant in the current global economic crisis, where increasingly it is argued that extensive changes are necessary in order to challenge inequalities. It is a shame, however, that most of the information and arguments that are being given are not new, and that too many opinions and concepts are presented. For those new to development paradigms, the brief, albeit somewhat disorganised, descriptions could be useful. For the majority, however, who already have some experience of development theories, this book will not be a valued addition. Still, with the current call to change the global economic order in order to create a more equal system, this book seems to be written at exactly the right time.

Importance must be attached to the starting point, in particular the selection of some questions to be answered (for example, how would justice be advanced?), rather than others (for example, what would be perfectly just institutions?). This departure has the dual effect, first, of taking the comparative rather than the transcendental route, and second, of focusing on actual realizations in the societies involved, rather than only on institutions and rules. Given the present balance of emphases in contemporary political philosophy, this will require a radical change in the formulation of the theory of justice. Why do we need such a dual departure? I begin with transcendentalism. I see two problems here. First, there may be no reasoned agreement at all, even under strict conditions of impartiality and open-minded scrutiny (for example, as identified by Rawls in his original position) on the nature of the just society: this is the issue of the feasibility of finding an agreed transcendental solution. Second, an exercise of practical reason that involves an actual choice demands a framework for comparison of justice for choosing among the feasible alternatives and not an identification of a possibly unavailable perfect situation that could not be transcended: this is the issue of the redundancy of the search for a transcendental solution. I shall presently discuss these problems with the transcendental focus (both feasibility and redundancy), but before that let me comment briefly on the institutional concentration involved in the approach of transcendental institutionalism.

Amartya Sen Shakes Up Justice Theory

Bias Das, AP Photo The economist Amartya Sens magnum opus on justice theory is published this month. Enlarge Image By Carlin Romano Suppose three childrenAnne, Bob, and Carlaquarrel over a flute. Anne says it's hers because she's the only one who knows how to play it. Bob counters that he's the poorest and has no toys, so the flute would at least give him something to play with. Carla reminds Anne and Bob that she built the darn thing, and no sooner did she finish it than the other two started trying to take it away. Intuitions clashing yet? Need something more complex to tingle your justice antennaeperhaps a puzzler from game theory? The example is Amartya Sen's, from the Nobel-Prize-winning economist's just-published The Idea of

Justice (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press), his magnum opus on a line

of work he's long addressed and now thoroughly re-examines: justice theory. And what a growth industry it's been since John Rawls revived the subject with his classic, A Theory of Justice (1971), and colleague Robert Nozick made its core principles into an Emerson Hall battle with his libertarian Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). Since Rawls, one hardly ranks as a political theorist without a whack at the J-word. Sen's stepping into the fray should keep things hopping, but justice theory is one subsidiary of philosophy that never really suffers a bad century.

Back in Homeric times, life was simpler. Justice largely meant personal vengeance. Complications began when Plato famously pinned on Thrasymachus the view that justice is simply the will of the stronger, and on Glaucon and Callicles the idea that justice is conventional. Plato argued, through his familiar Socratic ventriloquy, that justice is divine, an ideal to which human justice can only haltingly aspire. Aristotle then introduced a formal criterion of justice that still wins the greatest agreement, perhaps because it's merely formal: Treat equals equally and unequals unequally. From then on, follow the history of philosophers' sentences that begin "Justice is " on and you hit so many diverse endings you wonder whether anyone, including the lady in the blindfold, knows what justice is. To Aquinas, it's "a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him." To Hume, it's "nothing but an artificial invention." To Sir Edward Coke, it's "the daughter of the law, for the law bringeth her forth." To 20th-century American jurist Learned Hand, it's "the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society." Do a survey, and about the only thinker who invites instant agreement is Belgian philosopher of law Chaim Perelman. According to Perelman, justice is simply "a confused concept." One reason theories of justice abound is the range of the concept, applied to decisions, people, procedures, laws, actions, events. Justice is usually considered a positive thing, yet some rank it below mercy. It's divine for some, purely human for others. It's supposedly majestic, yet many complain of its quotidian banality and everyday scarcity. Recall the old lawyer's joke: Petitioner: "Justice, justice, I demand justice!" Judge: "Silence or I'll have you removed! This is a court of law!" When Rawls declared justice "the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought," and began his painstaking probe of the conditions of just institutions, he re-established a modern tradition dating back to Hobbes: using social-contract theory to articulate ideal forms of social justice, sometimes in quasi-syllogistic form. But there was also a longstanding, skeptical, antisystematic tradition in justice theory. One of the

suspenseful aspects of Sen's book is how its author, personally close to Rawls (who died in 2002) but more expansive and historical in regard to justice, walks a difficult line between the analytic foundationalism Rawls and Nozick practiced and the sensitivity to real-world justice in people's lives that Sen and Martha Nussbaum argue for and describe as the "capabilities" conception of justice. Although Sen mentions neither the late philosopher Robert C. Solomon, author of A Passion for Justice (1995), nor the very-much-with-us Elizabeth H. Wolgast, author of The Grammar of Justice (1987), both deserve credit for adumbrating ideas in justice theory that Sen, with his enormous intellectual prestige and cachet as a star in Harvard's firmament, may finally infiltrate into elite Ivy League and Oxbridge political theory. Solomon wrote in A Passion for Justice that justice is "a complex set of passions to be cultivated, not an abstract set of principles to be formulated. Justice begins with compassion and caring, not principles or opinions, but it also involves, right from the start, such 'negative' emotions as envy, jealousy, indignation, anger, and resentment, a keen sense of having been personally cheated or neglected, and the desire to get even." In time, suggested Solomon, "the sense of justice emerges as a generalization and, eventually, a rationalization of a personal sense of injustice." That common-sense attempt at causal explanationtaking seriously how feelings of injustice spur the intellectual drive toward a theory of justice had also been observed by Wolgast, who argued in The Grammar of Justice that injustice "grammatically" precedes justice. Sen's Harvard colleague, Michael J. Sandel, at the outset of his new Justice: What's the Right Thing to

Do?not quite The Idiot's Guide to Justice but, unlike Sen's work, mainly a
summary for general readers of key ideas in justice theorynotes, "At the heart of the bailout outrage was a sense of injustice." Might our concept of justice arise when society's normal moral inertia, the tendency to accept traditions and status quo ethical procedures without challenge, is itself challenged?

Sen inclines to that view. He begins An Idea of Justice by quoting Pip in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations: "In the little world in which children have their existence, there is nothing so finely perceived and finely felt, as injustice." Sen adds, "The identification of redressable injustice is not only what animates us to think about justice and injustice, it is also central to the theory of justice." Thus the great economist, who long ago transcended the bounds of his discipline, goes full-frontal with justiceand John Rawls. Displaying his customary mix of erudition and worldliness, his irritation at the "parochial" slighting of Eastern thought (see The Argumentative Indian) and resistance to (despite mastery of) purely formal approaches to justice, Sen both praises Rawls profusely for his "rightly celebrated" work and nicks him with a score of cuts. "Justice," Sen writes, "is ultimately connected with the way people's lives go, and not merely with the nature of institutions surrounding them." Two concepts from early Indian jurisprudence, niti (strict organizational and behavioral rules of justice) and nyaya (the larger picture of how such rules affect ordinary lives), provide a better prism for justice than Rawls's obsession with the characterization of just institutions. Indeed, Sen writes in a killer sum-up: "If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies, or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient." It was Solomon, in A Passion for Justice, who voiced the problem that hangs over ostensibly rigorous justice theory, which Sen plainly finds unconvincing yet never quite denounces. Speaking of the enormous technical literature spawned by Rawls, Nozick, and their acolytes, Solomon wrote: "The positions have been drawn, defined, refined, and redefined again. The qualifications have been qualified, the objections answered and answered again with more objections, and the ramifications further ramified. But the hope for a single, neutral, rational position has been thwarted every time." Solomon complained that justice theory had "become so specialized and so academic and so utterly unreadable that it has become just another intellectual puzzle, a conceptual Gordian knot awaiting its academic Alexander." Will Sen be that Alexander? In repeatedly bringing back into the discussion Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Sen signals the need for justice

theory to reconnect to realistic human psychology, not the phony formal rationalism that infects modern economics or the for-sake-of-argument altruism that anchors Rawls's project. (In A Theory of Justice, Rawls writes that in his well-ordered society, "Everyone is presumed to act justly.") By declaring his desire "to address questions of enhancing justice and removing injustice, rather than to offer resolutions of questions about the nature of perfect justice," Sen sinks a knife into the heart of the latter utopian program. On the other hand, Sen's own understanding of his aim in The Idea of Justice hardly dismisses formal resources or careful reasoning. He cites an alternative tradition to social-contract theory, one he identifies as extending from Smith to Mill and beyond and characterizes as "comparative" in its measuring of the justice actually experienced in the by individuals. That rather countertradition issued, Sen explains, "analyticaland

mathematicaldiscipline of social-choice theory" developed by Kenneth Arrow in the mid-20th century. Alas, Sen spends some of the most arid sections of his book arguing for how its insights can aid "enhancement of justice." He's far more convincing when he sticks to nonformal arguments. Nothing would be sadder than if An Idea

of Justice, like A Theory of Justice, generates a fresh industry of acolytedriven justice literature without moving political actors to improve people's lives (surely the author's paramount goal). Still, one should never underestimate the influence in philosophy of a big book by a Harvard or Princeton luminary that impeaches an intellectual tradition, however politely. Richard Rorty successfully undermined the pretensions of analytic epistemology (except among its practitioners) because he was an ex-analyst whistle-blower. Sen may be just the inside man to redirect philosophical thinking about justice to that real-world "capabilities approach" he and Nussbaum urge. One irony is that the famously media-shy Rawls had a complicated human relationship to "justice" few students of the magisterial system-builder understood. With the 2007 publication of Thomas Pogge's John Rawls: His

Life and Theory of Justice, we learned that Rawls evolved away from

Christianity and toward his secular theory of justice from deep feelings about concrete injustices such as the Holocaust. Another challenge to justicethe chanciness of lifeoccurred closer to home and similarly left a profound impact on him. In the Philippines during World War II, an assignment from a superior officer that might have gone to Rawls or another soldier went to the other man, who was killed. "Reasoning," writes Sen early on, "is a robust source of hope and confidence in a world darkened by murky deeds." In The Idea of Justice, Sen provides us with a stunning model despite his eternally ambiguous and imperfectible subject. As he so winningly adds, "The remedy for bad reasoning is better reasoning." Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Fairness and equity in social relationships: Do the projects reflect upon making various experiences more equitable for specific underserved individuals or populations? Empowerment: How is the interaction changing the ways social conditions were before and after the interaction for different individuals involved in the project? How is their perception about their role in determining the course of their lives changed as a result of their project participation? Economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental impacts: How is the interaction changing the ways things are at these levels before and after the interaction? Community building and community development: Building equitable partnerships and collaborations within and across the academy with local, national and international communities to promote social equity and social justice for individual, social, and community empowerment of the disenfranchised. Diversity, multiplicity, and democracy: Varied and participative involvement in decision-making.

 Everyday information needs: How does the project change how everyday information needs of the disenfranchised get met? Community informatics: Exploring the role and the application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to empower and enable local and global communities to meet their goals and aspirations.

The Central Human Capabilities refers to 10 aspects including (1) life; (2) bodily health; (3) bodily integrity; (4) senses, imagination, and thought; (5) emotions; (6) practical reason (7) affiliation: a. freedom of assembly and political speech and b. social bases of self-respect and non-humiliation against discrimination; (8) other species i.e. the world of nature; (9) play and recreational activities; and (10) control over ones environment.

(1)
A. Political. Being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern ones life; having the right of political participation and protections of free speech and association. B. Material. Being able to hold property (both land and movable goods), and having property rights on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others; having the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.