Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Built in­to the ar­chi­tec­ture of west­ern so­ci­eties and their so­cio-cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic struc­tures is a cu­mu­la­tive bias to­wards cer­tain groups and world­views over oth­ers. This bias re­sides in sup­pos­ed­ly ob­jec­tive cat­e­gories, knowl­edge, and laws that cloak the work­ings of pow­er.

For ex­am­ple, this bias can be seen in a racial­ly-slant­ed le­gal sys­tem, the sex­u­al di­vi­sion of labour, wage in­equal­i­ty, and the guise of sup­pos­ed­ly neu­tral gov­ern­ment poli­cies and de­ci­sion-mak­ing. For those in­ter­est­ed in so­cial change, one par­tic­u­lar method for en­gag­ing such pow­er is "so­cial jus­tice.

So­cial jus­tice is a term that seems com­mon-sen­si­cal. Many of us are fa­mil­iar with the term through the lo­cal po­lit­i­cal par­ty the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ). Oth­ers may re­mem­ber the term from var­i­ous his­tor­i­cal labour and civ­il rights bat­tles or per­haps lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy in Latin Amer­i­ca and oth­er re­li­gious con­nec­tions in­clud­ing the life of St Thomas Aquinas, Catholic so­cial teach­ing, or an­cient Hin­du so­ci­ety.

For some so­cial jus­tice is a dirty term, an im­ped­i­ment to un­re­strained eco­nom­ic growth as the sole pur­pose be­hind mod­ern so­ci­ety. It sug­gests a re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of re­sources. As such, most ne­olib­er­als and neo­clas­si­cal econ­o­mists-not to men­tion moral rel­a­tivists-re­coil at its claims to sci­en­tif­ic and in­tel­lec­tu­al rel­e­vance. Their crit­i­cism is of­ten that so­cial jus­tice is about brain­wash­ing peo­ple rather than good ed­u­ca­tion.

Yet their ideas are as man-made, po­lit­i­cal­ly bi­ased and brain­wash­ing as any so­cial jus­tice dis­course. An­thro­pol­o­gists are of­ten ad­vo­cates of so­cial jus­tice. This is an out­come of their re­search. As the rich and pow­er­ful are gen­er­al­ly loath to be sub­jects of an­thro­po­log­i­cal re­search, an­thro­pol­o­gists of­ten do long-term re­search with the less pow­er­ful. This type of field­work means an­thro­pol­o­gists are well-placed to of­fer per­spec­tives on so­cial jus­tice.

Many take is­sue with or­gan­i­sa­tions that pro­pose and dic­tate a sin­gu­lar no­tion of so­cial jus­tice. That sort of pa­ter­nal­is­tic, top-down ap­proach an­thro­pol­o­gists con­sid­er prob­lem­at­ic. Any de­f­i­n­i­tion should be open to con­tri­bu­tion, mod­i­fi­ca­tion, and change from be­low, not least be­cause so­cial jus­tice is­sues are con­tex­tu­al, mul­ti­ple and in­ter­sect­ed. There is not one so­cial jus­tice is­sue; there are many.

If one dic­tates to oth­ers what so­cial jus­tice is then it be­comes no dif­fer­ent from oth­er top-down, hi­er­ar­chi­cal re­la­tion­ships. It be­comes about what small groups of the pow­er­ful deem im­por­tant. In this sense, so­cial jus­tice is nei­ther self-ex­plana­to­ry or to be mis­tak­en for an old­er, nar­row­er con­cept de­fined as the "dis­trib­u­tive par­a­digm" that spoke of "colour-blind so­ci­ety."

Some key fea­tures of so­cial jus­tice an­thro­pol­o­gists might in­clude are self-re­flex­iv­i­ty, crit­i­cal lis­ten­ing, in­clu­sive pol­i­tics, so­cial change, and teach­ing. Again, such a de­f­i­n­i­tion is not fixed in stone; it is to be tweaked and added to.

And this is the im­por­tant point: po­lit­i­cal groups that speak about so­cial jus­tice in the sin­gu­lar can of­ten ex­ac­er­bate is­sues of so­cial jus­tice rather than solve them. The is­sues they deem need tack­ling will get tack­led-say, work­ers' rights-but the is­sues of oth­er groups will be ig­nored or deemed less im­por­tant-say, women's or ho­mo­sex­u­al rights.

So­cial jus­tice, then, is not some­thing to be forced on peo­ple, but rather, it is a skill set for look­ing at prob­lems of dif­fer­ence in so­ci­ety and of­fer­ing po­ten­tial so­lu­tions. In ed­u­ca­tion terms, it is about pro­duc­ing prob­lem-solvers, em­pa­thet­ic in­di­vid­u­als who make con­nec­tions to the world around them and pro­pose so­lu­tions.

An­thro­pol­o­gists un­der­stand pow­er through a va­ri­ety of ap­proach­es. The sim­plest is that pow­er is mul­ti-di­men­sion­al and op­er­ates over us in vis­i­ble, hid­den and in­vis­i­ble ways. For ex­am­ple, vis­i­ble pow­er is about mak­ing and en­forc­ing rules. Hid­den pow­er ex­cludes groups and sets the agen­da of le­git­i­mate dis­cus­sion while in­vis­i­ble pow­er is about shap­ing mean­ing, val­ues, and what is nor­mal.

In or­der to ne­go­ti­ate with pow­er, groups and in­di­vid­u­als must re­spond across all lev­els. By en­ter­ing in­to the po­lit­i­cal process, the Move­ment for So­cial Change is a re­sponse and strat­e­gy to deal with vis­i­ble pow­er by build­ing col­lec­tive pow­er.

Yet for so­cial jus­tice to work it al­so has to con­front, en­gage and ne­go­ti­ate with hid­den pow­er by or­gan­is­ing com­mu­ni­ties around com­mon con­cerns and le­git­imis­ing the is­sues of ex­clud­ed groups, while on the in­vis­i­ble lev­el it must build in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive pow­er through pop­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion, em­pow­er­ment and crit­i­cal think­ing that rais­es the con­scious­ness, po­lit­i­cal aware­ness and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween peo­ple to fight for and es­tab­lish their rights.

So­cial change, then, isn't just about get­ting the Gov­ern­ment to ef­fect struc­tur­al changes. It is al­so about get­ting in­to the hearts and minds of in­di­vid­u­als, pro­vid­ing them with un­der­stand­ing of the work­ings of mul­ti­ple, in­ter­sect­ing and con­cur­rent pow­er struc­tures which are lo­cal but tied to non-lo­cal sys­tems.

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine