Talk:Global justice

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Contents 1 Renovation 2 Redirect 3 New version 4 Peer review comments 5 Proposed history and context section 6 External Links 7 GA Pass 8 Movement Front & Center 9 POV

[edit] Renovation

This article is currently sketchy and tendentious. I plan to revise it. Anyone want to help?

Things which need to be covered (UPDATED: version 2):

• history of global justice as a philosophical concern
• central issues:
  • institutions: the role and moral significance of states, the UN, the WTO and World Bank, NGOs, etc.
  • moral universalism
  • distributive justice
• central positions:
  • 'realism'
  • cultural relativism/particularism/communitarianism (e.g. Walzer)
  • liberal nationalism (e.g. Miller, Tamir)
  • Rawls's 'society of peoples' and criticisms (e.g. Beitz)
  • human-rights based cosmopolitanism (e.g. Pogge)
  • consequentialist cosmopolitanism (e.g. Singer)
• measures of poverty (inequality of what?):
  • relative inequality of resources
  • basic needs
  • capacities
• further reading
• see also:
  • poverty
  • economic inequality
  • moral universalism
  • cultural relativism
  • moral relativism
  • social justice

What else?

--Sam Clark 09:18, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect

Could someone explain why 'global justice' now redirects to 'global justice movement'? They're not the same thing: as my comment above suggests, global justice is an issue in political philosophy.

UPDATE: I take it back - it doesn't redirect any more. I wonder what was going on?

FURTHER UPDATE (25 July): I get it. 'Global_justice' is the global justice page; 'Global_Justice' with a capital J redirects to 'Global Justice Movement'. I'll request deletion.

UPDATE 3 (27 July): capital J now redirects here.

--Sam Clark 10:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New version

New version now live. It's less ambitious than the plan above, in two ways: 1. the 'history' section rapidly turned into a general history of political philosophy, so I dropped it; 2. the 'measures of poverty' section would have duplicated material from the article 'Poverty', so again, I dropped it. --Sam Clark 10:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review comments

Please post such comments on the Peer Review page, which is linked at the top. Thank you.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed history and context section

Below is a tentative first go at an extra section in response to comments above. I'm putting it here, rather than straight into the article, because I'm currently unsure about whether it strikes the right balance between concision and focus, on the one hand, and meeting the points made above, on the other. Comments welcome.

---

The broader philosophical context of the global justice debate, in both its contemporary and historical forms, is the issue of impartiality. Many people are inclined to think that they have more important duties to family-members, friends and compatriots than they do to strangers and foreigners. But are they right to endorse such partiality? Some thinkers, perhaps beginning with the ancient Greek Diogenes of Sinope, have described themselves as citizens of the world. Some, including the utilitarian anarchist William Godwin, have argued that everyone has an impartial duty to do the most good he or she can, without preference for any one human being over another. The question of impartiality seems to have occurred independently to thinkers all over the world: Confucians have argued, for instance, that the benevolent man loves all men, but loves them partially rather than impartially.

The broader political context of the debate is the longstanding conflict between more and less local human institutions: tribes against states, villages against cities, local communities against empires, independent nation-states against the UN. The relative strength of the local against the more global has waxed and waned over recorded history. Since the early modern period, the preeminent political institution in the world has been the state, which is sovereign, territorial, claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of power in its territory, and exists in an international system of other sovereign states. Over the same period, and relatedly, political philosophers' interest in justice focused almost exclusively on domestic issues: how should states treat their subjects, and what do fellow-citizens owe to one another? Justice in relations between states, and between individuals across state borders, was put aside as a secondary issue or left to international relations theorists.

Since the First World War, however, the state system has been transformed by the creation of supranational political and economic institutions: the League of nations, the UN, the World Bank, and others. And, since the 1970s, global justice has increasingly become an important issue in political philosophy. ^[1] In the contemporary global justice debate, the general issue of partiality is focussed particularly on the moral significance of borders between nations (or states, peoples or cultures) and of shared citizenship. Some thinkers defend and others criticise partiality towards compatriots, in questions of human rights, benevolence, and distributive justice.

---

Cheers, Sam Clark 15:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Looks great. It's certainly a step in the right direction. Put it up! If anyone has anything else to say about it we'll surely find out. Lucidish _{{ Ben S. Nelson }} 16:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

Sam - you are clearly taking an active interest in this page and doing a good job improving it, so I'd like to address your concern about the external link to the Great Transition Initiative. I believe this is a very useful resource for the Global Justice article because it is an example of large group of engaged thinkers (including well-known theorists and global activists like Daniele Archibugi, Tariq Banuri, Hazel Henderson, Gus Speth, and many others) who have come together to think through the philosophical implications of Global Justice. It builds off of the well-respected and internationally reknown work of the Global Scenario Group- whose scenario analysis, including extensive quantitative work, have been used in numerous studies (including the UNEP's Global Envrionmental Outlook series). GTI is specifically an attempt to envision a global society rooted in principles of justice, thus it is not a neutral scientific study -- it is a prominent and resepected resource for people interested in this type of exercise. I think it adds as much value to the Global Justice article as any of the other essays listed. Please take a closer look at the GTI essay series and judge for yourself. OrionK 20:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. 'Great Transition Initiative' gets just over 400 hits on Google[1] I'm not denying the value of the essays on the site (I have had a look at a few, and they seem professional and potentially interesting). My argument against inclusion is that this is not a notable or authoritative resource on the subject of the article, it's a worthy but small-scale project on issues which relate, but aren't obviously central, to that subject: the article is about the issue in political philosophy of how to describe a just world, not about how we might get there. My argument against you in particular linking to the site is that it contravenes WP:VAIN, since you wrote one of the papers (assuming I'm right that Orion Kriegman is you? Apologies if not). Cheers, Sam Clark 10:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I removed the link, you (or anyone else) can add it back if you come to agree with me (*Great Transition Initiative An attempt by over 200 international scholars and activists to envision alternative scenarios of future global society rooted in the principles of global justice and ecological sustainability). The essays are primarily DESCRIPTIONS of what a global society rooted in principles of justice and ecological sustainability might look like -- they are visions (they also provide hints or clues as to pathways, but that's a very hard task for anyone) -- so I do think they are quite good illustrations of the theme of this article.

In terms of notability, I think you are quite wrong, but maybe we just travel in different circles -- Google page rank for GTI is 7/10, and the Great Transition essay is well known among international scholars and activists working on issues of global justice. Your call, I guess. OrionK 15:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA Pass

Congratulations on a good article. One way of improving is to include more inline citations, for example:

Some, for instance Kai Nielsen, endorse world government; others, such as Simon Caney, do not.

should be cited with a page number to a suitable reference. It's not critical, but it makes it a lot easier when verifying the article. CloudNine 09:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Movement Front & Center

The philosophy piece here very thoroughly done. The problem is that I think the broader public understands global justice to be a movement as much as a political philosphy (both of which are, admittedly, not household discussions alas). I've taken Sam's suggestion and bulked up the Global Justice movement page and will create a global justice (organization) page, but am thinking the political philosophy page should probably be listed separately too... So maybe a disimbiguation page? I'm a bit new to how best to do it, but not to Global Justice... and I think it's pretty key to bring the movement at least as front and center as the philosophy... for example, try googling "Global Justice" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Matthewkavanagh (talk • contribs).

Replied at User talk:Matthewkavanagh, relevant bits copied here:

... I certainly agree that the GJ movement is important, and that the GJ page should point people to the movement page (which you've greatly improved, by the way). So far, I've put a disambiguating link at the top of GJ, and think this is enough. The alternative would be: 1. move Global justice to Global justice in political philosophy; and 2. make Global justice a disambiguation page between pol.phil. and movement. But I'm simply not sure that this is necessary with only two pages to disambiguate. Incidentally, I don't think that the google test is quite as unambiguous as you suggest: the top ten results include Thomas Nagel's 'The Problem of Global Justice', and several organisations which don't seem to be linked to the GJM.

Sam Clark 12:00, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV

Under Nationalism: "...reflected for example in the fact that the benefits of the welfare state are not available to citizens of other countries." The "other" fails to define a contextual "us", and thus assumes the reader lives in a welfare state. Generalised reformulation, anybody? -Ahruman 10:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)