Susan's Day 9 Summary: Class Relations, Social Justice, and the Political Geography of Difference

- Harvey begins with a story of a chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. Why does Harvey begin with an anecdote? Further, is the chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina the anecdote that he chose? It could be a way for Harvey to concretely identify current and relevant issues related to problems of social justice. It also illustrates a weakening of working-class politics in the United States, to which Harvey attributes, in part, to increasing fragmentation of ‘progressive’ politics and the rise of social movements focusing on gender, race, ethnicity, ecology, sexuality, multiculturalism, etc.

- The fact that something is socially unjust presupposes universally agreed upon norms about what is meant by social justice as a concept. The idea of ‘universality’ is rejected by postmodern thought; it is “the belief that universal truths are both discoverable and applicable as guidelines for political-economic action” (p. 342-342). “The effect of the postmodern critique of universalism has been to render an application of the concept of social justice problematic” (P. 342). There are multiple competing theories of social justice; “which theory of social justice is most socially just?” (p.342)

- Harvey sees class as a commonality that cuts across race and gender lines. He sees some form of class politics as protecting the interests of minority groups. It seems as though Harvey is saying that there is a common right that exists irrespective of race and gender. Further, in using the events in Hamlet, North Carolina, as an example, he demonstrates how one could possibly consider a circumstance in which “there is no need for explicit theoretical, political or social argument over defining what is and what is not socially just because social justice is whatever is delivered by the market” (p. 343).

- The discourse to confront market justice is that of workers’ rights in the struggle against exploitation, profit making, and worker disempowerment (p. 345). At stake here is the class struggle over particular conceptions of justice and rights that will be applied in a particular situation. “Concentration on class alone is seen to hide, marginalize, disempower, repress, and perhaps even press all this of ‘others’ precisely because it cannot and does not acknowledge explicitly the existence of heterogeneities and differences based on, for example, race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, culture, locality, ethnicity, religion, community, consumer preferences, groups affiliation, and the like” (p. 345).

- How can we come to some understanding of what social justice looks like? What does it take to create the values and institutions of a reasonably just society? The answer is complicated because regimes of justice rest on extra legal violence (a force present throughout history). Social movements in the 20th century. are founded on the belief that “because their cause is just they cannot possibly themselves behave unjustly” (p. 346-347); “the application of any universal principle of social justice entails an injustice to someone, somewhere” (p.347).

- The law acts as a ‘permanence’ in the face of the fluidity of social change; some manifestations of otherness are fostered and some are constrained. Harvey sees this as presuming some general principles of rights or justice (p. 347).Harvey outlines initiatives that have emerged in pursuit of general principles of social justice: breaking out of the local, not romancing the geographical stone, the politics of scale, situating situated knowledges’

- Post structuralists confine politics to social interactions that are not necessarily influenced by money and power. This reflects post-structuralist tendencies to refuse to fit universal principles rigidly across heterogeneous situations. All social actions are not dependent on capitalism. Harvey appears to disagree as this opens the possibility for transformations via non-capitalist forces as the force for political organization. Harvey insists on a universality that is inserted in a dialectical relation to particularity (p. 350). The question arises, however, as to who is to determine how ‘universality’ is defined.

- The difficulty with defining rights is that some ideas of what defines a group consciousness in a community results inevitably in policies of exclusion; policies are used to define those that are different. Forms of democratic cultural pluralism are linked to the concept of ‘militant particularism’. Justice however cannot only be achieved at the local level. This leads to geographically fragmented notions of justice that take on territorial expression. To what extent toes space play a role in the expression/manifestation of injustice and justice?

- Value structures are aligned with spatio-temporalities, meaning there must be a scale at which to bound concerns; where the boundaries are drawn is the basis for difference. The scale at which an issue to considered will highlight some things and erase others. Harvey draws on Habermas to support the idea of a “free and unfettered communication occurring in the public sphere of civil society. Can the public sphere translate into a public space that does not require scale? Is the public sphere/public space a universalism? The importance of Habermas to Harvey could, in part, Habermas’ process-based understanding how norms and values of justice might become universalized.

- Differences part of a heterogeneous world can be defined in a number of ways (biographically, institutionally, socially, geographically, etc.). Differences produce knowledges that are situated in a heterogeneous world. A person’s situatedness is not separate and unrelated from difference, but a power relation: “both need the other and both internalize a relation to the other in their own identity” (p.355). People are situated at a point in a chain of events (consisting of processes) that can be traced geographically. The individual is a set of internalized relations situated in a chain of existence.

- Harvey asks: “what is the ‘epistemology’ which permits us to know difference? Harvey’s answer is a working-class politics. Class is a process: “situatedness or positionality in relation to processes of capital accumulation” (p.359). In today’s world, Harvey sees money as making us all the same, and thus advocates for critical engagement in political economy; “with our situatedness in relation to capital accumulation”. According to Harvey, political economy can establish conceptions of social justice “ as something to be fought for as a key value with an ethics of political solidarity built across different places” (p. 360).

- Conceptions of social justice require the promotion and reproduction of respect for group differences without oppression. Harvey asks: who defines universality and what constitutes this universality?