Sociology of social justice

The question of the Social justice does not constitute today a sociological object with whole share.

It seems that the absence of this object can be explained in two ways. On the one hand, the sociological analysis of social justice is limited by the unilaterality of the ideal models dominant which are founded, either on a formal approach of the rules of justice (Rawls, Habermas, Nozick, Dworkin), or on an analytical reduction of the complexity of the social situations (Walzer, Hayek, Dupuy). In addition, the sociological analysis of social justice is crossed by two great divergent prospects: a prospect cognitivist where social justice is especially seized under a normative aspect (Raymond Boudon, Kellerhals, Forsé and Parodi, Demeulenaere), and a prospect Pragmatique where social justice is rather included/understood like a critical aspiration of the individual subject (Dubet, Luc Boltanski and Thévenot, Honneth, De Singly).

It seems nevertheless possible to develop a synthetic prospect, which re-registers the question of social justice within the framework of democratic individualism inherent in advanced modernity. The traditional antithesis between equality and freedom initially makes it possible to locate the sociological analysis of social justice compared to the abstract model of the “community of the citizens” (Dominique Schnapper). The requirement of social justice appears indeed indissociable of the legal framework tended by the Déclaration of the Human rights and the Citizen: the social justifications are always formulated in terms of “right to” (right to diversity, right to the difference, right to the authenticity…). The plurality of the principles, the heterogeneity of the social goods, the multiplicity of the situations and the dimensions covered by social justice then invite to exceed the dominant models in the field of philosophy and the economy policies.

It is then a question of showing that the standards of social justice are generally combined in a complex way. On a side, the social inequalities are likely to be regarded as “right” only when they result from the free competition between individuals defined as equal (the model of " meritocratic equality of the chances" - Dubet - associating here the standard of the equality and the standard of the merit). But on another side, the value of dependant equity a renovated design of the distributive Justice (Rawls) is essential like a method of adjustment on the margin of the model of " meritocratic equality of the chances" (the justification then consisting in “giving more to those which have less”). The discrepancy between equality and equity laterally highlights an increasing priority of the question of the recognition (Fraser) on the question of the redistribution. This priority authorizes to couple, in a potentially concurrent way, the social norm of the need and the social norm for autonomy: to be right, it is not only any more to guarantee equalizes it freedom of all; but is also to recognize with the individual the right to be " what it est" (Will Kymlicka).

The “passion of the equality” (Tocqueville) thus opens on an anxious dynamics of recognition of the merits and individual needs. It involves a paradoxical definition of the subject, which aspires all at the same time to a valorization of its singularity and a justification of the social inequalities. Social justice can finally be apprehended, from a sociological point of view, like a mode of regulation of the normative tensions subjacent with democratic individualism.

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