Social Justice Activism

FAMILIES IN SOCIETY • Volume 83, Number 4
programs to educate students to pursue economic and social
justice or how NASW can enforce its ethical imperative
that “social workers promote social justice” and “challenge
social injustice” (NASW, 1996, pp. 1, 5; see also
Cox, 2001; Council on Social Work Education, 2001; Van
Soest, 1994; Reeser & Leighninger, 1990).
Summary: Different
Aspects of Social Justice
During the past century social work scholars have focused
on different aspects of social justice. Most have
viewed social justice as an alternative to charity in that its
emphasis is on egalitarianism and mutuality, instead of dominance
and hierarchy (Reynolds, 1951; Kropotkin, 1902).
At one end of the ideological spectrum, a Marxist view of
social justice recognizes that neither the human condition
nor social reality is fixed, but are the consequences of socioeconomic
relationships and cultural patterns, including
the ideological frameworks that rationalize them (George &
Wilding, 1994; Mullaly, 1997; Fraser, 1995; Gil, 1998). A
liberal view focuses on the distribution of benefits and burdens
and the protection of persons’ rights particularly at the
level of individuals (Katz, 2001; Isbister, 2001; Miller,
2001; Schmidtz & Goodwin, 1998). According to Rawls
(2001) and others, it also involves the assignment of fundamental
rights and duties, economic opportunities and social
conditions, and incorporates a principle of compensation or
redress (Tomasi, 2001; Sen, 1992).
Conservatives, such as Robert Nozick (1974) and
Lawrence Mead (1986, 1997), differ from liberals in four
important ways. First, they would assign these rights solely
to individuals and not to groups or classes of persons. Second,
they would limit these rights to the political sphere and
exclude the redistribution of resources and status. Third,
they would regard the protection of property rights as of
equal or greater importance (Sunstein, 1997; Hayek,
1976). Finally, they would assert that social justice requires
a balancing of rights with responsibilities or obligations
(Berlin, 1958; Gilbert, 1995; Schmidtz & Goodin 1998).
By contrast, Held (1984) maintains that the pursuit of
social justice complements rather than competes with the
pursuit of human rights. Both, she argues, are products of
social cooperation, trust, and mutuality. Gil (1998) shares
this vision of society and makes a similar argument from a
social work perspective. Finally, postmodern scholars propose
an expansion of modern visions of social justice to include
groups traditionally omitted from justice-oriented
debates, an examination of justice/injustice in the sociocultural
as well as the political-economic spheres of society,
and a focus on societal processes as well as societal goals
and outcomes (Leonard, 1995).
Conclusion: Social Justice,
Social Policy, and Social Work Practice
A social justice approach to social policy would acknowledge
the connection in the design and delivery of
social services between peoples’ needs for economic assistance
and the supports agencies provide. This would reflect
the goals of empowerment as originally articulated by
Solomon (1976) and developed by social work scholars
over the past quarter century (Reisch, Wenocur, & Sherman,
1981; Simon, 1994; Gutierrez & Lewis, 1999;
Gutierrez, Parsons, & Cox, 1998). Some principles for
policy development derived from a justice-centered approach
could include:
• Policies and services should hold the most vulnerable populations
harmless in the distribution of societal resources.
Based upon Rawls’ notion of redress (2001), unequal distribution
of resources would be justified only if such inequalities
served to advance the least advantaged groups in the
community (Isbister, 2001; Franklin, 1998).
• Reflecting the mutuality of worker/client interests best articulated
by Bertha Reynolds, the construction of social services
would embody the idea that such services are the expression
of collective responsibility for people’s needs (Gil, 1998).
• To achieve the long-range goals of social justice, when scarce
resources make such choices necessary, social policies and
services should emphasize prevention rather than correction,
amelioration, or remediation (Katz, 2001; White, 2000).
• To incorporate ideas developed both by multiculturalists and
postmodernists, social services should stress multiple forms
of helping and multiple means of providing access to services
and benefits in order to recognize that needs and helping
are defined differently by different groups in a multicultural
society (Caputo, 2000; Green, 1999; Rivera & Erlich, 1998;
Iglehart & Becerra, 1995; Leonard, 1995).
• Finally, in order to reflect the social work profession’s longstanding
emphasis on the primacy of the client’s interest, social
policies and services should be developed so as to enable
clients and constituents to define their own situations and
contribute to the development and evaluation of solutions as
much as possible (Saleebey, 2002; Simon, 1994).
Bertha Reynolds (1951) proposed four criteria for
achieving social justice in social work practice. One was
the criterion of belonging—that people should be treated
as human beings, not as problems to be solved. To some
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