Reflections

by Kyrstie Lane, Managing Editor, Reflections

What constitutes justice has been hotly contested throughout history, and the idea has greatly evolved through the centuries. One offshoot of this enormous and complicated debate is the concept of social justice, based in values of equality, human rights, and dignity for all. As the international arena continues to evolve, justice has ceased to be confined by regional or national boundaries: thus, a wider range of groups have demanded social justice, and its values have been applied to a wider range of issues. Many important protections have been achieved in the name of social justice, and yet at the same time new issues and challenges are constantly arising. Today, concerns about social justice touch upon everything from business and economics to development and peacebuilding, and beyond. This issue of Reflections presents articles that discuss a range of different domains in which social justice is evolving and gaining strength, yet is also facing a new array of challenges.

Bruce Paton’s article on corporate social responsibility (CSR) uses the example of Apple in China to demonstrate how CSR is continuing to evolve and is demanding more of companies and corporations in order to establish better protections for both people and the environment alike. He outlines the next steps that must be taken to better CSR, and what we should demand from it in the future. Girish Agrawal and Anu Mandavilli’s piece on the operations of the South Korean company POSCO in the state of Orissa, India describes an example of how states and corporations seek to exploit natural resources, under the guise of development and benefits for the greater good, to the detriment of local people. Their article provides just one example of how a state can fail to protect its own people, instead acting against them at the side of a multinational corporation. If the state will not protect its people from such infringement on their rights, who will?

The Centre’s research fellow Amy Schwartzott gives us a glimpse into her research on a peacebuilding project in Mozambique that transforms weapons of war into artwork in order to promote peace and reconciliation. The project aims to aid in healing the many wounds of Mozambique’s long history of violence by providing a path towards a more peaceful future through addressing the horrors of the past. As she explains, the powerful, positive symbolism of this project offers a model for peacebuilding efforts that can be used in many different contexts and conflicts.

This issue’s Picks of the Quarter present aspects of well-known conflicts that have gotten lost beside their more talked-about counterparts. These include the struggle of protestors in Bahrain, whose battle against a crushing regime has been lost beside more violent, publicized events of the Arab Spring; the continuing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, now fueled by rebel factions from neighboring Rwanda but not receiving the attention that past conflicts in either of these countries experienced; and the enormous benefits of the United States’ new Affordable Care Act for women, lost beside the raging political debates on
the Act.

Finally, the column Pedagogy of Conflict delves more deeply into the concept of social justice itself. The column examines not only what true social justice is, but what a conflict resolver or anyone wishing to work in this field must do and possess in order to be able to effectively pursue and work towards this ideal.