Affirmative Action and the Demands of Justice

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Scott Arnold
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Political Justification

This essay is about the moral and political justification of affirmative action programs in the United States. Both legally and politically, many of these programs are under attack, though they remain ubiquitous. The concern of this essay, however, is not with what the law says but with what it should say. The main argument advanced in this essay concludes that most of the controversial affirmative action programs are unjustified. It proceeds in a way that avoids dependence on controversial theories of justice or morality. My intention is to produce an argument that is persuasive across a broad ideological spectrum, extending even to those who believe that justice requires these very programs. Though the main focus of the essay is on affirmative action, in the course of making the case that these programs are illegitimate, I shall defend some principles about the conditions under which it is appropriate for the state to impose on civil society the demands of justice. These principles have broader implications for a normative theory of social change in democratic societies.

Social Justice, the Ethics of Care, and Market Economies

2002 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Caputo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
The United States ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Social Concern ◽  
Social Agenda ◽  
Caregiver Needs

This essay explores the roles of social justice and the “ethics of care” as animating forces for social change in light of the near universal ascendance of the principles of market-based economics and of their extension into nonmarket areas of social concern, particularly in the United States. The main argument is that linking the “ethics of care,” social justice, and power makes possible the development of a democratic political and social agenda that can respectively aid in meeting the caregiver needs of the nation and contribute to the transformation of gender roles associated with care.

scholarly journals Embedding in the city? Locating civil society in the philanthropy of place

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine C Pill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Philanthropic Foundations ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
The City

Abstract Philanthropic foundations have become increasingly important actors in the governance of cities in decline in the United States. The relationships between foundation and other actors within city governance are illuminated via contrasting interpretations of state-society power relationships which highlight the mutability of ‘civil society’ as an oppositional or integrated part of the state. After detailing a typology of philanthropy of place, the twofold role played by foundations in the governance of neighbourhood revitalization in the cities in which they are embedded is explored: not only as an important source of funding and support for neighbourhood-based organizations, but as contributors to the creation of neighbourhood revitalization policy agendas. Considering the cities of Baltimore and Cleveland reveals that the policy approaches adopted have tended to align with the predominant neoliberal policy agenda rather than revealing foundation actors as activists who assist the organizations they support in exerting agency to contest or seek to transform the prevailing hegemony. This makes clear the need for rigour in defining what constitutes civil society, and points to the importance of embedded philanthropic practices in enabling civil society agency.

10. Civil Society

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Ottaway
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Developing World ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
European Countries ◽  
International Assistance

This chapter examines the concept of civil society. During the 1990s, civil society was a relatively obscure concept familiar mostly to scholars of Marxism. It then evolved into a mainstream term freely used by social science analysts in general, and by practitioners in the international assistance field in particular. Several factors contributed to these developments, including the growing interest in the United States and many European countries in promoting democracy abroad at that time. The chapter first defines civil society before discussing traditional vs modern civil society. It then considers the rise of civil society as an entity separate from the broader society and from the state, along with the state-civil society relations in the developing world. Finally, it explores how the concept of civil society became an important part of discussions of democratization.

State, Centre and Bureaucracy

1981 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Birnbaum
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
The State ◽  
Weak State ◽  
The Social

THE STATE, IN THE STRONGEST MEANING OF THE WORD, IS NOT indispensable to the functioning of civil society. Indeed society can often so organize itself as to prevent the emergence of a state intent on establishing itself as an absolute power. The very existence of the state itself, the consequence of particular sociohistorical processes, upsets the whole of the social system which is henceforth ordered around it. The relationships between the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the working class or, today, the middle classes, differ profoundly according to whether these groups were confronted by a strongly institutionalized state or a centre which exercised essentially co-ordinating functions. Still today the political systems which have simultaneously a centre and a state (France) can be distinguished from those which have a weak state without a real centre (Italy) or a centre without a genuine state (Great Britain, the United States) or neither centre nor state (Switzerland). In the first two cases, in varying degrees, the state dominates and manages civil society; in the two latter, civil society manages itself. It is therefore possible to distinguish societies in which the state attempts to dominate the social system by endowing itself with a strong bureaucracy (ideal type: France; paralle development: Prussia, Spain, Italy) from those in which the organization of civil society makes it impossible for a powerful state and a powerful dominating bureaucracy to emerge (ideal type: Great Britain; parallel development: the United States and the consociational democracies like Switzerland). Without claiming to retrace methodically the history of each of these states or of their political centres, I should like to sketch a broad outline of their evolution with the object of showing that the different relations by which the many governing groups are linked together within the different social systems depend sometimes on the formation of the state and sometimes on the simple formation of a political centre.

Retreat into the Future: the United States, South Africa, and Human Rights, 1976–1978

1980 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Coker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Affirmative Action ◽  
State Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
The Future

When Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State in September 1973 he instructed all American embassy personnel to monitor human rights in the countries in which they were serving. President Jimmy Carter was not responsible for America's interest in human rights, only for the policy of affirmative action. When his Assistant Secretary for Human Rights commenced work she found only two members of the State Department permanently assigned to the task, and her sole guideline was the manual for setting up her office.

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