![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
In Spheres of Justice, Michael Walzer articulates an approach to distributive ethics based on complex equality that is closely attentive to the specific ways particular communities value goods. A renewed interest in place and geography among practitioners and theoreticians is giving rise to questions that are beyond the scope of Walzer's system and reveal abstractions at the geographic level that undercut his overall approach. This internal inconsistency weakens, but does not ultimately discount, Walzer's overall system of distributive ethics. When calibrated to allow for geographic particularity, Walzer's approach becomes even more useful to critique a range of contemporary development movements.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Glen Stassen and Lisa Williams for their helpful comments on a draft of this paper.
Notes
Note
1 Jackson's notion of the racial exclusivity of the suburbs has been helpfully challenged (Wiese, Citation2004, pp. 4–5), but his basic account of the characteristics of the postwar suburb is sound.