Social Justice: What Is It? Why Teach It?

Abstract

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, the article serves as an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Geography devoted to teaching social justice. Second, the article serves as an introduction to the concept of social justice, which turns out to be a frustratingly slippery idea to define. Despite this difficulty, I argue that geography teachers must undertake the challenge and then introduce concepts related to social justice and human rights into their curricula. The article asks three basic questions about social justice: What is it? Why should we be concerned about it? Why should we teach it? By drawing on the work of political philosophers, economists, and geographers, I suggest that individualistic notions (equality of opportunity) and community-oriented (equality of outcomes) notions of social justice are complementary rather than in conflict. Moral, economic, political, and legal reasons are offered to justify why we should be concerned about social justice. Finally, I argue that geographers are particularly well suited to study and teach concepts related to social justice because social injustice is caused by and expressed in such intrinsically geographical ways as ghettos, borders, margins, peripheries and regions at different scales.

Key Words:

• social justice
• critical pedagogy
• praxis