Spatial Justice
Event details
| Date | 08.05.2013 |
| Hour | 14:15 › 16:00 |
| Speaker | Laurent Matthey, Yves Bonard |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Justice is a sensitive notion that aims to reconcile two contradictory options: equality and freedom. Since Aristotle, many authors, including Hobbes, Locke and then Rousseau, have been confronted with this contradiction, not quite successfully. The notion of social contract has nevertheless lastingly introduced the thought of a social condition of being-there-together, laying the foundations of a fundamental problem which opposes justice to the state of nature.
John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser or Michael Walzer have largely contributed to the contemporary evolution of this reflection with, respectively, the notions of equity, capability, recognition, abnormal justice and spheres of justice. This revival has not only permitted to question the notion of equality (by justifying, for instance, inequalities) [Rawls], but also that of justice, giving more space to pluralism and emancipating the notion of equality from utilitarianism. To the redistribution of primary goods was added the consideration of the individual capacity to mobilise these goods [Sen], to redistribution was added recognition [Honneth] and representation [Fraser], and the notion of justice itself has been divided according to the considered problems (membership, health, security, education, etc.) [Walzer] or according to the principles of organisation of society [Boltanski and Thévenot].
Justice is not the result of a single norm, but of norms and evaluative registers, sometimes contradictory, which meet at the moment of a conflictual action. In this perspective, justice has become reflective, but also more elusive, because its application can not be entirely legitimate, and it can no longer pretend to be so in the name of universalism.
The transposition to space of the concept of justice is fully embedded in this debate, without really distinguishing itself from it. When proposing the right to the city in 1968, Henri Lefébvre has made the “urban” a good whose qualities entail the means of its own distribution. Since then, with David Harvey, Edward Soja or Susan Fainstein, an array of research has been conducted, essentially about the city.
This seminar intends to account for the richness of these studies on spatial justice while discussing its pertinence, coherence and weaknesses. Special attention will be paid to the valorisation of space as a pertinent dimension of justice, while avoiding the aporia of a spatialism that would strip the very notion of justice of all of its heuristic strength.
John Rawls, Amartya Sen, Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser or Michael Walzer have largely contributed to the contemporary evolution of this reflection with, respectively, the notions of equity, capability, recognition, abnormal justice and spheres of justice. This revival has not only permitted to question the notion of equality (by justifying, for instance, inequalities) [Rawls], but also that of justice, giving more space to pluralism and emancipating the notion of equality from utilitarianism. To the redistribution of primary goods was added the consideration of the individual capacity to mobilise these goods [Sen], to redistribution was added recognition [Honneth] and representation [Fraser], and the notion of justice itself has been divided according to the considered problems (membership, health, security, education, etc.) [Walzer] or according to the principles of organisation of society [Boltanski and Thévenot].
Justice is not the result of a single norm, but of norms and evaluative registers, sometimes contradictory, which meet at the moment of a conflictual action. In this perspective, justice has become reflective, but also more elusive, because its application can not be entirely legitimate, and it can no longer pretend to be so in the name of universalism.
The transposition to space of the concept of justice is fully embedded in this debate, without really distinguishing itself from it. When proposing the right to the city in 1968, Henri Lefébvre has made the “urban” a good whose qualities entail the means of its own distribution. Since then, with David Harvey, Edward Soja or Susan Fainstein, an array of research has been conducted, essentially about the city.
This seminar intends to account for the richness of these studies on spatial justice while discussing its pertinence, coherence and weaknesses. Special attention will be paid to the valorisation of space as a pertinent dimension of justice, while avoiding the aporia of a spatialism that would strip the very notion of justice of all of its heuristic strength.
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Organizer
- Ana Povoas, Jean-Nicolas Fauchille
Contact
- Ana Povoas, Jean-Nicolas Fauchille