The Capability Approach Sample Clauses

The Capability Approach. 3.2.1 Social justice and equality This study is based on a concern for social justice in education. Those who are interested in social justice are typically motivated to account for some form of equality in society. And when we talk about social justice we are generally discussing ideas related to fairness, impartiality, or rights, with an interest in how they describe the relationships between people and the things they have or are able to do. What this means is that social justice studies often attempt to sketch out what ‘equality’ might look like in society, and the role of research is twofold in this regard; firstly, it might seek to provide some definition of equality or inequality along with a methodology for identifying or measuring it and, secondly, it might provide some strategies for creating a more equal society, most likely starting with the least well-off. It might be argued that theories of social justice are more usefully applied to developing societies, where there is an urgent need to address basic forms of injustice related to achieving basic quality of life for all. However, increasingly there is an acknowledgement that developed societies face a particular challenge in terms of inequality: the ‘health gap’, ‘education gap’, and ‘wealth gap’, for instance, can each affect the quality of life in disastrous and tragic ways for those at the bottom (Marmot 2015). Indeed, Xxxxx Xxxxx highlights the relationship between social justice and equality, observing: ‘I take for granted that there is something which justice requires people to have equal amounts of, not no matter what, but to whatever extent is allowed by values which compete with distributive equality’ (1989, p.906). As such, there is an important connection between social justice and equality that is relevant to understanding quality of life in all communities, richer or poorer.