Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

In the concluding chapter, we illustrate connections between the different parts of the volume to identify potential areas for deepened engagement among justice theories. The chapter begins by discussing the role of liberalism as a touchstone for theories of justice and the limitations and opportunities this presents for justice theorising. The chapter then explores the connection between more theoretical approaches with those examining actually-existing circumstances of injustice. In doing so, we return to the forms, aspects and realms of justice to highlight how these feature throughout the chapter surveys, to analyse convergences and divergences among the approaches. In ending, the chapter offers a set of tables to help visualise and categorise the different traditions to provide readers a pedagogical resource useful for drawing connections and indicating avenues for future research.

This chapter draws from Indigenous scholars and authors to identify general Indigenous perspectives on justice. The chapter begins by discussing Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies which are concerned with harmonious relations with human and non-human natures. It then examines the function of rights as tools towards realising justice by discussing legal and political literatures regarding the struggle and respect for specifically Indigenous rights to recognition and self-determination. In highlighting a range of perspectives on justice, the chapter suggests that Indigenous approaches to justice critically challenge the western dominance of justice theorising, by expanding alternative ways of understanding what just human/non-human relations can look like.

This chapter introduces readers to the contents of the volume by identifying three categories through which to make sense of the diversity of justice theories. We suggest that thinking about justice through the ‘forms’, ‘aspects’ and ‘realms’ of justice enables readers to concentrate on how and why specific features of justice theories are better applied to problems within traditional social and political science research.

Theorising Justice surveys philosophical and normative theories of justice and their application within more empirically based social and political science research. Together, the chapters highlight the multi-faceted nature of justice as an analytical and political concept and avoids advocating ‘correct’ approaches to justice theorising. Each chapter provides overviews of the background, main tenets and critiques of dominant justice traditions. Part I examines theories of liberalism, libertarianism, cosmopolitanism, and the Capabilities Approach, in addition to approaches critical of these mainstream justice traditions, such as feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism and Indigenous perspectives of justice. Yet, a principal concern of the book is to promote further engagement with these differing conceptions of justice within social and political science scholarship. As such, chapters in Part II survey scholarship on environmental, climate, energy, spatial and landscape justice along with intergenerational as well as just transitions approaches. In doing so, the volume illustrates multiple methodological and conceptual approaches for analysing justice, illustrating how applied justice theories may usefully analyse problems of inequity, oppression, and domination within more empirically focused research. As justice becomes increasingly important to the discourses within social science and policy scholarship, Theorising Justice will be a valuable reference for students, instructors and practitioners seeking to address the social, political, economic and ecological challenges we face today.

Abstract Justice has long been central to geographic research but attention to the concept itself has been less explicitly theorized within the discipline. This article specifically traces the ways in which justice has been theorized within human geography. The review identifies commonalities among justice applications within geography, suggesting a shift beyond distributive and ideal theories of justice toward those explicating injustices coming more from bottom-up approaches. At the same time, it identifies the tendency of geographers to approach the concept of justice through normative-political approaches rather than normative-analytical justifications of socio-spatial phenomena. The paper illustrates the value of both approaches to justice theorizing but cautions that geographers should continue to justify the use of the concept within their work to avoid attenuating it. In ending, the paper illustrates how justice-oriented geographers can continue to identify why justice is central to their scholarship.

With the rise of organized houseless encampments or "tent cities" around the U.S., scholars have begun to address the social-spatial effects of encampments on houseless peoples' lives. This scholarship has primarily explained the development of organized encampments as an effect of neoliberal modes of governance as municipalities have sought to offload responsibility for caring for the houseless or to discipline houseless people by containing them through the regulative force of the state. Such explanations address the culpability of the state in relation to capital which shapes houseless peoples' lives. Yet, they leave unaddressed one critical component of houseless encampments: that relations surrounding property ensure that houseless encampment residents remain property-insecure and without a guaranteed right to remain. Through a case study of self-governing houseless encampments in Portland, Oregon, the article advances a relational analysis of property and citizenship to show how self-governing houseless communities are denied key privileges of citizenship that democratic self-governance is intended to realize. In doing so, the case study examines the very tradeoffs houseless encampment residents must make when living in an encampment. The paper ends suggesting that Portland's encampment model allows us to more clearly see the consequences of establishing collective rights to access property within liberal property systems, and from this, where political and scholarly attention ought to be placed to better protect houseless people through a more democratic right to remain.

This paper argues that geographers ought to pay closer attention to the role of property relations within political liberalism. Developing on the idea that propertied-citizenship excludes houseless or other property-insecure people from space, the paper argues that property-insecure people are instead incorporated within the relations of property. Examining how houseless people are incorporated within rather than outside of property, illustrates how key values of property long-held in liberalism are maintained and used to devalue a sense of social and political autonomy for the property-insecure. After tracing the dialectical relations of property with citizenship through the historical emergence of American liberalism, the paper examines how the values connecting property with citizenship continue to diminish the livelihoods of houseless people. Based on ethnographic research with self-governed houseless encampments in Portland, Oregon, I analyze how opposition to these unique types of houseless shelter affect encampment residents. What we are able to see from Portland's encampments, I argue, are the broader limitations of citizenship within liberalism which continue to be demarcated through a proper social order defined by property.