Susan Opotow

Justice and Identity: Changing Perspectives on What Is Fair

Most research on justice has aimed to describe abstract, depersonalized models that could apply to anyone. However, much of this research has involved identity, if only implicitly. We argue that justice needs to be contextualized to take into account the powerful effects of identity in determining when justice matters. The complexity and fluidity of identity need to be considered to understand when, why, and how strongly people care about justice, and how people choose among competing models of justice. We review existing research on distributive, procedural, and inclusionary justice and describe their connection to identity. We illustrate the intersection of justice and identity in environmental issues, a context in which these constructs have significant implications for individual, community, and planetary well-being. We conclude with 4 points to stimulate further research on the intersections of identity and justice.

From Moral Exclusion to Moral Inclusion: Theory for Teaching Peace

This article presents Moral Exclusion Theory as a way to systematize the study of complex issues in peace education and to challenge the thinking that supports oppressive social structures. The authors define its 2 key concepts: moral exclusion, the limited applicability of justice underlying destructive conflicts and difficult social problems; and moral inclusion, the emphasis on fairness, resource sharing, and concern for the well-being of all underlying peace building. They demonstrate the relevance of Moral Exclusion Theory in 4 key areas of peace education: (a) education for coexistence, (b) education for human rights, (c) education for gender equality, and (d) education for environmentalism. They then describe 2 common issues faced by schools, bullying and textbook bias, to demonstrate that moral exclusion is common and how students and staff can redress it. The article concludes with the challenge to use peace education as a tool for moral inclusion and for bringing about a world in which justice applies to all.

New Ways of Thinking about Environmentalism: Denial and the Process of Moral Exclusion in Environmental Conflict

Environmental issues present an urgent challenge throughout the world. Air, water, and land pollution continue at alarming rates and increasingly strain the Earths capacity to sustain healthy ecosystems and human life. Although technological and behavioral aspects of environmental conflict are often salient, this article contributes to the literature on environmentalism by examining moral orientations that underlie and fuel environmental conflict. The centerpiece of this article describes three kinds of denial in environmental conflict: (1) outcome severity; (2) stakeholder inclusion; and (3) self-involvement. Like intermeshed gears, these forms of denial actively advance the process of moral exclusion. The article concludes with implications of this analysis for theory and practice.

Reconciliation in Times of Impunity: Challenges for Social Justice

In human history there is no lack of malice, revenge, or savagery. The twentieth century has seen 33 million military deaths. Victimization deaths are estimated at six times that number, at 205 million people. The past decade has seen people enslaved, tortured, raped, and persecuted as members of political, racial, ethnic, or religious groups in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Yet we have not seen meaningful prosecution of crimes that have occurred on a massive scale. Former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights José Ayala Lasso has stated that “a person stands a better chance of being tried and judged for killing one human being than for killing 100,000.” This paper examines reconciliation in the aftermath of protracted, deadly, wide scale conflict characterized by impunity when crimes against individuals, groups, and humanity go unpunished. It describes the relevance of moral exclusion theory to conflicts in which dehumanization and violence are normalized, and it argues that impunity is an urgent matter for psychology and social justice research.

Is Justice Finite? The Case of Environmental Inclusion

Over the past 25 years, the environmental movement has argued for an increasingly wider consideration in our thinking about the natural world. It has argued, first, that a broader constituency is entitled to natural resources and, second, that a broader range of societal arrangements affect the natural world. Both inclusionary trends offer the opportunity to examine the social and psychological factors that widen a society’s “scope of justice,” the psychological boundary for extending considerations of fairness toward others. Tracing successively broader ecophilosophies over the past quarter century and describing typologies of values and research on the scope of justice, this chapter examines social psychological factors that can widen and constrict the scope of justice. Looking at this increasingly inclusionary environmental trend raises the question, “Does inclusion have limits?” The next section describes the scope of justice and its relevance to environmental attitudes and behavior.

What's Fair? Justice Issues in the Affirmative Action Debate

Justice has the illusion of solidity and immutability, but standards for fairness change with context. This article presents a conceptual analysis that describes the justice arguments used in the affirmative action debate as the how, what, and who of affirmative action. The article illustrates these procedural, distributive, and exclusionary arguments with examples, compares support with opposition, and examines conditions that change perceptions of justice over time.

Amenazados y víctimas del entramado de ETA en Euskadi: un estudio desde la teoría de la exclusión moral

Resumen Este estudio investiga la vivencia del acoso y violencia padecidos por las víctimas y los amenazados del entramado de ETA en Euskadi, utilizando el enfoque teórico de la exclusión moral. Para ello, se realiza un análisis de contenido sobre los testimonios de una muestra de personas amenazadas y víctimas de ETA en Euskadi (n = 85; Hombres = 76,50%; franja de edad40—49 años; sector público = 57,60%; actividad política como razón para el acoso = 51,80%; violencia psicológica = 55,29%). Concretamente, mediante las dimensiones de exclusión moral, 187 unidades de análisis fueron detectadas a partir del análisis de contenido. Los resultados mostraron las siguientes dimensiones de exclusión moral: a) un alcance social limitado a unos colectivos específicos amenazados por el entramado etarra (51,87%); b) unos comportamientos predominantemente de baja intensidad mediante estrategias de intimidación y amenaza, reforzadas por la potencial violencia física (21,14%); c) una participación pasiva de parte de la sociedad, que ha facilitado la indiferencia hacia las víctimas y en ocasiones su propia culpabilización (12,30%). Los coeficientes de estabilidad (k =.94) y reproducibilidad (k =.87) fueron adecuados. El estudio abarca aspectos que van más allá de las formas de violencia utilizadas y de sus efectos, aportándose algunos factores clave de la percepción de exclusión moral en amenazados y víctimas de ETA en Euskadi. Finalmente, se discuten los resultados, limitaciones e implicaciones de esta investigación.

Conflict and Morals

Youth conflicts can range from fleeting quarrels to more enduring antipathies expressed as violence toward individuals or groups. These conflicts can inflict physical and psychological harm, and when they fester, they can siphon off energy from more productive activities. However, conflicts also have positive potential. They can surface urgent concerns and motivate positive change by stimulating individuals, groups, or organizations to approach issues with fresh insight. Conflicts challenge us to be sufficiently attentive to learn from the dissonant understandings that give rise to conflicts and to be sufficiently skilled to resolve them constructively. This chapter argues that for adults and organizations that seek to nurture morality in youths, conflicts can be an underappreciated and valuable resource.

Absence and Presence: Interpreting Moral Exclusion in the Jewish Museum Berlin

This chapter describes research conducted in a museum that interprets injustice that occurred more than seven decades ago. From the vantage of the present, it looks back on the Third Reich, a period when the National Socialist Party (“Nazis”) gained adherents, power, and sought to exterminate Jews and other groups they denigrated as “life unworthy of life” (lebensunwertes Leben). Combining psychological theory with historical background, this chapter examines how museum professionals present this period that legitimated and then carried out a genocide of enormous proportions, The Holocaust. By examining how the Jewish Museum Berlin describes the Third Reich to the public, this chapter offers insight into representations of moral exclusion to engage museum visitors in reflecting on past injustice within their society. The museum’s approach offers scholars of injustice an understanding of the representation of moral exclusion designed to reach people in the present so that they can better understand the past, the dynamics of moral exclusion, and its import for present social relations.

The Legitimization of Political Violence: A Case Study of ETA in the Basque Country

Political violence can be legitimized by offering the public justifications for harm doing. This study of the legitimation of political violence is situated in the Basque region in northern Spain. It focuses on ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna; Basque Homeland and Freedom), the last separatist and nationalist group in Western Europe using terrorist violence as a tactic to achieve independence. In its 50 years of existence, ETA has evolved in its target selection and the forms of violence it utilizes to achieve political independence for the Basque Country. Utilizing two theories as analytic tools, Faces of Legitimization Theory (Van den Broek, 2004) and Moral Exclusion Theory (Opotow, 1990a, 1990b, 1995), this article describes how ETAs victims experience threatened or actual harm and its aftermath, how ETA describes its own actions, and the relation between ETA and Spanish governments. The article concludes with a discussion of results, limitations, and implications of the research findings.