SOCIAL JUSTICE: A MIRAGE OR REALITY IN PLURAL SOCIETIES
DATES: 13-14 June 2019
Organiser: Department of Politics and Governance
Venue: Central University of Kashmir
Green Campus, Ganderbal
PRE-CONFERENCE EVENT (12 June 2019)
https://www.cukashmir.ac.in/departmentdocs_18/Pre%20Conference%20program%20schedule%207%20June%2019.pdf
Social Justice has remained an essentially contested concept in terms of philosophy,ethics, legal notion and political conceptualisation. The contours of social justice stimulated in different dimensions according to the time and concern. The concerns ofjustice were as old as civilization and debateable even in contemporary philosophical understanding. Initially the concept of social justice travelled with religion and justifiedthe authority for society and individual’s harmonious relationship. Later the philosophers believed in social contract, which is grounded in reciprocity; betweenindividuals, as persons and as a society and state. But the notion of social justice occurred when the concept of reciprocity was justified only among the elites. Then thecontemporary philosophers further extended the concept of social justice to individual rights in order to address the difficulties aroused due to differences in diversifiedsocieties. Thus the discourse of social justice, over the years often surrounded around the arguments in favour of social goals on one side and the individual liberties on theother. This dichotomy between social goals or collective responsibility and individual liberty while achieving social justice in a diversified society intensified the debates.In the sphere of plural societies, the debates carried from ancient to modern societies. To understand, the early patrimonial societies have relative autonomy in the beginning,continued with homogeneity and finally assimilated not only into modernity and into industrialisation, but also to postmodern, post- industrialist societies of heterogeneityand difference. Hence, the convention on social justice is very much in demand. Since the philosophical underpinnings are applied to individual actions, nature of laws and topublic policies; the sanity instilled and remained within individuals as part of society
always realizes the unjust done to oneself and to others and would suggest either toresist or to reject. In order to comprehend the mirage or reality of social justice in a plural society, the following questions need to be addressed: a) considering the timeand concern of the society how have the critical questions of inequality been addressed by the philosophical inquisition of social justice? b) how social justice need to deal withthe root causes of the inequality? c) in an ever changing society, how does the philosophy of social justice respond to the challenges to face newer conditions ofinequality? and d) what other nuances of society needs to be additionally understood to confront the inequality issue in the plural societies?The conference focuses on the questions through the lens of analytical politicalphilosophy and critically examines the range of debates on social justice like the valueof equality, role of individual responsibility, moral justifications and the structuraleffects of inequality. This international conference will provide a venue for the students,scholars and academicians from interdisciplinary subjects to deliberate upon thecontestations overs the issues and challenges in the plural societies under the framework of social justice.
FINAL PROGRAMME SCHEDULE
https://www.cukashmir.ac.in/departmentdocs_18/Final_Programme%20Schedule.pdf
Conference Convener:
Dr. Himabindu M.
Assistant professor
Department of Politics and Governance
Central University of Kashmir