Recognition and Redistribution in Theories of Justice Beyond the State

If we consider what justice beyond the state requires, there are two quite obvious lines of inquiry one might pursue. First, there are the shocking socio-economic inequalities of a world in which many millions of people endure harsh lives under conditions of extreme poverty while many others enjoy lives of affluence and material excess. Levels of wealth and poverty, when judged on a global scale, are concentrated geopolitically with the proportions of wealthy and poor people varying dramatically across countries and regions of the world.1 We should be concerned, therefore, with the ways in which the current economic order allows such disparities to occur, or more accurately perhaps, how it causes and reinforces those disparities. Secondly, the history of modernity that has shaped the current global order has been marked deeply by colonialism, imperialism, and enslavement, along with associated forms of cultural and racial oppression. We should also be concerned, therefore, with the positive recognition of cultural differences.2 This means that we should be vigilant against any false claims to universalism in the theoretical perspectives that are used to understand the process of globalization. Many such theories are shot through with ethnocentric, culturally biased value-judgements that impose one Western capitalist perspective on this ongoing historical process while presenting themselves with a veneer of objectivity.