ABSTRACT
1Many would struggle to speak the words ‘global justice’ without a sense of indignation. It is hard to say these words without the attached feeling that far too many things are overwhelmingly wrong with this world and that so much of human life could and should be organised in a better, fairer, and less cruel manner. For too many on this earth life is marked by an endless parade of injustices, harms, wrongs and suffering. This does not occur naturally, but is done by some to others and often takes place at arm’s length through political, economic and bureaucratic organisations, and via the nudging of everyday life and human action in specific directions by normative beliefs, values and rationalities widely peddled and accepted as ‘common sense’. The occurrence of injustice is also very direct, it is the violence of a lack of food, clean water or medicine set against the very secure and comfortable lives of the affluent, it is the violence of inequality, debt, poverty, unemployment and the drudgery of low paid work set against the dreamscape of the advertising billboard or Hollywood film. It is the violence of discrimination and exclusion, the physical violence perpetrated in the home or in the local neighbourhood, and the military violence of civil and interstate war. Such injustice is ‘violent’ as it constitutes an active violation of human dignity. Injustice is a violent assault upon a dignified life, and a dignified life – for all – requires, at least, economic and formal equality, freedom, and democracy.
