The Degrees of Social Justice: Micro, Mezzo and Macro social Levels

Abstract

This chapter aims to give an account of social science’s various contributions to the issue of the different levels of social justice. More specifically, we analyse the ways social justice is applied at each of the (micro, mezzo and macro) social levels. One of the main difficulties the empirical social sciences need to overcome is how they observe or even measure how the moral principles and prevailing ideals arising from moral and political philosophy are concretely embodied in levels and areas where they interact and are disputed within particular groups and in the daily lives of individuals. This distance between the moral norm that is thought to float outside the social world and the numerous more or less developed and more or less contradictory concrete judgements we express every day and that frame our actions in a more or less reflective way raises the question of the levels or degrees of understanding of social justice, if only as a way of appreciating the diversity and complexity that have developed within this field of research in recent decades.

Thanks to: proyecto CONICYT FONDAP 15130009, Fondecyt regular n°1150808 et Programa de Estímulo a la Excelencia Institucional de la Universidad de Chile a través del Fondo de Fortalecimiento de Productividad y Continuidad en Investigación—Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. This document was also developed as part of the INCASI network, a European project (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie GA No 691004), coordinated by Dr. Pedro López-Roldán. This document is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the Agency’s opinion.