Reconceptualizing Justice in Human Geography

Landscape as Basic Structure, Justice as the Right to Justification

Bibliographic Data

ID4903581
AuthorsDon Mitchell (0000-0001-8796-7756, Uppsala University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume114
Issue9
Pages2010-2027
Publication date2024-10-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnals of the American Association of Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2469-4452 • E-ISSN: 2469-4460
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/24694452.2024.2366897
OpenAlexW4400649853
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited62

This article argues that geographers should rededicate themselves to developing a positive theory of justice. In the past fifty years, research has made enormous strides in theorizing injustice, but mostly geographers rely on commonsense and unexamined notions of justice as "fairness." In this article, I trace this avoidance of justice theorizing to the way geographers originally engaged with Rawls's foundation work and argue that his A Theory of Justice should be reexamined to better understand one of the central concepts: the "basic structure," especially as it has been reformulated by feminist political theorists. I argue that the landscape is a key component of the basic structure and understanding it as such offers a first step in a positive theory of justice that is deeper than the commonsense justice-as-fairness. Having established landscape as basic structure, I then argue that a second step toward a full theory of justice would be to understand justice as the "right to justification" (as theorized by the Frankfurt School's Forst). The end result-combining landscape as basic structure with justice as the right to justification-is a theory that allows for assessing both "minimally" and "maximally" just geographies

Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Foundation (evidence · Injustice · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Land Use and Ecosystem Services · Law · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access