Unusual coming from a leftist perspective, this book argues that those who care for social justice should seek more globalization and not try to prevent its development or roll it back.

In 1996, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, a grassroots advocacy organization, won a historic legal victory against the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. The resulting consent decree forced the MTA for a period of ten years to essentially reorient the mass transit system to better serve the city’s poorest residents. A stunning reversal of conventional governance and planning in urban America, which almost always favors wealthier residents, this decision is also, for renowned urban theorist Edward W. Soja, a concrete example of spatial justice in action. In Seeking Spatial Justice, Soja argues that justice has a geography and that the equitable distribution of resources, services, and access is a basic human right. Building on current concerns in critical geography and the new spatial consciousness, Soja interweaves theory and practice, offering new ways of understanding and changing the unjust geographies in which we live. After tracing the evolution of spatial justice and the closely related notion of the right to the city in the influential work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and others, he demonstrates how these ideas are now being applied through a series of case studies in Los Angeles, the city at the forefront of this movement. Soja focuses on such innovative labor–community coalitions as Justice for Janitors, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and the Right to the City Alliance; on struggles for rent control and environmental justice; and on the role that faculty and students in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning have played in both developing the theory of spatial justice and putting it into practice. Effectively locating spatial justice as a theoretical concept, a mode of empirical analysis, and a strategy for social and political action, this book makes a significant contribution to the contemporary debates about justice, space, and the city.

The book discusses the implications of globalization on education from the perspective of social justice. It looks at two countries — India and the UK — to look at how global economic and cultural processes are mediated through nation states, institutional structures and the aspirations of different social groups. It seeks to resituate the debates around education and social justice in policy, research and public discourse by highlighting the need for a more nuanced understanding of globalization and education. It also demonstrates the effects of economic dimensions — the politics of neoliberalism, and how this has shifted the understanding of state responsibilities and marginalized issues pertaining to the agenda of social justice.

Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice, Second Edition, introduces students to the study of communication among cultures within the broader context of globalization. Kathryn Sorrells highlights history, power, and global institutions as central to understanding the relationships and contexts that shape intercultural communication. Based on a framework that promotes critical thinking, reflection, and action, this text takes a social justice approach that provides students with the skills and knowledge to create a more equitable world through communication. Loaded with new case studies and contemporary topics, the Second Edition has been fully revised and updated to reflect the current global context, emerging local and global issues, and more diverse experiences.

"This book is the outcome of a series of seminars and conferences organised by Policy Network in the course of 2007"--Acknowledgements.

Many theoretical publications make assumptions about the facts of globalization, and in particular about the role and autonomy of the nation state. These factual claims and assumptions often play an important role in justifying the normative conclusions, yet remain under-explored. This interdisciplinary volume examines questions that are central to the problems of both social and international justice, and in particular, to their interdependence: How do global and transnational factors influence the capacity of states to be internally just? Has the state lost its capacity for autonomous action in the global economy, and thus its ethical significance for theories of justice? If so, which institutional reforms could address this problem? What is the role of the state in a just international order? The authors address important connections between domestic social justice and global dynamics, by identifying problematic practices and trends in the current global order. They examine political, economic and legal changes and offer normative views on concrete policies and institutions that are particularly important and/or problematic – i.e. international health policies, the World Bank, taxation policies and the World Trade Organization. Focusing on the relationship between social and global justice and establishing connections between political theory and empirical research, this book is vital reading for students and scholars of Politics, International Relations, and Development Studies.

The International Forum for Social Development was a 3 year project undertaken by the United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Affairs between 2001 and 2004 to promote international cooperation for social development and supporting developing countries and social groups not benefiting from the globalization process. This publication provides an overview and interpretation of the discussions and debates that occurred at the four meetings of the Forum for Social Development held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, within the framework of the implementation of the outcome of the World Summit for Social Development.