Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
INSAN & TOPLUM-THE JOURNAL OF HUMANITY & SOCIETY, cilt.14, sa.4, ss.192-218, 2024 (ESCI)
A just society is not one where everyone is absolutely equal on all terms, nor scholarly literature on social
justice is constrained by such a conception of the just. As observed from the broad scholarly literature of social justice,
most theories in this field are competing and contending normative political perspectives informed by a sociological
conception of inequalities and aiming to identify social, economic as well as institutional conditions under which
resulting inequalities are morally necessary and desired, rather than proposing absolute equality. This work primarily
aims to explore to what extent this foundational quality of social justice theories is adopted by peer-reviewed scholarly
articles published in Türkiye within disciplines of social work and social policy whose identifying characteristic is to
serve the establishment of the just society. Departing from this purpose, it methodologically employed a double-layered
systematic literature review (n=184) and qualitative content analysis (n=62) to critically scrutinise peer-reviewed
journal articles involving the concept of social justice. In addition to some complementary findings, these analyses
resulted in three major findings based on which we argue that social justice in Türkiye is (1) primarily addressed
as a part of the popular academic jargon along with some generic concepts such as human rights and welfare; (2)
interchangeably used with the concept of equality although there are substantial distinctions between them; and (3)
stressed in a way that there is a unified/homogenous conception of the just society that overlooks competing and
contending normative perspectives in the relevant literature.