Mirror Sites:
CSUDH Habermas UWP

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 6, 2001
Latest update: November 2, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org

Transforming Discourse Readings
Week of November 2, 2001: Week 10

• Online Readings:

  • Retribution and Reconciliation by David A. Crocke. On the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy website. Scroll about four fifths of the way down the file for a discussion of ubuntu, social harmony, and a critique of Archbishop Desmond Tutu's approach to reconciliation and restorative justice.

• Hardcopy Readings:

  Social Justice, Criminal Justice, ed. by Arrigo:

  • Up soon.

• Theoretical Concepts You Should Know:

  1. restorative justice: "Restorative justice is a valued-based approach to criminal justice, with a balanced focus on the offender, victim, and community. The foundation of restorative justice is to determine the harm resulting from a crime, what needs to be done to repair the harm, and who is responsible for repairing the harm."
     Definition from Restorative justice: Healing the Effects of Crime Website maintained by Tom Cavanagh. Dedicated to learning together how to heal the harm of crime.

  2. retributive justice: The dominant approach to criminal justice at the present time is sometimes called retributive justice and is focused on determining what law was broken, who broke it, and how should they be punished."

  3. distributive justice: Distributive justice is that approach to social justice that delves more deeply into the inequality of access to resources and that inequality's contribution to deviance and crime in the first place.

• Some Suggested Measures of Learning:

  Comment on one of the following topics, or do something of your own choosing.

  1. In transformative discourse, consider how the dominant discourse draws on the hidden assumptions that one people should serve another, and how easy it is to be complicit by denying that underlying assumption. How does this concept of underlying assumptions of servitude relate to the arguments of Minow and Nozick?

  2. Are the situations in South Africa after apartheid, and the U.S. after September 11 comparable. Can we learn anything about transforming our discourse from the experience of South Africa?

     Consider what harm was done in each case. Consider whether vengeance or retribution is sought. Consider both the simlarities and the differences.

More soon . . . . October 25, 2001. jeanne