Social justice in the context of COVID-19 pandemic

Volume 5, Number 4, 2020, P. 549–559

[ SOCIOLOGICAL SCIENCES ]

Article (file: pdf, size: 560 KB, downloads: 327)

Abstract:

The article considers the issues of social justice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the impact of the 2019-2020 pandemic on social inequality processes in different countries that cause a change of the concept of social justice. It analyses the social changes in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the phenomenon of social justice from viewpoint of the representatives of various social, economic, philosophical traditions: Aristotle, Cicero, L. Kelso, M. Adler, Weber A. and others. The author comes to the conclusion that in different periods of the historical development of society, the understanding of social justice and its content interpretation are different. It should be noted that social justice is an implicit agreement of a society in order to promote justice as a collective good. However, its interpretation reveals a contradiction between social equality and individual freedom. It is noted that in a society at risk, the attitude towards social justice worsens; in this context it is maximally fragmented into a multitude of individual and group criteria. Examining the economic and social consequences of combating the pandemic, we understand that little attention is paid to the principles of social justice when resources of a society are distributed and there is a gap in needs satisfaction of various social groups, which produces the phenomenon of a disjointed society.

Keywords:

social justice, social inequality, disjointed society, pandemic, COVID-19

Author:

Elena N. Struk, Head of Sociology and Psychology Department, Irkutsk National Research Technical University, Irkutsk, Russia

For citation:

Struk E.N. (2020) Social justice in the context of COVID-19 pandemic // Sotsial’naya kompetentnost’ = Social Competence. Vol. 5. No. 4. P. 549–559. (In Russ.)

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