Fairness and Equality

This article puts forward an argument in favor of small farmer fair trade based on an analysis of the differences between small farmer fair trade and plantation fair trade with examples drawn from the coffee and tea sectors. The article also scrutinizes the Fair Trade USA split from Fairtrade International and the proliferation of Fair Trade labels.

Educational policy depends on assumptions about fairness in education, whether they are made explicit or kept implicit. Without a view of fairness, one would be in the dark as to what should be done about the reproduction of social inequality through education, or whether or not anything should be done at all. The aim of this paper is to uncover the view of fairness in OECD education policy. It is based on an analysis of the normative argumentation concerning educational fairness in a set of policy documents from the last seven years, with special emphasis on the association between social background and educational achievement. The main result of the analysis is that the OECD explicitly operate with a loose idea of equal opportunity, compatible with even a merely formal equality, but implicitly with a meritocratic variant of fair equality of opportunity. In the final section, I argue that the OECD approach to fairness suffers from a limitation in that it considers educational justice in isolation from social justice in general.

Utilitarianism and prioritarianism make a strong assumption about the uniqueness of measures of how good things are for people, or for short, individual goodness measures. But it is far from obvious that the presupposition is correct. The usual response to this problem assumes that individual goodness measures are determined independently of our discourse about distributive theories. This article suggests reversing this response. What determines the set of individual goodness measures just is the body of platitudes we accept about distributive theories. When prioritarianism is taken to have an ex ante form, this approach vindicates the utilitarian and prioritarian presupposition, and provides an answer to an argument due to Broome that for different reasons to do with measurement, prioritarianism is meaningless.

Using data provided by the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) module Role of Government IV, we empirically investigate the micro-foundations of citizens' perceptions of public officials' fairness. Our results support the idea that (perceived) fairness of public officials is associated with a number of citizens' characteristics. In greater detail, we find evidence that receiving fair treatment from public officials is positively and significantly correlated to having connections with influential people.

Commonly, in liberal thought equal opportunity is understood as principle of distribution. However, such a point of view misses the close conceptual relation between equal opportunity and liberty. This paper’s aim is to show, why there is such a close conceptual relation between the two ideals. From this follows that within liberalism equal opportunity and liberty can only be defended together if they conceptually correlate.
In a first step the conceptual structure of both ideals is in focus. This discussion shows why equal opportunity must be conceived as an egalitarian conceptualization of claims of lib-erty. In a second step this paper discusses the potential conflicts between equal opportunity and liberty. Defending these conflicts has further consequences for conceptualizing liberty. Most commonly, in liberalism liberty guarantees conditions to realize an autonomous life. Therefore, it is necessary to show, why equal opportunity can serve this goal. Hence, in a third step this paper sketches two arguments for this purpose.

Damit behinderten Menschen die gleichen sozialen Möglichkeiten offen stehen, müssen für sie angemessene Bildungschancen sichergestellt werden. Dies bedeutet in der politischen Rhetorik meist, Chancengleichheit für Behinderte zu fordern. Dabei bleibt allerdings häufig offen, wie sich Bildungsansprüche für behinderte Menschen rechtfertigen lassen, die über ein Nicht-Diskriminierungsgebot hinausgehen. Die Rechtfertigung solcher Bildungsansprüche wirft normative Fragen der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit auf. Gleichzeitig verlangen sie in der pädagogischen Umsetzung nach Kriterien zur Bemessung entsprechender Leistungsansprüche.
Hierzu müssen sowohl aus normativer als auch aus pädagogischer Perspektive folgende drei Fragen beantwortet werden: a) Was ist im Kontext der Rede von Chancengleichheit im Bildungswesen überhaupt unter „Behinderung“ zu verstehen? b) Wie sind die knappen Ressourcen zur Sicherstellung von Chancengleichheit zwischen „Behinderten“ und Nicht-„Behinderten“ zu verteilen? c) Welche pädagogischen Massnahmen lassen sich zur Sicherstellung von Chancengleichheit für „Behinderte“ rechtfertigen? Die in diesem Band vereinten Beiträge erläutern diese drei Fragen aus gerechtigkeitstheoretischer und sonderpädagogischer Sicht.
Die gerechtigkeitstheoretischen Beiträge in diesem Band bilden die egalitaristische und non-egalitaristische Rechtfertigungsperspektive ab und diskutieren die Forderung nach Chancengleichheit im Lichte der Bildungsansprüche behinderter Menschen. Im Gegensatz zur philosophischen Debatte ist die Diskussion über Bildungsansprüche behinderter Menschen aus der Perspektive der Sonderpädagogik nicht in erster Linie mit deren normativen Rechtfertigung befasst. Die sonderpädagogischen Beiträge in diesem Band behandeln Fragen der Umsetzung von Chancengleichheit für „Behinderte“ vor dem Hintergrund der normativen Theorie.

Chancengleichheit ist ein viel komplexeres Ideal als gemeinhin angenommen. Das Ideal lässt sich weder auf einen streng egalitären Standard reduzieren, noch kann es als bloss prozedurale oder bloss substantielle Forderung aufgefasst werden. Diese Untersuchung zeigt, wie das Ideal zu verstehen ist und welche Funktion ihm im philosophischen Liberalismus zukommen sollte. Chancengleichheit hat im >Liberalismus allerdings eine viel geringere Bedeutung als Politik und Philosophie glauben machen.

This paper introduces τ-fairness as a compromise solution reconciling Pareto efficiency and equity in School Choice Problems. We show that, by considering a weak notion of equity that we refer to as λ-equity, it is possible to contribute positively to solve an open debate, originated by the efficiency-equity trade-off of the schooling problem. We also suggest a slight modification to some allocative procedures recently introduced in the United States to compute τ-fair allocations and provide support for this (possible) reformulation.

Does the procedure of entitlement affect fairness perceptions? We use a dictator game to study the question in mixed gender pairs. In our experiments, we vary the process of entitlement across treatments. Allocators in our dictator game can inherit an amount without any effort, earn an amount with effort, or inherit an amount earned by a randomly matched partner's effort. We find subjects allocate lower amounts to their paired partners when they are dividing an amount that has been earned through their own effort and allocate relatively higher amounts when dividing an amount that has been earned through the paired member's real effort. Results also suggest that female proposers are more sensitive towards variations in entitlement processes.

The article examines contemporary claims of Islamophobia and religious discrimination against Muslims in the United Kingdom in the context of the broader dynamics of religious discrimination in British history.

How the ‘struggle for existence’ of religious groups who were initially concerned with ‘establishing an identity of their own’ became ‘ the struggle for equality’ among both nonconformist religious minority groups in the nineteenth century as well as among twentieth century Muslim UK citizens of predominantly migrant and minority ethnic origin is examined.

The identification of ‘Islamophobia’ as a specific form of discrimination and hatred of ‘the other’ is located in the rise of a late twentieth century ‘politics of identity’ as it emerges from the impact of ‘globalization’.

The relationship between the distinctive features of the Muslim experience of discrimination on the basis of religion and that of other groups is explored by reference to the findings of the UK Government Home Office commissioned Religious Discrimination in England and Wales Research Project conducted during 1999–2001, as well as by reference to Orientalist and Islamophobic imagery.

This article considers strategies for combating religious discrimination and hatred, from public education through to legal instruments, such as the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Employment Equality (Religion of Belief) Regulations 2003.

The visceral and deeply embedded nature of ‘Islamophobia’ is illuminated by reference to the deep-seated and multi-layered admixture of religion and politics in Northern Irish 'sectarianism’.

The article concludes by advocating that it is the responsibility of all groups, of good governance in society, and in the ultimate interests of all, to tackle the phenomenon of religious discrimination and hatred under whatever guise it appears.