Socio-Spatial Justice: Spatial Justice

1276 Words6 Pages
Spatial (in)justice Space in geography is often considered as land and can be related to ownership usage. Soja (2010) says that when we think about space critically, the socio-spatial dialectic has to be considered which indicates that the society shapes the space in which they live in and the space shapes society. He elaborates that if we take the socio-spatial dialectic genuinely, it means that we acknowledge that the geographies we live in can have good and bad consequences in everything that we do. According to Soja (2010) spatial (in)justice is a deliberate emphasis that is focused on the spatial and geographical aspects of justice and injustice. He says that as a starting point, this involves fair and impartial distribution in space…show more content…
From this perspective, there is always an applicable spatial aspect to justice while at the same time all geographies have justice and injustice expressions into them. Soja (2010) adds that it can also be seen as both outcome and process as geographies that are in themselves just or unjust and as the processes that produces these outcomes. He further says that it is easy to find examples of social injustice illustratively, but it is much more difficult to identify and understand the underlying processes that produce unjust geographies. The city is viewed as the focal point of social power and hierarchy where everyday life of urban life creates inequalities and injustices. According to Soja (2010) attempting to find ways of increasing justice or decreasing injustice is very important in all societies, and an important proposition for strengthening human dignity and fairness and that this term is related to other things such as democracy, equality, citizenship and civil rights has now taken on a new meaning which include intensifying economic equalities and social…show more content…
The apartheid model (figure 1) shows that people of different races were separated from each other and there were buffer zones and they were racially separated under the Separate Amenities Act. Segregation was in cities and homelands (Seekings, 2013), in cities where lived the ‘white’ South Africans in neighbourhood that had good infrastructure services and commercial activity with a growing economy, as one moved from these prosperous neighbourhood provision of services lacked as black Africans were no longer considered as citizens of South Africans (Seekings, 2013). In the homelands there lives the blacks who were denied South African citizenship and were forcibly removed to places that were under-developed and had slums and ghettos, no jobs and no economic activity (Seekings, 2013). According to Seekings (2013) during the apartheid times people of different races were also segregated residentially under the Group Areas Act and this resulted into towns divided into ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘coloured’ and ‘Indian’ areas. The forced removals of people from spaces reflect Soja’s (2010) term of spatial
Show More
Related

  • Local Community Ethic

    1223 Words  | 5 Pages

    Ethic of Local Community Wood and Hilton’s (2012) ethic of local community was a conceptual addendum to Shapiro and Stefkovich’s Multiple Ethics Paradigm (2013). The additional paradigm focuses on outcomes which best serve the community and “adhere to the notion that society relies upon the interdependence of the people within. This perspective suggests that community members must recognize and carry out community responsibilities to maintain social order” (Wood & Hilton, 2012, p. 207). The

    Read More

  • Essay About Street Children

    1347 Words  | 6 Pages

    increase in numbers. For example, estimation of numbers sky rocketed from 200 – 300 street children in 1991 in Dar es Salaam to 3,500 in 1995 (Bamurange, 1998). These can only be educational estimates as the exact number is difficult to determine due to socio-economic, political and cultural conditions, including growing inequalities and patterns of urbanization. With the enormity of this population it is surprising

    Read More

  • Achievement Gap Gender

    2704 Words  | 11 Pages

    there are no noticeable disparities between boys and girls. The discrepancy appears in score performance with respect to several cognitive skills. For instance, females outperformed boys at verbal tasks while boys excel in attaining specific spatial tasks. Spatial tasks are important in solving mathematical problems. It’s the ability to understand and remember relations between objects (Baartmans, 1996). It is a vital finding of intelligence testing that there is no disparities between the sexes in

    Read More

More about Socio-Spatial Justice: Spatial Justice

Open Document