Social Research articles from June 2006

Social Research archives from June 2006

Editor's introduction.
June 22, 2006... FAIRNESS IS A CENTRAL MOTIVATING FORCE IN OUR PRIVATE AND public lives. It is deeply enmeshed with questions about who gets what and how it is distributed, with how we feel about the ways in which power, resources, access, even attention are...

Introduction: science looks at fairness.
June 22, 2006... IT FALLS TO ME, IN INTRODUCING THE FIRST SECTION OF THIS ISSUE, to make the obvious--but all important--point that the word "fair" has a double meaning. On the one hand, we say a situation is fair when we can see that it is well balanced in an...

Joint ventures require joint payoffs: fairness among primates.
June 22, 2006... WALL STREET IS SOMETIMES COMPARED TO A DARWINIAN JUNGLE. Nice guys finish last, it is said, and only the strong survive. This is an adequate enough description, but not entirely true, neither for the stock market nor for life in the jungle....

Fairness and norms.(I. Science Looks at Fairness)
June 22, 2006... THE TERM "FAIRNESS," IN EVERYDAY LANGUAGE, SEEMS TO BE USED IN two main ways." First, there is the idea of a fair division of something. A child might say, "It's not fair that she shall get a bigger slice of the cake." In this sense, the term...

Moral sense and material interests.(human nature)
June 22, 2006... INTRODUCTION THE SUCCESS OF HOMO SAPIENS, AS MEASURED BY ITS RAPID POPULATION growth and its inexorable spread over the face of the earth in the past 10,000 years, is based on the ability of humans to cooperate effectively in large groups...

The experimental study of social preferences.(I. Science Looks at Fairness)
June 22, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION IT IS COMMON FOR UNDERGRADUATES TO ENCOUNTER THE FOLLOWING quote from The Wealth of Nations (Smith, 1976 [1776]: 26-7) at the beginning of Economics 1: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or...

A tax system that embraces fairness and equality.
June 22, 2006... THERE WAS NOTHING GOOD ABOUT THE GOOD FRIDAY WHEN THE GREAT Emancipator was shot. It was 140 years ago tonight that John Wilkes Booth climbed the steps to President Abraham Lincoln's box at Ford's Theater. We know that the president fought...

Unfair by design. The war on drugs, race, and the legitimacy of the criminal justice system.(III. When Does Fairness Become an Issue? General Conditions that Give Rise to a Sense of Unfairness)
June 22, 2006... INTRODUCTION A COMMON ELEMENT IN DISCUSSIONS OF WHAT MAKES THE UNITED States unique is readily conveyed by the phrase "the American Dream." While an exact definition of this concept eludes us, widely accepted ways of thinking about it make...

When do people not protest unfairness? The case of skin color discrimination.
June 22, 2006... It was a color thing and a class thing. And for generations of black people, color and class have been inexorably tied together. --Lawrence Graham (2000) Well-to-do, fair-skinned kids in the neighborhood weren't allowed to play with...

Fairness, equality, and democracy: three big words.(III. When Does Fairness Become an Issue? General Conditions that Give Rise to a Sense of Unfairness)
June 22, 2006... WHAT IS A FAIR POLITY? IT ALL DEPENDS, AS ONE MIGHT SAY, ON WHAT FAIR IS. FAIRNESS CAN mean many things. Whatever it may mean (within the realm of common meanings of the term), it is important; and this for several reasons. Governments...

When is affirmative action fair? On grievous harms and public remedies.(III. When Does Fairness Become an Issue? General Conditions that Give Rise to a Sense of Unfairness)
June 22, 2006... SPEAKING AT HOWARD UNIVERSITY'S JUNE 1965 COMMENCEMENT, President Lyndon Johnson opened a national conversation on race, fairness, and affirmative action." Nearly a year after Congress had passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, and...

Introduction: reasoning about fairness and unfairness in law, philosophy, and political theory.(IV. Reasoning about Fairness and Unfairness in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory)
June 22, 2006... THE PAPERS INCLUDED IN THIS SECTION ARE QUITE DIVERSE, RANGING from Cass Sunstein's analysis of the conflicting conceptions of procedural fairness to Edna Ullmann-Margalit's analysis of family fairness. But there are common themes running...

Family fairness.(IV. Reasoning about Fairness and Unfairness in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory)
June 22, 2006... THIS PAPER IS THE LAST PART OF A THREE-PART PROJECT. THE LARGER picture is important for the proper framing of the present paper. Here then is an abstract of the three-part paper, which is about considerateness. Focusing on two extreme...

Fairness and philosophy.(IV. Reasoning about Fairness and Unfairness in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory)
June 22, 2006... THE IMPORTANCE OF DISCUSSIONS OF FAIRNESS IN THE POLITICAL philosophy of the past half-century needs no demonstration. Mentioning John Rawls is enough. But I mention him only to say that what follows is not much indebted to his extraordinary...

Notes on the political psychology of redistribution.(IV. Reasoning about Fairness and Unfairness in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory)
June 22, 2006... CONSIDER THIS: A PERSON TOWARD WHOM YOU ARE NOT ILL DISPOSED asks you to do something for him that you do not have to do. Responding to the request requires effort, but it is not massively burdensome. You do it willingly. This is followed by...

Two conceptions of procedural fairness.(IV. Reasoning about Fairness and Unfairness in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory)
June 22, 2006... I. INTRODUCTION THERE ARE TWO CONCEPTIONS OF PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS. THE FIRST places a high premium on the creation and application of general rules. On this view, public authorities should avoid "balancing tests" or close attention to...

Fairness in sovereign debt.(V. Fairness and Social Justice)
June 22, 2006... WHEN CAN WE SAY THAT A DEBT CRISIS HAS BEEN RESOLVED FAIRLY? What makes the processes of debt restructuring, debt cancellation, or the enforcement of debt contracts more or less fair, or the outcomes of such processes better or worse? These are...

Equality and choice in public services.(V. Fairness and Social Justice)
June 22, 2006... People should not forget the current system is a two-tier system when those who can afford it go private, or those who can move house get better schools.... Choice mechanisms enhance equity by exerting pressure on low-quality or incompetent...

The impact of inequality.(V. Fairness and Social Justice)
June 22, 2006... INTRODUCTION RATHER THAN DISCUSSING CONCEPTS OF FAIRNESS AS THEY MIGHT apply to various aspects of life, I want to draw attention to some of the more important social and health effects that result from different amounts of inequality in...