printSocial Justice as a Value:
in Search of a New Theoretical Optics
Volkov Yu.G.
Dr. Sci. (Philos.), Prof., Southern Federal University, Academic Supervisor, Head of the Department of Theoretical Sociology and Methodology of Regional Studies, Institute of Sociology and Regional Studies, Rostov-on-Don, Russia ugvolkov@sfedu.ru
Volkov Yu.G. Social Justice as a Value: in Search of a New Theoretical Optics. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2022. No 10. P. 27-36
The article revisits the concept of social justice in the light of a new theoretical optics offered by actor-network theory, which allows to interpret justice in social and interethnic relations through the cartography of re-aligning the social landscape. Analyzing the basic content aspects of social justice ideas in traditional Russian sociological thought, the author proceeds to the problem of finding methodological guidelines for studying social justice as a value in the conditions of a new reality formation, which challenges the sciences of society, requiring a renewal of research optics. As a possible version of such a new optics, the article discusses some ideas of actor-network theory (B. Latour, M. Callon, J. Low, e.a.). The article shows that actor-network optics allows us to pose the problem of leveling the social landscape, which, according to the author, can be interpreted as an implementation of social justice principles, including in interethnic interactions. The author relies on the theoretical ideas of the AST about the need to investigate social realities as processes of interactions and presents in the article some results of an empirical sociological survey of collective ideas about social justice in interethnic interactions in the South of Russia carried out in 2021.
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