ABSTRACT
Theories of justice assume “a bounded society with a determinate membership, forming a universe of distribution.” Their principles “apply to a demonstrable set of institutions whose impact on [one’s] life chances” are clear, so that injustice can be remedied by “changing the institutional structure” (Miller, 1999, pp. 4-6). In some cases, of course, social remedies generate new institutional structures rather than remedying the old. Amartya Sen (2009) takes an international perspective on theories of justice, and notes the connections between individually bounded societies and “the world beyond a country’s borders,” in part because “what happens in this country, and how its institutions operate, cannot but have effects, sometimes huge consequences, on the rest of the world,” and also because influences “beyond national borders are altogether omnipresent in the world in which we live” (p. 71). Further, “globally sensitive questioning” brings new and necessary information, new perspectives and broader assessments to bear on local discussions of issues (to cite Sen’s examples) such as of the unequal positions of women or the acceptability of torture (Sen, 2009, pp. 71-72).
