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Social Justice from a Cultural Perspective

KWOK LEUNG   &   WALTER G. STEPHAN

 Justice is a topic that is extremely important in all the social sciences, and percep-tions and procedures of justice affect all aspects of our lives, from actions in every-day living, to law and the legal system, to work behaviors and human resource poli-cies, and so on. Consequently, justice, and its close relative morality, has a longhistory of study in psychology and philosophy, and research on this topic has pro-duced many theories and models of justice relevant to everyday behavior.

In this chapter, Leung and Stephan review the cross-cultural literature on justice,arguing that research on justice must go beyond the Euro-American cultural confinesif the field is to develop universal theories of justice. They argue convincingly whyjustice should be studied cross-culturally, pointing out that cross-cultural researchcan advance understanding of justice in ways that are not possible with monocultural

studies. They also highlight the fact that globalization in diverse domains has drasti-cally increased cross-cultural contact, and that cultural differences in perceptions of justice and fairness may create misunderstandings and conflicts. They delineate wellthe functional aspects to justice and the differences between universalistic versus par-ticularistic conceptions of justice. They describe the moral basis of justice, highlight-ing the fact that the central notion of Western liberalism and individual autonomythat is found in the United States may not be found in other cultures, leading to fun-damental differences in moral codes and perceptions of fairness. They also present atwo-stage model of justice perception that attempts to separate, yet integrate, abstractprinciples of justice and the specific beliefs that link abstract principles to particularsocial situations.

The bulk of their review focuses on cross-cultural research in three areas of jus-tice: distributive, procedural, and retributive. They also devote a considerableamount of space to the literature on reactions to perceived injustice. Leung and Ste-phan do an especially good job of linking many of their descriptions, and much of the research literature, to cultural dimensions such as individualism versus collectiv-ism or power distance. They flesh out well the complex and intricate ways in whichculture may play a role in influencing perceptions of fairness and justice, thus provid-ing a platform to understand the basis for intercultural conflict in many arenas of 

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