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The sociology of justice in the era of polycrisis: Towards a cultural sociology of inequality

Sociologický ústav Slovenskej akadémie vied v. v. i.
Vás srdečne pozýva na ÚSTAVNÝ SEMINÁR SOCIOLOGICKÉHO ÚSTAVU SAV

15. 4. 2026 o 13.30

S prednáškou
The sociology of justice in the era of polycrisis: Towards a cultural sociology of inequality

vystúpi

Till Hilmar
Department of Sociology, Vienna University

Prednáška bude v anglickom jazyku v miestnosti č. 94 na Klemensovej 19 v Bratislave


Abstrakt

Why do sentiments of injustice appear both politically powerful and analytically elusive? This presentation revisits the sociology of justice in light of contemporary conditions of polycrisis, that is, overlapping economic, ecological, and social disruptions that unsettle established expectations. While there is a rich tradition of influential theoretical frameworks (distinguishing between merit, need, and equality, or between redistribution, recognition, and representation), distributive justice beliefs are often treated as relatively stable attitudes, and traced in terms of their distribution across the population.
I argue that this perspective is insufficient for understanding justice under conditions of rupture. Periods of disruption activate pre-existing justice beliefs and they constitute moments in which such beliefs are re-articulated and transformed. Rupture is both an objective condition that generates demands for legitimation and a subjective experience through which individuals and groups make sense of social change. Paradoxically, while crises fragment moral orders, they also intensify the salience of justice claims.

Building on insights from cultural sociology, the paper proposes a shift toward a dynamic understanding of inequality: one that focuses on how social actors interpret perceived violations of justice and how these interpretations are articulated and potentially politicized. I focus on examples from the context of the climate transformation to show that this approach can open new perspectives for understanding social conflicts, arguing that it allows us to capture how competing justice claims and trade-offs structure how inequalities are experienced and contested in everyday life.