The Social Life of Justice

In an age of crisis and uncertainty, The Social Life of Justice asks what justice means in an unjust world, and how it might be built to hold when reassurance is scarce. From borders and asylum systems to public grieving, datafied governance and climate adaptation, this book uses clear, vivid cases to re-imagine justice as a social practice of design: something we make, repair, and contest through our institutions, histories, and everyday relations.

Ranging from Plato to climate change, from social contracts to international humanitarian law, the book traces how the moral vocabularies of law, policy, and borders have been shaped by power, and how they might yet be redesigned to reduce harm and share benefit. Drawing on examples across racial, gender, epistemic and environmental justice, Nasar Meer shows how ideas of fairness are made and unmade in the worlds we inhabit, not in the theories we inherit.

Written with clarity and urgency, The Social Life of Justice will appeal to readers across sociology, political theory, law, and global studies. It invites scholars, students, and general readers alike to see justice not as a distant ideal but as a living process, answerable to evidence, history, and the institutions we are prepared to build.