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Social Justice in the Age of Trump: Contemporary Challenges in...
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Social Justice in the Age of Trump: Contemporary Challenges in Confronting Oppression

A special issue of Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760). This special issue belongs to the section "Contemporary Politics and Society".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 April 2020) | Viewed by 39160

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Christine M. Robinson

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Justice Studies, James Madison University, 90 Bluestone Drive, MSC 1205, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA
Interests: social justice; sexual orientation; environmental justice; public policy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Sue Spivey

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Justice Studies, James Madison University, 90 Bluestone Drive, MSC 1205, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA
Interests: gender; race; class; inequality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last two years of “the age of Trump”, the material conditions of life for marginalized and oppressed groups in the United States and globally has significantly worsened (Girard 2017, Gonzalez et al. 2018); the civic culture is regularly defiled by open expressions of everyday bigotry and the empowerment of organized hate groups (Gordon 2017, James 2017, Niewert 2017, Pollard 2018, Schecter 2017, Taylor 2018); and ordinary citizens increasingly encounter obstructions to meaningful democratic participation and in the decisions affecting their lives (Box 2017, Chemerinsky 2017). These circumstances provide the impetus for this Special Issue. By “the age of Trump” we refer not only to the policies and politics of the Trump Administration, but also to the debasement of civic culture and public discourse, and, critically, the perils to civic participation and representative democracy itself.

How has “the age of Trump” impacted marginalized and oppressed groups (poor and working-class people, people with disabilities, transgender people, immigrants, racial and religious minorities, LGBT people, and others) and their ability confront oppression? In what ways has it disempowered ordinary citizens, degraded our shared civic life and our humanity, and/or endangered our political institutions? What does social justice look like in “the age of Trump”?

Scholarship in the social sciences has begun to document some of the social, political, economic, and environmental consequences of “the age of Trump” for vulnerable populations (Abu-Ras et al. 2018, Miller et al. 2018) and for ordinary citizens (Chemerinsky 2017). Scholars are also beginning to formulate social justice interventions (Baskeran and Haber 2018, Green and Castro 2017, Lacy 2018) and examine resistance to oppression and these injustices (Estes 2018, Gleeson and Sampat 2018, Jones 2018, Yukich 2018). There is a tremendous need for greater scholarly attention to all of these issues.

This Special Issue seeks original scholarly contributions that investigate or examine any of the following general themes pertaining to social justice in “the age of Trump”:

  • Empirical studies that investigate the new realities facing marginalized and oppressed groups and examining the effects;
  • Scholarly analysis of barriers to social justice advocacy and/or citizen engagement or other threats to participatory democracy and their impact (for example, post-truth politics; voter suppression; attacks on the press/journalists; executive, judicial, and/or legislative impediments; corporate deregulation; etc.); and
  • Applied, policy, or empirical investigations of social justice interventions that confront or resist oppression and/or threats to civic engagement and influence.

Empirical and applied studies, as well as policy-oriented and theoretical contributions, from a wide range of disciplines (including law, sociology, criminology, political science, anthropology, education, public policy, health, philosophy, economics, history, psychology, and social work), as well as cross- and interdisciplinary studies are encouraged. The central organizing theme linking the collected works will be a focus on challenges to and opportunities for social justice in “the age of Trump”.

References:

Abu-Ras, Wahiba, Zulema E. Suárez, and Soleman Abu-Bader, Soleman. 2018. “Muslim Americans' safety and well-being in the wake of Trump: A public health and social justice crisis.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 88: 503–515.

Baskeran, Priya and Michael Haber. 2018. “Transactional Clinics as Change Agents in the Trump Era: Lessons from Two Contexts.” Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 26: 335–349.

Box, Richard C. 2017. “Into a New Regressive Era: Implications for Public Administration.” Public Integrity 19: 576–592.

Chemerinsky, Erwin. 2017. “The First Amendment in the Era of President Trump.” Denver Law Review 94: 553–566.

Estes, Carroll L. 2018. “ Women's rights, women's status, women's resistance in the Age of Trump.” Generations 41: 36–44.

Gleeson, Shannon; Sampat, Prerna. 2018. “Immigrant Resistance in the Age of Trump.” New Labor Forum 27: 86–95.

Gonzalez, Kirsten A., Johanna L. Ramirez, Johanna L. and Paz M. Galupo. 2018. “Increase in GLBTQ Minority Stress Following the 2016 US Presidential Election.” Journal of GLBT Family Studies 14: 130–151.

Gordon, Philip. 2017. “Night Train across America: Mapping ethnoheteronationalism in the Age of Trump.” South: A Scholarly Journal 50: 70–79.

Green, Terrance L. and Andrene Castro. 2017. “Doing counterwork in the age of a counterfeit president: resisting a Trump–DeVos education agenda.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 30: 912–919.

Heyer, Kristin E. 2018. “Internalized Borders: Immigration Ethics in the Age of Trump.” Theological Studies 79: 146–164.

James, David. 2017. “White nationalism, armed culture and state violence in the age of Donald Trump.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 43: 887–952.

Jones, Tiffany. 2018. “Trump, trans students, and transnational progress.” Sex Education 18: 479–494.

Kocher, Austin. 2017. “The New Resistance: Immigrant Rights Mobilization in an Era of Trump.” Journal of Latin American Geography 16: 165–171.

Lacy, Karyn. 2018. “Problems, Puzzles, and the Production of Knowledge: Harnessing Census Data in the Age of Trump.” City & Community 17: 560–564.

Miller, Edward Alan, Pamela Nadash, Michael K. Gusmano, Elizabeth Simpson, and Corina R. Ronneberg. 2018. “The state of aging policy and politics in the Trump era.” Journal of Aging & Social Policy 30: 193–208.

Pollard, Tom. 2018. “Alt-Right Transgressions in the Age of Trump.” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 17: 76–88.

Schecter, Asher. 2017. “We’ve Won: How Trump Empowers Israel’s Far Right.” World Policy Journal 34: 33–41.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. 2018. “The white power presidency: race and class in the Trump Era.” New Political Science 40: 103–112.

Yukich, Grace. 2018. “Muslim American activism in the age of Trump.” Sociology of Religion 79: 220–247.

Prof. Christine M. Robinson
Prof. Sue Spivey
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • social justice
  • oppression
  • civil rights
  • human rights
  • democracy

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

44 pages, 1786 KiB  
Article
The End of Resettlement? U.S. Refugee Policy in the Age of Trump
by Daniel J. Beers
Soc. Sci. 2020, 9(8), 129; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9080129 - 24 Jul 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 10677
Abstract
In the past three years, the Trump administration has taken unprecedented actions to slow the flow of refugees to the United States and undermine the foundations of the world’s largest refugee resettlement system. This article considers both the empirical substance of the White [...] Read more.
In the past three years, the Trump administration has taken unprecedented actions to slow the flow of refugees to the United States and undermine the foundations of the world’s largest refugee resettlement system. This article considers both the empirical substance of the White House’s anti-refugee policies, as well as their broader theoretical significance as a critical example of the Trump administration’s so-called “administrative deconstruction” agenda. Analyzing refugee policy as a theory-building case study, this article advances a novel argument reframing the administration’s actions through the lens of strategic disruption. Short of systemically deconstructing targeted programs, I contend that the Trump administration is engaged in an improvisational and deliberately antagonistic campaign to upend existing policies for the sake of disruption itself. Ultimately, Trump’s open disregard for established laws and conventions is a distinguishing feature of the administration’s approach, which limits its ability to implement lasting and legally binding change. In the case of refugee resettlement, this approach has produced a series of temporary and highly controversial policies, which have done measurable harm to refugees and humanitarian aid organizations. However, the legal and institutional foundations of the resettlement system remain firmly intact. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Justice in the Age of Trump: Contemporary Challenges in Confronting Oppression)
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20 pages, 876 KiB  
Article
Populism and Independence Movements in Europe: The Catalan-Spanish Case
by Carlos de las Heras-Pedrosa, Carmen Jambrino-Maldonado, Patricia P. Iglesias-Sánchez and Elena Millán-Celis
Soc. Sci. 2020, 9(4), 35; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9040035 - 29 Mar 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 7603
Abstract
The most powerful countries in the world are immersed in a process of economic and cultural globalization. As an effect of action and reaction, there is an increasing emergence of nationalistic phenomena. This investigation undertakes an analysis of the current situation in Europe [...] Read more.
The most powerful countries in the world are immersed in a process of economic and cultural globalization. As an effect of action and reaction, there is an increasing emergence of nationalistic phenomena. This investigation undertakes an analysis of the current situation in Europe and places particular focus on the case of the Catalan independence movement, subjacent to the history of Spain, which has been growing notably in recent times. With 3600 articles reviewed, this study investigates the repercussions and communicative strategies from the point of view of the principal Spanish digital media. The results reveal two parallel universes, clearly differentiated by their perspective of the conflict, their contradictory headlines, and their parallel truths. This text presents key findings that are relevant for the study of political communication in the context of media studies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Justice in the Age of Trump: Contemporary Challenges in Confronting Oppression)
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17 pages, 2267 KiB  
Article
Social Justice: Disparities in Average Earnings across Portuguese Municipalities
by Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho
Soc. Sci. 2019, 8(4), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8040125 - 19 Apr 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3731
Abstract
An ever-ongoing discussion these days involves the disparities in monthly earnings across different genders, geographical locations, levels of education, economic sectors, and skills and careers, with various economic and social consequences. In fact, in a framework such as that in which we live [...] Read more.
An ever-ongoing discussion these days involves the disparities in monthly earnings across different genders, geographical locations, levels of education, economic sectors, and skills and careers, with various economic and social consequences. In fact, in a framework such as that in which we live in nowadays (with pertinent concerns about economic and social convergences across several indicators), investigating these disparities would be interesting in order to complement the basis that is considered for the design of social policies. There are few studies considering the approaches here developed for this topic. The objective of this study is to analyse the disparities in the average monthly earnings received by employees across Portuguese mainland municipalities over the period 2004–2012, considering as additional analysis criteria geographical location, gender, levels of qualification, levels of education, economic sectors, professional activities, and further qualifications. For this both a cluster and factor analysis were considered to better identify municipalities with similar characteristics and correlations among variables. The results show that the disparities in the monthly average earnings between the Portuguese municipalities are related to three indexes associated with gender, qualifications, and chosen professions. The findings presented are specific to the Portuguese framework; however, the approaches developed in this study may be applied in other contexts to explore the dynamics related with the topic of social justice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Justice in the Age of Trump: Contemporary Challenges in Confronting Oppression)
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13 pages, 319 KiB  
Article
Towards Quantifiable Metrics Warranting Industry-Wide Corporate Death Penalties
by Joshua M. Pearce
Soc. Sci. 2019, 8(2), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8020062 - 18 Feb 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 15002
Abstract
In the singular search for profits, some corporations inadvertently kill humans. If this routinely occurs throughout an industry, it may no longer serve a net positive social purpose for society and should be eliminated. This article provides a path to an objective quantifiable [...] Read more.
In the singular search for profits, some corporations inadvertently kill humans. If this routinely occurs throughout an industry, it may no longer serve a net positive social purpose for society and should be eliminated. This article provides a path to an objective quantifiable metric for determining when an entire industry warrants the corporate death penalty. First, a theoretical foundation is developed with minimum assumptions necessary to provide evidence for corporate public purposes. This is formed into an objective quantifiable metric with publicly-available data and applied to two case studies in the U.S.: the tobacco and coal mining industries. The results show the American tobacco industry kills 4 times more people per year than it employs, and the American coal-mining industry kills more than one American every year for every coal miner employed. The results clearly warrant industry-wide corporate death penalties for both industries in America. Future work is discussed to ensure industries only exist to benefit humanity in all the societies in which they operate. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Justice in the Age of Trump: Contemporary Challenges in Confronting Oppression)
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