A thick theory of global justice: Participation as a constitutive dimension of global social justice

The principal failure of most theories of globalization is that they are “thin theories,” i.e. they fail to ground their analysis in the “mud and blood” of human experience. In an effort to come to a thicker understanding of globalization and the ethical challenges it poses, this dissertation engages the Global Economy and Cultures project, a world-wide network of over 40 social research and action centers that interviewed people at the grassroots level on how economic globalization is affecting their local economy and culture. When the poor of the world speak about globalization, they tend to speak of “lack of voice,” marginalization and alienation. The author concludes that the right to social, political and economic participation is an effective hermeneutic for the ethical evaluation of globalization precisely because the demand for greater participation comes from those most adversely affected by it and because the right to participate is simultaneously a social, political and economic category and thus is able to address globalization as a social-political-economic phenomenon. In an effort to come to a fuller understanding of the right to participate, the dissertation traces the development of this right in the modern Roman Catholic social justice tradition and then engages a number of contemporary secular theories of economic and political participation including: Amartya Sen's notion of development as freedom, the United Nations Human Development Programme and Iris Marion Young's theory of deliberative democracy. The final chapter posits a theology of participation as the desideratum for ethically evaluating globalization and draws several practical conclusions for social justice based on the right to social, political and economic participation.