Society, Space, and Social Justice

Society, Space, and Social Justice addresses multiple contextual intersectionalities, highlighting the underlying processes and causes contributing to the genesis and regeneration of emergent and extant spaces of (in)justice. Employing quantitative and qualitative techniques underpinned by elucidatory theoretical frameworks, the contributors to this collection investigate intersections of class, disability, gender, race, and “the other” within sociocultural and political-economic structures in varied geographic scales in Brazil, India, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and the United States. This book’s thematic diversity—the environment and outdoors, employment and labor, gendered/othered violence, health and disease, housing, infrastructure, and urban design—gives it interdisciplinary appeal. This timely collection examines and unpacks the complex mechanisms by which social justice can be perverted, thwarted, or achieved.

Geographers often study social justice through the lens of class, caste, race, or gender. In Society, Space, and Social Justice, Jennifer Pomeroy and Vandana Wadhwa take an intersectional approach to the multidimensional issues of social justice, which are intertwined with globally expressed spatial connotations. This edited collection is unique and should be critically acclaimed., This politically and intellectually powerful book is for anybody who thinks social justice is no longer on the agenda. Far from a monolithic concept, the rich case studies in this collection stretch our understanding of the complex struggles that social justice must necessarily overcome., All readers—regardless of discipline and standpoint—will find much to stimulate their thinking and challenge their assumptions. Co-editors Vandana Wadhwa and Jennifer Pomeroy have assembled a passionate collective of scholars and practitioners who critically explore social injustices in remarkably diverse contexts and through multiple perspectives. Contributors engage with themes of medicalization of the body and geographies of care, critical race theory and socio-environmental injustice, human rights and the right to spatial freedom in contexts ranging from North America to South Asia, and from South Africa to South America. Among the challenges of most edited volumes is to offer a whole that is more than the sum of its disparate chapters. Wadhwa and Pomeroy have done a wonderful job: This representative selection of original studies is no small achievement. What makes their volume stand out is how the individual chapters—collectively—contribute to our more empathetic understandings of the ongoing need for social justice in multiple contexts., This edited collection is of extreme value to those teaching, researching, and working at the intersections of social justice and structural violence in various locations around the world. The geographers contributing to this volume use an applied approach to engage with structural justice across genders, ethnicities, (dis)abilities, and countries in a manner that is unique for its inclusiveness. Society, Space, and Social Justice represents an important and sophisticated step in the study of spaces of (in)justice across a wide variety of topics and is a contemporary example of the importance of geography and these particular geographers to that analysis. One of the unique aspects of this collection is the steps the authors suggest to advocate for a more just society. This applied approach, combined with a thorough conceptual framework, will be of great use in the discipline. The theoretical and applied aspects of this volume make it a go-to text for health geography, feminist geography, urban geography, and other (sub)disciplines concerned with making the world a more just place in which to live.

Jennifer Y. Pomeroy is assistant professor of geography in the Department of History and Political Science at York College of Pennsylvania. Vandana Wadhwa is founder and CEO of Meridian R&C LLC.