Affective Equality and Social Justice

Affective relations are not social derivatives subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. The nurturing work that produces love, care, and solidarity operates under principles of other-centredness, even when it fails in this purpose. Furthermore, neither love nor care are purely personal or intimate matters; care exists as a public practice, be it in terms of health care, environmental care, community care, educational care or public welfare; solidarity can be regarded as the political expression of such public care. Because the relational realities of nurturing (and their counterpoint, neglect) operate as a distinct set of social practices, love, care and solidarity relations are sites of political import that need to be examined separately in social justice terms. The lack of appreciation of affective relations leads to a failure to recognise their pivotal role in generating injustices in the production of people in their humanness. This paper outlines a framework for thinking about affective relations in structural social justice terms. In so doing, it hopes to contribute to the redistribution, recognition, representation debate about justice by making the case for a fourth dimension, relational justice. The framework is sociologically informed by theoretical work and empirical research undertaken on love, care and solidarity. It takes a structural rather than individualist approach to social justice, arguing that equality of conditions matter as it is impossible to have anything but weak forms of equality of opportunity in economically and politically (structurally) unjust societies.