Book Review on social injustice

Vittorio Bufacchi has written an intriguing book on social injustice. It’s a combination of twelve essays, ten written over the duration of 2000-2008 and two written specially for this volume. He covers a wide a range of subjects through his essays to show how social injustice is present in the society. A thought-provoking essay on torture has been co-authored by Jean Maria Arrigo. Another one is a response to his critics (Matthew Fetenstein and Eddie Hyland) on political ‘scepticism’. Several essays touch on practical reason and moral psychology, but there is an account of grass-roots deliberative democracy amongst indigenous Mayans in Guatamala and a discussion to the reactions of the Down’s ‘paradox of voting’. The first essay of the book is ‘making sense of social justice’. This a beautifully written essay, finding the difference between social justice and social injustice. According to the author “social injustice is not merely the lack of social justice” (p. 1) as many political philosophers like Rawls believe. The absence of injustice (in relation to justice) in many texts and ideologies seems to displease the author. This was a provocative piece clearly explaining why social injustice is prevalent and ubiquitous in our society. The lacunae of injustice can be corrected by a three dimensional definition of social injustice, by viewing injustice as maldistribution, exclusion, and disempowerment. (p. 10) Conflating injustice with mere inequality is seen as a common error in literature by the author. (p. 10)
The underlying concern of the book is summed up in the claim that 'The point of political philosophy is not merely to create an arena where professional academics and students can play an increasingly sophisticated intellectual game, which is as highly stimulating as it is insignificant.' (p. 27) He says that the point of political philosophy is to expose and rectify social injustice (p. 17). In the essay on ‘why political philosophy matters’ he