Reconceptualizing Justice in the Globalizing World

The very profound transformations that have come to characterize social relations in the in the 21st century, facilitated by advances in transportation and information technologies, are inexorably bringing the world together. Thus, in the McLuhan's parlance, the world now constitutes a global village. As nations, peoples and communities across the globe become economically, socially and politically connected the distinction between the global and the local becomes increasingly blurred and the forces that have brought the world together continue to magnify the human potential to generate transnational consequences. Taking the above observations as a point of departure, this paper seeks to highlight how the change occasioned by the speeding up of global process and it attendant de-territorialization of global relations is rendering obsolete the traditional conceptualization of justice in political philosophy. Specifically this paper examines the rise and the meaning of the notion of global justice in a globalizing world. It evaluates the debates between the advocates of global justice and it critics such as the communitarians and the postmoderns. It concludes that in the light of globalization of social relations and the possibility of generating transnational harm, we cannot justifiably confine the concept of justice to territorially bounded communities.