ABSTRACT
Introduction Nancy Fraser (2008; 2009) equates social justice with the social arrangements which make it possible to participate socially on par or equally with each other. This chapter considers the extent to which one such social arrangement, the Child Support Grant in South Africa, provides its recipients with the ability to interact equally with others in relation to three different dimensions. First, with regard to the redistribution of resources, second, with regard to a recognition of work such as caring labor and third, in relation to the representation of people’s voices or social inclusion. We have chosen to use Fraser’s trivalent view of social justice with its economic, cultural and political dimensions to examine a case study about the South African Child Support Grant, for four reasons. First, we regard the dimensions that she identifies, the economic or distribution of resources, the cultural or recognition of attributes and the political or representation/social inclusion or exclusion, to be useful categories to examine people’s life circumstances. Second, Fraser equates social justice with participatory parity, which is a compelling way of comparing people’s circumstances and assessing what they are able to be and to do. Third, it is useful because Fraser focuses specifically on the social arrangements which either enable or put barriers up to achieving participatory parity in relation to the three dimensions – the economic, cultural and political. The fourth reason that we find Fraser’s conception of justice to be useful for our analysis of forms of social protection such as the South African Child Support Grant, is that it helps us to assess the socially transformative potential of social interventions, as she differentiates between affirmative and transformative outcomes. Thus the analysis from Fraser’s perspective allows us to be critically engaged and politically vigilant toward social arrangements such as Child Support Grants and how they can contribute toward social justice. It also makes it possible for a program such as the South African Child Support Grant, which is almost universally considered successful, to be viewed in a more nuanced light. This chapter is organized in the following way: The first section is an introduction to South Africa’s social assistance program, and the second describes the Child Support Grant as a form of social protection. This is followed by an
explication of Fraser’s social justice framework we use to analyze the data presented in our case study. We then briefly describe the research design, and finally analyze the data using Fraser’s dimensions of participatory parity.
