RECONSTITUTING COMMUNITY: SOCIAL JUSTICE, SOCIAL ORDER AND THE POLITICS OF COMMUNITY

Abstract

Social policy debates are informed today by a rhetoric of the ‘politics of community’ which focuses on problems of social fragmentation and exclusion in the new era of globalisation. While this rhetoric was earlier associated primarily with debate on social justice, it now more frequently relies on notions of social order, notably in the Federal Government's welfare reform agenda. ‘Community ‘ is thus a central and dynamic focus of debate, especially in relation to the arguments over ‘social capital’. The most important question in this project of ‘reconstituting community’ is the kind of community likely to emerge under globalisation: which question cannot be raised without shifting the current focus on social order back to one on social justice.