I think you raise important questions on a complex topic. Regarding the dearth of the literal phrase ‘social justice’, I think this is probably an effect of two things: 1) an actual de-emphasis on the concept, either intentionally or by a larger relative focus on other ethical frameworks. My unfounded guess would be that there’d be a minority of people who would want to whole-heartedly reject social justice-related talk, a larger group who are open to it but consider it not as important as other ethical concepts to EA, and a minority of people who think it should be the dominant ethical concept.
and
2) an avoidance of the literal term ‘social justice’ because of its connotations in the ‘culture wars’, politics, etc. I think a lot of EA thought deals with the substance of social justice—examples might be the neartermist focus on low and middle-income countries, work on U.S. criminal justice reform, the international justice angle on climate change, or even the intergenerational justice angle on longtermism. This work is grappling with justice-related issues implicitly, but isn’t usually conceptualised or written out in terms of social justice. Whether it can or should be or not I don’t know.
I think you raise important questions on a complex topic. Regarding the dearth of the literal phrase ‘social justice’, I think this is probably an effect of two things:
1) an actual de-emphasis on the concept, either intentionally or by a larger relative focus on other ethical frameworks. My unfounded guess would be that there’d be a minority of people who would want to whole-heartedly reject social justice-related talk, a larger group who are open to it but consider it not as important as other ethical concepts to EA, and a minority of people who think it should be the dominant ethical concept.
and
2) an avoidance of the literal term ‘social justice’ because of its connotations in the ‘culture wars’, politics, etc. I think a lot of EA thought deals with the substance of social justice—examples might be the neartermist focus on low and middle-income countries, work on U.S. criminal justice reform, the international justice angle on climate change, or even the intergenerational justice angle on longtermism. This work is grappling with justice-related issues implicitly, but isn’t usually conceptualised or written out in terms of social justice. Whether it can or should be or not I don’t know.