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Some theorists argue that rather than advocating a principle of educational equality as a component of a theory of justice in education, egalitarians should adopt a principle of educational adequacy. This paper looks at two recent attempts to show that adequacy, not equality, constitutes justice in education. It responds to the criticisms of equality by claiming that they are either unsuccessful or merely show that other values are also important, not that equality is not important. It also argues that a principle of educational adequacy cannot be all there is to justice in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the conflict that exists between partiality and equality that arises in the relationships between parents and their children. In treating their own children differently than other children, the authors state, inequalities may result between people. Other topics include attention given to the relationship-specificity of agents' prerogatives and responsibilities with respect to particular others and incorporating within a distributive paradigm the goods that familial relationships make available.

Focuses on equality and distributive justice. Significance of positional goods in leveling down objection to equality; Involvement of equality in a fair competition; Information on the nonpositional value of positional goods.

This paper explores the key normative issues raised by empirical research into social mobility and meritocracy. Typically, sociologists working in this area are motivated by a concern with matters of social justice and equality of opportunity, but that concern tends to be rather vague and diffuse, which makes it difficult to assess the normative relevance of their findings. Surveying, in an accessible manner, five issues familiar to political philosophers that clarify the significance of sociologists' results, this paper explains why a regime of `perfect mobility' is not an appropriate benchmark for evaluating the extent to which a society offers its members social justice or equality of opportunity. Some of the mechanisms that produce an association between the social position of parents and children are unobjectionable and would exist even in an altogether just society. Sociologists do not endorse perfect mobility. But neither are they clear about the variety, and normative significance, of the various mechanisms that tend to generate inequalities in mobility chances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the role of preferences and aspirations in generating social immobility. Equality of opportunity as foundation of meritocracy; Mechanism of intergenerational transmission of advantage; Distribution of opportunities for mobility; Mechanisms that generate the tendency to immobility.

Distinguishing between an explanatory and a normative interest in social stratification, this paper considers the relation between class analysis and the value of equality. Starting from the familiar distinction between (in) equality of position and (in) equality of opportunity, and noting the extent to which mobility research focuses on the latter, it suggests that class positions can themselves be characterized in terms of the opportunities they yield to those occupying them. This enables the clear identification of the kinds of inequality that are and are not addressed by research findings presented in terms of class categories and odds ratios. The significance of those findings from a normative perspective is then discussed, and their limitations are emphasized - though the paper also explains in what ways they are indeed of normative relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a defence of the methods and findings of what some critics have referred to as the 'Nuffield school of class analysis'. In particular, we respond to the critique mounted by Hellevik and Ringen, whose most recent publication appeared in an earlier volume of this journal. We argue that these authors adopt an arbitrary and essentialist view of what constitutes inequality, and have either misunderstood or misrepresented the aims and methodology of the research programme they deride. Ringen, moreover, explicitly concedes all of its major substantive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relation between philosophical discussions of, and social-scientific research into popular beliefs about, distributive justice. The first part sets out the differences and tensions between the two perspectives, identifying considerations which tend to lead adherents of each discipline to regard the other as irrelevant to its concerns. The second discusses four reasons why social scientists might benefit from philosophy: problems in identifying inconsistency, the fact that non-justice considerations might underlie distributive judgments, the way in which different principles of justice can yield the same concrete distributive judgments, and the ambiguity of key terms. The third part distinguishes and evaluates three versions of the claim that normative theorising about justice can profit from empirical research into public opinion: that its findings are food for thought, that they amount to feasibility constraints, and that they are constitutive of normatively justified principles of justice. The view that popular opinion about justice has a strongly constitutive role to play in justifying principles of distributive justice stricto sensu is rejected, but it is argued that what the people think (and what they can reasonably be expected to come to think) on distributive matters can be an important factor for the political theorist to take into account, for reasons of legitimacy, or feasibility, or both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews three interconnected issues that have been central to the controversial problem of describing the relationship between class and gender. First, the matter of taxonomy, and whether or not extant class schemes are suitable for the study of women's employment. Second, the question of how sex segregation in the occupational structure relates to regimes of class inequality and class mobility; more specifically, of the connections between absolute mobility rates and relative mobility chances. Finally, the attempt to identify the unit of class composition, in particular the so-called asymmetry hypothesis concerning the pattern of relationships among the class positions of spouses and the attributes that are said to comprise socio-political class formation. We argue that the last of these provides the most important strand to the debate, and present new cross-national data on the relationships between class identities, voting behaviour, and the social class standing of male and female partners. The findings for advanced capitalist societies support the conventional view that the unit of class composition is the household. However, those for post-communist states are contrary to conventional expectations, suggesting that processes of socio-political cuss formation may be different in East and West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]