This site will look much better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.

Skip Navigation skip menu and banner
University of Wyoming

What is Social Justice?


Social justice grows out of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and draws on decades of work in Anti-Racist, Black and Ethnic Studies, and Women's Studies[1]. Social justice utilizes a vocabulary and framework that considers the dominant or targeted social group identities of participants within an analysis of social hierarchies. Many social justice scholars bring a level of analysis including (but not limited to) a) attention to understanding the social forces and institutions that support inequity in social systems as well as the interpersonal behaviors, individual attitudes, or beliefs that reflect and also help to perpetuate unequal social relationships; b) acknowledgement of the inter-relatedness of phenomena and thereby employ multiple lenses including historical, political, cultural, economic, legal, etc.; and c) value and affirmation of multiple perspectives and points of view including the use of counter-narratives. Social justice research attends to problems of oppression and generates strategies for working toward their resolution. Social justice research also requires scholars to attend to modes of inquiry as well as their implementation.


[1] (see also Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 1997)