Deconstructing the philosophical positionalities of social equity: A postmodernist perspective

The philosophies of John Rawls, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau influenceUS-specific understandings of social equity and its social contract. This chapter questions such disciplinary reliance on Western philosophers via postmodernism. Postmodernism de constructs an American over-reliance on methodologically Western spaces. The chapter interacts the equity concept with Buddhism, Hinduism, three approaches to “African” philosophies and one concept(Ubuntu), and the indigenous philosophies of the Quechua, Aboriginal, Diné, and Inuit. The implications of a deconstructed and epistemologically repositioned social equity concept for public administration are discussed in the conclusion