Group Identities and Theories of Justice: An Experimental Investigation into the Justice and Injustice of Land Squatting in South Africa

In land controversies around the globe, the unfairness of the past confronts the fairness of the present as alternative conceptions of justice collide and conflict. South Africa represents a useful case for investigating such issues of transitional justice since the country faces a massive problem of squatting and land grabbing. Using a formal experiment embedded within a 2004 national survey of South Africans, I investigate the means by which ordinary people adjudicate conflicts among alternative principles of justice. The findings indicate that South Africans of every race judge evictions as more fair when squatters are extended procedural justice. Moreover, the group identities of blacks significantly structure their justice judgments, weighting some types of justice more heavily than others. Thus, this analysis yields important insights into the connection between group identities and how citizens apply multidimensional theories of justice to conflicts over historical land injustices.