Eisenberg: Rural Distributive Justice

In her recent article, Distributive Justice and Rural America, Ann Eisenberg (South Carolina, Law) argues that the decline of rural communities is not the result of some kind of inevitable, natural process but rather flows from decades of intentional law and policy choices that have repeatedly scarified rural people and places for perceived collective good.

Eisenberg deploys a distributive justice lens to reject morally neutral accounts of the status quo. Using law and policy examples from the agriculture, natural resource extraction, and manufacturing sectors, Eisenberg makes a powerful case that rural communities have been distinctly disadvantaged in the name of aggregate welfare and that these particularized rural burdens have not been adequately mitigated or offset.

The difficult question, of course, is what to do about this now. This view of the rural world - as one infused with intentional, collective choices that have systematically determined winners and losers - opens the door to big questions about what a fairer allocation of benefits and burdens would be. Eisenberg is only getting started, but this foundational work is worth a read.