The new millennium began with the triumph of democracy and markets. But for whom is life just, how so, and why? And what is being done to correct persisting injustices? Blending macro-level global and national analysis with in-depth grassroots detail, the contributors highlight roots of injustices, how they are perceived, and efforts to alleviate them. Following up on issues raised in the groundbreaking best-seller "Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements" (California, 2001), these essays elucidate how conceptions of justice are socially constructed and contested and historically contingent, shaped by people's values and institutionally grounded in real-life experiences. The contributors, a stellar coterie of North and Latin American scholars, offer refreshing new insights that deepen our understanding of social justice as ideology and practice.