Sociology is the science of social life, and as such, it is different from the pursuit of social justice and other efforts to evaluate or to reform the social world. Still, the idea of social justice is intimately connected with the idea of sociology. It arises along with scientific understandings of the social world and draws from these understandings to reshape society. The problem is that in practice, social justice activists often draw from only one type of sociological theory, conflict theory, and from a particular form of conflict theory known as critical theory. In doing so, they may ignore potential problems with the theories they are drawing from, and they may overlook many possibilities for effective reform. Conflict theory orients activists toward fighting oppression, but other theoretical approaches could help societies to achieve other possible moral goals, such as promoting understanding, increasing virtue, incentivizing virtue, making virtue easier, and strengthening solidarity.

社会学是社会生活的科学，因此，它不同于追求社会正义和其他评价或改革社会世界的努力。尽管如此，社会正义的理念与社会学的理念密切相关。它伴随着对社会世界的科学理解而出现，并从这些理解中汲取灵感来重塑社会。问题在于，在实践中，社会正义活动家往往只借鉴一种社会学理论，即冲突理论，以及一种称为批判理论的特定形式的冲突理论。这样做，他们可能会忽略他们所借鉴的理论的潜在问题，他们可能会忽略许多有效改革的可能性。冲突理论将活动家导向反对压迫，