The Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis (JTPP) is a peer-reviewed, biannual, scholarly journal of contemplative cutting edge research and practice on subjects related to human social flourishing and peace.

Co-Editors: Dr Jeremy A Rinker & Dr Daniel Rhodes

Associate Editor: Nilanjan Dutta
Publisher: Abhijit Mazumder

ADVISORY BOARD

Dr Amii Omara-Otunnu • Dr Ashwani Kumar • Dr Bandana Purkayastha

Dr Jacint Jordana • Dr John Doyle • Dr Lenin Raghuvanshi • Ms Michelle Ndiaye

Dr Rahul Mukherji • Dr Shankari Sundararaman • Dr Vandana Shiva

JTPP (https://jtpp.uk), bringing together peace practitioners and academics, fills an important transdisciplinary gap that exists in current academic literature.

JTPP endeavours to support scholarship that highlights

the human potential for transformation,

a holistic and collaborative approach to complex systems,

the transdisciplinary nature of solutions to wicked social problems, and

a shared sense of purpose in human transnational activism for positive change.

JTPP thus provides a dynamic forum for sharing information and experiences primarily catering to academics, and activists particularly in the disciplines of Peace and Conflict Studies, Political Science, International Relations, Human Rights, History, as well as professionals, policymakers, organisations, institutions and individuals who nurture a firm belief in peace and human rights.

JTPP invites SUBMISSIONS from academics, scholar-practitioners, and social activists. Please see: Author’s Corner (https://jtpp.uk/authors-corner/) for Submission Guidelines.

JTPP follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

For SUBSCRIPTION, please see: https://jtpp.uk/subscription-plan/

Published by Frontpage Publications Limited (https://frontpagepublications.com), Level 2, 13 John Prince’s Street, London W1G 0JR, in both print and online versions, in February 2021.

In association with Peace and Justice Studies Association (https://www.peacejusticestudies.org).

ASSOCIATES at: Delhi, Honolulu, Istanbul, Kampala, Kolkata, London, Madrid, Norwalk

Vol. 3
February 2021
No. 1

Contents

Publisher’s Greetings

ABHIJIT MAZUMDER

Our Contributors

Co-Editors’ Welcome and Introduction

JEREMY A RINKER & DANIEL RHODES

Re-Defining Justice and Creating Pathways for Healing: The Limits of the US Legal System and the Promise of Politicised Healing as a Model for Redressing Racialised Harm

DAVID ANDERSON HOOKER & SHEILA A BEDI

Photography Healing and Justice in Appalachia

JOE COLE

Addressing Clerical Sexual Abuse through Restorative Justice: A Search for Empowerment and Collective Healing

JONATHAN CHUKWUEMEKA MADU

Traditional Livelihoods and the Idea of Gender Justice: A Study of the Minority Women of Varanasi in the Area of Art and Craft

SALONI & SUSHIL KUMAR

Embracing an Ecosocial Worldview for Climate Justice and Collective Healing

SANDRA ENGSTROM & MEREDITH C F POWERS

Mapping Digital Justice: Across the Great Divide, Towards a Sanctuary for All

RANDALL AMSTER

Kaleidoscope

Curated by NILANJAN DUTTA

Book Reviews

JUSTIN HARMON, JEREMY A RINKER & CATHRYNE SCHMITZ

Publisher’s Greetings

6 February 2021

Dear All,

Greetings!

Wishing you all Happy and Prosperous New Year!

2020 will be remembered as a year with more challenges than opportunities, more questions than answers and more trials and tribulations than joy and gratification. Let’s hope that 2021 will take us to a new era unfolding new opportunities.

With good wishes from you all, Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis (JTPP), an initiative of Frontpage Publications Limited, UK, has stepped into the 3rd year.

In our endeavour to give voice to wide range of researchers, thinkers, and activists to explore radical responses to social conflict, war and injustice, JTPP, with a transdisciplinary approach as opposed to simply interdisciplinary in nature, started its mission on 30 January 2019.

We are proud to have contributors from all over the world who significantly hold up their views and reviews regarding the topical issues, and readers from various strata of society, whose opinions matter. At every stage, you all stood by us to facilitate collaborative research and praxis for multi-dimensional realities of positive peace and reconciliation systems. Thank you so much for joining us towards nonviolent peaceful future, and I feel sure to get your patronage in our forthcoming accomplishments as well.

In our pursuit to make things even better than the best, I would look forward to your valuable comments. Please feel free to reach out to me at am@jtpp.uk.

In solidarity,

ABHIJIT MAZUMDER

Publisher

Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis

&

Director

Frontpage Publications Limited

Our Contributors

AMSTER, RANDALL, JD, PhD, is Professor & Co-Director of the Justice & Peace Studies and Environmental Studies programmes at Georgetown University, USA. His books include ‘Peace Ecology’ (Routledge, 2015), ‘Anarchism Today’ (Praeger, 2012), and ‘Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness’ (LFB, 2008). Amster teaches and publishes widely on subjects including peacebuilding and nonviolence, social and environmental justice, political theory and movements, and the impacts of emerging technologies. (email: Randall.Amster@georgetown.edu)

BEDI, SHEILA A is a Professor of Law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and Director, Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic. Her honours include the NAACP’s Vernon Dahmer and Fannie Lou Hamer Award and the Federal District Court Excellence in Public Interest Award (N D Ill). Bedi is a co-author of a case book on prison law, Incarceration and the Law: Cases and Materials and she writes about race, gender, and the justice system. (email: sheila.bedi@law.northwestern.edu)

COLE, JOE is an Academic Professional Assistant Professor in the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Department of Peace and Conflict Studies. Joe holds a PhD in Philosophy from Duke University and a BS in Engineering Science from Penn State University. Joe’s interests include ecovillages, sustainable community, war and ethics, conflict transformation, and racial and social justice. Joe is the author of ‘Ecovillages, Sustainability, and Social and Environmental Healing’, in Realizing Nonviolent Resilience (Peter Lang, 2020). (email: jwcole@uncg.edu)

DUTTA, NILANJAN, Associate Editor, ‘Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis’, and is better known as an activist being involved in various social movements, particularly the civil liberties, environmental, anti-nuclear and peace movements. Having researched on various allied topics with fellowships from the SOAS, University of London, SARAI-CSDS and Calcutta Research Group, Nilanjan has authored, co-authored and edited a number of books on related subjects and made a few documentary films as well. (email: nilanjan123123@rediffmail.com)

ENGSTROM, SANDRA is a Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Stirling, UK, is co-lead of the Extremes in Society research group and sits on the University Race Equality Steering Group. Her main research and teaching interests focus on social work and climate change, self-care, community resilience, trauma and mental health. Engstrom is also interested in the decolonisation of social work education and practice. (email: sandra.engstrom@stir.ac.uk)

HARMON, JUSTIN, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community and Therapeutic Recreation at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. Harmon has worked extensively in the parks, forestry and recreation fields, land and wildlife management, environmental and primary education, and community relations and outreach. His primary research threads are recreation intervention post-diagnosis of cancer, the role of music in life course development, and the intricacies of community development. (email: jtharmo3@uncg.edu)

HOOKER, DAVID ANDERSON, PhD, JD, M Div, Associate Professor, Practice of Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA. His primary research interests consider the role of narratives in identity formation, the multigenerational transmission of trauma, justice seeking, and societal transformation. Hooker is the author of The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing(SkyHorse, 2016), Transforming Historical Harms (with Amy Potter- Czaijkowski, Eastern Mennonite, 2012) and several journal articles and book chapters. (email: dhooker@nd.edu)

KUMAR, SUSHIL, a PhD in Sociology, contributes in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility since 2005 in India. He has worked with international organisations viz. University of Gothenburg, Sweden DFID, Enterplan, Impactt Limited (London), World Bank, Rockefeller Philanthropy Associates (USA), BFA (USA), Norwegian Research Council & Overseas Development Group, ODI-London, IDPM-Manchester etc. He delivered the inaugural lecture at the Neubauer Collegium, Chicago in November 2016. (email: susheel.chaturvedy@gmail.com)

MADU, JONATHAN CHUKWUEMEKA holds PhD in Conflict Management & Peace Studies and has taught in many international institutions. As founder of the Centre for Promotion of Peace and Development (Nigeria), Madu currently heads the Department of Entrepreneurial Studies, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Nigeria. He is an international postgraduate examiner to many universities and has research interests in governance, peacebuilding and entrepreneurship. Among his publications is Nonviolent Transformation of Socio-cultural Conflict (Germany: LAP, 2012). (email: jnthn.madu@gmail.com)

POWERS, MEREDITH C F is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work and a Sustainability Faculty Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. She is a community engaged scholar, presenting her research nationally and internationally, and teaches about social work with immigrants and refugee populations, diversity, equity and inclusion, and environmental justice. She has co-authored and co-edited a growing body of work on climate justice and the ecosocial worldview. (email:MCFPowers@uncg.edu)

RHODES, DANIEL, Co-Editor of the ‘Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis’, is the Director, Undergraduate Social Work Programme at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. A PhD in Cultural Studies with a Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies from the UNC-Greensboro in 2008, Daniel obtained his Master’s in Social Work from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1996 and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Daniel has been engaged in community-based work in mental health, therapeutic foster care, and working with immigrants and refugees. (email: dtrhodes@uncg.edu)

RINKER, JEREMY A, PhD, Co-Editor of the ‘Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis’, is Assistant Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Peace & Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA where he researches the intersections between narrative and nonviolent social change. Jeremy’s research interests revolve around the centrality of justice discourse, trauma awareness, and collective resilience in movements aimed at transforming social conflict, historical injustices, and structural violence. His publications include ‘Identity, Rights, and Awareness: Anticaste Activism in India and the Awakening of Justice through Discursive Practices’ (Lexington, USA, 2018), ‘Realizing Nonviolent Resilience: Neoliberalism, Societal Trauma, and Marginalized Voice’ (with Jerry Lawler, Peter Lang, 2020). (email: jr@jtpp.uk / jarinker@uncg.edu)

SALONI, a PhD, in Sociology, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in one of the prestigious colleges for girls in Uttar Pradesh, India. ‘Gender Issues’ and ‘Lived Religion’, particularly in India, have been her focus area in the field of academics and social science research. At present Saloni is writing a book on Varanasi covering ‘Religious Myths and Religiosity: A Case of Hindu Women in Varanasi’. (email: tiwarisaloni8@gmail.com)

SCHMITZ, CATHRYNE L is Professor Emerita in the Department of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. Schmitz’s scholarship focuses on critical multiculturalism, environmental justice, intercultural education, organisational/community transformation, gender studies and peacebuilding. Her publications include ‘Critical Multiculturalism and Intersectionality in a Complex World’ (OUP, 2018), ‘Transformative Change: An Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies’ (Lexington, 2015). (email: clschmit@uncg.edu)

Co-Editors’ Welcome and Introduction

Welcome to the fifth issue (Vol. 3, No. 1) of the Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis (JTPP). At the start of our exciting third year of publication, we are pleased to bring you this Special Issue focused on healing and justice. Although just healing is something we are all still striving for at the start of 2021, we realise that both remain elusive for many. The last year has been difficult. Among racial reckoning, political upheaval, and a global pandemic what is more important in this contemporary moment than a justice that does not neglect the human need to heal? The emphasis on connecting peace practice to issues of both healing and justice seemed, and still seems, an appropriate way to start off our auspicious third year of production. Aspirationally, this special issue aims to expand consciousness about the important connections between seeking justice and the processes of healing.

Here we hope to spend a few pages in this co-editors’ welcome and introduction articulating our own organising hopes and thoughts as we made public this call for papers in the tumultuous summer of 2020. August 2020 seems a distal context from the perspective of February 2021, but the structural racism, populist polarisation, and pandemic pain of last August, of course, all remain with us. In outlining a few reflective thoughts about what has emerged in the contributions to this special issue, we ask your indulgence as we rationalise and philosophise about the mindset which drove our own initial call for papers. In our preeminent desire to be prospective, as opposed to retrospective, we will not dwell in the past too long, but at the same time cannot simply look away. We believe this issue of the JTPP contributes to a growing understanding of the complex realities of achieving justice that reckons with the past. Any honest forward-looking change must engage with problematic pasts. We promise that you will not be disappointed in choosing to read the content in this special issue, which we believe will expand your sense of justice and forecast the skills and means necessary for both healing and change. So much human conflict is undergirded by shared traumas; we hope the articles that follow reveal this important critical acknowledgement.

What has emerged in this issue challenges traditional paradigms of justice and foregrounds healing as an important, and often overlooked, aspect of what it means to address the roots of shared traumas. A just healing is what it takes to move communities towards inclusive change. The elusive concept of justice, as you will read in these pages, requires at least a sense of what it means to heal and, likely, a concrete set of pragmatic means to heal. Still, the fact is, too often retribution overshadows the realisation of such healing. While we do not assume that an over-emphasis on retribution necessarily means restorative approaches to justice are all that is needed, we do believe restorative approaches to justice have been under-utilised in most modern societies. While we would argue a wider acceptance of a restorative justice lens, or what Zehr (2003) calls changing lenses, is desperately needed in global systems of administering justice, such steps alone will not achieve a healing justice. The articles and book reviews in this special issue all explore, in differing contexts, ways to develop an expression of justice that privileges healing. As always, we hope that you enjoy this issue and continue to support the JTPP by sharing these articles and subscribing to the journal. Please disperse these articles widely among your friends and colleagues and encourage them to consider writing for us, and/or subscribing at: https://jtpp.uk/subscription-plan/. As a young journal, we are always eager to reach new readers and support important collaborations across disciplines. Your continued support is appreciated. We strongly believe in the power of cross- and trans-disciplinary collaboration as the most pregnant space of sustainable social change.

As we strive to open critical spaces for exploring peace, we want to be clear about what we mean by transdisciplinary peace praxis. By this we mean to uplift the difficult work of collaborative co-authored papers that bring together divergent and catalytic disciplinary lenses and worldviews towards achieving peace. The diversity of peace theory and practice (i.e. praxis) in this issue, like past issues, aims to both teach and encourage. Given the many difficulties of the past year, such innovative and creative approaches to peace are important now more than ever. Though many of the contributions to this special issue are single-authored articles, they offer a novel, creative, and collaborative scope for the project of achieving peace and justice without forgoing important processes of healing. Through upholding peace praxis while simultaneously attending to justice, the original contributions and book reviews in this issue of the JTPP provide a unique look at what striving for justice looks like in cases of extreme violence and systemic oppression.

In calling for papers for this special issue, we were keen to develop a space to interrogate the legacies of violence and trauma that shape public life in the United States and many other cultural contexts around the world. In the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN and a raging COVID-19 pandemic that made us all feel separate and apart, we were eager to envision ways that the work of justice could bring us together and make us feel interconnected in community. As scholar-practitioners of restorative peace circles and community dialogue, we both desired to question our assumptions about justice and problematise resilience and healing as both occluded by, and centred in, the work of social justice activism. In asking in the call for papers, ‘what are the benefits and drawbacks of restorative approaches to justice?’, we wanted to get insider-partial as well as critical outsider perspectives of the restorative justice movement. Restorative justice, as an international social movement, often seems to have only strong adherents and/or vocal detractors. But, what lies in between? A little constructive criticism of restorative justice adds to a better understanding of both justice and healing. But, too often we hear only the rhetoric of restorative justice as a salvo for a failed retributive justice system. Beyond raising constructive criticism, we continue to wonder what alternative models and paradigms of justice exist that privilege both justice and healing? In writing our call we hoped to hear from people working in the trenches of justice activism and advocacy. In such spaces how is healing articulated and achieved? Is this healing only individual or is it collective? Despite extensive written literature about ‘therapeutic justice’ (Wexler & Winick, 2008), transitional justice (Minow, 1999, among others) and transformative justice (Evans & Wilkins, 2019; Balasco, 2018, among others), we felt none of these approaches adequately addressed the complex relationship between collective healing and community resilience. How do societies achieve a justice that not only holds accountable, but also heals at the individual as well as societal levels? Although the international restorative justice movement is an inadequate response to the many paradoxes of achieving both justice and healing after conflict, the restorative mindset does seem extremely well-suited to helping communities understand better what healing means for them as they conceive of past wrongs as harms. Whether transitional, transformative, or restorative, justice is an always evolving aspirational concept. Still, while restorative justice, as a process, seems well-suited to the processes of healing, we remain unconvinced that these synergistic processes are always well-synchronised in peace practice.

The philosophical concept of restorative justice often requires some kind of explanation for those unfamiliar with it, especially given the pervasiveness of retributive justice practices as being the ‘default’ when it comes to dealing with harms in the community (what retributive justice often identifies as crimes). Restorative justice is also defined differently by those who take a restorative approach when it comes to addressing the harms in communities and the structural violence that is perpetrated among those who are often most vulnerable or oppressed. In our call for this issue, we wanted contributors to not only define restorative justice practices they use, but also describe the tangible ways these restorative justice practices manifest themselves in the work they do and in the communities they work with. Specifically we were interested in how the interplay between justice and healing distinguished themselves and if restorative justice approaches were always the most effective tool for lasting change? It was a broad task, but we felt it speaks to the diverse and nuanced nature of restorative practices. We believe the call solicited a deep conversation on the complexities of restorative justice practices, the differences of these practices based on geographic location and the connection between justice and healing. We hope the contributions herein help readers understand that healing may look differently based on harms caused and the restorative practices implemented.

As you can see more than answers, we had, and still have, many questions. The pieces in this issue only scratch the surface of answering our many curiosities, but scratching the surface, we believe, would desperately call for in the current context of political polarisation. The lacuna of pragmatic research on restorative practices, though slowly shrinking (for example see: https://www.iirp.edu/), remains important for peace practitioners to work to bridge.

In the first piece, David Anderson Hooker and Shelia A Bedi take us to Chicago to unearth the history of torture and trauma that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has unleashed on city residents, especially on people of colour. Their article, entitled ‘Re-Defining Justice and Creating Pathways for Healing: The Limits of the US Legal System and the Promise of Politicised Healing as a Model for Redressing Racialised Harm’, develops a provocative expansion of the analytical framework of justice first offered by Coleen Murphy (2017) to ‘redress CPD-created harm’ (p.18). Their creative article articulates ‘a syndemic approach to justice seeking’ (p.36) in creating what they call a ‘politicised healing’ (p.32) to redress past harms. Hooker and Bedi’s contribution appears at the start of this issue as it captures many of the complexities of focusing on both the history and the future (p.36) of past injustices. Their piece sets the stage for the articles that follow by defining and cataloguing liberal democratic approaches to justice and pointing out the limits of each.

In Joe Cole’s article, entitled ‘Photography Healing and Justice in Appalachia’, the focus shifts to ‘the legacies of colonisation, and cultural and structural violence’ (p.46) in the Appalachian regions of the American mid-Atlantic. Cole’s thick description of the lives of people in this region through their activism and photography gives voice to a particular expression of healing and justice. Through both ethnographic interview and auto-ethnographic vulnerability, Cole’s contribution opens a dialogue about the ‘ongoing legacy of an unjust and extractive economic system’ (p.70) issues of white supremacy, and developing more ‘ecocentric approaches to ethics and justice’ (p.71). To weave a framework of justice that he creatively calls ‘regenerative justice’ (p.71), Cole paints a detailed picture of life in this hardscrabble region of the United States, a picture reminiscent of James C Scott’s articulation of life in Zomia (Scott, 2010).

While the first two articles are grounded in the unique experience and history of the United States, the next two essays deal with quite different cultural settings. Jonathan Chukwuemeka Madu’s article, entitled ‘Addressing Clerical Sexual Abuse through Restorative Justice: A Search for Empowerment and Collective Healing’, takes us to Nigeria to explore restorative healing after the Roman Catholic Church’s international sex abuse scandal. In exploring the sensitive subject of ‘how to address clerical sexual abuse (CSA) through restorative justice that empowers individuals and all stakeholders’ (p.91), Madu underscores the power of restorative justice to overcome ‘the dominance of patriarchal tradition in Nigeria’ (p.90) and transform attitudes in a way that respects both perpetrators and victims. In articulating how African values of communalism and indigenous leadership structures can support a restorative approach to justice after such harms, Madu’s article gives voice to the hopeful possibility that the many victims of CSA can finally be heard, and their experiences validated.

Moving from Nigeria to India, Saloni and Kumar’s article, entitled ‘Traditional Livelihoods and the Idea of Gender Justice: A Study of the Minority Women of Varanasi in the Area of Art and Craft’, explores a women’s empowerment training programme among saree weavers in the ancient Indian city of Varanasi. In focusing attention on Muslim women, the ‘women are more deprived in their deprived communities’ (p.96), Saloni and Kumar shed light on alternative ways to bring justice to traditionally marginalised minority populations. In this context, healing comes through access and the training programme aimed at helping to develop economic opportunity and create ‘gradual change’ (p.116). Both the third and fourth papers in this issue give cultural texture to what it means to develop healing justice in the context of gendered legacies of past harms.

Engstrom and Powers in their article, entitled ‘Embracing an Ecosocial Worldview for Climate Justice and Collective Healing’, challenge readers with an autoethnographic account of the need to shift from ‘human-centric to an ecosocial worldview’ (p.120). Invoking the spirit and writings of Audre Lorde with her concept of ‘radical self-care’, Engstrom and Powers articulate as how to ‘work towards collective healing through climate justice’ in their ‘roles as social work teachers and community engaged researchers’ (p.122). The creative reflexivity of their article reminds us of the many ways we can heal the earth with our whole bodies and mindful behaviours.

The final research article by Randall Amster, entitled ‘Mapping Digital Justice: Across the Great Divide, Towards a Sanctuary for All’, ‘explores the justice and peacebuilding implications of a “digital divide” that fosters differential access to online opportunities and other technological resources often associated with mobility, equity, and prosperity’ (p.145). Amster’s article argues that the injustice in this digital divide and technological avalanche ‘isn’t merely about who profits from [these technologies] sale and use, but more so how the remaking of sociopolitical identities is ultimately more intrusive’ (p.147). In distinguishing the complex differences between digital access and digital literacy, Amster does us, the digital natives an important favour by bringing to light the insidious ways that technology leaves us little place for safety and sanctuary. Amster’s pedagogical reflections on digital justice are an important, and optimistic, way to close the academic articles in this special issue and point readers towards pragmatic praxis-based change and resistance.

Even after these six unique articles, the fun does not end! Three book reviews follow that all address our current epoch in critically important ways. Justin Harmon provides an analytical reading of ‘The New York Times’ bestselling Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson (2020). Arguing that Wilkerson’s second book offers little that is new, Harmon contends that her ‘claims come off as semantic exercises’ (p.171). Our co-editor, Jeremy A Rinker, reviews Kathleen Belew’s paperback release (2019) of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. Rinker in arguing writes that the book is well-worth a read as it clarifies the ‘historical reading of White Power’ given ‘recent political events in early 2021’ underscores the importance of knowing historical context for achieving justice.

Finally, Cathryne Schmitz reviewed Alicia Garza’s (2020) The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. Schmitz reading of Garza builds on the lessons that Garza learned as a founding member of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Beseeching us to not lose hope in the possibilities of transformational change, Schmitz’s review of Garza’s important book reminds us that ‘growing a movement requires developing alliances that tolerate disagreement versus demanding agreement’ (p.179).

A further reminder of the breadth and depth of fast-moving events can be found in the Kaleidoscope section at the end of this publication.

As this issue goes to press we remain in the throes of a global pandemic that places enormous strain on already vulnerable communities and creates its own unique form of trauma that we will need to address down the road; complex and multifaceted trauma that will require restorative justice, healing, and so much more. The United States, often attempting to project itself as the paragon of ‘democracy’ by directly and indirectly influencing political systems in other countries, especially the Global South, experienced its own attempted political coup when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in January. Spurred on by months of misinformation and direct lies that the election was unfair and ‘stolen’, these insurrectionists were brazen in their attempt to track down specific political figures and hold them accountable in what they considered to be a rigged 2020 presidential election. This event demonstrates how politics are not immune to unmet needs and trauma. What forms of reconciliation will be deployed to address the harms caused by political figures? How will the collective healing that communities need to engage in developing as we move forward with 2021? We hope this special issue provides some insight into these important questions.

Once again, thank you for reading the JTPP and again welcome to this transdisciplinary knowledge-building exercise. We are glad you are here with us exploring peace praxis. We hope you enjoy reading these six articles and three book reviews. We remain convinced that the JTPP, as exhibited through this profound collection of articles in this special issue, represents a critical voice for the power of knowledge in processes of change. As you turn the pages of our sixth issue be reminded that justice, like healing, takes time. Although the contributions in this special issue only scratch the surface of our understanding of healing and justice, we hope that they open avenues for further research and thinking. Again, please share this issue with friends, colleagues, and fellow activists to help build our journal’s readership and reach. If you like what you read, please ask your University (or local/municipal) library to subscribe by following https://jtpp.uk/subscription-plan/. May the articles in this issue of the Journal of Transdisciplinary Peace Praxis (JTPP) provide hope, healing, and at least a glimpse of justice. As always, we welcome your feedback!

With Metta (loving kindness),

DRS JEREMY A RINKER & DANIEL RHODES

Co-Editors of JTPP’s Special Issue on Justice and Healing

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

E: jarinker@uncg.edu; dtrhodes@uncg.edu

REFERENCES

Balasco, Lauren Marie, ‘Locating Transformative Justice: Prism or Schism in Transitional Justice?’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 12, Issue 2, July 2018, pp.368-78, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijtj/ijy004

Evans, M, & Wilkins, D, (2019). ‘Transformative Justice, Reparations and Transatlantic Slavery’ Social & Legal Studies, 28(2), 2019, pp.137-57, https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663917746490

Minow, Martha, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence, Boston: Beacon Press, 1999

Murphy, Colleen, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017

Scott, James C, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven: Yale University Press

Wexler, David B & Winick, Bruce J, ‘Therapeutic Jurisprudence’ in Principles of Addiction Medicine, 4th Edition, 2008, retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=1101507 on 21 December 2020

Zehr, Howard, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice, 3rd Edition, New York: Harold Press, 2003

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Re-Defining Justice and Creating Pathways for Healing:

The Limits of the US Legal System and the Promise of Politicised Healing as a Model for Redressing Racialised Harm¹

David Anderson Hooker & Sheila A Bedi

ABSTRACT

The long history of the Chicago Police Department (CPD)’s racialised violence instructs that when considering widespread multifaceted harm, a single form of justice—or even a combination of several forms of justice combined—provides too limited a framework for recourse and remedy. Instead, a new framework altogether is required. In this article, we briefly summarise more than 100 years on unrelenting racialised violence by the Chicago Police Department. Expanding the analytical framework first offered by Coleen Murphy, we consider seven approaches to justice to determine under which circumstances each particular approach to justice might provide a comprehensive, holistic, and healing measure of relief. Ultimately, we argue that theories of justice are insufficient to redress the harm of police violence and that politicised healing is a promising approach that takes wisdom from syndemic theory for redressing the deep, political and historical roots of racialised police violence.

KEYWORDS

Justice, politicised healing, Chicago Police Department, Chicago Torture Justice Center, syndemic theory

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

No Justice, No Peace! Activists often use this chant when protesting against racialised police violence in the United States of America. But survivors of police violence and their families often find justice—and peace—elusive. Survivors have limited formal options for seeking redress in the United States. Often, the civil legal system provides the only legal recourse because prosecutors rarely file criminal charges against police officers, and no other formal process for redress exists for survivors of racialised state harm.² The legal system is ill-equipped to remedy the harm of policing in the US. Courts frequently interpret the law in a manner that both discourages litigants and blunts litigation’s potential to stimulate change. And civil litigation—even when successful—can only deliver limited relief. This is true when the harm is individually experienced and even more so when the violence is widespread and systemic.

All approaches to justice, and especially justice resulting from litigation, are incapable of fully redressing the scale and scope of racialised police violence. The history of the Chicago Police Department and the decades of litigation challenging the CPD’s racist and violent policies and practices illustrate this fact. Chicago spends more money per capita on civil litigation than any other major city in the United States—almost $1 billion on police-related civil rights litigation since 2004.³ And for over 100 years City officials have repeatedly acknowledged that CPD engages in various forms of racial terror. Despite these facts, the CPD has been intransigent and many survivors of CPD created harm that exists without meaningful redress; for survivors of CPD’s abuse remains. But Chicago is also the birthplace of promising new approach to remedying systematic police violence: politicised healing. Politicised healing helps survivors recognise and implement their own power in a collective struggle for dignity that demands end to all forms of police violence The Chicago Torture Justice Centre (CTJC), a first-of-its-kind institution for survivors of police torture and violence and their families, develops and implements this concept with survivors of racialised harm in Chicago.

The history of the CPD and legal efforts to seek justice for survivors of CPD’s violence and abuse beg the question: Is over a century of police violence inflicted on Black and Brown people by the Chicago Police Department a matter of justice, or would a different framework be better suited to address the widespread harm? This article argues that theories of justice are insufficient to redress the harm of police violence and that politicised healing is a promising approach for redressing the deep, political and historical roots of racialised police violence.

Seeking Justice and Remedying Harm: Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Seeking Justice in Chicago

Distinct concepts of justice create specific remedies for identifiable harms. In order to examine whether a concept of justice can redress CPD-created harm, we adopt and expand the analytical framework presented by Colleen Murphy in Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice.⁴ Murphy argues the ‘question of justice’ must be identified before determining which form of justice is appropriate. The form of justice, following Murphy, must be holistically responsive to the problem posed. Here, our question of justice is rooted in both the past and the future of the Chicago Police Department, considers the multifaceted experiences of racialised harms from other social systems which interact with police violence to create a context of precarity, and prioritises the well-being of the community. We ask: What are the forms of justice or other appropriate responses that will appropriately acknowledge and redress historical state-sponsored wrongdoing, heal the physical, emotional, and spiritual harms, while transforming systems to create a future context in which Black and Brown-bodied people have equitable access to the relationships, resources, structures, and testimonial authority that they will need to be a self-determining people that might survive, thrive, and manifest their full capabilities?

We ask: What are the forms of justice or other appropriate responses that will appropriately acknowledge and redress historical state-sponsored wrongdoing, heal the physical, emotional, and spiritual harms, while transforming systems to create a future context in which Black and Brown-bodied people have equitable access to the relationships, resources, structures, and testimonial authority that they will need to be a self-determining people that might survive, thrive, and manifest their full capabilities?

People who have survived CPD’s violence and abuse have sought various forms of justice through the formal legal process. Informed by Murphy’s argument, we describe the consequences of a solely institutional justice-centred approach to police violence.

Justice Limited by the Law: Retributive, Corrective and Distributive Justice

For well over 100 years, the City of Chicago has documented the ways in which the Chicago Police Department has engaged in systemic, racialised harm. Throughout the CPD’s history, task forces, government investigations, grand juries and lawsuits have documented violence and corruption. And for generations, Chicago’s Black communities have disproportionately borne the harm resonating from the Chicago Police Department. The various entities that have documented the CPD’s often explicitly racist practices have made numerous recommendations aimed at stopping this harm. Most of these recommendations focus narrowly on changing police practice—and fail to recognise the broader systemic forms of injustice and the underlying cultural violence⁵ reflected in policing-related racialised harm. Regardless, throughout its history, the City of Chicago has adopted few, if any of the recommendations resulting from official investigations into CPD practices. And the justice available to survivors of CPD harm has failed to make individuals and indeed the Chicago at large community whole.

A Brief Overview of CPD History

1919

In 1919, Black people, including teenager, Eugene Williams, attempted to integrate a Chicago public beach.⁶ An angry mob of White people responded with attacks and stone throwing, causing Williams to drown in Lake Michigan. CPD failed to arrest of any the White people involved, and instead beat Black witnesses. Chicago’s Black community erupted with fury over the Black teenager’s murder and CPD’s refusal to act. Protests and racialised violence (often but not exclusively perpetuated by CPD) spread throughout the city. In response, then Governor Lowden established the Commission on Race Relations to investigate the uprisings. The Commission documented that during the 1919 unrest, CPD officers targeted Black people for arrests, while allowing White people who engaged in acts of violence to go free.⁷ Chicago police officers facilitated white violence against Black people and failed to protect Black people who were brutalised by White mobs.⁸ This Commission documented widespread disparities in housing, education and pervasive employment discrimination and concluded that CPD reflected the discrimination and white supremacist attitudes prevalent throughout Chicago, and the Commission recommended the creation of ‘a permanent local body representing both races [responsible for] … investigating situations likely to produce clashes … and with promoting the spirit of interracial tolerance and cooperation’.⁹ A Grand Jury convened regarding the 1919 unrest concluded that CPD ‘is in need of a thorough house cleaning. Every officer, no matter what his position is, who fails in his duty should be dismissed’.¹⁰ The City never created the recommended public body and the CPD failed to ever clean house.

CPD Police Torture

From 1919 until 1991, the Chicago Police Department engaged in a number of high-profile acts of racialised harm, from the CPD’s response to the 1968 uprisings¹¹

NOTES

1. The authors dedicate this article to the survivors of police torture in Chicago and their families, the organisers and activists who led the campaign to secure reparations for those who survived torture by the Chicago Police Department, and the staff of the Chicago Torture Justice Center. The authors express their gratitude to Sara Rosenberg and Terah Tollner for their excellent research and editorial assistance.

2. Panwala, Asit S, ‘The Failure of Local and Federal Prosecutors to Curb Police Brutality’, 30 Fordham Urban Law Journal, 639 (2002) (arguing that police officers are under prosecution by both state and federal prosecutors).

3. Irving, Chelsea, ‘City Has Paid More than $524 Million Over Past Decade to Settle Lawsuits against Police’, CBS Chicago, 4 September 2019, retrieved from https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/09/04/police-lawsuit-settlement-cost/ on 19 November 2020; Hinkel, Dan, ‘A Hidden Cost of Chicago Police Misconduct: $213 Million to Private Lawyers since 2004’, Chicago Tribune, 12 September 2019, retrieved from https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-met-chicago-legal-spending-20190912-sky5euto4jbcdenjfi4datpnki-story.html on 19 November 2020

4. Murphy, 2017

5. Galtung, Cultural Violence, 1990

6. Historians dispute some of the specific events that precipitated the 1918/1919 unrest. The City of Chicago’s official account describes a segregated beach where Black teenager Eugene Debs ‘drifted’ into the beach area designated for Whites. While Eugene was in the water, Black men attempted to enter the ‘white’ beach. White people responded with ‘attacks’ and ‘stone throwing’. Eugene drowned, but the official account states that no ‘stone bruises’ were found on his body. The official coroner’s report stated that he died because ‘fear of stone throwing kept him from the shore’. The Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and A Race Riot, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, January 1921 (Hereinafter ‘1919 Commission Report’); p.4

7. 1919 Commission Report p.632

8. 1919 Commission Report pp.34-35

9. 1919 Commission Report p.645

10. 1919 Commission Report p.51

11. Rivlin, Gary, ‘The Night Chicago Burned’, Chicago Reader, 25 August 1988, retrieved from https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-night-chicago-burned/Content?oid=872662 on 19 November 2020

Photography Healing and Justice in Appalachia

Joe Cole

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I will explore how photography can promote healing and transformative justice for the people, communities, and ecosystems of Appalachia suffering from the legacies of colonisation, and cultural and structural violence. The ancestors of many present-day Appalachian people participated in the colonisation of the region and the extermination of Native American cultures. Later, the descendants of Appalachian settlers experienced a second phase of colonisation from timber and coal companies who exploited both the people and the natural resources of the mountains. Stereotypes of mountain people as backward, ignorant, and violent have been used as weapons of cultural violence to rationalise direct and structural violence against Appalachian peoples and ecosystems. While the legacy of colonisation continues to impact present-day Appalachian communities through economic exploitation, environmental devastation, and cultural isolation, many Appalachian mountain communities have a strong sense of regional identity that supports rich artistic and cultural expression. Through interviews with photographers working in Appalachia, this paper will explore the impact of photographic representations of Appalachia on healing, transformation, and decolonisation at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, social, and ecological levels. Even though photography has been used to promote stereotypes and fuel cultural violence, photography can also challenge negative cultural imagery, raise questions around the complexities of identity and community, and explore the meaning and possibilities of healing and justice.

KEYWORDS

Appalachia, photography, healing, justice, social transformation, regenerative justice

INTRODUCTION

I begin with an overview of Appalachian history and the current social context in the region. Next, I discuss the role of photography as a medium of communication that transmits value-laden narratives open to multiple interpretations. Then, I present my interviews with four photographers who live and work in the Appalachian region. Finally, I develop my framework of Regenerative Justice and explore how photography can function to support justice, healing, and social transformation.

A note of disclosure: my interest in healing and justice in the Appalachian region is profoundly personal. I didn’t grow up in Appalachia, but both of my parents were born and raised there, and at least seven generations of my ancestors have lived and died there. My mother was a McCoy, and her mother was a Hatfield who lived near the Tug River that runs along the West Virginia/Kentucky border, and I have ancestral connections to both sides of the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud (Waller, 1988). Both of my grandfathers, some of my great-grandfathers, and several uncles and cousins have mined coal in western West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, and one of my grandfathers died in his sixties from black lung. So, as I explore the possibilities for healing and justice in Appalachia, these are deeply personal questions connected to my ancestry and my own family history of grief, displacement, and trauma.

THE APPALACHIAN CONTEXT

The term ‘Appalachia’ commonly refers to the mountainous region of eastern North America that runs from Pennsylvania and New York in the northeast to Alabama and Mississippi in the southeast. Contrary to common portrayals, the region does not have a single ethnic or cultural identity, but does have a shared history of displacement, dispossession, and conquest that connect various cultural and ethnic groups over the last few hundred years (Catte, 2018). According to Steven Stoll, ‘The southern mountains are half a billion years old, but Appalachia did not exist before the industrial invasion of those uplands during the 19th century. It appeared as a location within the capitalist world when its coal and labor ignited the American industrial revolution’ (Stoll, 2017: 7).

During the colonial period in North America, the Appalachian mountain region was inhabited by numerous indigenous cultures, including Shawnee, Cherokee, Muscogee, and Creek, among others, who moved freely about the region. Before and after the American Revolution, European colonists pushed into the mountains to settle and farm, resulting in small and large-scale violent conflict with the indigenous inhabitants. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, plantation owners sought to expand slavery and the production of cotton and other agricultural commodities beyond the original US colonies and into the frontier territories of the Southeast and Midwest (Baptist, 2014). Yet the sovereignty of indigenous communities stood in the way (Stoll, 2017). Descriptions of native people as backwards, impoverished, and savage fuelled unofficial and officially sanctioned violence against indigenous communities who were systematically attacked and displaced. Legislation like The Indian Removal Act of 1830 made extermination a matter of federal policy (Stoll, 2017). By the mid-1800s, most of the indigenous population was either killed or removed, and European colonists and their descendants had firmly settled on Appalachian land.

For the rest of the 1800s, these settler families and communities in Appalachia developed a largely self-sufficient way of life that relied on the forests for foraging and hunting, cleared land for farming, and crafted goods for trading with other regions. While initially praising Appalachian settlers as pioneers who aided in conquering the frontier for the new nation, US political and economic elites later became suspicious of mountain communities for their independence and autonomy from the dominant economic and political systems of private property, government taxation, and federal authority (Stoll, 2017). Early writers idealised the mountaineers as independent and resilient, but later in the 1800s, journalists and writers often described mountain people as primitive, poor, degenerate, violent, and grotesque (Stoll, 2017).

For White European settlers of Appalachia and their descendants, what started with a story of the noble frontiersman like Daniel Boone ended with a narrative of the ignorant, impoverished, and violent hillbilly who was threatening industrial progress. Yet mountain people didn’t become ‘poor’ until after the industrialisation of the mountains destroyed the ecological base for community self-sufficiency.

By the late 1800s, like the indigenous cultures before them, Appalachian Whites were seen as a backward, lawless, and violent race of people who were dangerous and stood in the way of progress (Waller, 1988; Stoll, 2017). According to Steven Stoll, ‘Racialization has often gone along with ejectment and enclosure, offering an intellectual tool for taking resources away from people said to be incapable of progress or change’ (Stoll, 2017: 21). The narrative describing Appalachian people as a primitive, violent, and ignorant race rationalised efforts to deprive them of self-sufficiency and access to the land. Timber and coal companies had set their sights on the natural riches of the Appalachian mountains, and these corporations used complex legal and political manoeuvres to claim control over the land in order to extract natural resources on a massive scale—billions of dollars of lumber and coal that was used to fuel the industrial development and urban expansion of the United States at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century (Hirsch & Dukes, 2014; Stoll, 2017).

For White European settlers of Appalachia and their descendants, what started with a story of the noble frontiersman like Daniel Boone ended with a narrative of the ignorant, impoverished, and violent hillbilly who was threatening industrial progress. Yet mountain people didn’t become ‘poor’ until after the industrialisation of the mountains destroyed the ecological base for community self-sufficiency (Stoll, 2017). Displaced from their lands and ways of making a living, Appalachian people took jobs with the timber and coal companies and became dependent on low-wage, dangerous work that was devastating the ecosystems of their region while undermining their autonomy, health, and quality of life.

In the late 1800s, the Appalachian mountains became notorious for violent feuds, like the one between the Hatfields and McCoys along the border between Kentucky and West Virginia (Waller, 1988). Writers and journalists played up stories of violent hillbillies who needed to be ‘civilised’ through industrial progress. Yet violent feuds in the Appalachian mountains increased rather than decreased as the timber and coal companies intensified exploitation of the region’s resources (Waller, 1988). As Altina Waller writes, ‘From the civil war to the early 20th century, economic changes were transforming Appalachia from a region of self-sufficient and stable communities to one of dependency and poverty’ (Waller, 1988: 9). The onslaught of industrial capitalism destabilised Appalachian communities and fostered violence, poverty, and dependence. Violence had not been a normal or acceptable part of settler mountain communities until the arrival of industrial extraction (Waller, 1988). So-called ‘progress’ was a brutal disruption of mountain cultures that had been largely stable and self-sufficient throughout most of the 1800s. Media stories played up stereotypes of feuding, violent, and backward hillbillies, and these stereotypes were used to justify the industrial conquest of the Appalachian mountains, effectively blaming mountain people for their own victimisation.

Media stories played up stereotypes of feuding, violent, and backward hillbillies, and these stereotypes were used to justify the industrial conquest of the Appalachian mountains, effectively blaming mountain people for their own victimisation.

Image 1 is an 1897 photo of the family of Anderson Hatfield, the patriarch who led the Hatfield side of the famous feud, and who was widely known as ‘Devil Anse’. Anderson Hatfield is sitting in the front row, second from the left, holding a rifle with the barrel pointing up. Historian Altina Waller (1988) writes that the photo was one of two famous photos made by an itinerant photographer who asked that the family members pose with their guns. The

Addressing Clerical Sexual Abuse through Restorative Justice: A Search for Empowerment and Collective Healing

Jonathan Chukwuemeka Madu

ABSTRACT

There have been highly publicised instances of alleged sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church with profoundly negative consequences on the victims, offenders, the Church and society. One long-term response has been calls to allow the Catholic clergy to marry; while for many, the offenders should face criminal justice. There are reasons to believe that none of these may bring about the desired outcome. Criminal justice system often works on a retributive foundation, imposing pain, suffering, or deprivation of liberty on the offender and may, on the other hand, silence the victims leaving them still frustrated. However, for restorative justice, healing the damaged relationships is the focus; involving all the affected parties to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible. Applying sociological paradigm on power, empowerment, social bonding and sexual morality, and using case studies and documentary sources, this article argues that restorative justice would respect the humanity of the offenders and create a way to promote accountability and personal healing as the offending individuals receive support to make things right not only for their victims but also for themselves and the community. As those who offend and the victims heal, so does the community.

KEY WORDS

Church, clerical sexual abuse, victim-offender mediation, community, restorative justice, collective healing, peace

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church worldwide has faced a dramatic increase in allegations of sexual abuse by its clergy, suggesting that both the Catholic Church and priesthood are experiencing crises of great magnitude (Guido, 2008: 255-69; Flamini, 2011; Richardson, 2018). Resulting negative impacts on the victims, offenders and the community have been seriously pronounced, viz: stress in the Roman Catholic priesthood (The Economist, 2017; Doyle, 2005), child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy (Dale et al, 2007: 59-74; Isely et al, 2008: 201-15), impact of the clergy sexual abuse on the victims and communities (Wind et al, 2008: 238-54; McLaughlin, 2007: 145-58); consequences and crises of such abuses in the Catholic Church (Frawley & Gail, 2004: 11-30; Kline, Mackin & Lezotte, 2008: 290-300).

Criminal justice system often works on a retributive foundation, imposing pain, suffering, or deprivation of liberty on the offender and may, on the other hand, silence the victims which leaves them frustrated rather than healing them or the community. However, for restorative justice, healing the damaged relationships is the focus; involving all affected parties to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible.

While there have been many writings on the clergy sexual abuse pandemic, more of these have blindly and solely condemned the Church, but not much have offered second opinion about other possible causes of the crisis in terms of environmental factors and offenders’ psychological conflicts and the needed helps for appropriate treatment and empowerment to address the situation. The earlier work on the issue by the author (Madu, 2020) which explored the various causes of the problem recommended a further research to address the problem through restorative justice (RJ). In reaction to sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, many have opined that they should be allowed to marry, while for others, the offenders should just face criminal justice; but none of these may bring about the desired outcome. There has been a history of sexual abuse in the Protestant Church also, with cover-up, that has not received as much coverage. This is one argument against just having priests to get married as a solution to this problem. On the other hand, criminal justice system often works on a retributive foundation, imposing pain, suffering, or deprivation of liberty on the offender and may, on the other hand, silence the victims which leaves them frustrated rather than healing them or the community. However, for restorative justice, healing the damaged relationships is the focus; involving all affected parties to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible.

Susan Miller advocates for restorative justice dialogues between victims and violent offenders (Madu, 2020, see also Zehr, 2015). There are advantages of such to reduce post-traumatic symptoms as they create opportunity for the victims who want/accept to meet their offenders face-to-face, which may lead to victim empowerment and coordinated responses of proactive Church leaders in building safer communities for children and vulnerable adults. Pope and Geske affirm that restorative justice can play a constructive role in the Church’s response to clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up; however, the authors focused on individual agents and person-to-person forgiveness rather than on large-scale collective or political forgiveness (Pope & Geske, 2019: 612). This article aims to address clerical sexual abuse through restorative justice ideals and practices that empower individuals and brings about collective healing through specific collective actions. Applying sociological theoretical framework on power, empowerment and social bonding with case studies and secondary literature, this article argues that restorative justice would respect the humanity of the offenders and create a way ‘to promote accountability and personal healing at the same time as that the offending individuals receive support to make things right not only for their victims but also for themselves and the society’ (Towes, 2006: 49).

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES: POWER, EMPOWERMENT, SOCIAL BONDING AND SEXUAL MORALITY

Max Weber defines power as the ability of one actor to influence another despite resistance (Gerth & Mills, 1978: 180). In that sense, power becomes authority if it is legitimised by people (power perceived as legitimate by a social structure). Power is only created in relationships. Lukes also sees power, not just as a ‘series of individually chosen acts; but also, most importantly, by the socially structured and culturally patterned behaviour of groups and practices of institutions, which may indeed be manifested by individual inaction’ (Lukes, 1974: 22). Empowerment is a multi-dimensional process of enhancing one’s or a group’s ability to have or do something. Communal empowerment is a collective social process of creating a community, achieving better control of the environment, and decision making in which groups or communities participate. It also includes organisational processes and structures that enhance member participation and improve organisational effectiveness for goal achievement (Zimmerman [2000] cited in Ballano, 2020: 5). Such processes lead to positive outcome such as social cohesion, social bonding, sense of community life, community building, coalition building, group support, community engagement, and involvement in and control of a situation in the community. Empowerment is believed to be sharing of power from one person or group to another, which could be by delegation of authority or participatory decision making (Kirkman & Rosen, 1919: 58-74). Empowerment of the Catholic laity is important and may require the laity to partake in ecclesial governance, but I disagree with Ballano (2020: 5) that this empowerment is necessarily by permitting married priesthood. Emphasis of Vatican II document on priesthood of all believers, which is common priesthood they share in Christ should not be misunderstood for the ministerial priesthood of the clerics in Roman Catholic Church; though the two are of mutual importance in the Church.

Sexual morality in this discussion refers to life of continency or chastity; in other words, self-discipline in sexual matters. Chastity is for all, but clerical celibacy is one of the unique ways of giving full response to the invitation of all to life of holiness (Madu, 2018: 240-49; Vatican Council Il, Lumen Gentium, Chp. V). Chastity is one of the three evangelical virtues (others being poverty and obedience) which are the corollaries to accepting the invitation to (Roman) Catholic priestly vocation. How different is the nature of chastity expected of a Catholic clergy from others? The observance of chastity differs according to one’s vocation or state of life. The religious, in order to dedicate himself/herself in a special way to God, takes the voluntary vow of chastity as part of a public profession in a religious order (Madu, 2015: 114-15). Expected of a religious, therefore, is absolute perpetual continence, which is abstinence from all voluntary sex activity. The religious professing vow of chastity renounces marriage and avoids every external and internal sexual acts. Clerics (clergy), being all men of Holy Orders of the Roman (Western) Catholic Rite, are called to celibate life and do not marry. However, priests and deacons of the Eastern Rite may marry. The Catholic clergy observe this in order to devote themselves completely to the service of God and the works of the apostolate without distraction. The clerical celibacy does not require profession of vows; the clerics are only obliged by the legislature (the Church’s Law) to remain unmarried. During the early Christianity, celibacy for the priest was a voluntary affair until after the Church’s Second Lateran Council in 1339 when it became mandatory (Ballano, 2020). Later, the Council of Trent in 1563 upheld it while Vatican II preserved it up to the present times.

Chastity for the married Christians means the right use of sexual activity within the bond of legitimate marriage (Madu, 2015: 115). The couple is required to be faithful to each other and not involve in extra-marital relationship. In every respect, clerical celibacy is exactly as chastity required of an unmarried Christian to observe until the single Christian gets married. It is sacrilegious for a religious to violate the vow of chastity, which may also cause a serious scandal like sexual abuse by a cleric. It is on this background, therefore, that we can understand the extent of the damaging impact of sexual abuse by a Catholic clergy—to himself, the victim and the society. This study has selected a few cases of clerical sexual abuse and how they were handled, to come up with a restorative justice procedure that can address the situation better, empowering individuals and bringing about collective healing.

Traditional Livelihoods and the Idea of Gender Justice

A Study of the Minority Women of Varanasi in the Area of Art and Craft

Saloni & Sushil Kumar

ABSTRACT

The idea of justice can be defined and explained in different ways. Irrespective of time and space it has been an undoubtedly established social fact that the girls and the women, as the members of the ‘female gender category’ have been deprived financially and subsequently emotionally as well as socially even if they have been equally or more contributing towards their respective household economies through their physical and mental labour and skills. Varanasi in India is a place well known nationally and globally for the handloom silk saris¹ it has produced since the medieval period. The minority Muslim community has been the main workforce in this traditional source of livelihood for thousands of families. The women of the Muslim community have been doing almost all the subsidiary works, which are required to start the process of weaving. However, they have been kept deprived by the traditional patriarchal setup of society. For instance, if we review the entire process of handloom weaving, especially of the Banarasi silk saris and other fabric, we find that there is a long chain of tasks which need to be done in a synchronised way in order to start the main course of weaving. Almost all the pre-handloom weaving activities like threading, reeling, making warp and weft, etc, are done mainly by the women members of the respective families. However, these fulfilled tasks are never credited to them. As a result, they are deliberately kept away from the economic and the financial rewards of this major source of livelihood, although certain project-based interventions have proved that they can weave and earn better than the men weavers of their community. The present research paper tries to explain up to what extent justice can be restored in such cases with rightful, wilful and dedicated efforts, especially regarding the women of the minority communities like the Muslim community in India where this phrase still gets relevance that ‘women are more deprived in their deprived communities’. Deprivation has a multi-faceted presence in society. Various studies and the entire discourse of feminism shows that the women, irrespective of their class, families, communities and societies, have been ‘given’ the secondary place in the male dominated societal setups. The Muslim women in this context present relatively bitter examples.

KEYWORDS

Livelihoods, gender, justice, art and craft, minority, gender-justice

THE IDEA OF ‘JUSTICE’

‘If justice consists in giving people their due, and those dues are different, then justice seems clearly to require unequal items.’²

The term ‘justice’ that means to ‘justify’ something that is according to the value system, popular norms and practised traditions. It attempts to bridge existing inequalities or the incidents or happenings, which create deprivations, traumas and setbacks to the targeted and victimised persons, groups or communities. Holistically, ‘justice’ can be seen ‘as’ and ‘in’ its abstract form only as it has been ever changing with time, space and situation. It has a wider framework that starts with ‘justice at the individual level’, travels in different forms of justice to group, community, social and global levels and ‘ultimately reaches at the level of divine justice’. However, the core of justice and its philosophical base have remained constant and unchanged.

Whereas ‘justice at the individual level’ is perceived in terms of individual cases that can vary from case to case, ‘justice at the social level’ is seen in wider context of society at large. For example, the reservation system in educational institutions and government jobs in India aims to bring social justice at the societal level while various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) assure ‘justice at the individual level’. However, both cannot be seen in isolated contexts as these are tightly interlinked in spite of the fact that both appear in separate forms.

Although the concept of ‘gender justice’ is global in nature, it is contextualised in Indian social context mainly in the present research paper. According to the 2011 Census of India, there is a gender imbalance in the total population of India as women constitute about 48% of the total population of India—that should ideally be 50%. Although, women in India have shown remarkable progress in various aspects of life, at individual and socio-economic and political fronts, the majority of them in certain societies and communities have been suffering from multifaceted discrimination and deprivations. If we consider the ideals of equal justice for all, their deprivation becomes more visible as they have been traditionally denied from it. This is a man’s world that has been shaping and reshaping the world of justice, in which women have not positioned and befitted equally. In the changing world scenario, that covers India as well, now new efforts are being made towards gender justice. There are different meanings and aspects of the term ‘gender justice’ but its definition and explanation provided by Oxfam³ appears closest to the present research paper. According to Oxfam, gender justice is a human right; every woman and girl is entitled to live in dignity and in freedom, without any fear. Gender Justice is indispensable for development, poverty reduction, and is crucial to achieving human progress. Realising it includes sharing of power and responsibility between women and men at home, in the workplace, and in the wider national and international communities.⁴

Although, women in India have shown remarkable progress in various aspects of life, at individual and socio-economic and political fronts, the majority of them in certain societies and communities have been suffering from multifaceted discrimination and deprivations. If we consider the ideals of equal justice for all, their deprivation becomes more visible as they have been traditionally denied from it.

A well-known case discussed in this research paper is known as the Shah Bano case. It refers to the general situation of the women from the largest minority community in India who have been suffering from frequent and unimagined incidents of injustice against them just because they are women. This long battled case also showcases their systematic struggles against such gender related social situation of injustice. This case started a formal and legal battle of the deprived women and catalysed a chain of efforts to make women-centric laws in India. The recent social movement and judicial decision through a bill passed in the Parliament of India on the issue of ‘Triple Talaq’ had good impacts of the Shah Bano Case.

The socio-religious contexts of the ‘Triple Talaq’ issue have been widely misinterpreted and misused in India. The term ‘Triple Talaq’ simply indicates a typical way of divorce in the Muslim community, in which a husband can easily divorce his wife only by uttering the word ‘Talaq’ three subsequent times in front of her, i.e., ‘Talaq, Talaq, Talaq’ (divorce, divorce, divorce). Now, with the advent of communication technology the same can be done through WhatsApp calls, video calls, emails, letters and FAXs, etc. An increasing number of illogical and baseless divorces in the Muslim community, and subsequent sufferings of the women divorced this way, have forced a number of human rights activists and political parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party to start social and political movements against the tradition of ‘Triple Talaq’ in India. Those who have raised their concerns and voices against this tradition of divorce have been convincing the society by and large that this goes against the religious provisions of ‘marriage’ and ‘divorce’ in Islam and are also against the verses of the Holy Quran. These movements were largely intimated and supported by the victims of ‘Triple Talaq’ that finally came to a legal end after the Parliament of India passed a Bill and made and implemented laws against it on 1 August 2019. After this all the Muslim men or women seeking ‘Talaq’ must go through the proper legal exercises which are compulsory to follow in this regard. Uttering the word ‘Talaq’ three times is no more accepted legally now.

There are many other cases in which favourable laws are formed through a number of Bills passed in the parliament. Judicial decisions also came in their favour with the perspective of social justice, inspired by such cases. A vital example in this regard is of the Lal Bihari ‘Mritak’ case that was fought by a farmer of the Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh in India who ‘remained’ dead in the government land records between 1975 and 1994. To capture his share in the land property after the death, his father and uncle eliminated his names from the official land records by bribing the land record officials so that Lal Bihari would not be able to ‘claim’ his share of land, of which the ownership was transferred in his name automatically as its successor. He fought long legal battles at various fronts, formed the ‘Mritak Sangh’ (an organisation of the dead) and added ‘Mritak’ (the dead) with his name as a catchy suffix. Finally he won the case and showed ‘how to be alive in the land records’ to many others who were victimised like him. Such cases present a good blend of law, morality and politics, which can be used to categorise social justice in two broader categories, i.e., in ‘formal justice’ and ‘material justice’. As summarised by the experts of this issue, it is conventional to distinguish between ‘formal justice’ (the law) and ‘material justice’ (morality and politics), although some theorists of justice treat the two concepts as parallel or overlapping, and argue that since legal and or criminal justice concerns the distribution of penalties to the guilty, it has much in common with social justice, which deals with the allocation of scarce goods (and ‘bads’) to a population; both are premised on the ideas of due process, impartiality, and distribution according to appropriate criteria.⁵

WHY ‘JUSTICE’ IS NEEDED

The human world is a paradoxical world in which positive and negative extremes exist together, sometimes justifying each other and sometimes living no logic or clue behind their countering extremities. Initially it can be seen in the world of linguistics, then in nature and society and subsequently and finally in emotions and expressions, i.e., the binaries like ‘black and white’, ‘cold and hot’, ‘poverty

NOTES

1. Saris—also spelt ‘Sarees’—are one of the ancient, traditional and most common daily wears for women in India. A sari can be 4.50 to 6.00 metre long that depends on the type of sari and the society in which it is used and on the occasion as well. It can simply be weaved using cotton threads, silk threads and even using silver and metal threads.

2. Scott, J (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Fourth Edition, 2014, p.382

3. Oxfam is an international organisation that has been working in different areas on various aspects of human life across the world. Its agenda in the areas of gender justice has been ‘to transform gender power relations and norms, through campaigning, programming, advocacy, research to facilitate women’s articulation of their own voice and agendas’.

4. https://policy-practice.oxfamamerica.org/work/gender-justice/

5. Scott, J (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, Fourth Edition, 2014, p.380

Embracing an Ecosocial Worldview for Climate Justice and Collective Healing

Sandra Engstrom & Meredith C F Powers

ABSTRACT

We are faced with an ongoing global climate crisis, the more recent public health crisis brought on by COVID-19, increased racial and police violence, ableism, and the intersecting injustices surrounding gender and sexuality. From an autoethnographic perspective, we argue the urgent need for a shift in worldview from one that is more human-centric to an ecosocial worldview that takes into account the global connections that we can no longer ignore. An ecosocial worldview acknowledges the inextricable relationships of humans within our context of a global ecosystem. When we embrace this worldview, we can approach and address injustice and in doing so, can prove to be beneficial to and healing for both the planet and the people living in; it has to be understood as climate justice. We reflect on our journeys to an ecosocial world view and discuss how climate justice works from an ecosocial worldview, can promote the repairing of broken relationships among individuals, communities, self, and the planet. This paper shares reflections and perspectives for individual and collective healing, such as eco-therapy, gratitude, teaching, and adopting a sustainable, life-enhancing pace. These healing and reflective practices within the context of climate justice are also important factors in building and maintaining individual and community resilience to current and future crises.

KEYWORDS

Ecosocial worldview, climate justice, autoethnography, social work, healing

INTRODUCTION

We would like to start with a recognition of gratitude, first, for Mother Nature who sustains us and revives us physically and emotionally, for the privilege to have this opportunity for contemplation of the many scholars and leaders who have come before us, and for the opportunity to collaborate over the years despite the distance and distractions. Also, we are grateful to the readers for joining us on this journey as they consider their worldview, the potential to embrace an ecosocial worldview, and how it can promote their own healing, collective healing, and specifically their involvement in creating climate justice.

Globally, we are experiencing a convergence of chronic and complex injustices, including colonialism, ableism, oppression, and violence based on race, gender and sexuality, structural inequality, and climate injustice (Canty, 2017; D’Alisa, Demaria & Kallis, 2014; Spencer, M S, Fentress, T, Touch, A & Hernandez, J, 2020). These converge with the recent global health pandemic of COVID-19 and the resulting economic repercussions (Amadasun, 2020; Lavalette, Ioakimidis & Ferguson, 2020). At the time of writing this paper, there have been over 68 million confirmed cases and over 1.5 million deaths as a result of COVID-19 and the numbers are increasing exponentially (WHO, 2020).

Due to the potential lethal spread of the virus, health and mental health suffering are exacerbated as many people are unable to rely upon known support systems, such as meeting with and enjoying close contact with family, friends, and support groups. Many have had to limit their movement, even within their homes and communities, having little to no contact with neighbours or connections in nature. Others have had to carry on, as frontline, essential workers, risking their health and mental health in care of others. Many experience the impacts of these injustices differently due to structural inequalities that deprive the majority of the world. However, these disparities are not merely ‘risk factors’, as some may euphemistically call them, rather ‘indicators of oppression’ (Flores, 2020) that must be recognised and addressed as such. The consequences of staying the course on our current trajectory are wide-ranging for all species and the planet itself, ranging from overpopulation, displacement, and forced migration due to scarcity of viable air, water, and land that will sustain life, and extinction. The current context is further evidence of the likelihood of increasing pandemics related to zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19 (Hirvilammi & Helne, 2014).

Due to all this, our ‘surge capacity’, a collection of adaptive systems that humans draw on for short-term survival in stressful situations, is increasingly depleted (Halle, 2020). This is because we are burdened by so much ongoing and anticipatory grief, including ambiguous loss, with no end in sight and no way to fathom what could be lost. These complex problems are chronic, ongoing stressors, or ‘wicked problems’ (Koloko, 2012) that must be rectified, despite the difficulties in where to start. The challenge to prioritise what to deal with and in what order can result in mental paralysis, increasing mental and physical distress and illness. Social workers have expertise and skill-sets to offer as they often operate in situations of uncertainty and ambiguity, but the impact on the social workers themselves has also been exacerbated in the current context (Lavalette, Ioakimidis & Ferguson, 2020). One angle that we, the authors, approach these wicked problems is through our work on climate justice. Through what we call ‘radical self-care’ (Lorde, 1988; Powers & Engstrom, 2020), we have found we can often overcome our mental paralysis and promote our healing as we work towards collective healing through climate justice in our roles as social work teachers and community engaged researchers. We define climate justice broadly as approaches and actions that address injustices to the entire ecosystem, which includes all species, humans merely being one (Powers, Rambaree & Peeters, 2019). Environmental justice is one aspect under the broader umbrella of climate justice, being the narrower and specific justice issues related to how humans are impacted by the environment (Bullard, 1994).

The challenge to prioritise what to deal with and in what order can result in mental paralysis, increasing mental and physical distress and illness. Social workers have expertise and skill-sets to offer as they often operate in situations of uncertainty and ambiguity, but the impact on the social workers themselves has also been exacerbated in the current context.

It is undeniable that our world is inextricably connected. The current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, while an ongoing tragedy, has also created space and time that allows us to intentionally and explicitly slow down to re-evaluate the current systems and processes upon which we rely. Instead of blindly perpetuating the structures and practices that resulted in the injustices we fight, we can take this moment to pause and establish a new normal. As writer and activist, Sonya Renee Taylor (2020) proclaimed,

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate, and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.

Increasingly, research and arguments have called for this slowing of our life pace and changing our ways as we reassess, mitigate, and redress the damage that humans have done, and continue to do, to the environment and each other (Dominelli, 2012; Peeters, 2012; Powers & Engstrom, 2020; Wall Kimmerer, 2013). Much of the current injustices of oppression, over-consumerism, exploitation, and materialistic practices are the result of structures and systems based on a human-centric worldview, where humans are seen as the centre of all relationships and prioritised over other species and the ecosystem (Dominelli, 2012; Rambaree, Powers & Smith, 2019). Thus, we must embrace an ecosocial worldview, which acknowledges the inextricable relationship between all life on this planet, including humans and more than humans. The ecosocial worldview or lens requires us to critically examine and question our current societal structures, practices, policies, routines, values, life-pace, and patterns of production and consumption. We recognise that we are entrenched in this temporal and physical context through global connectedness, along with the reader.

As leaders at the nexus of climate justice and social work, we are trying to be transparent about our struggles and ways of coping as we move beyond paralysis to action. We present our journeys of embracing an ecosocial worldview and how it has informed our practice to create true climate justice and collective healing. This paper contributes uniquely to the discussion and ongoing research in today’s context as we share our particular voices on the ways we are impacted and are trying to make impacts. We acknowledge that we are also among those that require healing and we intentionally situate our voices and experiences in the broader discussions and research (Canty, 2017; Powers & Engstrom, 2020; Schultz et al, 2016; Wall Kimmerer, 2013). This is why we have chosen to write this article from an autoethnographic perspective. We are not trying to add to the method of autoethnography, rather we are creating this collaborative autoethnography as a way to explicitly practise radical self-care as we promote the embracing of an ecosocial worldview in social work and the broader climate justice discourse. To this end, we also present our work in community engaged practice and research using an ecosocial worldview and discuss ways we are centring ecosocial worldview in the profession at large and within teaching. Without embracing an ecosocial worldview, we are doomed to our current trajectory of injustice and certain global demise. But, if we, and future generations, embrace an ecosocial worldview, we can change our individual and structural practices to promote authentic healing, especially concerning climate justice.

METHODOLOGY

As stated, we have chosen to write this article from an autoethnographic standpoint. This is due to our intimate experiences with the topics and our own need for radical self-care. The framework and process of combined autoethnography provided an additional structured space in which to reflect upon individually, and in conversation (Schon, 1983), about how the more we adopted this ecosocial worldview, the more we gained true hope that this is the way the world will ultimately be healed and bring about climate justice. The process of combined

Mapping Digital Justice:

Across the Great Divide, Towards a Sanctuary for All

Randall Amster

ABSTRACT

This article explores the justice and peacebuilding implications of a ‘digital divide’ that fosters differential access to online opportunities and other technological resources often associated with mobility, equity, and prosperity. Coverage maps indicate uneven digital access across geographical and socioeconomic factors, while patterns of internal stratification reveal how mechanised systems spark emerging regimes of predictive policing, digital profiling, and technologically driven punitive methods that can exacerbate structural inequalities. In an era when some users are so tech-saturated that they are seeking tools to manage their utilisation, others have yet to experience the ostensible benefits of technology and decide what level of usage is appropriate for them. Drawing upon varied experiences in which digital access is problematic if not altogether absent for many individuals and communities, this article seeks to illuminate questions of how identities are formed in the digital age, how preexisting inequalities impact access to technology, and the implications of how the benefits and burdens of emerging technologies are distributed. In the era of COVID, when essentials of access to resources and productivity are being thoroughly digitised, the need for critical engagement is more urgent than ever.

KEYWORDS

Digital, technology, algorithms, crime, data, justice, sanctuary

INTRODUCTION

Reflecting on technology sometimes feels like trying to describe water to a fish: it is simply the medium in which we exist. Yet as Marshall McLuhan famously asserted that medium is also a message unto itself, a notion echoed by Melvin Kranzberg in his equally notable insight that technology is neither good nor bad—but nor is it neutral. Fast forwarding a few decades from these observations, many of us find ourselves so thoroughly enmeshed in technologies at all scales that it is hard to imagine life without this being so. Still, an uneasiness often pervades, with intermittent spikes of concern about privacy, regulation, health impacts (especially on children), and more. These concerns, however, can pass as quickly as they emerged—and in the era of COVID, many of them have fallen by the wayside, as everything from education and employment to healthcare and relationships has moved in large part to the virtual realm. Rather than simply lamenting this, it is useful to consider a spectrum of affordances and limitations of modern technologies, critically examining the ways in which our lives are both enabled and constrained by the devices and programmes in our midst. This article seeks to use this framework in a way that bridges the personal and political dimensions of technology, drawing lessons from the criminal justice system as a backdrop, and extrapolating on the prospects for a more just world.

In the call to modernise (or even sometimes, ironically, to ‘humanise’) justice, there is a move towards automated processes throughout many criminal justice systems. In the United Kingdom, for instance, this is part of a push to make cases ‘digital by default’ in order to promote greater efficiency (Sanctuary Criminal Justice UK). However, as Virginia Eubanks observes in Automating Inequality, mechanised systems (devolving upon Big Data, artificial intelligence, and human-coded algorithms) are fostering ‘a new data regime’ of predictive policing, digital profiling, and punitive methods that can exacerbate structural inequalities (2018: 9). As Safiya Umoja Noble further explains in Algorithms of Oppression, the embedded biases in search engines and other algorithms yield a form of ‘technological redlining’ that deepens inequalities in society (2018: 1). Likewise, Cathy O’Neil describes in Weapons of Math Destruction how decisional algorithms and automated systems (used in myriad operations, such as police deployments and resource allocations) are opaque, unregulated, and reinforcing of discriminatory patterns (2016: 84-104). In an era of digital saturation and new modes of control that can intensify existing inequities, the need for a reinvigoration of justice with regard to the uses of technology is all the more urgent. The task here, then, is to discern how digital justice intersects with criminal justice; to evaluate the impact of an ostensible ‘digital divide’ that fosters differential access to online opportunities and other technological resources often associated with mobility, power, and prosperity; and to further explore alternatives (such as the recent call for ‘digital sanctuary’) that seek to foster the development of more just technologies and societies.

Writing on similar themes at the onset of computerisation and widespread mechanisation, Herbert Marcuse viewed technology as a ‘social process’ that exists beyond the ‘technical apparatus’ of commerce and communication (1941: 138). In this sense, technology is a set of social arrangements and not merely a network of interconnected gadgets. As Marcuse opined, ‘technology, as a mode of production, as the totality of instruments, devices and contrivances which characterize the machine age is thus at the same time a mode of organizing and perpetuating (or changing) social relationships, a manifestation of prevalent thought and behavior patterns, an instrument for control and domination’ (1941: 138-39). Tellingly, Marcuse went on to analyse the rise of fascism as a form of ‘technocracy’ that rests on ‘manipulation of the power inherent in technology’ (1941: 139).Yet it is not even necessary to go that far in order to appreciate the critical importance of the points being raised here. While it is easy to convey consternation about people looking at their phones during dinner or express mild amusement at friends who feel compelled to post the details of their lives, the potential implications go well beyond these appurtenances of the digital age. What Marcuse was articulating gets closer to the core of our technological conundrum by exposing the largely opaque power relations that underscore every piece of hardware in our midst. And this isn’t merely about who profits from their sale and use, but more so how the remaking of sociopolitical identities is ultimately more intrusive. As the saying goes, ‘if you’re not paying for it, then you’re the product’.

If we take the critiques of Marcuse and others seriously, however, then the irony becomes palpable: technology at a mass scale inherently serves the interests of social control, yet somehow granting more access to it nonetheless becomes a form of empowerment.

The fact that many if not most people seem to accept this bargain (i.e., trading deeply personal information for access to ‘free’ services) obviously doesn’t make it just. Yet this realisation leaves us in a conundrum where the expression of justice with regard to technology often appears as a call for everyone to have more access to it. This is especially true when it comes to ostensible public goods such as education, healthcare, and media, with either the implicit or explicit implication being that disparities in attaining these goods simply can be alleviated by granting people better access to the tools and technologies that enable them. If we take the critiques of Marcuse and others seriously, however, then the irony becomes palpable: technology at a mass scale inherently serves the interests of social control, yet somehow granting more access to it nonetheless becomes a form of empowerment. Further, even when access seems to be more equitable, this can serve to mask both preexisting inequalities in society and the subtle (and not so subtle ways) in which all forms of access are not created equal. The spectrum of these issues as to both quantity and quality of access is subsumed under the concept of the digital divide, which represents both a literal and figurative gap with profound justice implications. The aim of this essay is to unpack—and potentially transform—this realisation.

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE

A common perception (in fictional and journalistic annals alike) is that we live in a fully wired world, and are all connected to a pervasive technological web through myriad devices and networks. This view infuses the discourse around technology, going back at least to the advent of a consumer age that has been marked by mass production and pervasive access to conveniences. In the earlier days of the modern industrial era, theorists and commentators surmised the rise of a totalising system that could subsume not only the means (and ends) of production, but likewise the realms of culture and consciousness as well. Writing on the ‘social implications of modern technology’, Marcuse thus asserted that ‘there is no personal escape from the apparatus which has mechanized and standardized the world’ (1941: 143). Even more pointedly exploring ‘authoritarian and democratic’ strands in emerging technologies, Lewis Mumford subsequently noted that society may fast be approaching a point where ‘life itself will not survive, except what is funneled through the mechanical collective’ (1964: 7). By some accounts, such an overarching mechanised apparatus may be in the offing today by way of our ubiquitous devices, reifying the operative notion that the emerging technological web is unitary and all-encompassing in scope.

Nonetheless, the attainment of a fully actualised schema of technological interpositions may be nearer but remains uneven and incomplete. Numerous communities, and sometimes even entire discernible regions, do not possess ready access to the web of conveyances, nor even to the mobile networks that promise values of access and equity to manifold individuals across the globe. Geographical areas from swaths of Appalachia to Native American reservations and border regions, among other locales, are noticeably lacking on wireless coverage maps, either having limited service or being without it altogether in some places. The New York Times reported (Corasaniti, 2017) that ‘about 12.6 million American households lack access to broadband, according to a study last year by the Federal Communications Commission, which has classified broadband as a type of utility, similar to telephones. The problem is worse in poorer and rural areas’. Indeed, estimates indicate that up to 30 per cent of the population in states such as Mississippi, Arkansas, and Montana don’t have broadband access, with the FCC noting that ‘about 39 per cent of rural America lacks broadband access’ (Lant, 2017). As Bryan Alexander (2017) has observed, factors such as wealth, age, race, geography, and education often correlate with digital access, both as to whether it is available and, if so, at what speed.

Kaleidoscope

Stay at home, don’t write

Several studies have shown that women’s lives have been hit disproportionately under the lockdown policy adopted by governments around the world in the wake of corona virus pandemic. One report has made us perturbed that the flow of scholarly articles produced by women has gone down visibly to a trickle during this period. The reason: confined to their homes, women scholars and researchers have been so overburdened with housework and childcare duties that they simply could not manage to find the time to sit down and write. Men, on the contrary, seemed to experience just the opposite: enough opportunity and free time to think over and work on their yet formless tomes. While most journals in the academic world have noted a drastic reduction in submissions by women authors, submissions from men have shown an increase of up to 50%, according to data collected from editors by newspapers. Observers have pointed out that the diminishing trend of research publications could also adversely affect women’s academic careers in the long run, since the number of papers published is often taken as a measure of one’s scholarship.

Further reading: ‘Women’s research plummets during lockdown—but articles from men increase’, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/12/womens-research-plummets-during-lockdown-but-articles-from-men-increase

‘Pandemic lockdown holding back female academics, data show’, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/pandemic-lockdown-holding-back-female-academics-data-show

Education: a forgotten right?

Even as schools and colleges have been kept closed for months ostensibly for fear of the corona virus, an idea that has become immensely popular among educational regimes in most countries is ‘digital learning’. Under this dispensation, teacher-student interaction takes place in cyberspace instead of the classroom. As anything with a ‘digital’ tag is considered trendy nowadays, ‘online education’ is being peddled as the future of pedagogy. What is being overlooked or glossed over deliberately is that this ‘smart’ mode means the exclusion of millions from the educational arena. The reasons range from poor connectivity in many countries or many parts of many countries to abject poverty that prevents a large population from affording the necessary ‘smart’ gadgets. It is an irony that this mass exclusion took place in the year 2020, when the world was supposed to be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education. ‘Education is a fundamental human right that we must guarantee and defend every day, especially in the face of new and serious forms of digital exclusion’, UNESCO Director Audrey Azoulay reminded on the occasion. UNESCO’s #RightToEducation campaign has issued a loud wake-up call:

Education systems around the world have been faced with unprecedented challenges as the delivery of education massively shifted to distant learning solutions due to the sudden and widespread closure of schools in an attempt to limit the spread of the virus. Often heavily reliant on connectivity, such distance learning solutions have only increased the marginalization of the most vulnerable people.

It is, therefore, high time to ensure the realization of the right to education in all contexts. By renewing the attention paid to the rights and obligations laid down in the Convention, States need to take legal and policy measures to effectively putting an end to all kinds of discrimination and ensure equality of opportunity in education.

Whether it will be audible to the policymakers remains doubtful though.

Further reading: ‘What you need to know about the Convention against Discrimination in Education’,

https://en.unesco.org/news/what-you-need-know-about-convention-against-discrimination-education

‘Countries Should Endorse the Right to Education, UNESCO Recalls’,

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Countries-Should-Endorse-the-Right-To-Education-UNESCO-Recalls-20201211-0009.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=28

Lockdown and its uses

The Russian COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, has emerged as one of the top performers with least side effects in the fight against the dreaded disease. But the country’s law-and-order authorities seem to have found a more effective tool in combating another menace: people’s unrest. It is the good old policy of lockdown which does not need the kind of research that went into the development of the vaccine. So, on the first days of February, inhabitants of the capital city of Moscow as well as other big urban centres woke up with strict ‘stay-at-home’ orders. This time, it was not to protect them from the COVID-19 contagion but to prevent them from joining the demonstrations called to protest the prolonged detention of ailing opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In addition, to restrict the movement of people, several metro stations were shut down and surface traffic blocked or diverted. However, as there were corona virus attacks during the previous lockdown too, these stringent measures could not ensure that no demonstration took place. This was proven by the arrests of at least 5,000 people, including the jailed leader’s wife Yulia Navalnaya, for participating in the protests.

Further reading: ‘Alexei Navalny protests: Moscow in lockdown as police detain thousands’,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/russian-protests-continue-for-second-weekend-in-support-of-jailed-kremlin-critic-alexei-navalny

‘Police Lockdown Moscow, Other Cities to Prevent Navalny Protests’,

https://www.channelstv.com/2021/01/31/police-lockdown-moscow-other-cities-to-prevent-navalny-protests/

Must watch

Listen to Her, a film by Nandita Das. One of its supporters, UNESCO, describes it as ‘A spontaneous response to the irony of ‘STAY HOME, STAY SAFE’ for millions of women in India and around the world’. This short film focuses on two important issues faced by women during the lockdown. One is an ‘unprecedented increase in their workload’ which, we have seen in an item above, has even compelled women scholars to lag behind in their pursuit of academic credit. The second is a more quotidian and as well as critical issue — the rise in domestic abuse. Nandita Das, the director and actor, has inspired a number of women to speak up and tell their stories to the world, obviously expecting not silence but active solidarity. Apart from UNESCO, she is joined in this effort by UNFPA, UNICEF, UN Women and the South Asia Foundation (Madanjeet Singh Foundation). The film intends to create public awareness as well as provide helpline information to survivors where they can seek assistance. Launched on a number of social media platforms, Listen to Her is now available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scwYray2Dsk

Further reading: ‘Listen to Her, the irony of confinement for women’, https://en.unesco.org/news/listen-her-irony-confinement-women

Curated by Nilanjan Dutta

Book Reviews

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

By ISABEL WILKERSON

pp.496, New York: Random House

2020, HB

$32.00

Reviewed by

JUSTIN HARMON

Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020) comes at a time when conversations on race and racism in the United States are at their most pivotal point, arguably since the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

The scaffolding of the book is built around metaphors, anecdotes, and straightforward examples, all attributes that make for an accessible read, and more importantly, an easier sell if a book’s thesis is sound. Wilkerson states early in the book that, ‘Caste is the bones, race the skin’, and ‘Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place’ (p.19). From the beginning, the author leads readers to believe that she will add new depth to understanding the social injustices that have been historically tied to skin colour but have long been inadequately analysed.

There is key terminology essential to her thesis that readers are no doubt familiar with, primarily race and class, and Wilkerson seeks to delineate the distinctions between caste/casteism and race/racism and class/classism, all the while showing how the latter two support the notion of the former:

Any action or institution that mocks, harms, assumes, or attaches inferiority or stereotype on the basis of the social construct of race can be considered racism. Any action or structure that seeks to limit, hold back, or put someone in a defined ranking, seeks to keep someone in their place by elevating or denigrating that person based on their perceived category, can be seen as casteism (p.70).

Shortly thereafter, Wilkerson sets out to operationalise ‘class’ and continue to further establish how it and race are essential girders in the ‘infrastructure’ she seeks to articulate through caste/casteism in the United States: Class is an altogether separate measure of one’s standing in a society, marked by level of education, income, and occupation, as well as the attendant characteristics, such as accent, taste, and manners, that flow from socioeconomic status. These can be acquired through hard work and ingenuity or lost through poor decisions or calamity. If you can act your way out of it, then it is class, not caste (p.107).

For me, it came pretty early in the read where I started to have trouble buying Wilkerson’s argument. Some of Wilkerson’s claims come off as semantic exercises, a contemporary overhaul of conversations that have been going on for decades (centuries?). Every time I saw the words caste or casteism, I re-read the paragraph by inserting race or racism in its place—and the argument both made sense and was not new. I couldn’t help but feel her treatise is a little bit like putting old wine in new bottles; what is gained by reclassifying our understanding of racism in the United States?

To justify this need, she draws parallels to Nazism (Jewish ethnicity/religion) under Hitler in Germany and the original conceptualisation of casteism in India. However, she leaves out several examples of systemic and institutionalised forms of violence and genocide that one might think supports the need to more broadly apply the concept of caste as the institutional structure of a groups’ discontent: the Kurds, an ethnic group, and the loss of their homeland, Kurdistan, and continual fight with other nation-states like Syria and Iran; the slaughter of Tutsis, an ethnic group, supposedly once seen as ‘elite’ by their genocidal colonisers and neighbours, the Hutus, in Rwanda; or the internment and enslavement of Uighur Muslims, a religious group, in China. We could go on. Each one of these examples could be made to fit the mould that Wilkerson seeks to remake, but to do so would be to water down the effectiveness of her argument. If everything is caste, then nothing is, something that she unintentionally implies when she states that, ‘a caste system makes a captive of everyone within it’ (p.183). So, too, does the application of caste to sociocultural situations where it just does not fit. Are we to understand all forms of systemic oppression in the world as examples of caste?

While Wilkerson makes some significant contributions in terms of reintroducing bits of history that are either forgotten, overlooked, or pushed away due to their acrid taste and ugly blemishes on our country’s historical legacy, her book eclipses its inherent value through the forced reconceptualisation of racism in the United States. Had she taken a different tact, looking at the cultural components of Black people in America over its emerging history, she would have had the opportunity to add some breadth to conversations about race that began elsewhere, particularly in Nell Irvin Painter’s ‘The History of White People’ (2010) or Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s ‘The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America’ (2010). Muhammad states that, ‘white criminality was as much the consequence of racial ideology linking whiteness with class oppression as it was the result of new social and economic interventions at the state and federal levels’ (p.13) intended to suppress numerous sections of American society. As Muhammad astutely showcases, the intersection of race and class comes from the over-criminalisation of Black people in the era of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. Muhammad points to the assertion made by Franz Boas that culture traits are ‘shaped by environmental factors—climate, geography, natural disasters, war, and conquest’ (p.111, emphasis added). Muhammad takes the assessment one step further to show the limitations of Boas’ analysis because the latter ‘erased the color line only to unintentionally replace it with the culture line’ (p.125)—an ever-changing threshold that morphs to keep Black people as second-class citizens in their own country, subjugates to the whims of the dominant culture. For Muhammad, due to their station in life, Black Americans were thus relegated to finding their own means of social control, to ‘build cultural capacity by internally working out their own salvation’ (p.144), something Wilkerson seems to think not possible. She has removed agency as a possibility in the lives of millions of Black Americans. The false perception of inferiority that has been systematically attributed to Black Americans is a product of social condition—class/classism in its purest form, anchored down by race/racism; yet Wilkerson looks for other reasons and comes up short.

Wilkerson’s most moving rhetorical question is also the one that perhaps works against her the most (p.352): ‘if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?’ The answer is obvious: most able to make this decision (White people) have chosen ‘whiteness’. However, that whiteness, as chronicled by Painter (2010), is rife with injustices and discrimination of its own (not to mention what whiteness ‘is’ has changed over time), and still today, there are large pockets of white America that clutch to the bottom rung of the economic ladder of social mobility, perhaps dazed by the lie they have been sold that they are better off because at least they are not black. As much as her thesis should have focused on exploring culture over trying to inject the concept of caste into the national conversation on race, she should also have given more attention to class and how the dominant, wealth-holding, corporate class uses colour and race to create conflict between groups of people who have more in common than they do in difference.

Wilkerson said that, ‘Any action or structure that seeks to limit, hold back, or put someone in a defined ranking, seeks to keep someone in their place by elevating or denigrating that person based on their perceived category’ (p.70) should be seen as caste—no, it should not. What she is actually referring to is the dominant culture that has been developed over time and is enforced through structural systems meant to keep certain people in power and remove the agency of others (Hays, 1994)—capitalism at its finest. Ken Olende (2021) posits whether ‘racism predated capitalism’ and concluded that, ‘One proposition following from this is that racism is not the oppression of black people by white, but rather any systematic oppression on ethnic grounds’ (n.p.). As Painter (2010) demonstrated, whiteness and ethnicity has long been an amorphous categorisation, even if it has gelled over the decades in the United States.

Building on the work of Oliver Cromwell Cox, whom Wilkerson cites but does not engage with substantively, Olende (2021) states that, ‘Cox argued that racism developed out of chattel slavery, rather than the trade in African slaves developing because of racism: If white workers were available in sufficient numbers, they would have been substituted. As a matter of fact, part of the early demand for labor in the West Indies and on the mainland was filled by white servants, who were sometimes defined in exactly the same terms as those used to characterize the Africans’ (n. p.). So, had there been more cheap white labour available, race might have been less of a governing stigma in the evolution of systemic racism in American society, and class—as we know it today—would possibly be the overriding concern. Citing the work of Eric Williams and C L R James, Olende states that, ‘The reason [for black people being enslaved] was economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor. As compared with Native American and white labor, Negro slavery was eminently superior’ (n.p.). Therefore, the origins of what Wilkerson puts forth as caste in America are misleading. Caste was not the structural conditioning of Black people during slavery into their own subordinated category; it was lack of power and an economic decision (though this changed as race became synonymous with that lack of power). Caste was not introduced during Reconstruction; it was the solidification and fermentation of white supremacy and subordination through power, the capitalist reordering of society to benefit affluent White people.

Wilkerson said that, ‘If you can act your way out of it, then it is class, not caste’ (p.107). It is agreed that you may be able to transcend class, but you cannot transcend race in the United States. There is no need to repurpose an essential social dialog which would only serve to deemphasise the current, pivotal moment in history: that classism begets racism, and both are products of capitalist forms of oppression.

REFERENCES:

Hays, S, ‘Structure and Agency, and the Sticky Problem of Culture’, Sociological Theory, 12(1), 1994, pp.57-72

Muhammad, K G, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010

Olende, K, ‘Cedric Robinson, Racial Capitalism and the Return of Black Radicalism’, International Socialism: A Quarterly Review of Socialist Theory, 169, 6 January 2021, retrieved from: http://isj.org.uk/cedric-robinson-racial-capitalism/ on 9 January 2021

Painter, N I, The History of White People, New York: W W Norton, 2010

Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America

By KATHLEEN BELEW

339 pp, Boston: Harvard University Press

2019, (3rd edition), PB

$16.95

Reviewed by

JEREMY A RINKER

For traditional book lovers, of which I count myself a card-carrying member, a light, compact-sized, paperback excites pragmatic and visceral feelings of both the portability and revolutionary potential of knowledge. Kathleen Belew’s Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (2019 paperback edition) is the type of book that not only excites such potential, but also lives up to its promise to transform. The author, in the opening notes explains that the use of the term ‘ “revolutionary” is not meant to cast a positive light upon white power actors or the actions they undertook’ (p.x). Instead the book exposes the ‘shared repertoire’ (p.10) of the white power movement and leaves the reader transformed, yet angry. Why have American white nationalists not been better understood as coordinated leaderless terrorist cells over the last four decades? Given the 6 January 2021 storming of the US Capitol Building, Washington DC, Belew’s meticulous tracing of the historical connections between white power activists and the post-Vietnam growth in paramilitary organisations, is even more important. As to the book’s portability, it is only hampered by the fact that, so well written, you will not want to put it down and, thereby, will complete it faster than you need to transport it. In short, Belew’s book is well worth readers’ time and attention as it resets important narratives about American racial politics and the country’s uneven justice system.

In outlining the ‘catastrophic ricochet of the Vietnam War’ (p.16) through the post-war decades of paramilitary coordination of the white power movement in the United States, the book does a great service to the country’s ongoing reckoning with racial justice. Supplanting well-worn understandings of Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, Belew’s retelling of these tragic events of the early 1990s underscores how many mainstream journalists, academics, and casual observers ‘missed the significance of the militia movement in historical context’ (p.192). By focusing on the organisation, mobilisation, and framing of an increasingly well-coordinated White Power movement, Bring the War Home opens an important window into how an historical sense of justice and reckoning can too easily be circumvented and occluded. Belew’s compelling, and well-researched narrative from the late 1970 through the 2016 US Presidential elections connects the leadership in white power activism through both social vision and deed. Her primary goal of unmasking white power violence as a ‘series of coordinated acts’ (p.236) rather than ‘as scattered actions and inexplicable lone wolf attacks motivated not by ideology, but by madness’ (p.237) comes through loud and clear in her recasting of the historical narrative. Through this unmasking of the dominant historical narratives of these events, readers are provided a counter-narrative that gives insight into the logic and beliefs of white power activists.

Although there is much to learn in Belew’s book, there are also places where the historian’s approach could be augmented by scholarship from other disciplines like political science, peace and conflict studies, and religious studies. For example, reading Belew’s book as a long-time resident of Greensboro, North Carolina, I learned new information about the 1979 Greensboro Massacre and its aftermath. Belew’s depiction of a white power rally that ‘dubbed Jerry Paul Smith “Greensboro’s answer to John Wayne” ’ (p.51) brought home the extent of both the white power movement’s reach and the story of the Greensboro massacre’s impact within white power circles. At the same time, the complex dynamics and history of reactive animus between Klan and Communist Workers Party activists is not fully articulated. Further, the author’s analysis of white power movement pamphlets leaves open the religious underpinnings of many of the movement’s activists, in favour of a focus on militant and masculine interpretations. While the strategy of symbolically framing their resistance as a ‘war against the American women’ (p.184) was critical to White Power defence at Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1988, Belew’s focus here leaves other tropes of symbolic mobilising under-attended. Were the rhetorical tropes proclaiming, ‘defense of white women from miscegenation, racial pollution, and other dangers’ (p.157) more critical to the movement than the messianic religious worldview articulated via The Turner Diaries (1978)? While the protection of White women was certainly a key mobilising frame, so was a uniquely American Christian identity as self-sufficient resisters of perceived tyrannical government overreach. And both these rhetorical frames continue to resonate even today. Underpinning both these frames, the role of a uniquely American form of Christianity, born of collective trauma and a sense of victimisation, deserves more dedicated attention in Belew’s account. In asking if gender framing is more important than the vitriolic rhetoric between the post-war left and right does not refute Belew’s claims. On the contrary, raising these questions in no way obviates the revolutionary importance of this book. That reflection on the book raises such questions is, in fact, a testament to its relevance and importance.

Despite the rather minor critiques that can be raised in assessing the political framing, conflict dynamics, and religious sentiments at play, Belew’s book does a great job of historically-grounding social movement analysis as a critical tool in combating White Power beliefs. This, in itself, is a significant first step in unmasking the role that white power movement activists played, and continue to play, in the US polity. In my field of peace and conflict studies, such deep analysis of the parties involved leads one to further explore (and, thereby, expose) the strategies, tactics, and roles of these parties in an ongoing conflict repertoire. Rather than wish they were not here, or paint them as deranged or brainwashed, it is critical to understand such movement activists as rational actors pursuing their interests and beliefs, not just blindly following an ideology. Importantly, Belew tells the contemporary white nationalist story in such a way that we can begin to see the impacts of other historical developments and movements on their evolving strategies and tactics. ‘Leaderless resistance’ (p.5), for example, is not an invention of the white power movement, but a product of Colonel Ulius Louis Amoss of the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (Michael, 2012). Underscoring how social movements are organised and evolve within social networks and milieus of privilege, represents an important contribution to the goal of countering violent extremism.

Often the analysis of social movements, especially in marketable paperback editions, is assumed to be superficial subjective diatribes devoid of critical scholarly contribution to the academic literature. This is pointedly not the case with Kathleen Belew’s Bring the War Home. This is an important rendering of the terror that a small group of activists can met out on ordinary people as well as an articulation of the power that such a group can exert to reinforce revivalist and messianic notions of culture, history, and race. Recent political events in early 2021 are clarified through Belew’s historical reading of White Power. Without the kind of historical tracing that Belew does in this book, governments, policy makers, and academics can see right wing terrorism as fringe and uncoordinated. Bring the War Home brings home the extremely crucial need at this time in history to see those we disagree with as thinking and acting humans that can be de-radicalised through close listening to and contact. Justice for these problematic views and actions will not come by disregarding the actors or disconnecting them from historical context, but rather through listening and connecting them back to a shared sense of community and humanity. This book underscores a truism apparent in the ongoing reporting on white power activists—only through listening to what they are saying can clear patterns be exposed and future violence averted.

REFERENCES:

Michael, George, Lone Wolf Terror and the Rise of Leaderless Resistance, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012

Pierce, William, The Turner Diaries, Hillsboro, WV: National Vanguard Books, 1978

The Purpose of Power: How to Build Movements for the 21st Century

By ALICIA GARZA

336 pp, New York: One World Publishers

2020, HB

$27.00

Reviewed by

CATHRYNE L SCHMITZ

In The Purpose of Power: How to Build Movements for the 21st Century, Alicia Garza takes us on a journey that weaves the interpersonal and relational with the political and theoretical texture. The diversity of her life across race, ethnicity, class, and gender informs her analysis. She models the complexity of learning grounded in understanding that our social, political, and economic structures are built on racism and sexism.

From beginning to the end, Garza shares hard won lessons. Because her writing style is engaging and easy to follow, she draws the reader in and across multiple layers of complex knowledge building. She sets out to guide us in investigating and rethinking ‘how we got here, and where we can go, together—and what gets in the way’ (p.xv). What we come to understand is that it is a process that requires a commitment on our part to actively engage in transformation.

The story comes to us in three parts. The journey begins with the exploration of personal and generational history as context for engaging in organising and the development of movements. What comes through are lessons on learning from personal, educational, and professional experiences. As Garza frames, ‘We are all shaped by the political, social, and economic contexts of our time’ (p.4).

As our history shapes our environment, our environment shapes us. Garza highlights this relationship through self-reflection, ‘My time, place, and conditions powerfully shaped how I see the world and how I’ve come to think about change’ (p.5). She was raised in a feminist household by a strong Black woman who taught her to see and rely on her strengths. She spent her early years in a single parent home that was then expanded with a father, who was Jewish, and a younger brother along with a move to an affluent community. She lived the experience of racial, ethnic, economic, and gendered diversity. Her lived experience provided her with the opportunity to view the impact of racial, gendered, and economic positionality.

Garza underscores the need to analyse movements based on understanding that the US is a nation built on colonial racism and patriarchy. These structures were embedded in the Constitution and the social and economic structures. We are still battling to unseat the power of whiteness and overcome the horrific history of colonialism, racial violence, enslavement of people, and assault of sexist oppression that have been ongoing threads. Whiteness depends on blackness and male power depends on gender inequality. We have to get better at fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy, ableism, xenophobia, and classism. ‘In a society where everything can be bought and sold but not everyone can buy or sell is harmful to our health, physically, emotionally, and spiritually’ (p.288).

The examination of the late 20th century movements is instructive. The 1960s and 1970s brought forward progress due to the civil rights movements with accompanying policy changes. In response, there emerged a conservative backlash as White males fought to maintain their power along racial, economic, and gender lines. This set the stage for the conservative movements of the 1980s and 1990s. These movements were often framed around demonising Black communities and keeping women marginalised. Garza lays out the ways race was used to create fear in order to align power behind oppressive policies.

Analysis of the civil rights movements and the feminist movements is instructive for informing the leadership models and practices guiding new movements. Leadership of the civil rights movement was centred around identifying a charismatic male leader. And, the feminist movement was focused on leadership by White, middle class, heterosexual women who created movements that focused on their worldview. Black women were marginalised by both. Garza takes us on the journey by Black women and queer women to claim voice.

Going forward requires believing in the potential for change and the possibility for transformative leadership. The lessons from prior movements inform new movements and help build a vision for creating next movements. As Garza frames, ‘I believe that Black communities have the potential to unlock a new democracy, a new civil society, and a new economy in the United States’ (p.268). Black women have claimed their voice as agents of change, leaders, and the narrators for their own stories. The ingenuity and resistance of Black people informs the development of recent movements.

The 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin is highlighted as sparking activism and organising focus on challenging anti-Black racism and police violence. Garza, who had been actively involved as a change agent previously, brought her knowledge and experience with organising to this work. In 2014, Garza along with two other Black women, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, started the Black Lives Matter Movement, a movement based in nonviolent action. Their lessons and those Garza gained through her experience with activism and organising are informative for those looking to engage in transformative change.

Lessons abound that highlight cultivating support, engaging in organising, creating and growing movements, and developing new leadership models. Coming together for change requires building relationships and understanding that in order to solve ‘real’ problems, we have to move beyond our comfort zone to embrace and learn from others. This involves having the courage to explore other worldviews. Growing a movement requires developing alliances that tolerate disagreement versus demanding agreement. One of the core lessons is learning about, understanding, and growing power. Those with power make the rules and we lack that power. Transformation means understanding and disrupting racialised patriarchy and ‘changing the complex web of ideas, values, and beliefs the undergird the status quo’ (p.229).

Garza brings us full circle. She started with the goal of making sense of how we got here along with seeing the possibilities for building a collective future. She has woven together complex histories about the structures of oppression, strengths and limitations of movements for change, and the lessons that inform a new generation of organisers and change agents. The racism and sexism woven into the belly of US political, economic, and social structures and systems are at the heart of how we got here and what limits our progress. Garza learned these lessons well and incorporates her knowledge as she positions a path forward towards transformative change.

In reading Garza, we are reminded to look to the future and create what we need that does not exist. Change is possible. It is in fact ongoing and unavoidable. Thus, we need to be actively involved, collectively. Transformative change must address the ongoing structural oppression of racism and sexism. To that end, we are each challenged to ask how we are going to ‘address the ongoing assaults of racism and sexism and homophobia and poverty’ (p.289).

As we move forward individually and collectively, Garza reminds us that we are not ‘defined by what we lack—we are defined by how we come together when we fall apart’ (p.289). This requires maintaining hope and taking care of ourselves ‘in the manner that Audre Lorde described: To connect with each other in ways that propel all of us toward care—for ourselves and one another’ (p.288). As Garza highlights, ‘Hope is not the absence of despair—It is the ability to come back to our purpose, again and again’ (p.289).